That was a particularly bad idea.
ßeta
New Version (coming soon) and other miscellaneous updates!
Jun 16th
Here’s a preview of what’s soon going to be the new look of themak.org:
All critisism welcome for the new design.
The new theme is also going to mark a whole new version of themak.org, the move from the brilliant PALGN free hosting to an ASO shared hosting plan where I will also move this blog from WordPress to a hand made django weblog platform.
I now only have 4 exams left until I’ve finished with my GCSEs, and I feel fairly confident about how I’ve done (which is good) and I’m now only a few short days away from purchasing my guitar and hosting package.
My OSX powertools.
Mar 24th
This is a post devoted to the ‘little things’ that make using OSX fun for me. A long overdue last article for the week in apps series.
My Adium set up: as you can see this offers little clue as to who’s online apart from their avatar(display picture, buddy icon etc.) However, I find that this approach uses far less screen space than having their name displayed. Growl is highly utilised with this approach as I assoiciate their icon when they log in, or mouse-over to find it. It’s also set to auto-hide on the left hand side of my screen.- iClip4, this is essentially a multi-clipboard, which; for me is essential. I use it at the bottom of my screen where the Dock would usually go, and although it’s slightly sluggish on my PPC mac mini- it’s reasonable.
- The precise location of the dock- right and bottom aligned. (Using deeper) Small icons, hiding on and no magnification.
- Cytv this lets me watch tv on my ibook, whilst the tuner is plugged into my mac mini.
- Letterbox Mail plugin, because I spent too much time in Outlook 2003 before switching. Quicksilver and Visor. Emminently neccessary. Visor especially for living in a terminal window.
The Apple Interactive Television Box, another look
Oct 26th
In the mid nineties a product between Apple and BT sprung up, the Apple Interactive Television Box [wikipedia] this was to fufill BTs desire for a set top box that was connected to and received content from the internet. Or more specifically; certain BT servers. This would work over ADSL and serve the user with television and games etc.
Apart from its obvious similarities with the yet unreleased iTV from Apple. Being another set top box which uses content from the internet on television, however this is buffered on a macintosh computer. This I beleive is more similar to the BT HOME HUB[homehub webpage].
The home hub is a device which acts as an ADSL router with wireless VOIP handset, and also sets out to fufill many of the aims they had for the ITVB- albeit without the all in one aspect. But most importantly it has in its future plans an online television distribution system.
So, in conclusion; to say that the iTV is an updated ITVB is short sighted. The Apple Interactive Television Box (to give it its’ full name) has led to Apple and their parter in the matter BT to re attempt this internet linked video box just over 12 years later, is not a re-hash but merely re attempting when the market is right.
Google’s new playing field
Oct 4th
Google have a new laboratry, a place where they are experimenting on their core. SearchMash is where google plays; here there is not a market-place nor business- merely a place for the internet to examine and comment upon ideas that google wish to neither inflict upon nor deny the internet. Perhaps a beta testing ground for new features, a place where there is neiher the stigma of beta, nor the expectations of google. This is not google saying “You can tell us what you think.” But instead: “What do you think of this?” A place where google is not google. SearchMash is google, but they are trying new things that make it appear far fresher and more modern.
Maybe this is the Goliath creating his David, pondering this question: “Will google start to inherit from searchmash, or is searchmash going to become google.
Me? I quite like this new look google it has more flair, where I finally get my desired #1 for themak, instead of a placeholder site with a dot com after it.
Hope for the weeks Zooomr updates
Sep 3rd
Over the next week the Zooomr team is going to be making some fairly major updates to progressively beta photo sharing site Zooomr.
Personally I hope for:
- Stories.
- Better support for privacy settings.
- The ability to edit those things that are locked from first upload.
A wordpress plugin.The bulk uploader.
And thanks to zooomr for the qouta reset.
Teaser
Aug 27th
Update:
Here’s a quick teaser of the website that I’ve been working on for a while.
As to what it does, I’m not telling quite yet.
Oh and 
.
Sxore 2 mockup (unofficial)
Aug 26th
Recently I have been pointed to the sxore roadmap where they promise far tighter integration with wordpress for comments, such as using the wordpress comment database and form for the comment system. Also with the addition of multiple single sign on technologies. Yes, that is oxymoronic, but I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. I’ve been thinking about what the next version of the plugin will look like.
IM clients (3/6)
Aug 23rd
In this, the third post of the week in apps series, Tim and I. Will be looking at Instant Messaging clients.
For inter-service compatibility, there is none to beat AdiumX. Being open source I can always run the latest version on the svn tree- not suggesting this as a smart thing to do. The SVN version occasionally has it’s glitches but on the whole is very stable. Just before writing this article I ran svn update and recompiled from the latest build (17291), actually a later build as that one wouldn’t compile.
Adium is an open source Instant Messanger with full support for XMPP, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, gTalk, bonjour and several other protocols. Originally it used libgaim for this but now it uses a mix of libgaim, libezv and joscar- with smack soon to be used for XMP (this will have jingle support and will eventually allow Adium users to talk with gTalk users.
Adium 1.0 was released in 2001 by a student called Adam Iser, but was re-written to form AdiumX (originally planned to be Adium 2.0). Adium uses OSX’s built in html component (WebKit) to display each chat, and this allows for easy themeing of the chat window with only knowledge of HTML and css). Also the contact list is easy to theme and in the SVN version will hide on an edge of the screen and can be configured to only show as little or as much user information as it takes to show who’s online.
Adium has full out of the box support for Growl, a universal notifications protocol for OSX. Which allows you to be constantly informed of when someone comes online or sends you a message. Also possible is to have notifications read out using the system voice.
Web Browsers (2/6)
Aug 22nd
Today is the second installment in the week in apps series and Tim again joins us for Web browsers.
On any other platform, the choice for a good powerful tabbed web-browser is fairly easy; Firefox. But on OSX it looks nasty:
- It uses custom widgets.
- It uses Aqua and a menu. Not unified.
So I looked for an alternative, deciding against Safari because I didn’t like it and eventually settled on Camino.
Camino shares a lot with the Firefox project, a need to create a seperate Navigator only version of Mozilla- but for OSX will full native widget use and utilizing OSX only features.
Unfortuneatly Camino has recently suffered development stagnation with long waits between versions and lacks the support for extensions that Firefox has. Otherwise Camino is a very stable and useful web browser with a solid and standards compliant rendering engine.
My future browsing choices:
Camino is a solid browser but with little chance of seeing a version 2 anytime soon, I’m going to look at the emerging alternatives:
- Firefox 3.0 Minefield
- Shiira 2.0 currently in beta
Firefox.
Firefox has all the cool features found in firefox that make it highly probable that it will regain it’s crown as king of the Browsers. However:
Shiira.
The early beta of Shiira 2.0 shows much promise and has many new and interesting features that turn up the heat for other web browsers. (Shiira has quite a long way to go yet, as some settings are greyed out and some parts still in Japanese)
Mail Apps: (1/6)
Aug 21st
This week I’m going to be examining certain applications on my desktop running OSX, and Tim will be doing the same for Linux.
Mail.app
It could be said that there is only one real choice for an email client for OSX: Apple Mail. For one it comes pre-installed with OSX and secondly; it genuinely is the best email client available.
More >
Core Animation In Leopard
Aug 15th
Since the leak of the Leopard beta, quite a few interesting videos detailing the powers of core animation. Although I wonder why it was not shown at WWDC keynote, although I might think that Apple isn’t best pleased at this leak.
Seems that support is reliant on Core Image, so yay for my iBook 
and nay for the mini 
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