software - page 47

I got an email today from some friends who run a Bay Area IT consultancy. They deal almost exclusively in the PC trade but are Mac savvy themselves, so I was startled a bit by the subject line for their monthly Good News / Bad News newsletter: Two Very Bad Mac OSX Viruses.

Of course, I knew from chatter over the summer and from more recent conversation that the days of Macs being impervious to viruses and malware are probably numbered and sure enough, even Apple Support now officially recommends users install antivirus protection on Mac systems:

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.

The Apple knowledge base article goes on to recommend programs from Intego, Symantec/Norton and McAfee, all of which are commercially licensed products.

My consulting friends recommended iAntivirus, which is a free program, and said, “We have never used it but reviewers say it is good for being a free program. Download and use all free software with caution!”

Another free Mac virus checker (though the developer gratefully accepts all donations) is ClamXav, an updated version of which was released on Monday; the program gets 4.25 stars at Mac Update.

So, is that it? Are we all going to opt for the flu shot from now on? If you’ve installed antivirus software on your Mac, tell us how it’s going and what you like. If you haven’t, or don’t plan to, tell us why in comments.

Planning a banquet? Got royals coming to dinner? Or just hosting your daughter’s wedding? TablePlan is the app you had no idea even existed, and turns the nightmare that is making-sure-Aunt-Clara-doesn’t-sit-next-to-any-vegetarians into a delight!

Drag-and-drop re-seating on the fly. Built-in RSVP management. Faster than Excel. (Let’s face it, almost anything on Earth is faster than Excel.) And only 20 bucks.

When I got married, we didn’t bother with a table plan. We just stood up and said: “Sit wherever you like!” It was almost not a total disaster.

Just in case you don’t have such a great photographic eye, or perhaps are not completely satisfied with the images produced by your iPhone’s distinctive optics, there is help available.

More than 30,000 people have downloaded French photographer Eric Lafforgue’s free iPhone app Hervé Péroteau. He released version 2.1 on Sunday with more than 800 pictures available for use as screensavers for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Lafforgue’s work has been published in prestegious magazines worldwide, including Geo, National Geographic, CNN Traveler, The Times, Stampa and UNESCO magazine. His app will fill 25MB of space on your device, but it automatically lets you know when there are photo updates available and includes professional tips from one of the world’s most successful freelance photographers.

Check out some of his images in the gallery below and be sure also to visit his stunning website.

All images © Eric Lafforgue

Stainless is a multi-purpose browser for OS X inspired (according to its developers) by Google Chrome. The early beta version (0.4) available for download works only with 10.5 (Leopard) and appears to be a fun side project for the engineers at Mesa Dynamics, who developed Stainless to leverage multi-processing technologies they developed for one of their other products, Hypercube.

Blogger Jackson Chung has taken Stainless for a spin and writes that it has potential. “It is a fair bit more stable, quicker and simpler to use [than other Mac browsers] – and that appeals to most people who are stuck with the productivity-driven mindset of Do more with less time.” He applauds Stainless’ simple UI and the fact that every browser tab runs under a separate process.

Unlike Safari, for instance, which runs tabs under a collective process, Stainless ‘feels’ lighter, according to Chung, and the whole surfing experience seems quicker and more responsive.

Google is working on a Mac version of Chrome and Media Dynamics gives the impression that Stainless may well be no more than a demonstration of the possibilities we could see when Chrome for the Mac is finally released. Until then, however, Stainless looks to be a taste of things to come.

Via Make Use Of

I wrote last week about the impending release of Job Compass, an iPhone app that utilizes the phone’s location-aware capability and Google Maps to deliver location-specific results to users’ job search queries. The app had its debut on the iTunes AppStore over the weekend and I’ve spent the past few days playing around with it.

I am happy to report Job Compass is a useful, intuitive and well-designed application that takes out of the equation some of the more tedious aspects of searching for new employment. In the current economic climate, where the unemployment rate in the US has risen in each of the past six months and now stands at a level higher than its most recent peak in 2003, Job Compass is a handy app indeed.

On launch the program asks permission to use your location as a base from which to perform a job search. After a few moments, a Google map pinned to your location appears and you’re invited to search for a job. Users can put in anything they want (now’s the time to think – what’s your dream job?) and choose to search for listings within a 5, 10, 25, 50 or 100 mile radius of their current location.

A recent search for writer/editor positions within 10 miles of my house returned five open positions, all of which I could then call up and read about, either in short digest or full description form. Users can choose to send themselves an email with a link to the job description, or open it in Safari and apply for the job right from the iPhone. Though, given the limitations of the iPhone’s virtual keyboard and the raft of text entries usually required in an online job application, sending an email link is almost always going to be your best option. (Note to Ed.: I’m not looking, that was just an example!)

