Mahalo Daily today put together an abridged version of yesterday’s keynote. You can watch the video and find some related reading here: Steve Jobs WWDC Keynote in 60 Seconds - Mahalo.
Or you can watch the video here:
Eliot mentioned Fluid to me the other day, and then yesterday, it popped up in my regular feed reading. Fluid is a SSB, or single-site browser:
Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate desktop application. Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, logical separation from your other web browsing activity, and many other goodies.
So far, using Fluid, I’ve created a Mahalo app and a Gmail app. It’s all tweakable too:
Fluid includes Tabbed Browsing, built-in Userscripting (aka Greasemonkey), URL pattern matching for browsing whitelists and blacklists, bookmarks, auto-software updates via the Sparkle Update framework, custom SSB icons, a JavaScript API for showing dock badges, Growl notifications, and Dock Menu Items, and more.
The Mahalo Application is pretty cool, because you can enable a CoverFlow-esque feature to preview all the links on a page. Also, any link that is not internal to Mahalo itself opens in your default browser, so Mahalo is always there, open and running as a reference point. Here’s a screenshot:
I’ve just started tinkering with it; If you’re on a Mac running OS X 10.5, you really should check this out. But enough of these silly words… Here’s a video explaining how Fluid works:
Fluid Thumbnail Plug-in | http://fluidapp.com from Todd Ditchendorf on Vimeo.
This morning’s ride consists of me talking about why all the 15 or so podcasts I’ve recorded between last episode and this one never made it on this site, about my pet parrots, about Gmail IMAP
, about my iPhone, about updating to 1.1.1., and hacking, and more largely about Google with just a dash of Mac OS X Leopard. Check it out.
Sample The Web Podcast: The Morning Ride Edition, Episode 4
Subscribe to the Sample The Web Podcast via iTunes.
Note: This will not play correctly in Google Reader’s flash player due to the bit-rate at which the iPhone records. It plays fine in QuickTime.
So, now that Gmail finally gave me IMAP access (THANKS, GOOGLE!), I have a pretty awesome system setup. IMAP access via iPhone to my main (Gmail Apps), secondary (.Mac address), and tertiary (old regular Gmail account) email accounts. I set up READLATER folders in all three accounts, so now whenever I’m on my iPhone and there’s something I really need to go over while at my desk, I just move the email into the READLATER folder. I also have a TODO folder on all 3. My iPhone just became much much more useful as an on-the-go computing platform.
Leopard’s incarnation of Mail.app is much more stable (so far; knock on wood) than previous versions, too. So now, I have a desktop email experience via Mail.app & IMAP that mirrors nicely my mobile experience.
The big test will be to see if Skype comes out with an update for Leopard, and if that can be tricked into working on the iPhone (from all I’ve seen, it appears that the iPhone runs scaled down Leopard, so theoretically, a scaled down desktop app with all the dependencies placed in the right places just might have a very very slim chance of working; Talk about an ugly kludge of a hack).
Great write up over on TUAW: TUAW Guide: Xbox 360 and Mac.
Okay. Now I may actually buy one of these… Either that or I’m going to hack my Mac mini to be one, although I think that’s slightly illegal…
Never mind. Hey, Trevor, are you still interested in my Mac mini? If you buy me an Apple TV, I’ll do a straight swap.
Holy friggin’ cool! Spotted this via Rubel’s tweet on the topic.
ps—I wonder if these videos will play nicely on my PS3. Hmm…
This is cool, but I’m not running it in Rosetta.
Check out Inkscape:
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics(SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.
Inkscape’s main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development
There’s an OS X Universal build. I’m downloading it now. One of the things that I’m attempting with my new MacBook is to find Open Source free software (supplemented with some shareware) to do all the things I used to do with purchased software. Inkspace looks to be a great addition to my toolkit.
…following these instructions, on my new MacBook. Works faster than it did on my MacBook Pro. I wonder why?
… and it is driving me nuts. I did a search on Google and found that some people who have had this problem put some WD-40 on it which fixed it, some others tightened the screws next to the display which fixed it (I tried this solution but it made the casing dent in slightly so I undid it), and someone else took it in to Apple for repair and was sans laptop for a week. Eep!
Anyway, I may go see if my local Apple Store can fix it in store or replace my Macbook and transfer data in store. Either that or I’ll give the WD-40 a shot. However, I also found this post while searching for a solution: VMWare Fusion Beta « Lumpy’s Blog, and so now I’m downloading Fusion to give it a go. Hope it blows Parallels out of the water!
Being the huge fan that I am of writing really basic step-by-step how tos, and having just set up two new Macs, I thought it would be a good time to revisit this infinitely revisit-able guide for the new Mac user.
I’ll do this in three parts. This section is the Initial Setup. Here it goes:
Step 1: Resist the urge to rush. As eager as you are to bust out your new Mac and start playing, taking these initial steps slowly and carefully can make the first leg of your Mac ownership run much more smoothly.
Step 2: Open the box. Unpack everything. Find all the bits that you don’t need right away and put them somewhere where you can find them later. If your Mac came with a wireless mouse and keyboard, make sure you check all the nooks and crannies of your box. There are batteries included. Remove all the little bits of plastic film and all the little twisty ties. This is an important and sometimes overlooked step. I’m serious. What I see all too often is people with new Macs with the little thin bit of plastic wrap still strangle-holding the power-brick for their Mac laptop. This makes the power supply run slightly hotter than it should and over time can cause damage. Also, if you have an iMac take that little remote that came with your Mac and stick it on the bottom right side of the machine, below the DVD / CD drive slot. There’s a magnet there that holds it nicely in place. This is helpful in not losing the remote. If you own any other Mac, you can go ahead and lose the remote now. Just chuck it over your shoulder or out the window or something. If you don’t, you will inevitably lose the remote sooner or later, and you may as well get the grief, pain, and anxiety of the loss out of your system now. Eventually, you’ll realize that since your laptop Mac is often in your lap, you don’t really need a remote for it.
