RW Updates Gets a Dust-Off
Here is a site that’s been in need of attention for a little while now, and being as we are between themes right now I thought what better time to give RW Updates some love. RW Updates (now called RapidWeaver Updates) was started a few years ago to offer those wishing to track all the latest RapidWeaver developer goodness in one main point. It’s served that purpose well.
The most notable change is the width. I’ve all but given up on narrow sites — I’m over the skinny… and the scroll. The second most notable change is the boxes. Each new article shows up in a box — small, compact, easy to get through in a hurry.
Ok, I lied… the MOST notable change is that the site is just plain sexy now! Don’t you think?
LittleSnapper Touch Is Soon to Hit Realmac Lineup
This looks interesting, a companion iPhone application to LittleSnapper (desktop Mac app) and QuickSnapper (web based snapshot sharing). It’s yet to be released but the new app, dubbed LittleSnapper Touch promises to allow the user to snap photos and webpages (or parts of them) and then post them to QuickSnapper.
Anyone familiar with QuickSnapper will be aware that you will, in turn, be able to pull down those snaps into the desktop version of LittleSnapper with a simple click of the “Send to LittleSnapper” button. It’s not clear yet whether there will be any syncing option that will negate this step. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Stacks plus ExtraContent; it's a new Stacks Library item
So did you here the news? Possibly the most exciting thing to happen to themes, plugins and RapidWeaver all at one time! Back a couple of months ago we introduced you to ExtraContent, the new way of getting more out of the available RapidWeaver content areas. And a little while ago, YourHead Software introduced Stacks, a new way of building your page layouts in RapidWeaver. Then recently YourHead Software announced the the API that goes along with Stacks so that developer can build custom stacks to add to your Stacks Library. Are you with me here?
So what do you get when you put it all together? A custom stack made for ExtraContent enabled themes! Now you can access your ExtraContent areas of your ExtraContent enabled themes from the comfort of the Stacks interface. Utilize the layout power and elegance of Stacks to build exceptional ExtraContent layouts without having to so much look at a snippet or piece of code.
Here is the best part, the ExtraContent Stacks plugin is free. All you need is Stacks, and ExtraContent enabled theme and this custom ExtraContent stack and you have a world of possibilities in your hands.
Learn more about the ExtraContent Stacks plugin here, watch the tutorial here, download the ExtraContent Stacks plugin here and get YourHead Softwares Stacks for RapidWeaver.
SaaS… Free… Cloud computing… Dead
It probably sounds a bit funny to lament the death of web apps on a Mac productivity blog when web apps neither scream Mac or productive. The truth of the matter is though, I was am a heavy user of many web apps, more so than most of the native apps on my machine.
Let’s see, I use a remote time tracker, Google mail/calendar/reader, todo, flickr, Twitter… See where I am going with this? Most of these apps replaced local versions of the same service, and somewhat poorly, I might add. But the all have one really big advantage in that they can be accessed from anywhere and shared with anyone so easily that a monkey could do it.
But their biggest drawback to date is causing me to rethink the value of mobile access… since they only exist in the etherweb, if a developer decides to pull the plug on a service, you’re screwed! This already happened in a pretty big way this week with the loss of iWantSandy, Stickit, and pownce.
While I was only really effected by the loss of Stickit, I was still left scrambling for a desktop alternative that could do everyhing that I required of Stickit, and it such a way that felt familar. That’s how I came to use TaskPaper from HogBay Software. Now that working remotely is not as critical to me it was in my commuting and contracting days, this desktop solution seems to be the way I ought to move with all my other cloud solutions.
To be honest, Mail.app has come a long way since I dropped in the OS X 10.2 days, I already have BusySync syncing my Google calendar to iCal.app, rss feeds are a dime a dozen and would take me long to move back to NewsFire, and there are time tracking apps that actually keep acutate record of what a am really doing and not what a SAY I am doing.
Is your computing in the cloud? Do you feel secure with your choices in software as a service providers? Do you have a backup plan if/when they pull the plug? What do you think is the perfect balance?
seyDoggy is back in the office.
We are back from or little vacay, and back on the horse, if you will, working through a pile of emails and such. On our agenda this week is to address a few bug issues in some of our RapidWeaver themes, namely a footer issue in wideNas, and a couple of mystery bugs that occasionally rear their head in cataLog and Acumen. We should have all of these addressed this week with their respective update installers ready for download.
And as always we are ever moving forward and onward with the theme developments and ideas. We have quite a list of them to get through over the next year or so so you can be sure to see one or two new themes from us every month. Yes that is an ambitious plan, but this is what we do after all, we might very well be the only full time RapidWeaver theme developers now who do nothing else.
And speaking of RapidWeaver, did you notice that RapidWeaver 4.2 has been released? Yes indeed. I have not yet tried it myself, but I have downloaded it and will be getting into it shortly. Learn more about it’s release here.
DeliciousSafari 1.7
Of all the wondrous plugins available for Safari my all time favorite has to be DeliciousSafari, bringing the cloud convenience of Delicious.com (used to be del.icio.us) to Safari at the click of a menu item. I had some correspondence with the developer Douglas Richardson back in May about how he could make a few improvements to the plugin, namely spell checking and tag search.
