Have you checked out Dromaeo.com?  It’s a Mozilla owned site that runs a set of JavaScripts and test out how fast your browser is.  I tried it on my iMac, 1.83 Intel Core Duo with 1.5 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and found Firefox 3 beta 5 to be the fastest browser.  Oddly enough, Firefox 2 was the slowest, even behind SeaMonkey!

Granted, this is no professional test.  Firefox 2 has the  most extensions on my computer and that could cause slowness.  There are always a lot of factors to take into consideration, but this is what my tests show.

Dromaeo JavaScript Testing

2173.00ms - Firefox 3b5
3499.60ms - Safari 1.3
8193.20 - Camino 1.5.5
10798.20 - SeaMonkey 1.1.8
10859.20 - Flock 1.1
12161.40ms - Firefox 2

Did you run your own tests?  What did you find?

That got me thinking, what would be even cooler? I work in a paperless office, so a paper holder isn’t exactly what I need. What about…

• iPod/iPhone Cradle - With charging capabilities of course.
• A cell phone holder.
• Pencil holder. Kinda lame, but I always loose my pen.
• Candy dispenser. Full of M&Ms for me please.
• Atomic clock with weather capabilities.
• A Timer
• Cord Organizer
• Light so that my iSight makes me look good when chatting or playing with PhotoBooth.
• Mini keyboard with only Expose and Spaces buttons.
• USB Hub
• Flower holder. You know, for the girls. They were really popular in VW Bugs.
• Microphone for those that do audio chat.
• A bigger, multi level shelf for post-it’s and knickknacks.
• A rear view mirror so people don’t sneak up on me.
• A whiteboard so I can write down all my cool ideas.
• Funny signs to warn people of my mood. Like “If it’s important, you’d have told me about it already.” or “I was having a good day, until I got to work.”
• Some sort of cool color changing orb.
• Trash can for my candy wrappers.
• Disco ball. Who doesn’t want a disco ball?!
• Memory stick dock.
• Picture frame. For my cats of course. LOL!
• A rolladex. These are coming back in style. I just know it.
• A piggy bank. Or maybe a swear jar.
• A cool glowing Apple.

Check out the screen shot I took from wordpress.org. >

See how bold words are showing up in a weird font? I checked my appearance settings in Safari’s preferences and that looks OK. I’ve also used OnyX to run all maintenance scripts and that didn’t help either.

Firefox doesn’t have this issue and it doesn’t seem to happen on 10.4.x either. Wordpress.org isn’t the only site that I’ve seen the problem, yet it doesn’t happen on all sites.

Thoughts? Ideas? Help?

Smarter Renaming of Files

When changing a file name in Leopard, the OS selects just the file name and not the extension. Vary handy for those that want to keep the extension intact.

Spotlight Selects The Top Hit

In 10.4 Spotlight would suggest search results and then default to Show All. In 10.5, Spotlight by default selects the Top Hit. This is a very welcome feature and, with the new Spotlight search speed, I haven’t had to launch Quicksilver.

Spotlight Dictionary

Spotlight not only does math, but it also defines words. Put in any word and one of the results will be the definition as found in Apple’s Dictionary application.

New Screen Savers & iTunes Visualizers

Apple has a knack of creating cool screen savers and visualizers and have added some new offerings in 10.5. Shell and Arabesque make up the new screen savers and fit in nicely with Flurry. Lathe, Jelly (shown below) and Sitx make up the new iTunes visualizers.

Lots Of New Icons

We all know that the system preferences and folders were re-worked for Leopard, but so were a lot of other icons. Images have a nice white border around them, HTML files happen to be black and text files have a cleaner look to them also.

Expose and Spaces Applications

Spaces and Expose are features built into OSX and, in the past, features didn’t have a dock icon for the most part. Now they do. Just click on the icons to invoke the features. It actually quite handy as you don’t need to remember yet another keyboard shortcut.

Sure, the features I mentioned above are smaller ones, but it’s those smaller ones that you’ll interact with on a daily basis. I do have Time Machine but have yet to start it up as I don’t have an external drive. The updated Spotlight functionality has already come in quite handy.

What cool little Leopard features have you found?

