Yield Thought, this guy swapped his MacBook for an iPad+Linode

Yield Thought, I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode:

This guy is nuts. I could never do this. Even though 99% of my work is done via screen @ work as well.

Interesting though.

(whoops)

MacOSX Flashback Trojan is covered by ClamAV

So called because it looks like an Adobe Flash Installer. There seems to be a ton of news around this Trojan on various Mac-related websites. http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/19/trojan-variation-disables-mac-malware-protection/ for instance.

We wrote protection for this in ClamAV about 5 days ago.  I know a lot of Mac users run ClamAV, so I just thought I'd throw this out there.

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Android isn't free, unless you are the end user.

Android isn't free.

Apparently Google has found that out that a free OS isn't free.  It's going to cost you legal fees.  Being sued by everyone under the sun, Google has found itself in a sticky predicament, and has to defend itself with patents.  However, Apple still holds the patent on multitouch, so we'll have to see how that all works out.

So they bought Motorola Mobility.  yes. That division of Motorola that almost shut down and is nearly bankrupt -- and they paid 12.5B for it.  Srsly.

Even Balmer says Android isn't free.  Awhile ago.  http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/05/21/steve-ballmers-claim-android-isnt-really-free/

Unless you are the end user, when you can download and compile Android "for free" for use on your phone.

Should be interesting.

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Apple's "known bad" Xprotect file is now automatically updated

Very technical term I used there in the subject.. I know.

Apple just released Security Update 2011-003, in which they check for the MacDefender Malware, which I wrote about here.  But the most interesting part of the update is this paragraph:

File Quarantine
Available for:  Mac OS X v10.6.7, Mac OS X Server v10.6.7
Impact:  Automatically update the known malware definitions
Description:  The system will check daily for updates to the File
Quarantine malware definition list. An opt-out capability is provided
via the "Automatically update safe downloads list" checkbox in Security Preferences. Additional information is available in this.
Knowledge Base article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4651

Where apparently, Apple has built in an automatic updater to their anti-malware file, in it's most basic form, giving Apple the ability to directly protect their OS against the newest Malware.

If you don't know what I am talking about when I say "anti-malware file"  I suggest you read this post as well.

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Please leave comments below.

Locking your screen on OSX

Friend of mine tipped me to this (thanks @englishlfc).  People have asked me in the past about this, basically, how to lock your screen (Start your screen saver) using a keyboard shortcut on OSX.

On Windows you can mash Windows-L and it will lock your screen.  Or Ctrl-alt-del, enter.  (God it pains me to watch people hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and then MOUSE to "Lock Screen"... GRR!!)

My solution in OSX has always been to set my bottom left corner of my screen to "activate screen saver".  Then I could just move my mouse to that corner, and viola, locked screen.

But @englishlfc was looking to the same thing with the keyboard, and there are a ton of ways of doing it in Applescript, but it's even easier with Automator.

So, go open Automator, and select new "Workflow".

You'll get a blank screen that looks like this:

Select "Utilities on the left, and then find "Start Screen Saver" in the next column:

Drag "Start Screen Saver" over to the right:

That's it.  Save it as an "Application" in Documents or Applications.

Then go to System Preferences and set up a Keyboard Shortcut to activate that App:

Simple.

I did it a bit differently.  I used Alfred's new "Global Keyboard Shortcut" functionality to activate the app.

Done.

Maybe this'll help someone.

Want to know how to do this in Applescript?

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Mac OS X Lion iChat supports Yahoo Messenger video and voice chat

As the title of the article title states, Apple's OSX iChat client on OSX 7 Lion supports Yahoo Instant Messenger adding to support for AIM, GChat, and standard Jabber.

This is a welcome addition and stands to keep chipping away at the other major Instant Messenger clients, but, why is there two separate video chat clients for the Mac? (Facetime, iChat)

It would seem to me that it would make more sense to combine these two.

• Facetime traverses NAT (etc) better than iChat


• Facetime uses less bandwith


• Facetime is now "HD" (as Apple calls it), leaving the "quality" issue behind (iChat's resolution was better than Facetime, as Facetime is faster on the network)


• However, iChat does support up to 3 video calls at once (and like, 10 audio)

Anyway, I hope they fix this before OSX 7 is released finally.  I'd love to have one app that covered both IM and Mobile Video Chat.

