Charles Moore's Mailbag

Texting While Driving, the Power of DEVONthink and Adobe's The Bridge, Bamboo Bikes, and More

Charles Moore - 2009.07.29 - Tip Jar

Texting, Driving, Laws, and Responsibility

From Josh in response to Texting Kills: Cell Phone Use Impairs Drivers More than Alcohol:

Charles,

Speeding is also shown to be a major factor in injury crashes and it is universally banned, but there aren't enough cops out there to catch everybody who speeds every time in order for punishment to be a deterrent. Depending on how eager one is to realize the notion of an Orwellian police state, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.

Your column pits the greater good against the individual want - always a hot-button topic. We rely a great deal on other people "doing the right thing" in a free society not because they're made to, but because they want to. Being a bit of a libertarian, I err on the side of personal freedom. I think that law should be a mutually-agreed-upon list of things that we all say are universally bad and shouldn't do. The rest should be left up to the individual. Consequently, I get a bit annoyed when the government tells me I can't do something that I trust myself to do responsibly, just because someone else has proven that they can't do that same thing without causing harm.

I do agree with you about driving while texting, though, and even driving while talking. (I also would argue that shopping while texting should be a criminal offence, but that's a subject for another column.) I'm a computer repair technician, and my van is my office. Now, you'd think that I would be constantly on the go, talking on my phone, punching in things into my BlackBerry, swerving in and out of traffic. Not so. My company universally bans the use of mobile devices while operating company vehicles, unless you have a handsfree headset, then you can receive calls. They cite insurance liabilities as their reasoning, of course, not to make a social statement, but it has the same prohibitive effect.

I will admit that I use my phone while on the road a lot more than I should, which should be, frankly, not at all. What makes texting, IM, and other such technologies more dangerous than even a phone call is that they require complex, fast-paced responses in order to serve as the equivalent of a face-to-face conversation. We are being conditioned to believe that when a message is received, it must be responded to as soon as possible. Nor can we begin to pretend that such a communication can be attempted without taking one's eyes off the road.

Car manufacturers know that distracted driving is bad, and they invest millions every year to figure out where to place radio, climate control, and cruise control buttons in cars so that you can use muscle memory to turn up Bon Jovi or warm your seat. They have no control over the labyrinthine menus that today's phones have, though, and texting, mobile GPS, et cetera, are not activities best done blind. I can't even get the guy in front of me to use his freakin' turn signal. Of course, it's because he's reading the New York Times while eating a cheeseburger, and now we've added the extra distraction of watching YouTube on his iPhone.

Ultimately, it's a question of priorities, I think, which is terribly, horribly relative. Cell phones and all other electronic gadgets have their places, and, as we go forward in an increasingly connected and wired society, we have to keep in mind that we cannot individually control the behavior of others, only of ourselves, and we will have to decide how our priorities have changed. How do we get people to judiciously unplug and put the safety of their fellow motorists and passengers at the forefront? Do we rely on their best judgment and hope that they act responsibly? Do we swing to the other side and say "This is a bad thing, let's not do it anymore?" Or does the answer lie somewhere in between? I see an opportunity for Apple here. A system that allows you to respond to something someone has said by using your voice. I know it's been thought of before but no one has really done it right.

Hmm. Somebody call Steve. I enjoyed the column. Keep it up!

Regards,
Josh

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the comment. In a way, you've unintentionally highlighted the distinction between libertarian and conservative - I categorize myself as the latter, paleo and not neo. Libertarians and conservatives share a fair bit of attitude and conviction, but one area where we do part company is perhaps on legal restriction of certain behaviors.

American social philosopher Thomas Sowell has framed the dialectic in terms of "constrained" and "unconstrained", arguing that the most significant distinction between these two paradigmatic visions is that the constrained camp perceives and expects the natural order of things to be harsh and difficult and are more surprised when things go well than when they do not. In this unforgiving environment, the constrained seek systems and methods that will actually work, and regard the existence of any significant degree of peace, prosperity, and comfort as a major and precarious achievement, arrived at only through great effort and no small degree of enforced order.

Libertarians (I have several good friends who are, and was actually a member of the Libertarian Party of Canada for a short time, before it sunk in that I wasn't really libertarian) in many respects have more in common with classical liberalism (as distinct from the Marxism-lite that masquerades under the liberal banner these days) than classical conservatism.

Of course, we all have our inconsistencies. You mention speeding, and I've been a speeder for more than 40 years (without hurting or killing anybody), but I do sincerely believe with a fair bit of scientific corroboration that open highway speed limits in North America are absurdly low.

