Want to see something scary this Halloween? Like, perhaps, a browser that doesn't coddle you with all that silly stability and reliable performance? Feel like spending a little time on the bleeding edge? You too can taste the future (which, I am told, has a distinctive metallic tang) by downloading the first public beta of Firefox 3.6, now featured over at the Mozilla developer blog.

The next release of the open-source browser includes more flexible video options, better Javascript performance, updated font support and single-click appearance customization through the Personas skinning system. You can read more about the 3.6 changes from a web development perspective here.

The Mac version requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, and you can get it from the beta download page. Happy surfing!

The betas of the next Snow Leopard update continue at a fast and furious pace. Apple has reportedly begun seeding a new build of Mac OS X 10.6.2 to developers, just one week after the previous beta.

The new potential release focuses on graphics issues, specifically relating to drivers, QuartzCore, and ColorSync, as well as hitting issues with the Dock. Apple has identified no outstanding issues with the build, though the company is asking developers to pay special attention to graphics drivers, TrackPad preferences, and virtual machines.

The company says 148 components have been addressed in 10.6.2 betas so far, including issues in Dictionary, Expose, File Sync, Front Row, iPhoto, MobileMe, Parental Controls, QuickTime, Screen Sharing, Spotlight, Time Machine, and USB.

[via MacNN, Apple Insider]

I discovered Gruml a while back, but didn't write about it right away because there were too many glitches in the first beta to make it really interesting. Thankfully, recent releases have smoothed out the vast majority of the kinks, and I can now present -- with gusto -- a great RSS reader that interfaces with Google Reader.

NetNewsWire switched to syncing with Google Reader back in July, and I was pretty excited. Google Reader has been an amazing tool for me in the RSS world, and the more apps I have that all sync with it, the happier I am. However, despite seemingly endless trials and searches, I haven't really found the app that can top a Fluid SSB with a good userstyle. Gruml comes the closest so far, and it's free (at least right now, I'm not sure what the future holds after beta).

One of the things I like about desktop clients (when it comes to RSS readers) is scriptability. Gruml currently lacks the AppleScript dictionary that, say, NetNewsReader has, and I'd love to see it implemented. The keyboard navigation is decent, but not yet up-to-par with Google Reader's web interface, which can be navigated entirely with the keyboard. It might not make a difference to a lot of folks, but when I'm cruising through headlines I like to be all-keyboard when possible. The "Send Article to ... " menu is fantastic, covering 12 services ranging from Delicious to Twitter, and including Facebook, Ping.fm and Posterous. Note-taking, starring and sharing are all very well done, and sync perfectly with Google.

Google has released an official developer preview of Google Chrome for the Mac. Rather than digging through nightly development builds, you can download the developer preview of the WebKit-based browser at Google's official webpage.

Chrome sports several features similar to Safari 4 in Snow Leopard, such as sandboxing - each tab runs as its own process, so if one crashes, it doesn't bring down the whole browser. It also sports the "tabs on top" interface present in some builds of the Safari 4 beta released earlier this year. Some people hated tabs on top in Safari, but others eventually got used to it and even missed the feature when it was omitted from the final release of Safari 4; if tabs on top is your thing, then Chrome has you covered.

Chrome supports importing bookmarks, settings, and history from whatever browser you're currently using, so if you're curious to see how it runs on a Mac, go ahead and give it a try. Let us know in the comments if you run into any issues.

[Via Download Squad]

Despite rumors that the Google Chrome Web browser for Mac would not ship until 2010, it appears that the golden version of the new browser may be heading to Macs a lot sooner than expected.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that CEO (and former Apple board member) Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin had a few things to say about the new browser, including (according to 9to5Mac) that Chrome browser for Mac will ship in "a couple of months."

Apparently, the relatively slow adoption of the beta version of the browser has been due in part to the fact that development of the Mac version has lagged behind work for other platforms. To quote Schmidt, "The fundamental story about Chrome is speed. We were hurt by slowness to bring out a Mac version. People who move to Chrome have trouble moving back because of the speed."

