The first thing to be said about Postage is how good it looks. It has an amazing UI, and it is no wonder that in won an Apple Design Award this year. But it’s not just the UI that’s nice-looking, it’s the postcards you create as well that look great. And they’re easy to make—It just takes a couple of steps.

The first step is to choose the style for the postcard. As of now, there are over 55 styles in 10 different categories, which is more than enough. In the preview of each style, it shows you exactly where the picture will go, and where the text will go too. After you have chosen a style, you can choose a picture from your iPhone’s photo library. It would be great if you could see a preview with the picture as you were browsing photos, but I think that is an issue of Apple not allowing direct access to photos, you must use the list. After you have selected a picture, you can add one of 7 effects, or keep it as-is. More effects would be nice, and maybe even sliders for exposure, and saturation. But, this is supposed to be a simple app that allows you to make a postcard in just a minute, so it is not a necessity.

The next step is text. With Postage, not only can you choose what it says, but you can also choose a font, text style and text color. There are 9 different fonts to choose from, all of which are very different. If they added more, some would look alike, and you might end up spending minutes trying to figure out which one looks best. So, maybe you should be happy there aren’t more. The styles are normal text styles: left, center or right-alligned and normal or bold. I’m surprised that italics are not in there though, but for a simple message, I’m not sure you’d usually need them.

The final step, but most important one, is the addresses. You can choose someone from your contacts, or just enter someone’s email address. And, you can choose any email address that it will be marked as being from. So, if you want to surprise them, but down a random email address. You can also choose to add the postcard to your photo library, so you can keep track of all the ones you send. I would have never thought of doing this, but it is a great idea. Then, once you have finished everything (and you can go back to the previous step at any point), you must click Send, and your postcard is complete.

Just as easy as—Actually easier than—Mailing an actual postcard and you can choose your own image, style and text style and it arrives almost instantly. All this for the (normal) price of ($4.99) about 8-10 postcards (with postage), and this allows you to send unlimited postcards. But as this is being written, Postage is 40% off, or just the price of ($2.99) 5-6 postcards (with postage). So, if you’re on vacation, or going on vacation soon, Postage can assure that you don’t have any angry relatives for not sending postcards—What’s not to like? It’s available in the App Store through This link for only $2.99 as of now.

Stainless is the brainchild of the small software company Mesa Dynamics, initially meant more as a proof than a product. Mesa wrote the browser simply to demonstrate a multiple-process web browser similar to Google Chrome, but the app has since flourished due to fan demand into a full fledged web browser.

Stainless utilizes the same WebKit layout rendering engine used by Apple’s Safari browser and Google’s Chrome browser, but has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. Stainless has a unique feature called parallel sessions, which allows users to log into the same website multiple times with different accounts in each tab. Each tab open is designed to be its own process, so that if it stops responding, it doesn’t crash the entire browser. I noticed a number of subtle features in the course of using Stainless that really stuck out. One being that when you search for text on a page (Cmd+F), it searches on each page you click to afterwards automatically, something neither Safari or Firefox do. It was incredibly useful when looking for references of the same topic on multiple sites.

Stainless has a useful minimalist interface

I see the app’s main feature as it’s simplicity. Stainless gives all the screen real estate to the web page, rather than cluttering it with it’s own icons and menus. The simple 3-button control bar, address/search combo bar, and thin bookmark column felt comfortable. I was surprised how much I liked the icon-only bookmark column WebKit gives the browser that zippy feel that we’ve all come to expect in Safari, though Stainless is possibly even speedier. I found in an informal speed test between the new Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Stainless, that it definitely edged out on top in rendering and application responsiveness.

I do have a few quipes with Stainless though. It’s obviously still a beta, but I had trouble moving the app around in Spaces, and then switching tabs in the new space. The app wanted to jump back to the originating space, so I presume that this is related to the multiple-process architecture. Also, the switch to the browser was tricky without a bookmark or settings import wizard, something I’ve come to expect from a browser if it expects me to switch.

All in all Stainless is a fantastic piece of software. It’s obviously been planned out well. It’s handsome, integrates fabulous features like parallel sessions, and Google Gears, while maintaining performance. It’s sparse, but after a few days I realized that it had everything you NEED in a browser, nothing more, and nothing less. In the Mac world right now I’d call Safari the flashy browser, Firefox the extendible browser, Stainless the speedy browser, and Chrome the vaporware browser. If you’re waiting for Chrome, Stainless provides an excellent preview of what to expect.

The Twitter Phenomenon – some call it the death of journalism, some call it the rebirth of useful communication. No matter your feelings on Twitter, it’s likely that you have an account, or will get one soon enough.

Now when tweeting (verb: the act of updating your twitter) you have many options. The robust Twitter API allows you to post from just about anywhere with any internet or mobile device. There are hundreds of Twitter clients for you to choose from! Today we’ll go through the many different clients you can holster in your Twitter Toolbelt!

The AIR Clients:

AdobeAIR, for those of you that don’t know, is a runtime environment developed by Adobe for building powerful Internet applications that can be deployed as desktop applications. (They’re mainly composed of Flash, HTML, Javascript, and AJAX). Many Twitter apps have been developed in the AIR environment, making them all cross-platform, but with drawbacks. If you’re a Mac person, and you like your standard OS X Application Interface, then be warned. The AIR apps are great, but may not be right for you. Personally, I’ve tried many of them, but found that they reacted like web apps, when I wanted them to react like desktop applications. This is not to say they’re bad apps! Many are fantastic, but personally I don’t want them on my desktop.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is arguably the most popular AIR client, with an attractive dark, multi-column interface and integration with tons of popular URL shortening services as well as TwitPic and YFrog. TweetDeck also taps into the Facebook API to allow you to update Twitter and Facebook Status Updates. The app allows users to link more than one Twitter Account, something not seen in all clients.

Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop almost seems like a cousin to TweetDeck, but is a little bit less cluttered. Seesmic also takes the multi-column approach, but looses the icon-only-based navigation. The app has a great sidebar to organize your Tweets (and yes, Facebook integration in this one too), and just has a great user experience in general. I was impressed once again to see all of the external Twitter services such as URL shortening, photo uploading, and a handy “shrink text” feature to help you squeeze the most into of your Tweets.

Tweetr

Tweetr is about as straight up as you can get with a Twitter client. Its no-nonsense, “tell it like it is” layout works quite well for beginning tweeters. It shows tweets from people you’re following, your own tweets, @mentions, and direct messages all in the same list. Now if you follow hundreds of people and get thousands of @mentions a day… might not be the best app for you, but for a beginner Tweetr is great. It offers a number of excellent features such as URL shortening, uploading images right from your Webcam, and a basic layout.

The iPhone Clients:

Of course, “there’s an app for that.” There is a plethora of Twitter clients of the iPhone, and quite frankly it’s hard to find a bad one! The iPhone seems to have been built for Tweeting, it’s just so natural on the device. A few apps lack features in one or two areas, lag, or a just a bit ugly, but all-in-all the majorty of them are great. The following are considered some of the best:

Tweetie

Tweetie is an excellent app with a number of  features. Landscape keyboard, light-weight, and a well organized user interface make Tweetie stand out from the crowd. With support for multiple accounts, bit.ly and TwitPic integration, and a native iPhone feel, Tweetie is easily worth the $2.99 price tag, and is my favorite paid iPhone client.

Developer Screenshot

Twitterfon

Twiterfon is another great client, but it comes for the best price: $0. Twitterfon is the only free client on our list, and for good reason. Even though it’s sibling Twitterfon Pro offers a ton of great features, for the thrift shopper at the App Store, this is the best buy. It’s just a solid client, with features like conversation view, and a similar interface to Tweetie. Though freebie downloader beware: Twitterfon is ad-supported. It’s really not to invasive, but it’s kind of a pain. I’m personally too cheap to drop $4.99 on Twitterfon Pro, when I can get a great client like Tweetie for $2.99 with almost all of the same features. If you’re looking to spend nothing, and get almost all of the great features you’d expect in a paid app: look at Twitterfon.

Developer Screenshot

Twittelator Pro

Twittelator Pro is the heavy-weight in this category. This is for the Power Tweeter! You’ll be amazed at how many features are packed into this mobile app, you might even feel claustrophobic. It’s an incredible app, but it quite frankly it has more features than anyone will honestly ever need. It goes into a depth that is subterranean, but if you’re the kind of person that wants to put dingbats and Greek symbols into your tweets: this is your app. As seems to be quite common with these iPhone apps, they all seem to have agreed on the same basic interface to work from, so using one is like using another, only the features and colors vary.

Developer Screenshot

The OS X Native Clients:

These are by far my favorite type of Twitter apps! There’s nothing like a good ol’ native application in OS X. There are a number of advantages to a native client including Growl notifications, noticeable speed differences, interface responsiveness, quicker launch times… you get my point. Many of these are in their infancy, in early beta’s lacking a few of the features of the AIR clients, but they feel much studier.

Nambu

Nambu is my personal client of choice. It does exactly what you hope a Twitter client would do. It has a great sidebar for sorting tweets, it has multiple view modes, it has conversation view, it has that Mac OS X standard search in the upper-right corner, it has integration with tr.im and pic.im, and it just works. It can collapse itself into a Tweetr-esque interface, then sidebar view, or a TweetDeck-esque layout for those interested in seeing 3-4 columns of content. Best of all: it’s native. It feels comfortable, intuitive, and sturdy. It’s still in beta, but coming soon: Facebook support! AIR clients: meet your closest competitor.

