When it comes to adventure and travel, who could possibly know more than National Geographic Adventure magazine?

The magazine's website has regular features about techie toys and tools, so it was no surprise that blogger Steve Casimiro would write a post featuring his choices for the top twenty travel apps for iPhone. Some of his choices, such as HearPlanet, FlightTrack Pro, the Lonely Planet Phrasebooks, and World Customs [clicks open iTunes] aren't surprising, while others (Packing, Room) are interesting apps I wouldn't have even thought to try.

Of course, all of us have our own favorite travel apps. I couldn't imagine going on a trip anywhere in the world without Geocaching, and I like the free TripIt app better than the one that comes with FlightTrack Pro. I now have Brushes with me everywhere I go to capture quick sketches, and what's travel photography without being able to take panorama shots with Pano or 3D pictures with 3D Camera?

What are some of the apps that you can't live without when you're traveling? Leave your comment below.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

If we applied Shakespeare's logic to today's digital age, then it would also mean that watching mis-tagged or untagged videos on your Apple device (be it a Mac, iPhone, iPod or Apple TV) would be just as enjoyable. Okay, you got me, they'd probably be just as good. But this doesn't mean you're excused from tagging your videos appropriately.

First, a bit of background. The vast majority of videos purchased from the iTunes store, as well as "digital copy" (iPod/iPhone pre-formatted videos that are sometimes included on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs), will come pre-tagged. So, the situation for those in this camp (myself included) is peachy, especially when using an Apple TV. Your videos show up on the screen screen with proper titles, season and episode numbers, actors, and descriptions. Just the way Steve likes 'em.

But what if you already own the DVD and want a version for your iTunes library? For those of you with the time and patience to rip an MPEG-4 version (and believe me, this takes some patience, especially if you use H.264 encoding) of your favorite videos, a HandBrake-MetaX martini make tagging your videos a bit more of a pleasurable experience - as if it wasn't fun enough already.

I realize I may not be your average browser user. As a web developer, a browser to me is two parts daily use, two parts testing, and one part challenge. Since 2005, I've been using Firefox in some form or fashion as both my primary browser and as a testing vehicle.

I had recently started a JavaScript-intensive project, and I appreciated Safari 4's lightning-fast JavaScript execution speeds. In Firefox, I rely mostly on add-ons like Web Developer and Firebug to help me analyze and test for mistakes in websites I build in Firefox. They work great, but enabling them slows the browser down.

That's why I was excited for the updated Web Inspector that comes as part of Safari 4. (Yes, Safari 3 first came with Web Inspector, it couldn't hold a candle to Firebug's Swiss Army knife of an add-on for Firefox.) Testing was easy, and Safari 4's Web Inspector's many improvements made me think I could migrate to Safari full-time.

Read on to see how it went.

Yesterday I wrote about my love of the Mac mini. So dependable and unobtrusive, it's the Honda Civic of computers. In the post, I briefly described how we use Dropbox to send routinely-updated Keynote files to the mini. A few of you wrote to ask for details, so I decided to share that information here on the blog. We use two pieces of software: Dropbox and iCal.

Dropbox

Here's the setup. First, the Mac mini is connected to the projector in the Projection Room above the theater via DVI. Every day, it runs a slideshow before the orientation film. That slideshow contains sponsorship information, museum news, etc.

It's updated once a week or so by someone in the art department (we'll call her "Janie"). Janie's desk is a couple hundred yards and two buildings away from the Projection Room. The Keynote file lives in a Dropbox folder that both Janie's PC and the mini can access. Of course, we don't want Janie editing the slideshow while it's running before a room full of guests. That's where iCal comes in.

iCal

We stop showing the film at 4:00 PM and Janie arrives for the day at 9:00 AM, so we set up two repeating iCal events.

The first event launches the slideshow in the morning. Every weekday at 8:45 AM (doors open at 9:00), there's a repeating iCal event with an alarm set to open the slideshow where it lives in Dropbox. Note that the show has been set to run at launch and loop indefinitely in Keynote.

What about updating? Easy. We stop running the slideshow at 4:00 PM and Janie leaves for the day at 5:00 PM. A second repeating iCal event has an alarm that runs the following super-simple Applescript:

Tell application "Keynote"
quit
End tell

The script does just what you expect -- it kills Keynote. This runs at 4:05 PM each weekday, and frees Janie to spend 10 or 15 minutes updating the file from her PC just before she goes home. The next morning, the first iCal event re-launches the slideshow and the cycle repeats.

