Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Thursday, January 9, 2003

-- Comment()
Apple Life suite of applications: "I like Apple's new concept of iLife (music, photos, movies, and DVDs in one integrated digital life suite of applications). The parallel to the Microsoft Office productivity suite is intriguing. The new browser, Safari, and presentation tool, Keynote, are interesting ways to diverge from Microsoft (remember how Steve used to exclaim "Internet Explorer is the browser of choice"...). Safari has very interesting interface improvements in the areas of navigation and bookmark management; looks like a new arms race is on between browsers (I can't live without Mozilla's tabbed browsing and multi-tab bookmarks!). Safari's bug report button is a fine beta-testing touch, something I've normally included in Web-based applications for users to easily submit bug reports during testing. Expect this to become a common feature, beyond beta versions. Keynote uses an XML-based open file format, which will promote the development of related tools and the automated creation of presentations. Subtle, smart moves." [Jinn of Quality and Risk]

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Import Chimera bookmarks to Safari: "Safari has a great built-in and "almost hidden" feature: At the first launch, it imports your Internet Explorer favorites into its own Favorites library. Unfortunately, other browsers like OmniWeb or Chimera are not (yet) supported. But with this little trick, you can use this feature to import bookmarks from other browsers too. [...] simply name your export from Chimera (one of the latest builds) as "Favorites.html" and save it into~/Library/Preferences/Explorer." Then continue with the previous directions." [Mac OS X Hints]

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Show Safari's keyboard shortcut list: "Safari contains a number of new-and-existing keyboard commands. To see the entire list, click the Safari icon and choose "Show Package Contents." In the new window that opens, navigate to Contents -> Resources -> English.lproj -> Shortcuts.html." [Mac OS X Hints]

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Safari mounts FTP sites in the Finder: "Point Safari to your favorite ftp site by typing in the location window ftp://yourftp.com or by clicking on an ftp link. [...] Safari hands the request off to the Finder's "Connect to Server" feature and you get desktop access to whatever site you're looking at!" [Mac OS X Hints]

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Apple Launches New Browser at Macworld: "As part of its new product blitz at Macworld Expo, Apple has unveiled its own Web browser. Called Safari, the new browser is central to Apple's strategy to increase its market share by broadening its software offerings. But IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky said he doubts Apple's tactics will work." [osOpinion]

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Safari: "Safari looks good, loads fast, and seems to be making a true effort to support web standards. It[base ']s too early to say much more than that." (Jeffrey Zeldman via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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A Safari Of Net Effects: "Once again the network effects of the Internet delivers." (O'Reilly Network via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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Apple Eyes Microsoft's Turf: "Keynote is slick, yields gorgeous slides that look like they came from a professional graphic artist, and at first glance seems easy to use. And it is probably the last front on which Microsoft expected a competitive challenge to its software." (Forbes via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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Safari Breaks Single Day Download Record For Apple: "Apple's new Web browser, Safari, broke the single day download record previously held by iTunes, according to Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing." (MacCentral via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

Dave Winer on the Two-way Web -- Comment()
Blogging Alone (via RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing) writes: "In his first DaveNet essay of the new year, Dave Winer of Userland/Radio fame talks about the demands on technology and the form blogging is taking."

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Butterflies and other stories: "They may look like fragile wisps scudding along at the whim of the breeze, but butterflies are actually masters of their aerial domain. Researchers at Oxford University in the United Kingdom used an ultrafast digital camera to observe..." [Google Technology News]

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Another Apple switcher: "Hi, I'm John Robb, and I'm the CEO of a software company that makes Windows software." [The Scobleizer Weblog]

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Cory's novel (creatively licensed) is out: "Cory Doctorow's brilliant novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is out today. Buy it early and often. Cory's book is also the very first to be offered initially both for sale and under a CreativeCommons license. That means you can also download it for free." [Lessig Blog]

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2003: The year of anti-spam? "2003 is shaping up to be the year of anti-spam initiatives. When thinking about these issues, I keep coming back to Larry Lessig's four regulatory constraints: architecture, law, social norms, and the market..." [Jon's Radio]