I tried burning it to a DVD and it yelled at me as I didn’t have enough permissions for some files. So I tried to compress it and again I was yelled at for not enough permissions. Umm… Apple, I own the computer and OS. How am I not allowed access?

I did find out that I could copy it to another hard drive though.

A quick Google search and I ended up at the Apple support site where a lot of people were having the same issue. According to people on there I can just trash the ‘Previous Systems’ folder and re-claim my precious hard drive space. I’m making a copy or two first just in case though.

If you did an upgrade or an archive and install to Leopard, check to see if you have a ‘Previous Systems’ folder taking up a boat load of your hard drive too. It’d be located right next to your System folder if you had one.

So what’s a good open source graphic design application? I’ve tried a lot of programs and now I’m looking at GIMP. GIMP is the free alternative to Photoshop. But how well does it work?

A friend said that it’s hard to convert from Photoshop to GIMP. Since I’m a Fireworks fan, I guess I don’t have to worry about that one.

But what does GIMP really do? Does it open PSD or AI files? Does it do vector or just bitmap? Easy to use?

I’ve been wanting to try it, but it requires X11 on my Mac. I’m not sure what that is so I never installed it. I may though if GIMP is cool enough.

What do you think? Is GIMP a great piece of freeware or a lacking alternative for graphic design?

I love the new dock and the rounded corners on the menus. Small things I know, but Apple is known for the small details.

Safari 3 also rocks along with the folder quick view and stacks. I have a lot more features to go check out so I’m going to go play.

Chocoflop is a free image editor for the Mac. It loads quickly, has all the basic bitmap editing tools and doesn’t seem to take up many system resources.

I use Chocoflop to quickly do image re-sizing, cropping and image conversion. It even comes with layers & filters so if I want to, I can do some image creation. One of my favorite features is the ability to copy an image off the web and then go to Chocoflop and choose ‘New from Clipboard’. Sounds so simple, but it’s so nice.

Chocoflop is handy little tool for those quick image edits. Check it out for yourself. It’s free, so what do you have to loose?

I’ve never been a Microsoft Fan. I refuse to install Word or Excel on my iMac and, come to think of it, the I don’t have anything Microsoft installed. That was until I installed the Microsoft Mouse driver.

The Microsoft 5000 mouse is wireless, has five configurable buttons and a very nice scroll wheel that goes vertical and horizontal. For only $2, this thing rocks! That’s right, $2 on eBay.

So far, I’ve not had any of the issues I had with my two Kensington mice. That teaches me never to buy from them again.

If you’re looking for a mouse, don’t count out Microsoft mice just because of the company behind them. Yes it’s Microsoft, but this is something they’ve done right.

The reason I ask is because things happen. Someone is building a building and cuts the power to a whole city block. Oops. Or a storm brews up and knocks down a tree and the lights go out. It happens, the power goes out and then my iMac goes dead. So why don’t desktop computers have batteries?

Now, I’m not asking for much. Just a small battery that lasts maybe 10-30 minutes. Giving the user just enough time to save everything and shut down the computer safely. I’d think there would be enough room for a mini battery inside my iMac.

Or maybe, someone like Griffin Technologies could come up with a battery pack accessory. It could plug into your USB or Firewire slot and keep you safe.

Granted, I don’t even know if this is possible for a third party accessory, but I thought I’d ask as I’ve had the power go out a couple of times in the past few days and it’s really annoying. I haven’t lost anything, but even five minutes is enough time for me to save whatever I need and shut down.

Now buying a big UPS backup is overkill in this situation. So don’t even suggest it. I want something small and handy for just a few minutes of power.

What do you think?

[tags]battery,backup,power[/tags]

The initial release is extremely basic. Just install it and enable it. That’s all. It hooks into Worpress via the wp_meta function and will place the button after that information. Usually that’s in the sidebar where it says Meta. If you don’t have that function in your theme, which isn’t completely out of the ordinary, you can manually add some code in. Just see the install page.

So what’s next for the Made on a Mac plugin? Well, I was thinking of adding in some more graphics. Letting you, yes you, design some buttons and send them in. Then future users could choose from a number of different looks.