The Mac beta version is available and can be downloaded by those who are willing to use a browser without certain privacy features that is "not appropriate for general consumer use." I've had it on my Macs for about the last week and have been impressed with the speed of page rendering, although not with the current compatibility with some sites.

So, TUAW readers -- is Google Chrome (the browser, not the OS) too little, too late? Or is it a web browser that will make a difference on the Mac platform? Voice your opinions in the comments section below.

Andy Kim with Potion Factory contacted us a few minutes ago to reveal that he is seeking testers for the upcoming closed beta of the iPhone version of The Hit List.

Those wanting to be in the program are asked to submit how they best use The Hit List in their daily routine. From those entries, 10 people will be selected for the beta. Full rules are disclosed on Potion Factory's Web site. All entries must be received before September 21.

The iPhone version of The Hit List comes not a moment too soon. As indicated by the software's Google Group, users who adopted the program over the past year were migrating back to other GTD applications, such as Things, due to the lack of an iPhone app. As a fan of The Hit List, I was doing my best to hold out and see if an iPhone app would come along. I'm very happy not to be disappointed.

So here's something interesting, if you're curious to know what features might be in iPhone OS 3.1. It seems YouTube is chock full of videos shot in what seems to be defiance of Apple's NDA for 3.1 features. A couple of gems hint at expanded copy/paste functions, and there's one video which we could swear might hint at a real-time zoom... perhaps not just for photos but for framing video?

Anyway, it's a bit of a mining expedition, as searching for specific [REDACTED] methods or properties yields best results, so don't get all hot and bothered thinking you'll peep an iPad by searching for "setAppleTabletSize" or something. In fact, all of these could be fake, although the sheer number of videos seems to suggest something other than a grand deception.

Torqued over the lack of tethering support from AT&T? Taken matters into your own hands? TUAW has learned that, with the release of iPhone OS 3.1 beta 2, tethering via the IPCC hack no longer works for AT&T customers.

While iPhone OS 3.0 provides support for tethering, AT&T has yet to officially support it. As a workaround to obtain tethering (as well as MMS for some), some users have modified their carrier files (IPCC). As of 3.1 beta 2, this no longer works.

It's not that surprising that Apple would want close this loophole... but it is a little surprising that AT&T has yet to announce a firm date or rate plan for US customers to tether their iPhones.

[It should go without saying, but if you enable tethering on your 3.0 iPhone, you do so at your own risk; AT&T may slam you with a data overage bill or worse.]

We're getting tips from multiple sources that Apple has invited a group of iPhone developers to test drive AOL's updated Instant Messenger app for the iPhone -- complete with push notification -- in an effort to see how Apple's servers will handle the traffic. The invitation included the following:

"As a developer actively working with iPhone OS, we would like your help in a private test of the Apple Push Notification service. For this test, we have selected AOL's AIM Developer Preview for iPhone OS 3.0 to create a high-volume test environment for our servers."

Digg's Kevin Rose, perennial purveyor of information that just "fell off the back of the truck" shared a link early this morning to Google's new, supercharged, Webkit-based browser -- for Mac.

The new browser, Chrome, is clearly marked as a developer preview, and not meant for general browsing. In fact, as a good Mac citizen, it will refuse to set itself as your default browser.

It scores a 100 on the Acid3 test straight out of the box, but doesn't pass: it fails something called the linktest, which involves interacting A tags and IFRAMEs. A little research suggests that it could be a bug with Webkit. If that's true, then it's a bug that Safari 4 beta has fixed.

Chrome appears to have Flash (and other plugin) support disabled as well. JavaScript support, however, is fully functional. While Chrome performed much better than Firefox on this cursory test, it still didn't beat Safari 4 by a long shot. While only a beta, its performance is respectable and sure to improve.

Again, Google Chrome isn't for everyone, but if you're a web developer who needs to keep up with the bleeding edge of browser development, then this preview should be stable and reliable enough for you to test what you need to.

