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Chrome 19 Syncs Open Tabs Across Computers and Smartphones→

Chrome 19 Syncs Open Tabs Across Computers and Smartphones

Google Chrome 19: Tab Sync

Google Chrome 19: Tab Sync

From the Google Chrome blog:

With today’s Stable release of Chrome, you can. When you’re signed in to Chrome, your open tabs are synced across all your devices, so you can quickly access them from the “Other devices” menu on the New Tab page. If you’ve got Chrome for Android Beta, you can open the same recipe tab right on your phone when you run out to the store for more ingredients. The back and forward buttons will even work, so you can pick up browsing right where you left off.

Signing into Google Chrome synced items such as your bookmarks in the past, but this release brings us closer to the continuity many of wish for with our web browsers: tab syncing between our devices. Google Chrome should automatically update in the background, but you can visit About Google Chrome in the wrench menu to manually update to the latest stable version. Chrome 19 is available today, while the tab sync feature itself is rolling out over the coming weeks.

Also updated in the latest version of Google Chrome is the apps Settings. The new Settings view makes seeing history and clearing out browsing data a cinch by moving them to the first menu. The Extensions sub-menu has pretty much stayed the same, but the Settings sub-menu now contains an expansive list of options you can use to set how Chrome tracks privacy data and how Google Chrome will connect to the Internet (this is where you’ll make Chrome your default browser as well). The options themselves aren’t new, but rather the presentation has been updated to show you general preferences first, while making advanced options a simple extension of the more commonly used browser settings.

In other Chrome related news, Google could be gearing up to release their web browser on iOS according to a tidbit found by Macgasm. If gushing over this mockup was any indication, we’ve been wishing for Chrome to land on iOS devices for a long time now. While Google hasn’t officially announced Chrome for iOS (we’re talking mere speculation), iOS devices may soon be able to take advantage of the tab syncing that was introduced in today’s update.

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The iPad Is The Future Of Education

For the past years, Apple has been showcasing the educational advantages of devices like Macs, iPhones and iPods on its Apple in Education website. Since the introduction of the iPad in 2010, however, the company has been making an effort to position the device as the best tool now available to teachers and students to improve the quality of education and level of engagement. The dedicated iPad in Education webpage showcases recent moves by Apple such as iBooks Textbooks and the iTunes U iOS app.

While we have covered schools and educational institutions adopting iPads in the past, the latest profile posted by Apple today on their UK website is quite possibly the best example of iPad in education to date. Those of you who have been following the progress of iPad deployment in schools may remember Fraser Speirs’ iPad Project, which made headlines throughout 2011 as it was the first one-to-one iPad deployment to every people in a school. Speirs documented the process of giving an iPad to every teacher and student at Cedars School of Excellence (Scotland) on his personal website, and today Apple has posted a video profile showing how “Cedars students boost learning with iPad”.

The full video is available here, and it shows teachers and kids using the iPad as a modern, regular tool in their daily lives that has improved the way they create and share content of any kind. One particular segment towards the end of the video struck a chord with me:

I don’t think we could ever go back from where we are right now with the iPad. The only way’s really forward – to more access to knowledge, more empowerment, more creativity…all these things in the classroom”.

As I wrote before, Apple’s education strategy will be interesting to follow. Actually seeing kids and teachers who have been using the iPad as a real substitute for and enhancement over old learning tools for over a year now, however, reminds me that, no matter Apple’s strategy as a company, software is the future of education, and the iPad is giving our kids a bit of that future today.

Detractors of the iPad as a learning tool point at the management required by connected devices to ensure that, in the classroom, the possibilities offered by the Internet don’t get in the way of teachers’ requirements and students’ attention. Fortunately, this is something Apple has been addressing since day one, and that has recently improved with more tools.

Every major change in our society and culture will be awarded an equal amount of optimism and skepticism. As someone who’s been lucky enough to find his dream job in the possibilities offered by the Internet and software, I tend to see skepticism as a challenge, rather than a roadblock. People like Fraser Speirs are proving that, beyond analysts and blog posts, a better education for our kids is possible, today, every day, with a device that’s making kids eager to learn.

Free of the constraints of paper and old, disconnected learning material, the iPad brings new challenges and practical issues to overcome. With time, patience, and willingness to look past rules established in societies different than ours, we must make sure these devices we have built and ecosystems we have nurtured won’t be remembered for Angry Birds, because among other things, our kids deserve a better, modern education. And we have to start building it today.