For example, Following the 1973 oil crisis, the US government imposed a national 55 mile per hour speed limit. Claims of an initial side-benefit reduction in traffic fatalities have been hotly disputed, with some statistical analyses indicating that the highway safety record worsened in the first few months of the 55 mph limit, then regressed to mean by 1978. When Congress finally repealed federal speed limit in November 1995 - to much caterwauling and dire predictions of 6,400 increased deaths and a million additional injuries - the actual effect was dramatically the opposite. Traffic deaths dropped to a record low by 1997, including in the 33 states that had immediately raised their speed limits.

Likewise, a study by the National Motorists Association found that the safest period on Montana's Interstate highways was when there were no daytime speed limits or enforceable speed laws. When Montana implemented a new "safety program", imposing speed limits and enforcement, the state's fatal accident rate didn't just increase, it doubled according to NMA statistics. Other interesting findings of the Montana study were that vehicles traveling faster than average had the lowest accident rates, and there was no positive correlation between speed enforcement and accident rates on rural highways. If anything, the highways became less safe.

in most European countries the highway speed limit is 120 kmph (75 mph) or 130 kmph (81 mph). Britain and Sweden have the lowest speed limits at 110 kmph (68 mph). About three-quarters of the famous German Autobahnen have no speed limit at all. The "recommended "velocity is 130 kmph, but average speeds traveled in unregulated areas are about 150 kmph (93 mph), with some vehicles cruising at 200 kmph (124 mph) or more. Nevertheless, the overall safety record on Autobahnen is comparable to that on controlled-access highways in other European countries. A 2005 study by the German Interior Ministry found sections with unrestricted speed had the same accident record as sections with speed limits. (An interesting sub-note is that the Autobahn limit in construction zones is 80 kmph/50 mph.)

I don't think anyone could construct a rational case that texting while driving is anything other than grossly dangerous and irresponsible. A new study, results of which were released the day after my LEM piece on the topic was posted based on research conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, found that a driver is a whopping 23.2 times more likely to crash if they text while behind the wheel as an undistracted driver, so it appears that I actually understated the case

You can download a PDF abstract of the study.

Charles

DEVONthink vs. Spotlight and Acrobat

From Cliff:

I've read the reviews. I've inspected the website. I confess that I still don't know what DEVONthink does that Adobe Acrobat (for OCR) and Searchlight don't do.

I read happy users extolling its virtues but am unable to understand how its search differs markedly from a Searchlight search. Perhaps you might explain its utility vs. these two other programs (working together).

Thank you.

Cliff

Hi Cliff,

DEVONthink is a slippery application to define, because it does so many things, searches being just one of them. I think you're probably referencing Spotlight in your note, which is a decent but limited search engine.

The particular advantage of DEVONthink's search engine is it's quasi-AI ability to categorize and refine searches under a variety of user-selected criteria.

DEVONthink is also a powerful desktop database and a serviceable PDF and Microsoft Word document reader. It can also save documents in Word (although not with full Word formatting support), as well as RTF, RTFD, and OmniOutliner file formats - and additionally to your iPod or as an HTML formatted website document. Adobe Acrobat is an excellent program, but limited to working with PDF files. DEVONthink, on the other hand, opens PDFs by default as editable text and can export them in any of the file formats noted above.

DEVONthink's built-in OCR can work with any image-based file that you convert to a high-res TIFF file. DEVONthink Professional supports standard flatbed scanners and the Fujitsu ScanSnap, and it allows you to either scan documents directly within the application or by importing already scanned files. The embedded ReadIRIS OCR technology makes the PDFs it creates searchable while maintaining their layout and places an invisible (but machine-readable) text layer behind the scanned image.

DEVONthink also has a built-in Web browser based on Apple's WebKit, although I find that personally of limited use and prefer to use regular browsers.

With DEVONthink, you can import and catalogue all your email files.

The program also incorporates an RTF word processor/editor, which is serviceable, although not exactly feature-rich, and I miss the customized AppleScript support in my favorite word-cruncher, Tex-Edit Plus, so I tend to only use DEVONthink's word processor for rudimentary editing.

Hope this helps a bit. If you're curious, my recommendation would be to download the demo (free) and give it a whirl, with the caveat that it's not the most intuitive program to learn, so you need to read the manuals and climb a bit of a learning curve in order to really appreciate what the program can do.

Charles

DEVONthink, The Bridge, and Photo Management

From Adam:

After reading in recent columns about DEVONthink (DT), it seems to remind me of a program I found linked to on the Apple website once, called Personal Brain, a cross platform visual database program. I had it installed for about a week, but it was decidedly too resource hungry even for my heavily upgraded Gigabit Ethernet (DP 500, 1.5 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro, 2 x 120 GB HD) or my Quicksilver (Single 800, 1 GB RAM, 4 HDs totaling 1.25 TB). I was recently able to purchase something decidedly less low-end for my photography business - a 2006 Mac Pro. Unfortunately, I still only have 2 GB of RAM, so running Photoshop CS3, along with Mail, Firefox, iCal, and the half dozen other programs I use to manage my life, still puts me a bit light on resources.

