People have been speculating about a Google OS for years, and finally it’s official. Chrome OS will be open source, free, and popping up on a netbook near you in about a year or so from now.
And do you think Apple’s worried? Nah.
In the unlikely event that you’ve been yearning for more browsers on your Mac, and in the even less likely event that you wish you could splash out money for one; well, sunshine, your prayers have been answered.
For iCab, the last Mac browser that still costs money, is still being updated and has just reached version 4.6.1. And it can be all yours for 20 bucks. (I’m wracking my brains, and I can’t think of any other browsers that cost money these days – not since OmniWeb went free. Shout if you know of another.)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmE1PbeOYVE
This video from the Blogger team at Google isn’t new, but it did teach me a few things I didn’t know before. Sending stuff to a Blogger account from your iPhone is very simple, even if you don’t already have a Blogger account.
First, that Blogger allows anyone to create a blog instantly via email (or SMS message) by simply sending a first post to [email protected] (or to 256447 for US SMS messages). Just like the widely-admired Posterous service, there’s no need to sign up for anything in advance.
Second, and this is the clever bit, is that you can upload content to Blogger.com this way and then when you claim the post from your desktop computer, you can associate that content with any *existing* blog you have.
I know Blogger isn’t fashionable as a blogging platform these days, but I’m rather fond of its simplicity and ease of use. Evan Williams was right about those templates, though. Come on, guys: new templates? Much to ask?
The Apple Keyboard’s Last Stand from jcims on Vimeo.
How do people think of these things? Vimeo user jcims writes on his profile page: “Avoid boredom at all costs.”
Looks like he certainly knows how to do that. Have old Apple keyboard, will BLOW IT SKY HIGH IN THE WOODS. You know, for kids! I mean kicks.
OK, so you’ve installed the Safari 4 Beta and found, perhaps to your mild surprise, that you no longer have Safari 3 around and that your default browser is now beta software. (For what it’s worth, I think this beta period will be pretty short, and that a proper release is not far away. Anyway.)
But there are some things you don’t like. Perhaps you’d like the tabs to appear where they used to. Perhaps you liked the old loading progress bar – the blue one that filled the address bar, instead of the new spinning wheel which only displays *activity*, not progress. Or perhaps you hate the new Top Sites feature and want to disable it completely (not much need for this, as it’s easy to switch off, but still).
I’m only on my second MacBook upper case (pictured above), and it’s currently held together with a piece of duct tape.
But that’s nothing. Over at MacInTouch, reader Derek C is on his eighth, and Apple are sending him a whole new MacBook.
The related Flickr group, My MacBook was cracked by itself is still going strong, too. I suspect many Cult readers have seen this problem.
The appeal of a unibody replacement grows ever stronger.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wfv0OJ1oMQ
Another video doing the rounds of the blogs this morning, but little wonder because this is another thing that we – all of us – want.
Everyone knows what a pain it is to re-arrange and keep organized your iPhone apps, especially when you have pages and pages of the things. This neat concept video shows an iTunes-based system for keeping things sorted the way you want them, including the option to lock apps in place, or move several of them (or an entire screenful) at a time.
And when I say “everyone”, I mean it. The Apple team must share these frustrations along with the rest of us. So if Apple’s NOT working on something like this for a future iTunes/iPhone release, then I shall buy a packet of Refreshers for the seventh person who comments on this post.
In the words of a late, great, British Saturday morning kids TV show: THIS IS WHAT WE WANT. This is what I’ve wanted since I first got my grubby little fingers on an iPhone. This is how I used to use my Palm (with a GoType keyboard) to write articles on the road. It worked just fine. I really, really want this; not as a plaything for the jailbroken, but as a built-in, out-of-the-box, totally legitimate feature.
Some people are saying this is faked. They say the guy is either using VNC, with an accomplice doing the typing out of sight, or that the camera was paused after the keyboard typing to allow the text to be entered normally (and it’s fair to say that there is a slight camera shake at about 00:33).
But I don’t care if it’s a fake or not. This is a feature I want on my iPhone. In fact, I’m going to stop writing about it and just call my old friend Tim Cook right now. Me and him, you know. We’re buddies.
(Via TUAW.)
Oh, and in other news: people use Macs.
This post at The Next Web made me stop and think for a moment. I’ve been one of the many people who’ll cheerfully spend a dollar or two on an app that looks enticing and has generally good reviews.
After all, a dollar or two is nothing, right? Less than a cup of coffee, less than a pint of beer in my local pub.
But what’s the cumulative effect? Let’s see now… Open iTunes, click iTunes Store, click on my account ID, enter my password, click “Purchase History”, do some adding up, and the total is:
£68.60, or US$99.70 at the current exchange rate.
One hundred bucks, near as dammit, on iPhone apps. Wow. I had no idea was going to be that much. I was expecting about half that.
It also highlights just what an excellent idea the App Store is, and how well it has been designed. Shopping there is so simple, so instantaneous, and often so cheap per-app, that it almost becomes a thoughtless act. “This app looks cool. I’ll try it.” A dollar here, a few dollars there.
I’m not complaining, I’m just noticing my own App Store spending habits for the first time. This information is available to anyone who goes digging around inside iTunes to see it, but perhaps Apple could make it a little easier to keep track of spending.
How about a small box on the iTunes Store front page, which says “So far this month/year/to date, you have spent $X on iTunes.”?
Something small and unobtrusive; but visible.
Confession time: how much have you spent? And is it more or less than you expected?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp2s7nydo6w
Look, it’s Rogue for iPhone, otherwise known as Rogue Touch.
Those of you of a certain age will have fond memories of Rogue, which became very popular in the early 80s. Its co-creator Glenn Wichman has written an entertaining history (sadly, his link to Rogue-related stories he’s been sent is broken) and of course, these days you can play it in a browser window.
Chronosoft’s colorful update is a world away from Rogue’s ASCII origins, and the gameplay is very different because the keyboard controls have been replaced with (somewhat hard to fathom) swipes, touches and gestures. So if you want something more authentic (and you’d rather not pay for your dungeon-exploring), you should try Gandreas Software’s version of the original, which is much more “Roguelike”. It includes a plain ASCII mode and a graphics mode, and lets you enter commands with letter-shaped finger gestures. It’s still very different, but it’s as close to the original as a keyboard-less device is going to get.
And if you still want to play the original game on your computer, you can download it from Sourceforge. See you in the dungeons.
The folks at Omni got a mysterious gift via email the other day: a script that hunts through an iPhoto database for Faces, and relationships between them.
Then it takes what it’s found and spits out an OmniGraffle document showing which people appear in photos together. The result is this weird spidery diagram.
Judging by the comments, some people have had problems getting the script (created by Armin Briegel) working. An updated version has been posted, though, so it might still be worth a try if you have OmniGraffle installed.
This is a neat little trick, so I wonder how long it will be before we get something like this functionality inside iPhoto. After all, it’s already possible to use Places as a criterion for creating Smart Folders – with any luck, a future update will add Faces to that list. Then it would be possible to create Smart Folders that contain two or more particular people.