My favorite blogging client has now been revved to version 2. I’ve been using MarsEdit ever since original developer Brent Simmons rolled out the 1.0 product, and I’ve been very happy with it. A couple of months ago, I began beta-testing new owner Daniel Jalkut’s upgrade of the client, and wow, was I ever blown away. Brent never really had the time to devote to MarsEdit, what with the popularity of NetNewsWire, and Daniel has definitely taken MarsEdit to the next level.
One thing I’ve noticed, being on the beta test lists of a few independent and small-shop Mac developers, is the level of responsiveness from those developers. You’re talking directly with the individual responsible for the product, not some project manager or mid-level flunky who really doesn’t get what’s going on with the application. Daniel is no exception, encouraging great participation from those on the beta list, and he always maintains a professional, and very friendly, attitude. It sounds like the the upgrade release is a hit so far, and no wonder, because MarsEdit 2 is a great product.
Great job, Daniel!
Tag: site
(The obvious answer is “Flash sucks, that’s why”.)
Brent Simmons:
We all know that the iPhone doesn’t include Flash. Various theories have been aired.
I have a theory that I haven’t heard yet: Flash wasn’t included because it crashes so much.
I detest Flash. It’s a resource hog, and there are very few Flash-based sites that are well designed to begin with. I hope Google moves YouTube to H.264 video for the “regular” Internet, not just for the iPhone’s access.
Roughly Drafted makes the case that the iPhone is a threat to Flash, as well as to Windows Media and Real. Why? Because H.264 is an standard video codec that doesn’t rely on a software processor, for one. In laymen’s terms, by using H.264, your system doesn’t have to work as hard, because it likely has a hardware processor capable of decoding H.264 without having to hit your general processing unit, which means you get more battery life, use less power, etc.
If you’re a content provider, you don’t have to worry about providing multiple video formats. You can simply output a single, MPEG-based H.264 video that you know users won’t have to have a plug-in for, like Flash, Windows Media, or Real. The other upside is that you don’t have to pay any licensing fees for those three formats, either. Sounds like a win-win to me.
[Wave of the phin to Lee for the Roughly Drafted link, via IM.]
I believe genealogy fascinates a lot of people. We’ve all thought about “Where did I come from?” Most of us have no memories of family beyond our grandparents, maybe our great-grandparents. (I was able to know two of my great-grandmothers, both on my dad’s side, as a child.)
I came across Geni through some random blog readings, and I started a family tree with myself, in the hope I can help my son understand our family history a bit when he gets older.
The cool thing about Geni is that as you add people to your tree, you can invite them to sign up for the site (it’s free, at least for now), and they can add to their own tree, which in turn adds to yours. Think of it as MySpace meets the family tree, social networking making genealogy more practical. After all, my dad knows a lot more about his grandparents and great-grandparents than I do, and he can add a lot more information himself that I might not even think of.
I won’t go in to the whole spiel, because why say what’s already been said? Suffice to say, postings of a certain nature will increase in frequency here, because they are no longer being posted there. Links which appeared in the side bar there will be appearing in the side bar here. Some of you won’t care, some of you will. That’s just the way it is.
I confess I’ve been sucked in to the world of Twitter. It’s kind of addictive, watching what folks like John Gruber, the Iconfactory boys, Maury McCown, and even Darth Vader, are up to.
I’d love to know if my friends have accounts, so I can add you as a friend to mine, and please feel free to add me as a friend to yours. Ping me via IM, drop me an e-mail, or leave a comment.
One cool thing Twitter did last week was they created a Macworld account. By adding this account as a friend, you could follow the postings of those at Macworld Expo as Steve announced the latest and greatest tech from our favorite fruit company. There were so many messages coming in to Twitter through AOL Instant Messenger that Twitter exceeded its allowable AIM traffic, and that service was unavailable for about a day. (To clarify, you couldn’t post to Twitter via AIM; Twitter and AIM were each unaffected.)
You can post to Twitter via your Twitter page, by instant message (Jabber or AIM), or by text message from your mobile phone. (Text message charges from your mobile provider apply, but there’s no charge from Twitter.) If you’re a Mac user, you can also use Maury McCown’s TwitterPost, or the just-released-today Twitterrific from those aforementioned boys at the Iconfactory. Both apps are freeware.
So the question remains, what are you doing?
I’d say something pithy like, “All the news you can use in one spot”, but for quite a few folks, it may not, in fact, be all the news they could use, and it may not include all of the news they may want to use. Be that as it may: The News Right Now.
TNRN is a news aggregator which combines “Old Media” with “The Blogs”, their titles, not mine. The sources are divided on the page, with the former being on top, and the latter on the bottom. There are preferences to switch this, and to even exclude one or the other from being displayed. Another preference to tweak is the displaying of news by the source, or by topic, by source being the default. These preferences are in handy drop-down menus at the top of the page.
In the Old Media wing, one can find the headlines from The Wall Street Journal, the AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, WSJ’s OpinionJournal, Philly’s Inquirer, the LA Times, the Washington Times, and a few others.
The Blogs range from Washington Monthly to The Corner (National Review), The American Prospect to Townhall.com, Eschaton and the Daily Kos to Instapundit and Hugh Hewitt. Joshua Micah Marshall, The Plank, Michelle Malkin, Power Line, and Ed Morrissey round out the featured bloggers.
There is no way to delete or add an individual news source or blog, but for a lot of folks who may engage several of these sites per day, The News Right Now is a good way to get an overview of the latest news from a single source.
Four years ago today, the first post appeared, and a new blog was born. I moved my blogging efforts from my first site to this one, and I’ve been here ever since. Well, this and another place or two.
My thanks to my small–very small–but loyal band of readers. You all should comment more!
As of today, Paul Stamatiou has been blogging for a year. Congrats, Stammy!
If you read this blog mainly through my news feed, please note that I’m now using FeedBurner to supply the site’s RSS feed. The old feed is still operational, and will remain so for a while, but I would like to discontinue it in the near future.
So in your news reader of choice, please update the Retrophisch news feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/retrophisch.
You can also click on the feed link on the main page, or the RSS button in Safari’s address bar, or that of your auto feed-detecting browser of choice.
Michael has announced that C-Command now has forums for all of its products.
I helped him do some testing with the forum boards–which means we spent about ten minutes on it–and if you’re a SpamSieve or DropDMG user, I hope to see you around the virtual water cooler.
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Messy networks.
Dear God in Heaven.
[Via Firewheel Design.]
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Just when I thought there was never going to be anything interesting on Yahoo’s corporate blog, they have races with toy babies triggered by the licking of lollipops.