Erica Sadun

Biography

Erica Sadun holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has written, co-written, and contributed to almost two dozen books about technology, particularly in the areas of programming, digital video, and digital photography. An unrepentant geek, Sadun has never met a gadget she didn't need. Her checkered past includes run-ins with NeXT, Newton, and a vast myriad of both successful and unsuccessful technologies. When not writing, she and her geek husband parent three adorable geeks-in-training, who regard their parents with restrained bemusement.

Books

Eight Great Ways to Get the Most from Your Zune
by Erica Sadun
December 2006
Print: $7.99
Ebook: $7.99

Modding Mac OS X
by Erica Sadun
September 2004
Print: $24.95

Articles

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Four Ways to Compress to H.264 with Elgato's Turbo.264
Publish Date: Jul. 3, 2007Erica Sadun examines Elgato's new Turbo.264 graphics co-processor in a USB dongle. In this article, you'll discover whether the Turbo.264 is right for you and, if so, how to use it for your video compression needs using four handy compression methods. Building Custom iQuiz Data
Publish Date: Apr. 30, 2007iQuiz is a brand new, flashy iPod game from Apple that allows users to create custom games and run them using the iQuiz interface. In this tutorial, Erica Sadun shows how to create custom iQuiz files and provides sample code and files. Apple TV: State of the Hacks
Publish Date: Apr. 2, 2007Erica Sadun has been hacking away on the new Apple TV and presents this "State of the Hacks" roundup of what people are doing with their Apple TV boxes. Discover what kinds of mods are out there and whether they're the right fit for your needs and abilities. Six Slick Tricks for the Creative Xmod Audio Enhancer
Publish Date: Mar. 1, 2007Smaller than a computer mouse, the Creative Xmod packs some surprising sonic powers inside its sleek white shell. Erica Sadun reveals how to use it to pump up your MP3s, enjoy nine-speaker surround sound, and even upgrade your car stereo. Stream Live HDTV from Your Mac
Publish Date: Feb. 20, 2007Erica Sadun shows how to stream HD EyeTV video from a Mac using VLC in five easy steps, even as it records. Learn how to build this remote video streaming solution by accessing EyeTV's raw MPEG transport streams and using VLC to stream that MPEG and watch the video on another computer. Modding Apple Sample Code
Publish Date: Jan. 23, 2007Erica Sadun dives into Apple's sample code archive and shows how to modify MovieVideoChart to create a comic-book-like video layout tool. Learn a structured approach to taking advantage of the wealth of sample code that Apple provides for developers. iPod Notes: Above and Beyond
Publish Date: Dec. 12, 2006In this follow-up article to "Building Interactive iPod Experiences," Erica Sadun shows how to use iPod Notes to create a "notes-only" museum mode, reuse already existing HTML source material, create custom menu presentations, control navigation, and more. Building Interactive iPod Experiences
Publish Date: Nov. 28, 2006The interactive multimedia presentation is one of the least-trumpeted features of the iPod. In this article, Erica Sadun introduces the basics of interactive iPod design by showing how to use the iPod Notes feature to create presentations that include text, links, images, music, and videos. Five Zune Secrets You Need to Know
Publish Date: Nov. 16, 2006Learn how to hack your Zune's video output (and save a hundred bucks), avoid the WMA plague, install your own movies, and more in this fast, easy tutorial. What's The Big Deal About Making Music Players Social? Microsoft Zune and the Big Idea
Publish Date: Oct. 17, 2006Why does Microsoft insist that a social music player, its upcoming Zune, is the wave of the future? Zune social networking manifests itself through its Wi-Fi-based music sharing and its PC-based (and presumably MySpace-inspired) Zune Marketplace. Microsoft gambles that these two spheres are sufficient to define a new and unique Zune space. Erica Sadun takes a good hard look at the Zune and tries to figure out if it is the wave of the future--or just a pipe dream. Burn Your New iTunes Movies to DVD (and Protect Your Other iTunes Purchases)
Publish Date: Sep. 19, 2006How much money have you spent at the iTunes store? And what do you have to show for it? An iPod full of music? TV shows? Those new games and movies? Too many people forget how much cash they've put into their digital media. And when bad things happen--house fires, computer theft, iPod loss--they're not always prepared to be able to recover those digital assets. Erica Sadun shows you archiving techniques to preserve your (hefty) iTunes investment. Grabbing iTMS Preview Tracks the Geek Way
Publish Date: May. 9, 2006Ever tried to copy a preview track from the iTMS onto your iPod? Hint: you can't. iTunes won't add those 30-second free previews. Why would you want to? Some great audio and video are waiting for you to enjoy. Plus, there's the sheer thrill of geek accomplishment--the "oh, so that's how to do it" satisfaction. Getting Started with Quartz Composer
Publish Date: Mar. 23, 2006Apple's free developer tool collection contains many overlooked gems. These aren't limited to programming-specific utilities. Take Quartz Composer, for example. It's a free utility that can bring new life and interest to your iMovie projects. In this article, you'll learn how to use your own pictures to create a simple but flashy animation. Putting Google Video onto Your iPod
Publish Date: Jan. 24, 2006There's some pretty interesting stuff on Google Video. In this article, Erica Sadun shows you how to download videos, convert them to an iPod-friendly format, and load them onto your new 5G video iPod. Shop Different: Accessorizing Your iPod ... for Cheap!
Publish Date: Jan. 11, 2006Even though there are aisle after aisle of iPod add-ons on display at Macworld, Erica Sadun went a different direction to accessorize her player. She made a visit to the Dollar Store. Here's what she found.

