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Reeder - RSS Heaven on the iPhone
Along with Twitter and emails, reading my RSS feeds is one of my primary activities on my iPhone. I use Google Reader for centrally managing my subscriptions and I have pretty much tried all Google Reader apps on the iPhone. For a long time I used Byline but wanted something with integration with services such as Instapaper and Twitter. Along came Reeder and all my prays were answered!
I have been using Reeder for over a month now and I have to say I am very impressed. The application is a joy to use, with a beautiful and intuitive interface design. Synchronisation with Google Reader is also super fast and accurate, something which can be a serious problem with some of Reeders competitors in the App Store. Finally there is plenty of integration with third party services to keep the serious user more than happy, with support for Twitter, Delicious, Pinboard, Instapaper, ReadItLater and Email.
A few things I would like to see in the future are integration with Tumblr, being able to copy the URL of an article and the ability to manage your subscriptions from within the application. Reeder has come a long way in a short period of time and with the release of version 1.2, the developer has already shown that he is willing to listen to his users when defining the product roadmap and I am confident…
Twitter Re-Tweets
As many of you may have heard, Twitter are currently testing some new functionality in beta called Re-tweets. What’s new about that I hear you cry, Re-tweets or RT’s have been about for ages?
Well yes and no. While many clients have automated the re-tweeting of existing tweets, this is not something that Twitter itself has supported and users of the web interface have been required to cut and paste to manually create the posts.
I am fortunate enough to be part of that beta release, so thought you may like to hear and see how Twitter’s implementation works. Below is the explanation that Twitter provides:
There are two main differences. Firstly you still see the author of the original post and not the author of the re-tweet as you do currently.
Secondly, while you will still only see re-tweets from people you follow, they have included a count of how many other people have also re-tweeted the same post. This is quite useful in quickly gauging the popularity of the tweet.
Not drastic changes but useful ones and expect to see third party twitter clients falling into line and supporting this functionality in the very near future.
Is the Magic Mouse the Ultimate Mouse?
Today I got the chance to have a play with the new Apple Magic Mouse. Released earlier this week as part of the Apple hardware refresh, the Magic Mouse introduces gesture technology to the mouse, which was previously only found on the MacBook and iPhone.
So what does this mean for the user?
First impressions are the lack of buttons. While it’s predecessor, the Mighty Mouse, didn’t have visible left and right mouse buttons, there was the tiny scroll ball built into the top casing and the pinch buttons on the side.
With the Magic Mouse there is nothing, just a smooth curved back. But don’t let that fool you as this mouse is still a two button mouse and supports scrolling. The clever part is in the software which analyses the finger movements over the top of the mouse and translates them into actions, such as left or right click.
Its clever enough to understand the difference between a click and you laying your hand on top of the mouse. The scroll wheel is replaced by dragging your finger across the top of the mouse and just like the trackpad on the Unibody Macbook, the Magic Mouse will support 360 degree scrolling.
A nice touch is that the scrolling can be set to work relative to your finger speed. So if you want to slowly scroll down the document then a gentle stroke is all you need. If…
ExpressionEngine 2.0 Release Announced
Yesterday at the first day of The EECI 2009 conference in The Netherlands, Ellislab’s finally announced the launch date of the long awaited ExpressionEngine 2.0. It will be released on December 1st 2009, an early Christmas present anybody?
Code named “ExpressionEngine 2.0 Kaylee” will in development, this new version is a major step forward for the popular CMS, pushing it beyond its blogging roots and stamping its mark as full on content management system.
Perhaps the most interesting and eagerly awaited feature is its full integration with Ellislab’s other product CodeIngnitor, a PHP development framework. In fact during the development Ellislab’s took the opportunity to completely re-develop EE 2.0 from the ground up using CodeIgnitor.
During his keynote speech, EllisLab President Leslie Camacho also revealed the new pricing structure, which is as follows:
- Non-commercial $149 (used to be $99)
- Freelancer: $99 (for own website, not clients)
- Commercial $299 (used to be $249)
- Upgrade: $50 (from 1.6.3+)
Many of the details of what’s included in EE 2.0 is still closely under-wraps and as a member of the beta testing group I am restricted from saying anymore as a result of NDA. However Ellislabs have done a great job of keeping people up to date through their blog and they also released a screencast on Youtube last year, which you can see below.
Google Wave More of a Ripple
I was fortunate enough to receive a Google Wave invitation over the weekend. Having watched the promotional videos and listened to the buzz in the blogs and on twitter, I was keen to have a look and see if it stood up to all the hype.
So it was with some excitement that I logged in for the first time yesterday. Initial impressions? Well to be honest I have to say I was a little disappointed.
Google Wave is badged as the future of on-line communication and collaboration, combining email, chat and document management into one single location. This may well be the case but to achieve this you need people to collaborate with and that is the big issue, at present anyway.
