I think that the newly launched, free service (with 2GB storage) from Adobe, is likely to be a huge hit.

Take a look here.

Geeky interlude:

If you want to execute a process in the background in the shell, just append an ampersand to the end of the command. Most of the time this isn’t that useful, but the special appeal is when launch X apps from the shell. If you don’t append the &, the shell waits for the X app to terminate before returning a prompt, so the window is useless.

I spend quite a lot of time in Unix and just now found this tip out, as I’m writing my own simple shell for one of my classes. Cool tip indeed.

Just wanted to let everyone know that my favorite feature from Camino has finally come to Safari! If you double-click on empty space in the Safari tab-bar, a new tab will be created.

Yes, you could use Cmd-t or use the menu item, but sometimes I’m just right there with the mouse and that’s the quickest way. With the ability to rearrange and drag-n-drop tabs that Safari 3 added, I’m very pleased with tab support now.

This passage from a reader email pretty much nails it:

Yes, it would make a difference if the checkbox for Safari were unchecked by default. Also, the “new installs” should be visually separated from the “updates to programs you’ve already installed”, and clearly marked as such. I’m all in favor of programs updating themselves — especially potentially network-exploitable apps like iTunes or QuickTime — but companies shouldn’t abuse that to push entirely unrelated software on end users.

The reason reactions to this controversy have been so polarized is that we’ve been mostly arguing about the wrong thing: how or whether Apple should offer new applications to Windows users via the current Software Update app. The problem is with the design of the Software Update app itself.

The reader is right: updates to currently-installed software are an entirely different thing than offers to install new software. Different things should look different; the current design of Software Update doesn’t allow for such a visual differentiation.

For updates to installed software, the simple plain list Software Update currently displays is perfect. New software — like, in this case, Safari — should be displayed separately and more prominently. A big app icon alongside a brief description, perhaps — something that, visually, is instantly recognizable as something different from the regular updates. It should be clear that what’s being offered is both new and optional. The default should be not to install — or, perhaps, the user could be required to explicitly click either “Install” or “Don’t Install”, with neither option selected by default. If the user chooses “Don’t Install”, Software Update should then offer the user the option to never again be prompted about this particular application. (You can do this now, using the “Ignore Update” command in the Update menu, but this feature should not be hidden in a menu.)

Maybe Apple realizes this, but they figured it wasn’t worth the effort to add an entirely new presentation mode to the Software Update app, because they don’t have any other new Windows apps on the horizon. I.e., that, given their current plans, it wouldn’t be a new “ask the user if they want this brand new app installed” feature, but rather, for all intents and purposes, really just an “ask the user if they want Safari” feature.

But laziness is no excuse. This entire controversy, minuscule though it may be, could — and should — have been avoided if Apple had followed the design principle of making things that are different look different.

[From ★ Update - Daring Fireball]

I think DF summed the whole “controversy” up with this post. Very well put.

As described on the Latitude website:

Latitude is a powerful, content-centered browser for Mac OS X Leopard and above. Its core functionality is designed to make your browsing experience as straightforward as possible, without the limitations and rusty mold of existing browser conventions. Today, we don’t parse hypertext, but watch videos, keep tabs on news, slide through vacation photos and much more. Latitude is geared towards providing you with the tools to finally make the best of the wealth of content that is the World Wide Web. No manual required!

Latitude first came into being as a concept and list of features from Sebastiaan, on the Cocoia Blog. Sebastiaan detailed a list of features for the next generation browser and provided mockups for a working interface design. The idea sparked great interest in the Mac community and shortly thereafter development began in earnest on the project.

For more information about the Latitude browser and the team, visit the Latitude website. For updates on Latitude’s progress and other ramblings from Sebastiaan himself, visit his blog, Cocoia.

Read the interview with the Latitude development team, exclusive to Mac Fanatic, on the full post, here.

Continue reading »

I spent some time this evening making some changes to the site that have been on my mind for awhile. With another project I’m doing, I was finally comfortable enough with MySql to tackle the blog.

Now in the sidebar, are three more boxes with interesting data. First, there is a “What’s Hot” box that shows 5 posts, with the date of the last comment. Hopefully this will help everyone see where people are discussing posts on the site.

There is a box below that which shows the Top 10 Pages. This simply pulls data from my Mint installation and shows the 10 pages (right now also including the homepage and the blog itself). Once again, this is meant as a way to for everyone to see where most people are going on the site.

Finally, there is a box below that which shows the top 5 commented posts of all time.

If you have any other suggestions for the site, I’d love to hear them. Also, if you are interested in implementing something similar on your site, post a comment and we’ll follow up with that!

Slash Lane, from AppleInsider, wrote an interesting article detailing some anticipated issues surrounding the recently released beta of the iPhone SDK, allowing developers to get started developing apps that will run on the phone when the 2.0 release of the iPhone software is made publicly available as an update in “June”.

Pangea’s Brian Greenstone says:

My only concern is that everyone and their brother is jumping on the iPhone app bandwagon, so it may make it difficult to market a product when there are a zillion others coming out at the same time.

I think that Brian brings up an excellent point. There will be a ton of apps available relatively close to the iPhone OS v2.0 release, and customers will most likely be flooded with choices and some great apps will be temporarily lost in all the fuss. However, it will be a perfect time for bloggers, such as myself, to create “Top 20 new iPhone Applications” articles.

There has been an annoying bug in the search feature of the site for several months now, but I just hadn’t had time to sit down and think about it to correct it. However, after spending my evening writing in Javascript for a class project, I sat down and fixed the bug in about 5 minutes tonight!

Simply put, using the Spotlight-like search on the site always worked, whether you were on the main page or viewing a post. But clicking the “View More Results…” link to get more than 6 results as well as excerpts, post timestamps, and the number of comments….well, that only worked if you were on the main page. That has now been fixed, so search away!

I’m still unsure how this blog got listed as a Knoxville Tennessee blog, but I’m rightly listed on the Knoxville News Sentinel list of local blogs, and evidently a few other sites as well.

In a post from Knoxify, a site dedicated to building a community and “better everyone’s life” in Knoxville, Mac Fanatic was listed as one of seven blogs chosen for being “rich in content and color”.

I’m honored to be listed on that list!

I recently had to make the decision to either renew my year hosting contract through Bluehost, or let the blog die completely. It was a difficult decision, as the contract is expensive and I feel like the site has certainly died down over the past several months.

However, the time came to renew and I figured that if nothing else, I at least wanted my own place to develop and test apps on the web, so here we are. Not exactly the brightest outlook for the site, and one that I don’t like when reviewing just how much time and effort I, and others, have put into this project.