See how innovations from iPad inspire new features for the Mac. And find out what’s coming this summer with OS X Mountain Lion. Messages, Reminders, Notes, Notification Center, Twitter, Airplay Mirroring, Game Center, and more. You love them on iPad. Now you’ll love them on your Mac. And with iCloud, they all work better together.
Read more about OS X Mountain Lion here.Raven is a site-specific web browser that allows you to be more productive by creating a dedicated browsing instance for each one of your web apps, such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, CNN, YouTube, and many more.
Raven offers site-specific browsing, putting the features of the
sites you interact with the most easy to access and use
Raven is not a standard web browser to replace Safari, Chrome or Firefox, though you easily could if you wished. Instead it focuses on improving the experience on the sites you interact with the most. For instance, clicking on the Twitter icon in the left sidebar slides open the controls for Tweets, DMs, @Replies and Search for easy access. The controls available depend on what each site offers.
Think of Raven as the Mac OS X Twitter app, only for a plethora of social and news sites. Raven offers bookmarking to Instapaper, a smart bar, history, and even a toolbar icon that loads the mobile version of the site right in the Raven browser window – so you can view the site just as you would on your iPhone.
Some of the sites that take advantage of Raven’s site-specific browsing are: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, MySpace, Quora, Linkedin, Digg, TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, CNN, New York Times, AllThingsD, The Next Web, Dribble, Instapaper, Dropbox, Hulu Plus, Flickr, Vimeo, and more.
Raven isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely a cool piece of technology worth checking out.
The last two weeks on the Internet have been filled with articles covering the changes that recently appeared on Facebook (the Ticker), and the more drastic changes to your Profile that will be arriving shortly. Like every other previous Facebook change, people are so frustrated that they’re threatening to leave Facebook. Uh-huh, sure. Here’s why you won’t be quitting Facebook any time soon.First of all, the new Profile page (see image below) will take some getting used to. In order to take advantage of what it has to offer, you’ll most likely want to add some additional information. I say want to, because if you’re like most people, you probably like playing with new toys.
The new Facebook Timeline Profile page is actually pretty nice
The new Timeline Profile view offers viewers an easy way to scroll down through your life on Facebook much more easily – via the Timeline bar on the upper right of the page. Want to see what your friend was up to in 2002? Easy, just click the 2002 date in the Timeline bar and you’re zoomed right into place in their Timeline.
The uproar is that it supposedly “invades your privacy” because it puts all your posts in plain view for everyone to see. Well, I’m here to remind you that this has always been the case. It’s just a little easier to find now.
By now it should be no secret that you can add extensions to Apple’s Safari web browser. One new extension allows you to read and send Tweets with the click of a button.
Ostrich is accessed through a button in your browser bar which drops down an overlay window containing Tweets from your Twitter stream. The icon also notifies you of the number of unread Tweets with a red badge.
Ostrich adds Tweeting to Safari with the click of a button
One of the few features of Ostrich is the ability to automatically add a link to the page you’re currently on to a new Tweet, which you access by clicking the plus button in the upper right corner. And that’s what brings me to the single problem I have with this extension. When you click that plus button, a new window is spawned with a tiny text entry box; a royal pain in the behind, if you ask me. To be fair, the Ostrich feedback page does indicate that the developer is working on adding text input without spawning a new window.
Ostrich isn’t for everyone. Twitter power-users will want to avoid it due to it’s simplistic interface and lack of extra features. But if you’re only the occasional Tweeter, or you own a Macbook with a smaller screen and are trying to save screen space, Ostrich might fit the bill.
The Graphic Mac on Twitter
I recently updated the background image on my Twitter page, and almost immediately got a private message from a follower commenting about it. He also asked how much I use Twitter in my day to day work. The answer made me sit back and think about it for a while. My usage has changed quite a bit over the last year or two.
There was a time, when I was freelancing full-time about a year ago, when I was Tweeting a dozen or so times a day. I was working from home, and often found interesting ideas from other people, or simply used it as an excuse to take a break from my work. Once I started working full-time again, my Twitter habits changed. I don’t Tweet nearly as often anymore, but I found it to not be such a bad thing for me, and hopefully a more useful thing for my followers.
My Tweets now consist mainly of two things. First, you’ll see a quick Tweet announcing the latest article when it appears on The Graphic Mac. Second, I share interesting links to articles and resources as I come across them. Many of these links also appear in the sidebar off to the right, but many do not – so it’s worth checking both places.
Occasionally I do interact directly with followers if I have an answer to a question, or can provide a link to help someone out. But you’re not likely to see me Tweeting about my travels, or taste in coffee.
So in short, think of The Graphic Mac on Twitter as an extension of this site, not an extension of my social life. I would also like to say thank you to everyone who follows me, and who have supported this site over the years!
According to an article at Macworld.com, Google is about to make Gmail more social. According to the article, Google plans to make available the ability to update your social status, much like popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, right from within the Gmail interface.I’m not sure how well that will go-over with Gmail users. Personally, I feel like the Gmail service already lacks enough features that they should focus solely on email features, rather than adding non-email ones. At the same time, I feel like email is a private thing, and I don’t necessarily want any sign of “socialization” in there at all. Besides, the Gmail interface is already a cluttered mess as it is, I’m not sure how they could work-in social networking without making it completely unusable.
I’ve been longing for a way to update my Facebook and Twitter status in a single location that I’m already using; something that fits into my existing workflow.
There are plenty of services out there that would allow me to update my social networks, but they would require me to visit yet another Web site to do it, and that means yet another set of usernames and passwords to remember. No thanks.
With Twitter having the lock on micro-blogging, and Facebook having 400 million users and an expanding feature list, including the world’s largest photo-sharing service and reports of a full-blown email Web-client coming, you have to wonder just how long Google can afford to sit on the sidelines and watch.
The Expert:
The Expert
The number one way to spot an Internet @$$hole (referred to in the rest of this article as I.A.s) is to look on the potential turd-burglar’s Twitter page in the Bio section. If you see the word “expert” or “S.E.O.” or my favorite “S.E.O. Expert,” you have struck gold. You’ve come across the highest order of I.A. there is. If you follow them, drop them. If they follow you, block them. But for cryin’ out loud, don’t engage them – you’re just feeding wild animals that will eventually knock over your trash can and spill your garbage all over the driveway! Keep reading. There’s plenty more I.A.s out there to learn about.
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Rant: The annoying year that was 2011
2011 was just too much sharing for my taste
There were lots of great things happening in tech this year, too many to talk about here. But I have put together a list of things that managed to annoy me to no end.