Waiting for your copy of Tiger to arrive? You can play with QuickTime 7 right now. And you won’t believe your eyes…

I just encoded my first movie in H.264 using QuickTime Pro 7. I had been working on this 4:16 project for a couple weeks, and have encoded it previously in Sorenson 3 and MPEG-4. To get the quality I wanted, the file size was around 140 MBs (for a 640×480 movie at 29.97 fps).

Last night, I set up the export out of iMovie HD to the new H.264 codec that’s included in QuickTime 7. The compression time was about double what Sorenson had been taking, so I just called it a night and went to sleep.

First thing I did this morning was check the finished product. The file size had shrank to 50 MBs. I thought, “well that’s nice, but it’s probably going to look too chunky.” Heh. Was I wrong.

The movie is beautiful! And because it uses resources so efficiently, it plays smooth as ice — both audio and video — on my PowerBook. H.264 is amazing.

The rest of QuickTime is quite impressive also. We’re publishing a full review of it on MacDevCenter.com within the next week or so. Until then, I can tell you this. The new audio recording function is a riot. You can also plug in your iSight and record video directly in QT 7. Major fun. The interface is much improved. Overall, there’s plenty to keep you busy here while you wait for Tiger.

I recommend the Pro version for $29.95. It includes all of the goodies and the editing tools.

And yes, you can run QT 7 on Panther just fine…

Ever wish you could quickly lookup a word in a dictionary while you’re reading some online site or in an email you’ve received from your boss (who’s obviously received one of those Word-A-Day calendars as a gift)? Well, thanks to Tiger’s built-in dictionary and thesaurus, you can. All you need to do is:

• Move your mouse over a word, and hold down Control-Command-D
• A dictionary pop-up window appears, showing you a full dictionary-style definition for the word beneath the mouse pointer.
• If you continue to hold down the Control and Command keys, you can move the mouse around within that window to scroll through the definition, or to change from using the Oxford Dictionary to the Oxford Thesaurus
• Continue holding those keys down and try moving your mouse around the page to another word. As you move the mouse over other words, the dictionary window follows along, displaying the definition for whatever word is beneath the mouse pointer.

If you want to add a keyboard shortcut for Secure Empty Trash, you can do so with the following steps:

• Launch System Preferences by clicking its icon in the Dock.
• Select the Keyboard & Mouse preference panel.
• Select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
• Beneath the list of keyboard shortcuts in the middle of the window, you’ll see plus (+) and minus (–) sign buttons. Click the plus button to add an item to the list.
• In the sheet that slides out of the window’s titlebar, select Finder from the Application pop-up menu.
• In the Menu Title field, type in “Secure Empty Trash” (without the quotes). This tells the Finder to look for this menu item.
• Tab down to the Keyboard Shortcut field, and create a keyboard shortcut that works for you. For example, you could set the keyboard shortcut for Secure Empty Trash to Control-Shift-Command-D.
• Quit System Preferences (Command-Q).
• Because you’ve made changes to the Finder, you’ll need to restart it. To do this, go to Apple menu > Force Quit (Option-Command-Esc) to open the Force Quit window.
• Select the Finder and then click the Relaunch button. After clicking the Relaunch button, you’ll be prompted with an alert dialog box, asking if you really want to relaunch the Finder. Since this is what you want to do, click on the Relaunch button in the sheet.
• After a brief pause, your Dock quits and restarts.
• Close the Force Quit window by clicking on the red close window icon in the window’s titlebar.

Now if you go to the Finder’s application menu, you’ll see that the keyboard shortcut you’ve added for Secure Empty Trash shows up in the menu. Before using this shortcut, just make sure that the files in your Trash are files that you’ll never ever need again.

One of the coolest features of Mac OS X Tiger is its RSS Screen Saver. When your screen saver goes into action, news feeds from the site you select are displayed onscreen, along with a brief intro to the article.

To change Tiger’s default screen saver to use the RSS feed, follow these steps:

• Open System Preferences
• Select the Desktop & Screen Saver’s preference panel
• Click the Screen Saver tab
• In the list of available Screen Savers to the left, select “RSS Visualizer”
• After selecting RSS Visualizer, you’ll see a demo of the RSS screen saver in the display to the right

By default, Tiger’s RSS screen saver calls up news items from Apple’s Hot News RSS feed. If you want to select a different screen saver:

• Click the Options button
• A sheet slides out, displaying a list of other “pre-ordained” RSS sites which you can choose from
• Select a feed (for example, the “O’Reilly Network” feed)
• Click the Done button
• To see what the screen saver looks like, click the Test button

Now when the screen saver jumps into action, you’ll see news items fed to you from the O’Reilly Network of sites, including the Mac DevCenter.

Note: Your computer must have a Quartz Extreme-compatible graphics card for the RSS Visualizer to even appear in the list. If you don’t see this item in the list of available Screen Savers, your Mac won’t be able to use this feature.

Regardless of whether you use your Mac at work or home, chances are you get a lot of email everyday. And what better way to help you organize your email than with Mail.app’s new Smart Mailbox feature. Smart Mailboxes can be used for anything from sorting emails from your boss to a different folder than those from your friends, or sorting your messages based on when they were received.

