November 4, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
Amazon.com has a new Orders page that’s currently in beta testing if you log in to your account. The new orders page shows your current and previous orders in a clearer way and gives you access to tracking information without having to load another page. Overall, it’s a welcome improvement over their current orders page.
September 15, 2009 @ 11:28 pm
Amazon.com now has a dedicated wireless store in beta that makes shopping for a new wireless phone and plan as simple as ever. The site breaks the plans and/or phones by carrier, features, price, color, or brand. Plus, with Amazon.com’s great deals on mobile devices (with a new contract), this might be the cheapest place you can purchase a new phone.
March 24, 2009 @ 10:21 am
The full Up website has gone live and features lots of new information on the upcoming film including 3 whole new characters that have never before been seen. The three new characters are dogs whose names are Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Judging by their appearance, I assume that Alpha is a “bad dog” and Beta and Gamma are his somewhat silly and stupid sidekicks.
Check out bigger images below.
February 24, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
Today’s big announcement from Apple is that they’ve released a beta version of Safari 4 for free download (Windows/Mac). The browser touts itself as being the fastest — even faster than Chrome — and features a couple of UI tweaks and improvements over Sarafi 3.
First off, I’m a dedicated Firefox user. In terms of extendability, there simply isn’t a browser out at the moment that can match the plethora of plugins and add-ons available for Firefox. With that said, I do use Safari and Firefox side by side almost every day and I was more than eager to check out Safari 4 beta to see if it would make me reconsider my browser loyalties.
I’ve been using it since early this morning and there are just a few things I’d like to say about the new browser.
TABS: Something about the new tabs at the top doesn’t quite sit well with me. When Chrome came out with this UI enhancement, I was all for it and it seemed almost natural that they would be there. But somehow, Safari 4 doesn’t quite make this jump natural to the user. I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that the tabs stretch the ENTIRE LENGTH of the top bar, even if there’s only a couple of tabs open. And if it isn’t this, then it’s probably the subtle color differences between the tabs and the browser window. And if it’s not this either, then it’s got to be because there’s so much CRAP between the content window and the browser tabs in Safari, whereas Chrome just keeps in simple.
Cover Flow: Nice for about 30 seconds. And then pretty useless after that. If I’m going through my history, it’s because I want to find a specific site with specific content — and I want to be able to do that quickly. Cover Flow is not a quick way to view browser history. Sure, it’s a nice way, but it isn’t fast. A list view is more effective and will get me the results I want in a quicker fashion. As far as I’m concerned, this Cover Flow feature is just a visual gimmick for those who are bored.
Smart Address Field: Not even close to being as good as Firefox’s Smart Location Bar.
And as far as the browser being fast, it certainly is, but it doesn’t beat Chrome in real-life tests and rendering.
OH! And probably the best thing about Safari 4 is that Apple finally decided to use CTRL+TAB to switch between tabs. Thank goodness. The previous keyboard shortcut was stupid.
November 27, 2008 @ 3:13 am
When I download torrents on a PC, I exclusively use uTorrent as my application of choice because it is dead simple to use and really lightweight on system resources.
Since moving to a Mac, I’ve tried several torrent downloading apps like Vuze and Transmission and only settled on Transmission because there really wasn’t any better alternative that mimicked the look and feel of uTorrent on the PC.
Well, now that game has officially changed with uTorrent’s release of a beta app for the Mac.
Already I’m liking the single-window interface where information on each torrent is shown below the status window. It’s just better to deal with less windows and have everything on the screen in front of you. I’m not sure if I’m willing to switch to a beta program yet, but uTorrent for Mac definitely looks promising. I’ll see how development goes…
November 1, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
Netflix recently unveiled a beta testing program for Mac users to be able to watch movies instantly on their computers. The feature is basically an on-demand service for Netflix’s huge collection of movies and TV shows. I don’t know the exact number of titles available, but I know that every single film I’ve searched for so far has shown up as available in their “watch instantly” program.
The beta program runs on Macs using Microsoft’s fantastic Silverlight technology which I’ve praised highly before. I just signed up to test the program and I am just amazed at how easy and quick it was to watch my first streaming movie. All I had to do was install Silverlight and then restart my browser and basically, I just clicked on a movie in Netflix and it started streaming.
And don’t assume that streaming means crap quality. The Netflix video quality goes by the speed of your internet, and since my internet is pretty fast, my movies were just as clear as DVDs. In fact, I really couldn’t tell the difference most of the time.
The greatest surprise is that there are no ads during movie playback. I don’t know why I expected there to be ads, but when I found out it was all ad-free, I think it made the experience even better than it already was. The great thing about this on-demand feature from Netflix is that it really is on-demand in every way possible. You can skip to a particular part in the film you’re watching and it shows you a quick image of where you are while you’re seeking (see image below).
But perhaps the BEST thing about this streaming service is that it’s unlimited. Yep. You can be on Netflix’s lowest subscription plan and still watch as many movies as you want. There’s no limit and there’s no increase in price.
I’m never going to leave my house again. If you’re contemplating getting a Netflix subscription, just do it. It’s so super awesome I cannot even explain it in words. BEST THING I’VE PAID FOR THIS YEAR.
