Apple has a new support document that further details the new Address-Book-to-Gmail sync feature that debuted in 10.5.3. Here are a few choice talking points:
The feature now appears in iTunes 7.7 in addition to Address Book’s pref pane
Apple explains: “Google uses email addresses as the unique identifier for each Gmail contact. If some of your contacts have the same email address, they may not all sync.”
Also: “Anyone you have corresponded with in your Gmail account will be included in this sync by default.” Google, stop this behavior, or at least give us the option to shut it off.
My favorite bullet point is towards the bottom: “If you are syncing your computer with MobileMe, remember that these contacts may sync to MobileMe as well.” Note that Apple says these contacts “may” sync to MobileMe, instead of “definitely will, because MobileMe is a far more reliable replacement for .Mac.”
Good news for my favorite location-based social network so far:
Brightkite is all about sharing your location and meeting new people based on the places you visit, and the latest way of doing that is with the Brightkite API. Using the Brightkite API you can add a location component to any site, social network, or application.
I got ahold of the iPhone 2.0 software yesterday and took a bunch of free and commercial apps for a spin, including Loopt, a competitor to Brightkite that Apple showed off at WWDC. I gotta say: Loopt’s iPhone app is impressive, but I’m really interested to see what Brightkite can pull off with its iPhone app that is due by the end of July. This open API makes the service much more appealing to both developers and users. Plus, Brightkite is where most of my friends already are, so I’m hoping Loopt doesn’t gobble up most of the market simply by being first out the gate.
I’m finally getting around to installing a few CS3 Web Premium components on my MacBook Air, and was again annoyed by Adobe’s installer requirements of quitting all open browsers. There’s no reason to require this, and all my Adobe apps worked just fine even though I restarted both Safari and Firefox immediately after the installation began. Adobe’s similarly terrible software and installation experiences across the rest of its products are well-documented on various other sites.
Adobe, you are a design company, and probably the Earth’s largest supplier of design software. You can do so much better than this.
So here’s a bug report I just submitted to Adobe. I encourage you to send a similar message if you’re fed up with Adobe’s terrible software experiences:
******BUG******
Concise problem statement: Your software installation experience is a crime against the technology industry.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. Install Creative Suite
2. Get warned that Safari and Firefox need to be quit to install Creative Suite. I then quit said apps.
3. Restart both browsers right after installation begins, continue scratching head as to why in the hell I had to stop everything I was doing and quit my browsers in the first place.
Results: Everything works fine, can find no apparent reason for shutting down browsers and breaking my workflow just to install Adobe software.
Expected results: Better software and installation experience after spending hundreds of dollars on a package from a **design** company as massive as Adobe.
From Technosailor’s 10 things you need to know about WordPress 2.6, a new “Press This” bookmarklet will arrive that makes it much easier to blog photos, quotes, and videos you find around the web. This is one of Tumblr’s killer features, and it’s about damn time WordPress tackles something like this.
The other 10 things are certainly worth reading, including a new compromise to the ridiculous disabling of external blog editor access (by default) that MarsEdit developer Daniel Jalkut rightfully called BS on.
Best iPhone WordPress admin plug-in I’ve seen. Be sure to check out the rest of the screenshots. WPhone works across all the essential areas, but there’s no telling what it’ll do to plug-in-specific pages.
I wrote about Many Tricks’ Leech OS X download manager back in May, but I’ve been using Speed Download for a while and didn’t see a reason to switch over. Leech is a good download manager with a simple, unique UI that I recommend, but it didn’t have any must-have features when I wrote about it.
Today I decided to give Leech another spin since Many Tricks has issued a few new features and fixes since its debut. While I’m not positive I want to switch over yet, I definitely think this searchable History menu that mimics Leopard’s system-wide Help menu search field is a smart feature, and I don’t remember it being in the 1.0 that I wrote about. If you keep Leech hidden or close its window while it’s working, this is certainly an easy way to look through all your downloads without having to reactivate a full window. Smart.
Disqus is an interesting new hosted comment solution for blogs and websites. I’m trying it out here at 1FPS because of some unique features, such as threaded and more interactive comments than you get with WordPress and many of its plug-ins.
A definite downside for users of WordPress and similar platforms is that you no longer get your commenter’s e-mail address sent in comment notifications. If you require those for off-the-record correspondence with readers, you may need to find a workaround or bug the company to add this feature. Off the top of my head, I think a reasonable solution would be to enable this as an option for publishers (probably by default, since it’s the default of every CMS I’ve ever tried), but also allow registered commenters to control whether their e-mail address is sent in Disqus comment notifications to publishers.
Speaking of new features, though, Disqus has been busy. Users can now enable trackbacks, and the company added support for logging in via OpenID (for registered users/commenters at the main website, not logging in at just anyone’s site—yet). There are also now easy-breezy Disqus plug-ins for Joomla and Drupal as well.
If you want to learn more about Disqus you can of course visit the site, but a recent post on the company’s blog titled A Commenter’s Rights also explains more of the philosophy behind the company’s hosted comment approach.
Update:Guillermo Esteves says you actually can see a commenter’s e-mail address in your Disqus dashboard. It may not be as convenient as getting them via e-mail for some users, but at least they’re there if you need them.
WordPress’s decision to shut off remote access by default is analogous to a bank offering unrestricted drive-through access to its cash machines, while requiring pedestrians to ring a bell and wait for a security guard to open the door to the machines.
I don’t know if a new crew has taken the reigns of WordPress recently, but some really, really poor design and functionality decisions have been made since that $29 million VC score. Jalkut nailed this one.
TypePad introduced Blog It back in April, a cool little multi-service web app that bizarrely manifested as a Facebook application, of all things. Now, TypePad has morphed Blog It into an iPhone web app, living at http://blogit.typepad.com.
I haven’t signed in yet because I’m a bit too busy, but it appears to offer much of the same functionality wrapped in standard iPhone UI and controls. It also defaults to letting users sign in via OpenID. Cool.
Seriously, with a utility as awesome as Fluid, I can’t fathom a single reason to bother with the craptastic, sandboxed nature of Adobe AIR. Site designers can simply build their generic mobile site—and an iPhone-specific version if they want—and just offer a Fluid SSB (Site Specific Browser) or add some bonuses like a larger icon for a utility like Fluid.