For example, let’s say you want to create two Smart Mailboxes, one for email messages you’ve received today, and another for messages you’ve received this week. To create these Smart Mailboxes, follow along here:

• Launch Mail.app by clicking its icon in the Dock or double-clicking its icon in the Finder
• From the Mailbox menu, select the “New Smart Mailbox” item
• In the “Smart Mailbox Name” field, type in “Today’s Email”
• Change the “From” pop-up to “Date Received”, and leave the second pop-up set to “is today”
• Click OK

That creates a Smart Mailbox that when selected only displays the messages in your Inbox that came in today. Now let’s create another Smart Mailbox for email that’s come in this week:

• From the Mailbox menu, select the “New Smart Mailbox” item
• In the “Smart Mailbox Name” field, type in “This Week”
• Change the “From” pop-up to “Date Received”
• Change the second pop-up from “is today” to “is this week”
• Click OK

The possibilities are limitless, so use your imagination and create Smart Mailboxes to automatically sort and sift your messages to your heart’s content!

If you use Address Book’s near-hidden feature of including a birth date in someone’s record (in Address Book’s menu bar, select Card > Add Field > Birthday), you can now get those birthdays to automatically show up in iCal. All you need to do is:

• Open iCal (located in your Dock or in your Applications folder)
• Open iCal’s preferences (iCal > Preferences, or Command-,)
• Turn on “Show Birthdays calendar”

A new calendar called Birthdays appears in iCal’s list of calendars to the left. (Notice the little birthday cake icon to the right of the calendar name.)

Well, it’s here. The Tiger’s been set loose, and everyone’s gawking and geeking. Here’s a few widgets, reviews and opinions that have caught my eye…

• A new version of Quicksilver is ready; some say it’s just as useful and compelling as before, despite obvious added competition from Spotlight.
• “But a gain of just a few percentage points would represent a huge sales increase for Apple.” — Hiawatha Bray, in the Boston Globe
• Quicktime 7’s support for H.264 means huge video images in very efficiently compressed files; the end result looks fabulous. Our very own Tom Bridge has views on this (and he’s dead right about the BitTorrent bit … mmm, anyone making a BitTorrent widget?)
• Dashlicious, a del.icio.us widget. TailDash, created by the same people, is something I didn’t expect - a widget wrapper for a command line tool.
  
• WebFrog, a unicode text widget.
• Britannica Search Widget; what, no Google widget? Only a matter of time, hours I suspect. Same applies to Gmail. Everything that was once a candidate for the Menu Bar, or as a Dockling (remember those?) is now destined to become a widget.
• Some ideas for Smart Folders; again, these sorts of lists are going to be popping up all over the place.
• FOAF support in Safari
• Hyperjeff has started a new category for Dashboard widgets
• BBEdit 8.2 doesn’t only offer a bunch of Automator actions, it also includes a new “Highlight all misspelled words” command. Yay!

Now I’m just hoping that my trusty old iBook G3 can cope with the Tiger installation.

Anyone else tried it on a G3 yet?

Related link: https://www.apple.com/quicktime/hdgallery/

When my friend Jeff messaged me about the new HD Gallery over at the QuickTime site, I didn’t know what to expect. Sure, Steve has said you would be amazed, but really, wasn’t that just the reality distortion field at work? It would appear that this is one feature that Steve didn’t overplay his hand on. In fact, this is one you need to see to believe. So take a minute or ten, depending on your broadband connection, and watch the Serenity trailer in 720p. As soon as you pick your jaw up off the floor, consider the 1080p trailer.

The compressed files are 108 and 129MB in size, respectively, representing some absolutely astounding compression that represents the amazing abilities of H.264, the new codec that makes QuickTime 7 look and sound as good as that brand new plasma display you bought for a couple grand. Let’s take a peek at something really quick.

1080p video, at 24 frames per sec, at 4:4:4, is roughly 180 Megabytes per second. That’s a huge amount of data to move about, and most computers are going to freak out when they encounter it. However, that same video, crammed into H.264, come out at 8 Megabits per second. Granted, it’s no longer the original uncompressed master, but it’s 180 times as small.

This can lead, along with that FIOS service I mentioned last week, to some seriously beautiful images pumped through your home connection in fractions of a second.

If this is the future, I think I love it. Now just imagine what this will do to BitTorrent…

Have you seen the QuickTime 7 light? Is it not wonderous?

Related link: https://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M98…

Apple has released a new Family Pack for users of their Dot Mac service. This addresses some of my concerns over their $10 additional accounts. Mainly that my wife couldn’t even synchronize her Address Book with the Dot Mac Address Book for use in Webmail.

“The .Mac Family Pack offers an easy, cost-effective way to extend your family’s Mac experience to the Internet. You’ll get one main .Mac subscriber account with 250MB of storage space and four additional .Mac accounts with 100MB of storage space each. All five members have access to the services that come with a regular .Mac subscription, plus a Shared iDisk folder for you and your family.”

I’m not too thrilled about the pricing ($179.95 for the Family Pack – $149.95 until May 23), because I’ll probably only use three accounts and I believe I should only have to pay $119 for that ($99 + $10 + $10). Still, it is a move in the right direction and they did add the shared iDisk folder which will probably be pretty neat.

