Skitchin'
All the screenshots used on the RealMac forums recently, and here have been taken using Skitch and the tools it offers makes capturing screen images fun, intuitive, and hassle-free. It can, with a single click, upload the shots to either Flickr, FTP or the nifty mySkitch service and generates either the HTML code or the BBcode for the image regardless of where it's uploaded. Skitch, put very simply, is awesome. All singing, all dancing, it does exactly what I've dreamed a screenshot application would do. Perhaps that makes me a sad person, to dream about how a screenshot application uploads to the net, sings, dances and more But I just don't care: Skitch. Fucking. Rocks.
Highly perceptive readers might see something of interest in the above screenshot. Taken in Skitch. Of course. I do indeed have 200 invites to Skitch to give away, so if you want one, I'm going to play a little game. Send me something funny. Nothing gross. Something funny. If it makes me laugh, I'll trade it for a Skitch invite! Send things via the form here, or leave them in the comments.
Microsoft Windows Live Search Mini Widget
- Don't supply it in French by default, on an english-language page, merci. We also have the perfectly suitable NSSlider that y'know would actually make the widget preferences look completely OS X in look and feel - what's with the plus and minus buttons too?
- What's with the Live.com logo floating some way from the widget itself? That, to my eyes, is clutter - and on a manic dashboard like my own, it's unnecessary. The amount of space it takes up is enourmous - why is the close button so far away? When you install the wretched thing, the view when to choose whether to keep it or not has a freakin' huge area set aside for it. Only for the miniscule widget to appear at the top of it.
- The standard italicised i is not used for options. It may be a little thing, but it's something that pretty much every dashboard widget has. UI consistency means people can instinctively pick it up. Not the case here.
- The options button appears only after having searched - as mentioned above, that sort of thing is dealt with by the italicised i that is missing.
In all, I'm not enthralled with this widget. Seb said in IM, 'at least Microsoft are trying'. But who's really paying attention? I personally don't use a search widget - it seems like an extra step to launch dashboard and search, only to be taken to the browser which already has a Google box raring to go. I don't use Live.com - and to be honest, I don't think the widget will see any uptake. I mean, how many browsers for the Mac ship with Google as the default, and how many Mac users will happily start using WindowsLive?
From MacWorld UK
Handing Marketers the Reigns
The Sheer Number of Editions.
Here's what Adobe's decided to do, in true Microsoft fashion, for its CS3 product lineup:
- CS3 Design Premium.
- CS3 Design Standard.
- CS3 Web Premium.
- CS3 Web Standard.
- CS3 Production Premium.
- CS3 Master Collection.
Education Store Complexity
As I'm a student, I get a great discount from the big three (Apple, Microsoft and Adobe), and I intend to use it this time. So I took off to the Adobe online store (which, whilst smart, is partly Flash based, and so you can't Cmd-Click to open some links in a new tab). And what do I find (and I actually did laugh at this) - there's actually two editions of each CS3 edition (still following?!) on the education store. One is the 'Student Edition' which permits no commercial use, the other just being 'CS3 Edition' with full commercial use allowed. Student Editions (SE from now on) are true bargains if you simply need to learn the apps - CS3 Master Collection SE is £349 (ex. VAT) whilst CS3 Master Collection is £705 (ex. VAT) for educational customers - Master Collection will set back non-educational customers a cool £2,300. I love educational discounts.
Why Complicate Matters?
In general, I applaud the notion of offering a selection of packages1 - offering the opportunity to buy a CS3 edition (or even an individual product) will attract people to buy the product instead looking elsewhere for a 'cracked' version. Of course, it's a double-edged sword - if the editions are very few and / or the cost too high, people will also pirate it. But to offer Premium and Standard versions of all (except, perhaps tellingly, the Production edition) of CS3 is a Microsoft-esque act of handing marketers the reigns - a perfect example was Adobe's use of the Photoshop brand when officially naming 'Lightroom' as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. As for the Vista matrix of products? Don't get me started. I like choice, seriously I do. But there's choice and there's pure and simply marketing and confusion.