That's how two free pieces of software (iCal and Dropbox) combine with an inexpensive, consumer level one to create a simple and effective solution to a problem. Best of all, it doesn't require a computer science degree or even a week with a giant manual. The iCal events and script are invisible to Janie. All she knows is, "I open the folder on my PC, change the slideshow, hit Save and I'm done." Sure, we could have dumped it on a central server, set up some sort of FTP voodoo that would have given Janie a headache, etc. But why? If the simple solution works, use it.

If you try something similar, let me know how it goes. Thanks to everyone who asked about this.

If you prefer to keep your fingers on the keyboard and away from mice or trackpads, MercuryMover will allow you to do something simple: move and resize windows with the keyboard. There are a number of hotkeys for wiggling the windows into place, in 2 different increments, and a method of resizing windows via the keyboard.

Highbrow gives you fine control over which browser opens a certain link. For example, if someone sends you a link in IM and you want to open in it Firefox, but your default browser is Safari, you'd have to copy/paste that link into Firefox, or Safari will open it instead. But with Highbrow, you can quickly choose which browser opens what. Instead of mucking around in Safari prefs, Highbrow sets the default browser via handy menu bar item. Plus, you can opt for a floating window each time you click a link, and choose on the fly.

MercuryMover is $20 and a free trial is available. Highbrow is $12 and a free trial is also available.

WWDC isn't all about iPhone apps. Long before the iPhone was a twinkle in Steve's eye, WWDC was all about developing for the Macintosh. I had a chance to sit down with the guys behind QuicKeys, a venerable Mac app that will save you a lot of time on repetitive typing tasks. I got a look at the beta, but the full version is now available for $59.95 ($29.95 if you are upgrading from version 3).

For example, if you are constantly typing your email signature, QuicKeys can auto-complete the typing when you type "szm" or any other character combo you like (in a similar fashion to TextExpander). QuicKeys can also create keyboard shortcuts for darn near anything, and record actions for later use. That's really just the tip of the iceberg. QuicKeys has MIDI triggers, a powerful search tool, web actions, an online repository for shortcuts and tutorials, and the company is set to release a QuicKeys remote app for the iPhone/iPod touch (so yeah, you just can't escape that little platform).

Luckily, you can try QuicKeys yourself and get a feel for how powerful it truly is. There's a 30-day trial mode, but Startly (makers of QuicKeys) has a generous "unlimited" trial period, which extends the trial app indefinitely. I know I've often downloaded an app, installed it, then come back close to 30 days later to realize I can't dig into it within the timeout period. Give it a try and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you are a power user, this thing is a lifesaver. If you're a casual user, there's still benefit to typing less throughout the day.

Users of NewsGator's NetNewsWire iPhone news reader have been waiting with bated breath for the next iteration of the application, with the promise of the ability to mark news items unread and send articles to InstaPaper Instapaper, amongst other enhancements. As time has gone on, it became clear that Brent Simmons was working on other projects that are related to (but most decidedly not) the next iteration of NetNewsWire for the iPhone.

So what has been keeping him busy? As it turns out, NewsGator is rolling out an entire iPhone framework called TapLynx, which will allow its users to create content-rich topic-focused newsreader applications. The first such application, the All Things Digital iPhone app, was created by Simmons himself.

The goal of TapLynx is to offer users a framework that allows them to simply choose some images, set URLs for content feeds, and generate a media application for the iPhone without requiring any programming.

TapLynx is currently not even yet in beta, but you can sign up to get an alpha invitation on the TapLynx site.

By the way, for the NetNewsWire iPhone fans out there, it turns out that the next iteration of the app will be based on TapLynx, so even though it doesn't seem like there has been much recent movement, things are still progressing. We may even see the ability for NetNewsWire (both the Mac and iPhone versions) to synchronize with Google Reader accounts.

A Miami television station aired a story completely shot on an iPhone, as they covered the launch of the iPhone 3GS. The video looks pretty good, and once it was shot it was uploaded to Final Cut Pro for editing. Although you can trim the beginning and end of clips on the iPhone itself, you really can't edit.

The story aired on WFOR's 5PM News. The reporter, Gio Benitez, also used the iPhone Voice Memo app to record his narration, so the piece really was a true iPhone production.

Here's a link to the WFOR web page and that contains a link to the video as it aired on the news. If you want to go directly to the video it is here.

Of course there is nothing new about video on a cell phone. It's been around for quite a few years, but with a faster processor giving the user a nominal 30 frames per second, decent video is now a reality.

Don't confuse the video from the iPhone with what a good consumer camera can do, and my Flip minoHD cam looks a bit better, but for capturing something on the fly, it's a nice thing to have.

One other note. If you upload the video to MobileMe or YouTube the phone will compress the video before you upload and it won't look nearly as nice when you get it right off the phone before that compression step.

Thanks to John in Indianpolis for the tip.