Titus Blair, spokesman for Securicy Ventures, the app’s developer, told Cult of Mac, “we have partnered with most of the large jobs boards with the goal of being the #1 source for location based jobs searches,” and noted that Jobs Compass’s patent pending search protocol currently scans a database of over 2+ million listings, with more added daily.

Blair acknowledges “on Edge it can run pretty slow,” but says “we are working directly with Google on dramatically speeding this up for release 2.0.” Other enhancements in the works for coming updates include displaying maps and search results in landscape mode, the ability to input zip codes to search in other locations, as well as support for listings in the UK and Canada, and possibly other countries down the road.

Job Compass sells for $3.99 on the iTunes AppStore, which, if you’ve just lost your job or are interested in finding a new one, could prove to be a worthy investment.

Jesse Grosjean at Hog Bay Software has released Taskpaper 2.0, an impressive update to an already impressive app.

Taskpaper is the simplest sort of task management environment you can think of, and that’s why it’s so useful. It doesn’t try to do everything. But it does one thing – manage lists – extremely well indeed.

The new release has lots of new features, such as a new search system, custom themes (so you can have green-on-black Terminal style lists if you like), and (my favorite new addition) a system-wide keyboard shortcut that calls up a Quick Entry Window for, erm, quickly adding entries.

I’ve seen people criticize Taskpaper because of the features it lacks, but I don’t see it that way. It omits many things that appear in other task management apps, and it does to with purpose. Taskpaper keeps things simple. If you want to put more focus on getting things done than you do on Getting Things Done, Taskpaper is the app for you.

There’s an idea you have for a killer iPhone app that no one has made yet. Trouble is, you have the idea but aren’t a developer. Step in iPhone Freelancer, a site that aims to pair idea-happy luddites with the tech people to make those apps happen. Employers post projects, then freelancers bid on them. It just launched a couple of days ago, but there’s already one project for a game with a budget of $250-500:

“I am looking for someone to develop an iphone app in the spirit of ibeer. You will have to know the SDK development kit provided by apple or some mobile phone equivalent. The app is meant to be a simple form of entertainment. If you start with an existing game and can just change the images, that would be fine too. I just don’t have the skill to do it on my own.”

Given the recent spate of stories on of developers making big bucks on iPhone apps, the idea is good, though savvy programmers are sharing iPhone-related gigs already.

If you want to use a racy photo as your iPhone wallpaper it will have to be strictly DIY now that Wallpaper Universe has been pulled from the AppStore.

Some will say this turn of events confirms Steve Jobs’ promise to keep ‘porn’ off the iPhone. Others point out that it highlights the inscrutability of Apple’s review process for selecting what does, and what doesn’t make it into the AppStore catalog.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether Apple should retain exclusive gatekeeper authority over apps that can be legitimately run on the iPhone, many would be satisfied if the process for AppStore certification was more transparent, according to MG Siegler, writing for Venture Beat.

Last weekend’s snafu over the release of Google’s voice search update, the punting of approved apps on a third update, debacles such as the I Am Rich app – all raise legitimate questions over the capriciousness of Apple’s distribution of tickets to the big show.

Via Industry Standard

No one waits until after Thanksgiving any more to start thinking about and marketing Christmas, so why wait to get your iPhone Christmas Advent Calendar?

Available now from developers Gourmet Pixel, the 24 Days app greets the user upon first opening the application with a countdown to December 1st.

Once into December, you’re able to open each relevant window and in return, receive an interactive gift, which culminates to a spectacular interactive finale on Christmas Eve.

“A lot of the standard individual elements built into 24 Christmas Days are actually being sold in a separated form by other developers as single apps,” says Darren Lynch, a Director at Gourmet Pixel. He adds, “our app can also be used year after year, so it really is cost effective. While it ticks all the boxes, in terms of classic Christmas imagery, watch out for some special surprises that our development team has added –œ it’s a real Christmas treat!”

Last week, Jesper at Waffle Software (makers of This Service, among other apps) posted a lengthy critique of his favorite browser, OmniWeb.

Jesper’s been using OmniWeb 5 for years now, but he feels it’s been languishing, unloved and un-updated, for too long. He says:

“Why are you not caring about your product, and if you are, why doesn’t it show? Why are you letting people chatter feature requests on your forums without showing some degree of involvement? What’s with not even letting slip that either something is up for the future or that you’re thinking of letting this go..?”

