Jonathan Davies

Even with the release of Firefox 3 I still remain an avid Safari user. Why?

Because when I was using Firefox 2 I was bit two many times with it crashing on me over and over again and it using to much in the way of system resources. I didn’t use any extensions (I don’t feel I found any that I really need to use or enhance my computing experience exponentially).

Yes, I know Firefox 3 has changed all of this, but still. I have no need to. Safari does everything that I need and more. It’s faster, looks better and has better integration with the OS.

It’s a simple reason, but they’re simple problems - sorry Firefox but I’m not about to switch today.

I know a lot of you probably think I’m wrong, why?

Apple as of late have starting working with lots more companies to bring a better experience to its users. They’ve worked with Google on integrating YouTube and Google Maps into the iPhone. Yahoo! have also helped integrate some of their widgets into the iPhone.

There has also been an advent of rumors that Apple is working with Google to add live video streaming to iTunes as well.

An interesting idea which has pushed me to talk about how the tech industry especially, are starting to collaborate a lot of their products. Why would they do this?

Increasing awareness is a major factor. Having that name in the search box every time you want to search is a big selling point. I wonder how much Google pays Mozilla to have their search as the default search in Firefox ?

You’ve also got to think about the people that you are trying to reach, maybe you want to go into a new market where making a brand new product wouldn’t be appropriate. Instead you could confer with another company with a strong product already in that market. Sure, the initial cost might be great but if people start to recognize you as a player then half of the work is already done.

Integration is great for consumers, if they can do something with one app instead of another two others they’re happy. It’s a simple message but can be a lot harder to put into practice.

With creating Wanted, I have been making some rather large steps up. SD to HD, hosted website to self hosted website and finally from using iMovie to Final Cut Express.

All in all I have really enjoyed learning the ins and outs of the app; I think that to really learn an app you need to sit down with a project - a target of what you want to do and get to work. Messing about with it and clicking on buttons is all very well, but you never really learn a workflow.

By having a project you can work out the best way of doing things, and over time find out better ways of doing so.

I was very surprised. when I realized that I actually preferred editing in Final Cut Express over iMovie. Just the sheer control you have over your footage is far superior to that of iMovie. Simple things: like cropping video, having layers - being able to move and resize video and images manually. These are all things that I now take for granted.

Sure, the interface may not be the best in the world - but it works very well and once you get over it you realize how intuitive it really is. The amount of “things” you can do is also impressive, there are enough to probably, at this stage, to do whatever I want. By the sound of things, Final Cut is simply a few more things added to the menu.

The only thing that I have found lacking in the Final Cut Express bundle is a app similar to Motion. I don’t think LiveType does any of the stuff I want it to be able to do, like, create different and exciting lower thirds and enticing introductions. I tried, but could not get anything near what I was looking for.

Luckily for me I have enlisted my friend, Stu Helm, who is whipping me up a couple of things for Wanted!

So far I am loving exploring Final Cut Express, it has made me want to venture out from just video podcast and to maybe making a few short films. Should be a great experience!

Which do you prefer? iMovie or Final Cut Express?

I’m expecting my copy of Final Cut Express to arrive in a few days and was hunting online for some good tutorials. Though there are some good user created tutorials some of the best, in my opinion, are the ones by Apple. These tutorials cover every app that Apple makes, from iDVD to Motion. Of course there is a limited amount that they can cover and seem to be created for the new user of the application. For something more in depth I would head over to Lynda.com

Though they are still a valuable resource and great for anybody who is looking for an overview. The way in which Apple presents the tutorials is where the interface really shines. All the tutorials for the app in question are situated on one page and thanks to some AJAX magic I presume, when you click on a tutorial it shows up in the main pane. Apple also have added some nice “small things” that really add to the experience; for instance when you finish watching a tutorial a little tick appears showing that you have viewed the tutorial. It’s also nice to know that they stick around even if you don’t.

Moving on to my next point. How many companies actually do this? Create tutorials for the user to make their lives a little bit easier. Evidently not many as I did not even consider, before coming across them on the Apple website that Apple made theme.

Why do Apple do this? What is in their favour and what do they get out of it? Obviously it provides marketing for the product so the user is more prepared to by it knowing what he is in store for; but I think they are also subtly targeting the PC market - saying “Yes, it really is as easy as you’ve heard“. The way in which the tutorials are shown make the hardest app seem so trivial. The way in which clicking on this makes this happen. Not clicking on this and this and this, makes this happen.

Maybe I’m looking to deep, but I think Apple really are the sort of company that would convey this sort of message, even this subtly. I mean look at this blog post by Glenn Wolsey a while back. This one icon had the whole “Here’s to the crazy ones speech on it“. How many companies actually do that?

Just my thought of the day, what’s yours?

I only speak, write and listen to English (well). And it’s certainly the only language that I use on my Mac. So some may ask themselves why they need all these extra languages using a whole load of space on your mac. I am one of these people and the person who created wrote the app I am going to talk about is also.

Enter Monolingual , a small, free app designed to simply do one job, get rid of all those useless language resources. It trudges through your system looking for them and deletes them for you, it’s saved me over a gigabyte!

