When Apple release the new iPhone Operating System (3.0) they will remove applications which are not compatible with the update from the App Store. Is it time to make the App Store backward compatible?

iPhone App developers encouraged yet warned

Apple have been encouraging iPhone App developers to create new apps for iPhone OS 3.0 for some time. In addition to developing new apps developers are also encouraged to test old apps to make sure that they are also compatible with the impending iPhone OS release (if not make them so). This encouragement from Apple seems reasonable and logical, yet it has been tainted with the warning that compatibility issues could lead to some applications being removed from Apple’s App Store.

When I first read about this I immediately thought that Apple were being inconsiderate. Initially I thought that Apple will be removing all apps that would not work on an iPod (or  iPhone) that was not running the third major release of the iPhone operating system. However, it is now my understanding that a current iPhone OS 2.x application that is made compatible with version 3.0 will still work on iPods and iPhones running OS 2.x.

The Future will bring compatibility issues

We all know that technology progresses at a terrific rate. How long before there is a newer, better iPhone or iPod Touch? Three months, six months, a year perhaps? (Surely not a whole year!) There is no doubting that there will be new iPhones and new iPods and maybe a new device that Apple have not even thought of yet. What is new today will become old and one day today’s iPhones and iPods will not be compatible with the latest iPhone OS.

These new products will, of course , feature cutting edge technologies which make us wonder how we coped in the past.

Now imagine a time when there are a number of devices (old and new) that run different versions of iPhone Operating Systems. Will Apple continue to remove older versions of applications on its iTunes App Store, simply because they don’t run on the latest release of the iPhone OS?

Improving the App Store

Apple should act now by making simple changes to the iTunes App Store and the App Store application on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The software we use to look and download new applications should be made ‘device aware’.

For example when someone uses App Store on an iPod Touch they should not been shown the great Apps that will either lack functionality or simply will not work on their iPod. I am sure it would be really easy for Apple to add such filters. Taken further Apple could filter out Apps that would not work with the operating system that the device is currently using.

Making iTunes on a Mac or PC ‘device aware’ would be possible too. If you own and sync an iPhone with OS2.1 using iTunes then make sure only compatible apps are shown in the iTunes App Store. Of course there should be the option to switch such a function off, so users can see every application available, regardless of which device they actually own and which iPhone OS it uses.

Take a look at the Apple Store and you can choose suitable accessories for your iPod, whether it is the latest Shuffle or even a pre-Nano iPod Mini. To find suitable accessories Apple make it super easy by adding ‘Shop by Type’. A simple idea where the correct iPod is chosen from the extensive list and the user is presented with compatible accessories.

If it can be done for accessories — why not applications?

More »

• iPod OS on a Mac Pro? True or False?
• New Apple iPods to be Announced Tomorrow
• Apple to Make iTunes 8 and iPod Accessible to the Blind
• links for 2009-01-13
• Apple to Release iTunes 8 and New iPod Nano?

I must stress that this is a test for the Firefox blogging plugin ScribeFire and therefore some formatting may be unusual. I take that back — formatting was perfect!

ScribeFire is a plugin for Firefox which will turn the popular web browser into an editor for bloggers. ScribeFire supports many blogging services including; LiveJournal, Tumblr, Xanga and MySpace. Many blogging platforms such as WordPress, Moveable Type and Drupal, are supported too.

ScribeFire, an extension of Firefox ®, enables users to easily drag and drop formatted text from the Web into their blog(s), post entries, take notes, and optimize their ad inventory, directly through the Firefox browser.

scribefire.com

Installing ScribeFire

The process of installing the ScribeFire is as easy as adding any other Firefox plugin. Once installed and you have restarted Firefox you are ready to set up ScribeFire to work with your blog.

Adding your blog’s details is very simple with the ‘Account Wizard’. Just enter the blog’s URL and click continue. You will be asked for your log in details for your blog and after a few seconds you will be ready to write new blog posts within Firefox.

Overview of the Editor

The editor will probably look familiar as it looks fairly standard. There are tabs to change between the standard editing mode and source editing and a third that allows you preview your blog post within your blog’s template. The third option sounds great but I’m not totally convinced that it is actually working, perhaps it will next time ScribeFire is used.

Apart from the standard text formatting buttons there are buttons to add links and images and a useful addition to add images from Flickr which opens a search window. Adding Flickr images is very simple. However, this useful search feature does not seem to be limited to photographs that you are legally allowed to use. Any time I use Flickr I limit my search to those that are covered by the Creative Commons licence using Flickr’s advanced search.

Adding images to a post is otherwise really simple. You can either use the editor button or simply drag an image from the browser window or your computer. Selecting an image by clicking on it then ‘right clicking’ on it brings up a menu from which you can select ‘Element Properties’ shown below.

