Google Earth for OS X 10.4

After the false alarm of a week ago, Google Earth is really out for OS X -- in beta and for 10.4 only. At last, a good reason to upgrade to 10.4. My old iBook would never have had the horsepower to run it anyway ...

Official Google Blog: Google Earth in a Mac world (PC too)

1/10/2006 12:49:00 PM
Posted by Chikai Ohazama, Google Earth Team

... And we have a brand new member of the family -- Google Earth for Macintosh. We're happy to finally have some good news for the, ahem, vocal Mac enthusiasts we've been hearing from. Let's just say that we have gotten more than a few 'requests' for a Mac version of Google Earth. They've gone something like this:

1) 'When is it coming out? Your website says that you are working on it.'

2) 'You know, Mac users are very heavy graphics/mapping/visualization/design/ architecture/education/real estate/geocaching/social-geo-video-networking fans who would certainly use Google Earth a lot.'

3) 'So when is it coming out?'

We heard you loud and clear. The Mac version runs on OS X 10.4 and up. Happy travels throughout Google Earth, whether you're on a Mac or a PC."

The PC version is out of beta. Time for me to upgrade, though I if the OS X version works I won't be doing that much on the PC version.

The windows download page also lists some interesting Google Earth RSS overlays.

Update 1/10: The OS X page has the same overlays. I highly recommend the Wikipedia overlay, it links articles to locations. Panoramio overlays images on the earth. I had to download them to the desktop and then tell OS X to open them with Google Earth, it wasn't quite as simple as Google's overlay page suggested.

Pretty darned incredible. The performance and appearance on the iMac is beautiful so far.

Lookout for Outlook 1.3.0

Lookout for Outlook was one of the best pieces of productivity software ever created for the Windows platform. It makes Outlook, one of the shoddiest and crummiest piles of code ever sold, actually work.

Microsoft bought it and it disappeared. Allegedly MSN search has some of it.

I use version 1.2.8 dozens of times a day. By chance I see there was a quiet update to 1.3.0 last February -- almost a year ago. Worth trying.

Update 1/11/06: Hmm. I think 1.3.0 is not rebuilding my indices every hour as its supposed to. Alas, I fear I did this update once before -- with similar consequences. I withdraw my recommendation. I guess 1.2.8 is as good as it's going to get.

Fujitsu ScanSnap

MacWorld loves the Fujitsu ScanSnap.

It really does sound like a great product. Fujitsu has long been a dominant player in the low end of the document scanner marketplace (low end in this market was $1000 and up -- please don't mention HP's combo shred and scan devices to me), now they've taken their expertise down below $400. (That price includes the full version of Acrobat 7.)

Years ago I kludged together a scan to pdf solution for a software product I worked on. It didn't get to market, but it was the right way to go. Now ScanSnap and others are doing it right. Adobe has had a great solution for document scanning, but they've been reluctant to cannibalize their high end sales. I hope we'll see more of that at the low end.

It's all about the paper feeder. Fujitsu knows how to do this. I've seen their real SOHO scanner ($1000) scan in a thick plastic card. Very nice device.

Mac NoteTaker for PalmOS with TextMate

This came across a list for missing sync, an app that lets me use our old CLIEs on the iMac. Missing Sync is a great application, but it's desktop companion to the PalmOS Notes/Memos is really weak. This alternative to the Memo Pad has its own OSX conduit and desktop app...

From: Mark H. Subject: [missing-sync-palmos-talk]
Re: DayNotez or alternate journaling application with Desktop component?

I too am a DayNotez fan who would love to see a Mac desktop (or better still a conduit to one of the many excellent Mac journalling applications).

However, I've recently started experimenting with something else. I've been using Mac NoteTaker (Palm application and conduit) with TextMate (rather excellent text editor). [jf: TextWrangler is superb and free]

NoteTaker provides a hierarchical organisation of text notes on the Palm which are two-way-sync'd via a conduit to an identical hierarchy of folders and text files on the Mac. So it's extremely flexible. And it's free :-)

You can browse the notes on the Mac using Finder and edit them using any text editor such as TextEdit. However, I've found TextMate to be rather excellent for the task. Drop the NoteTaker folder onto TextMate's icon and it will produce a single window which has a side draw which shows the folder structure (see the screen shot on MacroMate's home page). TextMate calls this a project and you can save the project to open later, so I have a "NoteTaker" project on my desktop. TextMate contains some great text editing features which are handy for note taking / journalling, including spell-checking, templates and indent/outdent, bookmarks and clipboard history. It's also massively scriptable.

Sandvox and the return of end-user web site authoring

[Updated with review results.]

This is like watching the return of the dead. In the 90s there were many quite good end-user tools for web site creation. The only survivor of those glory days is FrontPage, and it's been horribly transmogrified into some zombie child of Microsoft Office.