Appleinsider has a great breakdown featuring some nice videos of OSX7 on their site here and here.  Check it out if you are an Apple user like me.

Other notable features of OSX7 I think:

• No Front Row


• Java runtime is not installed by default, it's a download now.


• Rosetta support (so support for running PowerPC apps on Intel machines) is gone.  Meaning that Apps should be smaller in size.


• Migration Assistant now supports helping Windows users move over to the Mac (smart)


• OSX Lion was given to a few researchers for review, so they can beat it up.  Very nice work.  I hope Apple rewards the researchers in some way.

H.264 is being dropped from Chrome

Chromium Blog: HTML Video Codec Support in Chrome.

Key sentence from above article:

"Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies."

Key comment from Slashdot on above article:

"This serves two strategic purposes for Google. First, it advances a codec that’s de facto controlled by Google at the expense of a codec that is a legitimate open standard controlled by a multi-vendor governance process managed by reputable international standards bodies. (“Open source” != “open standard”.) And second, it will slow the transition to HTML5 and away from Flash by creating more confusion about which codec to use for HTML5 video, which benefits Google by hurting Apple (since Apple doesn’t want to support Flash), but also sucks for users."

Google, just when I started to like you again.  I turned away from you for about a year and a half because you pissed me off with the Buzz thing.  Now you go and do this.

One step forward, two steps back.

iPhone 4 goes to Verizon too.

Finally, after long last, the iPhone is coming to Verizon.

I probably could go on Ad nausem about the new iPhone, but I'll just cover the bullet points

• The antenna is redesigned, and as a result the buttons are moved slightly down on the left, so some cases may not fit.


• CDMA, not LTE.  Which means you can't talk and surf at the same time. (Feature that I use a lot)


• You can use the iPhone as a wifi hotspot (so like a mifi) for up to 5 devices.  Nice.


• Coming February 10th for GA.  Advanced ordering for Verizon Customers on Feb 3.


• Otherwise, it's the iPhone 4.

This will be nice.

Macworlds 2010 App Gems Awards

Macworlds 2010 App Gems Awards | Mobile | Macworld.

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Macworld’s list of the best iOS apps from 2010.  Some really nice stuff here, good to see that I have most of them and use them quite often.

If you are an iOS user, check it out.

Apple releases Mac OS X 10.6.5 with no mention of AirPrint

AppleInsider | Apple releases Mac OS X 10.6.5 with no mention of AirPrint.

A nice roundup of everything in 10.6.5, including a gigantic flash update. From adobe.

Archiving Emails in Mail.app, there's an app for that.

If you are using Mail.app on OSX, this post is for you.

It's been well known to people that read my blog that I am an Inbox-Zero ninja, and generally pride myself on my ability to get through vast amounts of email quickly because of the system that I have refined over the past several years of experimenting.

Techniques in Archiving

One of the things about Inbox Zero is the ability to quickly move an email out of your "Inbox" and into another folder.  If you sort your emails that come into your Inbox by topic or subject or whatever, different folders may do good things for you.  For instance I have a folder where all Snort related email goes.  The three Snort mailing lists go straight to my inbox where I read most of them and then file them away using a keyboard shortcut.  Other Snort related mailing lists just go straight to this box, leaving me with only the important ones in my inbox.

Most listserver traffic of the 40 or so listservers that I belong to go straight to a "listserver" folder, where I can deal with it later.  You get my point.

But everything that I don't filter, is in my inbox, which usually nets me about 200~ emails a day that I need to deal with.  When I read an email I have possible outcomes.

• Delete it


• Archive it (if I need it later)


• Respond to it (if it takes shorter than 2 minutes to accomplish this task)


• Delegate it (if I am not the appropriate person to deal with "x" email)


• Make a todo to deal with it later.

Delete it

Duh.  I don't do enough of this.

Archive it.

This is the meat of the post, and kind of the point of writing this article.  I am a firm believer in leaving your hands on the keyboard if possible.  Learning the keyboard shortcuts in your favorite app will not only save time, but it also keeps your hands where you need to be doing work.  On the keyboard (instead of continually reaching for your mouse).  There are keyboard shortcuts for almost anything in OSX, and if you can't find it, or the menu command doesn't have a keyboard shortcut, you can make a keyboard shortcut to do what you want in Snow Leopard.  Heck, there are keyboard shortcuts in Gmail (learn em!)

