So I’m reviewing MarsEdit for Macteens and the review will be coming within a couple of days to 2 weeks. When it does, I’ll provide a link here.

So far I’m liking being able to have local drafts and I like having to not have Safari open. This makes it much less cluttered, which helps when trying to actually write things. I have not tried any of the other things so far, so I have no idea what I’ll think of it a couple days.

Right now, though, I’m looking for some opinions of people who have used MarsEdit, so I can gauge how much people like it and how much it is used.

So, comment away.

Edit:

I’m just trying out image embedding. So, here’s a picture I took.

That was more complicated than I would of hoped…

One of my favorite bloggers is Fake Steve, who poses as Steve Jobs and offers a hilarious approach to things in the Apple and Tech world. Recently there has been many people who have been trying to uncover who he is, through probably completely legal but unethical means. Some people have gone so far to make a special website just for Fake Steve, with a link only he received, that was used to discover where is from (Boston). While Valleywag has taken some heat, from Fake Steve himself as well, they offer some points that say why Andy Ihnatko isn’t Fake Steve in this post, citing reasons that while Andy is funny, Fake Steve is funnier, Andy Inahtko uses Verizon while Fake Steve does not, and more.

Gizmodo also has some points at that Fake Steve won’t be able to stay Fake for long, if the hunt carries on. They are one of the many groups of people who want Fake Steve to remain fake, including TUAW, Buzz Out Loud, and many individuals on Twitter as well.

I am in the group that wants Fake Steve to remain fake. I admit I was curious, but once Fake Steve wrote the post about the invasions of privacy, I figured that it went too far, and that it would be better for everyone if it stopped. I doubt the people who have done the things to discover who he is will stop, but maybe if enough people show their disapproval they will. It’s a big maybe though.

For me, summer has basically started. I have one more day off, 8th grade graduation, then graduation for the seniors. Once I’m done with those, I have the whole summer (and soccer camps and other trips) ahead of me. And, hopefully, this is where the learning begins.

Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…

Many of you will have heard this by now, but there is a very large scandal regarding a number that can be used to crack the encryption on HD-DVD disks. It started on a forum a few days ago, where one member managed to crack it, apparently accidently. It was posted to Digg, but it was promptly deleted and the poster banned. From here, it gets complicated. I hope this post can help both me and you understand. I’ll also provide links to what hasn’t been deleted, if I can find them.

How It Went

Although this post may stop it from becoming a thing of the past (which many Digg users hope it won’t become), I think that this post is a good recap of all the parts of the scandal.

What do you think of this? As usual, sound off in the comments.

Edit: Wow, the story Kevin Rose submitted and blog post he wrote currently 27,570 diggs. Even more than the iPhone story, which used to have the most diggs.

Yesterday, the Shiira Project released a new version of their browser called Shiira. This new version is 2.0, and is a large improvement over the old version, and the 2.0 betas. It is a nice browser, and although a bit unstable, is still really handy and really nicely designed. To show what I like about Shiira 2.0, I decided to make a list of things I like about it, and the things I don’t.

What I Like
Full-screen Mode: My favorite part of Shiira is the ability to have the browser take up the whole window with a handy navigation panel at the bottom. It is an improvement on such abilities on Windows, and looks really nice. I used it to present a website for school once, and it worked great. Click here for a screenshot.

Heads-Up-Display: Another thing I love is how the history and bookmarks are in a Heads-Up-Display, which makes it really easy to view. It also separates it from the real browser, which makes viewing history a lot easier then in Safari (I hate how you have to hope you don’t move your mouse out of the menu when looking in your history in Safari, it’s challenging). Click here for a screenshot.

PageDock: The PageDock, which is located at the bottom of the screen, is basically the tab bar in Safari souped up. It shows a preview of the page, the name, allows you to close a tab and add a new one really easily. Click here for a screenshot.

Tab Exposé: As I was writing up this review, I saw a little button that I never clicked before. When I did, I was pretty amazed. Like Exposé, which shows all the windows on your desktop smaller, next to eachother, and dims the background to make it easier to focus on the foreground, Tab Exposé shows all the pages in the browser in the same way that Expose does. Click here for a screenshot.

What I Don’t Like
Importing Bookmarks: I tried to import my bookmarks from Safari, by using the bookmarks bar from Safari, and dragging them to Shiira’s bookmarks bar. But, as you probably imagine, that didn’t work. I don’t see a way to do it, and it doesn’t include a menu option to import bookmarks.
Edit: Okay, I figured it out. If you enable Safari bookmarks in the prefences, go to the shelf, and drag them into the folder Bookmarks Bar (with the icon). Then, move one of those around, or do something within the folder Bookmarks Bar, and it should refresh itself. If it does that, it works.
Edit 2: Nevermind, when I quit and restarted, it cleared the bookmarks bar. It seems to not be writing the preferences.

Can’t Change Download Folder: This will probably get fixed in the next release, but while there is an option to change the download folder, but it isn’t enabled. This means that it always downloads to the Desktop, which bugs me, because I use this tip from Deskpopp (I did it already, but they already wrote about it, so I’ll just link to them). I hope they change this soon.

