Keynote's XML

An interesting introduction to Apple XML syntax (APXL) and its possibilities. Something to dive into on a rainy afternoon.

Too cool ? Not really..

A G5 Cube ? That would be almost too sweet ..

xScope: measure, align and inspect

A little gem from our friends of the Iconfactory: xScope

I've been spending the last few days tweaking CSS, trying to overcome the current browser's discrepancies in order to follow the W3C recommendations as closely as possible. But as you know, it's not a piece of cake..

I used Snapz Pro to capture screen areas, and Photoshop to measure the pixels separating one rendering from another. Until I discovered xScope (thanks Enrique). I wasn't using for an hour, that I logged onto their site to purchase it. It's not only a set of rulers, you can place guides, frames, change your cursor into a crosshair, magnify selected areas of your screen or easily see the usable real estate for any screen size, browser, for Mac or Windows - a dream.

If you design, need to measure, align and inspect on-screen graphics and layouts, xScope is today's answer.

Panther: archiving in ZIP format

Anybody noticed this one ? I usually use StuffIt's CM to archive (stuff or zip) a file/folder, but I gave the Finder's CM "Create an Archive of [name]" a try and discovered that it was in ZIP format.

John Siracusa reviews Panther

There's a nice in depth (as always) review of Panther by John Siracusa of Ars Technica,

Starting with Developer Preview 2, Ars Technica's Apple Technology Specialist John Siracusa has been following the steady progress of OS X from beta through Jaguar. Now Panther has hit the street, and John has undertaken his now-annual exercise of taking Apple's latest OS out for a long test drive.

Panther: Mail.app add-ons

MailEnhancer: extends the functionality of mail with several cool features:

• Show activity viewer when doing a manual mail check
• Display a status dialog after doing a manual mail check
• Dock icon count shows all unread instead of just inbox unread
• Automatically update signature to match sending address

The last one is by far the coolest. Invaluable if you have several e-mail accounts

MailPriority: provides a simple interface to set priorities for outgoing messages and request read receipts (when available on the receipient's server).

MailPicture: allows you to have your image show up in your mail message when you send it to a user that has MailPictures installed.

They are all freeware and Panther compatible and come as Bundles that install in your~/Library/Mail/Bundles directory.

Xbox switches to PowerPC

Guess what: Microsoft is switching to IBM's PowerPC chip (yes, the same you find in Apple's Macs) to power its playstation, the Xbox. (source WIRED).

There's quite a bit of irony here, he [Richard Doherty of IBM] added, referring to the fact that it has always been assumed that Apple would move to Intel, rather than Microsoft moving to the PowerPC, a chip technology co-developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola.

• Microsoft's press release
• IBM's press release

Panther: FireWire data corruption resolved

Apparently, Apple has narrowed the problem with Firewire 800 corruption down to an Oxford 922 chipset used by some external firewire enclosures (source EETimes, and Apple's official press release).

Other World Computing is offering a FireWire 800 firmware update for their Mercury Elite FW800 external drives.

While Oxford Semiconductor and Apple Computer disagree over what has led to this issue (there is absolutely no issue under any circumstance with OS 10.2.8 and earlier), Apple has confirmed that the issue is limited to firmware v1.02 and prior.

The patch is also available through VersionTracker.

LaCie has also published a announcement on their website regarding their FW800 external drives.

WiebeTech follows suit for their Fire800 and MicroGB+800 products with an announcement on their tech support page, and offers an firmware updater.

Doug Bowman is back on Mac

In a post call "SwitchBack", Douglas Bowman, the well-known designer of Stopdesign, explains how he has come back to using a Mac after a having given it up in favour of Windows (see "Confessions of a Designer" for the whole story).

Welcome back Doug.