StyleMac.com

We wrote about CPU architecture optimized Firefox builds before. Now with the advent of Firefox 3, new builds of Firefox for G5 and Intel processors arrived (due to legal issues they’re not called Firefox but Minefield though).

Normaly software is build so it runs on all kinds of different processors, so speed / memory footprint is, in a way, the lowest common detominator (keep in mind that I’m oversimplifying things here, to explain the benefits of optimized builds). However, if a software is optimized for just one archicture, one can throw in all kinds of extra features, that architecture has to offer (like for example SSE or MMX). This, of course, enhances the speed of the whole software.

So without further ado, here you can find the optimized Firefox (erm Minefield) builds. My first tests showed a strong enhancement in startup and scrolling speed.

Oh and btw. these builds use the beautiful MacOSXified Firefox-Icon from Adam Betts which I’ve been used myself for years by manually applying it to Firefox after installing. This icon fits into OSX way better than the original Firefox-Icon (imho, that is).

Those of the more OS agnostic might agree that the package management solution for software installation is a great enhancement over traditional means of distribution. Especially when it comes down to open source software, which often needs to be compiled for the underlying hardware, package management can be a salvation - since it allows one to turn away from complicated problems like finding all the necessary libraries / headers to satisfy “./configure” or finding RPM’s in the right version so the selected software will finally install.

If you’ve ever worked with Ubuntu’s Synaptic or Debian’s dpkg you know how easily software installation via package management can be.

For Mac OS X, there’ve always been several solutions to package management: Fink, MacPorts, DarwinPorts and even Gentoo Portage.

While some of these already come with a solid UI, MacPorts doesn’t. It’s standard distribution contains the powerful but not-so-easy-to-use “ports” commandline application. Porticus is a 10.4+ GUI package manager which tries to fill this gap. It offers a (quite synaptic-like, if I might say so) overview over available and installed packages, and allows of easy package installation.

Features:

• Viewing the current MacPorts categories
• Installing, uninstalling, updating, activating and deactivating ports
• Port variant handling
• MacPorts self-update support
• Growl Integration
• Sparkle Software Update

Porticus is freeware and can be found here.

Neat idea. When designing something, the search for a fitting color palette is always an obligatory important first step. Sites like Adobe kuler help you here insofar as they offer the ability to share beautiful color palettes between users.

Mondrianum goes one step further in that it allows to access the kuler palettes directly from the Mac OS X system-wide color-picker. Which means that the colors are available from (for example) iLife, iWork, Photoshop, Coda, CSSEdit, and more.

Mondrianum is 10.5 only and can be found over at Lthoglyph Software.

During one of the newer OS X software updates Apple extended the list of compatible RAW Cameras by the Sony Alpha a 200 and the a 350. The a 300 however was omitted. This is insofar weird, as the hardware differences between the a 200 and the a 300 have no effect neither on the ccd nor on the exposure / shutter options. The only difference is the tiltable LCD-Screen as well as the option to shoot using LiveView.
Thus the basic RAW picture from a a 300 should be similar to a picture from a a 200. I researched this a bit and found that that’s mostly the case. Thus I present a small script which will convert Alpha a 300 RAW Files to Alpha a 200 RAW Files. The process is rather simple.

You can download it either as a commandline script, or as a Automator Action. The commandline script can be used in the following way:
“python ./A300fix.py DSC0001.ARW” in order to convert the file DSC0001.ARW to A200 raw. Please note that the script doesn’t create copies but changes the original file. So you’re advised to create copies of your original RAW files in case anything doesn’t work out as expected - although this never happened to me so far.
Alternatively you can use “python ./A300fix.py all” to convert all scripts in the current directory.

The usage of the automator action should be rather clear.

Download the commandline script here

Download the Automator Action here

Tomorrow, June 17, 2008, the Mozilla Foundation aims to release Firefox 3 for download.

Nearly one and a half million people around the world have pledged on their website (link below) to download Firefox 3 as part of Mozilla Foundation’s attempt to get into the Guiness Book of World Records for most software downloads in a 24 hour period.

Firefox currently is in the #2 spot as far as Internet browsers go. Over the years it has steadily creeped up on the #1 title holder, Internet Explorer.

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

Today is the first day of the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. With over 5,000 people in attendance, this is one of the largest WWDC’s yet.

The House That Steve Built has some exciting announcements that have been coming seemingly every minute. Among the highlights are for the first half of the day are:

- Not only is iPhone 2.0 in beta with over 4,000 people in the beta program, but that there will be three parts to the SDK: Enterprise, SDK, as well as new features for the end users.

- Several demos from SEGA, Apple, eBay, Pangea Software, MIMVista, among others.

- SEGA shows off a video of Super Monkey Ball, which will be a launch title in the new App Store for $9.99 USD.

- MIMVista shows off a program designed to help medical students study and learn various parts of the body with almost realistic images.

- Steve anounces new iPhone 2.0 features, including contact search, support for Microsoft Office documents, and support for Asian languages. The iPhone is set to be released July 11th.

- Mobile.Me is the replacement for .mac, current .mac subscribers will be automatically updated to the new service. A 60-day trial of Mobile.Me will be included with the iPhone 2.0.

- The new iPhone will be thiner, sexier, include support for a 3G network, Enterprise support, more affordable, available in more countries, and have advanced GPS support.

- Target price for an 8GB iPhone 2.0 will be $199, a savings of $200 over the current price of the iPhone.

- Later in the day, Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard was announced, but would feature no new features, only improvements over older ones.

So we arrived and are waiting in line. The queue is rather long and we’re not sure if we managed to catch a good position for the Keynote. That is, a position that prevents us from having to enter one of the overflow rooms. There’re definately lots of people here. 

One of the lab areas in the lab room still had it’s label coverted. That may be a cue by that there’ll be something new which enforces a new lab in order to understand it.

More news as we continue our approaching the main floor.

On May 30th, the Blender Institute released its first movie, “Big Buck Bunny” on its website in .avi, H.264, .m4v, and several other video formats and resolutions.

The DVD has been available since May 20th, ten days before its wide release on the web.

The film follows the “Big Buck Bunny” as he thwarts three nefarious woodland creatures (2 squirrels and a rat) bent on causing mischief.

As mentioned in an earlier posting, Big Buck Bunny was created using Blender and other free and open source programs, and as such, is itself released under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Source: www.bigbuckbunny.org

So tomorrow our journey to WWDC will begin. We’ll fly from Amsterdam to London, from London to L.A. and from there by car to San Francisco. So it’ll be a rather eventfull journey: An interesting ride from L.A to SF, a (hopefully) equally interesting KeyNote (Please no ‘Worst Keynote Ever’ shirts for sale afterwards, like last year) and lots of informative sessions.

I got a new battery for my 15″ MBP in order to be able to hack away on some projects while on plane, I updated my harddive to 200MB 7200rpm so it is faster and I have more storage for a plethora of data (maybe even a Snow Leopard Install?) and I collected lots of documents to read while on plane too.

I’m really looking forward to it. If you happen to visit WWDC and’d love to meet up, be sure to contact us. Especially if you’re german too, and’d love to meet some other german MacHeads / Cococa Hackers.

Isolator is a rather simple Freeware application that helps you gaining focus through covering everything on your screen except for the task at hand. This allows to concentrate on what you’re doing instead of repeated distractions by means of IM, Twitter, Mail or others.