eBay has come a long way with it’s web interface on the worlds most popular bidding site on the world wide web. But, there still could be some improvements made, namely, with speed. One of my main gripes with eBay is that it can be slow at times. Not a biggy when you’re browsing but it can mean the difference between winning and losing at bid time. It’s happened a couple of times to me. Granted, network issues could be related to the speed problem; however, with its complex layout, eBay can take some of the burden of blame as well. Thankfully, eBay has an API (Application Program Interface) that allows developers to tap into the eBay engine externally. This means people at companies like iwascoding can make an eBay manager that works as if you were on eBay…but better.
iwascoding are the makers of the well known GarageSale, an eBay sell manager. This has been the more popular use of the eBay API but fortunately, those whacky German coding guys understand that there is a need to manage sales as well manage bids, so they created GarageBuy.
When I first saw GarageBuy, I was hesitant. What could it possibly do better than eBay’s web interface? Yes, speed was my key draw to this application, but was it worth opening another application to take more resources away from my Mac? Needless to say, the cost, free, was the strongest pull for me to click that download link.
Once installed, GarageBuy asks for you to authorize the application, much like wonderful Flickr Uploadr (also free) does. Once authorized, you’re already signed in and ready to go. First thing GarageBuy will do is import any items on your Watch list and other eBay information locally. Then, you’re off to the races.
I did a test search, “Purple Birkenstock”, to see how well the search would perform. To my surprise, it was quick and presented very nicely. The left side of the column shows your search term along with the hit count. To the right is the results. These results include brief auction information and a picture (if available.) With a limited pool of results, I went for something I wanted: NAS. NAS, short for Network Attached Storage, is a need at my home-based office. I’ve been looking for a rack mount product but this hardware form factor starts at 3k. Ouch! But what better way to test GarageBuy’s speed and see if I could find a deal? Well a deal indeed is what I found and speed was another feature rich benefit. My results quickly filled up the screen (over 700 total) and within minutes I found the perfect NAS at the perfect price. I’m sure I would have found it on my web browser as well, but no way would it have been this easy and this pleasurable.
Why pleasurable? The layout is so intelligently done that one would think iwascoding spent countless hours and Euros on this program. So why is this free, guys? On the right side, the Gallery display, where all your hits are shown, you can sort by time left, current price, Buy It Now price, or title. Above this sort line you can narrow down the results by clicking on soft buttons that differ from search to search that allow you really get into the details. You can also increase the size of the Gallery picture if you’d like. To watch an auction or hide it from the results, just click the appropriate button on the tool bar above.
To bid on an auction, all you need to do is click the money icon and up comes a new window with bid information including a place for your bid. The window is updated in real-time, so the auctions remaining time is displayed in countdown fashion along with the price being updated with the current bidders name. Placing your bid couldn’t be any easier than typing in your price, clicking the bid button, confirming the bid (which you can have disabled for future bids) and that’s it. Your bid is in and the screen updates with your information! It is very fast!
The left column will keep you up to date on your bids and other items you are watching. Green colored bubbles mean you’ve won the auction, red indicates a loss, and light red with dark red means it’s in auction your watching but you haven’t bid on yet (or your losing the bid.) Yellow is for the ended auction without a winner. Another nice feature of GarageBuy is the darker color will progress to the right as a time indicator. The closer it fills up the bubble, the less time you have left. It’s just so easy to glance at any auction and know when time is almost up.
GarageBuy is fully Growl compatible, so if you’re watching an auction, you’re notified when the bid changes. All other actions by you are also shown such as making a bid.
In short, GarageBuy, the first officially certified client for the Mac by eBay, is nothing short of awesome. Any user of eBay with a Mac should have this in their Applications folder. Light users to heavy users are going to thoroughly enjoy this eBay buyer manager. I know I am.
Nearly twelve months and counting. That’s the first time I saw Skitch at Macworld Expo. It started off as a tease and now has been a private beta for almost a year. When we say private, we mean private. Not that we’re big names or anything, but we’d at least think we could get in on this beta after sending a couple of requests in. We haven’t. From what it sounds like, only those with connections or well known names get in on this. For example, Merlin Mann of Mac Break Weekly has been using the beta from the start. He went on and on (listen…about 42 minutes in) about how awesome this application was…back in the early summer. We don’t doubt Merlin’s impressions, in fact, more times than not, we agree nearly 100% on like matters, but what has happened in those other six months? You really can’t blame Leopard as Plasq had to have a beta of that to work with. Even if not, compatibility issues shouldn’t have been too difficult to sort out. My SnapNDrag works just fine without an update for Leopard.
