The folks over at Panic software are having a crazy 50% off sale on all of their apps. Definatly worth a look if your a Mac user. I’ll personally be picking up Coda.

They’ve also released a promotional video that’s sure to entertain.

[via TightWind]

I’m not going to lie, I’m still fairly skeptical about the Palm Pre. it’s not that I don’t want it to be a success – I just wonder how anyone can stand up and say how a device is going to be a game changer when at most, they’ve played around with a prototype for twenty minutes. I’m also cautious because we’ve been here before. Anyone remember the Blackberry Storm? Everyone thought that was going to blow the iPhone out of the water; for those not aware, it certainly didn’t.

Over the past few months since CES, when Palm announced the Pre, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the direction that Palm are taking the Pre and I can’t really understand the choices that they’ve made. In some leaked internal material, they implore salesmen not to persuade certain “IT Centric Business Users”  – whatever that means – to buy the device.

I have a few problems with this. Surely, Palm, a company that isn’t doing so well right now should be putting all their energy into a phone that really, if it lives up to the hype; should be able to do ‘everything’ a Treo can do. This suggests to me a very confused product line, and makes me doubt who exactly Palm are marketing the Pre for. After all, surely if this device is so damn easy to use, the Pre should be for everyone. By doing so, like Apple, Palm wouldn’t be alienating a large possible portion of what could be a lucrative market – everyone. Apple is not afraid to say that the iPhone is for everyone. Look at the name of their ad campaign “There’s an app for just about anything”.

There’s one aspect about the whole business focus that Palm is working on that I’m slightly miffed about which Engadget pointed out:

One critical thing to note for business users and frequent flyers: the Sprint version of the phone — the first to be released — will not be a global phone, meaning it can’t be used on GSM networks overseas.

Let me get this straight. You want me to purchase a phone for business that I can’t use in most parts of the world? In other words, you want me to have two phones. One for when I’m at home and one for when I travel abroad. Forgoing to whole logistics issues of having multiple numbers and syncing everything together there’s a very large financial aspect for business to worry about. Seriously now, wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to buy one cell phone that happens to cost the price of the Palm Pre (after rebate, I’ll get onto that later) and works in other countries?

I hate pointing out the elephant in the room but… iPhone?

John Gruber put it best: “rebates suck”. They really do. The whole idea is that it’s such a terrible procedure to go and get the money back from the manufacturer – that most people give up and the company doesn’t loose any money. A sucky way to do business if you ask me. There is a silver lining however, Best Buy, are offering an instant rebate. I would be very, very surprised if Pre’s were purchased anywhere else but Best Buy.

I was really, really surprised when I found out that Palm weren’t going to be offering any form of desktop syncing application for the Pre – and slightly worried. Anyone who knows a little about the success of the iPods and iPhone is aware that, really, it’s iTunes that’s behind it. iTunes is the piece of software that allows the experience to be so damn seamless. I am not of the opinion that we are at a point where one can rely on their cell phone completely for contact information, let alone media.

By the sound of things, Palm’s intent on having a “Data Transfer Assistant” which for me suggests a world of hurt. For instance: I want to watch a movie on my Pre. How do I go about doing this? I can’t use iTunes or any other downloadable content store because of this little thing called DRM. So movies are out to the picture. Next up, music – a lot easier now that DRM for audio is a thing of the past. But first I have to navigate through my entire music file structure, copy it over to the “Data Transfer Assistant” and pray that the Pre works out where is should be stored?

Yeah, not quite my cup of tea.

Don’t worry, it’s not all bad however, there are a couple of items on the feature set that have caught my eye. If Synergy works, it will be revolutionary. If it doesn’t, then in turn the rest of the experience with the Pre will be a nightmare. I’m also very curious about the WebOS that Palm are pushing – kind of similar to how Apple intended the iPhone to operate. Of course, it didn’t and for now at least, we won’t be running any 3D Games on the Pre.

In the end, no matter how well the Pre does, Palm will have learnt a lot about the current state of the mobile industry, and being an iPhone user, I’m glad someone is keeping Apple on their toes. Because, RIM and HTC certainly aren’t.

Your move, Apple.