You can only collaborate with other Google Wave users and as its currently in limited preview, you may find your contact list a bit restricted. I’m no Billy No Mates and have a gmail contact list of over 400 people but only 3 of these already had Google Wave accounts. An appeal on twitter added a few more but with nothing serious to get our teeth into, we’ve been restricted to having quick conversations which we could easily have achieved through email.
Other issues appeared when trying to run Google Wave in Firefox on Windows. I found it sluggish, buggy and in some instances it would crash completely. I switched to Google Chrome…
Apple Autumn Announcements
Today has been a good day for Apple. They started by reporting their most profitable quarter ever, with revenues of nearly $10 billion yielding a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion. Even in this day and age with banks being bailed out across the planet, these are mind blowing numbers.
Where has this dramatic increase come from? Well the iphone sales go from strength to strength which are obviously part of it. However it would appear that Mac sales have also seen a year on year increase and have contributed to this growth as well.
How did they follow that? Well by announcing their usual pre-holiday season refresh of their Mac& Macbook range and launching an innovative new version of the Mighty Mouse, the Magic Mouse.
Other announcements included updates to their wireless networking peripherals with speed boosts for both the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule. There was also the introduction of a new Aluminium Apple remote which works with the iPhone, iPods with the Universal Dock, and post 2004 iMacs with the built-in infrared receiver
New Mac’s
Apple have taken the opportunity to refresh the iMac’s, entry level Macbook and Mac Mini’s.
The entry level Macbook moves even closer to its Aluminium Unibody Macbook Pro stable mates. It gains its own…
Is Tweetie v2 the Ultimate iPhone Twitter Client?
I’m a self confessed Twitter addict and have tried all the major Twitter clients on the iPhone.
Like most people I started out with Twitterriffic but soon moved onto Twitterfon (recently renamed EchoFon) where I stayed for quite a while. I was eventually attracted to the simplicity of the user interface of Birdfeed but as my use of Twitter grew I needed more power and so migrated onto applications such as Tweetdeck, Simplytweet and finally Twittelator.
Along the way I tried and discarded many others but was always on the look out for the ultimate twitter client. One which combined an easy to use interface, with the power and enhanced functionality needed by a user managing multiple accounts.
I will admit that I wasn’t a massive fan of the original version of Tweetie but I was excited to read the pre-release hype about version 2 and purchased it the moment it was a available in the App Store. Now we all know with iphone apps that the hype can be a long way from reality, but in this instance I can report that it was spot on!
Tweetie version 2 by Atebits, brings the perfect blend of interface polish and functionality. Advanced features are available for power users but these are discretely placed within the interface so as not to overwhelm the user experience, something other apps can be…
ExpressionEngine Podcast
A new podcast has arrived on the scene, focussing on the ExpressionEngine content management system and hosted by Dan Benjamin and Ryan Irelan.
The aim of The ExpressionEngine Podcast is to cover the latest EE news, development, and community. Both hosts have lots of commercial ExpressionEngine experience between them, here in their own words is what they cover in episode one:
In this episode, Dan and Ryan discuss the EE beta 2 phase, some new addons from Solspace, and offer some tech tips. We also go in-depth regarding caching and acceleration with Squid and varnish.
Having just finished listening to the first podcast, I can highly recommend this to anybody who is already using ExpressionEngine or thinking about getting into this great CMS.
More information can be found on the official ExpressionEngine Podcast website, you can follow them on twitter or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.
Spy on your Boss using Twitter
At last a good reason to encourage your manager to make use of Twitter!
This Dilbert cartoon has been doing the rounds on the blogs and by email over the last couple of days and I couldn’t resist publishing a copy myself. As a self confessed twitter addict, I’m sure my old team found twitter equally useful for tracking my whereabouts in the country or even the office.
Catch up with all the latest from Dilbert & Friends at the official Dilbert website or on Twitter
New Blog or Just a New Look?
After over a year of languishing on my to-do list, I have finally pulled my finger out and got my new blog off the ground and here it is!
I’ve actually had a blog for nearly five years and despite Lea and I using it quite extensively when we were on our career break, it has since sat forgotten and unloved on the Internet, with very occasional random posts from conferences, supplemented by regular automated posts of weekly twitter updates and delicious bookmarks.
I’ve flitted from social network to social network over the years but have found that there is a core set that I return to and use regularly, some on a daily basis. I realised there was a lot of content that I was generating on these and although they were available on the relevant site and aggregated through my friendfeed, I was keen to pull these altogether on my own site. This is where the idea for this site started to form.
At the same time I was doing more and more freelance work using ExpressionEngine and was really liking the flexibility it gave me, both in terms of design and functionality but also in how easy it is to extend, through existing extensions or by writing your own. These two ideas came together and eventually a new blog was born.
So why blog? Well in the last eighteen months I…