When I saw Jesper’s comments, I thought he was making a lot of valid points – so I contacted Omni and asked them if they had anything to say about them.

Today, both Jesper and I got a reply when Omni boss Ken Case added a comment to Jesper’s post. In it, he admits:

“OmniWeb has effectively been in maintenance mode for the last few years while we’ve focused the bulk of our attention on other products.”

But during that time, some ideas have been brewing. Omni doesn’t have enough developers to make them happen, so he signs off with an advertisement: “Would any experienced developers like to come work for us? We’re hiring!”

So if you fancy bringing OmniWeb up-to-date, now’s your chance.

Babies? Yes, babies! That’s all it is! Babies!

Isn’t there a law against this or something?

Wait – there’s two apps here. Babies and Babies Free.

The only difference I can see between them is that Babies costs a dollar and is described as: “Look at babies until you cannot look at babies no more! There is no end to the babies!”

Whereas Babies Free is merely “All the babies you will ever want to look at!”

I see, so there’s a clear functionality difference here. The free Babies app imposes restrictions on the amount of baby viewing. Users are limited to just the babies they will ever want to see; to see babies until you can no longer do so requires the pro-level upgrade. Figures.

So that’s all cleared up then.

Apple’s new MacBooks are great — but as a proud owner of one of the milled wonders, I can confirm that the much-vaunted glass trackpad did have issues. Not constant ones by any means, but it would miss clicks quite often — probably one in ten times.

Having finally downloaded and installed Trackpad Firmware Update 1.0 yesterday, I can also confirm that the problems have completely gone away now. No fuss, and every click counts.

My experience has not been universal, however. MacFixIt reports that many users are having difficulty installing the update, and I’ve even heard of some people getting kernel panics and other bad news. Install at your own risk, obviously, but it’s a very welcome update — makes the already good significantly better.

As has been widely rumored, Apple rolled out iPhone OS 2.2 tonight via software update, which brings Google Street View, mass transit directions, location sharing by e-mail, and, most excitingly, over-the-air podcast downloads, which has been a fairly glaring oversight (and source of considerable controversy).

At the same time, Apple has whipped out iTunes 8.0.2, which is basically a bug fix, plus improved results for VoiceOver, Apple’s accessibility technology for the visually impaired.

Nothing big, but good to see Apple improving its software nonetheless.

Via Engadget

When you switch on Voice Search in Google’s Mobile App for iPhone, you see a little bit of warning text underneath which reads:

“Voice Search only works in English, and works best for North American English accents.”

Tish and piffle, I thought to myself when I read that. I’m sure it’ll understand my humdrum Estuary English accent perfectly well.

But you know what? The warning was put there for a reason. Because so far, every search I’ve done has failed when I use my normal voice, and worked when I put on my appalling attempt at an American accent.

So thank you Google for giving us voice search, which is officially the New Best Thing Ever (better than the last Best Thing Ever, at any rate). But curse you, Google, for making me sound like a complete idiot every time I want to do a voice search for something in public.

Google’s voice search application for the iPhone is nothing short of spectacular. After tantalizing would-be users with either a PR goof or a brilliant marketing ploy that resulted in a delayed release on the AppStore, the updated version of Google Mobile finally hit on Monday and I got it on to my phone last night.

It’s like the home screen says, “For voice search, just bring the phone to your ear and speak. Really, no buttons required!” The program offers to let you watch a video to learn more, but it’s about as easy as it gets to call up a search results page that gives you just what you’re looking for simply by speaking into the phone.

When I searched for “70 Harper” the program returned results for “cindy harper,” but when I amended the search to “70 harper street, san francisco” I got a Google map pinned exactly to the address I spoke into the phone. Speaking about the incredible performance of this free app with my colleague Leander Kahney this morning, he agreed Google has served up something pretty amazing, saying, “it even understands my weird English accent.”

Say what you will about Google having worn out its welcome, or being on the downside of its rise to Internet glory, this advance in mobile search technology is a huge leap forward in this reviewer’s opinion. The iPhone may not yet be a fully functioning Star Trek communicator, but Google’s voice search brings it closer than many thought we might get.

Now, personally speaking, I find this very weird indeed. But some people might like the idea, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

You’re probably already aware of TextMate, which like most text editors eschews a lot of the user interface stuff you see in other apps. There’s a window, with text in it, and there are many many commands you can use, but there’s not much to see: there’s no toolbar.

SuperMate doesn’t add a toolbar, it’s more like adding a skin. It tinkers with TextMate’s panels and tabs and a few other things like the web preview window, and just Leopardizes them a little.

