Screenshots - When you take a screenshot using any of the keyboard shortcuts such as Command + Shift + 4, the image no longer appears on your desktop as "Picture 1.png" etc. They now appear on your desktop named as "Screen shot 2008-08-24 3:21pm.png"

Connecting your Mac to a Windows Domain/Active Directory Support - The Open Directory Utility is now gone from the Utilities folder. You can find its functionality now build-in to System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login Options. On right-side of this pane, at the bottom, click the 'Edit' button next to the 'Network Account Server:' line.

Airport - When the Airport card is looking for a WiFi network to connect to it now displays an animation over the Airport icon on the menubar. Instead of staying greyed out (previous behavior), one by one the curved lines of the illustrated radio 'waves' illuminate going upward. A nice visual touch to show your Mac is searching for a network. Before you were only able to determine this by clicking the icon.

Expose - When looking at all windows that are open, Expose now puts the title of the window under the window. When you go to select a window, that window will have a blue boarder. In the case of web browser winodws, the website currently loaded within that window is displayed in addition to the application title.

Dock Expose - Allows you to see small versions of all the open windows in any running program by clicking and holding down on its icon in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. This works great when moving a file from one finder window to another, or perhaps, a new mail message without having to first arrange both windows side-by-side on your screen.

System-wide Text Replacement - Look in the “Language And Text” panel of System Preferences and click on the “Text” tab to set it up and define substitutions. Type (tm) anywhere and the OS will automatically change it to a proper typographer’s symbol. Type “=STANDARDBLAH=” and it’ll be replaced with a whole paragraph making up some excuse why you don't have time to write a longer email because you're so busy with work, etc.

Larger/Interactive Icons in Finder - The addition of a Size slider at the bottom of an Icon View window in Finder allows you to scale icon sizes up to 512 x 512 pixels. These icons resemble large previews of the files' actual contents. For instance, in a small .txt document allowed me to read the small paragraph of text contained within...from the icon! If it's an image, you see the image. If it is a movie or audio file, you can there is a small play button which allows you to play it. If its a document such as a powerpoint/keynote presentation, PDF, or word/pages document, you can press small back/forward buttons to scroll through the pages

Clock/Time Zone - Snow Leopard will use your WiFi location & other hotspots it sees around you to attempt to determine your location, and thus your timezone. When traveling to other timezones, it will reset your timezone accordingly based on your location.

Apple Applications

Google Calendar support built-in to iCal - Open iCal. Go to the iCal's preferences pane. Go to accounts. Click the + symbol near the bottom. Select Account Type as Google and fill in your google credentials. By default, it will sync your main Google Calendar cal, however, if like myself you have multiple personal calendars and subscribe to another person's Google Calendars (my fiance's) you can go to the 'Dependencies' tab on the right, and select to sync those too. I think this may be my most used & favorite Snow Leopard feature.

Snow Leopard hits the Apple Store

August 24, 2009 by Your Name in Apple, News, Software

Here is a list of the new Snow Leopard specific pages that Apple just posted on their website that contain new information about Snow Leopard. This list of links should point you to all the places you can learn about just what is new in Snow Leopard.

Snow Leopard Introduction

New York Nearest Subway Augmented Reality App for iPhone 3GS

July 16, 2009 by Your Name in Apple, Software

Firefox 3.5 Released

July 01, 2009 by Your Name in Internet, News, Software

Firefox

You may already be running Firefox 3.5, if you grabbed it early from Mozilla’s FTP servers, where it’s been available for a little while now, but if not, head over to Mozilla.com to update. I’ve been using the Beta and the Release Candidate versions for some time, and aside from the usual incompatibility with a few add-ons, I can tell you that 3.5 not only works great, but also packs some useful new features.

For most users, the first thing you’ll notice is how much faster Firefox 3.5 is compared with the previous version. There are a lot of reasons for the speed improvements, but one of them is the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine that is much more efficient when dealing with resource-hogging web apps. There’s a great post over at WebWorkerDaily that goes into more detail about how that works and what it means.

My personal favorite new feature is the ability to tear off tabs and move them to new windows, something which I used to have to use a plug-in to accomplish. I can’t count how many times I need to do this on a daily basis when I’m referencing something for an article, or for debugging code and HTML.

