One of the smartest things you can do to protect yourself online these days is to simply not use Internet Explorer. The thing is so full of holes that using it is just asking for trouble. The December 17, 2006 stats release from W3 Counter shows world-wide usage of Internet Explorer still at 65%.
Here’s a quick look at Starry Hope’s browser stats. As you can see, only 7% of the visitors to this site (over the last year) have used Internet Explorer.
The past few days have been full of announcements in the area of running Windows applications on your Intel Mac. First, Parallels released a new beta version of their virtual machine, then VMware released a public beta of their virtual machine. Today, CodeWeavers made release candidate 1 of CrossOver Mac, their Windows compatibility product, available.
I decided to put Parallels and CrossOver Mac to a simple test and see which one works better for me. There are many technical (and even philosophical) questions surrounding this topic which I won’t cover here.
The task: Edit a photo from iPhoto with the Windows version of Photoshop 7.
Parallels Desktop for Mac Update Beta2 (Build 3094) was released today. Here’s a screencast that shows off some of my favorite features.
Place Windows applications on your Mac desktop or in your application dock. Just click to launch them directly from OS X!
Use Command+tab to cycle through Windows and Mac applications simultaneously, and hide and show Windows applications just like you would with Mac applications
Download this screencast in Quicktime format here.
The latest generation of Mac applications have really focused on the way an application looks. Developers are creating beautiful user interfaces and slick looking icons that make their apps more pleasing to look at. I appreciate the time and energy that people have put into making their apps look great.
Here’s a list of 10 Mac OS X applications with really cool icons. What are your favorite OS X application icons?
AppZapper
An uninstaller application on steroids - AppZapper is not only useful, but has a killer icon.
Cyberduck
This is the only open-source FTP and SFTP application that will run on my mac. While it’s not as efficient as Transmit for SFTP transfers, Cyberduck is free and has a great icon.
ImageWell
"The Handy Image Editor that will save you time and money." ImageWell is a program that really lives up to its hype. I had my doubts about ImageWell, but find it extremely useful when I want to make a quick edit to a picture without spending the time to open Photoshop or Fireworks. Oh, and it has a great icon too!
Midnight Inbox
I had high expectations for Midnight Inbox. I’ve been looking for a good GTD app and Midnight Inbox looked promising. Unfortunately, the application is so confusing that it’s nearly impossible to use. On the bright side, the developer did spend a lot of time on the icon, and it looks great! I’ll be keeping my eye on this app.
Little Snitch
Little Snitch monitors outgoing network traffic to let you know when applications are connecting to the internet. It also gives you the ability to block interent access for certain applications. Little Snitch has many of the features of ZoneAlarm with a much cooler name and icon.
SuperDuper!
This application makes fully bootable backups of your Mac hard drive. I like SuperDuper’s icon because it moves beyond the normal shiny 3D look of most OS X icons and does something more original.
svnX
SvnX is a must-have application for mac developers who need to work with Subversion repositories (a version control system). Their icon subtly displays the idea of version control and looks amazing in my dock.
Tangerine!
Tangerine is an application to help you "create magical playlists". Huh? I haven’t found this app very useful, but the icon is sweet!
Toast
Roxio’s all-purpose CD and DVD authoring software has one of the most clever icons around. Sure, it’s expensive and doesn’t smoke while it burns, but Toast’s feature set is unmatched in the macintosh market.
Transmit
Transmit is commonly considered to be the best mac FTP application. It comes with a very detailed, toy-like icon. I guess these guys didn’t hear the speech from Senator Ted Stevens about the Internet. After all, "It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes."
The guys over at Ruby Inside are putting together a Ruby Advent Calendar. The Calendar features a new article about Ruby for each day of Advent.
Following the trend, Err the Blog has put together their own Advent Calendar that’s packed full of useful Rails tips (focusing mostly on ActiveSupport). There are some great gems in there!