If I do decide to re-subscribe to Dot Mac, I’ll probably enable the other two accounts for the extra space anyway.

What do you think of the new Dot Mac Family Pack?

Even though Apple doesn’t officially release Mac OS X Tiger until 6 p.m. tonight, they’ve opened the doors for three new sites for:

• Automator Actions
• Dashboard Widgets
• Spotlight Plug-ins

If you’re a user/fan of Delicious Library, you’ll find a Dashboard Widget and a Spotlight Plug-in for that, Automator Actions for BBEdit, and much more.

What do you think of Dashboard, Automator, and Spotlight?

Related link: https://fjzone.org

Boy has it been hard to keep everything under wraps! Today is, as you all know, a big day for the Mac community, with the imminent release of Mac OS X v. 10.4 Tiger, its 200+ new features, 15+ new desktop backgrounds, 5+ new screen savers and 1+ new box design.

But today is also an important day for the MacDevCenter! As you can imagine, we are ready to get you acquainted with Tiger, show you around some of its absolute coolest features and share with you the excitement that surrounds the launch of every Apple product. As part of this information extravaganza, I will have the pleasure and honor to walk you through your first installation of Tiger a bit later today — watch your RSS newsreader to get all the news — and I hope this first piece will be of use to some of you.

Last but not least, I am also pleased to announce that, starting today with this very entry, I have pledged to regularly blog about Tiger, its exciting features and the questions that will inevitably arise within the Mac community. While I do have a few ideas that I am really looking forward to discuss with you on the O’Reilly Network, I wanted to grasp this occasion to ask you what you were interested in hearing about. Do you have any special questions, wonderings, anxieties the answers to which you think would look good in mini-article format? In any case, do not hesitate to contact me and let me know about them: it is always a pleasure to hear from you and I am looking forward to extending some of the discussions we are already having on the Zone to this very blog.

I know many of you are already grabbing the keys to get in line at your local Apple Store so remember to stay hydrated (drink plenty of water), stretch and get warmed up before you jump inside to grab the box and, most of all, do not, under any circumstances, bring along any object that could be mistaken with an unlimited cash supply in the heat of the action like credit cards or checkbooks — the stores are tempting places that demand a high level of self-control… ;^)

Have fun, y’all!

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Related link: https://dotnetvnc.sourceforge.net/

I just read about this .NET VNC Viewer 1.0.1.16 on Sourceforge and decided it try it out.
The screen image you see here shows the VNC viewer running on a Pocket PC 2003 device connected over a wireless LAN to a Linux box running VNC 4.0 and X11/IceWM.
Installing the viewer consisted of copying and pasting the EXE file while connected to my desktop PC using ActiveSync.
Then, I created a shortcut and pasted it into the Start Menu/Programs folder.
Tapping the new Programs icon brought up a familiar login window asking for the name(or IP):port location and a password prompt.
It worked pretty well in the brief period I tested it out.

Let us know about other useful Open Source applications for Microsoft Windows Mobile devices (Pocket PCs and Smartphones).

When Apple finally announced Tiger’s release date, one of the first things I did was to start making a checklist of things I needed to do before upgrading to Tiger. And while Derrick Story’s article on Housecleaning Tips for Tiger proved useful, there’s a lot to think about and do before you gut your system and install Tiger.

1. Backup: First and foremost, you’ve got to have a solid back up, because even though Tiger will offer an “Archive & Install” option (just like Panther and Jaguar before it), MacHeads know that there’s nothing like a clean install to clearing the gremlins out of your system. Whether you’re using Carbon Copy Cloner, .Mac’s Backup application, Retrospect, or just copying important files over to an external FireWire drive, make sure that your backup has everything you need. For example, some things you should seriously consider backing up include:
   • Your Documents folder
   • Any preferences you’ve set for apps you plan to reinstall on Tiger (look in ~/Library/Preferences)
   • Your email; if you’re using Mail.app, look in ~/Library/Mail
   • Your iPhoto Library (~/Pictures/iPhoto Library)
   • Your iTunes Library (~/Music/iTunes)
   • Anything you might have saved to your Desktop (come on, admit it, we all save crap to our Desktops)
   • If you use the Terminal and you’ve altered your shell’s settings, consider backing up your .bash_profile file .
   • If you’re using iBlog to blog to your .Mac HomePage, you’ll want to backup your blog (look in ~/Sites/iblog)
   • Any additional screen savers or sounds you might have installed on the system
   • Keychains…don’t forget to bring your Keychains along with you (~/Library/Keychains

   …these just to name a few. The point to stress here is think of the files that are important to you, and make sure you back those up to a place where you can quickly reload them after installing Tiger.

2. Don’t Forget About Other Users: Accounts, that is. If you have more than one user account on your system, don’t forget to backup any data they have in their Home directory as well.
3. Copy Your Network, VPN, and Modem Settings: It never hurts to jot this info down and set these anew once you’ve reinstalled. Go to System Preferences > Network to snag your network settings, and Internet Connect (/Applications) to copy your VPN and modem settings.
4. Applications (Part 1): Don’t just copy over applications from a backup; give them a fresh install, just as you would with the system. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “The guy’s nuts,” or “That takes too much time,” and you’re right in both cases. But seriously, sure, it might take you 3 or 4 or 8 hours to install the applications on your clean Tiger system, but you’re doing yourself a favor. Forget to copy one important file over, and you could be in for a world of hurt.
5. Applications (Part 2): When it comes to all those third-party apps you’ve got on your system, look for updates for them before you start the gutting and installing process. Create a folder on your Desktop (there we go again, saving crap to the Desktop), and then download the latest installers for all your favorite apps and save them to that folder.