Lounge

Lounge is a promising client, and a great one for people who like color coding. Lounge has a handsome OS X interface with cutesy color coded icons and tweets to help you distinguish all of the various details. My favorite feature of Lounge is how it handles TwitPic photos. If it sees a TwitPic link in a tweet, it loads a thumbnail of that photo next to the tweet. It’s really nice to have the mystery taken out of “what is this a photo of?” when clicking through to a TwitPic. Lounge also features a great multi-account system with each switching in-between. Another unique feature of Lounge is how it displays your followers/following feeds as mini-profiles.

Twitterpod

Twitterpod is an enigma. I should preface this by saying I strongly discourage readers from downloading this app. In all honesty when I first launched this app, I wondered if the developer was tripping. Users are greeted with what would be a standard Twitter client design except for the psychedelic multi-colored header scrolling your subscribed tweets in a pretty trippy way (there are three views in this app, one being full on trippy tweet scrolling). The top navigation of the client uses icons that are much too small, and require screen zoom to analyze their purpose. I can’t help but wondering if this is a joke of some kind: it’s that bad. There’s nothing particularly useful about the client. I only throw it into this mix as a warning, and because there are only 3 native OS X Twitter clients available. The other two are so innovative and unique from their AIR competitors, that I feel they make up for this pointless little… odd app.

Other Methods of Tweeting:

SMS

For those of you who have yet to convert to the iPhone, or prefer a different device there’s always tweeting by text message. Sign up on Twitter.com with your mobile number and start tweeting your heart away to shortcode: 40404. Also, you can subscribe to get mobile SMS updates when you subscribe to other Tweeters.

Blackberry

TwitterBerry is a popular app for RIM Blackberry devices. I haven’t used it personally, but I’ve heard it’s a decent client from a number of people.

μTorrent sports a handsome native cocoa interface

Users are greeted with a somewhat-vacant main window when they load .torrent files, but a well organized one. Windows users who have used μTorrent on XP or Vista will recognize the interface, but miss a few of the more robust features available for the Windows client. One major feature of this app that sets it apart from some of its other Mac competitors is its ability to load multiple torrents and manage them well (I realize that Transmission does this, but when downloading 2 or more files it gets difficult to manage).

I frequently download new Linux ISOs when they’re first released, ranging from 700mb to 2gb. Now getting the entire thing down can be a game of cat and mouse with the seeding ratio and upload/download limits, but μTorrent handles the connections quite nicely. Many users (including myself) have noticed significant down speed increases with the new μTorrent client. I was a Transmission user for a few years, but even when configured identically downloading the same torrent there’s no question that μTorrent is faster.

The preferences panel is well organized and gives users control
over all aspects of their Torrent experience

The app is great for downloading torrents and configuring network settings and preferences, but it doesn’t go much further than that. There is a search that launches to Google for searching, and some control of bandwidth priority, but overall in feature-set the client is rather light. It is quite quick, I found launching and quitting significantly faster than Transmission. All in all it’s a great client, but I found myself missing the RSS torrent download features available to Windows users. I used to be able to let μTorrent stay on top of the latest Ubuntu releases, but now I have to track down a number of different distributions from different pages. I hoping in future releases more of these features are integrated, but in all fairness the app is still in beta. Transmission users, trust me: it’s worth the switch. For now it functions as a solid client, just bare of some of the creature comforts that come with other apps.

SweetFM is a mash up of sorts, mixing Last.fm streaming with your average iTunes helper app. Like all other iTunes helper apps, SweetFM displays the album artwork of the song your currently listening to and that functionality also works with music you stream from Last.fm. It also has an indescript spot where you are suppose to enter what you want to listen to on Last.fm and an arbitrary arrow button next to it. One would think you could just enter an artist name into the box and get Last.fm to play it but this is not the case. Instead you have to press this arrow button to display a group of addition buttons labeled “Artist”, “Tags”, and etc. You then have to hit one of those buttons and enter further information into the box. For example, if I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd on Last.fm, I would have to open up SweetFM, click the arrow, click artist, and then enter “Pink Floyd” in the box.

In reality all they are really doing with this convoluted process is adding a little tag behind the information you enter into the box. You would think they could automate this or have a little bit of magic happen behind the scenes, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Aside from that the application feels more like a beta than a final release, I’ve encountered multiple bugs in the few days that I’ve been playing with it. The first of which is that what the application shows as playing and what is actually playing in iTunes don’t match from time to time, even though SweetFM says the right info in it’s menu in the menu bar. Also, the progress indicator, which allows you to scrub through songs, occasionally does not work.

But the most disappointing part of this application is it’s user interface. Even though they are touting the fact that you can design skins for this app using HTML and CSS, a well built one should still come bundled with the app. Fibre, the included skin, is an overly glossy, distracting waste of desktop space. Personally, I like my iTunes helpers to be pinned to the desktop and just meld with everything else their but Fibre is just not capable of doing that (the melding at least). Silly things like having the horizontal volume slider bumped right up to the “Scrobbling” button for Last.fm makes it seem as though the slider has something to do with “Scrobbling” when in fact it does not. The semi-transparent background in particular is my least favorite part, why does it need to be there? Take a page from the designers doing skins for Bowtie and just get rid of the app background all together, it works so much better with the desktop. Luckily choco moko has a skins directory on their website but at the moment it only has one additional theme, which seems only like a slight redesign to Fibre and nothing more.

If your at all interested in helper apps for iTunes, I would recommend you stay away from SweetFM. Although if your a fan of Last.fm it is worth checking out. It is available from choco moko for $29. If you are just looking for an iTunes helper, check out the free Bowtie.

MusicBox acts a lot like it’s brother product, VideoBox. You just drag a URL onto the window and choose the format and where to save. This would make sense because they are related products. So, once you are at the page you would like to download audio from, just drag the URL from your web browser of choice into MusicBox. It will then attempt to find audio on that page to download. If it doesn’t, though, it will prompt you with a WebKit view where you can press play, and then it will know what to do.

There is more than one way to choose a URL. MusicBox includes a Safari plugin that allows for one-click downloading. Just go to a URL, click the toolbar item, and you’re all set. To instal this go to MusicBox>Install Safari Plugin. The plugin even works with Safari 4 BETA.

MusicBox gives you a few formats to output the audio to. You can choose from raw, wav, mp3 and mp4, and also choose a bit rate (for all but raw). You can also choose to use the input file’s settings so no extra space is used for increasing quality that cannot be increased.

I do have a few gripes with MusicBox too. The main window shows a white-to-orange gradient with white text on it, which can be a bit hard to see, and looks a little funny. Also, one of the output options is mp4, but since MusicBox is only for audio, there is no reason to optput to a video format. Instead of mp4, m4a (AAC) should be included for maximum iTunes compatibility (or just for wanting all your songs in the same format). And one last thing is more of a warning that in issue. If you use any WebKit plugins to block flash video unless you click on it, you will usually have to play the clip for MusicBox because, well, the clip is being blocked.

MusicBox, by Tasty Apps retails for $15 and you can download a free trial from their site. It makes downloading music from the Internet very easy–You can do it in really only 2 steps. However, it is mostly for those who listen to music online and would like to bring it offline. Even for just downloading a bit of audio every now and then it can be very helpful, but for many it is unnecessary.

The user interface is what separates TwitterFon from the rest of the class. When new tweets are downloaded it will auto scroll to the beginning of the new tweets and shade all new tweets in blue. I prefer the visual difference between old tweets and new tweets. Many of the other applications auto scroll down to the last read tweet but dont identify the new ones visually. If you follow many people, as i do, you see many tweets per day. Occasionally I’d like to go back to one that referenced a link to a web page. TwitterFon has the ability to mark a tweet as a favorite with a gold star which will allow you to quickly find it from the favorites screen at a later time.

Another feature that I use and find fascinating is the search screen. Of course one can search for words but by using the GPS in the iPhone you can search in a defined radius from your current location. This is a great way to find people and activities in your local area. There is a trends feed within search that will show you what is most talked about on twitter at that moment. The search screen could use some refining and is a little confusing. The trends button toggles to the profile button when clicking in the search field and using the GPS for a search could be a little clearer. Perhaps the developer is trying to pack too much into one screen. I would prefer a little more real estate to input the search and hide the search criteria when the search results appear. Overall the app is very solid and doesn’t crash, the user interface is attractive, and the application is free with a small banner ad. Its worth a try.

If you don’t have a remote, Hulu Desktop also allows control via keyboard and mouse. Another great feature is the ability to link it into your Hulu account, allowing you to access your que, subscriptions, and viewing history as well as change settings such as closed captioning and video quality.

Unfortunately the app requires an Intel Core Duo processor (at least 2.0 GHz), at least 2 GB RAM, and at least a 2 Mbps internet connection, so this leaves out some Mac users. During the beta period, Hulu plans to “plan to gather and incorporate user feedback to improve the service.” I think this desktop app is a great step forward for Hulu and with their willingness to incorporate user feedback, this app has a lot of potential. Hulu Desktop can be found on the Hulu Labs website. Look for a review soon!

When you start up LittleSnapper Touch you will see a large wheel. Simply spin this wheel to select the different options. You can choose to upload images from your library, your camera, or you can take a websnap. Unlike LittleSnapper for Mac, however, the websnap will only be of what is currently showing on your iPhone’s screen. You can also add and delete accounts and visit the QuickSnapper website from the main menu.

Once you have a picture to upload you can enter the title, rating, description, tags, and type. Then just choose an account and tap share. The image will be uploaded and you will have the option to share it in an email or on Twitter. If you choose to share it on Twitter it will open up the Twitter application on your phone (Tweetie, Twitterrific, and Twitterfon are currently supported) and have the link in a new tweet.