Perian to Retire After a Final Update→

Perian to Retire After a Final Update

From the Perian homepage:

We began the Perian project over 6 years ago. We wanted to simplify viewing your content. Our team has attained that goal and with that in mind, Perian will be retired soon. Our stewardship has been a blast but it’s time for all of us to move on.

When I first purchased my Mac, Perian was one of the must-have applications that should’ve been installed as part of your initial setup alongside Quicksilver, MacFUSE, and Growl. Perian, the can-play-anything System Preferences drop-in, was considered essential for anyone with folders of DivX files (even though it could play so much more). While Perian’s developers are dropping support for the over six year old product, the OS X community will have the chance to maintain the product once Perian’s source code is shared after development ends.

Starting 90 days after the final Perian release, we will no longer provide support. We’ll wrap up our loose ends, pack up our bags, and move on to new and exciting projects.

Perian’s developers are asking that the community step forward to handle support requests, and they are directing new users to download Niceplayer as an alternative. Perian should continue to work on Lion as time permits, but its compatibility with Mountain Lion is undetermined. The source code will be posted to Google Code or GitHub soon for developers to learn from. If developers are interested in maintaining Perian, the #perian IRC room on irc.freenode.net will provide a hub where developers can communicate, ask questions, and get in contact with the founders. As it stands right now, Perian’s development will end within the next few months.

 

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Compare Timezones On The Go With Timelanes

When I ask myself what timezone a friend (or more recently, colleague) lives in, I fire up the Clocks app on my iPhone or Every Time Zone when I’m on my Mac. In many cases, this needs quite some time and disrupts my workflow; I need to go back to my mail or calendar or any other situation which required this knowledge (meetings, mails or projects) and apply the time differences to them. Yesterday, I stumbled upon Timelanes by B-ReelProducts, immediately bought it, and from time to time while trying it out, I remembered some awkward situations in which I could have needed exactly this app to enhance my workflow.

Timelanes basically is Every Time Zone on the go — with some handy extras and a different, but in no way worse UI. When launching it for the first time, the app automatically locates your current timezone and displays it styled as a horizontal lane. This way, it centralizes your chosen hour of the day, plus indicating the exact current time with a small clock indicator. At the same time, you can easily switch between the days or come back to the current time using the arrows and the clock button at the center of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, or you can scroll horizontally until you reach the exact point in time you need (Timelanes works both in portrait and landscape mode).

From here, comparing timezones and times is just two taps away. Using the plus button, you can search for any city in the world — not just those standard “indicating” cities like NYC or Mumbai — and add them to your lanes. Those behind your current timezone are displayed above, those ahead are arranged below it. Tap the weekday information and it will change to the actual date, so you can see when the new day begins in every timezone; swipe one, and you can delete them again. Here lays a small and more or less the only design flaw of the app: the edges of the delete button are scruffy and look pretty ugly in my opinion. Read more

Bloomberg: Apple Announcing Thinner MacBook Pro at WWDC→

Bloomberg: Apple Announcing Thinner MacBook Pro at WWDC

Following today’s report from The Wall Street Journal about new iCloud features set to be announced at the upcoming WWDC in June, Bloomberg has weighed in confirming a rumor posted today by 9to5Mac about the company’s new MacBook Pro line.

The MacBook Pro machines, to be unveiled at Apple’s annual developers conference starting June 11, also will feature high- definition screens like those on the iPhone and iPad, as well as flash memory to cut startup times and extend battery life, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been made public.

According to Bloomberg, Apple may also announce the release of the next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, at WWDC. Previously, Apple had simply confirmed the desktop OS upgrade would be coming “late summer”, without specifying a release date. The publication also suggests Ivy Bridge chips from Intel will be used, as previously reported. Retina displays for Macs is something Apple has been experimenting with in software releases for quite some time now, too, albeit such hardware implementation will require app and website developers to update their graphics for the new screens.

As many are speculating, two distinct reports about WWDC in one day seem to suggest a “controlled leak” by Apple to set expectations for the event, something the company did in the past. Prior to the iPhone 4S’ announcement, for instance, The Wall Street Journal pinpointed the device’s release timeframe and carrier support in the US, a move that several blogs connected to a “controlled leak” amidst rampant rumors during the summer. Apple itself went on the record saying those rumors negatively impacted the iPhone’s performances during the quarter.

WWDC ‘12 kicks off in San Francisco on June 11.

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Simple: Online And Mobile Banking With Style

New services providing financial management usually evoke doubtful feelings within us, as we tend to rely on big, long-time running companies with a good reputation rather than small competitors new to the game. More or less exactly two years ago, in May 2010, Alex Payne joined and co-founded a company called BankSimple with the imagination of a bank without fees, caring for support and responsible money treatment — plus a love for good design and usability concerning its user-end products. It already sounded like an ambitious goal the day he published his announcement post.

