This is a simple trick that’ll load Safari a bit faster:
1. Quit Safari if it’s running.
2. Go to terminal and type the following in one line:
3. Launch Safari again.
References can be found at MacOSXHints.com.
Apple’s Exposé (more info here) was probably one of the most important windows management breakthroughs since “Alt + Tab”. Not too long after Apple released it along with Panther, developers soon found ways to simulate the effects in Windows.
Case in point:
On the Opensource side, developers haven’t been standing idle. They also have come up with remarkable apps with similar tricks.
Before we jump the gun and accuse everyone else for stealing introducing Apple’s innovations in other platforms, I must confess that I first saw an Expos%uFFFD-like functionality on a Linux system even before the introduction of Panther. And according to this document at Microsoft’s very own UI Research lab, a similar functionality had been in existence long before Mac OSX. Unfortunately the project just never made it to various releases of Windows.
Now let’s take it a step further and examine some up and coming technologies. First up is Fold n’ Drop project from a French lab. The idea is to treat windows as pieces of paper. A user can fold, flip and leaf through them. There’s demo video and a Java demo app you can test it out. Very neat. And someone’s already made it work on a Windows Machine.
Another pretty cool application is from Sun Microsystems. Porject Looking Glass manipulates the Desktop and its windows each as 3D objects. It has features even a Mac user will envy. I was hoping to see some of them to be implemented in Tiger.
A demo is available for playback.
Other emerging implementations:
I am sure there are plenty more advanced UI projects in the labs. If anyone knows any that’s not here, please do share them with me.
Speaking of emerging technologies, IBM’s “alphaWorks: Emerging technologies” website has been in my bookmarks for the longest time. It’s a site that features the latest technologies at IBM labs that are available for licensing.
Today I received a surprise present from another enthusiast of Steve Job’s Stanford speech. It’s the back cover of the last issue of the “Whole Earth” magazine Steve Jobs referred to in his speech.
WOW!
I will revamp the speech audio download site soon to include the full size picture of the cover along with other helpful details.
The text is a bit hard to read. It says “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” A special thank you is extended to Dave Williams for sending me this picture.
I gotta hand it to the Japanese designers. They can consistently come up with products that can put a smile on my face. These tiny little jackets are just so cute. I wonder if this will sell in the United States.
The maker of the product is selling them for 2,000 Yen with a maximum order of 1,000 units. Yeah~ right… I am sure they will turn down a 10,000-unit order.
When Gmail first came out, there were a couple of hacks that allowed users to make their Gmail accounts as remote drives. But of course they didn’t really catch on. Found this today: Xmail Hard Drive.com. It effectively makes your Gmail account a remote storage. But it requires that you provide your login name/passowrd to a third party… I am not so sure about that…
via [LifeHacker]
Found this nice little app — Xyle Scope.
It’s a WYSIWYG application that makes editing CSS style sheets way easier than “edit-save-refresh browser” method. And because it’s got a built-in browser, you can see the changes as you go. This is also a good way for beginners to learn how other people utilize their CSS files on their sites.
I was reading an article about biodegradable diapers and bumped into this site: Treehugger. And from there, I saw this eco-friendly online store: Vivavi, and this eco-friendly design school, Ecosa Institute.
There seems to be an increasing number of environmentally conscious population in the United States, especially here in California. When I was back in New York, terms like “organic”, “environmental” and “vegetarian” are associated with Yuppies from the Upper Westside of the town.
In the Bay Area, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are pretty busy places. Steve Jobs is known to frequent Whole Foods since it’s only blocks from Apple’s main campus.
This reminds me of the notion of a “sustainable” business with minimal footprints mentioned by Ray Anderson (his info here and here) in the DVD The Corporation. If CEOs of Fortune 500 companies can think the way he does, the world would be a far better place. It’s rare to see a business with some conscience. Most others do it because of pressure from their customers or regulatory constrains (ahem-GE-ahem). But whatever it takes, it’s a popular thing to do now. So everyone’s doing it.
Since I started talking about diapers, here’s a company a former kozmo.com employee founded in NYC to deliver diapers (and some other stuff) — MaxDelivery.
This is one of those products I wish I’d come up with!
Protectorz is for data port protection for PowerBooks and iBooks.
The company, RadTech, also sells other really nicely made Mac-related products.
I have read about Delicious Library at quite a few places. But I never really thought much of it. So last night, I decided to kick the tires at this award-winning software…. Boy, was I blown away or what!!
Once you use one of the three methods (Title, Author, ISBN) to search for your item (books, DVDs, CDs and games), the result is returned fairly quickly from Amazon.com’s database (needless to say, you need to be connected to the Internet to use this).
But there are still things I was annoyed at:
But the software was amazing overall. I spent about an hour and a half entering everything I own (less games and CDs) into its database. Despite its shortcomings, this thing is great. I can now keep track of who’d borrowed my books and DVDs!!
And damn it, I own 100+ books. I thought I’d shed most of them with all the moves I’ve had!
UPDATE: The comment Jeff made got me interested in finding out what else’s out there. Booxter from Deep Prose Software makes book entry WAY easier than Delicious Library. But it does require that I am on Amazon’s site as well. Too bad it doesn’t support DVD collections (or does it?).
E-Commerce Times reported a survey, Students Use iTunes, Even With Free Napster at Hand which indicates that seven out of ten students will still get their music from Apple’s market-leading iTunes software even when they are offered a free service to Napster’s lame subscription model.
What does this say? Ease of use and good karma will prevail. Copycats like MSN Music, Yahoo! Music, Walmart Music (yes, even Walmart is in the game), Buy.com Music, Napster and countless others continue to feed on Apple’s continued innovation. This is not to say that those other services may still have one thing or two to teach Apple.
But will Apple take notice? Apple probably doesn’t care. It’s happy where it’s at right now… that is, until someone starts to steal its market share.
A number of reports (here, here and here) are saying Dell will be partnering with Napster in an attempt to unseat Apple from its crown in the music download business. This represents the first serious attempt from a major company to target Apple’s market share. Given Dell’s sheer muscle and position in the hardware market, this might be somewhat damaging.
Took sometime to fiddle with the Search Box today to make it look like this:
Much to my dismay, this elegant look only works under Safari. Under any other browser, it’d look like any normal search box.
This All the other browsers blows!
Apple has an elegant solution at its Dashboard Widgets download site (upper right hand corner). But it involves image alignments… And I don’t really want mine to look like this:
(this was happened in Firefox after a search result was returned)
While hopping about the Internet, some people said GizmoProject is to be a good contender to Skype‘s world domination plan.
Given that it supports as many platforms (less Windows CE, which nobody really cares anyway) as Skype (and is already available for Mac OSX), it’s probably the most attractively designed VoIP client based on the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology, which is pretty much the standard in the VoIP industry. Skype uses its own proprietary protocol; and seeing how successful Skype is in the market, there’s no reason to believe Skype will provide its API to developers anytime soon.
However, since nobody is using this yet, I will hold out until enough people bug me to install it.
