Articles by Timothy R. Butler

Timothy R. Butler is Editor-in-Chief of Open for Business. He also serves as a pastor at Little Hills Church and FaithTree Christian Fellowship.

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Location, Location, Location

By Timothy R. Butler | Oct 04, 2006 at 12:13 PM

I tend to walk very slowly when I take a hike some place. Slow enough to test the patience of even a fairly relaxed fellow walker. Why? I'll admit it: I am a shutterbug. I take thousands of photographs, photographs that eventually end up in Apple's iPhoto. This is well and good, save that the quantity makes it sometimes hard to locate a photo later on. GPS is my solution to fix that, and if you create any kind of digital documents away from your desk, it should be on your list of solutions too.

Apple Announcements Add Windows, Other x86 OS Support to Macs

By Timothy R. Butler | Apr 07, 2006 at 12:07 PM

In a surprising set of announcements Wednesday, Apple announced not only the BootCamp tool to aid users in installing Windows XP alongside Mac OS X on new Intel Mac systems, but also an optional updated firmware that adds BIOS support to the systems. The ramifications of this are not yet clear, but investors' enthusiasm led to a rally of the company's stock in the days since the announcement.

Wozniak Denies iPod Spin-Off Story

By Timothy R. Butler | Feb 25, 2006 at 5:28 PM

In a striking report on Thursday, the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper reported Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer (AAPL), had some major differences in vision with Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs. According to the piece written by Peter Nowak, Wozniak asserted that Apple ought to spin off its iPod division and was hesitant in his support of the Cupertino-based company's switch to Intel processors.

Apple Launches Intel iMac, Drops Firewire 800 on New Notebook

By Timothy R. Butler | Jan 10, 2006 at 2:04 PM

Apple Computer's Steve Jobs announced the first Intel-based Macintosh computers today during his annual MacWorld San Francisco keynote. Contrary to previously published rumors that had spread across the web in recent days, Apple did not announce a Mac mini DVR or a plasma television.

An Outsider's Look at Adobe Part II: InDesign CS 2

By Timothy R. Butler | Dec 29, 2005 at 4:32 PM

Last month, Open for Business looked at one component of Adobe's Creative Suite 2 Premium: Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional. In that review, we found the product was certainly useful and worth its price tag, but it isn't exactly what one would call a “creative” product, in the typical sense. So, what puts the “creative” in Creative Suite? Today, we look at Adobe InDesign CS2, the package's professional grade desktop publishing program.

An Outsider's Look at Adobe Part I: Acrobat 7

By Timothy R. Butler | Nov 03, 2005 at 11:06 PM

When you talk about graphics software, the components of Adobe Creative Suite 2 almost certainly are the first to come to mind. Being the longtime leader does not always mean a program is the best out there, of course, but it at least means the company is doing something right. To get to the bottom of whether Photoshop and its siblings are as good as their market numbers would indicate, OfB Labs took two moderately experienced graphics software users who had not used Adobe's products before, and tracked the experience of using the CS suite.

Tango: A Dance For the Desktop

By Timothy R. Butler | Oct 13, 2005 at 12:08 AM

Visual effects, to varying degrees are often negated from being a key component of usability. I can, for the most part, concede that to be the case. While well-designed effects can improve productivity by providing visual cues to what is going on, many only provide minimal benefits. Icons are not such a case, and that's why I think the Tango Project is more important than it might first seem.

KDE and the Vision Thing

By Timothy R. Butler | Aug 19, 2005 at 4:16 PM

Just over a year ago, I wrote an article, “Why GNOME's Got it Right,” which outlined why I thought the GNOME Project was clearly the Free Software desktop project with the best vision of the future. KDE's Appeal Project, which has been brewing for some time now, looks to a different set of issues that need solving and has some very smart minds at work on solving those problems. In a few words, KDE's got some of “that vision thing” too.

Could TPM Be Good for Tux?

By Timothy R. Butler | Aug 11, 2005 at 6:55 PM

Trusted Computing is generally associated with Microsoft, and, as of a short time ago, now Apple as well. On the other hand, little time is spent on the idea of integrating Trusted Platform Module support deep into GNU/Linux and other Free Software desktops. Maybe it is time for that to change.

Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom

By Timothy R. Butler | Aug 05, 2005 at 10:24 PM

In a series of articles (part I, part II) during the month of July, OfB's Timothy R. Butler explained why he felt that KDE needed to move beyond the Qt toolkit it uses as a foundation. In that series, he asserted that the licensing of Qt is becoming a stumbling block to the desktop's adoption. Eric Laffoon, the project lead for KDE's Kdewebdev module, takes exception to Butler's arguments and makes the case for his view on the issue of Qt, below.

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