Now, suddenly, this niche is coming back to life, at least in the OS X world. Karelia, a respected Mac software firm, has a beta of Sandvox. Ok, so it's probably not the document-oriented content-management-lite database-free static-output product with drag and drop link creation and dynamic link maintenance that I want, but any life in this domain is encouraging.

See also some prior posts of mine:

Content Management Systems
nVU and RapidWeaver: a lament (See also Tim's comments, though I think he missed my point about document-centric and end-user oriented).

Update 9/14: That was fast. My minimal requirements are the ability to select text and drag and drop it between pages. That should create a link and a bookmark. Moving pages in the development environment should update links (ie. indirection implemented). Creating links should allow one to select from available pages and bookmarks. Sandvox failed all these tests. Reviewing the forums it's pretty raw -- probably rushed out due to iWeb. I'll look at it again in six months.

It is pretty though.

Update 7/3/11: Tried again. Failed again.

OS X VNC has been updated

I tried the VNC server built into Tiger. It blew up every OS X VNC client I could find (there aren't many -- XP VNC clients are far better).

Fast User Switching and big displays are very hard on VNC. I wish Apple would do something at the Quartz layer.

I'm told this VNC server software is a much better option. I'm going to try again and I'll report back here:

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh:

OSXvnc 1.7 is an open source VNC server that provides remote access (with Rendezvous support) to the GUI, keyboard, and mouse using any VNC client. This release is now a full Universal Binary for improved Intel performance and adds a backward compatibility mode for older protocol versions, a flag to disable the screen saver while clients are connected, the ability to add as many listening hosts as you want directly from the GUI, and a number of bug fixes. OSXvnc is free for Mac OS X. [Source is available on SourceForge.]"

The critical item here in this release is full multi-user support and their specification of recommended clients.

Update 1/10/06: in preliminary testing using a Windows client on a fast network this is FAR better than anything else I've tried. The connection from the windows client did not survive a FUS session swap, but it was easy to restore to the background session. Amazing to see that actually work. I may have my long missed remote control for iTunes.

Update 1/10/06b: Not as good with Chicken of the VNC. Whereas the Windows VNC client supported screen scaling, Chicken doesn't. Less useful since my iMac display is so large. Works, albeit slowly on a G3 client.

Wonders of competition: Adobe Lightroom vs. Aperture

Adobe was neglecting OS X recently. Their software had become very XP focused.

But now both Microsoft (Vista photo management) and Apple (Aperture) are gunning for them. Astoundingly, Adobe, long known for their arrogance and dislike of customers, has launched an open beta of an Aperture rival: Adobe Labs - Project: Lightroom.

It looks like it came with their Macromedia acquisition. I'll wait to hear from more adventurous folks. I enjoyed the marketing blurb, emphases mine:

Adobe today responded to Aperture with a free beta-test version of Lightroom, an open-architecture application for professional photographers:

Adobe Lightroom Beta is the efficient new way for professional photographers to import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images. So you can spend less time sorting and refining photographs, and more time actually shooting them. Its clean, elegant interface literally steps out of the way and lets you quickly view and work with the images you shot today, as well as the thousands of images that you will shoot over the course of your career. Because no two photographers work alike, Adobe Lightroom adapts to your workflow, not the other way around.

Lightroom Beta lets you view, zoom in, and compare photographs quickly and easily. Precise, photography-specific adjustments allow you to fine tune your images while maintaining the highest level of image quality from capture through output. And best of all, it runs on most commonly used computers, even notebook computers used on location. Initially available as a beta for Macintosh, Lightroom will later support both the Windows and Macintosh platforms. [...]

Recommended system requirements are Macintosh OSX 10.4.3, 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 768 MB RAM and a 1024x768 resolution screen. Regular updates to the software will be posted on the site, feedback will be collected and the final product is expected to be introduced in late 2006. Further details around pricing, system requirements and availability have yet to be determined.

Heh, heh, heh. Open architecture. Runs on legacy hardware. Adapts to "your" workflow. Nice slapshots at Aperture.

Even commie socialists like me have to love capitalism when there's real competition. Heck, back when IE had competition it was a great piece of software ...

Update: Derrick Storry has a characteristically enthusiastic pre-Review of Lightroom up. You can manage photos in the Lightroom database or externally. No mention of iPhoto importing! I suspect folks with a large iPhoto investment will be swayed by the import abilities of Aperture. The ability to manage images in the external database will make it tempting to try this in parallel to iPhoto, but there'd be a high probability of messing up iPhoto.

Update: And here's a very extensive review and TOW has a series of links, including an excellent one outlining the story of Aperture. It's got quite a history behind it. This should be a really great fight, but if Adobe really wants to get down and diry they need to add an iPhoto import utility.

Update: It's only an 4.3 MB download?! Huh? It installed fine as non-admin. As an experiment I tried importing a smallish iPhoto library folder. It quietly died. Oh well, more testing to come.