1. Things integration, tagging

Cultured Code's Things is slowly and methodically nearing release — something I suspect many people eagerly await (or not, considering we now get to use the Beta for free!). Last saturday, Cultured Code released a small version update with a big new feature: system-wide To Do integration. Enter a To Do in Things, and it's instantly in Mail and iCal. It's a significant step in the evolution of this task manager. It's been enlightening to watch this app progress via the updates and the Things blog. The developers are clearly focusing an extraordinary level of effort to get this right, and it shows. I can't wait to see the companion app for the iPhone/iPod Touch due out at the end of June.

I received a comment this week concerning my original (and aging) Things review. I questioned the scalability of Things in that review (i.e. ability to manage hundreds of To Dos), and reader Mark countered that Things scales just fine provided one develops a good tagging system. I think this is largely true — more so as I've become a better tag manager and better versed in how to use Things.

The trick, then, is to develop a system of tagging that works. If you have a good tagging structure for Things, you can share it on the Things wiki (on the Real-world tagging examples page). There are two useful entries there to help get you started. Hopefully more tagging gurus will share their ideas and solutions. For more on tagging, check out Ian Beck's TagaMac site (particularly his intro to tags).

By the way, wouldn't it be nice to have a dedicated wiki for community-contributed tagging solutions, usage examples, and tips for all Mac apps that support the venerable tag?

2. RapidWeaver 4 first impressions

You may have heard that RealMac Software's RapidWeaver 4 came out this week. The most noticeable difference in this Leopard-only upgrade is the user interface, but there are also some significant under-the-hood improvements. If you are upgrading from an earlier version, ensure you update your third party plug ins first, then install the upgrade.

The new interface meshes well with the 'Leopard look' and is sleeker and easier to look at. It also includes a far amount of eye candy (e.g. black pop up windows, iconic representations of your files flying past during file open and upload). In short, it looks good. Note to RapidWeaver: I don't need to see each file loading when I start up RW. Just show me the progress bar. All those file icons whipping past is a nice use of Core Animation, but it's superfluous. Same goes for the file upload progress indicator.

I like the new toolbar that runs across the top of the app. At first, I was lamenting that I could not customize the shortcuts on the toolbar. Then, upon further inspection, it dawned on me that everything I need is already there. Good design.

The left-hand sidebar icons that represent individual pages of your site are now easier to recognize. RW pages are easy to pick out, as are third party plugin pages (e.g. a Blocks page now looks, appropriately, like a big yellow block).

One thing I don't like is the 'Add a new Page' view in the UI — it looks pretty, but I can't see the version number of my plugins as I could in earlier versions of the app (I tried clicking on the plugin name, as I would in Finder to reveal a long file name, but this had no effect). This used to be an easy way to see if I had the most current plugins installed.

There are now four new themes. You can now search through your themes or filter them (based on RW version, or if they originated from a third party). I like this. The one minor problem I've noticed is this: if I change the theme view to display smaller icon sizes, it doesn't stick. Once I close the document and open it up again, the theme previews are once again set to the default size (which are a bit too large).

One of the biggest changes is the adoption of a new file format based on standard XML. This is good news for people with very large sites, and good news for third party integration possibilities. I can vouch for this: publishing is dramatically speedier.

Be sure to check out the new Extras folder in the download. It includes a well-designed new PDF manual, the SDK for Theme development, and an assortment of web badges to add to your site.

I'm quite happy with this update, although I could not find a changelog anywhere on the RW site that clearly delineates what's new. I'm sure it's there somewhere.

And speaking of the RW website, it also received a major refresh (RealMac does this with each major release, offering up their previous site design as a new RW template).

The RapidWeaver forums have also been totally revamped. There is now a main community discussion section, a technical support section (which is now the primary means to get technical support for RW), and community forums in various languages other than English. A note for people who were used to the old forum: look for the search function inside the categories. It looks good, but I was disappointed to see that my account indicates that I've not made any posts (i.e. it appears my account was reset with the new launch. I don't know if other users face the same situation).

Delicious Library 2 is now out. DL offers a novel way to catalog your books, movies, music, software, toys, tools, electronics and video games using your built-in iSight as a barcode scanner. If you’ve never used it, give it a try. It’s a great tool to catalog your stuff. It makes it easy to track who you lent your possessions too. And it’s an invaluable tool for insurance purposes (take it from someone who moves frequently — it’s worth the price of admission for this use alone). This is one of those applications you point to when people ask why you use a Mac.

If you own an earlier version, there are many, many new features to check out that make this a worthy upgrade. A new license is $40, an upgrade is $20. Those who bought the last version before this update (version 1.6.6) will get the upgrade for free.

Congratulations to the team behind the successful landing of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander this weekend. In the coming months, the Lander will send back data that will hopefully answer questions about the past and present climate of Mars, the Martian arctic’s ability to support life and the history of water on the planet.

Here are some different ways you can follow the Mission on your Mac:

1. Phoenix Mars Mission website

This site is, as you would expect, the primary source for the latest images, video, news. There is some great blog content here, too. As an aside, check out this CIO article about the behind-the-scenes challenge of serving up web content for the mission in near-real time to tens of thousands of people at once. It’s especially impressive considering that the imagery content is streaming in from millions of miles away.

2. Twitter with the Phoenix

Yes, even the Phoenix Mars Lander has a Twitter account. This is a convenient way to get regular updates — and the spacecraft is even responding to user questions (the tweets are written in the first ‘person’).

3. Visit the Mission on Second Life

And, yes, there’s also a Second Life site for the Mission.

4. Mac screensaver, widget

You can download a couple of Mac freebies over at the Phoenix Mars Mission site. The Mac screensaver features current imagery that auto-updates each time it is launched. The widget provides current Martian weather data.

