The guys over at the Google Mac blog have dropped a new little open source application called Visigami, which serves as a more "interesting" and "fun" way to browse and play around with images online. Basically, after installing the app, you can then pull in pics from Picasa, Google Images, or Flickr (iPhoto is just a suggestion so far), and then search, animate, zoom in or out on them, and even turn them right into a screensaver.
It's a pretty neat little application -- not exactly the kind of thing that anyone has probably been hoping for (it seems more fun than utilitarian), but if you find yourself often browsing photos online, this definitely seems like a more fun way to do it. And it's one more reason to praise all the great developers working on our platform -- it's little apps like this that make the Mac user experience so much better.
Tom from iPhonebuglist.com was poking around in Apple's online feedback form, and as you can see above, he found something interesting hidden in the HTML code. There was a product tag on the form not for the iPhone, but for the "iPhone Extreme." The page has since been fixed, and there's no trace of it ever appearing.
We completely agree with Apple Insider on this one: it's a stretch to say this is anything more than a coder mixup. Still, there it is, right there (in a Windows window! Tom, how dare you!). Could it be a "sport" version of the iPhone? Or a home device designed to serve as a standalone, Mac-less dock for your iPhone on your Airport Extreme network?
Probably neither. I'm pretty sure a comment over at 9-to-5 Mac has it right (although the site themselves went way overboard, calling a February release on what is really an imaginary product): whoever coded the page just used the Airport Extreme template, and did a mass cut-and-paste with "iPhone" and "Airport." Amazing that the Mac community can get so workedup over what almost surely is simply a coder's mistake.
Alan dropped a quick note about a chance for our UK readers to get a free iTunes song. Those of you overseas may have been complaining that Apple treats you like second class citizens, but Britons, worry not, because they're bribing you with a song. Send an SMS with the words "ROCK," "POP," "LIVE," or "ITUNES" to 85100, and Apple will send you back a code for a free song on the iTunes UK store.
The promotion ends on September 30th, so you've got to get it done quick, and this is definitely a YMMV situation. It won't work outside of the UK, and I even tried to send the code using iChat, but no dice -- apparently it has to come from a phone number there. It's not exactly free, either -- as you may have figured out, it's actually the cost of sending and receiving an SMS. If that's more than £0.99, it's not worth it.
But if you're in the UK and have an itchy SMS finger, send it along and see what happens.
Panic's Cabel Sasser has updated his blog (finally! His Miis were cute and all, but I was tired of seeing them every day) with a really interesting post about how he designed the toolbar for the everything-web-development tool that apparently is the bee's knees, Coda.
Instead of using the standard rounded bevel of OS X's unified toolbar, Sasser decided he wanted to do something a little different, and created a tab-ish vertical indent. Unfortunately, the way OS X's toolbars work didn't vibe with his idea (there were just three pixels at the bottom that couldn't be edited the way he wanted), so the Panic team ended up developing their own entire toolbar. That, he says, is why you can't rearrange the icons in Coda-- because the app isn't using the system toolbar.
But the best part is saved for last. All the hard work paid off, because even though Sasser had to drive his team nuts just to figure out a way to get around those three pixels, Apple eventually agreed with him. And the new toolbar in Leopard looks strangely familiar. Great story, and a real shot in the arm to developers who might not otherwise be pushed to bother with all the coding required to get the look they want exactly right.
I have now spent a pretty solid week writing applications for the iPhone. And what an exciting week it's been. I've been privileged to view and interact with the iPhone in a way that few other people have had the opportunity to. The iPhone is tight, robust and its SDK--even seen through such imperfect tools as class-dump--is beautiful.
Let me give you an example. This morning I decided to write a basic word processor for the iPhone. In about 30 lines of code, I was able to create an application that saved all changes to disk and reloaded that text launching the application. That kind of success doesn't happen because I'm some sort of phenomenal programmer, it happens because Apple makes amazing, usable libraries. I was able to use classic Cocoa strategies like reading a string to and from disk and combine it with new UIKit strategies like creating a keyboard that automatically knows how to enter and edit text.
A few tipsters have dropped us notes (thanks!) that on Apple's Developer Tools page, there's a new tool. Along with Xcode and Dashcode, there's a new, very pretty app called Xray. The flavor text itself says the app takes "interface cues from timeline editors such as GarageBand," so what we're looking at here seems to be a realtime application tester and analyzer.
The three windows in the screenshot show stats on "Network Traffic," "CPU Load," and "Reads/Writes," and Apple also says devs will be able to track user events and even the OpenGL video driver. Looks like it will bring all the new tracking tools and analysis junk (technical term) together in a browsable, graphical interface, which means an easier time for devs, which means better apps for all of us. Groovy!
Google's Summer of Code is a really cool, really massive project focused on open source that first started back in 2005. It functions on a pretty simple concept: the company gives out grants to student developers (this summer they brought on 900 from a list of 6,200 applicants) to work on open source projects for the summer, and we all subsequently benefit in one way or another. Take a gander through the long list of projects on the menu for this summer, and click on any to see what the goals are.
