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  • Performancing for Firefox – Double Post

    <…snip…>

    Update: Ok, it seems to work. It even lets you make double-posts real easy. 🙄 And categories do not seem to work.

  • Performancing for Firefox

    I’m giving Performancing for Firefox a go, because Asa thinks it’s ‘kick ass’. We’ll see about that!

    Already crashed one time. But whether that’s because of a combination of this blog-tool, SpellBound and/or my online banking transaction in one go. Maybe…

    By the way: This isn’t the only in-browser 3rd party blogging tool I’ve seen. In fact, Google’s Blogger Web Comments for Firefox extension does it as well. Albeit limited to Blogger.com only.

    So, run spell-check… (It doesn’t recognize Firefox…. ;-))
    Now, ‘Publish To: ThinkLemon

  • The Orange Icon, part 2

    Feed Icon Microsoft has decided. The feed indicator in IE 7 is still orange!
    Most surprisingly it’s the same one that Firefox has. Well, not so much of a surprise, because it was the Mozilla foundation who kindly ‘donated’ it:

    Thanks again to the Mozilla team for making the icon available and helping us do the right thing for all browser users.

    It’s a good thing there’s some in-browser ‘standardisation’ on the RSS/Atom/Feed front. But what about those orange XML/RSS/Atom chicklets everywhere? How about some standardisation there? Maybe in conjunction with the above mentioned icon? Like so? Feed Chicklet

  • Other december 9 surprises

    Besides the release leakage of GE for Mac.

    Del.icio.us take-over
    Like Yahoo! taking hold of del.icio.us. Just as LookSmart did with Furl.
    Update: The take-over sounds a little strange to me as Yahoo! was working on it’s own del.icio.us/Furl with their My Web 2.0 BETA. Which can save ‘personal’ pages and tag them. We’ll see where this goes…

    Portable Firefox
    Portable Firefox is ‘dead’, long live PortableApps.com. Great initiative John! 🙂
    Now if you ever did care to walk around with your browser, office suite, media player, image editor, OS, *whatever you want*, on a USB Stick? take a look at this site. Most of it is *geek* stuff, but it’s an interesting development nonetheless.
    BTW @John, did you ever have a chat with Bart Lagerweij? It seems to me you are both working in the same direction.

  • Google Earth Mac Beta

    Google Earth Beta After an evening of trying out the non-public beta of Google Earth for Mac OS X I must say… YES! Finally. 🙂
    I, and a lot of Mac owners, have been eager to run this piece of software on a Mac. And now we can. Not officially, because the download page at earth.google.com still mentions Apple Macintosh computers are not supported at this time (but we are working on it).

    And they definitely are working on it. See the screenshot below.

    Google Earth on Mac OS X

    All I can say right now, is:

    1. It works. On my iBook 12″ (Tiger inSideTM) I can spin and zoom the Globe quite happily without resorting to *hacks*, Virtual Desktop, Remote Desktops, etc.
    2. It’s buggy. It froze on me a couple o’ times. With all the options turned up, it hampers. A DirectX option on OS X???? Polygons are garbled. The app icons look like s… Images in popups don’t seem to work. And there’s probably more.
    3. It’s NOT finished. So it is not expected to work YET! DO NOT COMPLAIN it is a non-public beta that happened to leak. Otherwise Google would’ve made publicly available.
    4. It’s great. If you get motion-sickness too easily, don’t mess with the scroll-pad. 😉
    5. This apps Useragent is ‘GoogleEarthMac/LT3.1.0371.0’. So the ‘network link’ people know now.
    6. It’s a first for Google! As in: A first major software ‘leak’. A first major application on OS X (GMail Notifier was an excercise).
    7. Compatibility? You’ll probably need a current (hefty) Apple product with the latest OS (X) and patches. But we’ll know for sure once they release it.

    So how do YOU obtain a working version?

    You’ll have to wait a little longer! Google is working on it. How long? Maybe a few days or months.

    Update: It’s here. Go get it from Google!