We love Merlin (we miss you on MBW) and no offense to him, but man, Plasq, where’s the goods? How long can one company have a product in beta? Publicly? Shesh, Apple’s Leopard was in beta about the same amount of time and it’s a freakin’ entire operating system! What’s your excuse?
From what I saw at Macworld Expo and what I’ve read and heard, Skitch sounds to be the best screen capture utility made. Note I didn’t say out there. 
It’s caused me to hold off on buying other products, but at this rate, it’s pretty much time to move on and forget. I’m sure Skitch will see daylight, maybe, at Macworld Expo in January, but after this long delay, it just doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal anymore. It may have been much wiser for Plasq to keep its mouth shut on this last year and then surprised us with it this year. Basic marketing trick, guys.
I often find myself wondering if there is a freeware application of something I may be looking on any particular day. I’ll Google hunt, but sometimes I can spend more time than I want looking for the application than it’s sometimes worth in the end. I can also search some of the mega-download sites but then I get peppered with shareware. I just need something easy and I’ve found it. The new way for me to find freeware is to use Eagle of Liberty’s XTastes.
With XTastes, you can browse categories and then drill down to a specific application. At this level, you can see its latest version number, size, the date it was updated, and you can leave a five star scaled rating if you’d like. More information about the program is just a simple click away with full details on the app including a link to the authors website.
XTastes also allows you to use CoverFlow if column view ain’t your thing. In this mode, you get a large icon of the application with a drop down drawer containing application information…in French as it were for us. 
Hopefully us English speakin’ folk will get an update to that real soon.
So if you’re looking for an easy way to find some freeware and you don’t wish to open your browser and wouldn’t mind a snazzy interface to do it in, whelp, hit the XTastes, baby. Oh ya, it’s free.
For the last two weeks, I’ve been a unhappy participant of the wonderful volley of the finger pointing game. It all started when my Entourage events, which are put into my iCal calendar via Microsoft’s Sync Service, disappeared from iCal one day. Yes, that day was when I accepted the 10.5.1 patch update from Software Update. Since iCal broke with Apple’s patch, I called it up for help. After enjoying an hour conversation and being bumped up to level two, the final answer came to, “Call Microsoft.” Yes, it was Microsoft’s fault.
Okay, I was game. I had nothing better to do than waste another hour of my time with another computer software giant. Why not? SInce the writers strike had sapped all of my existing fun and joy out since Michael and his office staff were no longer around to make me giggle, what did I have to lose? So Microsoft I called and Microsoft I explained my problem and Microsoft actually laughed — I kid you not, the support guy laughed! — and asked me why I was calling it with an Apple application (iCal) problem. So for amusements sake, remember this is the only reason I was performing this exercise, I explained how the data was using Microsoft’s Sync Service and thus Apple believed it was a Microsoft problem. After confirming with me that everything worked prior to the 10.5.1 patch, I was told, “Call Apple.” Joy.
So, having little of my life left of any true value anymore, I once again called Apple. This time I was able to enjoy Spanish music for nearly two hours before someone picked up. But with a quick explanation of my little journey, I was told without a doubt this was a Microsoft issue. Umm-hmm.
Well, if you read my previous post, Is Leopard Apple’s Vista, then you’d know I ended up going back to the more stable 10.5.0. When I had let Microsoft’s Sync Service do it’s thing for a while, I opened iCal out of curiosity. Yup, there was all my events. Go figure. I knew it would be there and why it is, neither Microsoft nor Apple know. Sadly, I’ll probably lose it again when 10.5.2 comes out, unless, that is, Entourage 2008 is on my hard drive first and Microsoft improves Sync Service. We’ll see…
Are you a web designer needing to check how your perfectly XHTML and CSS tuned site looks breaks in Internet Explorer (IE)? Don’t really want to let your RAM and CPU cycles get bitten just to be only greeted with your dismay due to Parallels or VMWare’s overhead? Just want something fast to see what you have to fix, fix it, and then be done with it? Well, then you and other web designers can rejoice, ies4osx is here!
Using ies4linux by Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior as the foundation for ies4osx, Kronenberg Informatik Lösungen (Mike’s the guy behind the big ‘ol German name) has brought to OS X for the first time Internet Explorer 5, 5.5, 6.0, and 7.0 beta without the need for a full blown virtual machine or a restart into Boot Camp. Nope, using just WINE and X11 windows, you’ve got a simple double click on the ies4osx icon of your choice (which poor standards version of IE will you open?) and up come Internet Explorer in a flash. Granted, I have a 3 GHz Mac Pro with 3 GB of RAM, but I know your whimpy Mac can open this nice and fast, too.