Now, how do you do this in Mail.app, well there is a little app called "Archive" that will allow you to do this.

Archive.  Archive allows you to do exactly that.  Archive the email that you are presently on.  It creates a folder in your email accounts named "Archive", and when you mash the shortcut in your inbox, it puts the email that you have lighted in the appropriate Archive folder.  Simple, clean, done.

There is also Mail Act-On, which I've talked about before here, is a nice little app if you need to do more advanced things than Archive, but for 99% of you, check out Archive, it does what you need.

Respond to it

If I think it'll take less than 2 minutes to respond to the email that I am currently reading, I'll bang out a response.  I try to not bang out a "quick" response "just to keep the ball moving" as Kevin Rose says.  I try to write out a through response.  My point in doing this is to eliminate further email by providing any answers I can, by asking the appropriate question so that the response to my email is full of exactly what I need it to be, and so that people don't waste more time by me not wasting theirs with a "short terse banged-out email".

Delegate It.

Otherwise known as the "Forward" button.  I get a ton of email, not all appropriate for me to handle, some need to go to our web team, some need to go to our research team, but it comes to me, because I "handle" the email, as opposed to ignore it.  I don't mind being the conduit to which people communicate, at least I know things are getting done, and I have a pulse on what is going on.

Todo It.

If the email contains an action that I need to perform, but I can't do it right now, I have a keyboard shortcut that allows me to highlight a section of text, mash a keyboard shortcut, and Omnifocus will grab the hightlight-ed input that I selected and makes a Todo out of it, along with a link in Omnifocus back to the email that generated it.  (This is called "Clipping" for you Omnifocus nerds, get ON IT.)  I quickly set a context (email) and a due date.  Then I go onto the next email.  Everyday, I get to the bottom of the "Todo"s that are due that day, and that includes the thoughtful emails.

Matter of fact, writing this post about "Archive" was a Todo.

Let me go mark it done.

BTW -- Inbox Zero comes from Merlin Mann.  I'm not stealing his work.  It's insightful.  He rocks.  MerlinMann.com and InboxZero.com

Notes syncing between Mail.app and iPhone, finally

I've written several times over the years about the need for Notes to sync automatically between the iPhone and the Mac Mail.app Desktop application.  Well, unbeknownst to me (because I stopped using Notes in Mail.app because of the lack of this feature), in iOS 4.0 Apple has built this in.

I didn't test it right away when the release came out, and just now that I haven't written about it either since they built this in.  But it works.

If you have an IMAP account, you can go into your account settings on your iPhone and turn on "Notes" in that account's preferences.  Mail will create a folder called "Notes" on the IMAP server, and your "Notes" on Mail.app will be sync'ed Over-the-Air with your iPhone.

I have my Mail.app set up like this:



So that all my notes and to-do's stay intact in one account, and not spread apart different accounts.  But there is more than one advantage to MobileMe for this particular feature.  If you set it to MobileMe, Notes are pushed.  (As opposed to pull, as they would be with other IMAP accounts.)

In short, Apple enabled Notes syncing in iOS 4.0.  It works.  Give it a shot.

Facetime

Facetime, Apple’s new iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 video chat application got a bit of an update on Tuesday of this week.

Jobs said it himself, the biggest thing that people wanted when facetime was shown on the iPhone for the first time was the integration of the system into the Mac desktop.  I talked about this back on this original post when the iPhone 4 came out.  Finally, at Tuesday’s speech Jobs and Apple rolled out the Facetime client for the desktop.

It works.

You can call Mac to Mac using Facetime, you can also call Mac to iPhone or iPhone to Mac, likewise with the iPod Touch. The resolution is good (it’s scaled down a bit if you are used to iChat’s resolution), audio is excellent, and it works flawlessly. In fact, when it came out, I was on a hotel network. I tried to initiate an iChat connection to my Dad, and we couldn’t do it for lack of bandwidth, however, Facetime connected right away without a problem.

The only thing that I thought was a bit strange, and I know I'm not the only one, was that Apple released it as a separate application for the Mac.

However, after I thought about it for a bit, I came back to my original conclusion that this is a temporary step. The application is simple and easy to write, so that’s what Apple did. I imagine in order to build the feature into iChat, they'd have to rewrite the whole application, and while they didn’t at all indicate that this was going to happen in 10.7 Lion (which they also started talking about on Tuesday), it makes a lot of sense to have it built into the OS.

