Blogging through Safari is practically impossible on the iPhone due to the excessive real estate taken up by the keyboard. Native apps have the potential to make the whole ordeal much more manageable, and they could spawn a new trend of bloggers who post while on the road.
Apple today introduced MobileMe, a new Internet service that delivers push email, push contacts and push calendars from the MobileMe service in the “cloud” to native applications on iPhone, iPod touch, Macs and PCs. MobileMe also provides a suite of elegant, ad-free web applications that deliver a desktop-like experience through any modern browser. MobileMe applications include Mail, Contacts and Calendar, as well as Gallery for viewing and sharing photos and iDisk for storing and exchanging documents online.
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RelatedMail is a very useful plugin for Apple Mail that shows messages related to the currently viewed message.
ReadAir is an OS X themed desktop client that was built with Adobe Air.
PocketTweets is a Web-based Twitter client for the Apple iPhone. See the latest tweets from your contacts, update your status remotely, or see what's happening around the world by viewing the public timeline - all via EDGE or WiFi.
It's a long time coming but there is finally a file sharing application for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Hahlo is the original Twitter client for iPhone/iPod Touch. It's built on top of the great APIs provided by Twitter and Summize. Just one of the great new features in version 3 is the search capabilities that are made possible via the Summize API. Hahlo 3 has an all-new menu which brings all the great features right to your fingertips. Hahlo's aim is to provide as much of the Twitter.com functionality as possible, in an interface that is as easy to use as it is on the eyes.
This guide will show you how to access a computer located on your home network from outside of your local area network. For the purposes of this guide, let’s assume we are trying to access a HOME SERVER such as a Mac Mini located on your home WiFi router. The home computer could just as easily be a Ubuntu, or similarly flavored Linux machine. The first thing that we will need to do is determine your home IP address, and then we will setup port forwarding on your wireless router. Keep reading to get started with this process or go here to learn how a SSH Tunnel works.
StatCounter says that iPhone took 0.06 percent of the total Internet browser market in the UK in March, behind Nokia with 0.15 percent. "iPhone already has three times the Internet browser market share of BlackBerry (0.02 percent) in the UK [and] Sony Ericsson has 0.01 percent of the UK market...iPhone and iTouch combined took 0.9 percent of the UK market in March to date," StatCounter said.
Whois or "Who is," is a way to query for contact information (or domain name ownership information) about the person or company in control of a site. If you want to know who runs a website, you don't have to look any further than your Mac and opening a Terminal window.
ExpanDrive gives you perfectly transparent access to open, edit, and save files with your favorite programs, even when those files are half a world away. Transparent means that you don’t even notice you’re operating on remote files—they act like they’re on an USB drive you plugged directly into your own computer. Daring Fireball has a good article about this software title.
Working with a lot of photos to upload can be a pain, especially with any sort of web-based interface. No matter how well-designed the interface is, you're still in a web browser and suffer from the limitations therein. The answer to effectively organizing and uploading tens, or even hundreds, of photos to Flickr is to use a desktop application specifically designed to help you accomplish this task. Enter Photonic.
Keep in mind that, unfortunately for many, Photonic is Leopard-only.
The video demonstrates the results of the DNS changes made on a Mac OS X system.
Adium 1.2 is a major feature release with a ton of fantastic improvements as well as a a ridiculous number of bug fixes. There's the improved Adium menu item and account management features, various and sundry improvements to Jabber support (including SSL certification authentication, server-supplied action support, and discovery services browsing), fixed Bonjour local area network messaging with file transfers, better group chat (conferencing), a completely rewritten Applescript dictionary which should lead to all sorts of powerful new interactions with other programs, and detachable groups.
Flickr Finder is a free, Mac-only application that lets you browse Flickr photos without a browser. The interface is similar to the Mac Finder.
NetNewsWire is arguably the most popular desktop feed reader on the planet. That does not, however, mean that NetNewsWire is the most popular RSS reader, period. Far from it, actually. Find out heavy details about NetNewsWire in this article.
FlickrShop is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to upload images to Flickr photo sharing website directly from Adobe Photoshop.