Here’s a brief list of some of the highlights of the new version to whet your appetite (and more here):

Private Browsing and Clear Recent History features.
Location aware browsing via geolocation.
Gecko engine 1.9.1, with many rendering process improvements.
HTML5, downloadable fonts and other new CSS property support, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.
Open video support, meaning that you won’t have to download any plug-ins or use external viewers to watch web video content.
Improvements to session restore, anti-phishing and malware, the Awesome Bar, and browser customization.

Check out the full Release Notes for 3.5 from Mozilla for a complete list of new features and additions.

Team Fortress 2

May 26, 2009 by Your Name in Gaming, Software, Technology

So I got online last night and immediately noticed that Steam said that Ryan and Bruce were both online & playing Team Fortress 2. It had been quite a while since I'd played Team Fortress 2 so I decided to fire it up. I'd seen a lot of talk about TF2 on the game blogs recently and I didn't really know why. After a bit of research I now know that its because of a major content patch (and Sniper class refresh) that they've recently released.

After joining the same game Ryan was in, I quickly realized that since TF2 runs on the Halflife 2 Engine, my new gaming PC I built a month or so back runs it brilliantly. The second thing I noticed were achievements and achievement that I'd earned displayed as 0. Apparently the last time I'd played TF2, achievements didn't exist yet within the gameand now they've implemented a system in which you can unlock new weapons and items within the game the longer you play. In fact, this recent content patch changed this unlocking system from an achievement-based grind to a system in which every 20-30 minutes of play, you have a good change at randomly unlocking an item. Due to past problems with players all playing a certain class (in order to unlock a new item for that class) it's now COMPLETELY randomized when you unlock something to encourage a diversity of classes within any given game. This, for instance, encourages me to play an Engineer but allows me to randomly unlock a sniper item. Again - I have no control over what gets unlocked. It's random. There is no way to control what gets unlocked, therefore, there is no reason for me to play a class I'm not super fond of, just to unlock the items for that class.

I like this.

This new system of unlocking items does have it's critics though. Some players have complained that since they had unlocked many items before this system was put in place via the old achievement based unlock system, that now under the new system they're starting to randomly unlock items that they've already unlocked. In order words, it gets progressively more difficult to get items you haven't gotten yet unless you get lucky. I can see how this could probably be a problem but it doesn't concern me as much for now as practically anything I might unlock, I do not yet have. Short sighted? Probably..... but I'll bitch about that bridge when I get to it. For now I'm happy that I've rediscovered a game that I already own and therefore, do not have to pay for in order to enjoy it.

Switching from Aperture back to iPhoto 09

January 29, 2009 by Your Name in Apple, Blog, Photography, Software, Technology

what_iphoto_20090106 I'm stumped. I've been using Aperature for just over a year now, ever since I got my Canon 40D in December of 07 and decided to make the switch to shooting completely in RAW. I have a photo library of approximately 16,000 pictures. Due to the great new features in iPhoto 09 such as Faces, Places and the older (but awesome) feature known as Events, I wish to switch back. The problem is, I search on Google, I search on the Aperture and iPhoto support discussion boards at Apple.com, I search everywhere I can think of, and I cannot find anyone with a solution (only lots of other people with the same problem). Apparently there is no native, built-in, way to switch from Aperture BACK to iPhoto (only iPhoto to Aperture).

If I Export Versions or Export Masters in Aperture, its going to spit them out as PNGs, JPGs or TIFFs rather than the Canon RAW files. My Photo library is about 80 GB in size. I do not wish to save an old copy of it just to preserve the RAW versions of all my pics. I really love the organizational aspects of iPhoto but wish to retain Aperture as my editing software. My ideal workflow would be: connect the camera to the comp, import the pics into iPhoto, post processes them in Aperture, but have them remain stored in iPhoto's library (and in iPhoto's library only). I do not wish to have 2 seperate libraries to maintain, and to only use Aperture as an editor.

Does anyone have a solution for this?