One last item that spurred on this article was, in fact, John Gruber's DaringFireball Membership Drive. As an incentive buy or renew a very excellent DF subscription2, he's persuaded a whole plethora of Mac developers to throw in some prizes. One of which is:
Yes, you read that right. Delicious Library appears to be splitting the product line. Now, I know feck-all about what the folks at Delicious Monster have in store for the (Leopard only) v2.0 - last I heard from an anonymous Mac developer in Paris last year was that it was apparently hardly started, and he considered it vapourware - but I can't help but feel that this divergance is just to much complication. I despise complication - I love things to be straightforward most of the time. I shouldn't have to refer to a 'Product Selector' to help me find what's best for my needs (and they're hardly going to tell you to buy the cheapest product if consumer entered selections mean they could tell you to buy the more expensive product)!Delicious Monster: 5 licenses to the upcoming Delicious Library 2.0 Pro ($80 value). Winners receive Delicous Library 1 licenses now, free upgrades when version 2 ships
So why do marketers think we need all the editions? Very simply it boils down to this: Creating editions gives bragging rights. It creates envy. It means people are made to feel ashamed if they only buy Web Standard instead of opting for Web Premium, and above all, it influences people to perhaps spend more money than they need to. Of course, that's what marketing's about, but Apple's not afraid of marketing, and play the simple line with most of their software. They don't seem to do too badly in the scheme of things ;)
--
1 In a semi-ironic way, I work part time for a software developer who actually consolidated their product line from Pro and Lite to simply 'RapidWeaver', and for what it's worth I think that was a great move (and one well before I started using RapidWeaver).
2 For what it's worth, I'm a big fan of the new DF t-shirts. I sure will be availing myself of at least one of each in the next few weeks.
Adobe Creative Suite 3: Watch the Launch
NetNewsWire 3.0d
Overflow. It rocks
As a sidenote, the News Readers bit is one area I really want to get rid of. However, I've yet to find an RSS reader that does ABSOLUTELY everything I want it to. If a couple of RSS readers imported groups from OPML (and why they don't, I have no idea) I'd be sorted. I like NetNewsWire Lite, but (petty I know) I don't like the window it uses with huge buttons at the top. Give me NewsFire, or NewsLife with OPML group imports and I'll be a loyal customer for life. Silly, perhaps, that I'm fretting about RSS readers of all things, but given that I use RSS so much (and couldn't cope without it) it's a big thing. I would use Google Reader, but the last time I tried, they didn't work with Daring Fireball's subscription feeds (which completely rules it out for me). Too bad I guess, but I'm not a fan of the Google Reader UI either ;-) !!
MacRabbit releases CSSEdit 2
RSS Readers
Emptying the Trash
Well well well. Nope, this isn't me trashing the entirety of my iTunes folder ;-) that's the number of non-English files I removed from Applications that are sitting on my hard-disk using Monolingual. Because OS X has each language in a special .lproj folder (english.lproj etc etc) it's really easy to remove files that aren't needed yet not affect the software. Just be sure to check that English is never ticked in the list as removing that will mean a fresh install of OS X. Nasty. I run Monolingual perhaps every 6 weeks, just as all the software updates install fresh .lproj files, and today I removed 500MB of stuff. Nice.
My Favourite Software!
RealPlayer Annoys the Hell out of me
What have the people at Real been doing for the past 9 months? It's December for goodness sake. Apple ships usually one 10.x.1 revision behind, but are currently shipping with the latest build and Micro$oft can be up to 3 months behind, but then the time it takes to get the massive amount of media sorted [plus the master install discs that Windows PC manufacturers use] makes this more than understandable.
So yeah, a software install can be up to 3 months behind and that's the max/norm. BUT NINE MONTHS :-o... come on - that's taking the piss! If Real are at all interested in capturing any of iTMS market share, they're gonna have to do better than that!
Firefox 1.5 Released!
Get Firefox Now!