Glen Scott - Keeping it simple, since 1977

Why I won’t be upgrading to the iPhone 3G

Glen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:06:27 +0000

I’m really happy with my iPhone, but I must admit I was initially tempted to upgrade to the new 3G version which is released this Friday. However, after thinking things through I’ve decided to stick with the “old” version. Why? Well, with the free OS 2.0 upgrade, I will get these features for free anyway:

Native applications
Cisco IPSec VPN support
MobileMe
Improved mail client
Enhanced contact management
Better battery life

and more.

Meaning the only differences between my iPhone and the 3G iPhone is:

3G
GPRS

So it boils down to whether I want to pay £99 for these two features. And I don’t: they are nice options, but far from essential. 3G is faster than EDGE, but for general browsing of websites I don’t think it will make a huge difference, especially because many sites serve up optimised iPhone pages already. Furthermore, enabling 3G on the phone will zap the battery faster than when using EDGE. And GPRS, while a nice idea, is far from essential in my day-to-day usage of the phone right now.

iPhone 3G

Useless Mac Applications #2 : Adobe Reader

Glen — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:30:45 +0000

A classic example of an application that started off performing a simple, useful task (i.e. displaying PDF documents) and has grown to an overly complex, slow, hulking beast of an application.

I got scared off by the 251Mb disk space the installer claims that it needs:

I’ll stick to Apple’s Preview.app, thanks.

Useless Mac Applications #1 : Sherlock

Automatically virus scan your downloads folder

Glen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:36:40 +0000

Okay, so there are not really any Mac specific virus threats, but there are tonnes for Windows… and you don’t want to be passing these on to your PC owning friends right? Best be safe…

Download and install ClamXav
Launch ClamXav application
Go into preferences and click the Folder Sentry tab
Drag your Downloads folder from the Finder to the Folders Being Watched pane
Check the Launch ClamXav Sentry when you log in to this computer option
Log out and log back in to your account and you will see a new item in your menu bar indicating that Sentry is monitoring your Downloads folder
The Sentry uses Growl notifications if it finds anything suspicious

Parallels for $49, offer ends today!

Glen — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:31:25 +0000

Good deal from Mac Heist: get Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac, half price. Be quick, offer ends today!

Mac Heist

Software Development, Visualized

Glen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:11:35 +0000

code_swarm is a fantastic application that visualises software projects over a period of time by analysing their code repositories. It aims to show in a graphical manner the users working on a project, and the number of files committed. Some great example videos are available, including a video of the Apache webserver project.

code_swarm

Firefox 3 released: still looks dodgy on Mac

Glen — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:16:36 +0000

Using Firefox 3 is really a different experience from using OS X. It’s not Windows, it’s not OS X and it’s not Linux. It’s something else.

To upgrade or not to upgrade?

Glen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:42:08 +0000

John Gruber on the iPhone upgrade dilemma:

So what it boils down to is whether you think it’s worth $199 up front — plus $15 extra per month for the new data plan with SMS — for faster cell network data.

The iPhone 3G Upgrade Question

Fire Eagle beta invite anyone?

Glen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:24:56 +0000

I have one invite to the Fire Eagle beta to give away. Just leave a comment if you are interested.

What is Fire Eagle? From the site:

Fire Eagle is the secure and stylish way to share your location with sites and services online.

Fire Eagle

Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk will play nicely together

Glen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:00:35 +0000

Buried deep inside the press release announcing the Yahoo-Google search advertising deal, is an interesting point about the company’s respective messenger clients:

In addition, Yahoo! and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users.

New Blog Design

Glen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:50:36 +0000

I’ve installed a new Wordpress Theme to freshen things up a bit. It’s called Spotlight and I think it’s a nice minimalist design, with enough flair to keep the page looking interesting.

Let me know what you think!