While LittleSnapper Touch is great for uploading images, there are a few issues with the application. Other than uploading images, it doesn’t do that much. There isn’t anyway to annotate your images and, as mentioned before, the websnaps do not capture the whole page (obviously due to the iPhone’s limitations).

If you are expecting a full version of LittleSnapper for Mac on your iPhone, this is not what you are looking for. If you want a simple application to upload pictures to QuickSnapper, however, this is just for you. LittleSnapper Touch is currently on iTunes for $2.99.

Tweetie’s UI is quite similar to other Twitter apps; showing tweets in a long list style form, but on the left side of the app is the sidebar. Here you can switch between accounts by clicking the account avatar, and switch between the timeline, mentions, messages, and search. Sections with new tweets will have a blue icon on them. In the timeline you have multiple options. You can double click a reply tweet to view the entire conversation, you can reply to tweets with a small icon in the top right of the tweet, and you can click on a user’s avatar to view their profile. From the profile page you can view their timeline, replies, favorites, and basic information. As you dig through the timeline the bar on the top of the screen shows you were you are, and you can click on it to go back to certain locations.

Tweetie’s direct messaging feature looks a lot like iChat. Messages are sorted based on who the conversation is with and how recent the latest message was. When you click on a name you will see what looks like the iChat speech bubbles displaying messages. You can click reply in the top right to send a direct message reply. Tweetie also has the ability to search tweets. Just click the search icon and type in what you want to find. You can also click on a word marked as a tag (#) in a tweet. The search pages automatically refreshes to show new tweets and you can open searches in a new window to keep them separate from Tweetie. If you click the magnifying glass in the search box you can view a list of popular trends.

Finally, posting tweets. Tweetie handles new tweets a bit differently than other Twitter clients. When you want to post a new tweet a new window will pop-up. This lets you tweet even when the Tweetie window is closed, and is a great way to avoid some distraction. You can post a new tweet by clicking the button in the bottom right corner or Tweetie, click the reply icon in tweets, or just hitting a quick hot-key. In this pop-up window you can also drag and drop images from Finder. Tweetie also has a bookmarklet to tweet a website that you are browsing. Tweetie uses command-enter to submit the tweet to avoid accidental tweeting.

Tweetie works great for most people, but it lacks some features others would love to have. There is currently no way to save searches or sort people into separate groups. There is also no way to delete tweets or set a time interval for auto refreshing. Tweetie runs in both the dock and menubar, which could be annoying for some users.

Tweetie is currently available from the atebits website. You can purchase a license for $14.95 until May 4 when the price will be raised to $19.95, but there is a free ad-supported version available.

Think of Airmailr as your gateway to all of Twitter’s services without using your web browser.  Though there are many apps that already syndicate your timeline and publish you latest tweets, Airmailr does this in using Apple’s quick-at-a-glance feature – Dashboard.  Dashboard was designed to show you information any time you want to see it.  This is exactly what Airmailr does with your Twitter timeline.

When first installing Airmailr, a built in setup system takes you through a couple easy steps to get itself up and running.  You first have to allow Twitter to communicate with Airmailr.  Clicking on the given link in the setup takes you to Twitter’s “allow -this app- to communicate with Twitter” page.

Type in your account username and password and hit “allow”.  Continue the setup process by going back to the widget in Dashboard.

Airmailr’s interface resembles that of other Twitter clients with the standard up-and-down visual timeline along with a small thumbnail provided by the Twitter user.  Hovering over a Tweet in the timeline darkens its background.  A quick RT or “Re-Tweet” button in the bottom right-hand corner of each hovered tweet allows you to forward this tweet to your timeline allowing all of your friends to see the same message.  Clicking on someone’s screen name allows you to view a page of specs including their profile information as well as how many tweets they have posted.  Quick links are also provided in this spec page that allow you to quickly see their latest tweets and go to their profile and specified web page.

Navigation tabs at the top of the widget take you to different features.  ”Friends” takes you the timeline of just your friended twitterers.  ”@Replies” filters down to all of the tweets that were publicly directed towards you.  ”DM” which stands for “Direct Message”, filters down to all of the tweets that were privately directed towards you.  ”Search” allows you search the entire “Twitterverse” with a search box.

The bottom toolbar has four items.  ”Prefs” takes you to the widget’s preference pane.  Here you can adjust settings such as how often Airmailr checks for new tweets, how you want Airmailr to interact and use “Growl”, and how many tweets you want to see in your timeline at a time. “Logout” does exactly what it says – logs you out of Twitter.  ”Refresh Symbol” tells Airmailr to refresh and look for new tweets.  The right-hand icon that resembles a speech bubble allows you to post a new tweet.  You can also enter in a shortened URL so that the URL itself doesn’t take up the entire tweet message.

All in all, Airmailr is a great Twitter client even though it is still in its BETA form.  Using the speed and accessibility of Dashboard, Airmailr preforms without a hiccup and with great speed.  Getting and sending tweets takes seconds, and with it’s built in growl support, you don’t even need to open Dashboard to have your tweets automatically popup.  For those of you who are looking for a lightweight twitter client who also uses Dashboard a lot, this is the widget for you.

Airmailr is free and available at airmailr.com.

Espresso is a one-window app. Everything that can be done is done in its main window. There are three sections to this window: Workspace, Project and Publish. There are also project settings which can be found in the toolbar.

The Workspace section is…well your workspace. This is where you want to put the files you want to work on, or previews of different pages. Instead of having to go through a file structure on the sidebar, you just drag-and-drop important files here, and they’ll stay here. This is also where all previews you generate will go. You can also add a new item to your workspace by going to File>New Tab. If you have a file selected (in the Project section), it will put that file into your workspace. If no file is selected, it will add a blank file to your workspace. To go through items in your workspace, just hit Command-} (Select the next item) and Command-{ (Select the previous tab). To remove an item from this list, just put your moue over it, and then click the (x) that appears. You can also rearrange this list just by dragging. The Workspace is really helpful if you are dealing with many files and many previews, because it provides easy access to the ones you want to access.

The Project section contains all files for your current project. If you click the magnifying glass icon, a text field will appear that allows you to search for files. If you click the wheel icon, you can choose to reveal the current file in finder, delete it, duplicate it, etc. If you use Espresso as it really should be used, you usually won’t need to do much work from the Project section, you will just access files, add files, etc. For small projects, the list of files is very helpful, but for larger ones with complex hierarchies and structures, the Project search makes it extremely easy to find files.

The last section in Espresso is the Publish section. This allows you to easily upload files to an FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 or FTP with SSL server. To set one up, click the Settings toolbar button and then click Add Server. You can then enter the relevant information for your server. Once you have finishes, just click the Save button, and the server will be saved. Your server will then appear in the Publish section of Espresso. When you click on server, there are a couple things you can do. You can just browse and see what files are on the server (just click the Browse toolbar item). You can also do an Update. An Update just updates the copy of the files on the server. Everything on your computer stays the same. You can also do a Merge. A Merge syncs the files on your computer with the ones on your server so the most-up-to dat version of each file is kept. Before you click Publish (which will sync them), you can see what will happen to each file in the Action column. A Mirror is very similar to an Update, except it creates an exact mirror of the files on your computer on the server. The descriptions at the top of the page can get you really confused about the difference between Mirror and Update if you think too much into it. So, just use the names as guides. Mirror and Update are two different things. Based on what you want to do, choose one. It is nice that Espresso has built-in publishing with many SVN-like (Subversion) commands.

Espresso includes support for things called Sugars. These extend Espresso’s CodeSense (they add extra languages). So, Espresso is not confined to XHTML, CSS and JavaScript, it can include any language that has an available Sugar. But, Sugars aren’t just developed by a few people that have the experience, they can be developed by anyone who knows a little XML. But, of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to make your own. You can find an aggregated list at Coffee House. Sugars are great because they allow Espresso to support an infinite amount of languages (you could make your own pointless one even!), but Coda also has a form of them, so this does not lead it too far ahead of the pack.

Along with Sugars, Espresso includes Themes. These can also be downloaded from Coffee House. Themes allow for different syntax highlighting colors. They are similar to those of TextMate or Xcode. Except for the installing part. You have to click Reveal in Finder in the Colors tab of Espresso>Preferences… and then drag the .css file in there. Then, you have to restart Espresso, go back to the preferences and choose it from the list. This isn’t that bad, but it would be nicer if you could just click Instal Theme. Like Sugars, anyone with a knowledge of CSS can easily make an Espresso theme.

MacRabbit’s Espresso retails for about $80 and you can download a trial from the Web site. It’s Sugars and Themes add a nice configurability option and community part to it. It is $20 less than the other popular IDE on the mac for web development. Of course, you can use a text editor and the Terminal for most features it contains, but it provides a beautiful interface with a very nice and clean environment for developing.

Google Quick Search Box opens with a simple double tap of the command key. From here you can just type in what you want. Google QSB has some basic search features, including the ability to search your computer and certain websites (such as Google, Youtube, and Wikipedia). You can navigate results with the arrow keys on your keyboard. Sadly, web search results only showed up for Wikipedia and Youtube, and it only displays limited results. For the other options it just opens a link in your default browser.

Google QSB also includes some more advaced features. If you type in “Weather” and your zipcode the current weather conditions will show up. You can also use it as a simple calculator. It even searches your web browser’s history for results.

Although Google Quick Search Box currently doesn’t have many features it looks like a promising application. It is only a beta right now and more features will probably be added soon. You can download the app right now from it’s Google Code website for free.