One of the other things that i noticed about facetime is that it doesn’t really give you any kind of “presence” notification. For instance, it would make sense that since Apple knows you are connected to the internet via $device, they would be able to provide some type of presence notification along with it, I assume this is going to come with 10.7 too.

The Mac App Store, why it's awesome.

On Tuesday this week, Steve Jobs got up in front of journalists and announced several things.  I'd like to cover them all at once, but I realized the post was going to be way too long, so I thought I'd cover them in separate topics.

The Mac App Store

First let me talk about, what I thought was the biggest announcement of the entire press conference.  The Mac App Store.

Similar to the iOS App store that you can find in iTunes, Apple will be rolling out a separate application onto the OSX platform where developers can upload their apps to Apple in order for them to be purchase-able through the "one-click" easy access of this app.



Apple is taking the same 'cut' that it takes for the iTunes app store, 70/30.  70% of the developers revenue for selling an app goes to the developer, the other 30% goes to Apple to pay for the store, the hosting, the bandwidth, etc.  Some developers will think that this is Apple gouging into their profits, and while true, they have to think of a couple things:

1) I can raise the price of my app, just enough, to make it worthwhile for me.

2) The prices of the apps in the Mac App store will generally be higher, as they will be of higher quality. (Theory of mine, as they won't be just little fart apps for the iPhone.)

3) You would now be featured in the "showcase" as it were for Apps.  This is a genius idea.  Yes you have to sacrifice the 30% of your revenue, but your download count will go through the roof.  Look at the developers that have made millions off of the iPhone app store in just a short amount of time after it's release.

Conspiracy Theories

Some people I've heard talk about the App store seem to think this is Apple's way of locking you into their platform.  Let me share my opinion on this.

They already have you locked into their platform.

First off, if you buy your app from the app store, you click the button, it downloads over the internet (further reinforcing my theory that I wrote a couple years ago when the Macbook Air came out, I said that it was going to be the end of distributing software via physical medium), it installs by itself.  Done.  Easy.

If you want to update the app, you go to the "updates" section of the app store, and you click "update" or "update all" and all your apps are automagically updated.  What I'd like to see Apple do is have all their updates take place through this system.  I think "Software Update" and the "Updates in the App store" may be confusing for some users, but that will remain to be seen I guess.

At the same time yesterday we found out that Apple is depreciating Java on their system, and the new Macbook Air (which I'll talk about in a later post) is shipping without Adobe Flash.  I think both of these are smart decisions, and would like to see both of these in the App Store.  Oracle submits a Java build, and Adobe submits Flash.  You download both of these with one click, from one place (instead of going all over the internet to find them and their updates), and that way when a new update comes out for Flash or Java, you just click "Update" in the app store.  This does two things:

A) Makes security better, by providing an easy way for people to update their apps.

B) It absolves Apple from having to maintain older software on their system and keep it updated (such as Flash).

Great idea.

More Conspiracy Theories

Yesterday on my drive home I was listening to the latest "MacBreak Weekly" podcast, and even though Alex Lindsay has been saying it for several months now, he reiterated it again in the latest broadcast.  He thinks that the OS on the Mac is going to iOS.

I think he could not be more wrong, and let me explain why.

Steve Jobs said yesterday that they were bringing some of the things they have learned form the iPhone and iPad back to the Mac.  Good idea.  It's great to have a unifying experience across all your platforms.

Does that mean that the OSX Operating system will be all touch based?  No.  Jobs said that yesterday, trying to manipulate objects on a vertical surface doesn't work.  Think about it as you are reading this right now, if you are reading this on a traditional computer.  Think about not having your mouse, and moving the cursor or using gestures on your monitor.  Play with that idea a second.  Your arm would get so tired and you'd get frustrated after awhile.  Heck, when I dock my iPad and use a regular keyboard with it, and I have to reach up and tap something on the screen when it's in a vertical configuration, it's annoying.  This won't work.  I agree.