In response to Michael’s insightful post on how Fusion’s going, John Rust left an interesting tidbit for all the folks using Safari Adblock out there who want to The Deck and Fusion advertisements to stick around:

For Safari AdBlock users wanting to block everything but Fusion and The Deck, add two custom filters which allow content from anything with “deck” or “fusion” in the URL.

Three weeks, or so, ago I sent in my MacBook Air in for repair. The signs were very obvious that my hard drive was about to pack it in. And there was that sound… the sound every computer owner dreads: Click. Click. Click. So instead of waiting for it to die on me, I decided that is was the opportune moment to hand it in for repair. I was nearing the end of my school Easter holiday and had finished most of my computer based work that was required of me. I had never been keen on the idea of having my computer repaired in the school term – I rely on it far to much for some lessons. A week of not having a computer at hand would be a disaster.

I received my Mac back a little over a week after dropping it off with a new hard drive installed. The folks at John Lewis were kind enough to copy all my data over for me, so I had everything exactly as it used to be. However, I was not satisfied with the performance. Apps were crashing left right and centre, and I wanted a fresh start.

So, I decided that a clean reinstall was in order, at the time – it was all the rage – so after reading up on what to back-up and what not to. I began to process.

The Back-up

Backing up data was relatively easy. All of my documents are stored with DropBox, an incredibly easy file syncing app; that also happens to act as a back-up. I copied over my iTunes library, iPhoto library and some databases from Address Book, Bento and Littlesnapper into an external USB hard drive I had lying around.

All my software licenses and passwords were stored in the ever useful 1Password application, so no sweat there. I simply exported an encrypted file that would be opened by 1Password after the reinstall.

After the obvious elements of my system had been backed up, it was down to the nitty gritty that I wasn’t particularly sure about, such as preferences. Once I’d cut down on all of those extra apps I wasn’t using – I copied some of the preference files to make the transition a little easier. One aspect I was concerned about was Mail, which didn’t go according to plan, and to this day I don’t exactly know what went wrong.

I followed this guide here (obviously, not recommended!) to no avail. Luckily, being the cautious person I am, I stringed together important emails and forwarded them to a random web mail account for such a case as this.

The Reinstall

Up until this point, I had never made use of Remote Disk. I was very much, pleasantly surprised when it worked without a hitch. I installed the Remote Disk software on my brother’s Mac. Inserted the Leopard Disk and ran the “Remote Install Mac OS X Utility”. I connected my MacBook Air to the MacBook Pro via ethernet, hoping to quicken up what I new was going to be a long process.

Believe me. It was.

After several cups of tea, a mowing of the lawn (my house has a very big lawn), and an episode of Tekzilla: the reinstall was complete and all I had to do was enter the necessary information and take the obligatory avatar snapshot.

The Recovery

The rest of the afternoon was spent downloading applications, reapplying operating system settings, and installing Adobe CS3 over Remote Disk, which worked perfectly. All in all, I was very satisfied with the results. My MacBook Air is now a lot faster on a day to day basis and I’m not suffering application crashes nearly so frequently.

What else did I gain from this? Confidence. I was always very worried that I would forget to back something up. Moreover, I was concerned that Remote Disk would stop in its tracts, leaving me in an impossible position. All of these worries proved to be unfounded, something I’m super happy about.

If you are finding your Mac (or PC for that matter) a little slow. Why not try a reinstall? After all, when was the last time you did?

I was poking around Shawn Blanc’s weblog, after his incredible redesign and found this on his contact page:

Moreover, if you have a response to something I’ve posted here then write about it on your own site. Putting your thoughts into words and putting those words in front of your own readers can be a gutsy move, and I highly recommend it.

Intentionally or not, this has to be one of the strongest arguments for removing comments from a weblog (which Shawn has done) I have come across. As good as an email is, if you feel strongly about a post that has been made – why not write something on your own terms about it? Interestingly, this point does not dispel the concept of comments; but instead offers a better alternative, in my opinion.

And yes, this is an aside, so you won’t be able to leave a comment. Email me or write a post telling me – and the rest of the world – your thoughts on what bloggers consider such a very sensitive matter.

I’ve got a new favourite iPhone game – FlightControl [App Store Link]. A gorgeous and very addictive app that requires you to take on the position as an air traffic controller.

