June sure is shaping up to be a good month to be a Mac web geek! Every few days there is a new browser being released and they are all the fastest browser on the net.
Apple just introduced Safari 4. It has ‘remarkable’ new features as is the world’s fastest web browser according to Apple.
Firefox 3.5 will be here soon, and it’s shaping up to be by far the fastest Firefox yet: more than twice as fast as Firefox 3 and 10 times as fast as Firefox 2. That’s some serious speed.
We’ve been waiting and waiting for Google Chrome to come out for the Mac and, unfortunately, we have to wait some more. Unless, that is, you are adventurous. If you are, you can download Google Chromium; the development version of Google Chrome for Mac.
The good news here is that Google Chromium works pretty well. I’ve been running it for a few days with no crashes. It seems speedy, renders pages well and really impressed me for a pre-alpha browser.
This tutorial covers the very basics of creating an Adobe AIR application that will work on Mac, Windows and Linux. It will show you what software to install and how to turn some web code into an Adobe AIR application. You will get enough information to get you started and from there you can create the next great Adobe AIR application.
Step 1. Get Aptana Studio – It’s free. http://www.aptana.com
Get Aptana Studio
Step 2. Get the Adobe AIR plug-in for Aptana Studio. http://www.aptana.com/air
Step 3. Create a new project in Aptana by going to File -> New and choosing Adobe AIR Project.
There are no shortage of Twitter applications out there. Each client seems to have a slightly different feature set too. I’ve tried a lot of them and below is a list of good Twitter applications that have been built for the Mac. No Adobe Air suggestions here, and most are available only on the Mac.
Bluebird
Simple and pretty, this app has the ability to be one of the nicest looking Twitter apps. It also comes with three built in themes which are very nice and supports multiple accounts. This one is one I haven’t played with much, but am loving it the more I use it. Only downside so far is no way to distinguish between read and un-read tweets.
If you’re anything like me, you have more than a few social networks you are a part of. Keeping up with all those networks can be hard too. However, with the Mac app Fluid you can create multi-site menu bar applications for quick and easy access.
What I have setup is Facebook mobile, Weather Underground mobile and Plurk mobile all loaded into one application and stored in my menu bar. When I click on the blue F, I not only see the weather conditions, but also any Facebook updates and Plurk updates.
I’ve been thinking about getting an online service to backup my computer for a while now, however most services made the plans confusing, didn’t have a Mac client, or had price levels that just made it more than I wanted to spend. However, I signed up for Backblaze and it’s been wonderful ever since. I no longer think about backing up, it just happens.
I know what a lot of Mac users are thinking, what about Time Machine? Well, as great as Time Machine is, if my house were to burn down, so would all my backups. An off site backup solution is the only way to ensure that my files are safe. Time Machine works well for local backups, but really isn’t the best solution overall and that’s why I looked into other options.
Are you uber excited for the new Safari 4 beta from Apple? However, on install all it does is bounce and crash? I’ve been having the issue under 10.5.6 and the fix is simple; remove your Safari addons!
Step 1 – Uninstall Safari 4 beta and revert back to Safari 3. If you still have Safari 3, then you’re good to go.
Note: You don’t have to reinstall Safari 3, it should just come back when you uninstall Safari 4 beta.
Step 2 – Go to Safari -> Preferences and look for any addons like…
SocialAddict for Adobe Air, and for the web, has been updated to version 1.2.
Updates include:
For those that don’t know, SocialAddict is an application that brings together the mobile version of multiple social networking sites for quick and easy access. It’s available for your desktop via Adobe Air or on the web.
A quick post to say I just upgraded WordPress to 2.7 and I’m loving the admin side of things. Overall it seems more responsive which is nice in itself.
The new admin menu layout is a welcome change as well and the color scheme is easy on the eyes. I’ve only been running it for a few minutes, so I don’t really have a good feel for everything. The upgrade was smooth though and I don’t seem to be having any plugin compatibility issues; or none that I know of.
I’ve become a fan of Ping.fm and its mass notification abilities. However, I wanted to update my Ping.fm status without navigating away from the page I was on. So I created the Ping.fm Mobile Sidebar for Firefox.
Much like my many other Firefox sidebars, it simply works as a shortcut to access the mobile version of a site. This time it’s Ping.fm.
Yes, you could easily do this with a bookmark in Firefox, but I prefer to have an icon in my toolbar and a keyboard shortcut at my disposal.
Social Status