Does that mean that OSX can't learn some multi-touch gestures?  No.  In fact, you can already scroll with two fingers (have been able to do for years on the Mac), three finger swipe forwards and back, even rotate photos and documents by the same rotation method that you use on the iPod Nano's screen.  Add a few more of these and the system will not only be intuitive, but you'll be able to get a lot done, faster.  That's why Apple invented the Magic Mouse, and that's why they invented the Magic Trackpad.  Look at the direction of the Operating System and it makes sense.

OSX is not becoming iOS.  It won't work.  But there are advantages that iOS has that OSX does not have, again, let's come back to the App Store.  The App Store on the iTunes/iPod touch/iPhone/iPad system is an easy one-click access to any app on the Apple store.  The App store on the Mac is going to be the same way.  However, what side effects does this provide that people may not have thought of yet?

1) Your Apps are tied to your iTunes account.  Okay, that means that if I want to rebuild my computer, or buy a new one, all I have to do is open the App Store and I can suck down all the apps that I've already paid for without having to re-find them on the internet, or from a backup.  Better yet, I don't have to keep track of licenses and other non-sense like that.

2) Easy updating.  This is important, not only for functionality, but for security.  I think this is one of the best features of the App Store.

3) Your Apps are tied to your iTunes account.  Which means what?  That's right.  They are DRM'ed to your name.  Which means what?  That's right.  You can't pirate the Apps.

Let me pause for effect.

Apple.  Just figured out a way.  To stop.  Software piracy.

Yup.  That's just happened.

Genius.  I buy all my applications anyway, so it doesn't affect me, but that's awesome.

The apps that are sold through the app store can't be packaged up and sent to your friend anymore.

Yes, you can still download apps and what not from the Internet in general (meaning that developers for the Mac don't HAVE to sell their apps through the app store), but then you are dealing with not being in front of tons of eyes through the App Store, licensing and purchasing schemes.  You have to maintain all of that yourself.  Whereas through the App Store, Apple has taken care of all of that for you and prevented the piracy of your Apps.

I also think this will totally increase the amount of apps available for the Mac platform.  All of a sudden people will have easy access to a way to simply get their Mac Application out there without having to shrink wrap it and get it into the big-box stores.

Problem?

Honestly, I see nothing but good things here.  The only time I'll have a problem with the Mac App Store is when Apple says that the only place you can get the apps is from them.  .....and they are still taking their 30% cut.

That's not really fair (which isn't happening, I'm just theorizing).

Although it would be interesting, because then all code would come from Apple, approved, and signed.  Malware and what-not could be rendered totally non-existant.

Apple has also stated in their terms of service that "violent" video games can't be on the App Store.

That sucks.  I think that'll hurt the store overall, but who knows, they may fix that.

Ray Ozzie leaving post as Microsoft's chief software architect

Ray Ozzie is the gentleman that took Bill Gates's place after he retired from his day to day duties at Microsoft, and unfortunately, this kinda makes me feel more confident in the opinion I had when that event took place.

Microsoft is losing their spirit.

Let's face it, it's quite obvious now that Bill Gates was the driver behind the Microsoft brand and direction.  This is the third notable post that is being vacated since Bill Gates left (the first being the designer behind the Zune interface Robbie Bach, second being CFO Chris Liddell), and yet, somehow Ballmer stays in charge.

Don't get me wrong, Ballmer knows how to make money.  Which is why he's a good CEO, but in my opinion, it doesn't feel like he is ushering in a strong "direction" for the company.  But maybe I'm being a little critical, trying not to compare him to Steve Jobs, but hate him or love him, Steve Jobs is a great CEO.

It just feels to me that Microsoft is playing the catchup game.  Saying "me too" to everything that is coming out.  Windows Mobile Phone 7, (which was started a long time ago, but not until the iPhone came out was serious pressure put on this), the Xbox360 (which is probably Microsoft's best product), the Zune copied after the iPod, Windows's constant comparison to OSX, chasing after Google with Bing, and chasing after the iPad now with whatever-the-heck tablets (slate) they come out with.

Sad part is, Microsoft almost invented the tablet business.  They pretty much pioneered it.  However, they tried to shoe horn a Desktop OS into a tablet PC and wrote enough software to be able to use a pen.  Well, it doesn't appear to have caught on en-masse.  They didn't go back to the drawing board (like they did with Windows Mobile Phone 7) and design a new user interface, even if they copied the WMP7 interface from the Zune HD.  Their current tablet offering does not bode well for touch, and it's unclear where their future direction is going as far as touch is concerned, but it doesn't look good right now.  It still looks like they are trying to shoehorn Windows 7, the desktop operating system, into the tablet.  It's not going to work!  You tried that once, and it failed.  So I refer to the current class of computing devices (the iPad, and all the competitors that are trying to come out now as "slate" devices.)

