norwegian-based Opera Software has released version 3.0 of their free, java-based mobile browser Opera Mini. while preceding versions already outperformed most phones’ preinstalled browser-applications by using server-side compression-proxies and optimizing html not intended for mobile rendering, version 3.0 goes even further with several new features:
).while features like photo-blogging and RSS-reader might be not really interesting to the poweruser, the addition of content-folding & https-support alone makes version 3.0 a worthy upgrade. to install Opera Mini 3.0, just navigate to www.operamini.com on your phone or PC.
as anticipated by many customers, Apple quickly released a follow-up to the bemoaned 7.0 release of iTunes. iTunes 7.0.1 (both windows and mac osx) “addresses stability and performance issues with Cover Flow, CD importing, iPod syncing, and more”. however, feedback on the update indicates that some problems still persist, so I was glad to find this download-link to iTunes 6.0.5 on Apple’s support forums.
sometime last night, the Songbird-developers hatched released version 0.2 Test Flight, therefor lifting the Mozilla-based opensource audio-player officialy into Beta. Songbird comes with a built-in Wikipedia-plugin, a cool example of what the integration of browser & player can do: browsing artist-pages in Wikipedia, Songbird automatically offers all linked audio-tracks/samples for playback. the new Audioscrobbler-extension connects Songbird with Last.fm. unfortunately, Songbird is still quite a memory-hog - seems that’s what we need to get used to. binaries for win32, mac osx & linux are waiting for being tried out!
thx to Marcus, I finally rediscovered the SimCity-esque traffic-visualizer I mentioned some days ago. VisitorVille by World Market Watch is a Windows desktop-application building game-like graphic representations of webserver log-files. pages are represented as buildings, visitors referring from search-engines arrive in Google- or AOL-busses and carry a passport disclosing details like javascript- & flash-support and screen-resolution.
with monthly fees of USD 89,- for sites with up to 5.000 unique daily visitors, VisitorVille’s eyecandy seems quite costly, especially since the user-interface looks a bit outdated (think Windows 2000). moreover, the downloadable demo is restricted to a random dataset, which makes evaluation difficult. still I think the underlying idea of visualizing website-traffic in a metropolitan environment is original - so if you’re into traffic-analysis, keep an eye on a potential update to VisitorVille.
Microsoft Windows Live Writer is a free offline/desktop-blogging tool released as beta last friday. like similar tools (TechCrunch mentions Qumana, which is available for both Windows and Mac OS), Live Writer allows users to write and edit blog-posts using a local application rather than the common browser-based richtext-editors. every blogger who has lost a post due to a browser-crash will find the idea of local editors intriguing - same goes for users who want to draft posts offline.
in terms of editing-features, Live Writer offers pretty much everything you’ld expect from a blog-editor: wysiwyg-formating based on your blog’s stylesheets, image-publishing, access to already existing posts and drafts. advanced features include a spell-checker (unfortunately only on-demand, not as-you-type like f.e. in Microsoft Word) and integration with Windows Live Local maps.
the Live Writer-installer is embedded with Windows Live Toolbar, which installs Windows Desktop Search and lots of additionial buttons into Internet Explorer - fortunately the installer allows to opt-out from most extensions. Live Writer works with Microsoft’s homegrown blogging-service Live Spaces, but also supports Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad and WordPress. testing Live Writer on my self-hosted WordPress-install worked pretty well, including image-uploads and web-preview - all that after entering only my blog-URL and user-credentials. looks like the development-team has really put much effort in supporting other platforms and standards like the Metaweblog API.
since Martin from futurenews.at is currently installing his very first MacBook, I thought I’ld collect some of my favorite Mac-utiltities for him…
Transmit 3 is probably the most popular FTP-client for the mac. it’s capable of all important protocols (FTP, sFTP, WebDav, .mac), integrates well with common text-editors for remote edit, syncs folders and offers a sweet user-interface (including dashboard-widgets and droplets).
