Category: Reviews

Happy new year!

It’s been a while since I last made an update to this blog. I discovered a new web hosting service that cut our monthly expenses by 1/4! It took a little bit of time but I managed to port all the previous posts back to a self-hosted WordPress setup.

For the entire 2011 I experimented with WordPress.com, Tumblr and Posterous. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.

If you’re looking for something quick and easy, use Tumblr. If you want some extensibility, try WordPress.com. If you want to automatically update your other online presences while blogging, Posterous.

Firefox 4 finally arrived, and it replaced Chrome as my default

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Maybe I should disclose that I’m a hardcore Firefox user when 3.0 was released back in 2008. But after a year of using Chrome, I don’t think that matters anymore. I’m just as passionate about Google’s WebKit adaptation known as Chrome as I am about the best open source alternative.

Firefox 4 is as customizable as always. Adblock actually works. And having the most basic option of restricting the offline cache is definitely nice. It’s not like you didn’t know what was coming. It took Mozilla almost 3 years to go from Firefox 3 to Firefox 4 and there was like 12 betas and 2 release candidates. So I knew what I was getting into right off the bat.

Anyways, Firefox 4 is nothing revolutionary. It certainly isn’t faster than the latest Chrome. But it is stable and handles memory well, and its JavaScript performance is where a modern browser is anticipated to be. The fact that after 10 major versions of Chrome and Google still only allows cache-related changes by using a shortcut parameter hack is concerning (no way of doing this in Mac OS X). I hope it’s something they’ll address sooner or later.

Benchmarks:

I do wish Mozilla shipped Firefox 4 with some different default settings. But I have to fix the common annoyances of any browser I download so I guess that’s not too big of a deal.

There’s no reason not to use Internet Explorer 9 if you’re a Windows user or Safari 5 if you’re a Mac user. But if you’re a cross-platform guy like me and the ability to sync across the board (native, not some Xmarks BS) is important to you then it basically boils down to Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

More choices = good.

PS: Just check out this vertical space! I did it with Windows XP, similar results are possible with other OSs by just moving the buttons and awesome bar into the tabs bar and then unchecking “tabs on top”. Don’t need to modify userChrome.css or anything, since that stylesheet is only affecting Windows systems.

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PSS: I guess the hype wore off on me. 2 days later I’m back on Chrome. I guess I’m just addicted to the raw performance.

So what’s the big deal about Instagram?

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Okay I admit I’m late to the game. The app has been out for a while now. I’ll also admit I’m only checking it out because I was bored. Apps like these are a dime and dozen on the App Store, so what makes Instagram kind of special? I mean there’s tweets and blog posts about how this is going to kill Flickr. So what’s the big deal right? 

It make photosharing easy and cross posts to all the well known social platforms, with a twist: It comes with a bunch of filters that would make your photos look like oldshool polaroid takes.

I only wish it shared a link via Flickr, if you chose to cross post. I certainly see why they would want to use their own image hosting on top to attract new users. So I guess it’s no big deal since I can push a copy to Flickr during or after the post. 

1 caveat, there’s not enough filters. It’s like cowbells, you can never have enough cowbells. 

Bottom line it’s fun it’s easy and it’s ridiculously oldschool. 

PS: I highly doubt this will ever kill Flickr. That’s even more ridiculous than the oldschool-ness of this app. 

iWork + Box.net WebDAV = must have for iPad

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I have been searching for a WebDAV compatible cloud storage service since I started playing with Pages on the iPad. 16 GB is plenty for storage if you’re only doing word processing and simple spreadsheets but since Apple gimped the iPad’s file manager (it’s non-existent), I had to resort to some Googling to finally settling on using Box.net. 

<rant>

Apple’s iWork suite for iPad (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) natively support MobileMe’s iDisk function. But a MobileMe subscription costs $99! There are so many free cloud storage services nowadays that charging for $99 a year is just outrageous. If Dropbox can give me 2 GB for free with a dead easy sync app for every platform, why would I pay for MobileMe to get iDisk that’s supported by Apple devices only? That’s stupid, roll out free MobileMe or die. 

</rant>

So if you’re like me and is unwilling to sync with iTunes to get at the files created on your iPad, here’s how to get WebDAV working with Box.net. 

  1. Sign up with Box. 
  2. Setup Box’s WebDAV details with iWork apps. 

Server: http://box.net/dav
Username: your Box username
Password: your Box password

Done. 

PS: Dropbox can be extended with WebDAV functions using a 3rd party called DropDAV. It works relatively well and is painless to setup, but I wrote this for Box because it had native WebDAV support. There is however a problem with Box, there is no Mac desktop client. Kind of silly if you think about it. So if you prefer Dropbox (I always have) then check out DropDAV. 

Mac App Store 1 month later

A lot of essential apps that I make use of on the Mac OS X are now on the App Store since its launch in January, 2010. We are almost at a place where any Mac user can easily find an app that would do what they need cheaply or often for free. 

Here are the apps that I can already find in the App Store:

  • Apple apps, iWork, iLife, pro apps, etc.
  • Kindle
  • MediaLink (not as good as PS3 Media Server in terms of compatibility but Apple library integration is much better
  • NovaBench
  • Pixelmator
  • Sparrow (used all the early beta and bought it the minute it was available on App Store)
  • TextWrangler
  • Twitter
  • VirusBarrier Express

And here’s a whole bunch of apps that are not available yet:

  • Any borderline legal apps, such as emulators, media rippers, P2P clients, open source codecs etc
  • Adium
  • Adobe apps
  • Burn
  • Carbon Copy Cloner
  • Colloquy, although a lot of people are starting to recommend Trillian as the end all IM, IRC, Facebook all-in-one
  • Cyberduck (you can pay for Transmit, I’ve always liked Cyberduck though)
  • Dropbox
  • Google Chrome (no Firefox either)
  • Growl
  • PS3 Media Server
  • Skype
  • Steam (although I fail to see why Steam would ever be in App Store)
  • The Unarchiver
  • TuneUp (no TidySongs either)

The actual type of games available in App Store are mostly iOS ports or old Mac ports. Steam is what you need if you’re looking for more modern games. 

I haven’t seen any media center apps either. XBMC, Boxee, Plex are all independent downloads. 

We’ll probably never see the plugins, preference panes, and system-level apps. That is by design though, and most users are likely not going to be looking for these in the first place. 

I hope to see a media player made available soon. MPlayer OSX Extended and VLC are both missing.