The monitors arrived Friday morning at the office. Using Matrox’s DualHead2Go, I successfully hooked up both monitors to my Macbook Pro and have them running at 1900×1200 resolution.

They look great!

• Twitterrific can now update your iChat/Adium/Skype status using your last tweet. Select the “Update chat status” preference in the configuration panel and the status in all running chat applications will be updated (though note that AIM/iChat apparently only allow a total of 44 characters, including spaces, for available statuses. Away messages don’t seem to have this limit though)
• The main window snaps to the edge of the screen
• Tweets can be marked as a favorite by clicking on the tweet’s heart icon
• Added Cmd-2 to send a response to the author of the selected tweet
• Added Cmd-D to send a direct message to the author of the selected tweet
• The text of the tweet is no longer truncated. The size of the tweet view adapts to the length of the tweet
  and much, much more!

Download Twiterrific 2.0.

[tags]Twitter, Apple, Blogging, SMS, Mobile, Mac[/tags]

While the full price list borders on the intimidating, the cost for users varies from as little as $110 Canadian ($95 US) for a Contribute CS3 upgrade to $3,440 ($2,969 US) for the complete Master Collection that bundles Adobe’s deluxe artistic and video editing tools.

The CS3 Design and Production Premium suites for artists remain under wraps, though the Web Standard edition will sell for $1,375 ($1,186 US), suggesting a ballpark figure for its Design equal. European prices were revealed on Friday.

Here’s the new pretty packaging:

[tags]Adobe, CS3, Apple, Digg, Blogging, Photoshop, Technorati, Blogs[/tags]

Oh, the power of blogging. Glad to know that someone from the Canadian Press reads the blog.

[tags]Apple, iPhone, Canada, Blogging[/tags]

On Wednesday of last week I wrote a post on the Apple iPhone and its availability in Canada. On Wednesday afternoon the post was “dugg” to the front-page of Digg and received approximately 8500 visitors with over 10,000 pageviews. Thanks to GoDaddy for hanging in there and keeping my website online during the increased traffic. So what’s the problem with being “Dugg”? Digg users travel in swarms. On average they don’t check more than one page, they don’t click ads, they rarely comment on the article and don’t come back. The best thing to come out of being “Dugg” is the link love from other blogs and increased Google juice.

It’s amazing to see how quickly a properly optimized post can move up the Google food chain. I carefully selected the post title keywords “iPhone”, “Canadian” and “Availability”. Currently the post is #1 on Google Canada for the search term “iPhone Availability” and #2 for “iPhone Canada”. Google is still calculating incoming links for the post but I can already see the traffic rolling in from these search queries.

Digg on!

[tags]Digg, iPhone, Apple, Canada, Blogging, Wiseman[/tags]

Most importantly, I’m thankful for all of the sweet little Mac apps from the Apple online community. I just recently came across a couple apps that allow me to sync up Google services with my desktop. Google Reader Notifier by troelsbay.eu keeps me connected with my Google Reader account by informing me whenever new items arrive. Pair this up with the Google Notifier app by Google and you have your entire Google services (Gmail, Google Calandar, Google Reader) at your fingertips.

[tags]Apple, Google, OSX, GMail, Mac, Wiseman[/tags]

Steve Jobs officially announced the much anticipated Apple iPhone during the opening keynote yesterday at Macworld 2007. The phone has been in production for five years and features a 3.5inch touch wide screen display, core animation based on OSX, a rich HTML email client and a ton of other bells and whistles. Initial price points are a little heavy starting at $499USD for a 4GB and $599 for an 8GB model. iPhone will be available exclusively this June through Cingular, the largest US wireless carrier.

Custom Blog Design

That’s swell for US residents, but what about Canadians? When can we expect the iPhone in Canada? It turns out that Apple will not be releasing a CDMA version of the iPhone which eliminates Bell/Aliant as a carrier. Looks like we’re stuck with Rogers, the largest Canadian GSM wireless carrier. If there’s one thing Canada lacks it’s a good ol’ battle between Telecommunications providers.

I have spoken with several representatives from Rogers regarding the availability of the iPhone and it turns out that they are in fact planning on providing the iPhone to Canadians. There are no official statements but the average wait time is 6-8 months minimum once they become available in the US (check the track record with previous smartphones). I’m also told the iPhone will be available on a two or three year contract, and a data plan must also be purchased (data plans in Canada aren’t cheap). Looks like an accurate release date in Canada is sometime Q4 2007 and into early 2008. About the same time that the phone will be available to European carriers.

First Apple iPhone Review by Walt Mossberg

Latest Apple iPhone News

• June 29th, 2007 – Apple iPhone now available on Apple’s online store
• Disassembling an iPhone. A look inside the iPhone.

[tags]iPhone, Canada, Rogers, Cingular, Apple, MacWorld, Digg[/tags]

The computer was all ready to go, right out of the box. I booted up and within a minute I had my Internet connection setup. I started downloading software right away. I found the installation process much different. Unlike when using Windows software, Mac software doesn’t contain hundreds of files. Instead it’s all packaged into a single application, which can be moved around to different directories without affecting the way the application operates. Removing applications is easy, just drag the application to the trashcan. No add/remove programs required and there’s no left over configuration documents after a application is removed.

One of the coolest features in Tiger OSX is the ability to manage widgets. There is one for every purpose you can imagine. With the push of a button you can have everything from translations tools to RSS widgets at your fingertips.

Another selling point for me was the ability to run Windows and linux within Tiger OSX. Through using parallels I’m able to check websites and applications that I develop without having to jump onto another computer or restart.

If you’re thinking of making the switch, take a moment to read this guide and check out these benchmarks. I’ve also attached a really great video walkthrough demo of Tiger OSX.

View on Google Video

[tags]Apple, Mac, Intel, Core2Duo, Windows, Blogging[/tags]

[tags]Apple, Core2Duo, MacbookPro, Macbook, Mac, Intel[/tags]

[tags]Apple, Disco, Macbook, Toast[/tags]