MWSF 2010: Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac Announced

The big announcement at the kickoff of Macworld Conference & Expo today was Microsoft’s official announcement of Office 2011 for Mac. 

Office 2011 ousting Entourage and adopting Outlook for Mac, built from the ground up. It will also herald the return of Visual Basic, which didn’t make the cut in the 2008 version.

Also, the “ribbon” user interface that introduced in Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac is getting a visual facelift and functionality overhaul. And a nice little touch will be smooth transitions in the ribbon interface via Core Animation.

Office 2011 for Mac should be available for Holiday 2010. The price has yet to announced.

Aperture 3 Released

Early this morning our favorite fruit company released Aperture 3, the iPhoto-on-steroids performance enhancing code for prosumer and professional shutterbugs alike. Aperture 3 is 64-bit, includes Faces and Places from the previous iPhoto release, and includes a few new tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets (among many other minute tweaks and updates).

I, for one, have been salivating over Aperture for a while. Since I started shooting RAW images over JPGs, iPhoto has become a slow, uncooperative mutt. Yes, I could have bought Aperture 2, but I had been convinced for the past 6 months that Aperture 3 was right around the corner. I waited, and it has paid off. 

I’ve requested a trial copy from Apple’s site, and can’t wait to download it and give it a run. That will also give me 30-days to see if I can find a decent deal on it.

I’ll post more on my thoughts on Aperture 3, the ease (or difficulty) of transitioning from iPhoto, and other gems after I’ve had a while to play and tinker.

If you’ve been feeling a little cramped by iPhoto, go visit the Aperture page and request a trial to see if that fits better for your photo processing needs. And when you want to buy, remember to feed the techēse speaking guy by using the Amazon link in the sidebar.

1Password 3 Holds All Your Keys

I’ve been using 1Password by Agile Web Solutions for about a year thanks to my friend Samantha gifting a license to me during Agile’s Thanksgiving gifting program last year. Well, for the past 9 months or so, the team at Agile has been giving 1Password the biggest overhaul in the software’s history.

Since late August I’ve been beta-testing 1Password 3, which I am glad to tell you has been released for the masses today. If you are a Mac user, 1Password is a must-have application. It generates secure passwords for your web presence, and stores them all in a secure database that can be unlocked by your, well, one password you’ll never forget.

Too often I see people that use a word that can be found in the dictionary as their password (which means easily hacked) and then they use it everywhere. Even for their financial accounts online. This is a terrible practice that I even used to use.

Well, 1Password 3 has refined the user interface greatly from previous versions. Now everything is separated into different vaults, so you can easily access your logins, accounts, identities, secure notes, software licenses, and wallet. This program tracks everything for your digital life.

What I have found to be the most helpful is the web browser plugin. Whether you use Safari, Firefox, Camino, etc. (Chrome is in the works) you can easily have the plugin fill in user and password fields for you. Or if you need to fill in your credit card and billing address info for a merchant, the plugin will do it all in a couple clicks. The credit card info is very helpful for changing your info for many merchants when you receive a new card every couple years.

1Password 3 offers many enhancements for users of version 2, and is inescapably attractive for new users. This should be the first download for any Mac.

1Password 3 is available for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard. It costs $39.95 for a new license and users of version 2 may upgrade for $19.95 (until Nov. 30, 2009, then the price raises to $29.95).

For a complete list of what’s new, check out this page.

Twitterrific 2.1 Fluffs the Blue Bird's Feathers

Yesterday Apple finally approved the first substantial feature update to my favorite Twitter application for the iPhone – Twitterrific. The app had been sitting in the approval queue for quite a few weeks. The new version brings a flock of new features. I’ll go over my favorites here. The colossal list of all the changes can be found at Twitterrific’s version history page.

First and foremost, I had started with Twitterrific since the opening day of the App Store. But version 1.x lacked many advanced features, especially when Tweetie came on the scene. I had resisted Tweetie for quite a while, but when I started managing a second Twitter account, I ended up on Tweetie out of necessity.