FlickScreen makes uploading screenshots to Flickr as simple as taking screenshots on your mac now. While FlickScreen is running it lives in your menu bar and is always available to you regardless of what you are working on. You can capture and upload by selecting an option from the FlickScreen menu or by invoking it from your keyboard. Before you upload you have the opportunity to set the title, description and tags for your screenshot so that no further editing is necessary.
Apple recently released Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, including Safari 3. The latest Safari is also included in Mac OS X 10.4.11, the latest update to Tiger. A corresponding version is available as the latest Safari for Windows Beta, including the new features and lots of stability and usability improvements. Apple’s site can tell you a lot about the new end-user features of Safari 3. But a lot of the goodness is on the inside, in the WebKit engine that powers Safari. Here’s a list of ten of the most exciting engine enhancements since the Safari 2 version of WebKit, with lots of details and demos.
You must set a VNC password in Leopard's System Preferences in order for the TightVNC client to connect to it. (Or else TightVNC will give you an error about the server not supporting the right security protocol.) To do so, in System Preferences, go to Sharing, and from Screen Sharing, click on the "Computer Options" button. Set your password there and TightVNC will be able to remote control your Mac given its IP address.
Most Web browsers have handy autofill features that enable you to enter passwords, addresses, credit card numbers, and other data in forms with just a couple of clicks or keystrokes. Autofill isn’t dangerous in and of itself, but it can lead to problems. For example, someone with access to your computer could potentially log in to your bank account, make purchases in your name, or discover where you live. The same would be true if your computer were stolen.
Detractors of .Mac will nod heads and repeat the "I can get everything for free" mantra. Of course, this is exactly what Linux advocates say to anyone who will listen to them for five minutes without throwing a punch, so you had better be wearing a propeller hat with that argument. The reality is that people will pay for what they value, and searching for the value in .Mac begins with the features and not the price.
Apple announced that it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season on its online iTunes Store. The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode.
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Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com's S3 Storage Service. Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. In order to use this service you need a tool like Jungle Disk because Amazon doesn't provide any direct way to upload or download data from S3. Jungle Disk integrates into your local file system like any other drive.
Dashalytics is a free Dashboard widget that offers quick access to Google Analytics statistics. It will work for all accounts no matter what your default language is. You can easily have multiple widgets open to track statistics on multiple sites.
Dejal released Dejal Simon 2.3, the essential site monitoring tool for Mac OS X. It checks web pages, FTP and DNS servers, local or remote ports or volumes, and other services for changes or failures, and notifies you via e-mail, sound, speech, or HTML reports.
Continue reading "Monitor websites and servers for changes or failures with Simon 2.3" »
This article explores how the iPhone changes the balance of power when it comes to security. There are a few minor application issues that make a phisher's job easier and much more interesting is the way the iPhone connects the Web browser and the phone.
Safari on iPhone uses the same Web Kit engine as Safari on the computer desktop. With the Safari Web Kit engine, you can develop sophisticated Web 2.0 sites and applications that will impress and delight iPhone users. To design a web application that shines on iPhone and ensures a great user experience, you’ll want to read this article.
If your iPhone is having trouble connecting to the Internet using your home or office WiFi wireless router, the solution may be to change the iPhone’s DNS settings.
Security researchers have long speculated that Apple has benefited from security by obscurity, escaping attention from malicious hackers because Windows-based computers dominate in homes and offices. But Apple's new Safari for Windows puts it right in hackers' crosshairs. The browser gives hackers another way to attack Windows and security researchers will now likely spend hours hunting down holes in the code.
Safari 3 features easy-to-manage bookmarks, effortless browsing with easy-to-organize tabs and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information.
Safari has always been the fastest browser on the Mac and now it’s the fastest browser on Windows, loading and drawing web pages up to twice as fast as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Mozilla Firefox 2. The speed of Safari combined with its intuitive user interface lets users spend more time surfing the web and less time waiting for pages to load. Other Safari features now available to Windows users include SnapBack, one-click access to an initial search query; resizable text fields; and private browsing to ensure that information about an individual’s browsing history isn’t stored.
The Camino project is an open source Mac OS X based Web browser that features the same browser rendering engine, Gecko, used in Mozilla's popular Firefox Web browser. A rendering engine is the brains behind your Web browser that takes the HTML and CSS code and renders it into a viewable Web page. If you're a user of the Safari browser, the rendering engine it uses is known as WebCore.