To start off this series, I’ve decided to talk about some of the many popular tools web developers use every day to create their own websites.  This post is divided into two parts because there are two kinds of web development apps out there: W.Y.S.I.W.Y.Gs and Text Based apps.

W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G Apps

In case you’re puzzled on what that means, here’s an explanation.  WYSIWYG is an abbreviation for “what you see is what you get”.  It basically means that whatever you see on the screen, is what your web page will look like when you publish it.

Let’s take a look at some of today’s popular WYSIWYG apps for designing websites.

RapidWeaver

Created by Realmac Software, RapidWeaver is one of the most popular 3rd party apps designed to create beautiful webpages with just a couple clicks.  With 40 themes included, all you have to do is enter in your content whether it’s text, images or both, and RapidWeaver will format it so that it fits with your selected theme.  To find out more, check out our review here at MacApper.

iWeb

iWeb is Apple’s take on a WYSIWYG web app.  Literally, what you see on the screen is what you’re going to see when you hit the big “Publish” button.  Insert and drag around text boxes and images to make your web page exactly the way you want it without having to type a single line of code.  iWeb is part of Apple’s iLife Suite of sofware apps including iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand.  You can find out more via iWeb’s product page.

All of the apps have a price tag but also have a demo in which you can download and see which one you like best.  If you’re looking for a little more control over the design and content of your web page, try the other type of web development app:  Text Based apps.

Text Based Apps

These apps are exactly what the title suggests – Text based meaning that in order to achieve your goal of the perfect web page, you’re going to have to stretch your fingers.  The plus side is that with these apps, every element of your page is customizable making the result exactly like the image in your head.

Here’s a small list of popular text based apps out of the countless selections available today.

Coda

From Panic inc. comes a one-windowed web development app designed to have all the tools you need at your fingertips.  Coda takes a bunch of separate apps and incorporates them and their features into one nicely designed package.  Top feautres include a text editor with auto-complete for most of the many popular coding languages, a built in FTP engine which is used to transfer your files onto your web server making your page accessible to the world wide web, and a CSS editor.  If you don’t understand a bunch of these terms, stay tuned.  Everything will be explained in time.

Dashcode

Some of you might have not expected to see this app in the list.  Dashcode is Apple’s way of making the development process of creating “widgets” a lot easier.  But did you ever think of Dashcode’s code editing features?  Auto-complete, text coloring, and what’s more?  It’s Free!

Textmate

This one’s a biggie.  This text editing giant is from a company known as MacroMates.  You name it, Textmate’s got it.  Besides the standard ability of editing and creating files for the web, Textmate’s expandability in terms of plugins makes it truly a universal text editor for the Mac.  To find out more, check out their site or look at our review here at MacApper.

These are just some of the many amazing Text Based web developing apps available.  Be sure to check out Apple.com’s downloads page for a larger list.

There you have it!  If you have any more quetions about the apps, feel free to look them up and find a review here at MacApper.  Stay tuned for our next installment which will talk about using Dashcode to start developing your first webpage.

Although WebnoteHappy integrates with Delicious, it does not require you to use Delicious to store or view your bookmarks. So, you are not required to sign up for anything. You just download and go.

WebnoteHappy’s best feature is its ease-of-use. You can either use shortcuts or the application itself to add new bookmarks. By default, the shortcut to add a webnote (bookmark) is Command-Shift-D. Of course, for you to use this shortcut, the app must be open. When you hit that shortcut in almost any web browser (or any major web browser), you will see a popup that allows you to add a description, tags, a title and where to keep the webnote. If you choose to Share Via Delicious and you don’t already have Delicious set up in WebnoteHappy, a sheet will appear on its main window that asks you for your username and password.

As said above, you can also add a new webnote in the application itself. To do this, you just have to click the New toolbar item, and you will get a popup where you will insert the relevant information (all the information mentioned above, plus a URL).

WebnoteHappy also has organizing capabilities. You can create both folders and smart folders to keep certain webnotes in. It comes with two already made smart folders: Last 24 house and Last 7 days. To add a new folder, just go to File>New Folder, and to add a new smart folder, go to File>New Smart Folder. If you are creating a smart folder, you will then be asked for the conditions that need to be met for a webnote to be in the folder.

Along with sharing bookmarks to Delicious, WebnoteHappy also allows you to import from Delicious, Safari, Firefox, OmniWeb and XBEl and export to HTML and XBEL. To do this, just go to either File>Import from, or File>Export to, and choose the relevant format.

My only real gripe in WebnoteHappy is its interface. It looks slightly outdated. With just a few changes such as: different toolbar icons, bigger +/- buttons and different folder icons, it could look amazing. Also, if Cover Flow browsing was added, or at least previews, that would be a big plus as well.

Happy Apps‘ WebnoteHappy retails for $24.95, and you can get a family pack for only $5 more! You can also download a free, 30-day trial from their Web site. Although it has an outdated interface, it is extremely simple to use and very fast. However, if previews or Cover Flow was added, the import/add of a webnote time would probably increase. But whether you are a social bookmarking lover, or just want a nice database of your bookmarks, WebnoteHappy can help you.

From what we can see from the public beta so far, Espresso can easily be divided into 3 sections: Editor, Project Organizer, and Publisher. Let’s look at them one at a time.

Editor

Espresso shares CSSEdit’s tabbed editor window. Making a tab is as easy as going to File > New Tab or Command + T. Once created, users can re-arrange them or drag them out of the tab bar to make them separate windows.

When typing in code, Espresso automatically changes the style of the text to better understand and differentiate your code. Colors can be customized by making themes located in Espresso’s preferences. Users can create themes and share them online with other developers. Espresso also allows you to visually navigate through your code via the “navigator” tool located on the right-hand side of the editor window. This tricked out list view shows all of your tags and elements much like the way CSSEdit does.

Espresso is able to recognize your code with something called “Sugars“. Sugars are pre-packaged files that contain all of the information needed for Espresso to work with your code. All one must do is simply double click one to install it. What’s more is that developers can create their own Sugars making Espresso’s editor extremely versatile.

Project Organizer

Espresso organizes all of your files in groups called projects. To create a project, go to File > New Project… or press Shift + Command + N. Espresso manifests your projects in folders located wherever you save them. Each project folder contains all of your files along with Espresso’s project file recognizable by it’s “.esproj” extension.

Espresso’s project interface is made up of one window divided into two parts: the sidebar and the editor. The editor is the same editor we talked about earlier with the exception of the sidebar being attached to its left. The sidebar is where you access all of your files and servers. The first part of the sidebar is entitled “Workspace”. Simply put, the workspace is where Espresso puts all of your currently open files. Think of them as tabs, only this time they’re located in the sidebar as list items. You can still reorder them and drag them out of the window to make separate individual windows, however Espresso puts them there by default to keep things together.

Publisher

You’ve created your files, organized them into a project, and now you’re ready to get them online. Luckily for you there is nothing to worry about because Espresso has a built in FTP client that supports FTP, SFTP, and Amazon S3 services. Espresso handles uploading files a little differently from the average FTP client. Yes, you could simply drag your files in and out of the window, or you could use the Update, Merge, and Mirror features. Clicking these toolbar items when your server is selected does exactly what they say they do. Clicking “Update” checks the files on your computer to see if any of them have been changed. Espresso then shows you which files need to be uploaded and replaced. All you then need to do is hit “Publish”. Clicking “Merge” syncs the files on your computer and the files on the server so that both have the most recent information. Clicking “Mirror” checks your files and deletes any information on the server that isn’t in your local project.

Finishing Thoughts

Espresso is very much still in BETA form. MacRabbit is right when saying that Espresso is buggy and is by no means perfect. I myself have discovered a problem of Espresso not recognizing my files as updated when it checks through to see what files need to be updated, however this convenience is not needed. I can simply drag the files onto the right place and manually transfer it like a normal FTP client. All of the previewed content above is based off of Espresso version 1.0b1. Espresso’s preo-rder price is 59.95€ ($84 USD) and is available now for download at Espresso’s Product Page.

Button Builder is designed to make all of your buttons, whether it’s for a web site or an application for the Mac, quickly and easily.  Every aspect of the app is tailored so that you can get in, make your buttons, and get out.  The user interface is simple and streamlined so that you only need to focus on your results.  

At the top is a standard tool bar with 4 buttons.  Theme, Font, Adjust, and export.  Think of the toolbar as a conveyor belt with each step in order to make your button.  First, select one of Button Builder’s 50 themes each varying in size and color.  Next, choose a font out of your library.  It doesn’t matter if the font is specific to your computer or not because the exported button will be an image.  After that, click the Adjust button to customize all of your button’s aspects ranging from the text position to the width of the actual button.  It’s a comfort to know that your button can be as wide or as thin as you’d like.  Each template is made up of three parts: Left, Middle, and Right.  All Button Builder has to do is increase the size of the Middle part. Once you have your button looking the way it should, click the Export toolbar item to save it in either .JPG or .PNG format.

Button Builder is required to run at Mac OS 10.4.3 or higher which means your computer should run this app at a quick pace.  Button Builder takes up very little processing power resulting in almost insinuations responses.  However, depending on what you have running at the moment and on how big your button is, Button Builder’s speeds will vary.

Button Builder does have it’s flaws.  The bottom of the file menu has its usual “Print Setup” and and “Print” menu items, but after choosing “Print”, nothing happens.  Also, when opening a new window in Button Builder, the theme column is missing it’s scroll bar.  To fix this one must simply resize the window, but this does become annoying having to do this every time you open the app or a new window.  