Well as of September 2nd, version 1.7 of DeliciousSafari now includes spell checking and a couple of other cool features. Tag search didn’t make it, but a way to manage your favorite tags is now available and is really all I was looking for with tag search anyhow. DeliciousSafari now supports up to 1000 characters in the notes field, just like the new Delicious.com, so you are no longer confined to those teeny-tiny 250 character posts, which is great news for a wordy guy like myself.
If you are a heavy user of Delicious.com then DeliciousSafari will be a good addition to your Safari arsenal.
Rogers; You Got Served
You cannot begin to understand my frustration with Rogers and there recent tactics for hijacking “Server not found or DNS error” response pages (see here and here). I got so furious that I called Rogers and demanded a workaround to their little “solution”. And to my surprise, the technical representative JUMPED at the opportunity to show me how! So here’s to you Rogers and all that you mean to me:
- find the Internet Settings on your computer or router (there are plenty of web article to help you for Windows or Mac)
- Change the “DNS server(s)” to something public, like, for instance, 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.1 (a US based public DNS server, not likely to ever go down)
- Boom! Buh-bye Rogers/Yahoo! search page
You see, by default, Rogers (or any other ISP) has you using their DNS server (your computer will automatically use your ISP’s DNS server unless told to do otherwise) and therefor they can track what you are doing or see what’s being served to you. So in the event that you call for a site that doesn’t exist, they can cheerily offer up a Rogers/Yahoo! search page laden with advertising and paid-for links instead of actually telling you that that server or site you actually requested might not exist or might have an error.
Here is where Rogers FAILS! Umm Rogers? People who actually know how to use a computer and who aren’t using Internet Explorer 6 actually use the address bar as a search field and not strictly a place to resolve URL and DNS calls. For instance, my local Mac reseller is Carbon Computing and I wanted to call them today. I thought I would get their phone number from their web site so into my address bar I entered “carbonation” and pressed enter, which, prior to Rogers meddling, would normally resolve to “http://www.carbonation.com“. If the search term were something unresolvable, like “jingle butt pants on fire” then my browser would inform me that “http://jingle%20butt%20pants%20on%20fire/” cannot be found and probably ask me if I wanted to search for the term “jingle butt pants on fire” in Google (or which ever search engine I have set as a default).
Rogers figures they are doing you a solid by removing this extra step, they’ll just perform the search for you. But in a case like mine I don’t want to SEARCH for “carbonation”, I want to RESOLVE it by slapping a .com on the end of it. And by circumventing the default server error message, don’t you think they are causing more mayhem than good?
To the bonehead at Rogers that thought this was all a good idea… you are the biggest boob of all the boobs at Rogers. And that is a fair feat my friend.
WordPress on the iPhone
Ahhh… what I wouldn’t give for horizontal typing in the WordPress iPhone app. All else considered that is my only gripe with it.
Is it a productivity tool worthy of presious space on a blog about productivity and increased workflow on a Mac? Mmmm… Yes and no. Is it fast to blog on a phone? No. But what if you blog for a living?
That, in my opinion, is what makes then WordPress iPhone app a little gold nugget. Say you are a paid contributor to a well known blog and for whatever reason you find yourself in front of a killer story without a laptop in sight. Just whip out your iPhone and post your breaking news.
Or say you just made your draft deadline and you’re off to Grandmas’s for Sunday dinner when you suddenly realize you’ve made a terrible mistake. Whip out your iPhone and correct it on route.
The app includes all of the WordPress 2.6 goodness and is extremely intuitive to use. If you’re like me and you contribute to a number of WordPress blogs you’ll apreciate the ability to write to each one, all from a single app.
FlipSide5 games smash Apple charts!
Just barely cooled off from the initial site launch a little over 24 hours ago, I am greeted this morning by the news from Michael Sanford of FlipSide5, Inc. that Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch, two games I designed all of the artwork for, have just hit the top of the charts over at Apple.
These two games not only take the #1 and #2 spots in the web apps games category (*update), but Tic-Tac-Touch is the one and only featured game! In addition, Tic-Tac-Touch again is #1 across all web app categories. But the insanity doesn’t stop there; this is the only time I have ever seen an app (Tic-Tac-Touch in this case) ever sit in the featured position in “Most Recent“, “Most Popular“, “Alphabetical“, and “Staff Picks“!
Batten down the hatches maties! Thar be a rogue wave coming!
*UPDATE:
As of May 29th, Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch have taken the #1 and #2 spots as Top Web Apps (tab on right hand side). For a screen shot of this, go to my flickr page.
Welcome to seyDoggy 2008
Well I have great news and almost great news. As you can see, seyDoggy 2008 is alive and kicking (that’s the great news)! It’s been totally rebuilt from the ground up, as you can see, and has been streamlined somewhat, to reflect the usage patters that I saw come across the site over the last few years. I’ve cut away a lot of the cruft and trimmed it down to the stuff you seem to care about most; the blog and the portfolio.
Here’s the almost great news; I was hoping to tell you about a great new site we made for a great new client of ours who makes great products for the iPhone, but… erm… that nasty old NDA got in the way. This time it was Apple vs. my client and not me (phew!) but just the same the site launch has been put on hold until the legal bit and bobs can be sorted out with Apple. It is great news none the less because I am just so please with it’s out come that I just can’t wait for you to see it. Hopefully the coming week will shine some new hope on a release date.
So let me know what you think of the new seyDoggy.com!