   As Derrick mentioned in his article, now’s the time to take a look through your Applications folder and do a gut-check with all those third-party apps you’ve installed and tested. Haven’t used one in a while? Chances are you won’t in the future, so don’t bother grabbing the installer.

6. Application Updates and Drivers:
   Yeah, I know, enough about apps already, right? Well, okay, this is the final point. If you run apps from Adobe, Macromedia, Bare Bones, etc., or have installed drivers for your scanner, camera, or some other odd device, you might want to take a pass by the product sites and download the latest updates. Usually, you can find these under a “Support” link, or some such.
7. Burn that Folder! Once you’ve got all your apps and/or application updates, and device drivers saved in that folder on your Desktop, burn it to CD or DVD. That way, once Tiger’s installed on your system, you can just pop in the disc and run the installers from there.
8. Clean Install Time: Once you’ve got your backup and you’ve got all your application and device driver ducks in a row, it’s time to install that new Tiger system you’ve been waiting months for. As mentioned earlier, if you can get away with doing a clean install, do it. Don’t go for the Archive & Install option. While it’s nice to have, there’s nothting like a clean slate to work from.
9. Really Clean that System: If you want to do yourself a favor, you might want to consider running Disk Utility during the install process (go to the Utilities menu and select “Disk Utility”). You can use Disk Utility to partition your hard drive, and if you go the Erase tab and click the “Security Options” button, you can opt to Zero Out the drive, or do a 7- or 35-pass erase, which completely wipes your drive clean, making it damned near impossible for you or anyone else to ever recover anything that once lived on your hard drive.
10. Install, Reboot, and Reload: Once you’ve installed Tiger, it’s time to go back and load on the stuff from your backup. Make sure you drop everything where it belongs. Then start installing applications and any updates or drivers you’ve burned to disc. While you’re installing the apps, you can always use that time to tweak the System Preferences to configure the system to your liking.
11. Run Software Update: This catches any updates you might need for the iLife apps, iWork, Final Cut Pro, etc.

One last thing you might want to consider doing is, after you’ve got your Mac configured and set up just the way you want it — with all your apps installed and upgraded — is to image your system and burn that to a DVD or place the image on an external FireWire drive (or better yet, your iPod). That way, if you ever need to gut and reinstall from scratch again, you can just reinstall that image on your hard drive.

Are you ready for Tiger? How long will it be before you upgrade?

Related link: https://textamerica.com/api.aspx

Moblog provider Textamerica has an API beta release and a contest for the first 20 applications using their API that they consider useful.

Here’s how Textamerica describes the contest:

Developers: To help launch our new Developer Program we will pay $500 for each of the first 20 applications (with source code) based on this API which are developed by you, and which we deem to be the most useful to the Textamerica Community as a whole. This is not a contest but merely our way of showing our appreciation for what you do. Please submit your applications here along with your contact information.

Did your Textamerica beta-API based app win a prize? Let us know about it.

Related link: https://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/320

Mark Burnett’s column on Security for the Paranoid is an amazing trip in to how little each and every one us do for security. For example, I’ve only got the one Firewall here at work, and my AirPort Express is my only intrusion protection at the hacienda, but Mark uses no fewer than three Firewalls to filter his data. I try to keep my passwords longer than eight characters and multi-case, including symbols where possible, but that would be mere weakness to Mr. Burnett.

I think what surprised me most, and piqued my interest, was his idea to use Smart Cards for his kids. Now, while he didn’t actually implement the protocols for network access based upon a Smart Card, that still is pretty darned hardcore. He does have a point that the practice of security isn’t just about protection from specific intrusion, or locking the doors after the thieves have been by to nick your telly, but is a way of protecting yourself against intrusion. Anyone who’s ever been successfully phished can tell you about what security they ought to have been using, and will tell you they’d rather have been prepared than victimized.

Most folks pay lip service to security, but I think Mark Burnett may be one of the few people out there actually giving it their all.

Are you secure? Are you sure?

Two of my favorite apps, BBEdit and Audio Hijack Pro announced this morning that new versions are ready and available — today — for Mac OS X Tiger.

The big news for me, though, is that BBEdit 8.2 (a free upgrade for 8.0 owners) comes with a bunch of Automator Actions. This is huge, since this makes BBEdit the first third-party app I know of to ship with Automator Actions. Yeah, sure, BBEdit’s got an awesome AppleScript suite, but now having the ability to control it with Automator will certainly help speed up some of my processes here, and I can’t wait to dive in and test ‘em out.

Click here to download the upgrade for BBEdit 8.2.