    Sidenote: If you manage to install GE on a Mac. You may want to look at some spectacular impact craters on Earth’s surface. Download the kmz’s and open them in GE. Enjoy! 🙂

    Update: Stefan from go.ogleearth.com has been asked nicely by the Google people to take down the download links. He also has a more in-depth review of GE on Mac OS X. I haven’t gotten any comment from Google, yet.

  • Google Earth for Mac OS X around the corner…

    Or is it??? I’ve blogged about it before. Well, it was more a kind of ‘wishing out loud‘. But just yet the Google Earth fairy brought me a package. It looks, smells and tastes like a Mac app. Unfortunately I’m at work and my Mac is at home. So I cannot be sure.

    A quick look around the package which bears the version number 3.1.0371.0 looks genuine enough. Whether somebody is pulling a prank, tries to make my Mac a bot or gave me an early Christmas gift I cannot tell at this point. Still have to finish off half a days work, rush home, eat and then, only then, start her up. 🙁
    Think I’ll fake an upcoming flu. *cough* 😉

    AppleInsider has the scoop (and the screenshot) to back this up. All I can say: “I’ll get back on this…” Can’t wait to get home.

    Note: No official word from Google yet.

    Update (23:00 GMT+1): Well, it works! 🙂

  • No Christmas for Sony

    They have been very naughty this year 👿

    No Xmas for Sony

    What you say? BoingBoing started an online banner protest I happen to agree with. 🙂
    Read all about the Sony DRM debacle on Mark Russinovich’s blog.

    There, I’ve done my good deed this year. Now can I have a PlayStation XBox 360?

  • Firefox 1.5 released

    YES!!! The long awaited sequel is here. Get the official update of Firefox. It’s available on Windows, OS X, Linux and some 20 odd language versions. 20 times 3 makes 60, not? See all versions.

    This release comes with a revamped preference panel, tabbed browsing enhancements, loads of bugfixes, faster back- and forward, … in short it just got better. How much, you’ll have to find out yourself.

    BUT If you plan to upgrade, please make sure none of your critical extensions break. If they do, persuade the original extension creator to fix his/her extension ASAP. Or take a look at the Mozilla Quality post: “Some help testing Extensions for Firefox 1.5“.
    Personally, the only extension that hasn’t been updated for me, are the Furl Tools.

    And as of this release the new mozilla.com site is live as well. (As opposed to the former .org one)

    On a sidenote: I expect the Portable Firefox version to be released very soon.

    Go Get It!

    Update: This final release seems to have the same timestamp of FF RC3. Which some of us have been running since November 11th. I must admit, I have not run into issues since. Some extensions reserved.
    And it seems mozilla.com is favoured over mozilla.org. I see former links pointing to .org redirected to the .com.

  • Animated shorts

    I love ’em! Especially the CGI kind. Having some experience with 3D apps, I know how time- and resource-consuming it is to make a perfect animation. Not to mention the skills needed.
    (Allright, stop-animation with clay is harder. Sorry Gromit. But I hear … they’re also turning to computers to speed up the workflow. Heresy, I say! ;-))

    Anyway, there is a wealth of demo-reels and animated shorts to be found on the web. So let’s start with a household name in computer generated images: Blur Studio. Here’s their animated short: Rockfish.

    Rockfish Still by Blur

    Synopsis: ‘Rex Hunt’ meets ‘Tremors’.
    View the short: Large version / Small version (Quicktime required)

  • {Canvas} demo

    If you’re viewing this post with a release candidate of Firefox 1.5, take a look at the below <canvas> demo.

    Canvascape - 3D Walker

    For now, you can only walk through a maze from a first person perspective. But it runs smooth and looks pretty impressive.

    See the “3D Walker” demo on Canvascape

    PS: It is rumored to work on Safari too, but I haven’t tried it yet. Confirmed. The demo works fine on Safari (2).

    Small update: It appears to be a bad idea to use (encoded) tags in post titles. So I changed it slightly.

    Update: This just has cross-browser* Wolfenstein 3D written all over it. 🙂 Or, … yes there I go again… Google Earth?

    *IE6 doesn’t support the canvas-element nor is there an indication IE7 will.