One might compare Button Builder to a more professional program such as Adobe Photoshop.  If you want more control over the look and feel of your buttons, Photoshop is your choice.  Button Builder makes it easier to create a standard set of buttons based on its wide variety of templates.  Speaking of templates, Button Builder comes packaged with a Button Builder Template Builder.  Say that ten times fast!  If you find yourself using a file in another editor a lot, you can go ahead and use this utility to create a template usable in Button Builder.  On another note, if you have RapidWeaver, check the “Window” menu again.  You should be happy to find a “Launch Button Builder” item there waiting for you.

Button Builder has gone through four main version updates.  This app is not new to the Mac app world.  Due to a decrease in interest and more focus on RapidWeaver, Realmac Software has made it Open Source and for the unbelievable price of Free!  Button Builder is available at from Realmac Software.

Snow Reports ($1.99)

The app that I would compare Snow Reports to the most is Weather.app (included on all iPhones and iPod Touches). This is because it works the same way. You have a list of resorts that you can edit from the “i” button, and to go from one to another you just slide your finger. That being said, I’ll bet you have already figured out that it’s easy to use. In the settings window (click the “i” button), you can also change the order of the resorts, change from inches to centimeters, and add new resorts based on location.

For each entry you get some very nice information, like the number of trails and lifts open, show, and depths. The top section tells you whether the mountain is open and the total number of open trails and lifts. It also gives you links to call (if you have an iPhone) and visit the resort’s website. The New Snow section tells you how much it has snowed in the last 24, 48 and 72 hrs (1, 2, and 3 days). The Base Depth section tells you the lower and upper thickness of the snow. On the bottom there are 3 buttons: Report, Weather, and Images. Report will open a WebKit view with the OnTheSnow conditions page for the resort. The Weather button opens another WebKit view with the weather report for the resort. The Images button also opens a WebKit view with images of the resort. It would look much better if there was another view for these that fit the nice style of Snow Reports instead of just a WebKit View.

Snow Reports gives you about all the information you would want as someone just looking but not skiing. If you do ski a lot, then this app may not have all the features you will want, like maps, trails, etc. For $1.99, it can be a fun app for skiers and non-skiers.

Grade: B-

Ski Lodge ($4.99*)

Ski Lodge is made for the skier and not just the average bystander. It includes features like maps, built-in live cameras, photos, and even news. Like Snow Reports, it is very easy to use, but it doesn’t use the same style. It has a better way to view your favorites; there’s a list view, making it easier to access resorts in long lists. Favorites are resorts that will appear in your favorites, but they are not the only ones that you can get information about. To access any resort, just go to All Resorts and go through the lists to select a resort. If you want to add it to your favorites, just click the Add to Favorites button. You can also go to Nearby to find resorts near you.

For each resort, Ski Lodge gives you a lot of information, divided into two main sections: the top and the bottom. The top part gives you access to weather, temperature, and snow. The weather report is just a picture of something like a sun, a sun and a cloud, etc. The temperature tells you the current temperature, and the snow report tells you how much snow has fallen in the last 24, 48, and 72 hours. You can change from metric to English in Settings.app. The bottom section gives you links to other views. The Trail Map button shows you the percentage of green, blue, black, and double black trails based on the length of each section. When you click on it, you can actually view the trail map with full multi touch! The Live Cams & Photos button will bring you to a view where you can choose to see the resort from live cameras and photos. To go to the next or previous camera or photo, just slide your finger across the screen. The Website button brings you to the resort’s website. The Show in Maps button opens the location of the resort in the Google Maps app. The button with the phone number allows you to call the resort. Although, even if you have an iPod Touch, it allows you to click this button.

Ski Lodge is definitely aimed at someone who skis a fair amount. It gives you many more features than Snow Reports, but it also costs more. If you do not ski, or don’t ski not very much, but still want a ski report app, you will probably want to go with Snow Reports. But just the maps and news alone can make Ski Lodge worth it for even someone who skis just a couple times a year. You’re also doing the environment a favor by not taking a map.

Grade: B+

*Ski Lodge was $4.99 at the time of review–it is now on sale for $1.99 for a limited time.

Versions makes SVN easy. All you have to do to setup a Repository (where the files are stored) Bookmark is select the [+] button and click Add Repository Bookmark… You will then be prompted for a name, URL, and username and password. Most open-source SVN Repositories don’t require a password, but for a personal repository, you will probably want one. Once you have entered all the relevant information, just click the Create button. The Repository will then show up in the Bookmarks sidebar. When you click on one of these bookmarks, the Repository will be loaded.

The main panel of Versions has 3 tabs: Timeline, Browse, and Transcript. The Timeline tab shows you the most recent revisions. For each revision it tells you the user who made the change, the revision number, the files that were changed, and a description of the change. The browse tab gives you a look at the files in the Repository. It shows the files exactly like in list mode in the Finder. Double-clicking on a file will allow you to edit it and clicking the Quick Look toolbar item will allow you to view it in Quick Look. If you click the Compare Diff toolbar icon, you can compare the most recent version of the file with a previous revision. Once you choose the previous revision, it will open the files in the file-comparison app that you choose in Versions’ preferences (I suggest using Changes). The transcript tab just shows you what Versions has been doing (e.g. opening a file from a Repository, etc.).

Versions not only makes it easy to view Repositories, but it also makes it easy to upload to them. To create a Checkout Version (a local copy) of a Repository, just select a bookmark, go to the Browse tab, and select what part of the project you want, and then click the Checkout toolbar item. Versions will prompt you with a dialogue of where to save it to, and then it will save it. It would be nice if you could just select a bookmark and click Checkout, and it would download the entire thing. When you want to upload changes from your working copy, all you have to do is select your working copy, select the files you want to commit, and click the Commit toolbar item. If you added new files from the last time you uploaded, you will need to mark them as needing to be uploaded. You can do this by selecting the file and clicking the Add toolbar item. If there is a file listed that you do not want to upload, just click the Delete toolbar item. It can be a bit tedious to have to select to add all your new files, but it’s worth it.

If you are a real SVN lover and power-user, you will really like the information shown about files when the Inspector toolbar icon is clicked. I will not even try to explain all the features here, for I do not know them all, but they are useful to some.

Versions has just come out of Beta and now retails for about $48.57 (€39). It is the prettiest, most intuitive, and easiest to use SVN client available for the Mac. It is even a partner of Beanstalk, the best source of private Repositories. If you do any shared work, namely code, I suggest that you download the free trial of Versions and see how it compares to what you have used in the past; I think you will be surprised at how helpful it is.

LittleSnapper’s main feature is the ability to capture an entire website. As you browse the Internet, you can hit a keystroke and LittleSnapper will automatically save the whole web page as an image file. You can also open the current website in LittleSnapper and select a specific area to capture. When you open up a website in LittleSnapper you have two main choices: you can save the whole page, or you can select a section from it. As you hover your mouse pointer over sections of the web page, areas will become highlighted and you just need to click to capture it. LittleSnapper also includes the basic screenshot tools, so you can snap anything on your screen.

Once you have your screenshot, you can edit it. LittleSnapper comes with the basic tools. You can draw lines, circles, boxes, and arrows, and add text to your screenshot. You can also use the blur and highlight tool to hide or point out a section of the image. There is just one last step before you share your image: add information. You can add tags and/or a description.

LittleSnapper lets you quickly upload your images using Realmac’s QuickSnapper service. When you upload images to your QuickSnapper account people can view the image and add comments. QuickSnapper is currently in beta, so you may experience minor problems. Not only does LittleSnapper let you upload images to QuickSnapper, but you can also upload to Flickr or an FTP server.

With LittleSnapper you might be taking a lot of screenshots, so you can organize your screenshots in the LittleSnapper library. LittleSnapper lets you create collections and folders to organize your images. Folders can contain collections, and collections contain your screenshots. You can also create smart collections for easy organizing. You just need to set different rules, like rating or tags, and all applicable images will go straight to the collection.

LittleSnapper still comes with its flaws. While editing images, there isn’t a quick way in the toolbar to edit the text size and font. If you want to change the font you need to open the standard font window in the menu bar. There also isn’t a way to create a shape with a filled color. If you want to take a picture using your iSight and quickly share it, you would need to take the picture in a different application; LittleSnapper doesn’t have iSight support.

LittleSnapper is a great application to share screenshots. It works perfect for many uses, from sharing website designs to annotating images for your blog. You can download a free trial, or buy LittleSnapper for $39 from Realmac Software.

VirusBarrier includes a Real-Time Scanner and an On-Demand Scanner. By default, the Real-Time Scanner will be enabled, but if you want to turn it off, go to the Scanner pane of VirusBarrier > Preferences and click the Disable Real-Time Scanner… button. As expected, this scanner will scan every file created on your Mac (which includes downloaded files). When it finds a virus, there are three things you can have it do: Display an Alert, Repair it, or Put it into the Quarantine Zone. The first two are self-explanatory, but the third needs some explaining. When a file is added to the Quarantine Zone, it cannot be opened or read, but it doesn’t repair the file either. If you want to repair it, you just have to access your Quarantine Zone by going to View > Quarantine or clicking on the Malware Quarantine button in the main window. You can then Delete the file, Consider it Safe, Scan, or Repair the file. You may think that scanning the file again is dumb, because it has already done that — but since the file was automatically added to the quarantine, you never got to see what kind of virus it was. So, you may just want to see what it is infected with. A file will also be added to the Quarantine Zone if you do not respond to a Virus Alert Window. To choose what happens when VirusBarrier finds an infected file, just go to the Scanner pane of VirusBarrier > Preferences.