ScreenSteps 2.6 is out, and has added two very useful features: the ability to export to Microsoft Word or Pages, and the ability to embed videos into your documents for online publication. We've covered this screen-based documentation application since its initial release, and it continues to be a personal favorite for me and an incredibly efficient way to create and maintain documentation for clients, employees and users.

The video embedding is a huge deal for my workflow. I've found through years of working with clients that a PDF or online document and a video serve two very different audiences. Some folks, myself included, have a learning style that does not work with video tutorials. We require text and examples we can scan, search and bookmark. The other half are in a reverse situation; videos jibe with their learning style, but pages of text just cause a logjam in their brains. Ultimately, because I can rarely predict the learning style of a client, I end up creating both; documenting a procedure step-by-step, and then demonstrating it while I record the screen, using the manual I just created as a script. With ScreenSteps 2.6, I can now add a shorter video to each step or lesson, allowing me to serve both audiences a little more efficiently.

Embedding video is as easy as copying the embed code from any video service which provides it, choosing the Step > Set Video Embed Code menu option and pasting your code. At this point, the "video embed" is a PR-speak way of introducing a feature which really has much more advanced possibilities. Quite simply, this feature allows you to embed anything you want, and -- at least in HTML exports -- have it interpreted within the documentation as Javascript/HTML. I plan to use this freedom to embed bookmarks in my videos using YouTube's Javascript API. You can also use it to insert code examples with HTML pre and code tags. The sky's the limit.

On to the new export formats ... I really should say format, as it's a single option to export a Office Open XML format. This format can be read by and edited in most modern word processors, including Apple's Pages and Microsoft Word. As with ScreenSteps' other export formats, users can customize templates for their OOXML files, allowing strict adherence to standards within organizations with such requirements. It allows for some pretty darn good-looking Pages documents, too.

A trial version of ScreenSteps 2.6 is available for download from Blue Mango Learning Systems. See the product page for further details. Pricing comes in two levels: $39.95US for the standard version, or $59.95US for the Pro version (which is required for the video embedding and OOXML export features). As noted by the developers in the comments, video embedding works in both Standard and Pro versions.

One of the highly touted features of the new iPhone is the ability to have the map display your direction of travel. A great idea, long overdue. As people were walking out of the Apple Store today it was one of the first things some people wanted to try. They brought up the Google Map app, and then started spinning around. But these whirling dervishes weren't getting anywhere.

Since I was the real smart TUAW dude, I told them I could get it going. Nope. Nada. Zero.

After a bit of a search at the Apple web site when I returned home, I found it. You have one more tap to do on the map. When you tap the location icon at the lower left of the map screen a second time, it changes to a new, previously unseen icon. It looks like a little wedge in a circle. When you activate it, you're good to go. Or spin.

I think if I were designing this I would have made it an option on the map to default to direction of travel, or North at the top. Oh well, nobody asked me. Not the most obvious GUI design, but I guess once you know it, you know it. Now you know it too.

With all the excitement about iPhone version 3.0, there isn't a lot of help on how to set up one of the most unique features of the upgrade, Find my iPhone.

If you're having trouble, here are the steps. First, the service has to be turned on. You do that in your iPhone settings. Under email accounts, select your MobileMe info. You'll get to a page that has an on/off switch for Find my iPhone. Turn it on.

After that, you must be in your MobileMe web page. Sign in. At first glance, you won't see anything. You have to click on the accounts icon, and you should see a Find my iPhone icon at the bottom of the account settings. You can then decide to find your iPhone on a map, send it a message, or remote wipe it. I found the map pretty accurate, as I have a metal roof on the house that plays hell with GPS and cell signals. I sent a test message. That worked fine, and I received an email confirmation that the message was sent to the phone. I didn't try the remote wipe. I've spent enough time today downloading and uploading iPhone software and data.

Note: Apple MobileMe servers are a bit spotty today. It took me a couple of tries to get into my account options.

Find my iPhone is a powerful new feature. I hope I never need to use it.

Here's what the icon looks like on the MobileMe page:

Hard Mac reports on a newly released Apple Knowledge Base article that reveals this nice little tidbit about the new MacBook Pro's SD slot. Not only can you use it to dump pictures off your digital camera, but you can use it as a boot disk if need be. The article also reveals:

• You can use the thinner MultiMediaCards with the SD slot. Cards that have a thickness or surfaces that exceed 2.1mm should not be used.
• You can use standard SD cards (4MB to 4GB) and SDHC (4-32GB) cards in the slot. MiniSD, MicroSD, MiniSDHC and MicroSDHC can also be used with adapters.
• The SD slot will work with cards that exceed 32GB
• SD cards with the exFAT file system will not be read, will need to be reformatted as a FAT32
• SD cards are read as USB storage devices
• To use the SD card as a startup volume, change the default partition table to GUID and format the card to use the Mac OS Extended file format
• SDIO (Secure Digital Input Output) cards will not be recognized
• The SD card slot will work with Boot Camp for both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