Paul Thurrot on the iPod Shuffle –

This is a rare misstep for Apple, and, I hope, the end of the miniaturization silliness that currently grips the company. Smaller isn’t always better. Nowhere is that more true than with the iPod shuffle 3G.

I think this is another case in which Apple has sacrificed form over function.

Apple made no apologies for the lack of a screen in the Shuffle when it was first released. Now, it’s as if they’re trying to shoehorn the capabilities of an iPod with a screen into the Shuffle. This had led to an overcomplicated and frustrating method for controlling the music on the Shuffle.

It’s not a pleasant sight when you get up in the morning, to find that your inbox is stacked up with over fifty new messages, all varying with importance and you have no idea where to start. Recently, I’ve made an effort to organize my email more appropriately and be more objective with what is relevant and what isn’t. Say you’ve got five emails telling you that you’ve got a new Twitter follower and an important email buried far below – you’ve got to decide which is more important to you.

Enter Rules. A solution that has been built into Apple’s Mail application for years, but has gone unnoticed by many. Rules happens to be the most useful asset I have found in Mail to date, and believe me, you’ll find a use for them, if not today – someday. So what does Rules do? It’s pretty much an automated filing system for your email that uses conditions that you set. Now, at first Rules can seem very daunting and may take a bit of time and experimentation to set up – but after you’ve spent that first half an hour you’ll find it second nature and very intuitive.

Creating a Rule

My aim in this guide is to streamline and cut down that thirty minutes into ten at the most. Firstly, you’re going to need to head over to the Rules preference pane. Go, Mail, Preferences and then to the Rules tab on the preference pane (see below). You’ll find that Apple already has a preset Rule about emails from them – you can ignore it or delete it, by doing so you won’t effect anything that this guide will be looking at.

Next, you’re obviously going to want to click the ‘add rule’ button which will bring down a menu for setting up rules. From here you’ve got quite a few options to mess around with. First of all, it’s probably a good idea to give it an appropriate name instead of something ambiguous. Next you’ve got to choose if all the terms you’ll be laying down have to be followed or just one of them – in doing to you’ll allow emails to move into a certain mailbox in your sidebar. To put this in perspective:

Say I wanted an email to be sent to me every time one of my posts got commented on and I wanted all those emails to go into a mailbox named ‘Project X’ in Mail’s sidebar. However, I also wanted any other emails that I received from my co-editors mentioning Project X that I received to go into that same folder. If I chose the “any” option – only one of the requirements would have to be met for Mail to put it into the Project X mailbox, however, if I chose the “all” option, the emails would have to meet both the requirements and therefore the emails about comments wouldn’t go into the folder because it was not from an editor – as I had requested.

Extra Options

It gets quite easy from here on out, you now need to choose what you want Mail to look in when it sees an email. This can vary from who the email was from, the date it was sent on, or even if the email was sent from someone in your address book. After this you’ve got to give Mail a little more information about the text your going to be defining later on. The email may have to contain a phrase, begin or end with something – there are a couple of other options available for you that I won’t go into at the moment.

Now that you’ve allowed Mail to chose the right emails thanks to your parameters – what do you want it to do with them? In the case of Desktop Vibes, I have those emails sent to a mailbox called ‘Desktop Vibes’. However there are some other, pretty cool scenarios that you could put together if you wanted.

Here are a few I came up with:

• Once you’ve replied to an email – have it archived or even deleted.
• Any emails you receive from social networks can go straight into one ‘Social’ folder, so you can reach the important correspondence.
• Do you get a lot of school assignments via email? Give them their own mailbox!
• Want to ingore all those

Conclusion

Rules turns Mail from one of those applications that you like into one that you love. That’s big. So go and have a mess around with Rules in Mail. You’ll soon find it a lot easier to reach that magic inbox number – zero.

Do you use Rules in Apple Mail (or any other email application) to help sift through all of that mail? If so, how do you use it?

I’m a little slow on the uptake, but Veronica Belmont and Ryan Block have started a new Tumblog called, The Vintage Web, which makes any tech savvy person – let alone web developer – cringe.

The most harrowing aspect of these sites are, often, they’re still being actively updated.

Along with the newly redesigned iPod Shuffle, Apple have released a ‘Guided Tour‘ for the product. It’s very informative but I couldn’t help notice the edge Apple took when they compared the speech synthesizing on Windows to Leopard – which of course was superior.