Update: After much thought, the only solution I can think of is to export a TIFF (best quality image type out of the 3 - JPG, TIFF, PNG) of the Versions of all my photos I've taken. This will allow all of my editing I've done to my pics be preserved. Then I can simply export all of my Masters in RAW format to a diff location and then back them up for safe keeping. Going forard, iPhoto will import my RAW masters into its library and save duplicate versions of any editing I make to the pics. This isn't the IDEAL solution but it seems to be the best option available to me at the moment. In the future my workflow is as such: Import pics from Canon 40D into iPhoto 09, any editing of these pics is done through iPhoto's option of "Use External Editor" which would be Aperture for me. Then the edited versions are saved back into iPhoto's library. If I need to every do any editing of my photos previous to Jan 29, 2009, I just go back and dig up the old RAW's that I've backed up of them.

Anyone see an issue with this plan?

Twitter Discloses Reason For Several High Profile Account Security Breaches: Support Tools Compromised

January 05, 2009 by Your Name in Internet, News, Social Media/Networking, Software, Technology, Web 2-0

Several high profile twitter users' accounts were breached this today. Barack Obama, FoxNews, BritneySpears, RichSanchezcnn, LeoLaporte and others were all taken over. Some of the posts made by the hackers on these accounts varies from funny (FoxNews announced that Bill O'Reilly is Gay, RichSanchez said he was high on coke) to scams, (Barrack Obama offered prizes if you take a survey). The post from Biz over at Twitter is below:

Monday Morning Madness

This morning we discovered 33 Twitter accounts had been "hacked" including prominent Twitter-ers like Rick Sanchez and Barack Obama (who has not been Twittering since becoming the president elect due to transition issues). We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Rick, Barack, and others are now back in control of their accounts.
What Happened?
The issue with these 33 accounts is different from the Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users this weekend. These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can't remember or get stuck. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We'll put them back only when they're safe and secure.
Reacting Quickly and Fixing the Problems
In addition to this Monday morning madness we're coming off a wacky weekend where lots of folks were tricked into participating in a Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users. In both cases, our on-call team was able to attend to the matter quickly and prevent too many people from being affected. Our support team is definitely going to have a busy week because we reset a bunch of passwords just to be on the safe side.
Could OAuth Have Helped?
We plan to release a closed beta of the open authentication protocol, OAuth this month but it's important to note that this would not have prevented a Phishing scam nor would it have prevented these accounts from being compromised. OAuth is something we can provide so that folks who use third party applications built on the Twitter API can access to their data while protecting their account credentials.

Top 10 Macworld rumors for 2009

January 04, 2009 by Your Name in Apple, Hardware, News, Software, Technology

Apple’s (AAPL) last Macworld Conference and Expo opens Monday at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, but the real action starts Tuesday at 9 a.m. PT (12 noon ET) with senior vice president Phil Schiller’s opening remarks — the first Macworld keynote not delivered by Steve Jobs since 1997.

Nobody’s expecting breakthrough products that rise to the level of the iMac (Macworld 1998), the iBook (1999), iTunes (2001) or the iPhone (2007), but this Expo is not without its drama, speculation and hype.

Our top 10 favorite Macworld rumors:

10. Snow Leopard release date. We know a lot about Mac OS X 10.6, thanks to Jobs’ June 2008 announcement that it was coming, Apple’s official description of the product and a steady stream of leaks from the developer community. What we don’t know is when it will ship.
9. Unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro. By several accounts, this machine was supposed to be released in October, along with the new unibody 13-inch MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro. But display issues and problems with the optical drive reportedly pushed its release back “several months” — which brings us to next week’s Expo. UPDATE: Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac adds this twist: the new 17-inch Pro will sport a superslim longer-lasting nonremovable battery pack.
8. Revamped iWork. The big news on New Year’s Eve was the “truckload” of information dumped on various rumor sites about iWork — Apple’s homegrown answer to Microsoft (MSFT) Office. The thrust of it was that what’s now a suite of desktop applications — Pages, Numbers and Keynote — is about to be transformed into a collection of Web-based apps like the .Mac Web Gallery, suitable for cloud computing.
7. 32 GB iPhone. Whispers that Apple was set to double the memory of the top-end iPhone have been floating around since September, but AT&T’s (T) post-Christmas $99 iPhone sale and word that Apple had sewed up the lion’s share Samsung’s flash memory production all point to a January release.
6. 64 GB iPod touch. Rumors of this memory upgrade go back even further. It was supposed to happen in August, then in September, and then before Christmas. With memory prices falling, time is more than ripe.
5. New Mac mini. Rumors of the most affordable Mac’s imminent demise have given way to a flood of new specs, among them 2.0 or 2.3 GHz Core 2 Duo processors, NVIDIA graphics platform, dual display outputs and dual drives that can be configured every which way.
4. New iMac. Some inspired sleuthing in the extension files that shipped with the new MacBooks found references to NVIDIA chipsets for both a Mac mini and a new iMac — along with hints that the reconfigured all-in-one desktop was supposed to ship in November but got pushed into 2009 by unexpected delays. DigiTimes now reports that Apple has ordered shipments of 800,000 per month.
3. New iPod shuffle. FBR Capital Markets’ Craig Berger, whose track record AppleInsider describes as “questionable,” expects Apple to release a new and smaller version of the iPod shuffle sometime in the first calendar quarter — which started on Thursday. AppleInsider adds that it has picked up chatter of a new shuffle that would be flat as a credit card but thick enough at one end to fit a headphone jack.
2. New Apple TV/Time Capsule. This one also comes from an analyst. Shaw Wu, a veteran Apple watcher newly ensconsed at Kaufman Bros., wrote last week about the possibility that Apple will introduce a new consumer device — “an enhanced version of Apple TV and/or Time Capsule” — that would give users access to their media content, SlingBox style, from anywhere on the Internet.
1. Steve Jobs. Show or no-show, Apple’s CEO is both Macworld 2009’s No. 1 rumor and No. 1 source of rumors — whether it be that he’s stepping down, that his health is failing, that he doesn’t feel there’s enough news in Nos. 1-9 to justify a Steve Jobs keynote, or that he just doesn’t feel like playing in Macworld’s sandbox anymore. We favor the theory that he’s set the stage brilliantly for a surprise cameo appearance.

Below the line:

iPhone nano. Despite all the chatter — and spy photos — not this Macworld. Maybe later this year.

iPod tablet. Maybe later this year. Maybe never.

Is there truth to any of this? We’ll be flying to San Francisco Monday to find out. Tune in to this space early Tuesday for our Macworld 2009 live blog.

[Photo courtesy of setteB.IT.]

Below the fold: How Phil Schiller could hit a home run next Tuesday, as imagined on The Mac Observer’s Apple Finance Board by one of the regulars, retired Air Force pilot Pat Smellie.

From AFB:

Mr Schiller will do great. He is being coached by one of the best presenters in the business and whether SJ shows or not he will have been over every inch of the presentation.
Start with Itunes Over 6B songs sold., 400M Applications, 300M TV shows WOW. Bring up the Music execs and announce release of Itunes Plus for all tracks same great price.
Back to Schiller Mac sales growth over 10M new MACs in 2008. Demo new IMac, MAC Mini, Mac Pro in Feb with Intel I7 and Mac Book Pro 17’ Quad Core.
Switch to Snow Leopard speed comparison of the new hardware on Leopard vs Snow Leopard. Wow! Free upgrade to Snow Leopard with new Mac purchase. Available in June
Software demo of new ILife/Iwork Suite on mobile me. Free to all Mobile Me subscribers.
On to Iphone 20M sold to date. Joined on stage by China Mobile CEO. Announce new Iphone for China/Korea GSM/TD-SCDMA $99 price also available US non 3G via Walmart. Demo couple new software features.
One More Thing
Finally lights dim and SJ appears on stage with a NetBook and Tablet. He says he can’t decide which to build so he will let America decide. Call in numbers or text Netbook/Tablet. Voting will continue until end of Mac World
Lights come up curtain opens SJ on stage with Sir Paul singing Let It Be announcing the release of the Beatles catalog
It great to dream big. Reality is its a show as much as anything. Apple will deliver many great things this year but probably a lot of them will not be announced at Mac World. — pats