Blog

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Disabling the Digg Bar

April 13 2009

If you've been caught up with the controversy about the new DiggBar and its attempt to subvert traffic, here's a quick and simple way to disable it for your Digg account. read more

iPhone Dev: IOKit - The Missing Public Framework

April 13 2009

A lot of fuss has been made about Apple's public and private frameworks. Did you know that there's actually a public framework that you're not allowed to use? Here are the facts. read more

OS X Tip: Opening header files from the command line

April 13 2009

Want a quick tip about searching for header files from the command line? Here's a how-to you can use. read more

OS X Install FAIL

April 13 2009

Eric Mock provides today's "Chuckle of the Day". How long does it take to install iDVD? Maybe you should go get a few thousand cups of coffee. read more

Self check-out fu

March 13 2009

Do you find yourself using those self check-out machines more these days? Do you find yourself struggling with already filled bags and no place to put more purchases? Here's a quick secret to better check-out. read more

Pad your Apple Store order to over $50

February 27 2009

Want to pad your Apple Store purchase to get over that magic $50 free shipping threshold? Here's how. read more

On Vibration

January 23 2009

Making an iPhone vibrate requires nothing more than a simple call to Audio Services. Deciding on when your application should buzz is a different matter. The code for producing that short buzz effect is this: read more

Bring Airplane Mode control back to life

January 16 2009

At some point, my apmode utility got dropped from Erica Utilities and a number of people, particularly my pal Pytey, asked if I could find some time to bring it back to life. Last night, I decided to see if I could put this together using 2.x technology after having… read more

Thinking about table selection: Persistent or Active?

January 09 2009

A colleague recently had his application rejected from App Store because he used what I can only call a noun-verb approach. He allowed items in the table to be selected, and highlighted upon selection, and then provided buttons that used that choice to perform an action. His application was rejected,… read more

Defining legal input characters

January 02 2009

I sometimes use a little trick to ensure that a UITextInputField only accepts a certain subset of characters. Say for example, you want to ensure that a user enters only letters and spaces. A UITextField delegate can catch each character as its typed and decide whether to add items to… read more

Useful Core Graphics functions

December 26 2008

Last week, I introduced several handy utilities that let you convert standard Core Graphics structures to and from strings. This week, I thought I'd continue to explore utility functions, moving on to ways you can work with points and rectangles for on-screen calculations. Like the string utilities, these are functions,… read more

Converting Points and Rectangles to Strings and back

December 19 2008

Two core graphics structures, the CGRect and the CGPoint, play a large role in iPhone development. They are used to position items on-screen and to set their size. Every time you use a UIView, you can work with its frame, its center, and its bounds--all of which use these two… read more

Thoughts on AVFoundation

December 12 2008

In the beginning, or at least the iPhone's beginning, there was Celestial. It offered a fabulous QuickTime-esque approach to handling media of all kinds. Of course, this was back in the days of the first jailbreaks and there was no official SDK. When the SDK finally did roll around, its… read more

The case of the Missing MapKit

December 05 2008

While wading through the new 2.2 Frameworks, I suddenly noticed that MapKit, once a Private Framework was missing in action. MapKit, which was available until SDK 2.1, offered all kinds of utterly yummy features including Trip Players, Traffic tiles, Route Views and more. So what happened to MapKit? read more

Locating, tagging, and retrieving views

November 28 2008

Last week, I wrote about exploring subviews both of the user-added and Apple-created varieties. Many GUI components contain view classes that are hidden from the developer but are composed of perfectly standard components. read more

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