Two years later, his company, Simple, has grown into a still small, innovative and transparent financial service for US-residents who own a social security number, a computer, and an iPhone. It’s a combination of “classic” credit card payment and modern online banking. Read more

WSJ: iCloud Getting Photo Sharing and Commenting, Video Syncing at WWDC→

WSJ: iCloud Getting Photo Sharing, Commenting, Video Syncing at WWDC

A new report by The Wall Street Journals claims Apple will be announcing a series of new features for iCloud at WWDC, including a revamped photo sharing system with support for user comments.

The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

The full report is available (behind paywall) at The Wall Street Journal. The publication also confirms iCloud.com will be getting support for Notes and Reminders web apps, as we previously detailed based on a “leaked” beta version of the service.

However, to say that “users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream” is incorrect. A feature of iPhoto for iOS called “Journals” and released in early March allows users to build sets of photos and share them publicly with a URL through iCloud. These Journals even support additional graphics such as backgrounds, text captions, and they can be viewed in any browser, allowing users to zoom in on single photos and download them. Here is an example of iCloud Journal.

Whilst it would make sense for Apple to simplify iCloud photo sharing and allow easier commenting especially from mobile devices, Photo Stream isn’t the only option to “store one set of photos”. Journals are limited to iPhoto, which is a separate app sold on the App Store that doesn’t come pre-installed on iOS devices, but they certainly show that Apple has been experimenting with iCloud-based public sharing for quite some time, even offering an API to developers for that (albeit limited to storage, with no display options as the WSJ implies here). With MobileMe approaching its deadline of June 30, it’s also worth keeping in mind that Apple’s existing solution to store and share photos, MobileMe Gallery, will stop functioning alongside the service, so it wouldn’t be a surprise for Apple to offer an alternative.

Apple’s WWDC is scheduled to kick off in San Francisco on June 11. Developers have been asking for more tools to integrate their apps with iCloud, and it’s very likely that Apple will announce additions to the service, as well as offer previews of iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion at its upcoming developer event.

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Sparrow 1.2 for iPhone Brings Landscape Support, Labels Management

Sparrow 1.1 brought minor enhancements to the best alternative email client for iPhone, including a built-in browser and a Send & Archive option. Sparrow 1.2, released today, adds much-requested support for landscape mode to an email app that, in this new version, also lets you manage email labels and folders.

I have been testing Sparrow 1.2, and while I am no fan of landscape mode on iOS (I never use such functionality on the iPhone), I recognize how some users are going to perform some serious typing for their email replies thanks to Sparrow 1.2. The whole compose interface has been updated to take advantage of the different orientation.

Two features that I have been enjoying in Sparrow 1.2 are proper label/folder management, and improved navigation between messages. The latter brings a nicer, cleaner design to the message “preview” you get when pulling a message up to reveal the next one. Folder/label management, on the other hand, now lets Sparrow directly create, edit, and delete labels or folders without leaving the app to use a web interface or desktop client.

I have tested the feature with Gmail (both regular and Google Apps accounts) and iCloud, and I was pleased to see Sparrow differentiated visually between labels (for Gmail) and folders (for iCloud mail). Because label management has been implemented in the mid panel – the one Sparrow uses to list an account’s mailboxes – you won’t be able to swipe-to-delete; instead, management has been assigned to a new “Edit” button that shows up in the Folders or Labels sections of a single account.

Meanwhile, the Sparrow team has also confirmed that Apple won’t allow them to implement push notifications through the VoIP framework, as they did in early betas of the app. Sparrow will have to build notification support on the server’s side, and the developers confirm this will require a yearly subscription for Sparrow users willing to use push notifications. Previously, the Sparrow developers said push support would be coming “with or without Apple”.

With proper label management, landscape mode, localization in 9 additional languages, and bug fixes, Sparrow for iPhone continues its march towards becoming the best email client for iPhone. You can find Sparrow 1.2 on the App Store today.

Review: World Atlas For iPhone

Good design certainly is not all to care about. Sometimes, a nifty UI can solve many problems or even hide certain failures in functionality. But it can be as perfect and unique as conceivable — if a product doesn’t work at all, good design cannot change that. Unfortunately, I came across a very good example for this: World Atlas by Technoplus. I only tested the iPhone version, so I cannot tell anything about the usability of the separately sold iPad app yet. But on the iPhone, it’s easy to sum up World Atlas as a well-designed, yet pretty useless app, coded without real care for good UX and features. Read more