strange name, great text-editor: SubEthaEdit is a lean yet powerful editor clearly aimed at developers. features include syntax-highlighting of the web’s most important languages, apple script-support, a UNIX-like command-line utility interfacing with the terminal and awesome collaboration-capabilities, allowing several users to work on the same document simultaneously.
for most mac-users, instant messaging means Adium X. Adium supports AIM, Jabber, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger and sports a gorgeous, skinable interface. of course, like all other meta-messengers, Adium lacks support for many advanced features of the IM-networks (and you’ll still need your Skype-client, though this is probably about to change).
iTerm is a neat telnet/ssh-terminal application. besides boring stuff like VT- & ANSI-compatibility, apple script-support and multiple languages, it offers transparent windows and - quite useful - tabbed terminal-sessions.
at first glance Quicksilver, is just a fast search-index for commonly used folders, documents and programs (very much like os-x’ spotlight). when looking closer, Quicksilver offers powerful ways to define actions and scripts which also can be mapped to keyboard-shortcuts.
Butler is an essential desktop-utility providing extra menu-bars, docklets, hot-corners and custom hotkeys. Butler launches applications, manages bookmarks, inserts text-snippets, controls iTunes and runs apple scripts.
Transmission is a simple but efficient bittorrent-client - no bells and whistles, just working unobtrusively in the background. for more features, the java-based client Azureus is the weapon of choice.
VoodooPad is my favorite scratchpad-application. VoodooPad is unique in storing documents as marked up text very similar to html, allowing nested documents, links and the usual html-formatting. moreover, it exports directly to your iPod.
two more-or-less useful scripts utilize the integrated motion-sensor of the MacBook (Pro) in rather innovative ways: while SmackBook Pro allows users to change virtual desktops by smacking the MacBook’s sides’, MacSaber is totally over the top, turning your laptop into a jedi-weapon!
any must-have tools I have missed? you’re welcome to post!
Bill Belew from the recommendable TheBizOfKnowledge-blog asks: “So, which PC is best for new students?” (meaning mac- or windows-PCs). there are obvious arguments of course, like lower price-point and greater choice of hardware for the windows-PC, while an Apple-computer shines regarding the ease-of-use and the ability to run both windows- & mac-software. I guess it’s this versatility why I’ld recommend a Mac to the average student.
however, I think it’s important that students also learn about alternative, opensource operating-systems and -applications like linux and open office. parents (and schools!!) will be happy to save the money on that Microsoft Offce-license, and students will benefit from the ability to adapt to different software-environments (of course this applies especially to students in technical subjects - luckily opensource is common sense at Austria’s Technical Universitiy). coming a long way, I think that mainstream linux-distributions like SuSe and Ubuntu have almost reached the level of user-friendliness necessary for general adoption in education.
Songbird’s source-repository was opened for public access today. Songbird is an opensource audio-player & -manager based on firefox’ HTML-rendering-engine and XUL-framework. besides opening the repository, the Songbird-team released binaries (pre0.2) for windows, linux and mac os (that’s a premiere for linux & mac).
despite looking like a black iTunes-clone at first glance, Songbird introduces innovative concepts for browsing websites containing audio-data. the integrated browser automatically extracts linked audio-files and offers them for one-click-download to the library. the pre0.2 release of Songbird looks promising - if you don’t want to install the software to your computer, I recommend watching these screenscasts to get an impression of its features.
the phpBB-team released the first public beta of phpBB version 3.0 (’Olympus’) this saturday. phpBB is probably the worlds most often installed opensource bulletin-board system and therefor also an inviting target for automated mass-hacks. besides tightening security, new features in 3.0 cover many things previously accomplished by external extension as well as loads of new stuff: attaching of files and inline-media to posts, more flexible user-profiles, improved user-management, better performance due caching and support for Oracle-databases (here is a list of the Olympus feature highlights).
my first impression after a quick test-installation of Olympus: many of the new features are useful (I especially like the new administration-panel) and will make everyone hosting a phpBB-board want to upgrade soon. let’s hope that the phpBB-team will offer good migration-tools, otherwise the transition to 3.0 could be painful…
Maybe you could explain me sometime
