FREN

#FF00AA


5 jul. 2006

@web@

The existing netscape.com community (why, yes, there is such a thing) hates the new Digg-like homepage with a passion. That’s just hilarious — way to go, lifting off a whole site’s concept, with no regard whatsoever for what actually works for your audience. But then, what would Netscape be if it weren’t for that kind of organizational blunders?

I have been using Netscape for 10 years because it WAS the superior browser — now it is as INFERIOR as any other choice!

Gotta feel for the poor guy who’s going back to Internet Explorer so he can have msn.com as a homepage rather than netscape.com.

 

(Incidentally, there seems to be some Javascript at netscape.com slowing down Safari — yeah, I know, what Javascript doesn’t slow down Safari?)

 

@web@

I finally could connect to GéoPortail (with Firefox; it doesn’t seem to like Safari, despite claims of the contrary). Damn, that’s crappy. Well, the photos of Paris are crappy — much less detailed than the recently updated Google Earth ones, and washed out and un appealing — but IGN wins, quite expectedly, on the rest of the country, where Google’s pictures have much poorer resolution.

And, unlike Google, they also have complete maps of the country. Scanned maps. Seriously. Bitmap, scanned maps. Utterly unreadable maps. Freaking clueless morons. So, as I recall, the French administration is working on its own Google and Google Books now, right? That’ll be fun.

 

@apple@

Megazoomer [via] makes windows full-screen. Just press Command-Enter, and the front-most window grows to fill your entire monitor. Press the same keys, and it shrinks again.

Yay. It’s a SIMBL plugin that modifies existing applications, so it’s bound not to work well with everything and wreak havoc every now and then, but it’s still very cool, and seems to work just as advertised. Very smooth, perfect to zoom in on a web page, show something to someone on your computer, or focus on your work.

 

@apple@

DeskBrowse [via] has two modes: a regular browsing mode and Websposé, which places you in a password-protectable ‘kiosk-mode’ web environment ideal for allowing other users or guests to browse the web safely without any harm coming to your system.

If you don’t mind your guests having access to your Gmail account and whatnot if you haven’t logged out from within Safari. Other than that, it’s just yet another application using WebKit, only it appears and disappears with a hotkey. Must be nothing short of revolutionary.

 

@apple@

Apple Phones Home, Too. Seems like OS X 10.4.7 regularly contacts apple.com to ascertain that your widgets are up to date or legit or something. It’s amazing that in 2006 a major OS maker could still naively ignore user paranoia… a few months only after being burned on the exact same issue with the iTunes ministore. Some people never learn.

Anyway: instructions to disable the Widget Advisory (not that I’m among the paranoid crowd — I couldn’t care less — but it may be of interest to someone).

 

@apple@

Ungenius – How QA Really Works. I’m sorry, but you won’t convince me that Steve Jobs isn’t rushing new products to release before appropriate testing. You don’t release a pocket music player without noticing that pocketing it will scratch it beyond recognition. You don’t use a new plastic to manufacture your notebooks without finding out that it won’t withstand the heat, or the sweat, or something. All it would take is a dozen people trying out the products for two weeks in real-world conditions before they were released.

Oh, wait, it’s not just that Apple hardware is rushed out — it’s that they’re so afraid their upcoming products might be leaked, they’d rather release them insufficiently tested than let a couple units out out of the campus’s gates. Yeah, that is now “one of the (many) ways that Apple’s legendary secrecy hurts the company.” Big time. That’s not how business is done. And that’s definitely not how Quality Assurance is done.

 

@apple@

The Cult of Mac Blog – New Case Rumored for Mac Pro: “Think Secret, often reliable in their prognosticating…” Excuse me now?

There’s been a fair amount of… shall we say, controversial material on this blog, lately, but now it just looks like they’re begging you to unsubscribe to their feed.

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