[Via Macworld]

The concept of a single-site browser or site-specific browser (SSB, either way) is simple: give me a window with one website in it, preferably a desktop application replacement like Gmail, RTM, Basecamp or Zoho, and let that window behave like a regular application with its own Dock icon, notifications, etc. If you're spending a lot of your time on a particular site, this can simplify your life quite a bit; if you're mixing up GTD with ADD (as so many of us seem to be), an SSB can help limit your distraction horizon while you're trying to maintain focus and flow.

The inspiration for many SSB offerings was the Firefox offshoot Webrunner, and the descendant of that project has now earned a 1.0 beta designation and its own website: Prism, from Mozilla Labs, gives you a power tool for creating your own SSBs at will, either via a Firefox extension or by launching the Prism config app and typing in the target URL.

Aside from having a dockable icon for each website you convert, you can also set your SSBs to launch at login, or assign mailto: links to open your web email client (similarly achievable for Gmail with the Gmail Notifier tool). If you have to keep separate sets of credentials for work & personal accounts for web services, no need to log in and out repeatedly -- just set up a Prism SSB for one of the accounts, and the passwords & cookies will stay as they need to be. In my brief testing this morning, several sites worked just as expected; the only sticking point is that the Choosy extension gets confused about whether or not Firefox is running when an SSB is open.

Safari 4 developer seeds had offered a "Save as Web Application" feature for creating SSBs, which has been stripped from the File menu in the current public beta but still looks to be part of the final release; meanwhile, you can still make WebKit-centric SSBs with the excellent and free Fluid.

What site or webapp would you put in a single-site browser?

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

[H/T to Lifehacker]

I want to make a quick mention regarding one of the most useful utilities I've found in recent days: SizeUp. It allows you to resize and reposition windows using keyboard shortcuts. It's no secret that I like my screen real estate, and making the most of it is a big deal to me. You can sit and resize windows all day, but I'd rather hit a couple of keys and have everything in place.

SizeUp offers half-screen (vertical or horizontal) and quarter-screen sizing (easily positionable in any corner), as well as a true Windows-style maximize function. You can also set a custom size for the "Center Window" option, which resizes the window to the specified dimensions and positions it in the center of its current screen. Not the screen you want? The last set of shortcuts lets you jump the window between existing monitors in your setup.

The hotkeys are configurable, but the defaults (surprisingly) didn't conflict with any of my extensive collection of shortcut combinations. SizeUp is shareware, but you can pay what you think it's worth (Fair licensing). A suggested price of $9.99US doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. If it's useful to you, but not that useful, a minimum donation of $2.99US is requested. The maximize function alone is worth that. Developers Irradiated Software also offer a "lite" version called TwoUp which can do the split screen trick on its own, free. Grab a fully-functioning demo of SizeUp at the Irradiated Software website.

Most RSS readers on the desktop look like lists. Times, a reader Mat covered last year, looks like a newspaper. In a "normal" RSS reader, the river of information can become a blur and users may be put off by the incessant noise. Times, on the other hand, aims to make feeds more pleasant to peruse. Check out the gallery to see the curled edges, slight texturing on the sides of the "paper" and page effects. It's the app I'd get my grandmother to use to read RSS feeds, and I think it's a great introduction to feed reading for "the rest of us." Here's how to get started.

When you click on a story's headline or body text, the page folds down, and you read. When you're done, you click the folded page and it pops back up to reveal the feeds again. Added to this basic "graze and read" functionality seen on all RSS readers is the shelf (something many readers have as well, like the clippings in NetNewsWire), a place to temporarily hold stories you are interested in. You can read these later and then throw them out. Times isn't intended to be a storage locker or book reader -- it is designed for quick scanning and reading. Likewise, the shelf is only so large and can be set to automatically clear itself at certain intervals.

The first thing you'll want to do with Times is customize the feeds. Especially if you are setting this up for someone else (like grandma), you can easily remove the pre-configured feeds and add your own. I recommend not adding dozens of feeds to Times. While power users may scan hundreds of sites, the average person may only make time for a few. NetNewsWire and other readers are better equipped to serve the sort of information overload of a "power reader" and I've included a shot of Feeds and NetNewsWire for comparison in the gallery. Times is designed for some "light" feed reading and aims to make the process more pleasant, not powerful. I recommend no more than 6-8 per category page.

Next I'll show you exactly how to set up your own category pages and fill those in with feeds. Then I'll show how to use the shelf and sharing tools.