Brian Fitzgerald

Café Macs reports that the seed notes for the latest pre-release of Tiger include only one known issue.

I've been messing around with Macromedia captivate to see if it works as a good solution for putting some content online. One file that I need to post requires that a persons viewing of it be recorded (name, email, etc.). Captivate says that it can do this via email, but it does it in a way that just won't work for me. Captivate is also able to tie into "learning management systems", so I'm now working to see how difficult that solution is. I'm playing with Moodle.

At the same time, I'm playing with Mambo. it's a open-source content management system that is well designed and seems to have nice features. I don't know if I'll ever have a use for it, but it's sure nice to know what's out there.

Both of these installations were simpler with the new version of MAMP that became available a few days ago. It installs Apache 2, MySQL, PHP and PHPMyAdmin. Very easy to use!

Panic has upgraded their FTP client Transmit to version 3. Actually, I'm late on this as they did this about a week ago now, and there is already a 3.01 out. 3 introduces some great improvements over version 2 including the ability to:

• navigate servers in column view
• connect to WebDAV servers (including iDisk)
• use a tabbed interface to manage multiple servers in a single window
• have a sidebar-like interface to maintain different "favorites" for each connection

If you don't have a FTP client of choice right now or are looking for something new, you really should check out Transmit. It's the best available for the macintosh in my opinion and version 3 just separates it further from the competition.

A ZDNet story about the brewing fight over internet forms which may lead to a battle of standards that make us reminisce about the simple days when it was Microsoft vs everybody else. There's at least three different camps ready to start promoting their own "standards" including Macromedia's new Flash forms that are a part of CF 7. This could be ugly.

When it comes to Macromedia applications, Dreamweaver and Flash are the well-knowns with ColdFusion gaining in popularity. Much less talked about is their great image-editing program Fireworks. It surprises me how many people do most of their web image editing in big programs like Photoshop. Photoshop is a great tool and the best tool for doing many things, but I think it's often not the most effective tool for creating quick and simple graphics. Switchboard has a short writeup on Fireworks making this point.

Here's one of the sharpest personal sites I've seen for a while. Very nice.

This is the MOST overlooked element, in my opinion, when it comes to creating a web site. People want to focus on the visual part of it but spend relatively little time on the most important part of the site -- the content. Asterisk discusses this...

P-P-P-PowerBook and the Billy Graham Special Edition iPod

Two articles: One from yesterday and one from today.

From MacWorld: A dangerous spoofing security hole has been found in almost every browser on the market -- except one. Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera and Netscape all suffer from the "moderately critical" vulnerability that allows the spoofing of address bar URLs and SSL certificates, but, incredibly Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer gets a clean bill of health.

I just saw a commercial on the TV for the new MSN Search. The commercial was cooler than the search is. In some ways, the new Microsoft vs Google battle reminds me of the longtime Microsoft vs Apple contest. Today's release of Google Maps elicits a response that is not uncommon for Google "applications". They are incredible. They obviously have very smart people there creating applications that actually make the web better. Microsoft on the other hand, continues to release product after product that is just enough to keep people from leaving. Don't want to leave the MSN home page to perform a search? We'll give you a search that's good enough. Think some of those servers are pretty robust? We'll give you one that's good enough. Considering a different operating system? Don't switch. We'll keep giving you just enough to hold on to you. Microsoft is all about the bottom line and rarely does anything that makes one say "wow!". Windows XP's "Luna" interface, at first made me say "wow", but after a short time you realize that it's just a prettier face on the same windows. Google, like Apple and many other companies continue to release new products that completely change the ways people do things while Microsoft sits back and watches for the next thing they will need to provide to hold on.

Google, in their labs area, has released Google Maps. These maps are incredible.

CNN is not podcasting, but has an article about it.

The Red Sox' Curt Schilling in response to the Patriots super bowl victory last night: "They're the Yankees of the NFL, but without being greedy bastards."

Macromedia's ColdFusion 7 is out! It bring flash-based forms and display tables, printable reports (flashpaper) and many performance enhancements. I can't wait to start using it! Learn more at http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/

Here's an interesting article at sfgate.com reopening the mac vs win debate (as if it was ever closed).

Wired published an article about employees with iPods at Microsoft's campus. Some are having to start sneaking around with them by not using the easy-to-identify white earbuds.

In a competition to create the best iPod accessory out of an Altoids can, a set of speakers won. See the winner and learn to make it yourself at Readymademag.com

O'Reilly is publishing a new book called Don't Click on the Blue E! in March to help frustrated WinIE users make the switch to Firefox.

Firefox extensions are fun and their getting better. PC Magazine reviews the "top 15".

Extreme tech has posted a new article detailing the current available browsing alternatives to WinIE.

Digital-web magazine has published a story called The Four Best Web Design Books You May Have Missed. Included are Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing With Web Standards, June Cohen's Unusually Useful Web Book, and a book I don't have by Eric T. Peterson titled Web Analytics Demystified. With our web statistics software recently upgraded at work, I am particularly interested in this topic right now. Looks like I'll be visiting Amazon soon...

Microsoft has released their new search engine: an updated MSN search. The search, which is supposed to be faster than Google, has in my opinion a terrible interface once you get past the search screen and according to some who have used it, poor search results. Of the newer generation of search engines that are competing with Google, the one that intrigues me most is Amazon's A9. Still, with all of these new options available, I still have found no reason to stop using Google.

Skype has released version 1.0 for the macintosh (along with version 1.0 for Linux and Pocket PC, and version 1.1 for Windows).

I am once again back to Panther (Mac OS 10.3) on my home computer after, what was a pretty successful couple of weeks using Tiger (Mac OS 10.4), I allowed it to upgrade and it broke Audio Hijack Pro. Having the choice of staying with Tiger or having AHP, I reverted back to Panther.