Whether or not these goals are met by the end of the summer is another thing entirely, but there are some great projects and features on the list for such apps as Adium, Camino, Thunderbird, Inkscape and much more. Adium, for example, might gain features like basic voice chat, AppleScript and Bonjour support, while a juicy feature on Camino's todo list is Tabsposé, bringing the window management wonders of Exposé (much like the WebKit-based Shiira features) to the more Mac-like alternative to Firefox. In fact, one of the developers involved with working Tabsposé for Camino is blogging the effort, with a few posts already online covering developer-oriented topics like getting caught up with minor details and coding resources, but also including teaser mockups of what Tabsposé might eventually look like.
Long story short: Google's third round of Summer of Code looks like it will again do some great things for Mac OS X software and open source on a broader scale. Heck, those open source developers are even getting paid, which must be a nice change of pace for some of them. We'll keep an eye on what new features arise from this Google-funded coding powwow at the end of the summer.
TextExpander is another favorite utility in the TUAW tool belt, as it can save a boatload of time with repeatedly typing anything from email signatures to canned customer service replies and even code. In fact, SmileOnMyMac just made HTML coding a bit easier on web designers and hackers everywhere by posting an HTML snippet file that contains abbreviations for over 60 common pieces of HTML, ripe for cutting down on the time it takes to hand code your sites. This file should serve as a great example of the power of TextExpander, since SmileOnMyMac made sure to use some of the app's tricks that insert the cursor in a useful place after expanding a snippet, such as in between the quotes of: <a href=""></a>, allowing you to easily fill in the blanks. But don't stop there - a little exploring of how these snippets are put together should enable you to build your own for the specific kinds of work and code you use.
This snippet file is free from SmileOnMyMac's site, and the highly recommended TextExpander sells for $29.95 with a whopping 90 day money-back guarantee.
iWebFlinger is great for those who want to use HTML to customize their iWeb sites, but they neither have nor want a .Mac account with which to publish.
On the customization front, this useful tool allows you to insert code into your iWeb sites by wrapping it in a specific tag, as well as customizing the site-wide header and footer with dedicated chunks of code (pictured).
As far as getting your recently-created iWeb site to where it's going, iWebFlinger's FTP features are pretty handy. Your password is stored in the system-wide Keychain, and you can even upload a favicon (the neat little custom icons that appear alongside a site's URL in the address bar). iWebFlinger also has the option to be smart about exactly which files it needs to upload and replace, which can save a lot of time when you make additions or changes to your site.
iWebFlinger is donationware from Chris J. Shull, and it's available at his site.
When we posted about Part I of Scott Stevenson's Learn Cocoa tutorial, some people complained that there wasn't actually any coding involved. Well Part II at least introduces what Scott calls "Thinking in Code" and begins to dig a little deeper into what is required to actually use Xcode to write a Cocoa application. Obviously, Scott is moving very slowly, as yet again he requires no previous experience, but his lavishly illustrated guide is a pleasure to behold. He holds out the promise of more such guides in the future, provided some donations are forthcoming. Given how well he's done so far, I hope that comes to pass. Check it out at Cocoa Dev Central.
Our friends at Download Squad have discovered a melding of two scripting worlds: AppleScript and Ruby. RubyOSA is the darling scriptenstein of these two languages, and while I don't know a lick of either, I'm willing to bet this could be a popular amongst the code ninjas in the audience. Ruby is a popular language (the 13th most popular, by their numbers), and it's the foundation of the Ruby on Rails framework which has given us such handy web 2.0 apps as Backpack, Odeo, Strongspace and many more.
This is about the line, however, that I reach where I would need to start pretending I know more about any of these languages, so I'll let you check out RubyOSA for yourself to see if it gets your coding gears turning.
Bare Bones Software really knows how to deliver a .5 release, as the have just announced v8.5 of BBEdit, their powerful and professional HTML and code editor. Amongst the total 160 new and updated features is a revamped UI for both the app and its now-searchable preferences, 'code folding' for collapsing sections of a document for greater legibility, a revamped Clippings feature for re-using snippets of text and code, new languages, auto-save and much, much more.
At $199, this editor definitely isn't for the faint of heart, and it's definitely why 'professional' is included in the product's description. However, for owners of previous versions, Bare Bones has quite possibly the most agreeable upgrade terms we've ever seen for an application: owners of any BBEdit v8.0 and above can upgrade for a mere $30, though if you purchased v8.2 after 1/1/06, it's free. For owners of v7.1.4 and earlier, the upgrade is only $40. a 30 day demo of this Universal Binary app is, of course, available from Bare Bones Software.
News is coming in via digg commenters and posts on forum threads linked therein which seems to indicate and give evidence that BitRocket uses code taken from the Transmission.app source without giving any attribution as required by the MIT license under which Transmission is released. These accusations are further supported by the fact that the developer of BitRocket, Julian Ashton, previously developed XFactor, a P2P application, which was proven to take code from the Poisoned project, again without proper attribution.
Update: Scott, our fearless leader, did some digging and found a post on the forum thread linked that I seem to have missed. According to at least one account, BitRocket does properly credit the source it uses.
Sample code posted at the ADC could prove that preview versions of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard might be unleashed to WWDC attendees next week. The page has since been taken down, but DuggMirror retained a copy for our speculating eyes.