Other button ideas, besides just more Apple buttons, could include: Designed For Firefox, Built with skEdit or CSS by CSSEdit.

Ok, I’ll admit, I was just going to add some icons to my sidebar to promote the great software I was using for my site. Then I decided to make it into a plugin to share. There is only one button now, but, if others are interested, I can add more in too. Just let me know if you like the idea and I’ll get a form up to let you submit your buttons.

For now, you can download your very own Made on a Mac Wordpress plugin and start showing even more Apple love on your Wordpress blog.

* Ok, it’s not the greatest plugin ever. That would probably be Akismet in my opinion.

I had taken it to the Apple store in hopes they’d help. Instead they sent me to YouTube to watch a video on how to clean the Mighty Mouse. Well, I tried to open the mouse and ended up killing it instead.

The good news is I just got a new mouse on Ebay for $2 and I hope it’ll be nice.

It’s a Microsoft wireless laster 5000 mouse. Everyone says how good Microsoft mice are, so now I just have to wait for mine to arrive.

If you have an Apple Mighty Mouse that no longer scrolls down, start looking for a new mouse. Or, if your computer is still under warranty, take it back and see if they’ll replace it. It was never made to open up.

In the past I’ve tried out a few cordless mice and have reverted back to corded every time. I’m not sure why, but I guess my preference isn’t one way or the other.

I recently checked out the Logitech MX Revolution mouse and learned to dislike it. It was great because it was loaded with buttons, cordless via BlueTooth, had a rechargeable base and a great form factor. What bugged me was the scrolling. The scroll wheel was sensitive and it seemed to always scroll a little bit whenever I moved the mouse. Or I’d spin the wheel and it’d go fast, so fast that when I changed documents it was still scrolling in them too. Basically it annoyed the heck out of me.

I’ve always avoided Microsoft mice in the past too, but more and more Mac people are telling me how great they are. Maybe that’s where I need to go this time.

So, if I go mouse shopping next weekend while the wife is out of town, do you have any suggestions?

The download is big, but it’s a program that sure can do a lot. The interface is very nice and it makes the program look stunning. It also loads quite quickly on my Intel iMac.

One of the things I really liked about NeoOffice is that it can read and write Microsoft formats including .docx. I do have to interact with these files so it’s nice to have an easy solution.

NeoOffice also gives me the ability to copy out an image at it’s original size. Word continues to think any image copied out of the document, and pasted into Fireworks, is 600dpi. Talk about a pain in the butt.

The only thing I don’t really like is the default NeoOffice icons. They seem a bit out of date. So I re-created the application icon to be a bit more Macish and up-to-date.

To update your NeoOffice icon, follow these steps.

1. Download the NeoOffice replacement icon.
2. Unzip
3. Find the NeoOffice application on your computer. Probably in the Applications folder.
4. Right-click on the application and ‘Show Package Contents‘
5. Open the Contents folder.
6. Open the Resources folder.
7. Rename ship.icns to ship2.icns for backup purposes.
8. Drag ship.icns from the NeoOffice Replacement Icon folder to the Resources folder.
9. Start NeoOffice.

Overall, I’m impressed with NeoOffice so far. It’s free, works well with Microsoft 2007 documents and includes word processing, spreadsheet (Excel), presentation (Powerpoint) and many other options built in. I’ll definitely be keeping it around for future use.