I was wondering if you'd heard of or tried Personal Brain and what your thoughts are in comparison to DT. While DT will give you a demo (which I intend to try soon), Personal Brain is freeware at the personal level. PB "Core" is $150 and PB "Pro" is $250. I'm having trouble finding out what the difference is though.

My reason for thinking of these is that I'm on the lookout for a good photo management system. Currently, I have one very large hard drive dedicated to photos. The Canon software downloads them into dated directories, and I add a name after the date to remind me of the event. Then I go to all the processing and stuff I do to get it ready for the gallery within those folders, as well as prepare the images for the web. All my editing includes (and this is the crucial bit) adding to the EXIF of the file my contact info, info about where and why the picture was taken, copyright info, and keywords that are searchable by the various image galleries I use (still looking for "the one"). What I need is a program that leaves my directory structure intact but is able to add all the metadata I use easily, as well as find stuff for me. Because, let's face it, when you're looking for a specific PSD and all of them are named something like _MG_1022.psd, it's kinda hard to remember filenames.

I've tried iPhoto and various other photo studio apps, but they all are not good enough for me to abandon my current system. iPhoto's biggest problem is that I can't point it away from the boot drive, otherwise the 09 iteration is quite nice. When you've got 500+ GB of photos, anything that tries to catalogue them by moving them somewhere else just won't work.

It seems as though these database programs are geared towards writing books, managing various office projects that include lots of files and random snippets of information, and similar projects. If I could find a program as useful, that allowed me to do all my EXIF tricks and just generally kept a more organized and browsable structure to everything, I'd use it in a heartbeat, and probably even pay up to $100 for it.

-Adam

Hi Adam,

DEVONthink can handle photo management, but that function is not one of its main foci.

I was previously unaware of Personal Brain. Looks interesting, but I'm not a fan of resource-hog applications, which is one reason why I'm a DEVONthink fan. It runs tolerably well on my 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 with 1.5 GB RAM, and is zippy on my 2.0 GHz MacBook with 4 GB RAM.

For photo organization and management, I'm wondering if you've tried Adobe's Bridge CS3 program, which has come bundled with Photoshop Elements since the release of Version 6, as well as of course with Photoshop CS.

The Bridge (previously only available with Adobe Creative Suite applications) lets you browse through your hard drive to locate the photos you want to open and manipulate. It also lets you export photos from iPhoto.

The Bridge has several panels that help you find and preview your photos, review associated metadata, and so forth. You can use any of the predefined arrangements of these panels - called Workspaces - by clicking the numbered Workspace buttons in the lower right hand corner of Bridge, or create your own custom Workspace by hiding the panels you don't use.

Another Bridge feature, called "Stacks," lets you dispense with iPhoto and organize your photos into stacks of images. Stacks let you keep each series of photos in a single spot in Adobe Bridge for Photoshop Elements, making it easier and faster to find the photos you want, since stacks reduce unwanted clutter.

Bridge lets you use Keywords to help you categorize and find photos in ever-growing photo libraries. You can use the Keywords panel, located on the right side of Bridge (in the default Workspace layout), to easily add keywords that represent favorite people, places, or events, and assign them to photos. You can instantly view every photo taken of a person, place, or event by simply filtering on one or more keywords.

You can also employ a feature called Collections, which lets you save groups of favorite photos as as a Collection for quick access and viewing, or to gather together photos you want to use in a project. An example of how you might use Collections would be if you have several cameras, you can segregate your library based on the camera you used to capture your shots.

Photoshop Elements has to be one of the greatest ever software bargains. It amount of power you get for $89.95 makes it a stupendous value, and the addition of The Bridge is icing on the cake (and only included in the Mac version).

Charles

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I'll have to try Bridge again. I've had every version of Photoshop from 5 to CS3 except CS2, so I had tried out Bridge when they first introduced it, but it was quite slow and clunky back then. I haven't really given it a second thought since then. Giving it a cursory glance here at work (we have CS2), it seems much better than I remember it. I'm sure the dual G5 helps out in that regard. Thanks for the tip, I'm looking forward to seeing how my Mac Pro (06) handles the CS3 version. You may have just saved me many hours of tedious organizing.

-Adam

Hi Adam,

I'm delighted to have been of service. I hope The Bridge works out for you.

Charles

Bridge is working out great for me so far. If it had a simple-to-use geotagging feature and integration with a few different web albums I use, I wouldn't need anything else.