5. Get the iTunes podcast

There’s also a Phoenix Mars Mission podcast hosted by the University of Arizona. This is the first time a public university has led a Mars mission.

I’ll leave you with an interesting fact: there is a DVD fastened with Velcro to the Phoenix Mars Lander. It’s called Vision of Mars, and it’s a compendium of Mars-related text, art, and radio broadcasts from the 19th and 20th century compiled by the Planetary Society. It also contains 250,000 names of Society members and space exploration enthusiasts. According to the Society, it’s “a message from our world to future human inhabitants of Mars.” The disc, billed as the ‘first library on Mars,’ is reportedly the most expensive DVD ever made. It’s comprised of silicon glass and is designed to last for 500 years.

If it were up to me, I would have attached a Nintendo Wii.

I’ve received a couple of reader comments over the past few months asking if I would consider creating a lighter-colored theme. The gist of it is that the dark colors of View from the Dock are fine for short posts, but some people don’t enjoy reading the longer review articles on the dark background (my wife is included in this category).

In response, I created a ‘light’ version of this site. You can choose the light or original flavor from the new ‘Switch Style’ drop-down list in the left column. It’s persistent, meaning it will remember your choice…provided you have enabled cookies for your web browser.

I also got rid of the registration requirement for commenting and added a ‘CAPTCHA’ to prevent spam and verify commenters are human. The one I choose is reCAPTCHA. The nifty thing about reCAPTCHA is that one of the two words you are required to type is a scanned word from a book that cannot be read by computerized Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. By entering the word, you are helping to digitize an old book. That is a truly great idea.

So, if you registered for this site — you don’t need to log in anymore to comment. If you’re new to the site, you do not need to register at all to comment.

If you've been following the PIM series here, you know that I recently delayed my reviews because the Worldwide Developers Conference is just around the corner (a time of year when many Mac apps are updated). But I have a confession to make. This delay is also a convenient excuse! I haven't had time to devote my energies to the PIM review series over the past couple of weeks, and this offered a valid reason to postpone. With the recent update of two of the five apps in this review series (Together and EagleFiler), I plan to be back with the next review soon. I may change the order of the reviews and start with the recently-updated apps as a precaution.

Speaking of the PIM reviews, there has been an interesting development regarding this series: Alan Schmitt of Metadata posted a very well-thought out argument that VooDooPad shouldn't be part of this review series since it's a fundamentally different sort of application. Alan makes a distinction between PIMs as data organizers and PIMs as data creation tools: while the former is focused on manipulation of metadata, the latter is focused on manipulation of data. I think this is an excellent point. What I'm thinking about now is how the various Mac info managers fit on the creation vs. organization spectrum. I'll post my thoughts soon.

Meanwhile, here's a short round up of odds and ends that recently caught my interest around the Macosphere.

 

1. Get Satisfaction

Get Satisfaction is a community-driven customer service site with an aim to create new and better connections between companies and users. It's a place to get tech support, a place to gripe about a product or service, a place to interact with employees from a company, and a place to share ideas. For companies, it's a great way to manage tech support and directly engage with customers (and it's free). For customers like you and me, it's a very interactive and interesting way to get help with an app or service (or just to monitor what people are saying). I also like the newly-added 'Overheard' feature on Get Satisfaction, which allows companies to track what people are saying about them in the Twittersphere. It's an interesting way to view a narrow segment of Twitter posts. It's also a novel way to generate tips and ideas for posts for bloggers (for instance, I can monitor the worldwide Twitter stream of all posts that mention Apple). I have the sense that Get Satisfaction is a harbinger of things to come as social networking/microblogging evolves and matures. It's a great tool that is worth your time to check out. Let's count down the days until it's bought by Google.

 

2. Alternative Twitter Views

I'm still adjusting to the Twitter phenomenon. The best description of it I've heard so far comes from Adam Christianson of the MacCast, who noted it's like iChat without the commitment. I like that. At any rate, here are a couple of interesting sites that provide alternative views of the Twitter stream. The first, twittervision, is a mash-up of Google Maps and Twitter. As you might expect, it displays Twitter posts in realtime on a world map. The second, Firehose, presents a realtime Twitter timeline. These sites aren't particularly useful, but they are interesting. The Firehose stream is particularly mesmerizing.

 

3. Delicious Library 2 Nears Release

The developer of Delicious Library, the barcode-friendly media cataloguing tool, announced the availability of a Beta download of version 2.0 yesterday via a Twitter post. If you buy the current version of DL (1.6.6), you will get the 2.0 upgrade for free. If you've never tried DL, download the trial and check it out. It's the slickest use of the built-in iSight camera that I've seen. Note that the 2.0 Beta is optimized for OS X Leopard 10.5.3, which has not yet been released.

 

4. Ready-Set-Do! GTD App Updated

Ready-Set-Do!, a Getting Things Done workflow app, updated to 1.3 recently. This isn't as much an application as it is a cleverly packaged set of Applescripts that allow you to manage the files on your Mac using GTD methodology. From what I've read, this app is for people who really grok the GTD process. It appears to be most similar to Midnight Inbox, in that it aims to serve as a GTD command post to manages all the files on your Mac by creating alias links (in other words, files are not actually moved around, they are only referenced and managed through the Ready-Set-Do! interface). Interesting idea.

 

5. Links for web developers

I'm kind of tired of 'top ten' style lists, but blogwell.com's 100+ Resources for Web Developers is a good reference and summary.

 

6. Graffletopia

If you use OmniGraffle, you must check out Graffletopia. Here, you can choose from over 300,000 free stencils to use in your OmniGraffle project. If you're unfamiliar with OmniGraffle, it's a tool with which you can create diagrams. If you peruse through some of the Graffletopia styles, you will quickly get a sense of just how useful this tool can be.