Firefox Download Day

Simon Schoeters <a href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/" title="Firefox Download Day 2008"><img src="/images/firefoxdownloadday.png" alt="Firefox Download Day 2008 badge" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em;" /></a> I'm a Mac user and ever since Leopard is out I switched back to Safari. Admitted, it wasn't and still isn't the best browser out there but it does the job and is still the fasted solution on my old Powerbook. While I use Safari for my daily browsing I still keep a copy of Firefox for web development stuff. I just can't miss the <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60" title="Firefox Web Developer extension" class="ext">Web Developer</a> toolbar or <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843" title="Firefox Firebug extension" class="ext">Firebug</a> extensions! Why all this advertising for Firefox? Well, it's <a href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/" title="Firefox Download Day 2008" class="ext">Firefox Download Day 2008</a> today and they need all the support they can get to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours. The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is <abbr title="2008-06-17T10:00:00-08">June 17, 2008 at 10 AM</abbr> but that's <abbr title="Pacific Standard Time">PST</abbr> or San Francisco time. So in Belgium the Firefox Download Day will start at <abbr title="2008-06-17T10:00:00+1">7 PM</abbr>. Check this time in <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=6&day=17&year=2008&hour=10&min=0&sec=0&p1=224&sort=1" title="June 17, 2008 at 10 AM in your time zone" class="ext">your time zone</a>. Firefox is a free download for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, but I didn't need to tell you that. Update: Mozilla's CEO <a class="url fn ext" href="http://john.jubjubs.net/">John Lilly</a>Mozilla Corporation posted an <a href="http://john.jubjubs.net/2008/06/18/firefox-3s-first-24-hours/" title="Firefox 3's First 24 Hours" class="ext">update</a> on the Firefox Download Day. Firefox 3 was downloaded 8 million times in its first 24 hours. At its peak, the server was sending out Firefox 3 copies at 17,000 downloads per minute! He also states that Firefox market share has grown to about 4%, an impressive number 24 hours after the release.

2008-06-17T17:44:19+02:00

firefox-download-day Firefox Download Day

2009-02-21T22:10:14+01:00

Simon Schoeters Today another colleague of mine got himeself an iMac. After a sleepless night he is looking for some extra software so I took a look in my Applications folder and here is my list of most useful Mac OS X apps. The ones with a &hearts; are the ones I need, the others are great applications I don't need evey day or the ones I download again next time I need them for a specific task. <ul>  <li><a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/" title="Photoshop, still the major image editor" class="ext">Adobe Photoshop</a> &hearts; is the image editor, no questions asked. Tried numerous alternatives from Pixelmator to GIMP but I keep going back to Photoshop.</li> <li><a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/" title="Photo editing with Lightroom" class="ext">Adobe Photoshop Lightroom</a> &hearts; a must have if you regularly edit photos or shoot in RAW.</li>  <li><a href="http://www.macromates.com/" title="The missing editor for Mac OS X" class="ext">TextMate</a> &hearts; is an editor that combines the power of command line editing with a nice <abbr title="Graphical User Interface">GUI</abbr> wrapped around it.</li>  <li><a href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/" title="Firefox, a great development browser" class="ext">Firefox</a> &hearts; as development browser. I use Safari for my daily browsing stuff but the Firefox extensions make it indispensable for web development.</li> <li><a href="http://www.acquisitionx.com/" title="Aquisition X, a peer-to-peer file sharing program" class="ext">Aquisition X</a> a peer-to-peer file sharing program which connects to Gnutella and BitTorrent networks.</li> <li><a href="http://www.adiumx.com/" title="Adium X, the chat client for Mac" class="ext">Adium X</a> &hearts; is a free and open source instant messaging application that can connect to <abbr title="AOL Instant Messenger">AIM</abbr>, <abbr title="The Microsoft Network">MSN</abbr>, Jabber, Facebook, GTalk and more.</li> <li><a href="http://www.skype.com/" title="VoIP with Skype" class="ext">Skype</a> &hearts; makes calls from your computer - free to other people on Skype and cheap to phones and mobiles around the world.</li> <li><a href="http://www.transmissionbt.com/" title="Transmission, a simple, lightweight BitTorrent client" class="ext">Transmission</a> is a fast, easy, and free BitTorrent client with a focus on being lightweight yet feature-filled.</li> <li><a href="http://www.panic.com/transmit/" title="Transmit, a great FTP client" class="ext">Transmit</a> &hearts; is still the best FTP program for Mac OS X in my opinion. It supports Amazon S3, iDisk, WebDAV, <abbr title="File Transfer Protocol">FTP</abbr>, <abbr title="Secure File Transfer Protocol">SFTP</abbr>, <abbr title="Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer">TLS/SSL</abbr>.</li> <li><a href="http://www.spanningsync.com/" title="Sync iCal and Google Calendar" class="ext">Spanning Sync</a> &hearts; syncs your iCal with Google Calendar on a scheduled basis.</li>  <li><a href="http://www.handbrake.fr/" title="DVD to MPEG-4 converter" class="ext">Handbrake</a> is a free and open source multithreaded <abbr title="Digital Versatile Disc">DVD</abbr> to <abbr title="Moving Picture Experts Group">MPEG</abbr>-4 converter.</li> <li><a href="http://www.isquint.org/" title=" iPod or iPhone video conversion" class="ext">iSquint</a> is free movie converter from numerous movie formats to iPod, iPhone and Apple TV compatible formats.</li>  <li><a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/" title="VLC, the ‘play all’ media player" class="ext">VLC Media Player</a> &hearts; plays all the more obscure movie formats QuickTime doesn't know about.</li> <li>With <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx" title="Play Windows Media files in your QuickTime player" class="ext">Flip4Mac</a> &hearts; you can play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime player and view these files in your browser.</li> <li><a href="http://www.araelium.com/screenflick/" title="Screen capturing with Screenflick" class="ext">Screenflick</a> &hearts; is a screen capturing app that can record portions of the screen and record audio simultaneous from microphones and the system audio.</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.zattoo.com/ " title="Zattoo is real TV on your PC" class="ext">Zattoo</a> free real streaming TV. For Belgium it shows VT4, VIJFtv and La Une.</li>  <li><a href="http://www.versionsapp.com/" title="Versions, a Subversion client" class="ext">Versions</a> &hearts; is still in beta and it already replaced my command line <abbr title="Subversion">SVN</abbr> skills or how a GUI can make your life easier.</li>  <li><a href="http://www.blacktree.com/quicksilver" title="Quicksilver application and task launcher" class="ext">Quicksilver</a> is a fantastic launcher I used to start applications with a simple shortcut but Spotlight kind of replaced it. Still, it's much more powerfull and has loads of plug-ins.</li> <li><a href="http://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/" title="Geocoding for the Mac" class="ext">HoudaGeo</a> &hearts; is a one-stop photo geo coding application which can read <abbr title="Global Positioning System">GPS</abbr> log files or use Google Maps to add geographic coordinates to your photos.</li> <li><a href="http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html" title="The Unarchiver, a BOMArchiveHelper replacement" class="ext">The Unarchiver</a> &hearts; is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. It supports Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats.</li> <li><a href="http://www.barebones.com/products/Yojimbo/" title="Yojimbo, an unstructured information organizer" class="ext">Yojimbo</a> &hearts; is an information organizer to store unstructured information like password, notes, etc. Use it to keep website payment confirmations, flight numbers, passwords, code snippets and others but looking for a free alternative here.</li> <li><a href="http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/" title="Parallels, run Windows, Linux and Mac OS X side by side">Parallels</a> is a OS virtualization tool that let's you run Windows or Linux on your Mac side by side.</li> <li><a href="http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/" title="Caffeine, keep your Mac awake" class="ext">Caffeine</a> &hearts; is a tiny program that puts an icon your your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Greet free app to keep around.</li> <li><a href="http://www.macports.org/" title="Software package manager MacPorts" class="ext">MacPorts</a> is a software package manager for Mac OS X, not the tool for everyone but a great help if you need to install UNIX software from time to time and don't like the ‘configure, make, make’ install way. Free, of course.</li> </ul> A few duplicates or applications that do more or less the same things as the ones above but for free. <ul> <li><a href="http://cabos.sourceforge.jp/" title="Cabos, a peer-to-peer file sharing program" class="ext">Cabos</a> &hearts; is a free open source alternative for Aquisition X. The <abbr title="User Interface">UI</abbr> doesn't look as good but hey, it's free.</li> <li><a href="http://www.cyberduck.ch/" title="Cyberduck, a free FTP app" class="ext">Cyberduck</a> is a free and open source alternative for Transmit. It supports FTP, SFTP, WebDAV & Amazon S3. Again, the UI is the trade of but offers great value for, well, no money.</li> </ul>

