Brian Fitzgerald

If you didn't see the announcements at yesterday's WWDC keynote, you can find them at Apple.com.

Impressions? First, I was intrigued a little by the tag-team presentation format. Steve handed off to three other Apple execs throughout the keynote in a way that felt to me like a bit of a "American Geek Idol". Are they trying to find someone that has a bit of the aura that Steve carries? None of the presenters yesterday qualify -- especially Phil.

Second, While the hardware announcements are probably the most important, they do not excite me. I get giddy about the software. Time machine looks great. Time machine is a backup solution with a fantastic interface that allows the user to take any finder window or compatible appliction and rewind it to a state that they need or restore a piece from that past version to the current. Of course for many of us that run with a pretty full hard drive, this will require the purchase of a large external drive, but if the backup can be transparent and reliable, it is worth it.

The iChat improvments look great. I'm most excited about the ability to share a screen with a buddy to either collaborate with that person OR do troubleshooting. I can't count the times that I've been chatting with somebody and just wished that I could see what they were seeing and help them out.

Universal Access in Tiger is way better than what's been in OS X before, but it's got a long way to go and I'm glad to see that it is such an important part of Leopard that they featured it in the keynote. I'm hoping that it's functional enough that I can, as a web developer, really get a feel for how visually-challenged folks are receiving a page and to then make them as easy to digest as possible.

Finally, spotlight is kind of boring, but I don't know what I did before it. I welcome the ability to do more advanced searches with it and to be able to search network volumes with it.

Now, we just have to wait until next spring to receive the goods. Tiger was released during the last weekend of April in 2005. Perhaps we can expect a similar release this time.

technorati tags:apple, wwdc, keynote

This morning (or noon-ish central time) Steve Jobs will take the stage in San Francisco to address the attendees of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. This is the Apple version of the MAX conference (for those develop using Adobe products). I read one web site that anticipated a "flurry" of announcements. While I'm sure there will be some surprises, here are the three things that are expected:

• MacOS 10.5 “Leopard” - Apple has made no secret that it’s going to be talking a lot about Leopard. What is a secret is what’s in Leopard. A list going around lists the following improvements: ** Spotlight 2.0 ** Dashboard 2.0 ** Safari 3.0 ** iChat 4.0 ** Automator 2.0 ** QuickTime 7.2 ** Mail 3.0 ** iCal 3.0 ** Address Book 5.0
• G5 Tower Replacement “MacPro”?
• XServe Intel Upgrade

I'm pretty unimpressed with the Leopard list. While it may be true, anybody could go through the Apple-provided applications on their computer and increase the versions by one. I hope to see a lot of eye-candy! We'll just have to see what Stevie shows us.

Beyond that, who knows. I would be surprised to see any iPod announcements, but it's been a while since the video version came out and there have been rumors for months of an iPod with a larger video screen on it. There have also been rumors of a redesigned Nano with an aluminum case similar to the iPod mini that it replaced.

technorati tags:wwdc, apple

Yesterday, I think, Opera (the company) pushed out the finished version of Opera (the browser) 9. If you haven’t tried or used Opera before, this is a pretty good time to try it out. Opera could probably be considered the original ‘standards’ browser. While IE and Netscape were battling over features and market share, this browser from Norway was steadily creating a browser that followed the rules.

Opera has become a browser that tries to do everything, similar to the way that Mozilla suite (they call it seamonkey now?! ha.) included all that one should need to use the internet. Opera sports a pretty good email client, a note taking system and a news reader. The new version also has widgets that are similar to dashboard widgets on OS X and Yahoo widgets (used to be konfabulator).

Opera is the only real browser on the macintosh that I know of that supports a true full-screen mode and if you work with CSS, it can emulate other user-agents such as a terminal or low-visibility display to let you see how your work will appear. The new version of opera can also respond to voice commands and read page text. One suggestion from Opera that I'd like to try is creating a slide presentation using pages, displaying them in full-screen mode, then using the voice recognition to have Opera navigate the slides.

Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX 2004 on the Macintosh used Opera to do it's in-application page rendering, but Dreamweaver 8 now uses Safari (WebKit). Opera was recently announced as Nintendo's choice to embed browsers in their current Gameboy DS portable devices, ensuring that many youth will be using Opera for every day browsing and requiring that web developers consider it when designing sites.

So what's wrong with it? First, the UI is a little kludgy. Opera 9 doesn't suffer from the window overload that previous versions did, but you can still end up with a lot buttons trying to get your attention. Second, like Firefox, the application is not really 'native' to any operating system, so while it runs on just about anything, it doesn't run as well as applications that were written specifically for a single operating system. Third, many developers just don't consider opera when they are developing sites, so many sites don't appear as they were intended.

While I still prefer Flock for my everyday-allday browser, Opera is worth having and knowing for when you need to do something were one of Opera's many tools can help you out. Every web developer should maintain this as one of the primary browsers that should be tested against along with IE, Firefox and Safari.

technorati tags:opera, browsers

MacPractice Uses Parallels to Bring Windows Dentistry App to Mac

MacPractice this past weekend announced an agreement with Synca Direct, Inc. to bring the company's Cadi dentistry software to Mac users via Parallels Desktop, which enables running Mac OS X and Windows XP simultaneously

I knew this would happen. While it is a great thing to be able to run both OS X applications and Windows applications on the same computer, I do not like the idea that some developers will look at this as an opportunity to not write software for the macintosh. This could be particularly true in the future for Microsoft. Why would they create an Office for Macintosh when they know that everybody needs it and that only having a Windows version would require the purchase of a $300 copy of Windows. Where will this go?

technorati tags:windows, parallels, macpractice

Google Browser Sync is a new plug-in for Firefox that will allow you to keep multiple copies of Firefox (home, work computers?) in sync. Your bookmarks, history and cookies are all continually synced. Very cool – If you don’t mind google having a running record of everything you do online.