A preview build of Firefox has been released by the Mozilla developer Josh Aas. This new experimental build is equipped with native Mac OS X form controls, that should help in making it look and feel more like an OS X program. Currently, the build is only available for the latest Intel-based Macs, though a PowerPC version has been promised.
Sven-S. Porst has updated his Mailboxer utility, which quickly creates smart mailboxes in Mail.app to match all the emails to and from contacts in your Address Book. It now comes with options to create smart mailboxes for a particular Address Book Group or for all your contacts, French and German localisations and the ability to enter a customised name for the top-level smart mailbox created in the process.
Desktop email clients, like Apple Mail, offer integrated OS features which are difficult to make use of with a web based email service like Gmail. Attempting to do so requires a number of 3rd party software packages or utilities which give the feeling of tight integration. Mailplane is a piece of software that will give you a different experience with Gmail, more details in this article.
Everyone's been abuzz about what the super-secret Panic app has been making the rounds is all about. There have been a few leaked screenshots here and there, but now the cat is finally out of the bag. Panic introduced today its new app, called Coda. What does Coda do? In simple terms, it's like Dreamweaver without the WYSIWYG, and cooler. Coda integrates SubEthaEdit's collaborative editing and sharing with Transmit's FTP engine, CSSEdit, and various code tips, with previewing in a WebKit view.
Merlin Mann writes about the smart folders he's been using in Mail.app. Very useful and it just could make you more productive.
One nice thing about Mail is the Redirect feature, which lets you forward mail to a particular address so that it does not appear to have been forwarded from you. The final recipient sees the message just as you did when it arrived in your inbox.
One annoying thing about Mail’s Redirect feature is that it cannot be used on more than one message at a time. You can’t select, say, the entire contents of one mailbox and tell Mail to redirect all those messages to your Gmail account. If you select more than one message, the Redirect menu item is unusable. Here's the solution.
Downloading your favorite TV show is much easier than it was a few years ago with the help of torrent indexing sites and great software. With the arrival of the open source TVShows application, the whole thing just got even easier.
There are two huge advantages to off-site backup on a server. First, if something catastrophic happens, like a fire or theft, I need to have my critical files stored in some other location. Secondly, it enables you to access those critical files from any computer, anywhere. This tutorial has a pretty high geek rating - it requires you to use some programs you might not be familiar with, like Terminal, and the Applescript Editor. It’s written to be understood by casual computer users.
Mac users have more browsers to choose from then any other platform. The question is, which one delivers the most performance? Last year we tested four of the most popular browsers and found that OmniWeb (which uses a tweaked version of Apple’s WebCore engine) and the WebKit nightly build more or less tied on the test suite.
Home automation is a topic that both excites and daunts some of us. Gordon Meyer from O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter has incorporated some of those "hacks" to interface with Twitter. Twitter, for those who aren't familiar, is the (infamous?) microblogging platform that allows users to update their statuses via a multitude of platforms—IM, SMS, e-mail, web—as well as receive notifications from friends via those same platforms.
The fusion of web services and desktop software is a holy grail of computing bliss that few can claim. Anyone who has ever gone back and forth on whether to use the convenience and innovation of Gmail on the web vs. the power and integration of a desktop email client like Apple's Mail.app knows what we're talking about. While the melding of these two universes might seem like an impossible hope to some, Mailplane is a new desktop Gmail client in private beta that just may be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Aside from bringing the application up-to-date with the latest security updates from the Mozilla/Firefox code base, there are a few fixes and new features: better support for importing iCab bookmarks and Internet Explorer ".url" shortcuts, an updated Java plugin, and support for restoring corrupted bookmarks from a backup.
One of the often overlooked features of Safari is its Activity window, hiding in plain sight in the Window menu (or just press Command-Option-A for fast access). The Activity window shows activity related to the Web pages you are viewing. If you try to load a page and it stalls out with “loading,” for instance, the Activity window will show you exactly which item is causing the problem—just click the disclosure triangle next to the page in question, and you’ll see entries for every item on the page, and (if those items are loaded) their size or (if they’re not loaded) a message showing their status.