As said above, VirusBarrier also has an On-Demand Scanner. To use this, you need only open the application and click the Scan button. If a virus is found, VirusBarrier does what you have it set up to do in the Scanner pane of the preferences (as talked about above). VirusBarrier also gives you a very nice looking dashboard-like view, showing you how much your CPU is working, percent complete, etc. If you want VirusBarrier to give you a more accurate percent completed, you will want to have the Count Files Before Scan checkbox checked, in the Scanner pane of VirusBarrier > Preferences. By doing this, VirusBarrier will count your files (which takes a little bit of time) before it looks for viruses. In this same pane, you can also choose to scan archives. Archives are files like Zips, Tars, etc. What VirusBarrier will do (if you have the Scan archives checkbox checked) is look through all of the files like these, and make sure there are no viruses in them. VirusBarrier really scans all of your files — even those in compressed archives!

One feature that really brings VirusBarrier so far ahead of the pack is its support for iPhone and iPod Touch scanning. iPhones can be vulnerable to viruses — not usually, but it is possible. So, what VirusBarrier will do (if you have the Scan iPhone/iPod Touch checkbox selected in the Scanner pane of VirusBarrier > Preferences) is copy the entire contents of your iPhone or iPod Touch to your hard drive, scan them, and tell you if there are any files that need repairing. This feature is a little bit of a stretch for those of us not Jailbreaking our iPhones, but for those who do, it will help you feel secure. To just scan an iPhone or iPod Touch, go to View > Scan Selection (or command-1), click Hard Drives, and select your iPod Touch or iPhone.

This brings me to another nice feature in VirusBarrier: the ability to scan only certain types of files. If there’s a certain type (or types) of file that you download from sites that may be less than trustworthy, you may want to just scan that type of file. VirusBarrier makes it easy to do this. Just go to the View > Scan Selection, select Documents, and then select all the types of files you wish to scan. You can also do this for Applications and certain locations by clicking on either Applications or Browse in the Scan Selection view. If you go to the Browse item, there is actually a little gem — you can browse your iPhone or iPod Touch. Although you could easily find a way to scan certain file types in other virus apps, it is nice to have it built in (with a little gem too).

Intego’s VirusBarrier retails for $69.95, and you can download a demo from their site. One thing to note about the demo is that it includes old virus definitions and won’t let you update to the newest. If you want us to buy your software, Intego, you should at least let us see accurate definitions before we buy. VirusBarrier is pretty expensive compared to McAfee or Symantic (or ClamXAV), but it is the only one with a Mac-like interface and ease of use.

Disclaimer: Our sponsor, MacUpdate, is currently offering a Promo Holiday Bundle that includes VirusBarrier and 9 other great Mac apps for only $49.99. This review was written without any influence from MacUpdate or the developer. If you would like to purchase the bundle, click here.

Webbla is a new form of bookmark manager. Instead of simply showing you your bookmarks as URLs and names, it also shows you an image of the web page that you have bookmarked. Although this one thing doesn’t really add much functionality to bookmarks, it goes along with the whole idea of Leopard-style apps. You can change the size of the previews by dragging the slider in the lower-right-hand corner of the window. You can also view your bookmarks in a list view, though, by just clicking the List View toolbar button.

Although this is a nice feature, it’s not all that Webbla does; it also adds Notes and Tags to your bookmarks. To add these, first make sure that the Bookmark Detail Pane is visible (View > Show Bookmark Details). Then just click in either the Notes or Tags field to add notes or tags. In this same pane, you can also change the URL and name of a bookmark.

You will also notice that there is a Status field in this Info Pane. This tells you if you have visited the bookmark, the last time Webbla check the status of the bookmark, if there have been any changes to the web page, the load time, the update mode, and something called sensitivity. The first two are self-explanatory, but the last four require some explaining. The Changes field actually tells you if there have been any changes to the page since you bookmarked it. I have never seen that feature before; it’s great! The load time just tells you how long it took for Webbla to load the page. The Update Mode is where you specify how often you want this bookmark to update (check for changes). If you select Manually, you’ll have to right-click on the bookmark and hit Check Website on Changes. Once per Session and Continuously just check once on every use of Webbla or always, respectively. Sensitivity controls what is considered an update. The higher the sensitivity, the smaller something needs to be to be considered an update.

One great little feature that they added to Webbla is the ability to view your bookmarks in Cover Flow — in the Finder. All you do is, in the Finder, create a new search with no search term, but a kind. As a kind, go to Other in the popup, and then type in Safari Bookmark. All your Webbla bookmarks will now appear. However, sometimes you will see cached pages from Camino and Safari, too. If you want to save this, just hit the Save button in the Finder and choose where to save to. Although Webbla does not directly give you a way to view your bookmarks in Cover Flow, it tells you how.

Although I love Webbla’s interface as a whole, there are a few gripes I have with it. First, the New Collection toolbar button’s + is way too small. Second, the Preview toolbar icon looks very fuzzy. I have also been having performance issues; it can take a very long time to process bookmarks sometimes. But, as long as you don’t need access to them right away, this is okay.

Celmaro’s Webbla retails for $21.98, but you can download a free trial from their site. Webbla is a great tool for bookmarking, but it does have a ways to go. I think if you want a visual bookmarking tool, it is the way to go, but if you just want simple bookmarks, Safari is just fine for that.

Since it seems to be a common belief that video games are to Mac users what telephones are to the Amish, it’s refreshing to see a technological design visionary like Will Wright acknowledging that gaming is just as sought-after, if only less accessible, for Mac users as for PC junkies. To that end, he has taken one of many pioneering steps with his newest brain child, Spore, in releasing the game simultaneously for the PC and Mac –- as a single hybrid DVD.

Spore is best understood as a combination of five separate mini-games, or “stages”, each of which is at least functional, if not always particularly compelling on its own. These stages are plastered together using slideshow cut scenes, and the end result is a bit of a jarring journey that nevertheless allows you to follow the existence of your Frankensteinian monster babies from glorified plankton to space-faring civilizations.

Because the five stages are quite distinct from each other, I have split this review into sections to address the stages separately before I comment on the game as a whole. Spore is a massive world, and my journey through it to bring you this review has been long and challenging. Even so, I may still have only scratched the surface. Now, I invite you to join me as I share the tale of my experiences…

“Waiter, there’s a bug in my primordial soup!” – The Cell Stage

Spore starts with the aptly named “Cell” stage, where you bear witness to a particularly durable meteorite that manages to survive a brush up against a blazing star, only to shatter pathetically when it crashes into the ocean of an unsuspecting planet that, in my case, was called “Snorp”.

Squishy Sheds its Shell

Moments later, deep in the primordial seas of Snorp, a fragment of the space rock splits open to reveal… a tiny squishy thing! Once little Squishy shakes out of its asteroid shell, you gain control and begin navigating through the gelatinous environment. If you’ve chosen to be carnivorous (as I had done), then the object at this point is to hunt for the little pink spongy blobs floating around you (as opposed to the little green spongy blobs that your vegan counterparts will be harvesting).

Cells Just

Wanna Have Fun

Once you’ve collected enough DNA points to fill up the DNA bar at the bottom of your screen, you’ll be asked to call out for a mate in order to consummate your readiness for transition to the next evolutionary stage in the game. After watching Manfred and Manuella engage in a PG-13 love dance, you (Manfred that is, which can be a bit distressing for male players) will lay an egg and proceed to enter another creation tool set.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed the first of five evolutionary stages in Spore! By this point in the game you will have grasped almost all of the major gameplay elements that will occur again and again throughout the rest of the stages, only on a different scale.

Disco Diplomacy – The Creature Stage

You regain control of Manfred at a nesting site where you and all the other little Manfreds live happily together in a family group. You basically have two choices when it comes to how you deal with another species at this point in the game: you can either kill and eat them (assuming you’re strong enough), or you can engage in a cross-cultural game of Disco Simon Says. More on that later.

Luckily, as the proud creator of a carnivore, your only real choice is deciding which of the available species Manfred is going to commit culinary genocide against.

Combat in Spore resembles the combat in turn-based games in the sense that all it really consists of is you clicking the opposing creature repeatedly to unleash your attacks while your opponent does much the same thing against you. This continues until one of you dies. Your number of attacks and their strength are dictated, as are many other things, by the parts you chose to put on Manfred.

Manfred Sneaks up on a Skeleton

Once the tribe is completely eliminated, you are considered victorious and awarded with a number of DNA points that varies according to how difficult the creatures were to kill compared to your strength. And yes, to be perfectly clear, you have to eliminate all of the offending creatures in order to win your reward – there’s no Noah’s Ark business happening on Snorp, it’s all or nothing.

But what happens if you encounter a species of creature and don’t feel like eating them? Well, the two of you can engage in what can only be called a cheap disco parody of Simon Says, where your opponent will make a friendly gesture at you (again dictated by the body parts you’ve chosen) which you are then expected to repeat back to them. Possible exchanges include singing, dancing, and posing. After you’ve exchanged a few rounds of such pleasantries and filled up both ends of a little meter that appears, Spore considers that you’ve impressed your opponent. Now you get to do the same thing with three other members of the species in order to secure the alliance.

Disco Diplomacy

Progression through the rest of this stage essentially entails more of the same, with occasional pauses to add more parts to Manfred and the odd “migration” where your entire family of Manfreds spontaneously leaves without you while you’re out hunting and you come home only to find that you have to trek halfway across the planet to catch up with them.