I switched back to the blue bird when version 2.0 came out and was instantly won back. Over time though, I did find that the new blue bird was missing a few features that Tweetie had that I really loved. Twitterrific 2.1 has taken care of all that, and is reigning supreme yet again.

Here’s what Tweetie had that Twitterrific now has:

• New “Load More…” button to retrieve older tweets in the timeline.


• Added a photo viewer for images on yfrog, Twitpic, and Twitgoo. (This is instead of just loading the web page for the photo, as Twitterrific had always done. This is MUCH faster.)


• Tap on the avatar in the author info view to view the avatar full size.


• Added following and followers buttons to author view.

Granted, these are not drastic things that I couldn’t live without, but they round out the experience of the app. Possibly my favorite is the custom image viewer, especially for Twitpic. The old method of loading the whole Twitpic web page was time consuming and cumbersome, as you’d have to zoom to see the image every time. Now you get a wonderful fullscreen image that loads quickly. Nice.

Some other new features that I am loving is the “Address Book” view (signified by a rolodex card), a YouTube videos play within the in-app browser, the built-in web browser supports landscape view, in-app email support, and the ability to translate a tweet to your native language.

The “address book” is a wonderful feature. From either the timeline view or posting view, you can bring up your followers, who you’re following, and a search area to view an account and create a mention or direct message. Very nice.

Utilizing the in-app YouTube viewer and in-app email in OS 3.0 is nice. An app’s experience is greatly improved when you don’t have to leave the app all the time.

For iPhone 3GS owners, you getting some special attention and love, too!  You can record, post, and view video from yfrog and TwitVid. The developers note that for yfrog, you need to activate the video setting on yfrog.com.

Also, apparently Twitterrific 2.1 is “optimized for the iPhone 3GS.” Whatever that means. (Not that I’m bitter that I don’t have a 3GS.) (I’m just messing with you all.)

Overall, Twitterrific 2.1 is a solid feature upgrade that really gives the blue bird some new pluck. Twitterrific 2.1 is available in an ad-supported free [App Store] version and a $3.99 ad-free Premium [App Store] version.

P.S. ~ It’s not a bad idea to follow @Twitterrific on the Twitter. App specific news is regularly pumped out there and helpful hints and tips for the app are offered as well.

Convertbot Belongs on Your iPhone (or iPod touch) [u]

There are plenty of times that I want to convert one value to another. For some reason, it usually involves recipes. My wife and I have many recipes that are scaled to feed an army. We’re a three person family. And our just-over-one-year-old son doesn’t exactly eat a large portion.

(Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll eat us out of house & home when he becomes a teenager).

Now, there are other times I’ve needed to convert various values. My go-to place for such a thing has always been Google. See, if you go to Google and type in 48.5 ounces to pounds Google will tell you 48.5 ounces = 3.03125 pounds. Handy, huh?

Great thing is, that even works on my iPhone via Safari.

But I love great design and user interfaces. Heck, I use a Mac, right? How could I not have an appreciation for those? Well, it just so happens that there is an app for that. And it belongs on your iPhone.

I’ve had my eyes on Convertbot [App Store] by Tapbots for quite some time now. It is a gorgeous little app that lives to serve your every conversion whim. It has a wonderful robotic-inspired user interface, complete with sound effects that just makes the experience gush with gadgetry.

And this little app does a lot. Currency, Data Size, Length, Mass, Speed, Temperature, Time, Volume, and Area are the main categories, with many denominations in each one. There is a nice demo video over on the aforelinked Tapbots site. The app normally sells for $1.99.

However, as of this publication, Convertbot is FREE for a “very limited time.” So skip the demo, go make sure it’s still free on the App Store, and add it to your iPhone’s utility belt!