Did I say thats all it did? I meant that only for effect because it does a couple more handy things. It also deletes foreign keyboard layouts and non essential architectures such as that for the Power PC.

So there you go; monolingual can save you space so you can put more important stuff on there, like those illegal MP3s or just space for the Limewire install - it’s up to you.

Have you ever wished that you could look at every mac ever created, see the clock speed, standard RAM and even hear the startup chime? Well Mactracker is for you; and even if you don’t really care it certainly is very interesting to look at.

“Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options. Also included is information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, digital cameras, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, AirPort Base Stations, Newton, and Mac OS versions.”

Mactracker also has some very smart searching capabilities. You can browse by possessor type, colour and even the price of the Mac, which can be looked at and compared in four countries.

Some of the Macs (mostly newer models) have been benchmarked so you can see the performance; the benchmarks use Geekbench 2 and all are user submitted by users. If you are looking at purchasing a new Mac you can see if that $500 increase in price is worth it. You can also make a note on each model and even add it to the list of “My Mac Models” where you can add more information about yours such as the serial number and when the warranty expires!

Mactracker consolidates all the information you can find on the internet about Macs from both the present and the past; it does this all in a very friendly and consistent user interface. And do you know the best part? Mactracker is absolutely free!

I like my Mac to be ready for me every day when I wake up, but I don’t want it wasting away during the night, after snooping about the the energy savings preference pane I found out how to schedule your mac to sleep and wake up.

Here are the steps:

Go to: System Preferences > Energy Saver > Schedule

In this pane, pictured above you can set timings for your Mac to go to sleep and to wake up whenever you want. For instance I have mine set to go to sleep and about 2am (because sometimes I am up pretty late and don’t want it falling asleep on me) and then for it to wake up at 6am so my computer alarm will actually go off, which it sometimes doesn’t when it is asleep.

One thing that I would like it to do that it doesn’t; is for it to be able to set sleep and wake times throughout the day, so if I wanted it to shut off every morning for half an hour because I know I won’t be there half the time.

Do you have any Quick tips that you want to share with us? Either leave a comment or use the contact form.

Do you make any changes to you Mac or PC (I’m going to refer to the mac from now on) for Christmas. I do, not for any particular reason, but it is fun. The image above is of my desktop.

Here are two really easy changes you can make to your Mac for the festive season:

Change your wallpaper:

It’s simple, but makes a big difference. Below are two very good Christmas wallpaper collections.

The Christmas Corner

Christmas Carnivals

Change some icons:

The Icon Factory have some great collections of icons themed towards the holiday season right here.

Do you spruce up you computer for the holiday season and how? Leave a comment with a link to your desktop.

I recently came across a really cool plugin for Mail.app called Letterbox which has really changed the way that I use mail for the better. Just to warn you Leopard users, at the time of writing there is not currently support for Leopard - but he is working on it. The whole idea of Letterbox is to change the workspace of Mail from being vertical to horizontal, this especially suits my widescreen display meaning I am not wasting any screen real-estate that I payed for.

Here is a quick screenshot of how it changes mail:

So as you can see you know have three vertical columns; this doesn’t make any major changes for the first two put the third in which you have far more space to read a message and I find that I don’t spend nearly as much time scrolling down

Simple and sweet. Go check it out today (if you are running Tiger that is).

Skype is great; here is why. I just got of Skype after having a lengthy conversation with my dad. He is currently in the US. How much did that whole conversation cost us - nothing. This is one of the many reasons that I love Skype.

I’m going to go a bit deeper into the pros and cons with this really cool app.

Pros

It’s Free!:

You can’t get much better than that, I use Skype to talk with my friends and family, even those who live in the UK

It Holds No Bounds:

You can talk for as long as you like to whoever you like; granted they have to have an internet connection and a computer but who doesn’t nowadays?

Simple Interface:

I hate those small buttons that you get on mobile phones. With Skype you can see exactly what you want and all the buttons make sense to their purpose. Something I am unsure of for most companies.

When it’s no free… It’s cheap:

One of the great features of Skype is to phone landline's for local or cheaper then average rates. For instance: If I wanted to phone Japan I would put in the Japanese number and skype would send it overseas via the internet and then offload it as a local call.

Cons

Both People Need it:

If you want to do a free call to each other then yes, the person you are calling does need to have Skype installed. And when they don’t understand quite how it works you have to go through it over the phone

Feedback:

Unfortunately some people find it hard to understand the sheer anguish I get when I get feedback from what I am saying in Skype. The normal cause for this is when they have their speakers on and that is going back into their mic. I know, this is a problem with the computer, not Skype but it still really bugs me.

Initial Investment:

Yay Skype is free! After go go get that $60 uncomfortable headset and buy all those nifty accessories that you are offered when signing up.

Conclusion

As I started this post - Skype is great and I think that it is very hard to improve on it. All they can really do is work on increasing the quality of the calls. I didn’t mention this but Skype sounds way better than your average phone. I recommend Skype to everyone, it works on Mac, PC and Linux, so give it a go, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of your friend already used it.

Do you use Skype? What is your favourite feature and why? Either leave a comment or use the contact form!