Audio Hijack Pro also sees some improvements for Tiger (although I can’t test them out yet since I have to wait until tomorrow to get my hands on Tiger), including:

• Full Mac OS X Tiger compatability
• Fully AppleScriptable (too bad there’s no mention of Automator Actions)
• New “Radio” Input Source, supporting Griffin’s RadioSHARK and D-Link’s DSB-R100
• New “System Audio” Input Source, allowing for optional hijacking and recording of all audio
• Includes the Application Mixer plugin, to allow input from multiple applications
• Overlapping Timer detection
• Disk Status window, showing available disk space on all volumes
• Many minor additions and bug fixes

Version 2.5 is a free update for registered owners of
Audio Hijack Pro 2. Registered users of Audio Hijack Pro 1.x may upgrade to version 2 for just $10.

Click here to get more info on Audio Hijack Pro.

At a press preview event the other day, I had a chance to see the new Tiger version of Safari in a bit more detail.

The most-hyped new feature in Safari is RSS feed reading and management, and I was curious to see how this would measure up against the UI of popular aggregators like NetNewsWire and NewsFire.

The new Safari treats feeds just like any bookmark, and the UI controls are much the same. Where other feed-centric apps have been busy adding their own (WebKit-constructed) built-in browsers in recent months, Safari is heading in the opposite directions, adding a feed manager into the browser.

When you browse to a web page with an associated feed, a blue ‘RSS’ icon appears in the address bar. Click this and you’re shown a view of the feed itself, nicely styled (I’m guessing this style will be pretty easy to customize).

From then on, you ’subscribe’ to the feed by adding it to your bookmarks list.

You can combine all feeds into a single page, for a very helpful-sounding “What’s new?” view, and you can view feeds using a number of criteria (by source name, by time/date, etc).

Best of all, you can search through all the feed data for something specific, and then save that search as yet another bookmark.

Now you have a saved, constantly-updated, personalised search which you can use any time you want to crawl through all your incoming feeds for new stuff about “dogs in hats” or whatever else you care about. Nice.

I only had a brief opportunity to see Safari in action, and didn’t get answers to these questions:

• Can I add a new feed without visiting the web page first?
• What happens on web pages with more than one associated feed?
• How does Safari treat ‘old’ items, and how do I mark them as ‘read’?

I look forward to getting the answers to these questions just as soon as Tiger arrives.

Might you be tempted to switch from a dedicated aggregator/reader to the new Safari?

I’ve just come back from a special Apple presentation in London, a “sneak preview” of the new features in Tiger.

Apple’s Brian Croll had made the trip from the States to make a short presentation to a bunch of typically skeptical British journalists in a plush hotel suite in the centre of Soho, and he did a great job of whizzing rapidly over all the new, exciting stuff.

A lot of which most of the journalists knew about already, of course. We’ve been following the weblogs and the news coverage and the apple.com preview material too, so we’ve already heard about Dashboard and Spotlight and Automator.

Still, it was fun to see them in action, and to have a chance to (very briefly) grill Brian on some details afterwards.

Brian made a great show of Spotlight, the search tool that lets Tiger users find anything on their computer. He demonstrated how it employs filenames, metadata, and file content to find search results. It’s fast and it updates changes to the file system in real time (at least, it does on a PowerMac G5, which was the demo machine being used).

I thought the most interesting quote came in the informal chat session after the presentation. We were all hanging round drinking good quality tea, munching those delicious biscuits you only get in hotel hospitality suites, when I heard Brian talking to another journalist:

“The first thing you start doing is cease using hierarchy as a means of storing stuff. I know this, because I’ve been using this for a few months and I don’t bother to file things anymore. I don’t give a rat’s ass where my files are, because Spotlight finds everything for me.”

That’s the crucial, boiled-to-the-bone reality of something like Spotlight. If it really is capable of finding what you need, why bother keeping your stuff in any kind of order?

Another journalist at the same event, an old pal from the 1990s dotcom bubble days, told me how his computer desktop is a complete mess because he saves everything to it, and rarely gets round to sorting it out.

“I might have a folder called ‘January-March’ and I’ll throw everything into it, but it’s still a mess,” he confessed. Maybe Spotlight could help him, I thought.

As much as Brian seemed like a genuine guy, as a typically skeptical British journalist I can’t just take his word for it. Thankfully, I don’t have to.

I was having an email conversation with a web developer recently, someone who has been in the fortunate position to play with beta versions of Tiger for some time now. He didn’t break his NDA, but he did say this: “All the hype about Spotlight is justified, you know. It really does rock, it’s amazing.”

So might Tiger help people like my disorganized journalist friend? Might it ultimately spell the end of the Finder?

Just as some people have abandoned any sort of filing system for the email (the ‘Gmail mentality’, I call it), I think Spotlight (if it’s as fabulous as we’re being told) will lead to a new trend for single-folder file organisation.

People really will be able to put everything into their ~/Documents folder, without creating hierarchies of sub-folders. Throw it all into the one place, and use Spotlight and the equally entrancing Smart Folders feature to keep everything in order, and find what you need, when you need it.

Finder, RIP?

Which would you rather do? File everything yourself, or just forget about it?

Related link: https://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb

Hi, it’s me again. The browser whore. Just thought I’d check in with an update on my latest on-a-whim switch.

