Brian Fitzgerald

Since I haven’t been able to post for the last month-plus, here are some things I’ve wanted to get up here.

Regarding Browsers

• The public alpha of Firefox 2.0 (codename: bon echo) is scheduled to be released on Feb 10. What's in store? While I'm sure that they will always continue to work on improving the rendering, the focus of bon echo is the experience. Two things expected in the new version are a improved interface with more operating system ties and inline spell checking.
• Flock .6 is scheduled to be released around Feb 15. I'm not sure what to expect from this, but I have really liked what I've seen from Flock so far.
• Internet Explorer 7 beta is now available from Microsoft and so far it seems that it does not suck. There are parts of the interface that I don't care for, but the rendering seems to be very solid.
• Camino 1.0 b2 was just released and OmniWeb 5.5 is on the way.

• Garageband 3's new podcasting features are great. When you create a podcast it gives you a time-based timeline (instead of measure/tempo-based one). You can easily create chapters and export to iTunes. I've done a one-hour board of education podcast using it and am curious to see if it will handle closer to two hours when the board has a busy night.
• Apple's new web site tool "iWeb" is a fantastic tool for putting together a simple site. You can easily create online homes for photos, podcasts, movies and whatever else you might have to publish. So far I have not found good options in it for customizing the look of your site, but I don't expect that most people interested in a tool like this will care.
• iPhoto 6 is a great improvement to iPhoto. It seems considerably faster than it predecessor with nice new additions such as a full-screen editor and the ability to order greeting cards and calendars.
• I had the chance to use the new MacBook Pro and its really a fantastic machine. It is slim and I love the built-in iSight and included FrontRow/Remote.

• Adobe just announced that they are working on universal binary versions of their applications but that they would be released as the next versions of their applications and NOT to expect a univeral binary update to current applications. I hope and assume that this applies to the products previously owned by Macromedia, although with 8 having just come out in October, that could be a long wait.