2008-07-18T14:31:08+02:00

mac-apps-for-switchers Mac apps for switchers

2008-10-10T21:22:10+02:00

Simon Schoeters Today <a href="http://labs.mozilla.com/" title="Mozilla Labs" class="ext">Mozilla Labs</a> announced <a href="http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/10/introducing-geode/" title="Introducing Geode @ Mozilla Labs" class="ext">Geode</a>. Mozilla plans to add it in a future version of Firefox but today it's already available as an add-on. It adds the ability for a website to request your location. You can than optionally choose to send your exact location, neighborhood or city to that site. <img src="/images/geode.png" alt="Geode screenshot" /> I have been waiting for this to come out, especially after Aza Raskin's <a href="http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-geolocation-js-library/" title="Geolocation Redux and a JS Library @ Aza's Thoughts" class="ext">conceptual post</a>. The interface is intuitive (although I preferred Aza's somewhat more graphical version). I tried the plugin on the Geode <a href="http://labs.mozilla.com/geode_welcome/" title="Geode sample page" class="ext">sample page</a> and it does what it should do. Well - that's to say - it showed my location exactly as promised, the same way my iPhone does. Geode probably uses the <a href="http://www.skyhookwireless.com/" class="ext">Skyhook</a> database (like the iPhone) to determine the location based on the <abbr title="Wireless Fidelity">Wi-Fi</abbr> access points it can ‘see’. This is a bit of a problem as the Skyhook coverage in Europe is bad and as such not very useful (yet). Skyhook is extending its coverage in Europe and Mozilla is looking for other providers as well so it may get better over time. <blockquote cite="http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/10/introducing-geode/">We're still working out the specifics, but we're hoping that location will be provided by one or more user selectable service providers and methods, e.g. GPS-based, WiFi-based, manual entry, etc.</blockquote> Why would you need this? Mozilla gives the same old example of finding a restaurant near your location by ‘pulling out you laptop’. I don't think people ‘pull‘ out their laptops that easily (that's up the the iPhones and BlackBerrys) but I can see the movie theatre showing the schedule for the nearest complex at the top of the list or Google giving a higher score to search results nearby. I suppose we'll even see location aware ads with the promotions of the closest supermarket.

2008-10-08T00:23:59+02:00

welcome-geode Welcome Geode

2008-10-08T00:25:53+02:00