I used to use Safari; I spent a long time with Camino; I spent some more time with Firefox, and most of the time I liked it, except when it crashed out on me, which several times made me so angry I went back to Camino for a few days, just to spite those Firefox bytes.

But I’d miss something, usually one of the Firefox plugins, and come crawling back.

But Firefox continued to annoy me. Every few tabs, it would start to slow down; the beach ball of doom started to become a regular feature on my computer, something I’m not accustomed to. Other apps seemed to be running slower whenever Firefox was alive (notably Eudora and NetNewsWire).

So I had an idea. Why not switch to OmniWeb? After all, I’ve never actually tried it as my default browser; I’ve only ever used it in test mode, trying out a few things for a few hours.

And you know something? I wish I’d done this ages ago. OmniWeb does as standard most of the things I was using plugins for in Firefox (like saved sessions), but it’s also faster, easier on the system as a whole, and works with just about every web site or service I use on a regular basis. It doesn’t hang. I can leave it open for days without concern. After just a couple of days trying it out, I’m finding myself very unwilling to switch back to one of those old browsers.

But hey, you know me, I’m a browser whore. I’ll probably eat these words as soon as Camino goes 1.0, or when Firefox reaches 2.0, at which point I’ll start moaning about OmniWeb not keeping up or something equally dumb.

Until that day comes, though, I’m drinking the OmniWeb juice, and mmmmm it tastes gooooood.

Oh, wait a minute. I haven’t downloaded Opera 8 yet …

Have you drunk from the OmniWeb carton? And is the Opera 8 download worth it?

Related link: https://www22.verizon.com/fiosforhome/channels/fios/HighSpeedInternetForHome.asp

When I heard that my friend Mike was considering dumping his cable modem and moving to DirecTV, I asked him what he was going to do about connectivity. He wasn’t sure yet, he was considering DSL options, but was leaning away from the DirecTV satellite option. One of the engineers in the building in which I work had bragged to me the other day that he’d just gotten FIOS service and that it was just blazingly fast. I asked him where it was available, and it turns he lives just up the street from my friend Mike.

Mike called Verizon, and had FIOS about two weeks later. They put in the fibre box with a battery backup just inside his back door, and he was all set. The whole install is two small boxes, one the side of an old-school wall-hanging telephone, and the small interface box for the router. Last night I went over to Mike’s for the weekly poker game, with every intention of trying out his new fat pipe. I took my laptop with me, and figured I’d try to download what I hadn’t been able to finish in 6 hours at the office: the latest Tiger Dev seed.

The final results were incredible. The 2.2GB disk image downloaded in just under an hour. The connection, even over an 802.11g wireless network, was nothing short of astounding. The best part? This was the cheapest version, $40 a month ($15/mo less than my DSL…) which is 5Mbps pull, 2Mbps push. For another $10 you get 15Mbps pull, 2Mbps push.

Verizon is hoping to spread the service beyond Falls Church, VA in coming months, but there’s no official timetable for anything beyond the current installations. But man, I’d sure love to have it at my place.

have FIOS? Tell us.

Related link: https://ubuntulinux.org/

I haven’t had a lot of success getting WiFi to work on notebook PCs running various versions of Linux in the past few years (various makes and models of notebook PCs and WiFi cards).

I have an old Dell Lattitude L400 with a Cisco Aironet 802.11b PC Card. It only has 256MB RAM (1 DIMM slot) on a Pentium 3 running at 700MHz and has been booting and running slowly even after a complete hard disk reformating and reinstalling Windows 2000 Professional.

My recollection is that Windows 2000 Professional sunsets at the end of June. And, since the notebook was running slowly anyway (probably weighed down by anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. etc.), I thought I’d take another try at getting WiFi on a notebook working with a Linux distro. I’ve been pretty happy with Ubuntu Linux on a test desktop PC for a while. So, I thought I’d give it a try on the L400.

I tried the Ubuntu LiveCD first and was very happy to get the WiFi card connected to my wireless LAN with minimal effort.

So, I took the Ubuntu install CD and installed it on the L400’s hard disk, setup the WiFi config again and finally have a nice little (4 pounds or so) notebook PC with working WiFi.
Ubuntu seems to run very comfortably with only 256MB RAM and a 10GB hard drive.

What’s your Linux notebook PC WiFi experience been like?

Are we heading towards a mobile convergence utopia where one device will be a phone, camera, MP3 player, GPS, game console, PIM, and overall super-gadget? Or, are we going to be buying more narrowly feature-focused best-of-breed mobile devices with separate mobile phone, camera, etc., etc.?

I was in the in super duper ultra-converged Star Trek Tricorder type device camp until I reviewed a good but non-smartphone, the
Sony Ericsson T610
back in late 2003.
Back then, I wrote:

The T610 performs fewer functions than either the PDA-phones or the smartphones. However, it delivers these fewer functions extremely well and with excellent battery-power efficiency. Its excellent and easy-to-configure Bluetooth capability lets you easily pair it with whatever Bluetooth-enabled PDA or notebook PC for a custom-fit mobile computing environment. It may be, then, that this kind of best-of-breed individual components provides a better mobile-computing model for some of us by providing a simpler and timelier upgrade path for different phone and PDA features.

