Dropzone is an application by Aptonic which I reviewed back in November here, and it was quite a positive review. I was impressed by the app, which was (is) a small utility that sits in the dock and enables you to perform many actions by simply activating them via drag & drop. Want to share a link? Drag it from Safari onto the Dropzone icon and boom, it shortens the URL using bit.ly and it automatically places it in the clipboard. With this same process you can install applications by dragging the original .dmg file, mount and unmount external hard drives, set desktop pictures and more. It’s extensible, it’s magical.
TextExpander Goes 3.0 - Adds Native Dropbox Support, Leaves Prefpane Format
TextExpander, the much popular utility from SmileOnMyMac that enables you to save a lot of time by assigning abbreviations to ferquently used text and images, has been updated to the 3.0 version with tons of new stuff.
First, the application is no longer a preference pane and comes in the usual .app bundle. I don’t know what’s the thought behind this, perhaps the developers wanted to give it a more “native” feeling. Alongside with the new application format, TextExpander 3 adds support for automatic Dropbox backups and sharing of snippets in the same local network; I still have to test whether this actually works with the iPhone though.
Also, with TE running in the menubar you can now search for snippets right from the icon and do some other things like edit the last expanded snippet. Last, TE 3.0 introduces support for global keyboard shortcut, meaning that you can assign a shortcut for entering new Snippets (basically, a quick entry panel) and invoke it everytime you want to add some text to your collection.
A regular license of TextExpander 3.x comes at $ 34.95, but if your purchased it after November 1, 2009 you can have it right in your Applications folder for free. Previous users can purchase a license saving $15.
Nice update.
Apple’s Long History of Lousy First Reviews
“As the Wall Street Journal reported, the mouse was considered a miss: “Useless,” said Charles L. Mauro, president of an engineering firm. “It isn’t all that easy to learn,” said Amy Wohl, president of a corporate consultancy. “I think it’s awkward,” added Clem Labine, a newspaper publisher. “Since it doesn’t get you away from the keyboard altogether, why go back and forth?”
The Mozilla & Metalab Fiasco
I guess they’re gonna publish a statement tomorrow saying that you can’t blame inspiration. And of course, we won’t believe that.
But you know, worst part is Mozilla could have used some copy for Firefox - next time choose wisely which project to rip off for.
AgileWeb Solutions Posts New Mockups of 1Password for iPad
“One of the most interesting things about developing our iPad version is that we’re learning new ways to solve problems and make 1Password easier to use, but not just for the iPad. Dan says that they’ve discovered a lot so far that they want to bring back to our Mac and iPhone versions, which means all of our users will benefit from our iPad development, even if they never get an iPad.”
Apple Rolls Out 3.2 SDK Beta 4 [UPDATING]
Apple has updated the 3.2 SDK to the beta 4 version. Available here.
Expect updates about it soon in this post.
UPDATE: We’ve got an email from a developer who’s already testing the new beta. Seems like the Camera tab is no longer there in Photos.app. I think we now have a pretty clear confirmation about the lack of camera in the iPad.
UPDATE 2. The Camera tab hasn’t completely disappeared, it’s there when you connect an external memory with photos.
UPDATE 3: The Add Bookmark button works fine now:
Cisco Announces New Routers That Could Boost AT&T Service
“These new routers could mean big news to customers like AT&T who could use them as the backbone of their landline and cellular data services to better serve their customers. This in turn could mean that areas with slow-to-non-existent cellular data (i.e. SF, LA, NY etc.) could see a boost in network reliability. “
Scrup, Free and Open Source Alternative to Tinygrab and Droplr
Sharing picture across the internet could be a real problem sometimes. Not because there’s a lack of tools to do it, no - that is the real problem: there are too many apps that enable you to take a screenshot and upload it somewhere, and people don’t know anymore which app to use. We reviewed apps such as Tinygrab and Droplr before, but the one we’re talking about today is quite awesome and surely different from those ones.
Scrup by Rasmus Andersson (designer at Spotify) is simple and open source utility that, once installed and running on your Mac, can upload screenshots to your own webserver and automatically paste the url into the clipboard for easy sharing. You just have to upload a .php file to your server, insert some credentials in the Preferences of the app and you’ll be all set. Scrup runs in the menubar, it shows nice thumbnail previews of your “scrups” together with date and time.
It works just as good as many other paid and famous apps. Scrup is free and available over at GitHub’s official project page here. Also, be sure to check out Django Scrup, a django-based web receiver for Scrup that forwards the screenshots to Amazon S3.
Being Flash Free
Interesting post over at Cocoia’s blog. It’s true, uninstalling flash precludes you to a lot of content on the current web - so you keep it installed on your computer.
And that’s exactly Adobe’s strongest point in why you shouldn’t uninstall Flash.