Step 3: Plug in the power and all the necessary peripherals (your mouse and keyboard, etc). Turn on the machine.
Step 4: Go through Apple’s default setup process and be slightly aggravated by all the personal information they ask of you each time you buy something from them. If you don’t have a .Mac account, be slightly more aggravated at how much they try to sell you on it. Make sure you give the computer a password. Besides being a security risk, OS X is UNIX-based, and UNIX-based systems don’t like a blank password. Make sure it is one that you can remember. You will need to enter it every time you install something.
Step 5: After you have completed the initial setup, before you do anything else, run Software Update (go to Apple menu—>Software Update. Install everything it finds and put in your password from Step 4. After everything updates, restart the computer and run Software Update again. Chances are that you may have a firmware update to do too. If you do, when the Mac reboots, a dialog will open up telling you what to do to install the firmware. Do not just ignore this. Make a note of all the steps and follow them. After everything is done, run Software Update one last time for good measure.
That’s it for the initial setup. You can start playing and tinkering if you like. However, stay tuned. I’ll add another post soon on how to tweak the way OS X works for you, as well as a post about all the cool free software that you should download and install immediately.
Here’s a nice video tutorial on preparing your videos for PS3 playback using your Mac:
Found via: Sony PS3 Modding - Homebrew, Upgrades, Mods, and Hacks: Create an AVC/H.264 Video for the PS3
Mad props to the entire Weblogs, Inc team on busting out great coverage of three great events for record numbers this week!
Read all about it via Judith:
This incredible network effort that went into covering these three major events collided into a perfect storm today. Bloggers from both Engadget and TUAW, attended Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld in San Francisco — while still leaving an insanely strong Engadget team, augmented by Autoblog team members, blogging and streaming photo galleries from CES in Las Vegas. Our shutter-fingered, car geek bloggers of Autoblog, were also getting their joy by swarming all over the Detroit Auto Show — hundreds of gleaming high-res photos, accompanying a mind boggling array of four-wheeled ‘braking’ news.
Amazing stuff. Yesterday, I ran a Netscape Chat of the Stevenote, and as I just told Judith on the phone a while ago, I started out watching about 15 sites’ live coverage and the tabs eventually closed down to Engadget and TUAW, where I would look at Engadget’s polished sometimes verbatim quoting of Steve Jobs and then click over to TUAW for the fangasm reaction. Great tag team coverage by two great blogs. w00t!
I worked for a good 5 years in various tech support roles, and I know my way around a computer. Why, oh why, is it then that I behave like one of the least informed users and never listen to my inner tech guru? Last night, as I was downloading my Season Pass to Big Brother All Stars (Big Brother is my favorite reality show), I decided, “Hey, why don’t I download that program that strips unnecessary language files from OS X?” So I did, and I also noticed that it could strip the non-Intel based support files from Universal Binaries. Cool, right? Well, my inner tech support guy screamed, “Don’t do it! Back up first! Don’t do this on your production machine!” I ignored that voice and as a result, I am spending some of my energies this morning reinstalling OS X on my MacBook Pro. I mean the program worked, but as a side effect, none of my legacy programs, like Photoshop, would launch. Not only that, but when I tried to just reinstall Photoshop, I discovered that the installer wouldn’t launch either. Looks like some vital part of Rosetta went bye bye. Grrr… Hopefully, doing an Archive and Install will make everything work again…
Update: Archive and Install worked. We are now back to normal…
… which I think is pretty cool. I think those two publications run the gamut: Formal, well-known, journalistic and industry-defining Wall Street Journal [link] and then a very successful blog that tends to regularly contain content that is pro-EFF alongside random posts about things like pyrotechnic fun [link]. Here’s the line from this TUAW post that keeps getting quoted: “[I]f Apple plays its cards right and doesn’t screw things up, people will see that booting into OS X runs more smoothly and is nicer than booting into Windows, and we may see more switchers than ever before.” I wrote that line. Neat!
Also, last night I installed Windows XP Home on my iMac, and it runs fast. Here’s some pictures. Unfortunately, I have to uninstall and reinstall, as I didn’t give the XP partition quite enough room to allow for the way World of Warcraft temporarily tends to eat up hard drive space when it installs updates.
Ha ha! This is a good breakdown of why ThinkSecret isn’t all that amazing and why it is sad that a lot of the Mac web follows them so faithfully and that I fully agree with: Daring Fireball: The Annals of Journalism. They make tons and tons of predictions, many of which contradict one another, and ultimately they get about 2% of their guesses right. Oooooh, they’re magic!
How to serve your iTunes library to your Sony PSP using WiFi internet is a nice little how-to for OS X users:
Dot Tunes looks at your iTunes library and generates a simple web page based on Album or Artist listings that can be accessed across the internet. Once you have generated the web page, it’s a simple matter of bookmarking the page in Safari and syncing that bookmark to your web browser on your PSP. You can then access your itunes library with the Dot Tunes web interface and easily navigate to a specific song by artist or album listing.
This isn’t actually PSP specific, as you could set this up as a way to serve up your music on your home system with a 200GB hard drive to serve the music out to your Powerbook while you are on the go.
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