Since then we’ve seen even more converged devices mostly with the phone-camera-mp3-game mix.
However, we’ve also seen really good single function devices like MP3 players (the iPod and others), small high density USB storage drives, and lots of low-priced mobile phones that are mostly used for voice and text messaging.

And, since the process of getting devices approved for use as mobile phones is far longer and more difficult than getting other kinds of devices to market, perhaps converging functions on the phone slows down product delivery.
So, maybe it would be better if manufacturers slowed down the convergence effort and take another look around. I know I think I might be better off as a consumer and end-user if I had a good solid mobile phone that had only good voice quality, good battery life, a solid Bluetooth 2.0 stack, and fast data service.
Assuming it could reliably connect any other device I was carrying (PDA, camera, MP3 player, etc.) to connect to the Internet, I could still do everything I do today and pick and choose what I upgrade (new camera, new MP3 player, etc.) as new devices come to market.

What do you think? Which way are we heading? To device convergence or divergence?

I was able to catch the Tiger demo today at the NAB show in Las Vegas. Before I report on some of the specifics, I should mention that the Apple theater was packed again, and I suspect that many of the viewers are potential switchers.

My first impression was that Tiger is looking very good… ready for release in fact. The Spotlight portion of the demo was strong, especially combined with Smart folders. It’s funny, thanks to Gmail, I’ve loosened up on some of my filing habits and now rely more on Google’s “mail search” to navigate my inbox. After watching the Spotlight demo today, I’m thinking I’m in a better frame of mind to fully embrace this feature right out of the gate.

Again with switchers in mind, Spotlight in System Preferences is intriguing. Apple has loaded tons of relative keywords into the OS. So if you enter “wallpaper” into the Spotlight field, the “Desktop” System Preference is highlighted. Geez, I wonder why they did that?

A digression during the talk disclosed the new RSS screensaver. This thing is gorgeous. Headlines from your subscriptions move gracefully across the screen in full 3D animation. If you see something you like, click on it, and Tiger opens Safari RSS and takes you to the story. Very, very nifty.

Dashboard and QuickTime 7 are also looking quite refined. I can’t wait to write more about QT7. And as you may have guessed, we’ll have Dashboard articles for you on Mac DevCenter after April 29.

One of my favorite Tiger features, Automator, is looking downright awesome. I’ve developed a gag reflex to the term workflow, and NAB has only worsened my condition. Kodak even used the term in their presentation title. Ack! No way I was going to stop for that.

All of those companies should come watch the Automator demo. It’s so easy to use and powerful. I’m going to be eliminating lots of repetitive tasks from my working life. But get this, you can save an Automator script as a Finder “plug-in,” which is Apple’s terminology for a CM (contextual menu) item, accessible via a right-click of the mouse.

What this means is that you’ll be able to write your own CMs with Automator in just a matter of minutes. This is going to be fun…

At O’Reilly, a big part of our business is paying attention to what’s new and interesting in the world of technology. We have a pretty good record at having anticipated some of the big developments in recent technological history. For instance, we launched the first commercial Web site, GNN, in 1993; we organized the meeting at which the term “open source” was first adopted; we were early investors in Blogger, which helped launch the blogging revolution; and more recently, our Web 2.0 conference launched a world-wide meme. Internally, we’ve called this predictive sense the “O’Reilly Radar” — in fact it’s become a tradition to kick off O’Reilly conferences with a talk of the same name. And while we’re certainly not always right, we are, at least, good at making interesting guesses.

Our methodology is simple: we draw from the wisdom of the alpha geeks in our midst, paying attention to what’s interesting to them, amplifying these weak signals, and seeing where they fit into the innovation ecology. Add to that the original research conducted by the O’Reilly Research group, and you start to get a good picture of what the technology world is thinking about. What books are people just now starting to buy, and which are falling off in interest? Which tech-related Google AdWords are rising or falling in price? What can we learn from predictive markets tracking tech trends? Which open source contributors look to be on the track of an interesting project — or set of projects?

The O’Reilly Radar blog will track what we’re tracking, and turn the blips into conversations. Using some of the technologies we’re currently enjoying — tags by del.icio.us, photos by Flickr, trends by the Yahoo!/O’Reilly Buzz Market — we’ll draw from the wisdom of the alpha geeks, amplify the weak signals, draw out effective design patterns, iterate, and see if we can predict the next Mosaic, P2P, or Amazon.

If you’re not familiar with NAB, the annual mega-media convention in Las Vegas, I can tell you it’s an amazing event. Its roots are in broadcast, but like so many areas of communication, technology has invaded and now dominates.

NAB occupies three halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The other areas are interesting enough, but the real action is in the South Hall. And guess who’s there stirring up the masses? Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Avid, and quite a few other technology firms.

Adobe is riding high on its comprehensive portfolio of media software and its announced acquisition of Macromedia. Avid also looks extremely strong and is making a heavy pitch to broadcast journalists. But Apple is driving them wild. I can’t believe how many people are elbow to elbow in their demos of Final Cut Pro and other offerings.

Remember when Steve said that 2005 was going to be the year of HD? (at Macworld SF in Jan.). Well, NAB has just confirmed that assertion. It’s everywhere. If you close your eyes, you see the letters HD burned into your lids. And Apple, with its HD focus, is in prime position to solidify its presence in professional digital media.