The piece of sample code is QTNoStepsDemo, a meaningless chunk of code to us non-developers, but one aspect of the page (posted on Apple's site 8/01/2006) is what raised the flag: the code's build requirements specify "Leopard Preview". If this page is legit, it certainly isn't a blatant statement from Apple that Leopard will indeed be unleashed to our developer overlords, but it definitely is suspect. As with all other tidbits we've been uncovering over the past few weeks, we'll just have to stay tuned for Monday's events to see what Apple's engineers have up their sleeves.
If you still aren't tired of yet more iPhone rumors, here's a fairly juice one that's fueled by the crafty digital sleuthing of an AppleInsider reader. By dissecting the latest iPod firmware update, the reader found references to "t_feature_app_PHONE_APP" and variables such as "kPhoneSignalStrength", "prPhoneSettingsMenu" and more. To further fuel the fire, it's unlikely that this code has anything to do with the Motorola phones as they use an entirely different operating system. If you're interested in seeing the rest of the findings, including references to an iPod-based search application and an iPod keyboard, check out this AppleInsider forum thread.
Engadget is betting that we could see this now-infamous iPhone as soon as WWDC, beginning Monday August 7th, 2006. I guess time will only tell if Steve pulls an Apple-branded phone out of his jeans any time soon.
Alan dropped a quick note about a chance for our UK readers to get a free iTunes song. Those of you overseas may have been complaining that Apple treats you like second class citizens, but Britons, worry not, because they're bribing you with a song. Send an SMS with the words "ROCK," "POP," "LIVE," or "ITUNES" to 85100, and Apple will send you back a code for a free song on the iTunes UK store.
Panic's Cabel Sasser has updated his blog (finally! His Miis were cute and all, but I was tired of seeing them every day) with a really interesting post about how he designed the toolbar for the everything-web-development tool that apparently is the bee's knees, Coda.
Google's Summer of Code is a really cool, really massive project focused on open source that first started back in 2005. It functions on a pretty simple concept: the company gives out grants to student developers (this summer they brought on 900 from a list of 6,200 applicants) to work on open source projects for the summer, and we all subsequently benefit in one way or another. Take a gander through the long list of projects on the menu for this summer, and click on any to see what the goals are.
TextExpander is another favorite utility in the TUAW tool belt, as it can save a boatload of time with repeatedly typing anything from email signatures to canned customer service replies and even code. In fact, SmileOnMyMac just made HTML coding a bit easier on web designers and hackers everywhere by posting an HTML snippet file that contains abbreviations for over 60 common pieces of HTML, ripe for cutting down on the time it takes to hand code your sites. This file should serve as a great example of the power of TextExpander, since SmileOnMyMac made sure to use some of the app's tricks that insert the cursor in a useful place after expanding a snippet, such as in between the quotes of: <a href=""></a>, allowing you to easily fill in the blanks. But don't stop there - a little exploring of how these snippets are put together should enable you to build your own for the specific kinds of work and code you use.
When we posted about Part I of Scott Stevenson's Learn Cocoa tutorial, some people complained that there wasn't actually any coding involved. Well Part II at least introduces what Scott calls "Thinking in Code" and begins to dig a little deeper into what is required to actually use Xcode to write a Cocoa application. Obviously, Scott is moving very slowly, as yet again he requires no previous experience, but his lavishly illustrated guide is a pleasure to behold. He holds out the promise of more such guides in the future, provided some donations are forthcoming. Given how well he's done so far, I hope that comes to pass. Check it out at Cocoa Dev Central.
Our friends at Download Squad have discovered a melding of two scripting worlds: AppleScript and Ruby. RubyOSA is the darling scriptenstein of these two languages, and while I don't know a lick of either, I'm willing to bet this could be a popular amongst the code ninjas in the audience. Ruby is a popular language (the 13th most popular, by their numbers), and it's the foundation of the Ruby on Rails framework which has given us such handy web 2.0 apps as Backpack, Odeo, Strongspace and many more.
Bare Bones Software really knows how to deliver a .5 release, as the have just announced v8.5 of BBEdit, their powerful and professional HTML and code editor. Amongst the total 160 new and updated features is a revamped UI for both the app and its now-searchable preferences, 'code folding' for collapsing sections of a document for greater legibility, a revamped Clippings feature for re-using snippets of text and code, new languages, auto-save and much, much more.
Sample code posted at the ADC could prove that preview versions of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard might be unleashed to WWDC attendees next week. The page has since been taken down, but DuggMirror retained a copy for our speculating eyes.
If you still aren't tired of yet more iPhone rumors, here's a fairly juice one that's fueled by the crafty digital sleuthing of an AppleInsider reader. By dissecting the latest iPod firmware update, the reader found references to "t_feature_app_PHONE_APP" and variables such as "kPhoneSignalStrength", "prPhoneSettingsMenu" and more. To further fuel the fire, it's unlikely that this code has anything to do with the Motorola phones as they use an entirely different operating system. If you're interested in seeing the rest of the findings, including references to an iPod-based search application and an iPod keyboard, check out this AppleInsider forum thread.