The same contextual menu can be used to format selected text too.

To the far right of ScribeFire’s editor’s menubar their is a drop down menu, represented by a small triangle. This menu adds further options for formatting your post (justification and an option to add YouTube hosted videos, much in the same manner as the Flickr button.

Post options

To the right of the main editor is a tabbed area where you will find the Categories tab which lists all of the Categories that are set up on your blogs. Check the ones you want to publish your post in and, optionally, add a few tags below. The last tab, entitled ‘Options’ allows you to modify the timestamp, add Technorati tags and TrackBack URLs and has the option to enable Pings too.

The first two tabs entitle ‘Blogs’ and ‘Entries’ are fairly self-explanitory. The former is where you can add, edit and remove your weblogs details. The latter, ‘Entries’, lists all your blog’s posts allowing previous posts to be edited too. Until published your ‘posts’ are stored as ‘notes’, a list of which you will find under the ‘Entries’ tab too.

In fact you could use ScribeFox just for taking notes. Being able to drag text and images to the editor and saving them as notes could prove useful for some.

Publishing your post

Once a post has been completed it is a simple matter of pushing the publish button. A neat feature is the option to publish as a draft (if the blogging host or platform allows it). Also, as I am using WordPress there is also the option to publish the post as a Post or Page. (This will make sense if you use WordPress too.)

Options when publishing

Summary

If you are a blogger then I would highly recommend this plugin for the Firefox — at the very least give it a try. If you like, or need, to take notes while browsing the web then ScribeFire would suit that purpose too.

Using ScribeFire is easy and intuitive with its familiar editor layout. There are features that I have yet to use, but it will give you something to discover when trying for yourself.

A long time ago I tested a couple of blogging plugins for Firefox, I quickly uninstalled them as a I was not impressed. ScribeFire is different, it is a blog writing and note taking plugin that I will use in the future and will remain installed.

If you use ScribeFire or another Firefox pluging that enables blogging share your experiences and thoughts via the comments. Also feel free to recommend other blogging software, a particular favourite of mine has been Ecto for Mac, but having a blogging tool accessable within the browser seems to make sense to me.

More »

• Zemanta — resource integration for bloggers
• Aviary, Online Apps for Creatives
• WordPress 2.6 Released
• Tired of Facebook Apps?
• Initial Thoughts About Google New Web Browser

Having said this the release of iTunes 8 and changes to the iPod range are likely. However, a totally redesigned iPod Nano seems less feasible.

What is feasible is the introduction of an new and improved visualization visualisation for iTunes.

According to rumors, the new iTunes 8 presumably coming next week at the Apple “Let Us Rock” event will come with some beautiful new visualizations. Now, new rumors say that the new visualizations will actually be , a formerly-available plugin by artist Robert Hodgins.

gizmodo.com

More »

• New Apple iPods to be Announced Tomorrow
• links for 2008-09-09
• Watch Apple’s New iTunes and iPod Event
• Apple’s Steve Jobs Announces iPod Nano 4G
• links for 2008-08-13 [delicious.com]

This is a great tip for Apple Mac users who utlise the microblogging service, Twitter. It is a fairly simple way of creating a client for Twitter which is accessible from the Apple menu bar (as a menu item). The method uses Hahlo that is intended for use with Apple iPhone which makes this ‘hack’ notable for its creative use of software that is freely available.

One of the the Twitter clients I started looking into is Hahlo. It’s basically a web based application used by a lot of iPhone users. You can make it into a great desktop Twitter client using the combo of Fluid, and Growl.

[From Twitter Client using Fluid and Hahlo with Growl]

Here’s the screencast to show how set-up your own menu item for Twitter.

Visit Twitter Client using Fluid and Hahlo with Growl for links to the software used.

This tutorial could be used to create a menu item for any web application. Experiment and share your creations via the comments.

More »

• Make the Apple App Store backward compatible
• Facebook Security Weakness Discovered
• Initial Thoughts About Google New Web Browser
• Screencast About MUPromo Software Bundle.
• Discounted Software for Apple Mac Users

Google promises that their new web browser will be different from the others, with a simple user interface and improved navigation and search. At last there is a browser that combines the address and search boxes that not only searches and lists results from Google but from your history too.

The use of tabs looks to be fairly familiar. Users are able to reorder them and drag them out to make new windows and vice versa, much like Safari. What seems to be a unique feature is that each webpage (tabbed or otherwise) is a separate process, rather than the whole application being one process. This means that if a website in one tab fails or hangs the other windows and tabs are unaffected. This separation is similar to the Fluid application which allows Mac users to create a separate application for website applications such as Google’s GMail or Facebook and so on.

Why Google developed a web browser?

Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

[From Google Chrome]

At the moment Google Chrome is only available for Windows users but there are Mac and Linux versions in the pipeline. In the meantime those of you who use Windows can download Google Chrome and enjoy this promising piece of software.

Changing the future of web applications.

Could Google raise the competition between browser developers again? It is certainly looking that way which may prove to be a kick in the teeth for Firefox which has taken a number of years to become popular enough to put a slight dent in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer user figures.

I predict that Chrome will become the ‘must have’ web browser as more of us use more web-based applications whether they be social networking apps or the increasingly popular office tools such as word processors, spreadsheets and calendar software.

If Chrome is as stable and efficient as Google promise then there is sure to be a surge of new web applications that one day will perhaps make locally stored applications redundant. Hopefully the emphasis will be on quality applications that emulate the software that is available on our computers. There are a number of online application developer already out there doing this. Google is one such website offering many applications and the lesser known Aviary is another.

Whereas Google has office type tools, Aviary has web applications for the creatives of the world. Currently invite only, Aviary features tools for image editing, vector design, audio and video editing and many more. Aviary is truly incredible and unlike anything else that is currently available.

In conclusion Google’s new web browser could be the ‘next big thing’ and might change the way that the majority utilize utilise the Internet and the world wide web.

More »

• Aviary, Online Apps for Creatives
• Semantic Page Titles Improve Search Engine Optimization
• links for 2009-03-02
• Tired of Facebook Apps?
• links for 2009-02-10

Can’t concentrate because you’ve got a billion windows opened?

Check out Isolator. The clever Mac app dims background application windows to keep you focused on the current application. Couple it with Menu Eclipse to dim your menubar, and you’ve got a distraction-fighting dynamic duo.

[From Stay in Focus with Isolator and Menu Eclipse]

If you want to be able to lessen the distraction from background application windows (and the pale menubar) the these two apps are worth downloading to try. Both have the option to be controlled via menubar items too which is a bonus.

More »

• Twitter Client using Fluid and Hahlo with Growl
• White Noise Prompts Simple Design
• Blogging Within Firefox With ScribeFire
• Initial Thoughts About Google New Web Browser
• Mac Software Bundle Now Available

The top five includes Evernote, a cross platform solution that is gaining popularity very quickly along side the old favorite favourite, pen and paper.

While the post itself is worth a read if you are looking for such software, the comments contain more recommendations which may prove to be as useful.

As a user of NoteBook by software developers Circus Ponies I would have thought that it was worthy of a mention, but alas not. If you are a Mac user and are looking for software to keep your notes and projects organized organised then do consider NoteBook. Unfortunately there is not a Windows version.

If you use different platforms, perhaps a Mac at work and a PC at home, then Evernote is a great solution.

More »

• Mac Software Bundle Now Available
• Discounted Software for Apple Mac Users
• Mac OSX — Stop ‘syslogd’ Being A CPU Hog
• Make the Apple App Store backward compatible
• A Positive Article About The Benefits Of Twitter

To see if your Mac is suffering with this strange processor hogging problem open Activity Monitor (found in the Utilities folder in Applications). You might see something like the screenshot below which shows syslogd using a large percentage of the processor power.

[click image to enlarge]

 
The actual cause of the problem is varied but it is not syslogd itself. There have been numerous discussions on Mac OS Hints, Apple Support , Mac Rumors, and other Apple Mac forums, mainly started by users with their pleads for help.

Having noticed the problem many users have searched the system log for clues to what is actually causing syslogd to go haywire. Some concluded that it was Apple’s back up software, Time Machine, while others were having problems with Last.fm software. There is a list of other possible culprits being suggested in the forums.

When I searched for more information about this Mac OSX annoyance I found plenty of descriptions of the symptoms but sadly few solutions. A few people had suggested ways to fix the problem, but none of these seemed to work for me.

One likely solution has been provided by Daniel Simmons, who wrote the article ‘Taming Leopard’s Syslogd‘ on the subject. Unfortunately I did not find this solution until solving the quandary using quite a different method. Try Daniel’s suggestion — it might work for you.

Erroneous Disk Permissions?

I tried starting up from the Leopard install disk and running Disk Utility having been inspired by an article found on PooPsTech WebLog entitled ‘mdworker Slows down OS X – 100% CPU Usage! Here is the solution!‘. However, after running ‘Repair Disk Permissions’ the problem persisted.

Last Resort Fix

Armed with freshly brewed coffee and a book to read I started the process of installing Leopard (Mac OS 10.5.1) from scratch using Archive and Install with the Preserve Users and Network Settings option [see below].

Once the installation process had completed a quick look at the Activity Monitor application showed that syslogd was not hogging the processor. Reinstallation seemed to have done the trick, but, my system had regressed to 10.5.1. With this in mind I downloaded the 10.5.4 all-in-one update to install manually — rather than relying on the operating system’s Software Update.