Overall Bugginess: This is always in this browser, and if it wasn’t buggy, much more people would use it. This occurred in the betas, and although people would think it would be fixed by the final release of 2.0, it wasn’t. It crashes a lot, some things don’t work. I may submit bug reports eventually, and I encourage you to submit bug reports too.

Beauty
Besides all that, isn’t it just beautiful?

Even though it’s a great browser, and has been making progress, I’m sticking with Safari. I’m used to it, and I just like how it works. I can’t judge for you though, so download it yourself, and sound off in the comments on what you think. Anyway, I hoped you like this (my first!) review.

PS: If anyone was wondering why the GUI looks different, I’m using this theme, with Shapeshifter.

Yesterday, while looking in the staff section of MacApper, I found the blog of Joseph, and was pretty happy that I came upon it. It’s a cool blog, with a nice theme, and it linked me to something really cool. The thing that I found was Random Shapes.

Before I explain what it is, I’ll give a little back story: I was also looking at blogs of some teens with large numbers of readers, such as Glenn Wolsey and Paul Stamatiou, and found that they were in a blogging network called 9rules. I was interested in it, but I figured that my blog wasn’t up there to join it, even though it would help me get readers. So, I stopped looking, and went to MacApper to check out what their new post was. I look in the staff section, and that’s where I found Joseph’s blog.

Back to Random Shapes. Random Shapes is another blogging network, like 9rules, but has one major difference. That difference is the blogging network is for teens. Joseph, like myself, is a young teen blogger, but he has a bit more following, because he has more links to his blog (like MacApper, where I found it). I figured that it would be a good thing to try and make it in, because it wouldn’t be as hard as 9rules, but may still be hard.

But, if any Random Shapes people are reading this, I would love to say that I really want to join, and that a blogging network for teens is both a great idea and a great thing.

If I make it in, I’ll be sure to edit this post.

I wrote something about MacApper yesterday, on a tone that wasn’t too nice. But, today, MacApper is doing something a lot better. They are having a Switcher’s Giveaway, and you can win a ton of new apps. The apps are listed in the post, and some are amazing. I have some already, because I bought the Macheist Bundle, but they’re really nice. The catch is you have to email them telling your switching story. I’m going to be preparing mine, and it’ll only get better if more people send in their tales. Send in your emails by 11:59PM EDT on Monday, April 30th.

Check it out!

Recently (meaning today), MacApper wrote an exclusive review of the yet to be released app Coda, made by Panic. Without going into the details of the app, although it is really cool, I feel that MacApper shouldn’t have written the review. First, they shouldn’t have the app at all, it was sent in from an anonymous beta tester. Second, they wanted to get more readers as they are new, and also wanted to have a nice exclusive review. They did get dugg, so that helps, but that means more people have seen the screenshots and have heard about the review. Panic emailed the writer of the post, Miles Evans, to remove the screenshots, but they were mirrored because someone at Digg kept them saved. This means that what Panic tried to do, hide the leak, failed. Another thing is that Panic is approaching its 10 year anniversary on Monday, which is when the app was supposed to be released.

All my feelings on this: Although Miles says he thought it was okay, he should of removed it completely, even though people probably saved it. He also knew it was unreleased, so shouldn’t of wrote about it, and certainly taken screenshots. Although he says Panic isn’t angry, I bet they are annoyed. But, one thing I learned is that Miles is good at making excuses.

PS: Happy 10th Anniversary, Panic!

Hey, I just wanted to check in with everyone. See, as you can probably tell, I’ve been really slacking off for writing for this website.

I have a reason, but it’s not completely valid. School has been busy, and even though I had a long spring break, I couldn’t really get anything done. I took a vacation, and the rest of the time I spent relaxing and desiging this theme.

The theme, though, I am very proud of. It was originally based off of my Virb, and was then adapted into a page handmade in CSS and xHTML. I was proud of it, and even made a partly done Wordpress theme for it, that was integrated into the rest, but I figured I needed a Wordpress theme that worked all on its own. So, for the past couple of days I have been making this, mainly on the weekends.

Overall, I’m sorry for slacking, if you were one of my dedicated readers. Eventually, if you’re not a dedicated reader, there will be a reason to be. Just you wait.

PS: Although I said I would never write about myself to some people, I think that’s going to change. I am still going to write about things in the News and technology things that I am interested in, but if something interesting happens to me I might right about it. The other times I might write about it are when I am explaining things about the site, and why it hasn’t been updated.

If you want to help me with the site, offer critique, comments, and suggestions on the theme, and submit articles you want me to write about, then feel free to email me at conner at connerdowney dot com. (replace the at with “@”, the dot with “.”, and remove the spaces.

Here’s a very funny comic by Foxtrot. It plays on how the RIAA has sued grandmothers, 12 year old girls, and other crazy things like that, just to get money. They have also recently come out with a website where you can pay for what you’ve pirated online, at a discount. This is perfect evidence of how they don’t want to help the artists, they just want money. But, enough of that, follow the link.