Personally, I think TextMate’s just fine as it is. But if you’d like to see it a bit more, um, purple, maybe this will be of interest.

We’ve written before about some of the creative ways Mac users act to protect their gear and to foil the nefarious intentions of would-be thieves. This week brings another, called MacTrak, from GadgetTrak, Inc., makers of the new anti-theft software for mobile devices.

MacTrak features location-awareness from Skyhook Wireless’ Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) and integration with Flickr to capture the location and images of laptop thieves.

“Skyhook’s cutting-edge location technology allows our software to send the location of the device to the owner along with a photo of who is using the system, greatly increasing the chances of getting the stolen device back,” says Ken Westin, founder and CTO of GadgetTrak.

When a MacTrak-enabled laptop is stolen, the device owner can remotely activate tracking for their stolen system. Once the stolen device connects to the Internet, MacTrak determines the device location using WPS. It will also activate the Mac’s camera and photograph whoever is using the device. The image, location and network information are then uploaded to Flickr and an email is sent to the owner with the same information. Data will continue to be sent over time until tracking is disabled.

“Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning can pinpoint the location of a stolen device within 20-30 meters even in dense urban areas or indoors, meeting the tough performance standards of security applications,” says Kate Imbach, director of marketing at Skyhook Wireless.

You can buy MacTrak directly from GadgetTrak.

The Google Mobile team is expected to enhance its iPhone search product with a voice recognition add-on as soon as today, according to a report in the New York Times.

Having already reorganized the way it delivers the results of an iPhone search request earlier this week, the Mountain View, CA search engine company is taking another step toward perfecting the way it handles the challenges of entering and retrieving information with hand-held wireless devices.

“Solving those two problems in a world-class way is our goal,” says Vic Gundotra, a former Microsoft executive who now heads Google’s mobile businesses.

With teams of voice recognition engineers working in New York, London and Mountain View utilizing trillions of search queries Google users have made over the years, one aspect of the service relies on a statistical model of the way words are frequently strung together, according to Mike Cohen, a speech research who was co-founder of Nuance Communications before coming to Google.

The service also takes advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer to put itself into “listen” mode when the phone is raised to a user’s ear, a design development contributed by a Google researcher in London.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft already offer voice services for cellphones. The Microsoft Tellme service returns information in specific categories like directions, maps and movies. Yahoo’s oneSearch with Voice is more flexible but does not appear to be as accurate as Google’s offering, according to the Times report.

The Google system is far from perfect, and it can return queries that appear as gibberish. Google executives declined to estimate how often the service gets it right, but they said they believed it was accurate enough to be useful to people who wanted to avoid tapping out their queries on the iPhone’s touch-screen keyboard.

As of this writing the add on was not yet available on the AppStore, but as Raj Reddy, an artificial intelligence researcher at Carnegie Mellon University says, “whatever they introduce now, it will greatly increase in accuracy in three or six months.”

Via New York Times

Fans of comics’ “Golden Age” now have a great way to feed that jones on the iPhone and iPod Touch with Comic Zeal from Bitolithic.

The $1.99 app lets you download an unlimited number of classic comics from the 1930s and 1940s, a period that saw the arrival of the comic book as a mainstream art form, when the medium’s artistic vocabulary and creative conventions were defined by its first generation of writers, artists, and editors.

The app downloads full comics to store locally on your device for easy access offline, and takes full advantage of the iPhone platform’s pinch-zoom and fingertip scrolling so you can move around pages quickly and zoom in to detail as you wish. A recent update makes turning pages with the swipe gesture a breeze and counts as an excellent improvement to the original released version.

“I had been itching to do some development for the Mac but when we learned the iPhone and iPod contained most of OS X I knew I had to do SOMETHING on the device,” Melbourne-based developer Emiliano Molina told Cult of Mac. “During that time, a colleague let me borrow some of his most precious comic books. The most leisure time I had was on the train but I couldn’t risk damaging them,” he says, “eventually I realized that what I needed was a digital version of those comics on the iPod.”

The Comic Zeal library contains an eclectic mix of titles that have fallen out of copyright, such as Romantic Adventures, Strange Worlds, Racket Squad and a personal favorite of this reviewer, Eerie.

Molina is also developing what he calls the Comic Zeal Creator, which allows you to convert the CBR/CBZ files of comics you find on the internet into Comic Zeal’s CBI format, so you can upload your own favorites to the iPhone for storage and later access. The Creator remains in Beta and can be downloaded from the Bitolithic website.