I wanted to also praise you on your medical marijuana commentary. While I certainly don't support recreational use, I see absolutely no logical reason why a doctor shouldn't be able to prescribe marijuana for whatever use they deem appropriate, and it should be widely available at pharmacies. I am especially impressed by your response, as it seems most Christians (including a lot at my church) simply have the propagandized view of marijuana and fail to see or hear about the health benefits, yet many of these people have no problem popping Vicodin or other similar drugs given to them by their doctors.

I have no personal desire to smoke pot. I hate the smell, and I'm pretty sure there's still a running bet amongst a certain group of people about getting me to try it. But, as someone with severe chronic pain, I can certainly understand the desperate desire for relief. I mainly try to control my pain with chiropractic and OTC painkillers, which honestly only ever take the edge off. A pill form of marijuana would certainly be something I'd be willing to try, if it were legal to do so.

-Adam

Hi Adam,

That's great about The Bridge. It was a new feature added to Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac, so I expect that a lot of folks are unaware that it's now included, increasing the value of the program substantially.

We appear to be pretty much on the same page about medical marijuana as well - and yes, there is a rational disconnect for a lot of Christians on the topic. I appreciate (and share) qualms about straying outside the law, but there seems to be a strong ideological/moral element for most as well, which I can only attribute to a failure to think the issue through rationally, at least for anyone who thinks taking prescription Vicodin or extremely addictive Oxycontin is just fine while arguing that there is any moral failure attached to taking legal medical marijuana therapeutically.

For me, OTC painkillers like Tylenol or the various NSAIDs don't even take the edge off. Codeine 60 mg helps a wee bit but makes me sleepy, and ditto for Klonopin. I have a filled prescription for Tramedol, but am not happy about the side-effect profile. Based on the positive experiences of folks I know with taking Cannabis for pain (both legally and illegally), finding it both effective and non-drowsiness-inducing, I would use it in a heartbeat if it were legal to do so and not absurdly-priced (e.g.: Sativex).

Charles

Vaporize Your Pot, Don't Smoke It

From Brink:

Hi,

It is a hazard to your health to smoke anything.

I have a tall Turkish water pipe, I use in the following manner: I wet the cannabis with water until it is saturated. I then pack it on top of the pipe screen. Then I take a heat gun (like a hair dryer on steroids) and blow the vapors into the water chamber and make sure to inhale the vapors before they condense on the glass.

It is fairly comical looking, but it works better than the many weed vaporization devices on the market.

Brink

Hi Brink,

I agree with you about the smoking.

The person I mentioned in the column who uses Cannabis as a safer, more effective, and non-addictive alternative to prescription antidepressants uses a vaporizer and says it's much better.

I've held back so far. I have no moral or ethical problem with using medical marijuana, am convinced that THC and other cannabinoids are effective medication, and would like to see it legalized and treated the same as alcohol regulation-wise.

However, I do try to stay within the law, even when I disagree with it. Makes life less complicated. ;-)

We'll see how things go with the fibromyalgia.

Thanks for the tip and mini-tutorial.

Charles

Bamboo Bikes and Notebooks

From Andrew in response to Of Bamboo Bikes, Notebooks, and Other Things:

Charles,

Wow, that's keen! I've long wished to see the many potentials of bamboo appreciated and used here in the West, as it has been in Asia. My 30+ year old Motobecane bicycle has given me fine service, but its traditional 15-speed, high-bar "racer" style is not so practical for my urban transportation needs, and I've been thinking about a replacement; I'll definitely look into these bamboo models (produced right next door in Colorado).

The bamboo laptop looks like fun, though $2,000 ($1,759 at Amazon) is a little much to pay for a lark. I saw one review that said the feel of the bamboo trackpad beat even the glass trackpad on the Unibody MacBooks. A bamboo keyboard (don't see why not, though I guess it would be pretty labor intensive) would have been really neat.

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

Glad you enjoyed the article.

Motobecane, eh? My wife, who was born and brought up in Bermuda, had a Motobecane Mobylette moped there before we were married (one of her sisters inherited it after). It was a cool little machine. I used it quite a bit when I spent six weeks there in the spring and summer of 1974 prior to our wedding. Its 50 cc engine was no ball of fire, but I could coax 40 mph out of it on straight stretches along the South Shore highway, which was double the speed limit.

I like the feel of bamboo, so I expect the reviewer's assessment about the bamboo trackpad is accurate, although as you say, the price of those bamboo laptops is a bit daunting. If they were Macs, though....

Charles

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Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column was a regular feature on MacOpinion, he is news editor at Applelinks.com and a columnist at MacPrices.net. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

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