hexstatik

firefox 3 was released today. i for one had started becoming annoyed with the instability of firefox 2, so i installed it earlier today. while i like safari’s speed and stablity more than firefox 2’s, there is no google toolbar available for safari, so i was pleased to see that upon installation of ff3, a new version of google toolbar was installed and working.

i have noticed it is quite a bit faster than ff2. it also looks MUCH better on my mac. only time will tell in the area of stability.

today is firefox’s “download day”, where they are trying to set a new world record for the most downloads in one 24 hour period, so if you have firefox 2, download it give it a try today.

quicksilver is a cool application for the mac like no other. it’s an application launcher… and so much more. it’s philosophy is “wei wu wei”, or act without doing, and allows you to use your keyboard to do… well, just about anything.

for the longest time, i’d been only using it for the most basic of things, usually launching apps. recently however, i started using twitter, and then also heard from rjtaylor that you can tweet right from quicksilver. my beef with twitter before was that i always needed to open up twitterific to send my tweets, which was kind of tiresome. now, with the new quicksilver action, hooked up to a trigger, a tweet is just a ctrl-opt-cmd-t away!

having this new trigger has opened a whole a new world, and i’ve now created two more:

1. search google (i’m using ctrl-opt-cmd-G)
2. shortened URLs using qurl (ctrl-opt-cmd-L)

you can learn more at the quicksilver tutorial page.

if you use a mac, and you don’t use quicksilver, you are seriously missing out.

Last year I was lucky enough to attend the Canadian Strategic Architect Forum. The goody bag that was given to attendees was quite nice, and included a Microsoft LifeCam NX-6000, as well as a copy of the (then) newly released Windows Vista operating system.

The computer I was using at home for personal use at the time was getting quite long in the tooth, and was unable to run Vista, so I didn’t end up installing it. I then decided to switch to a Mac, and so had no use for it. I tried selling it a few times on Craigslist, and at one point considered letting it go for $150. The interested buying never got back to me, so I opted to let the market dictate the price in an online auction at eBay. It was a great decision. 7 days after listing it for $149, I sold it for $212.76 plus $15 for shipping.

I received payment almost immediately, so, the next day, I went to amazon.ca and bought a copy Apple’s Mac OS 10.5 Leopard (5-user family pack) for $20 off, and then combined a $10 coupon I found online for a total of $189 and change (including tax).

Now, that’s what I call an upgrade!

So, tonight, I found an application that gives me one more reason to absolutely love my mac. It’s called FacebookSync 2.2 by FSB Software. FacebookSync is an application that allows you to sync up your Mac’s Address Book with your friends’ details from Facebook. Details such as their photo, address, birthday, phone numbers and some instant messenger info are some of the details that you can sync.

While it didn’t grab all photos, it did a pretty good job of grabbing some information I didn’t have. And of course, I recommend you backup your address book before you attempt to try this.