Update: I played with it a little bit, hoping that maybe it would provide a nice way for a person to log into any installation of Firefox and make it theirs. While it is conceivable that you could use it in this way, it really nags you to enter a login and password and not everybody would use it. It seems best suited to being used by a single person (like the home/work example earlier).

technorati tags:google, browser, firefox, sync

Dale Dougherty from O’Reilly created the term “Web 2.0” to describe the recent rebirth of web development that has brought us cleaner interfaces as well as AJAX-powered behaviors. As a part of this, O’Reilly has organized a couple of Web 2.0 conferences around the topic. Now, O’Reilly is trademarking the term “Web 2.0” and people are very angry about this. If this were a company like Microsoft, I would have no doubt that they had plans to either lock down the term in a way that nobody could use it, or they would popularize it in a self-centered way that would bring more attention to them. O’Reilly has done nothing I know of to give me a reason to immediately jump to the conclusion that they are doing this for selfish reasons. I think that it is fair that they have exclusive access to the term when it is used to describe a conference (that is all that they are requesting). Considering their history with Web 2.0 conferences, I agree with them that if I saw a conference billing itself as a “Web 2.0 Conference” that I would assume that it was an O’Reilly conference. This is the confusion that they are trying to avoid. I’m sure that O’Reilly would be pretty understanding if contacted about a conference title that used the term “Web 2.0” as a way to clarify the topic of the conference and less as a title for the event.

I'm actually glad that they have taken the step to take some ownership of this. Next thing we would know, Web 2.0 would be a menu item/feature/search/option in Internet Explorer 7 and the term would be off limits to everyone.

technorati tags:oreilly, web20

AppleInsider reports that Apple is working on a new all-in-one Mac for education, to replace the phased-out eMac, and that Apple is targeting release in the "September timeframe" 2006. If so, Apple would catch only the tail end of the purchase cycle for the school year beginning this Fall, since many educational institutions, faculty, and students are already planning their next purchases.

Mac Rumors: Apple Mac Rumors and News You Care About

It will be interesting to see how Apple tries to bundle a likely LCD display with an education-class computer in the old eMac's price range of $800ish.

technorati tags:eMac

Macy's will dip its foot back into the retail consumer electronics market again by adding iPod vending machines to its stores this fall. The company plans to install Zoom Stores robotic vending machines stocked with iPods in stores across 32 cities according to The Buffalo News. The retailer stopped selling consumer electronics after the market proved to be unprofitable in its stores.

The iPod Observer - Now Playing - Macy's Gets iPod Vending Machines

Please wait while I slide 400 $1 bills in to here...

Will Richardson discusses the difference between teaching kids to be ‘lifelong learners’ and ‘lifelong teachers’. Included is a video podcast from an elementary classroom teaching others how to do podcasting.

maczot.com

CNet reporters' roundtable ‘cast discusses Jobs’ role at Apple.

They are finally coming…

Chax adds needed features to iChat like tabs and growl support.

This awesome umbrella was in this month’s WIRED mag. It receives radio signals that tell it what the chance of rain that day is, then blinks it’s blue handle to communicate that you to you. See the umbrella blinking madly near the door on the way out? Better take it with you!

After reading this interview, I’m more impressed that I was before with the ability to dual-boot XP on an intel mac.

VW’s new Gypsie interface allows you to sync with iTunes, dock your iPod and access both with a fantastic interface in the dash. Wow.

Firefox 2 alpha 1 is available. At the time of this posting, it is not yet on the mozilla site, but TechCrunch has managed to find a link to it.

Google has made another acquisition of a cool ‘web 2.0’ site. It has purchased Writely, an online word processor that uses AJAX methods to create a product that is cross platform, cross browser and pretty snappy to use. A year ago or more I think I would have been pretty excited by this, but Google’s releases lately have been, in my opinion, real yawners demonstrating some lack of focus. When they were releasing one great ‘product’ after another, there was no one that I would rather see pick up a site like this. Now that Google is starting to become a bit of a Yahoo, I don’t know. On the other hand, if you put together their email system with the in-development calendar, their as-of-yet unannounced file storage, and now a word processor, you are starting to have all of the elements of your computer on the web. That may be huge.

Microsoft announced and showed off the new Origami at CeBit. Haven’t had much time to take a good read of it, but sure looks cool.

Screenshots have been leaked of a calendar system in development at Google.

You knew it would be coming. I’m just surprised it happened this soon. You can now subscribe to Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report on iTunes. You pay $10/show and you get the next 16 episodes (one month). Get both and that’s $20 a month, but considering that that’s about all I keep cable for, it could be a great deal.

If you have a Tivo (or are thinking about getting one), better do it quick. Next week, Tivo plans to pull it’s lifetime subscription plan which allows you to pay a one time fee of $299 and never pay the monthly fee. Apparently they have decided it’s too good of a deal.

I heard somebody talk a couple of years ago about a taco bell or mcdonalds or something down in Florida that was experimenting with serve-yourself cashier counters. Looks like those combination restaraunts (KFC/Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut/Taco Bell, Taco Bell/KFC) are ready to start trying it out.

First video: Mocks Microsofts ability to make any packaging dull and over detailed.

Second video: Is this what Microsoft will be announcing tomorrow? 

There are so many “Web 2.0” companies that it’s almost impossible to track them. Here’s a poster that’s been assembled using web 2.0 company logos. It’s fun to see the designs and colors used. It’s also fun to just start going through them to see what’s being done by all of these companies.