On Black Friday, 2007, I took advantage of a truly Super Sweet (suite) deal. It was great–I bought Microsoft Office 2004 for a Mac for about $30, and can upgrade for $10 to the new Office 2008. The dilemma presented to me is this: Do I choose to get Office 2008 student edition with 3 licenses, or the Special Media Edition, which is one license but includes Microsoft Expression Media. I really only need one license, as my wife can use Office 2004. But what if in the future I want to upgrade her version to 2008? What if the time comes that she can’t open documents (like .docx files) from collaborators? So 3 licenses is not terribly important, but would be nice.
But I don’t want to NOT get Microsoft Expression Media if it’s useful. I had never heard of it before, but I have learned it is a digital asset management tool to help catalogue the digital media on my hard drive. I still didn’t know what that meant in practice, so I downloaded the trial version and tested it for about 30 minutes. After that brief time, here is my take on it:
It is basically iPhoto/iTunes on steroids. I like the idea and the system, although it badly needs some Mac interface lovin’. It’s pretty ugly and looks like a Microsoft product usually does: like a spreadsheet. So the UI experience is not pleasant to look at, and I had to search for how to use some of the options. But it was fairly easy to use.
I do like the concept, though, and that may have sold me on it despite its terrible UI. It catalogues all of the images, music, pdfs, video, and anything else you have on your hard drive. You select the folders, and it imports it into its database where you can search and browse to find things.
Up to this point, it’s no better really than Spotlight. But what I like is that within this one program I could tag, star (rate), rename, and manipulate the media. That’s not a big thing, and maybe there is a little shareware app out there that lets me quickly tag things in my folders? If there is, can anyone tell me about it? Otherwise, I might get Expression Media just for this one functionality. Here’s why: I tend to download comics, talks, and images that I think pertain to different topics I am interested in, so I can use them in my teaching. But if I have something titled "school.gif" in my K12 folder, I may not be able to find it if I’m teaching on elearning in higher education, for example (because I’d look in my K12 folder). With Expression Media, I can tag images so when I search under different names, I can find things, which is good because most media pertains to more than one category.
Can anyone think of another app that does that? If so, let me know in the comments. Otherwise, I might get Expression Media for that reason alone.
Anyone else tried Expression Media? What’s your take/opinion on it? Please let me know!
Tags: Microsoft Expression Media, office 2008, macintosh, software, microsoft, digital asset management
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