June 2007 Archives

It’s only been a couple of weeks since Safari 3 came out in beta. We’re already to 3.0.2 for security upgrades. That’s pretty impressive.

From ArsTechnica

Apple updates Safari and Mac OS X to fix security issues:

Apple has released Safari 3.0.2 for both Mac and Windows with lots of tweaks, including some security fixes. They’ve also issued Security Update 2007-006 for anyone who isn’t using Safari 3.

Read More…

Technorati Tags: apple, safari

Here’s a cool Photoshop Plugin: PearlyWhites from Image Trends. It automatically whitens a person’s smile, no selecting necessary! It’s $49.95, and there’s a free trial. I haven’t tried it yet, though.

Technorati Tags: photoshop, plugins, graphics

VMWare, though while not releasing the official 4.0 version, it taking orders. Pricing is $79.99 (the same as Parallels). They’re offering special pre-order pricing of $39.99.

Technorati Tags: virtualization, vmware

Im a little late in this one, but I realized it’s a little harder to create OpenXML documents (like Word 2007) that I thought. While it’s still really easy to parse the actual XML code, you then have to ZIP it all with the right “stories” etc. Yuck!

Technorati Tags: office, xml

Now that Safari’s been out for awhile, there are some comparisons between the three major browsers (Firefox, IE7, and now Safari) on Windows. Here’s a wrap up.

Technorati Tags: apple, browsers, safari, security, windows

As most people know now, Apple's released a beta for Safari 3 for both Windows and Mac.  It took me awhile to figure out why, since I've always preferred the extensibility of Firefox over Safari.  I found it interesting to tout it as being faster on JavaScript rendering than IE 7 or Firefox.  That wasn't enough of a reason for me to switch.

This morning, I realized it was to gain developers for the iPhone.  Now that developers can harness Safari on iPhone for widgets and other applications, it makes sense having a score of new developers that might not own a Mac but do develop for the iPhone.  These could be free (like so many OS X apps and widgets) or commercial (also like so many OS X apps).

I'm guessing, if it works on Safari 3 (either platform), it'll run on iPhone's Safari.

UPDATE: Crave agrees with me.

Technorati Tags: iphone, safari, apple

Apparently, the patch for the Treo 700p was a bad thing right now (the previous post about it is here).

More info can bet found at mytreo.net and treocentral.com.

Parallels 3.0 for Mac is out now. I must say, I like what I’ve seen. Upgrades are $49.

I missed this awhile back I think (it was actually about one year ago). Jensen Harris has a great post on customizing the Ribbon.

Technorati Tags: office, xml

OpenXML Community Growing:

• Older versions of Office - As you all know, folks who have older versions of Office can download a free update that allows them to read and write the open xml formats. While the downloads have only been available for about 6 months, they are already the 2nd most popular download on Microsoft.com (second only to IE 7). There are well over 4 million downloads to date.
  ET: These work pretty well. They don’t work with some DMSes currently. Both Hummingbird and OpenText are working on versions compatible with them.

• OpenOffice - Thanks to Novell, you can read and write the OpenXML formats with OpenOffice. The Sun folks are also involved as they move from the XSLT approach to a more native support.
  ET: OpenOffice is a cool alternative to MS Office, but it’s still not as polished. Of course, free can go a long way to make up for that.

• WordPerfect - Corel has announced support for OpenXML in an upcoming release of their office suite.

• Palm OS - Documents To Go brings OpenXML support to smartphone and PDA devices powered by the Palm operating system.

• Mac - NeoOffice brings OpenXML support to the mac.
  ET: As great as NeoOffice is in many ways, it is slow and not as pretty as other Mac apps.

• MindMapping - Mindjet’s MindManager allows you to follow the logical workflow of first brainstorming, then creating a document outline, and then writing you document. You can brainstorm your idea in MindManager, and then convert those into a wordProcessingML document.

• OpenXML Writer - The folks up at OpenXML.biz have build a free open source text editor called “OpenXML Writer” that allows you to edit WordprocessingML files.

• Gnumeric - Gnumeric is an open source spreadsheet application that was one of the first applications out there to show support for SpreadsheetML.

• Web Development (PHP) - There is an open source project up on codeplex where they are creating a set of PHP classes which allow you to read and write SpreadsheetML files.

• Java Developers - There is a project up on sourceforge where they are creating a set of Java APIs to make programming against the openxml formats much easier for Java developers.

• Data Reporting - In Monarch V.9.0 from Datawatch you have the ability to create reports of your data using SpreadsheetML.

• XML to PDF - Altsoft XML2PDF server 2007 supports the import of WordprocessingML files.

• Word and Character Counting on Mac - Word Counter 2.2.1 is an application for Mac OS X, and it supports a variety of file formats, including WordprocessingML

• Convert docx to simple html - The docx converter allows you to transform WordprocessingML documents into either plain text or simple html directly from their website.

From BrianJones

Yes, I drank the Kool-Aid and switched to a Mac. Well, switch isn’t the right word. Boot camp allows me to have both.

One thing that too me awhile to get right is SSL mail from Dreamhost with both Mail.app and Thunderbird without getting error messages all the time.

A couple of things need to happen:

1) The Dreamhost SSL certificate needs to be added to the keychain.
2) A change must be made to the /etc/hosts file.
3) The E-mail apps must be configured (for new and existing accounts).

The Dreamhost wiki has it handled pretty much (for Tiger, 10.4).

Technorati Tags: mac, mail.app, osx, thunderbird