• Adium - The all in one, completely customizable instant messaging program. It absolutely rocks!
• AOL Radio - I love this because I can get nearly commercial free streaming music from all genres.
• AppFresh* - Only free while in development, AppFresh keeps me up-to-date on what installed programs are not up-to-date.
• Butler - Applications & Folders in the menu bar are so handy. Plus it can do so much more.
• ByteController - I just found this sweet menubar iTunes controller.
• Chicken of the VNC - Connecting to a PC across the room has never been so easy.
• CleanArchiver - Because Windows users get confused with .ds_store files.
• CocoaMySQL - It’s nice to be able to connect & manage MySQL databases from the desktop.
• Correo - Up and coming email application. I can’t wait to see where it goes.
• Cyberduck - Excellent FTP program. Not sure why I purchased FTP programs in the past.
• Fish - Virtual fish tank!
• Firefox - My browser of choice. I can’t live without all the extensions.
• Flip4Mac - Yes, .wma and .wmv can work on a Mac.
• Gizmo Project - When Skype’s success when to their head, Gizmo reminded me how great VoIP can be.
• Growl - Customizable system notifications without system interference.
• Journler - Great scrapbook/junk drawer/whatever application.
• iTunes - My digital jukebox. It’s probably one of my most used apps.
• Licensed - Great app for keeping serial numbers of those programs I do buy.
• Mailplane* - Free for now.  This is a great desktop Gmail application.
• OnyX - System maintenance made easy.
• Quicksilver - Well designed and presented system search.
• TextWrangler - The best do it all text application around. From HTML to pretty much any text format.
• Thunderbird - Not used as much at home, but the only email application I use at work.
• VirtueDesktops or Desktop Manager - Sometimes one desktop just isn’t enough.
• WeatherDock - I love the weather so having it in the menubar is a must.

All applications can be found on MacUpdate or are just a Google (or Yahoo or Ask) search away.

If you have any you’d like to add, post them in the comments below or on your site and link back here as a reference point.

iGoogle Hosted on Zooomr

Now, most things that start with an i followed by a product name remind me of Apple. I think it was that iMac that started it all and of course the iPod, iTunes and wealth of other i stuff. Is Google keen on Apple? Well probably not.

The old personalized homepages were known as ig - http://www.google.com/ig - so they just expanded upon that and spelled it out; iGoogle.

To me, the name change is cool. I like it and think it helps separate Google from the personalized area a bit more. Having recently started to ramp up my personal homepage use, the iGoogle name is a welcome addition.

Rock on iGoogle!

Coherence makes Windows apps appear as a normal application on your Mac desktop. It removes the window constraints and desktop of XP and everything becomes independent.

In the screen shot below, you can see the XP start bar, Firefox Mac & PC, Google sidebar (minimized) and then the Mac desktop and stickies. Switching back and forth is just like any other application in the Mac. Even the running PC application icons show up in the Mac dock. How sweet is that?!

Hosted on Zooomr

It seems that every build of Parallels is more amazing than the previous. They are constantly pushing the envelope and making the Mac and PC interaction very smooth and very easy to use. If anyone wanted to switch, but not loose that one application, this is perfect. There is no loss of speed, quality and any PC application will run. Prallels really is the best way to run XP on an Intel Mac.

Now if I could only get the XP task bar to move to the top as it interferes with the dock on the bottom.

It has a slim form factor with extraordinarily bright and crisp screens. Comes with a built in MP3 player with touch controls on the cover even though I don’t know how to get music on it from my Mac yet. It has a camera, video camera and can play many types of media. It’s even Bluetooth enabled. This was of great news to me as my iMac was able to see it and I could send my address book contacts to it. That’s much easier than trying to type them all in on the phone.

I’m really excited about our new phones and I can’t wait to figure out all the features. My next priority items are to figure out how to add music to the phone and get pictures & video off the phone and do it all for free. Any ideas?

One year ago, Apple announced the Intel processor, iLife 06 with iWeb and lots of RSS and Podcast integration, the official FM transmitter for the iPod and minor updates to iWork. In September’s show, Mr. Jobs told us about iPod games, the movie store in iTunes, new Nanos and previewed iTV.

This year, as always, there is lots of speculation. Some say an Apple branded cell phone while others are hinting at an Apple TV. Both of these I’m un-concerned with unless they are more than just a cell phone or TV. What I’m excited to hear about is more details on iTV and MacOSX 10.5. Both of which should be shipping in 2007.

I’m just excited to listen in and hear what Apple has to announce. If you’d like to get up to the minute information, check out UneasySilences’ list of keynote coverage’s. Thanks to The Second Press for posting that.

If it works well, I may consider buying it.  But then again I do own Parallels.  The advantage to CrossOver is you don’t need Windows.  The downside is that not all software is supported and it’s got a very retro/ugly feel to it.  Course that could be due to IE 6.  I’ll have to check out more programs. 

Have you used CrossOver?  Thoughts?