UPDATE: I just discovered there’s is a virtual ton of extra measurement categories that can be enabled in the app’s preferences! They include Angle, Data Rate, Force, Fuel, Illuminance, Power, Pressure, Radioactivity, SI, Typography, and Work.

More Colors than a Box of Crayons

If you’ve ever had to do any amount of web design — no matter how basic — you’ve likely had to match colors for sidebar widgets or some other material. I know any time I add a new widget to the sidebar of this blog, I have to pull out a color picker.

Back in February, my best buddy from Britain, Samantha, wrote an article about a little utility named Pipette. Pipette allows you to use a eyedropper tool to sample a pixel of an image and then grab the hex code so you can easily color-match on the web.

However, I did have a gripe with Pipette — and it is a snobby spoiled Mac user gripe. It’s ugly. The pallette is boring, the icon is 128-pixels when the rest of the Mac world has long since moved to 512-pixel icons. Also, it’s annoying that the window disappears when the app isn’t selected, meaning I can’t just leave it over on the side of the screen for easy access.

But it served a great purpose. And it did its job very well.

And then I stumbled upon Colors by Matt Patenaude. Colors does everything Pipette does, but does it with some modern Mac OS X gloss. The icon is gorgeous and so is the UI.

It also has a couple more tricks than Pipette. Not only can you grab the hex code (#rrggbb) but you can also grab #rgb, rgb(x,x,x) and rgba(x,x,x,x,). Also, you may choose whether or not to include the # sign.

In my book, Colors trumps Pipette in form and function (though I only see myself using hex code). Enjoy.

Glyphboard Brings Character(s) to iPhone OS 3.0

Neven Mrgan, a designer for Panic Inc., has cooked up a pretty sweet little web app for users with iPhone OS 3.0 on their iPhones and iPods touch. Yes, you did just read a sweet little web app. Remember web apps? That was Apple’s solution for third-party developers before the iPhone SDK and App Store.

So, what does this little web app do? Well, Mac users have for years been able to use the option and shift keys to modify the output of other keys. For instance, if you type option + shift + k you get a cool Apple logo that looks like this . If you’re on a PC, you’re out of luck. Other characters include Trademark ™ (option + 2) and Copyright © (option + g). Now, the iPhone OS’s heart is OS X, so it can also display these charaters, but the soft keyboard doesn’t support a lot of these characters.

This is where Glyphboard comes in. Now, clicking that link on a Mac or PC won’t help you much, but if you view it on an iPhone or iPod touch running Software 3.0, you can do something cool. By adding that page to the Home Screen, it will create a standalone web-based application.

In Software 2.x, web apps ran in Safari, and if you scrolled up enough, you’d see Safari’s address bar. One of the cool new features of iPhone OS 3.0 is the ability for web designers to make their web app completely standalone. Essentially, adding Glyphboard to your homescreen is quite like installing a Dashboard widget on OS X.

Glyphboard allows you to copy and paste many special characters from Glyphboard to other apps. It’s quite slick.

Bonus: because it is a web app, it can be updated at any time, without being held up in the App Store approval process.

I believe this is an essential web app for anyone using iPhone or iPod touch Software 3.0. A few screen shots below. Enjoy.

WWDC 2009: A Parade of Awesome!

Three days ago, Apple held the keynote address of its Worldwide Developer’s Conference, and all I have to say is that it was a Parade of Awesome! That’s all I have to say. You can go about your regularly scheduled browsing now. I’m kidding! Of course I have the interesting highlights for you.

I waited to write this until I had time to watch the keynote video, as I prefer to get my source material first-hand, instead regurgitating all the other blogs. Call me old-fashioned.

The first thing that caught my attention was when Phil Schiller, Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, said that the number of active OS X users in 2007 was 25 million people and that number in 2009 is 75 million users. That is a lot of growth. Apple’s doing pretty well.

This post got pretty long, so I’m inserting a jump here for visitors to the main page.