Apple released a significant update for 4th generation iPod Nano Tuesday night. Software Version 1.0.3 includes a number of fixes to cover art and photo distortion issues that some users had been experiencing, and delivers support for the eagerly awaited Apple in-ear headphones with mic and remote.

Although the headphones were announced in September when the iPod Nano line was refreshed, they have remained as yet unavailable.

Nano users can obtain the new software by connecting the digital media player to their computer and launching iTunes. Follow the prompts for downloading and installing the software.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a developers’ conference in Australia yesterday he thinks the idea of using Webkit as the rendering engine for Internet Explorer is “interesting” and that his company “may look at that” as the Microsoft web browser continues to evolve.

Asked directly why IE remains relevant and what is the value of a proprietary rendering engine “when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster,” Ballmer responded by admitting that Microsoft would need to consider the future of the browser and determine if there is any lack of innovation for the company to capitalize upon with “proprietary extensions that broaden its functionality.”

Since defeating Netscape, once the lone challenger to its dominance of the browser market, IE has been wildly outpaced by the likes of Firefox, Safari and Opera in the past five years, while the speed and standards compliant advantages of Webkit have led a number of developers to make it the foundation for their web browsers and other web related tools. Among them are Nokia’s mobile browser, Google’s new Chrome, and of course the mobile Safari browser used by Apple’s iPhone.

With Microsoft having long preached the gospel of praising developers for the innovations brought to its core product, the company would no doubt gain the undying gratitude of the developer community should it adopt Webkit and free developers from the extra work currently required to make their code render predictably in Internet Explorer.

Via AppleInsider

Today, Stanford professor Dr. Ge Wang and his company, Smule, introduced Ocarina, the first and only app that transforms the iPhone into an expressive musical wind instrument.

The app synthesizes sound in real-time, just like a regular instrument, based on actual gestures including wind input, tilt, and finger placement over the four holes overlaid on the multi-touch pad. Unlike other iPhone audio apps, the sound is not pre-compiled but is generated by the notes, gestures and nuance of the individual performer. As a result, it allows an iPhone user to explore and master the musical sounds of an entirely iPhone-native version of an ancient flute-like instrument.

Smule’s audio engine (CHiP) and the Smule Sonic Network make it possible to hear live performances around the world. With the globe view, you can hear performances, and see the origin of that performance.

Dr. Wang, in addition to being CTO of Smule, is director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, and the author of the Chuck audio programming language.

Formation of the first iPhone Philharmonic cannot be far behind. Perhaps one day, iPhone music will be its own category at the Grammys.

I don’t know about you, but I get funny looks from folk when I show off my iPhone, then have to sheepishly confess that it doesn’t do MMS messages.

“Phhhfft,” people say, pulling out their 2-year-old Nokias that they got for free. “Even this crappy old thing can do MMS.”

Apple’s workaround is to send iPhone owners a plain text message with a link to a webapp, where they can view their MMS. In the UK, the O2 webapp is horrible. No-one at O2 has bothered to make it iPhone-friendly. The whole setup is clunky, to put it mildly.

Ross McKillop thinks so too, and that’s why he decided to build a better webapp, one that is designed for iPhone. The result is the newly renamed iPhoneMMS, which lets you view incoming and send outgoing MMS messages, via a complex arrangement of protocols and emails.

It’s still clunky compared to proper MMS support, but it’s a good deal better than the shoddy mess supplied by O2. Until they and Apple get their collective act together to make a decent built-in MMS application, it’s the best option.

In an emailed response to another user disappointed in the performance of the glass trackpad on his new MacBook Pro, Steve Jobs said, “Software Fix coming soon,” according to MacRumors.

We reported on the possible dustup over quirky trackpads on Monday, noting the growing number of threads related to user concerns about it in Apple’s discussion forums. In comments to our post Cult of Mac readers, on balance, haven’t seemed to find it much of an issue, but if a software patch is indeed forthcoming, that should be good news to all who have been bothered by the problem.

Just a few days after announcing that Mac support for Netflix’s Watch Instantly service was on the way, the company has opened the door to its public beta here. With a quick install of Microsoft Silverlight 2.0, you’ll be good to go — not even a browser restart was necessary for me. I’ve been playing with it for about an hour now, and I’m really impressed. At least on my (admittedly brand-new) MacBook, it loads almost instantly, the video and audio quality is great, and the suggestions really do mesh with my taste. And none of the bizarre error messages I’ve seen in reviews of the older Windows version.

The site suggests that a 1.5 Ghz Intel chip is the minimum for Mac support. Anyone with an older machine had the chance to put this service through its paces?