Back at Mac DevCenter, with our focus on the upcoming Tiger release, I don’t think many O’Reilly readers realize Apple’s strength in professional media. But it’s worth noting that Cupertino’s reach extends way beyond laptops and music players. They’re on a serious digital media roll right now in Las Vegas. And Apple is looking quite flush.

In their formal, none-too-readable-by-humans announcement about acquiring Macromedia, Adobe makes specific mention of “the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash”.

What’s that supposed to mean, do you think?

After all, for most people, PDF and Flash are two very different things, used in very different situations.

Most people think of PDF as a format for printed documents (that’s if they think of PDF at all). The same people probably consider Flash a means of making web pages a little more animated. Of course both formats offer considerably more than just that, but those are the broadly accepted consumer views.

Where’s the complementary functionality, then?

It’s hard to think of it in terms of “PDF and Flash” as specified in that announcement. Easier, I think, to consider the acquisition in terms of complemantary business plans.

Both Adobe’s and Macromedia’s products (and each one sells several different products, much more than just PDF or Flash) are about creativity, about content.

As the global content industry changes shape, wrapping itself around the requirements of digital creation, publication and distribution, the opportunities for commercial gain in those areas are growing. Adobe was already in an excellent position in several areas such as print and online publishing, or digital imaging.

Macromedia’s authoring and interactive media tools (Studio, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Contribute, Director, ColdFusion - it’s quite a list when you stop to think about it) gives Adobe a nice wide range of products for future development. More eggs, in more baskets; a wise move, even if, at 3.4 billion dollars, it sounds to us mere mortals like a very expensive one.

What’s your take on Adobe’s move?

A reader (hi Jonathan!) emailed me last week to let me know about a new, free, little snippet-keeping app he’d stumbled upon.

It’s called Sidenote and it looks like this when it’s running:

Sidenote sits at the side of your screen and neatly hides itself away when not in use. Wave your pointer in its direction and it pops out again. You can do all the things you’d expect to do in a note-taking app; use rich text, drag images into notes, and so on.

The app has a professional feel to it and does everything its maker claims. At the moment, it’s a mouse-oriented utility and offers little in the way of keyboard control, which means I can’t bring myself to put it to use yet. Some people might not find that a problem though; if you tend to drag chunks of text or images from web pages or other documents, Sidenote’s simplicity may well appeal.

Notes are autosaved, too, which makes it a handy thing to have around for the terminally forgetful.

My only complaint is that switching from one note to another is currently only possible via a drop-down menu; this might get unwieldy if the number of notes gets larger than a dozen or so.

Hopefully future versions will include some options for keyboard control, and an alternative approach to note-switching. In the meantime, try it out and see what you think.

Update: Shortly after I posted this, I got the following email from Pierre Chatal, Sidenote creator:

I’m happy to let you know that a new version has been issued and there’s system-wide hotkeys to create, close and navigate between notes and manipulating the drawer!

Great news, and thanks Pierre.

What’s your favorite snippet keeper?

Tom’s Hardware has a brief report and photo of a 15 ounce Newton-sized device running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition at:

Ruby, the ultra compact Tablet PC

The photo shows a device with thumb keyboard at the bottom and what looks like a Wacom type digitizing stylus on the table surface.

The device looks a bit top heavy to use the thumb keyboard comfortably.
But, I can see people leaning it against the edge of a table to use the thumb keyboard.

I would probably consider buying it.
But, then again, I also bought the Apple Newton and various versions of the Windows CE based Handheld PC :-)
The now gone and forgotten Handheld PC form factor with a clamshell design disappeared because people thought it was too big.
It looks like the smaller PDA (Palm OS and Pocket PC type devices) are now also seeing declining sales as people buy multifunction phones, iPods, and portable game consoles.
While this Newton-sized Tablet PC has obvious vertical market applications, I wonder if the general public will be interested in a size rejected as too larger in the past.

Would you buy a Newton-sized Tablet PC? I think I would if it were reasonably priced (under $1000… way under :-)

Japan Today summarizes an article from Kyodo news about a security firm’s child’s blazer that contains a GPS device that lets parents locate their child and have a security agent dispatched in an emergency situation.

GPS-mounted blazers enable parents to locate kids

There’s some negative comments about this product on Japan Today. What do you think?

The mystery is over. For nine months, the Mac faithful have waited anxiously for the gestation of Mac OS X Tiger, and this week our wish came true: We finally got an answer to when Tiger would release. And for those of you who’ve been under a rock this week, that day would be Friday, April 29th.

While the Apple engineers have been toiling away, working feverishly on Tiger, I too have been pent up in my home office, editing Tiger books in preparation for its release. So now that the gloves are off and we know when Tiger hits the street, here’s the first wave of O’Reilly books on Tiger, coming soon to a bookstore (brick or online) near you:

• Mac OS X Tiger Pocket Guide
• Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger
• Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks

Each of these books has something to offer for its readers, so I thought I’d spend a little time here and give you an idea of what to look for (without breaking my NDA).

Mac OS X Tiger Pocket Guide

First, a little shameless self-promotion; this is my book. (Yep, that’s right, I’m the autho