Some times sensitive data needs to be sent via email and as it travels to it’s destination it can be intercepted by hackers, ISPs, the office IT geek or even a strict government. In this tutorial, we’ll discuss how to use Apple’s Mail application to send secure emails that are signed and encrypted. How does it work? Both parties get a free personal certificate from a trusted source and then we let Mail do the rest.
While how fast a browser can render a web page is certainly an important weapon in the browser war arguments, the difference is usually a matter of seconds at the most. To my mind, a more important measure of speed is how a browser affects the overall speed of your SYSTEM.
Google Notifier is a program I wrote that lets you know when there is new Gmail ready to be read in your inbox and when you have upcoming Google Calendar events. The basic features of Notifier are pretty obvious, but there are a few bits of trivia that Notifier users might be interested in.
If you use Mail.app a lot, this series of five tutorials are something to check out. The tips, ideas and workflows that demonstrated will be useful to everyone. Hawk Wings has all the details.
If you find yourself typing the same thing over and over again when answering emails, Ryan Carson has a real time-saving tip for you. Watch the video below to see how Text Expander can save you time on when answering emails.
iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device.
iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.
There are many ways to remotely initiate BitTorrent downloads, but most are complicated and require tweaking. Here’s an easy way to remotely download torrents with only an instant messaging application and a BitTorrent client.
Company blogs are the Pandora’s Box of such pre-announcements, even when not intended as such. Once something is stated in an official blog, the proverbial cat is difficult to stuff back into the bag. As customers, we all want to know what's going to happen in the future, but we will also turn around and beat developers with the very information they share with us. One of the terms we hit them with is, of course, vaporware.
If you download a song and find that you hate it, you've only wasted about 5 minutes and 99 cents, and a bad TV episode will set you back $1.99 and 45 minutes at most. An audiobook that sucks, however, will cost you at least $18.95 and, assuming you force yourself to listen to the whole thing, several hours of your time. So a free chapter is a very good thing for audiobooks in general, and for the iTunes Store in particular, in that it gives us consumers just enough of a book to know if we'd like to hear more. It's kind of like reading the jacket cover of the hardcopy and scanning the first chapter while browsing through Barnes and Noble, except now you get to do it while sitting at a stop light.
Even if you're using Gmail as your primary e-mail account, there are many instances where having an offline version of all your messages is very handy. This article shows beginners how to do it.
This article doesn't even attempt to try and make the hard decision of whether or not you should allow your .Mac account to expire. Actually, this article assumes you've already made that choice and presents a practical approach you can follow to get yourself on track for a smooth move to a Google-centric web experience. Getting your mail, address book, calendar, online storage, online photos, and blog squared away are among the topics we'll investigate.
Paul Burd writes: "After setting up the account through my host, and setting up the IMAP account in Apple’s Mail, I found that items weren’t being synced as they should. Anything I did through the webmail client did show up in Mail, but things I did in Mail did NOT show up in the webmail client." Read on for helpful hints.
You may remember Apple gave us a sneak peak at the new .Mac webmail a couple of weeks ago… well, it just went live. If you have a .Mac account you should be able to login online to see the changes.
John Hicks made a great look for Bloglines, finally an interface that doesn't suck :) He writes: "It has been tested in Safari, Camino, Firefox, Omniweb and Opera. It is intended for Mac users, to blend in with the system look, but it should work OK on other platforms too."
I guess Google is noticing the growing number of Mac users. The have a few tools available for Mac OS X and they are listed in the first post in their brand new Mac blog. I hope the continue writing it, I'm sure there's a large audience waiting for it.
With its smart use of the latest web technology (probably AJAX), it'll remind you of the Mail application on your desktop, with a simple and elegant interface, drag-and-drop capability, built-in Address Book, and more. Will it save .Mac? I personally don't think it's enough...
With the release of Skype version 2.0.0.2 you can make video calls to anyone on Skype, no matter what kind of computer they are using. You need to have at least Mac OS X 10.3.9 and 512 MB RAM. If you're using an Intel Mac, don't fret since the program comes as an Universal binary.
