TechWorld

As Everyone should know, new Macbook/Macbook Pros have come out. They have a glass trackpad, a black bezel around the glass screen, like the iMac design, light-up black keyboards like the macbook air, and are made from one piece of aluminum.

However, I definitely do NOT like the design. I mean, I really don’t know how to explain, but the black bezel on a laptop just bothers me, and a glass trackpad isn’t innovative….it’s weird!

Anyways, I don’t think I’ll get one unless absolutely have to, like if my current Macbook breaks.

WebKit, the underlying framework for Apple’s Safari web browser, has just scored a perfect 100 without any mistakes on the acid3 test!

Way to go!

To get the nightly build, just go to http://www.webkit.org

There are many shareware applications that are great and that look good, but there are also freeware/open source applications that have the same ability.

RSS Reader- Instead of NetNewsWire, or anything, use Vienna:

Vienna is a free RSS reader with a built in browser.

www.vienna-rss.org

Adobe Photoshop- Instead of Adobe Photoshop CS3, use Gimp:

Gimp basically duplicates the ability of Photoshop, but maybe with less features, and not as a good looking interface.

http://www.gimp.org

The older version uses X11, but if you use the alpha version of the one that’s about to come out, it’ll be a standalone application.

Adobe Illustrator- Instead of Adobe Illustrator CS3, use Inkscape.

http://www.inkscape.org

Inkscape also duplicates the ability of Adobe Illustrator.

Adobe InDesign CS3- Instead of Adobe InDesign, use Scribus which also requires Ghostscript (I haven’t found out how to install yet).

VMWare Fusion/Parallels- Instead of these two virtual system applications, use VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org).

WebMynd is basically like Webbla, but for history. Webbla is an application for the Mac in which you can visually add bookmarks.

WebMynd is a free Firefox add-on in which you can enable so that it’ll record your history visually through snapshots of the web pages you went to.

Just go to http://webmynd.com, and install the extension for Firefox. The next time Firefox opens, WebMynd will automatically make an account for you, and then Firefox will restart again.

Then, WebMynd will start automatically recording. To stop or start WebMynd to record, just press:

To block websites from being recorded, press “Tools—–>WebMynd settings”. Then, just add the site:

GrabUp is a photo-taking application made by GrabUp.com.

GrabUp is just like the popular application called Skitch, except once you install it, there basically is no graphical interface, except for the system preferences.

Just press “Start GrabUp (Right now, it’s “Stop GrabUp” because I already started it), and then it’ll start running, and an ion in the menu bar will appear.

The similar thing between Skitch and GrabUp is that they can be uploaded onto the internet, and to take a picture is very easy.

Just Press: CMD—–>SHIFT—–4, and a “plus” sign should appear. Just hold and drag to specify what to capture.

Then, you’re done! The picture is automatically uploaded onto the internet, and when it is, the GrabUp icon in the menu bar should change, yellow while uploading, and green when it’s done uploading. To access the picture, just press on the icon, go to “recent images”, and press the image you want to see. It’ll open the webpage.

There are 2 versions of GrabUp, free and pro version. Pro costs 20 bucks, and enables GrabUp to upload to any site you want:

Note that you won’t be able to edit any photos, and that once the image is uploaded, you won’t be able to delete it. Also, the webpage in which the image is uploaded to will contain ads unless your a pro user. Or, you can add “?direct” without the quotes to the end of the webpage.

I’ll be reviewing another application like this, later.

I don’t have many photos in iPhoto ’08, only about 990 or so. However, whenever I boot up iPhoto, it always freezes for a few seconds, before proceeding to show me all those photos I have. Here are some tips that I’ve discovered (or think) that may help make iPhoto ’08 faster in booting, scrolling, and displaying.

1. Strip the Intel/PPC part. Use an application to strip the Intel or PPC part of iPhoto. That part is wasted code, which not only saves space, but also helps iPhoto ’08 boot faster (MUCH MUCH faster). Use an application like Xslimmer (shareware), TrimtheFat (freeware), Leopard Cache Cleaner/Tiger Cache Cleaner (Inside menu bar “Clean——>DeFAT Application”), or MacPilot (“Tools—->Extract Intel-Only/PPC-Only Application”).

