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11 07 2008

MobileMe: A First look

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: World wide web, Internet Tools, MobileMe

We’ve all awaited the .Mac to MobileMe switch for a while now (some more than others). However, Apple’s 6 hour time table for upgrading to MobileMe turned awry and led into an almost 24 hour up, down, up, up, down cycle.

If you’re like most users experiencing the 24 outage, then you haven’t been able to login and experience MobileMe first hand. So why not take a look at our gallery? We’ve got photos of the entire MobileMe suite of web applications and user preferences: from the login screen to storage partitioning.

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09 07 2008

1Password 2.7 gets a little sexier

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: Software, World wide web Tools

I know we just mentioned the upcoming iPhone version of 1Password yesterday, so I’ll make this swift. Version 2.7 (of the desktop variety) was just released and it adds a brand new feature: a fully keyboard-accessible HUD window which allows you to instantly navigate to a website and log in.

According to the developers, this feature has been In the works for over a year. It integrates all of your “Go & Fill” 1Click bookmarks directly into your web browser. The HUD window (yes, I have a weak spot for those sexy, transparent black HUDs) has a search feature at the top of it which grants for speedy location of the bookmark you’re looking for.

So, please excuse the extra mention; I think this new feature is useful enough to warrant a quick note. Current users just need to check the auto-updates within the application. Curious celebrations can visit the 1Password page.

09 07 2008

Precipitate: search Google Docs and Bookmarks from Spotlight

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: Freeware, Internet Tools

Google’s Mac group has released Precipitate, a plugin which allows you to search Google Docs and Google Bookmarks from the same interface that you search you Mac. It works with both Spotlight and Google Desktop for Mac. Basically the developer’s idea is to have a one stop search interface for information on your Mac and information in the Google cloud so you don’t have to remember where you saved something. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Google’s Precipitate is a free download from Google Code.

09 07 2008

1Password 2.7 gets a tiny sexier

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: Software, World wide web Tools

I know we just mentioned the upcoming iPhone version of 1Password yesterday, so I’ll make this swift. Version 2.7 (of the desktop variety) was just released and it adds a brand new feature: a fully keyboard-accessible HUD window which allows you to instantly navigate to a website and log in.

According to the developers, this feature has been In the works for over a year. It integrates all of your “Go & Fill” 1Click bookmarks directly into your web browser. The HUD window (yes, I’ve a weak spot for those sexy, transparent black HUDs) has a search feature at the top of it which allows for speedy location of the bookmark you’re looking for.

So, please excuse the extra mention; I think this new feature is useful enough to warrant a swift note. Current users just need to check the auto-updates within the application. Curious celebrations can visit the 1Password page.

08 07 2008

Mac 101: Browser tab tricks

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: World wide web, Internet Tools, Mac 101

How did we ever get buy without tabbed browsing? Think back to the days of OS 9 and IE 4. Ugh.

JimD at creativebits has shared a cool trick (Firefox and Safari) for swiftly returning to a previously visited website in a new tab, thus preserving the site you’re currently browsing.

This got us thinking of some of our favorite browser tricks, like this one. If you’ve got several tabs open, you can move from one to the other with keyboard shortcuts. In Firefox, it’s Command-Option plus the arrow keys. In Safari, it’s Command-Shift plus the arrow keys.

Quickly jump to the address field with Command-L (both Firefox and Safari). It selects the full text, so you can either just begin typing or hit Command-C to replicate the url. Of course, Safari 3 lets you grab Web Clips and turn them into Dashboard widgets.

Have you got a favorite browser trick to share with newcomers to the Mac?

08 07 2008

ted: episode downloader for bittorrent

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: Freeware, Internet Tools

In the past we’ve covered the Mac application Television Shows, which automates starting bittorrents for tv show episodes. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated in a while (though the main page still promises an update soon). However, I recently ran across another application that works in a similar way called ted.

With ted you can select various shows, even see summaries of episodes, then send the torrents off your your favorite bittorrent client (e.g. Transmission). Unfortunately, ted is a cross-platform java application, but it should run fine on any modern Mac.

ted is a free download from sourceforge.

[via Gizmodo]

08 07 2008

Adobe Flash Player 10 beta brings major speed improvement

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: World wide web, Internet Tools, Beta Beat

The slowness of Flash has long been a complaint on the fairer platform and it finally looks like somebody at Adobe was paying attention. Adobe Labs has released a beta for Flash Player 10 and among the changes is a major speed boost. Indeed commenting on his personal site, one Adobe Flash engineer has gone so far as to say that “this version of the player runs… [the GUIMark] benchmark substantially superior on OSX than any previous Flash Player version. It should be up to 3 times faster” (more details here).

Adobe Flash Player 10 beta 2 is a free download from Adobe Labs. However, they warn that previous version should be uninstalled before updating.

[via MacNN]

04 07 2008

Minefield offers custom builds of Firefox 3

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: Software, World wide web, World wide web Tools

If you think Firefox could run a little faster on your Mac, then you might want to download one of BeatnikPad’s custom builds of Firefox 3. “Minefield” (previously known as BonEcho for pre-3.0 releases) is Neil Lee’s custom build of Firefox. He’s currently offering custom builds for:

Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for Intel
Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G5
Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G4

Neil Lee has been offering custom builds of Firefox for many years now. They have the ability to make Firefox run a bit faster and smoother on older Macs. You can download them for free (though donations are accepted) from the BeatnikPad website.

[via IGM]

03 07 2008

Firefox 3 Download Day a huge success

Posted by: in Internet Tools & News

Filed under: Software, Freeware, Internet Tools, Open Source

The graphic above says it all — Firefox 3 Download Day was a success, with 8,002,530 downloads in 24 hours. Amazingly, this happened despite all of the initial download glitches that happened on Download Day. The Mozilla team is reporting that 29,116,621 copies of Firefox 3 have been downloaded as of 1:13 PM ET today.

If you signed up for Download Day notifications, you’ll receive this email as well and you can get your own cheesy certificate, suitable for framing (or not).

Since I downloaded Firefox 3, I’ve been enjoying some of the plugins that are now residing at the bottom of my browser (Twitterfox and the Accuweather Forecastfox plugin). Firefox 3 seems faster to me, and I like the way it displays sites that are using certificates by putting a wide, clickable banner in the address bar. What are your opinions about Firefox 3?