Archive and Install

Select this option if you want to install a fresh system on your computer. “Archive and Install” moves your existing Mac OS X system files to a folder named Previous System, and then installs a new copy of Mac OS X on the selected volume. Mac OS X–installed applications, such as Address Book and Safari, are archived, and new versions are installed in the Applications folder.

Unless you choose “Preserve Users and Network Settings,” user accounts and their home folders are also archived in the Previous System folder.

Excerpt from Apple Leopard’s Install & Setup Guide

The Moment of Truth

Once the installation process had completed and I had read a considerable portion of the novel I had started I waited for the Mac to start up with optimistic trepidation. Apple’s software was true to its word and kept all additional software and user files in place as well as providing a copy of the old system neatly placed in a new folder named Previous System.

Of course the first application I ran was Activity Monitor and syslogd was not topping the heavy CPU user chart. Using the search field I found that syslogd appeared to be behaving itself and continued to do so when my usual profusion of open apps:

Finally! The problem had be solved. All indicators were, well, indicating that the unwelcome situation had been banished. As I write this a few days after reinstallation of Leopard I can report with glee that this method, although drastic, works.

As previously mentioned this method ought to be treated as a last resort. If you have this problem with your Mac and nothing else works for you then the reinstallation of Leopard will work.

Help From Apple

It is a shame that this strange error does not have an easier fix, and had not been fixed via Apple’s software updates. I am not sure when syslogd started to take up so much processing power. When I first upgraded to Leopard the disc I bought was already version 10.5.1, and let Software Update maintain and update the system. Perhaps that is where the problem lies, hence I downloaded the update direct from the Apple website.

I must admit that I find it annoying that there are no definitive answers and that Apple does not seem to be taking much notice of the discussions about what is causing syslogd to monopolize monopolise the CPU. Although, to be fair to Apple, it is a relatively old and uncommon fault which does not affect new Macs. However, it really ought to be addressed for users of older machines that have older versions of the operating system and are having trouble after updating system software.

More »

• Make the Apple App Store backward compatible
• LifeHacker’s Five Best Note-Taking Tools
• Want Ubuntu On Your Apple Mac? Use Parallels Desktop
• Discounted Software for Apple Mac Users
• links for 2008-11-26

I stumbled across this script on userscripts.org that claims to do the following:

“This script is for anyone who is sick and tired of having to navigate through all the bullshit and spam that has been filling Facebook lately. The purpose of this script is to remove any mention of a third party app on all of Facebook. This script will greatly change your facebook experience. This script truly unfucks Facebook.”

The name of this script?

Unfuck Facebook and it is available to download on userscripts.org.

In order to use Unfuck Facebook, and the hundreds of other scripts available you must be using the Firefox web browser with the Greasemonkey extension installed.

About Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function.

About Firefox

Firefox is a free, open source web browser that is available for a number of operating systems, including Linux, Windows and Mac. Firefox is the second most used web browser, according to Net Applications and fast, secure and extendable via the many plugins that are available.

Summary

I have yet to install Unfuck Facebook as there are a few Facebook apps that I do find useful. (Not that I use Facebook that often.) The idea behind Facebook, as a social network, is great and well implemented. This is only spoilt by the shear number of puerile apps.

If you really do find Facebook Apps annoying perhaps it time you ‘unfuck Facebook’.

More »

• Facebook Security Weakness Discovered
• PayPal to Block Unsafe Web Browsers
• Initial Thoughts About Google New Web Browser
• Make the Apple App Store backward compatible
• Blogging Within Firefox With ScribeFire

The process was made easy by a great article that helped me get Ubuntu running in no time [see below].

First impressions of Ubuntu? Really easy to use and very fast, even when running it virtually on an iMac via Parallels Desktop. Within minutes of installing Ubuntu I had used Firefox and downloaded and updated software while working back in the Mac OS environment. Ubuntu does seem very intuitive and perhaps simpler than other versions of Linux that I have used over the years.

There do seem to be a few issues with the latest version of Ubuntu at the time of writing so perhaps try downloading Ubuntu 6.06 (as recommended by Stuart’s article). At the moment Ubuntu does not want to start up again since closing it down and quitting Parallels.

Please share your suggestions about fixing this, other than using an older version of Ubuntu, via the comment form below.

LINK: Running Ubuntu Under Parallels Desktop For Mac – Thanks Stuart!

More »

• Mac OSX — Stop ‘syslogd’ Being A CPU Hog
• Make the Apple App Store backward compatible
• WordPress 2.5 Gallery Problems
• WordPress 2.6 Released
• WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Smooth & Worthwhile