From the announcement: "In addition to a bevy of behind-the-scenes enhancements, Unison 1.7.7 also adds compatibility with Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 Developer Preview ("Leopard"). Sure, it'll be a really long time before most of us ever have to really worry about this, but we wanted to make sure that you cutting edge developers could continue to cut that sweet, sweet edge while using Unison at the same time! We've also fixed some issues with previewed items, reunited resumed transfers with their progress bars, further streamlined the cache folder, resolved some issues with dropped and inactive connections, and generally improved Unison in a variety of ways you may or may not notice. Unison 1.7.7 is a free upgrade for all Unison owners."
Chanpory writes: "If you’re feeling guilty for not keeping up with the news, try Newsmap. The site varies headlines by size and color depending on how much coverage a news item gets. This lets you quickly see top news items as well as biases and trends in news coverage. You can see Newsmap with a flick of the finger by combining it with Exposé and WebDesktop. Here’s how."
The Google Notifier is an application that shows you alerts in your menu bar, so you can see when you have new Gmail messages or upcoming Google Calendar events without having to open a web browser. Please note that some have reported slight problems with this applications since in some instances it requires them to login multiple times.
The Mozilla Organization has released a first beta of the next version of Firefox, and Rob Griffiths looks at what to expect in version 2.0 of the popular Web browser.
This test covers the latest versions of the browsers: Safari/Webkit 2.0.4 (the version that comes with OS X 10.4.7), FireFox 1.5.0.4, Camino 1.0.2, and OmniWeb 5.5 Beta. All four of the browsers are Universal Binaries which is good news for owners of Intel-based Macs.
Voice over IP, or VoIP, is an emerging technology that allows you to use your broadband Internet connection to place and receive voice and videophone calls. Macworld reviewed four Mac-compatible desktop VoIP applications: Apple’s iChat AV 3.1.4, SIPPhone’s Gizmo Project 1.3.2, SightSpeed 4.5, and Skype 1.4.
Unison 1.7.6 comes with some cool new features. For starters, it's now possible to create NZB files from within Unison. Just select a group of files, and choose "Export Files as NZB" from the "File" menu. The authors also changed PAR file creation so that it will automatically restart after a crash, heaven forbid. The "Save Attachments" feature is now much faster, and more memory efficient.
You’ve dreamed of having your own Web site - a place where you can share your photos, movies, and life events. But who has the time to learn how all the pieces fit together? Now, thanks to iWeb, you don’t need to write a single line of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code. All you need is a free weekend and this handy guide.
Back in the days of my first connections to the Internet, first webmail services were something very useful. It was tough to get a POP mailbox, so connecting over very slow and expensive dialups was the only way to go. Nowadays I have 9 different POP e-mail accounts, but still use one on a webmail provider. Gmail is powerful and versatile, so I like having one of my non-business accounts in a place that I can access from everywhere. In the last year or so I have tested a couple of Gmail related "interfaces", including widgets and a notifier. Here is my perspective on the pros, cons and wishes...
To access Box.net in Mac OS X it requires no additional software or special configurations. This article will give you all you need to get it running.
John Hicks writes: "When it comes to testing and debugging sites, it seems that Firefox can’t be beaten. Other browsers have useful tools though, which gave me an idea for an ad-hoc series highlighting useful web development features, starting with Safari. While it doesn’t have an official plugin architecture like Firefox, that hasn’t stopped developers finding ways around it and providing excellent plugins."
I came across a number of situations where I needed to access my business e-mail from an insecure environment. I am talking about conferences, exhibitions, as well as airports and open WLAN hotspots. Majority of free e-mail providers, such as Google GMail and Yahoo! have options to login by using a https connection over secure sockets layer (SSL) or transport layer security (TLS). However, in my case, a couple of business mailboxes can be accessed via a webmail that doesn't offer any kind of encryption. The solution is pretty simple - create your own SSH Tunnel.
Continue reading "HOW TO: Securely access your webmail using SSH tunnels" »
Mozilla released a new version of its Firefox browser that adds native support for Mac OS X running on Intel processors, and contains a number of important security fixes for all Firefox users. This should speed up Web browsing on these new systems, which had previously relied on Apple's Rosetta translation technology to run Firefox.