James Duncan Davidson

Biography

James Duncan Davidson is a photographer, author, and software developer living in Portland, Oregon. He is the co-author of O'Reilly's Running Mac OS X Tiger and a contributor to Mac OS X Hacks, among others.

He is perhaps best known for his work on Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant, both open source software projects created during his tenure at Sun Microsystems. More recently, he's been working on lots of Ruby on Rails based websites and Objective-C based Cocoa applications. Since 2005, he has been the photographer for all the conferences produced by O'Reilly Media.

Books

Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Bookshelf) by Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson Second Edition December 2006 $39.95 USD	Running Mac OS X Tiger by Jason Deraleau, James Duncan Davidson December 2005 $39.95 USD (Read Reviews)
Mac OS X Panther Hacks by Rael Dornfest, James Duncan Davidson June 2004 $29.95 USD (Read Reviews)	Running Mac OS X Panther by James Duncan Davidson December 2003 OUT OF PRINT (Read Reviews)
Cocoa in a Nutshell by Michael Beam, James Duncan Davidson May 2003 $39.95 USD (Read Reviews)	Learning Cocoa with Objective-C by James Duncan Davidson, Apple Computer, Inc. Second Edition September 2002 $34.95 USD (Read Reviews)

Articles

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MacBook Pro: The Thermal Paste Question
Publish Date: May. 23, 2006The MacBook Pro is a hot machine--literally so hot that it becomes uncomfortable on your lap after extended periods of use. Some users blame the excessive use of thermal paste between the main chips on the logic board and the thermal pipes. Is this the problem? James Duncan Davidson cracks open his MacBook Pro to find out. Canon 5D: First Impressions
Publish Date: Oct. 12, 2005The first thing that's noticeable about the EOS 5D is that it is a full-frame camera. I took a shot out of my hotel window with an EF 24-70 L zoom lens at 24mm. My reaction was, "So that's where my wide-angle has been hiding all these years." James Duncan Davidson reports on the Canon 5D after his first assignment with it. Dev to Dev: James Duncan Davidson Interviews Panic
Publish Date: Mar. 23, 2004The folks at Panic have been producing great software for the Mac since the System 7 days. James Duncan Davidson, author of "Running Mac OS X," interviews the Panic cofounders to discuss Cocoa, Xcode, surviving with Apple, and making it as an independent developer. Ten Things I Dig About Xcode
Publish Date: Oct. 24, 2003Following in the footsteps of "Ten Things I Dig About Panther," James Duncan Davidson further explores one of the facets near and dear to Mac developers--their application development environment. Apple is introducing Xcode, along with Panther, and Davidson takes it for a spin and reports on his initial findings. Ten Things I Dig About Panther
Publish Date: Oct. 10, 2003Now that the release of Panther is officially announced, it's time to take a close look at its key features. O'Reilly author James Duncan Davidson shows you the aspects of Panther that he really digs. In Sync with CVS
Publish Date: Jul. 15, 2003Apple's Backup and iSync applications are great for Dot-Mac subscribers, but some folks prefer to "roll their own" when synchronizing data among machines. The open source tool, CVS, is a good solution for "do it yourself" types. James Duncan Davidson shows you how to set it up. Configuring sendmail on Jaguar
Publish Date: Sep. 10, 2002Sendmail is powerful, but at times appears complicated too. James Duncan Davidson helps you unravel the sendmail knot so you can configure this awesome mail server on your Mac OS X system. Setting up a Site Server with Jaguar
Publish Date: Aug. 24, 2002Jaguar's debut adds many updates to Mac OS X's under-the-hood open source tools. In this article, James Duncan Davidson shows you how to tap Jaguar's ability to run your own site server, including an overview for setting up Sendmail. Easy 802.11b Wireless for Small Businesses
Publish Date: Feb. 14, 2002Small businesses looking for an edge over their larger competitors might consider providing wireless Internet access for their customers. It's affordable, and after reading these detailed instructions, darn easy. A Week with the iPod
Publish Date: Nov. 28, 2001We hit the streets with one of today's hottest tech toys, the iPod. Is it the "must have" MP3 player for Mac music lovers, or just an expensive spoke in Apple's digital hub? James Duncan Davidson gives you the inside scoop. Mixing Java and Titanium: Part Three
Publish Date: Sep. 25, 2001This is part three of a three-part series on Java and Mac OS X from a Java programmer's point of view. In this article, James Duncan Davidson takes a look at Cocoa from his side of the fence. He also shares his views on swing apps for Mac OS X. Mixing Java and Titanium, Part Two
Publish Date: Sep. 11, 2001As we continue to explore Java on Mac OS X with James Duncan Davidson, we look at the easiest way to create a double-clickable Java program on Mac OS X, plus experiences with Project Builder, and fun with Quartz. Mixing Java and Titanium: Part 1
Publish Date: Sep. 4, 2001Recently James Duncan Davidson published a series of weblogs on the subject of Java and Mac OS X for O'Reilly Network. These blogs contained lots of useful information that was too good to get buried deep within the network labyrinth, so we've updated them and are now presenting the content in a series of three articles. This is part one of the series. Life After AirPort -- New Wireless Base Stations
Publish Date: Aug. 9, 2001Is there 802.11b life after your AirPort Base Station goes up in smoke? You bet! We review the 3Com HomeConnect Wireless Gateway and the SMC Barricade. Help Yourself Help Others
Publish Date: May. 25, 2001As we look at the various ways to help give your Mac OS X applications a professional look, don't forget the "help" function for users. Here are the basics of adding help to your Mac OS X app.