2. Go to preferences, and go to the second tab, or “Appearance”. Turn off Drop Shadow, and bring the background slider to all white. This speeds up the scrolling.

3. Go to preferences, and go to the third tab, or “Events”. Make sure that reflection isn’t on.

4. Set the view size to “0″, “1″, “2″, or “3″. For some reason, I found that the presets let iPhoto ’08 scroll smoothly.

5. Strip the languages. For some reason, this let’s iPhoto boot up faster. Uses something like Monolingual, or you can just use Xslimmer again, or CleanApp. CleanApp and Xslimmer are shareware

I’ll be reviewing this later, and I’ll post (maybe) a screencast. I’m still discovering some changes, so..I’ll get back to you guys once I’m done looking through the new software.

iTunes and iPod used to be the largest and most famous music player/software out there, but now with the new launch of the Zune 3.0, I believe that the Zune software is much better than Apple’s.

First of all, Apple HAS to redesign iTunes. iTunes has looked like that for I don’t even know how long.

The Zune 3.0 software is graphically appealing..much more than iTunes at least. Everything is animated, and the black letters with the shadow drop against the pure white background is much more appealing than iTunes.

The Zune 3.0 also has much more new features, even though many of them are small. First, when the Zune 3.0 isn’t active, but is playing a song, a visualizer will appear (well..I guess I’ll call it a visualizer). Second, Zune is much more customizable than iTunes, like the background, and the arrangements, and all. Third, the marketplace is SO much better than iTunes Store! It’s much less crowded, and well thought out. Everything doesn’t take 5 minutes (yes…I’m exaggerating) to get from one place to another, and the way the Zune displays information about everything is so much better than iTunes.

Now to the actual players.

I have reviewed the players, but I just upgraded my 1st gen Zune 30GB to software 3.0. Apple, you might actually want to try to offer free major upgrades (ex: STOP CHARGING 10$ FOR AN UPGRADE TO IPOD TOUCH 2.0!!!!!). The new software has given MANY new features. Finally, audiobooks can be listened to on the Zune, and the FM Player (one of the BEST features of the Zune) is now so integrated with the Zune Marketplace (also another built in feature..buying songs from a marketplace..can go to McDonalds to buy…) that while you listen to a song, you might decide you want to buy it, and then you can add it into the cart.

I haven’t tried the 4th Gen Apple iPod Nano software, because I don’t want to get another iPod Nano when I just got one. However, if Apple DOES update the iPod Nano 3rd Gen to include Genius, or give a major update, then I might try and see some good in it.

Now that the major releases for the Zune desktop software, and iTunes have been released, many features have been added, but the major feature of both softwares are similar.

For iTunes, Apple branded the feature “Genius”. Basically what Genius does is Genius finds songs related to a song you choose to make a playlist.

However, first you have to enable Genius, and when you do, Genius sends your songs to an Apple server, which is one part I really hate. Even though it IS anonymous, I still don’t like giving my information away. Another thing that I hate about Genius is that the processing is so SLOW!!! It takes 10 minutes or so to send your songs up, and I only have 200 or so songs!!

Then, you just select a song, and press the Genius button in the lower right hand corner.

For Zune, Microsoft branded the feature MixView. MixView is automatically enabled. To use it, just click on an album, and press “MixView”, which should be on the bottom center. One thing bad about MixView is that MixView doesn’t work with songs.

When you do press MixView, the album will be processed, and the album should be in the center. After being processed, albums, artists, and others should be branching off your selected album. MixView shows the related genre, who influenced the artist, who the artist influenced, albums, and artists. However, MixView does not make a playlist. MixView just processes the information to show songs, albums, and artists that you might like.

When I wrote about Syncplicity, they said that they Mac client was coming in September, so I check everyday, until one day, they changed it to this:

COME ON!!! I WANT TO TRY OUT SYNCPLICITY WITH A MAC CLIENT!!! PLEASE??