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In part 2 of “My Tech”, I will go over some of the software in use on a normal basis. I run Mac OS X but I have an install of Vista Ultimate installed on a Boot Camp partition. My need for Windows declines each day. I’ve gotten to the point where I no longer have Parallels installed.

What’s in my Menubar:
Last.fm
Twitteriffic
Soundsource
Bandwagon FTP
DeskLickr

Desktop Apps:
AppZapper
Autorate
Disco
Handbrake
IEatBrainz
Linkinus
MacTheRipper
MetaX
Popcorn
Pukka
Skype
Tangerine!
Transmission
Transmit
VisualHub
Wednesday List
Spanning Sync
Connect360
Missing Sync for Blackberry

Web Apps:
Gmail
Google Reader
Google Calendar
Google Documents
Remember the Milk
Meebo
Backpack
My Pull List
My Mile Marker

Beta 2 of Opera Mini 2 was released yesterday with a nice list of enhancements:

• Added encryption
• Added multi search, with shortcut #+9
• Added create search from form field
• Added landscape mode, shortcut #+*
• Added support for small anti-aliased bitmap fonts
• Added content folding
• Simplified setup process
• Improved image quality
• Improved fit to width mode rendering
• Simplified settings page
• Added native BlackBerry menu
• Allow BlackBerry to accept the EULA via the menu.
• Fixed decoding of images that were skipped when partially above the window
• Added clock adjustment setting
• Changing the font size via settings now clears the document cache
• Now saves full screen mode between sessions
• Dialogs are now displayed with round corners and alpha channel overlay windows
• Delayed randomess gathering for secure connections until first real page request

What caught my eye the most was the improvements made to its Blackberry support. I had tried beta 1 and was pretty unimpressed. It was clumsy, slow and hard to use so I deleted. With specific support for Blackberry devices, I decided to load up beta 2 on my BB Pearl and give it another chance.

Blackberry Changes
Right off the bat I was loving the changes. It now behaves like any Blackberry app should. The Menu button actually brings up the menu!! Previously you had to use the QW and OP buttons to access the menus. It was frustrating at best. They did a great job of making use of the Menu, Back and Trackball in the new version.

Landscape mode
As I segway from the changes for Blackberry devices, the 2nd change I was most excited about was the landscape mode. As soon as I loaded up the8thsign.com in Opera, I was hitting #+* every way I could. Nothing I did would get landscape mode to work. I must have spend 15mins using every possible key combination and still nothing. Looked under settings and no Landscape mode listed there either. So it looks like it its not enabled on Blackberry’s for some reason. Disappointing.

Other Features
Some of the nicer new features include using the 2-3-6-8 buttons to navigate around the webpage. This may have been in beta 1 but I don’t remember it being this easy or fun to navigate. When moving side to side, its even smart enough to stop at edges of text and pictures even if its only a few pixels away. Another feature I’ve noticed is that text will be reformatted to fit your screen, even when viewing the full page and zoomed in.

Most transitions are now made with a iPhone like slide effect. In most places its very smooth but gets choppy when zooming out of a page.

Also new to this version is a OS X like hud for shortcuts and info. To see what I’m talking about, hold down the * or # buttons for a few seconds. They also use this new interface for displaying link information.

Conclusion
Beta 2 is a HUGE improvement for Opera Mini 4, especially on Blackberry Devices. Why they didn’t include landscape mode on Blackberries puzzles me but hopefully it will show up in beta 3. Getting around webpages is fast and fun. I just wish there was some way you could set it as your default browser but RIM doesn’t allow that. Hopefully in BB OS 4.3. My only complaint is the full screen view looks very distorted. It maybe due to the small screen size but the iPhones full screen mode looks amazing. If you have a Blackberry, download the beta and check it out. You can get it for free by going to http://mini.opera.com/beta from your phone.

I finally picked up iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 this weekend after Apple’s announcement last week. I’ve been waiting for iLife ‘08 since Macworld as I use iPhoto on a daily basis and Garageband when I record my podcast. iDVD and iWeb are pretty useless to me but iMovie was something I always wanted to get into but never did. Mostly due to not having a video camera. iWork on the other hand i rarely use and really have no idea why I picked it up but I did anyways.

First thing I did was try out iPhoto for obvious reasons. Now mind you, I never really “got” iPhoto but in the past 8 months I’ve gotten use to it. The first thing you notice is that Events now replace rolls. I think this will actually work out for me in the long run. My favorite upgrade so far is the keyword, no more drag and dropping. It has a more traditional tagging interface now which i love. I’ve only really played with the new iPhoto for a little bit so far and its mostly due to the fact it now runs like shit on my Macbook. As I write this I am rebuilding all the thumbnails, database and permissions hoping it will help. When scrolling and editing pictures, the CPU jumps to 100% and everything crawls. Anyone else having the same issues?

The other iLife apps I haven’t played with too much yet. iWork I’ll probably almost never use due to Google Apps but I have it if i need it.

Comic Collector Live, the Windows only database program for comic books has finally launched their Live Market. Live Market sets out to be eBay for comics. This is the one feature I have been waiting for as I have a lot of comics I would like to sell. As soon as I got the email, I booted up Vista via Boot Camp and installed the new version of Comic Collector Live. From there it took no more than 10mins to setup a sellers account. Right now they have two different packages - a $14.95 all you can eat plan and a $0.25 pay per listing plan. If you’re going to sell any more than a handful of comics, the $14.95 seems the better deal as it is only $0.01 to sell and the listing doesn’t expire. Otherwise, its a standard 7 day listing. Selling comics is easy if you have already entered the comic into the program, just click sell and then rate your comics condition. You can rate individual comics or as a group. Also, you can sell individually or as a lot.

Right now I only have up the first 15 issues of Venom as I was playing around but in the next week or so I plan on going through my books and selling anything I don’t wait. From the stats on the homepage, it doesn’t look promising. As of this writing there are 1095 items for sales and only 33 sold. The site did just launch so hopefully over the next few days, the user base will increase. I’m going to give the service a month to see how I make out. Its too bad this is a Windows only, it would be made a great Web app.

I’ve whipped up a Workflow for encoding videos for the Blackberry Curve. You will need to head over to my post on encoding video for the Blackberry Pearl for instructions but here is an updated Workflow that should format videos to the correct screen size. I do not have a Curve to test this so if anyone has one and would like to give me feedback, I’d appreciate it.

[Download Workflow for Blackberry Curve]

Bandwagon, the iTunes backup program, has finally released their version of software that supports backup to an FTP server. They have had a version that supported Amazon’s S3 service for a couple months now but now you can backup to any FTP server including another computer on your local network. I tested it last night by backing up my iTunes music to a Buffalo Linkstation I have on my LAN. The 40 gigs of data took about 2 hours to backup so speed was good. I’m probably going to try a backup to my Dreamhost site soon but thats going to take some time. Everything worked great except the app was always at 100% CPU usage when it was running. The program is in beta so bugs are expected. For a first release tho, it offers a great way to backup your iTunes library locally or offsite.

Also they are offering a free 6 months to any blogger who posts about the release. Just make a post, not unlike this one, and post a trackback to the post on their blog and you will get a code good for a 6 months free.

My favorite remote control software, LogMeIn, has released a preview of their upcoming client for Mac. LogMeIn is similar to GoToMyPC in it provides 24/7 access to your computer from any web browser. I’ve used LogMeIn for years when I was doing computer consulting to remotely access clients PC and its nice to finally see it come to Macs. The client only supports LogMeIn Free accounts right now which allows access to one computer. But since its free, there is no reason not to signup for an account and have access to your home Mac anytime, anywhere.