Read through for the full JavaScript test details.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

While still in beta, Evom (from The Little App Factory, makers of iPodRip) looks ready to pick up where iSquint left off. It easily and quickly converts videos to formats compatible with iTunes, YouTube, your iPod, and Apple TV.

It couldn't be a simpler drag-and-drop operation: drop the video on the Evom window, and select a destination. After that, Evom does the heavy lifting and (optionally) adds the finished video to iTunes. The output quality is good -- it uses the same technical foundation as ffmpegX. You get the same high quality without all the fiddly controls of ffmpegX.

Evom also includes a bookmarklet that lets you save off YouTube videos to your computer with a single click. The quality of the output there mostly depends on how good the source video is, but it couldn't be easier.

iSquint, my favorite "as if by magic" video conversion tool, was discontinued after Techspansion (also the makers of iSquint's bigger brother VisualHub) shut their doors last October. The VisualHub codebase is still being developed, however, in a new project called Video Monkey that Aron covered in March, which is also well worth a look.

Evom is in beta, but unlike iSquint, it appears like it may cost something when the final version is released. It also appears limited to converting 60 items until it's registered, and trying to register the app leads to a non-existent shopping cart area. Even so, the simple interface and easy installation will be worth a few bucks to me.

[Via Daring Fireball.]

If you're a developer running the iPhone 3.0 beta, you may have gotten a special note in your email today -- and judging by the number of you who let us know about the news, there's plenty of those emails going around. Apple is testing the long-awaited push notification feature of the 3.0 software (and the back-end servers that provide the updates) with a build of the Associated Press news update app. If you got an email with a promo code and you've been putting the app through its paces, do let us know how it's going.

Push notification is all well and good, but what about true background processing for those critical applications that need always-on connectivity? More on the prospects for that capability in our next post, coming up shortly.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

[H/T to Engadget]

Version version, who's got the new version? iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 is now downloadable, along with a new build of iTunes 8.2 -- log into developer.apple.com to pick up the latest build.

What's tweaked and changed? Well, editing the carrier file in iTunes to enable tethering is now apparently blocked, and MMS support on AT&T is also 'hidden' per the iPhone Blog. It's not 100% clear whether these feature drops are deliberate, as some reports say a clean install preserves the capabilities. Parental control features for apps now seem to be visible... and yes, the new beta has already been jailbroken.

Got more observations and tidbits? Let us know below.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

In the history of marketing battles, The Cola Wars have nothing on the Twitter App War that's currently raging online. Twitterrific, TweetDeck and others (popular with commenters: Pwitter and DestroyTwitter) are waging the ground battle, while Twitterrific (mobile), Tweetie and TwitterFon (to name a few) are fighting it out in the air.

Today we got our hands on a beta of Lounge, a new client for Mac OS X (and iPhone/iPod touch). It's definitely got a way to go (I saw more beach balls than Memorial Day at Hilton Head), but I see where they're going and I like it.

First off, there's support for multiple accounts, and switching between them is easy. A series of buttons appear horizontally in the left of the window, including "My 2 Cents" (which displays just your tweets), Favorites, Friends, Replies and my favorite, Vanity, which finds all occurrences of your Twitter handle.

Mouse over a user's tweet to see options to re-tweet, copy the URL, open in a browser and more. I really like the option to view user details, which lets you see just that user's tweets, his followers, those being followed and profile and URL.

It is kind of wide (wider than Twitterrific but not TweetDeck, of course) so those with small displays be warned. Also, some may be put off by the pastel-colored icons. Still, it shows promise. Check it out if you're up for it, and provide some feedback to make Lounge better.

Just as developers around the world are hearing about the new iPhone features, Apple has updated their Dev Center. With the new site, existing developers will get immediate access to the new iPhone 3.0 SDK. That is if you are able to login. Currently the Dev Center is experiencing extremely slow load times, and kicking some users off when they try to login.

It will be interesting to see if non-developers will register for the $99/year program, just to get access to the beta of iPhone 3.0. Be sure to take part in our poll below.