Ray Ozzie, as it states in the below linked article, is best known for creating Lotus Notes.  Which really doesn't speak volumes to quality, but it does speak to success.  Even a totally awful program can make tons of money.  But Mr. Ozzie didn't seem to provide the direction that Gates did.  Face it, Gates was the genius behind the Microsoft brand.  Even if his tactic was to copy everything he saw, which I'm not saying he did, but even if his tactic was that, it was genius and it worked well.

I am not a Microsoft Shareholder, heck, I'm not even an Apple shareholder anymore,  but I'd wonder why Ballmer was still in power considering the stock price hasn't moved much in over 10 years.

Ray Ozzie leaving post as Microsofts chief software architect.

MobileMe Calendar Comes out of Beta

Following up on this post that I wrote back in July, the MobileMe calendaring system has come out of Beta.  Which means that if you are using the MobileMe service and you are on Snow Leopard (or Leopard) your iCal calendar should automatically switch over to WebDAV.  As well as your iPhone's calendar if you are running 4.0.

The nicest part about the system is the ability to invite other people to events from your iPhone and iCal, as well as see their Free/Busy schedules.

Update:  Apple's article on the subject.

Verizon Rumored To Replace Google With Bing On All Android Devices

Yesterday, Spetember 9th, Verizon gave a preview to their newest "Android" phone coming out for their network, Samsung's Galaxy S.

It has a 4-in AMOLED screen, 1GHZ Hummingbird Processor, and it has the ability to become a hotspot.  However, Verizon has ruined the phone, and may ruin every phone on their network from now on.  Why?

The thing that makes Android great is it's integration.  Google built the OS, it's integrated into Google's infrastructure, and that's the way it works best.  Just like the iPhone, which works best with Apple's infrastructure (MobileMe, iTunes, etc).

Verizon has decided to cripple this phone by instead of tying it to Google, they have tied it to Bing.  Bing Search, Bing Maps, and instead of Google's awesome navigation app, they have replaced it with Verizon's own Navigation app, which, btw, they cleverly charge you 10 bucks a month to use.

Bloatware..  Blockbuster apps, Tetris apps that charge you money, etc.

To make it worse, Verizon has stated that they will be moving all of their "Droid" line to Bing.  It won't be exclusive, (meaning you can switch everything back to Google), but this is basically how to ruin a franchise.  (Verizon having Android on everything.)

This is where Verizon did it wrong with the iPhone as well.  When Apple came to Verizon and said "We are going to make a phone, you can be the carrier, but you can't put any apps or logos or anything on it"  Verizon said No.  So Apple went to Cingular (which later was bought by AT&T).  Cingular agreed, therefore the iPhone is on AT&T right now.

Apple's iPhone doesn't have bloatware (unless you count the apps that Apple puts on there themselves, which, I can understand your argument), it starts off with Google as the search engine by default, but you have the option to change it.

The iPhone doesn't force you to use a service, they force you to use the apps that are built in (unless you download new ones), like the "Maps" application, it's Google Maps and Google Search, but you'd almost never know it.  So far Apple hasn't ruined it, but we'll see.

Verizon may be ruining a good thing here.  Hopefully they don't.

Here's Gizmodo's review as well: here.

Verizon Rumored To Replace Google With Bing On All Android Devices | Markets | Minyanville.com.

Google Wave, it's dead. So sad.

In case you haven't heard.

So, on Google's "Official" Blog (which one guys?  You have so many!) they announced yesterday that they are pulling the plug on Google Wave.

So sad.

I think Wave had some really good potential, but I'll say it here, as I have said it since the beginning, Wave would have never caught on unless it replaced something else.  Wave was pretty neat, it was like a Wiki, Google Docs, Gmail, Gtalk, and god-knows-what-else all rolled into one.  It worked, it worked pretty well.  But it didn't replace anything for anyone.  It was a "and also" technology.

Let's Hope

Google rolls some of the technology they developed for Wave into the rest of their products.  For instance, simultaneous typing. That could be useful in Gmail and Gtalk.