Now “buyer” beware (this is donate-ware, by the way,) there is no support for Active X or Java. So, many people might be disappointed thinking that they will be able access certain sites such as QuickBooks Online which requires Active X. So know that this is mostly for testing sites and really for nothing little more.
All in all, this is a treat for those in need for a quick access to Internet Explorer without the fear of waiting for long start ups or large system resources overhead. Thanks, guys!
What’s with this cat? Apple had two years to make it happen as good as Tiger and yet, things all over the hard drive don’t spin like they should. While I’m not quite prepared to call this a Vista issue like some are, I am disappointed. Ironically, I’m more grieved with Apple’s update, 10.5.1, than the out-of-the-box version. As previously blogged, the update does more harm than good. Constant crashes, complaints of applications not responding to log outs, and permission issues, Apple’s update to fix its network copy bug is just horrible. I couldn’t believe that Apple’s very own iMovie 08 would not open for the life of me after installed last week. I never did get it to open under 10.5.1. Carbon Copy Cloner made a perfect copy of my not-so perfect install and I went back to 10.5.0. Things are better but still, minor issues are there.
Now Oliver Rist at PCMAG.COM has a whole different feeling on Leopard. He thinks Apple pulled a Vista. While his article has some valid points, I find it a bit comical to go that far. His first point is the “wait for the service pack” before you install it. Since I’ve already established the 10.5.1 is actually worse than 10.5.0, and since it only corrects the network copy bug with a few other minor fixes, this already is untrue. Granted, it kind of puts more credence into his statement, but only at face value. The truth is (and by the way, NEVER move files people, COPY and you’ll be just fine), Vista has been out just nearly a year now and there are still tons and tons of issues that the upcoming SP1 will supposedly to fix. The number one issue with Vista is hardware. No one can get even peripheral less than a year old to work in Vista. Ah, last I checked, this isn’t an issue in Leopard. Read the comments in Rist’s article and you’ll find one poster stating that he used his PowerBook (Apple stopped making these nearly three years ago) to upgrade to Leopard and then download drivers for his Vista machine!
Other complaints from Rist include “useless” visual effects. He thinks Apple’s translucent Finder menu bar is very much like Vista’s all-over-the-place translucent borders and title bars. I agree with Rist, Aero is horrible. I turn it off any Vista machine that I must work on. Apple’s single bar on the top is not that bad. Unlike Aero, it actually grows on you. Rist also poo-poos the Dock and I do agree, the dinky shinny star as a running application indicator is a poor choice for a company known for it’s expertise in user interfaces. The reflective Dock, though, ain’t that big of deal to complain about.
Other issues, such as networking (outside of my fluke first install, I’ve had zero issues with networking), and Rist’s whining of Time Machine as a poor bundled app, again, does not make this a Vista comparison.
In summary, I agree, Leopard has its issues and I am quite annoyed with Apple for allowing this to happen; however, Vista it ain’t. When a multi-billion corporation has nearly seven years to update it’s operating system, the mistakes should not be as great as it is with Vista. There is not a mass exodus of Mac users returning to Tiger as there are Vista users running back to eXPerience (remember that? ) With major PC manufacturers going back to Windows XP as a pre-install choice and Vista installs with a “Go Back to Previous Version” options, I really can’t see how anyone could honestly call Leopard Apple’s Vista. No, Microsoft has earned its smelly fish of an operating system all by itself.
Having worked on the Windows platform exclusively since Windows95 OSR2 (yes, I was an OS/2 hold out), I’ve seen a lot of software for all sorts of uses. Having heard through all those years that Windows dominated for software availability and diversity, one would be surprised to find a killer app on the Mac that wasn’t available for Windows. I first discovered such a killer app several years ago called LaunchBar when slowly migrating to the Mac platform. I soon found others (and by the way, QuickSilver has since replaced LaunchBar in my Utilities folder) and of late, I’ve officially discovered MarsEdit.
MarsEdit is a blog editor with gung-ho power. Supporting various popular blogging engines such as WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, and Vox, Red Sweater Software has pretty much covered the majority of you bloggers out there. I’ve seen MarsEdit before but was apprehensive to download and try it because my previous experience with blog editors, mainly on Windows, because they just couldn’t replicating my web interface experience of WordPress well enough. I found myself constantly having to log into my blog via Firefox to “touch” things up before posting. Why bother with an editor then? But I relented and gave MarsEdit a try and boy, am I glad I did. It immediately became one of my “Must Have” software installs!