Sporadic Strategy – The Tribal/Civilization Stages

When you reach the Tribal Stage, you’re ready to outfit Manfred with clothing, armour, and other such accoutrements of tribal culture. This includes jewelry, by the way, in case you male players weren’t already gender-confused enough after so much egg laying.

Manfred's Mariachi Barbeque

The Tribal Stage and onward is where we start getting into a little more complexity in terms of the gameplay. If you’ve ever played a Real-Time Strategy game like the Civilization series or Age of Empires, then you’ll recognize the basic mechanics of what you’re seeing in Spore from here on in. The issue is that they’ve taken that formula and stupefied it down to the point where it’s annoyingly superficial for players who, like me, are used to the in-depth and glorious scope of RTS games like Supreme Commander or even StarCraft.

Tribes Clash in Battle

Obviously, Spore is not trying to make a full RTS out of its individual later-game stages, and comparisons to the titles I mentioned above are not only unfair but also misguided. Nevertheless, the execution feels somewhat stunted and unsatisfying for those who are used to this style of gameplay on the scale provided by those classics.

In all honesty, it becomes quite difficult to judge Spore accurately beyond the Tribal Stage because it’s hard to be sure when it’s taking itself seriously and when it’s just throwing up copious amounts of cute aesthetics and brilliantly-executed procedural environments to distract us from the fact that the underlying gameplay is surprisingly hollow.

Once you hit the Civilization Stage, you’re put in control of things from a scaled-back, more god-like perspective that removes the more close-up interactions with your creature. This is actually an important problem because, in doing so, Spore ends up denying you one of the principle appeals of the game and, not least of all, one of the main distractions from the shallow gameplay.

The Birth of a Civilization

For me, as soon as everything was scaled back and I was left with nothing but the ambiguous civilization of Manfreds to look down upon, I started to miss those nights by the campfire with Chief Manfred, and I felt a lot of Spore’s charm drift off into space, where I hoped to regain it…

The Final Frontier – The Space Stage

Stars, Asteroids, Black Holes, Oh My!

The Space Stage has an advantage over the Tribal and Civilization Stages in that it actually feels like a culmination of all the gameplay elements that have led you to this point. There really is a lot to do here – the terraforming, exploring, and large-scale expansion elements are both engaging and entertaining, while still maintaining the cutesy Spore aesthetic – and, more than any of the other stages, Space will keep your mind suitably occupied with interstellar tasks.

Which brings me to the negative aspects. For some reason, a number of Spore players (including this one) encountered a bizarre quirk of the game’s AI engine that spontaneously decides to hike up the difficulty when you reach the Space Stage. Even on the highest difficulty setting, it’s really not a challenge to get through the earlier stages of Spore – it’s a happy and carefree experience.

But then suddenly, when you reach the Space Stage, you’re plopped into a universe where aggressive enemies will systematically kick your ass(es) and consistently outperform you with superior firepower, accuracy, range, and, most annoyingly, numbers. There is an endless supply of things that want to kill you in Spore’s space, and when you and your allies are being deliberately creamed by a force triple your size and then pirates show up on top of that, it sort of makes you wish that Manfred had never crawled out of Snorp’s oceans to begin with.

-

One of Many Planets

Spore and the Evolution of Mac Gaming – The Verdict

Reaching my quota of allowable installs, thanks to EA’s idiotically draconian DRM scheme for the game, I managed to install and play Spore on a Mac Pro, a Macbook Pro, and a PC desktop to judge the performance differences between the platforms. The Mac Pro and PC both ran spore at the absolute highest settings without breaking a sweat, and even my two-year-old, 15″ Macbook Pro ran it smoothly at the high quality settings. I did not experience a single crash on any of the three systems over the hours of testing, which is impressive in itself and serves as a testament to the engine’s brilliant engineering. We should thank Maxis for putting in the time to make the Mac version every bit as polished as the PC one in terms of execution.

On the topic of EA’s marketing disaster of a DRM system, I could spend a whole new article discussing just that. But I don’t have to because it’s been discussed before. Suffice it to say that the entire concept of such rigid restraints is self-defeating because it alienates legitimate customers. Pirates aren’t going to stop pirating because of a DRM system on the legal copies of the game. Thilo, the author of the article at the second to last link, summarizes:

“News flash: Pirates don’t convert. They are stubborn and ruthless. Hence the term “pirate. ” [sic] They steal games. If they can’t steal a game, they steal it from a friend. If they can’t steal it from a friend, they steal a different game. Half the fun of playing a game is stealing it.”

As of this article’s writing, it appears that EA has finally relented to the righteous pressure of their former fans and planned to remove the digital incarceration system they attached to Maxis’ poor game. Also at the time of this writing, the Spore v1.01 patch has been released, but only for the PC. Us Mac folks are still waiting, but Maxis assures us that we’ll get our patch soon.

Setting aside all the minor quibbles, Spore is a game to be appreciated and admired as an adventurous step forward in procedural game design and large-scale mechanics. It is ultimately an ambitious and successful science project, and should be understood as such. Having said that, actually playing through Spore can be tedious and unfulfilling at times specifically because it feels more like a science experiment than a coherent gaming experience.

To wrap up, even with its truly brilliant art direction, impressive sound design, and compelling concept, the fundamental fact of the matter remains that Spore is marketed as a video game, not an experiment in gaming technology, and the experience of playing through the fragmented sections can be unsatisfying, disjointed, and tedious – words which should not have to be used to describe something that’s meant to be fun.

Fresh audiences may find themselves drawn into an interesting and pleasing world that offers a simplistic gaming entertainment; however, audiences going in with the high expectations nurtured through years of waiting and watching and re-watching every tantalizing video and announcement will likely be left mildly disappointed.

So, after all that, what’s the verdict? I give Spore three and a half evolutionary stages out of five.

Pick up a copy from your nearest gaming retailer or buy and download it online, then play through it yourself and let us know what you think of Spore!

For a number of weeks now, Adobe has been tantalizing their loving horde of followers with the promise of a “Brilliant Event” taking place on the 23rd of September – that’s today. It wasn’t really too much of a mystery though, as it was clear from the start that the big event is the unveiling of the long-awaited next installment in their multi-purpose creative design software package: Creative Suite 4. Interestingly, Adobe has chosen to call this their biggest software release to date, and when someone like Adobe says that, people take note.

Officially unveiled in a large-scale public webcast at 9AM Eastern Time this morning, CS4 will be available in a number of different packages: Master Collection, Production Premium, Web Standard, Web Premium, Design Standard and Design Premium. Each of these is a suite of applications specifically tailored to the needs of professionals in that field. Existing users of CS3 (or earlier versions) can also choose to upgrade or purchase any of their existing stand-alone elements individually.

Released in March of 2007, CS3 continued the legacy of industry-standard creative development applications and remains the staple for most design needs. Its successor comes trumpeting in with a number of new features for their 13 stand-alone products, 14 integrated technologies, and seven services. But the best part of CS4 isn’t its individual parts, but its apparently seamless integration between all products in the line.

This is achieved primarily through Adobe ConnectNow, an online service for real-time collaboration that can be accessed from many of the CS4 applications.

There are a number of feature updates for each of the individual applications in the suites, including the ability to use “tweens” instead of keyframes in Flash CS4 to facilitate precise control over animation attributes. Flash also sports a new tool called the “Bones” tool which allows for realistic animation of linked objects. InDesign users will be happy with the new Live PreFlight tool that can make catching minor errors easier, and Photoshop fans should enjoy the new Content-Aware Scaling tool that can automatically re-compose an image on the fly as you resize it.

Speaking of Photoshop, CS4 offers it in two flavours, the standard and “Extended” versions, which differ slightly in functionality and price. The added features of the “Extended” edition are mainly geared toward those who work in film and other mediums where advanced 3D image manipulation is important. Some of the most exciting “Extended” features are the ability to paint directly on 3D images, rotate and scale 3D models freely, and adjust lighting, meshes, and materials for any of your models.

On the negative side for us Mac folks, Adobe is not shipping 64-bit versions of its CS4 applications for the Mac OS, and is not expected to until CS5 shows up. This is apparently because the applications were originally written in Carbon rather than the Cocoa application framework. And since Apple decided to scrap plans for a 64-bit version of Carbon, all the applications must now be ported to Cocoa before they can continue on their way to a 64-bit release. Adobe is working on it, but they say that it’s no small undertaking and will not be something they will achieve for the release of CS4. I guess that means a few more months of letting Windows users have a 10% performance advantage on us. Darn.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 is scheduled to ship in October, and until then we can enjoy the betas of a couple of the applications including the new Flash Player 10, all of which are now available as free downloads. For more information on the features and functionality of CS4, check out the official site.

Though still labeled as “Beta”, the basic functionality of OpenHuddle is already up and running at full steam, and users are starting to filter in to take a peek at what they’ve got going on. OpenHuddle’s homepage will explain the basics: the entire system functions through multi-functional web application areas called “Rooms” (or “Huddles”), which you can customize and create yourself.

Need a place where you can chat with twelve of your friends while doodling on a whiteboard to really illustrate (my trackpad art skills notwithstanding) your point? Not a problem, just add a whiteboard and chat widget to your Room’s layout space and you’re good to go. If you’re into more direct communication, OpenHuddle also has a fairly robust “Multi-User Video Conferencing” interface which does pretty much what you’d expect it to, except that, because it’s entirely web-based, it’s completely cross-platform compatible so you don’t have to worry about who’s on what. There’s also an audio-only chat option for Skype-like calls, and an instant-message-style text chat widget.