I think the collaboration-on-documents idea was great.  That would be most useful in a corporate setting.  I would have loved to use it at Sourcefire.

Design

Some of their design ideas were great. Look at the navigation window over here on the right.  Look at the shading around the box, Look at the title bar (how it can be collapsed).  Look at the "+" button.  It all looks very nice.  It has icons, it has lots of html5 being used to shade and render it.  The drop shadow, the links.  Every box on Google Wave seemed to be more carefully thought out and precise.  The GUI was a wonderful idea and one couldn't very well argue with that.  The scroll bar (not pictured here) was nice to use.  Every pane was separated into it's own individual boxes.  You could tell there was a difference in between all of them.  Take a look at this post over at lifehacker.org: http://lifehacker.com/5400644/google-wave-look-and-feel-coming-to-gmail-other-google-apps.  I don't where they got that screenshot, but that's the way that Gmail should look!  Look at the boxes, the drop shadows, the shading.  The whole look and feel reeks less of a "Web App" and more of a Desktop app.  It has polish.  It has great design.  If you take a look at a screenshot of Gmail, from my own inbox, you will see what I am talking about.  Look at the panes here.  Look at the navigation windows.  This is not good GUI design in a web app, functional?  Yes.  Good looking and easier to navigate? No.

If Gmail wants to act like they are a desktop email replacement tool, they need to stop looking like "Mutt" and start looking like Wave.

In a way, I'm kind of sad to see Wave go.  There was a lot of really great ideas there.  I enjoyed using it.

However, I can totally see how it didn't work for some people.  It was confusing.  People didn't understand how it was different from anything else they used.  As I said, it didn't replace anything they already had, it didn't have a "need".  When the iPhone was invented people immediately saw the "need" for it.  A phone that is brilliantly easy to use.  It also replaced things.  It replaced their phone, it replaced their blackberry.  It was simple.

Wave wasn't simple.  It didn't replace anything, and that is why it failed.  People don't need another email system.  In fact, they need less.

Safari 5.0.1 Posted this morning

Back in June I wrote a post on a problem with Safari 5 creating a black background around certain objects when moved from one application to another.  For instance, when you attempt to use the "Mail this PDF" function from Preview.  Well, this morning Apple released version 5.0.1 of Safari.  This fixes the issue I described here, along with many others.  As posted on Apple's website here, the following are fixes:

• More accurate Top Hit results in the Address Field


• More accurate timing for CSS animations


• Better stability when using the Safari Reader keyboard shortcut


• Better stability when scrolling through MobileMe Mail


• Fixes display of multipage articles from www.rollingstone.com in Safari Reader


• Fixes an issue that prevented Google Wave and other websites using JavaScript encryption libraries from working correctly on 32-bit systems


• Fixes an issue that prevented Safari from launching on Leopard systems with network home directories


• Fixes an issue that could cause borders on YouTube thumbnails to disappear when hovering over the thumbnail image


• Fixes an issue that could cause Flash content to overlap with other content on www.facebook.com, www.crateandbarrel.com, and other sites when using Flash 10.1


• Fixes an issue that prevented boarding passes from www.aa.com from printing correctly


• Fixes an issue that could cause DNS prefetching requests to overburden certain routers


• Fixes an issue that could cause VoiceOver to misidentify elements of webpages

Safari 5.0.1 also packs in a bunch of security updates.  Of course Blackhat and Defcon are this week, so that may have something to do with this update being released.

Safari
Impact: Accessing a maliciously crafted RSS feed may cause files from the user's system to be sent to a remote server
Description: A cross-site scripting issue exists in Safari's handling of RSS feeds. Accessing a maliciously crafted RSS feed may cause files from the user's system to be sent to a remote server. This issue is addressed through improved handling of RSS feeds.
Credit to Billy Rios of the Google Security Team for reporting this
issue.

Safari
Impact: Safari's AutoFill feature may disclose information to websites without user interaction
Description: Safari's AutoFill feature can automatically fill out web forms using designated information in your Mac OS X Address Book, Outlook, or Windows Address Book. By design, user action is required for AutoFill to operate within a web form. An implementation issue exists that allows a maliciously crafted website to trigger AutoFill without user interaction. This can result in the disclosure of information contained within the user's Address Book Card. To trigger the issue, the following two situations are required. First, in Safari : Preferences : AutoFill, the "Autofill web forms using info from my Address Book card" checkbox must be checked. Second, the user's Address Book must have a Card designated as "My Card". Only the information in that specific card is accessed via AutoFill. This issue is addressed by prohibiting AutoFill from using information without user action. Devices running iOS are not affected.
Credit to Jeremiah Grossman of WhiteHat Security for reporting this issue.
(Nice work Jeremiah!)