One post is all it took, folks. With nearly full support of WordPress’ posting features, including the new keywords feature from the latest minor revision, and its seamless integration with flikr, I was hooked. I was greatly impressed with the simplicity of MarsEdit’s layout and the ability to easily customize it for my blog. I can add my site specific CSS tags and edit the preview template for exact representation of a post with SvenOnTech’s look-n-feel as I bang away on the keys of my thin metallic Apple keyboard. The former I had to hack WordPress to allow for custom tags and I would lose those tags after every upgrade. Now, no worries. If that’s not enough customization for you, then crank out some AppleScript and sky’s the limit, baby!
The cool feature list goes on with integration with your favorite editor (TextWrangler for me), macros to handle common repetitive tasks, support for more than one blog, integration with RSS readers such as NetNewsWire, and bookmarklet power. In short, you’ll be hard pressed finding something that sucks with MarsEdit. Look, like I said, I used a half of dozen Windows programs in the past and while they all promised a blogging experience that would lead be away from my web browser, I always found my self un-installing the disappointments days later. MarsEdit hasn’t led me to AppZapper. In fact, it has given me reassurance that there really is a good off-line blog editor out there worthy of $30. Heck, don’t tell Red Sweater, but I would have probably paid even more!
Apple releases its much awaited update to Tiger, OS X 10.5, or, Leopard, today. With over 300 new features and improvements, many are excited to slap the cat onto their Mac today. I know I am. But I’ll have to wait until Tuesday when it arrives from Amazon.
While Leopard isn’t Earth shattering, it also didn’t take six years to produce like Microsoft’s Vista, the Redmond-based computer software giants update to Windows XP. Again, unlike Vista, Leopard isn’t just eye candy with annoying security pop-ups with little else to offer than maybe five different version in which to chose from.
No, Leopard isn’t going to woo most like the iPhone, but it will do things better, more securely, and improve on other lack-lusting applications such as iCal. Interesting tid-bits is that there will be a new screen saver, “Word of the Day”, for all to watch when their Mac goes idle. A new font, Braille, is included and no, I don’t know if you put your finger onto your screen if you’ll be able to “read” it. The Danes will also get a built-in spell checker for their language. Wikipedia is now also fully integrated into Dictionary. Now you’ll be able to access the free online encyclopedia with the Apple look-and-feel.
One of my favorite and most missed feature of UNIX and Windows is X-Mouse. This lets the mouse constitute what is the active window. So you may have Mail.app open and in the foreground and Safari in the background to the left. If something is selected in Safari, say a word, in UNIX or Windows (with TweakUI installed) you could simply move the mouse to Safari, without clicking on it, and select Command+C, for copy, and then go back to your e-mail and paste the word into a message. Well, Leopard kinda has this with scrolling background windows. You’ll be able to scroll a window that is not the forefront with your mouse without clicking on the window. So maybe OSX 10.6 will have true X-Mouse in it.
If you’re interesting in seeing what else is this new cat, take a look at Apple’s Guided Tour of Leopard. You can also hone down on each of the 300+ features at Apple’s site as well.
Apple Stores to release the feline at 6:00 PM local time nationwide tonight.
Ergonis Software and TidBITS Publishing Inc. today announced the release of the free TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary for Typinator.
The latest update to Typinator from Ergonis Software gave the program the capability to correct typos and misspellings as soon as they’re entered. To help users get started immediately, Ergonis provided dictionaries of more than 800 common mistakes in each of English, German, and French. Now Typinator has become even more useful with the addition of the public domain TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary in English, which enables Typinator to correct over 2,300 additional mistakes on the fly.
TidBITS publisher Adam C. Engst said, “The original public domain list of mistakes and their corrections comes from Micah Alpern; we enhanced and formatted it for use with the unsupported auto-correction capability in Eudora, where I’ve become addicted to it.
When Typinator 2.0 added auto-correction, we worked with Ergonis to convert it appropriately and import it into Typinator, making
Typinator a fixture on all my Macs.”
Christoph Reichenberger, CEO of Ergonis Software, said, “With the new version 2.0, Typinator is no longer just a typing assistant that
speeds repetitive typing tasks, but also becomes a system-wide auto-correction tool that automatically corrects typing errors and
misspelled words. We’re pleased to distribute the TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary with Typinator because it quadruples the number of errors that Typinator can correct, making Typinator even more valuable to our users. Installation is as easy as downloading the package and double-clicking it, and best of all, it’s free!”
Visit Ergonis Software’s Web site at
We told you about DuelAdapter last month and we’re happy to now report that the PC Card to ExpressCard adapter is now shipping. You’ll now be able to use old legacy PC Card or even PCMCIA accessories on your MacBook Pro or ExpressCard equiped PC. All you’ll need is the drivers for that specific card and you’ll be up and running in no time. If you haven’t been able to find an ExpressCard accessory for your notebook and have become frustrated by that, worry no more with DuelAdapter!