Blog

Localized Corrections and Masking

May 15 2008

The headline feature of Lightroom 2 will be localized corrections. Sure, multiple monitor support is nice, print packages are pretty cool, and 64-bit support are all great additions, but localized corrections are what really will get people's excitement going. Because... read more

Auto Sync and White Balance

May 10 2008

Brandon Oelling has been extolling the virtues of AutoSync on this blog, and for good reason. It can make quick work of adjusting dozens or hundreds of images at once, especially for simple adjustments like exposure and contrast. There's one... read more

Import Considerations

April 20 2008

Because of the fact that I spend so much time working with digital assets, or maybe despite it depending on your point of view, I'm always quite curious to see how other people deal with the problems of managing large... read more

Lightroom 1.4.1 Released

April 10 2008

On March 16th, Lightroom 1.4 was pulled from Adobe's servers because of some rather nasty bugs that slipped out into the world. This was a disappointment to many because Lightroom 1.4 contained support for lots of new cameras, including the... read more

Lightroom 2.0 Beta Is Out

April 02 2008

It may be the end of April Fool's day, but this is no joke. Today marks the start of the public beta of Lightroom 2.0 which introduces localized corrections as well as the ability to run on multiple monitors. As... read more

Monitor Calibration Cheat Sheet

April 01 2008

If you're using Lightroom to manage your photos, you are probably serious about your photographs. And if you are indeed serious, then practicing good color management is essential to getting the most out of your work. I recommend that everyone... read more

Lightroom 1.4 Rollback

March 16 2008

Lightroom 1.4 and Adobe Camera Raw 4.4 were released last week. However, it has come to Adobe's attention that things aren't all happy with these updates and that if you've installed it, you should rollback to previous versions. If you're... read more

Lightroom and Time Machine Update

March 11 2008

When Mac OS X Leopard was released, it came with a cautionary note about Time Machine compatibility with Aperture databases. Soon after, Adobe released information that the interaction between Lightroom and Time Machine was unknown. Of course, we all presumed... read more

Keep Things Straight When Using Multiple Catalogs

March 02 2008

For many people, putting all of their images into a single Lightroom catalog works just fine. When everything is in a single catalog, things are easy. All of your keywords are in one place and you can search among all... read more

To Delete or Not to Delete

February 19 2008

One of the common threads of the comments to my recent set of posts about the challenges of keeping a large library and backing it up—both on this blog and in person—was the question of why should one keep so... read more

Another Vote for 1:1 Previews

February 12 2008

A few days ago, fellow Inside Lightroom blogger Michael Clark talked about his use of 1:1 Previews to speed up his Lightroom workflow. At the risk of sounding off with a "me too!" post, I fully agree. For the last... read more

February 05 2008

One of the essential uses of metadata for photographic images is to indicate who owns the image and how to get in touch with them. After all, if you publish your images on the web they're going to be distributed... read more

The Economics of Online Backup

January 29 2008

In the comments to my previous posts about storing a photo library, quite a few people have mentioned using an online backup solution like Amazon S3 or Mozy. I've looked into this many times and keep running the two sets... read more

Safe Deposit Backups of Photo Libraries

January 22 2008

In last week's blog post, I mentioned that I was done talking about storage of photo libraries. I lied. Over the course of the last seven days, I've had dozens of conversations with photographers about storage. Even at the end... read more

The Simplest Photo Storage Solution

January 15 2008

Starting out on New Year's Day, I've been writing about storage here on the Inside Lightroom and evidently it's hit a nerve as my fellow blogger Micheal Clark has also chimed in on storage solutions. What with all these posts... read more

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