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A use after free issue exists in WebKit's handling of element focus. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved handling of element focus.
Credit to Tony Chang of Google, Inc. for reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's rendering of inline elements. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking.
Credit to wushi of team509 for reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of dynamic modifications to text nodes. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory management.
Credit? Apple Internal?

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of CSS counters. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.
This issue is addressed through improved memory management.
Credit to wushi of team509, working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for
reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: An uninitialized memory access issue exists in WebKit's handling of the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo-elements in SVG text elements. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed by not rendering :first-letter or :first-line pseudo-elements in SVG text elements.
Credit to wushi of team509, working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A use after free issue exists in WebKit's handling of foreignObject elements in SVG documents. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through additional validation of SVG documents.
Credit to wushi of team509, working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of floating elements in SVG documents. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory management.
Credit? Apple Internal?

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of 'use' elements in SVG documents. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved handling of 'use' elements in SVG documents. Credit to Justin Schuh of Google, Inc. for reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A heap buffer overflow exists in WebKit's handling of JavaScript string objects. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking.
Credit: Apple.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A reentrancy issue exists in WebKit's handling of just- in-time compiled JavaScript stubs. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved synchronization.
Credit? Apple Internal?

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A signedness issue exists in WebKit's handling of JavaScript arrays. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved handling of JavaScript array indices.
Credit to Natalie Silvanovich for reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of regular expressions. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved handling of regular expressions.
Credit to Peter Varga of University of Szeged for reporting this issue.

WebKit
Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: A use after free issue exists in WebKit's handling of "font-face" and "use" elements in SVG documents. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved handling of "font-face" and "use" elements in SVG documents.
Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG for reporting this issue.

Safari 5.0.1 and Safari 4.1.1 address the same set of security issues. Safari 5.0.1 is provided for Mac OS X v10.5, Mac OS X v10.6, and Windows systems. Safari 4.1.1 is provided for Mac OS X v10.4 systems

The thing to remember with the above vulnerabilities is that things that are labeled "Webkit", affect more than just Safari. They could possibly affect anything using the Webkit framework. Chrome included.

Apple's New Products

Apple announced a few new products this morning on their online Store.  New iMac, new Mac Pro, and a totally new product that I saw rumored a couple weeks ago, called the Magic Trackpad.

For years I've had a Fingerworks iGesture pad, I've been using it off and on since about the 2001 timeframe.  I found it to be the neatest and easiest way to navigate my computer's interface differently from the mouse ever.  I'm a big proponent of the keyboard, and hate taking my hand off of the keyboard to mouse, but for some reason I found the iGesture Pad fun to use (especially doing things like cut, copy, and paste.   Fingerworks was founded 1998 at the University of Delaware (a couple miles from where I live) and produced keyboards, pads, keypads, all to help with RSI and to introduce gesture based navigation into the world.  They weren't exclusively Mac based, in fact, they worked on Linux pretty well as well, of course, on Windows.  Which, back then, is what I used.

Apple bought Fingerworks back in 2005, coincidentally, when they started working on the iPad (before they started working on the iPhone.  They started working on the touch tablet first).  Presumably for their patents, and innovations in the technology.  If you've used an Apple product since about 2006 or 2007, you've used Fingerworks-based technology.

Two finger scrolling, three finger swipe, pinch to zoom and pinch to un-zoom, the whole Magic Mouse, the finger manipulation on the iPhone and iPad.

In this line, comes the Magic Trackpad.  Which is kinda like my old iGesture Pad (which is sitting right here -- not in use currently).  It's a trackpad that mimics the trackpad on the laptops.

There are, however, a couple things still missing.  Like these features:

• Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, and Redo.


• Web based browsing movements.


• How about actual File movements (save, open?).


• I mean, look at them all.

However, since that's basically all software based, I am hoping that Apple builds that stuff into the interface now that we have the hardware.  Here's hoping.