File sharing and collaboration is a necessary feature of these applications, and OpenHuddle acknowledges this by providing extensive file-type support for users. Need to get some comments on a presentation before you go up to perform? Upload your PowerPoint (.PPT) or Flash (.SWF) slideshow file and you’re ready to get comments from everyone in your room in seconds. Ditto for documents, photos, live web clips, and even your desktop! Need to teach someone exactly how to install something or perform certain actions in an application? Why tell them when you can show them with the equivalent of a screencast –- right inside their browser.

That’s all great in theory, of course, but how does it all actually work out in the real world? Well, it turns out that it performs quite speedily considering everything that’s going on within a single browser instance. The video chat was a little choppy in my experience (using the Macbook Pro’s built-in iSight camera and mic), and the text chat had some occasional delays in publishing a message, but not enough to be considered anything but an annoyance. The interface is indeed very customizable, though it may not be immediately clear how it works. The file and desktop sharing worked as advertised and, on a Mac, you’ll be asked to download a small Java applet which will allow you to specify whether you want to share your entire screen or just a section of it, which is actually very smart.

All of this functionality begs the question of how secure the whole enterprise is, and the answer is “not very”. The system seems more tailored to casual, friendly kinds of conversations between friends or family; it’s far too open and publicly-accessible to be of much use for business users hoping for a private meeting room, even though you can apply some basic access restrictions to your Room.

All in all, OpenHuddle has taken an important pioneering step for the web applications industry and it proves that this kind of cross-platform collaboration is indeed possible. Once they come out of beta and work out a few kinks in the system, I think that there will be a large market waiting for them. Head on over to OpenHuddle.com to check it out for yourself, and let us know how you think the service is coming along!

For the people that don’t feel like shelling out for Apple’s push-enabled MobileMe service, Google offers a highly competitive set of services that rival Apple’s. For the low price of $0.00, you can have all of your iCal appointments synced up to the cloud. Additionally, any changes you make to Google Calendar online will be pushed down to your iCal calendar on your Mac. While it doesn’t offer the same instantaneous changes as MobileMe claims to offer, the 15 minute interval default sync time should be more than enough for some.

Integrating Google Calendar with iCal is as simple as adding an account to your iCal preferences. After you open the preferences in iCal, click on the Accounts tab. Hit the “+” button to get the “Add an Account” dialog box. For the username option, put in your full Gmail address (including the @gmail.com), followed by your password. Additionally, you have to put in the address for the Account URL. This address can be found here: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[YOUR USERNAME]/user (just replace the [YOUR USERNAME] with your own Gmail address). Again, this should include the “@gmail.com” at the end of it.

After following those simple steps, you should be up and running. You can sync manually by clicking Command+R and you can also change the sync interval. With the iPhone Google interface, and Google Sync app for BlackBerry, you can truly have your calendars in sync everywhere. I have a strong feeling that Apple will allow native syncing to the iPhone with a future update. That would make it even easier to make sure that you never have a reason for missing an appointment again.

Headline is different from other RSS readers because of it’s size. It has a small window that looks much like the iChat buddy list. For each feed entry the status is represented by a dot: green if it’s new, yellow if it’s from the week, or white if it’s older (there will be no dot if it has already been read). These look just like the iChat icons and help you easily find new feeds. The number of new items also appears as a badge in the dock icon. One other useful feature to find new feeds is just to hit the spacebar; this will switch to the next new feed. There is still an issue with this, though; it only goes to the newest feed below the selected feed. If you have any new ones above it you need to scroll up and select that feed.

On top of the Headline window you can change the filter and search for an entry. There are a few different filters to select. You can filter by date or choose to view only unread or favorite entries. One thing missing from Headline, though, is the ability to sort your feeds into categories. This option is in many other RSS readers and is a very useful feature.

The bottom of the window includes a button to switch to view your RSS feeds instead of entries. It also includes some other tools and functions. To open the content button you can click an icon or you can just double-click a feed. There is also a button to open the media window and one to mark as a favorite. When you mark an entry as a favorite the read icon is replaced with a heart. Finally there are a few buttons to share the entry; you can send it as an email or share it in IM. Currently iChat is the only supported IM application. A couple of things that Headline is missing, though, include a way to view one website at a time and the ability to sort feeds into different categories.

When you double-click a feed the content window appears. This is where you can read the full entry. You can also leave this window open as you browse your feeds and it will show you the currently selected feed. The feed window appears as a HUD style display. On the bottom of the feed window are two buttons: “Open in Browser” and “Close Preview”.

Adding new feeds to Headline is very easy. Just click the feed button in the bottom left and the entries will switch to show you a list of feeds. Here you can click the plus and minus buttons to add and delete feeds. You can not rename feeds or just view the entries from one feed. If you already use an RSS reader you can easily import your feeds from different applications or an OPML file. Headline uses core animation to add some cool effects. There is a slight fade effect when you switch between feeds and entries. There is also a pop in effect when you open the preview window. Headline even supports growl.

Headline is a very innovative RSS reader. The minimal UI is great to leave on the side of your screen. It is still missing a few features but hopefully in the coming months more features will be added. Headline costs $19.95 and a demo is available at Doseido Software.

First, you’ll need to identify a folder to sync with on your remote host. Then, bust open your file menu and select Synchronize.

Cyberduck will then ask you to identify the folder with which you wish to synchronize. Pick a folder on your HD, confirm the sync, and your files will be transferred. You can also sync multiple folders with the same folder on the remote host. My only problem with this sync function is that Cyberduck does not automatically sync the folders on start-up. A couple of keyword searches later and I found what I was looking for.

In a previous version of Cyberduck, the app shipped with a script that would sync the folders. This sample sync AppleScript needs to be modified with your ftp login information as well as paths to your synchronized folder locations. Once the script is modified you can have an app like Lingon run the script when your sync folder is modified.

This is a great tip for those who would like to update their iWeb sites automatically. Just sync up your site folder with the corresponding folder on your web host and Cyberduck does the rest. In fact, I use Cyberduck’s synchronization feature to keep folders on my work computer and personal laptop synced. Cyberduck is not only my go to FTP app, it’s now my folder synchronization app of choice.

iTweak, formerly “iWeb Expander”, allows the end user to make some very handy additions to make his or her site that much more professional and full-featured. When you open iTweak for the first time, you’re greeted by a fairly lengthy Welcome screen that advises you to take advantage of the tutorials available on Guimkie’s site. They offer detailed tutorials for almost every feature of the program, and it makes it that much easier to learn how to make all of the changes you want.

After you get to the main screen, you can start to dig right in and make any of the changes you want. After you use the iWeb option to “Publish to a Folder…”, you can start to work with iTweak. You choose the folder of the site by clicking on the “Choose Published Site” button, and then proceed to tweak whatever you want. The app makes it super easy to add a favicon (the small icon present in your address bar before the ‘http’), integrate Google search, or even install a hit counter. Additionally, when you’re publishing to a non-.mac/MobileMe server that supports PHP, you can add in a Contact form, something that I know I personally miss from using RapidWeaver. Adding the ability for comments, and even adding site-wide security, is only a click away. Finally, you can search and replace any code globally in the entire site, so making changes to small things is really made simple and straightforward as well.

After you’re done making all of your changes, you simply click on the “Process Site” button and can then upload it to your FTP server and allow it for all people to see. After asking a friend to test it with .mac, he reported that it certainly worked as advertised, but that the PHP functions do not work since .mac doesn’t support PHP in iWeb sites. However, for those people who are using iWeb to quickly whip up sites for other locations, the functionality added by iTweak is certainly a welcomed addition.

iTweak is a free application from Guimkie software, but donations are accepted.

The social web browser, as the Flock developers like to call it, can tie in to many major social Web 2.0 sites, including Facebook, Flickr, Digg, del.icio.us and YouTube. So that they weren’t left in the dust with the release of Firefox 3, the Mozilla Gecko-based Flock has pushed out a public beta of Flock 2, based on the latest Firefox engine. The new version packs all the feature, security and stability enhancements (well, mostly — more on that later) of Firefox 3 with the added social features. The Awesome Bar, the new favorites engine, the new password log handling — it’s all in there.

On top of all the Firefox goodies is the ability to see what your friends on any number of social sites are up to with message notifications right in the “people” sidebar. Another sidebar checks popular web-based e-mail clients, and another acts as a clipboard for anything on the Web, like links, text, and images.

Flock’s custom start page, called My World, is a sleek, customizable page where you can display a few headlines from your favorite RSS feeds, YouTube and Flickr media streams, and most visited sites. Flock handles RSS similarly to Safari, though feeds are selected from the sidebar with headlines shown in the body. With Flock you can save news stories by starring them, a feature I’ve longed for in Safari RSS. Another nifty feature is the media browser, which displays streams from YouTube and Flickr, giving users the ability to add their own from any site.

All these features seem to come at a price, though. Flock isn’t quite as zippy or as stable as Firefox 3. Crashes were a fairly common occurrence during my testing. I would also find myself feeling guilty when I’m only taking advantage of a fraction of Flock’s total feature set. And with all these functions, the interface and the Mac simplicity mentality gets overwhelmed with clutter. There are just too many buttons at the top of the window: one for sending a page via e-mail, one for Digging the page, one for installing a search engine (which cannot be removed). Really, in the rare instance I want to install the search engine from Ma.gnolia.com, I think I can manage to use a menu item.

Because this is a beta, the stability errors I ran into will likely be stomped out before the final version. This is only the first public beta, so we can even expect a few additional features before the next milestone. So if you like the all-in-one browser mentality and are a big user of everything Web 2.0, give the new Flock 2 beta a shot.