For the past week, I have changed by default browser on both my home and work computers (Apple iMacs running Mac OS X Snow Leopard) to Google Chrome. I have not previously used Chrome and have been a long-time loyal user of Firefox, but I’ve heard good things and figured I’d give it a shot. Knowing I wouldn’t get much out fo it just downloading it and surfing for a half hour, I decided the best way to really get to know it is to not use other browsers and exclusively use Chrome.

The Good
The absolute first thing I noticed when I opened it up is that if I had blinked, I would have missed it. When it comes to opening speed, Firefox is, well, slow. I had previously thought Safari was quick to load, but Chrome even makes Apple’s default browser seem sluggish. Beyond just opening, page loading is also speedy and smooth. Also a terrific feature is the ever-growing selection of extensions. This is something that I’ve always enjoyed about Firefox and is a great first step if Google wants me to switch over to their offering. Even the interface itself is clean, intuitive, and simple to use. Overall it is a very appealing browser and is constantly being updated with new features trying to stay ahead of the competition.

The Bad
I’m not a big fan of the search box and address bar merger. I have a ton of different search engines that I use regularly and the ability to rapidly toggle between them. Chrome, sadly, does not make this an easy task.

The Ugly
There were more than just a handful of sites with nagging visual errors that just simply are not there when using Firefox or Safari. I can overlook just about every other issue I have with Chrome, but incorrectly displaying pages that I frequent is a dealbreaker.

After a week, I will admit I am impressed. Although Google Chrome will not be usurping Firefox as my primary browser, it has earned a spot in my Applications folder and I will be continuing to use it as a secondary browser.

Like this post? Read more at The Apple Vine.

DISCLAIMER: For those of you that are a bit slow, this is a joke! Apparently, the creator of the video has been getting some hilarious responses from people wondering when it will be available in the app store.

Like this post? Read more at The Apple Vine.

Because of the popularity of my Top Ten Must-Have Free iPhone Apps, I’ve decided to put together yet another top ten free apps list, but this time entirely games. Some of these you may have played, some you may not have, but all are awesome and free. These time wasters are sure to amuse you for hours and hours on end.

1. Mancala FS5 Free
   This is by far the best online-player board game available for the iPhone. It allows for single player, two player on a single phone, and multiplayer via WiFi (there’s a world-wide leader board!), local networks (bluetooth or wifi), and AIM. It even allows push notifications so you can invite a friend to play. I’ve easily clocked more time playing Mancala FS5 than any other iPhone app.
2. TapDefense
   Anyone who loves flash games on the Internet has probably lost hours of their life to one defense game or another. TapDefense is no different. This highly addictive tower-style defense game is fun, challenging, and offers a huge amount of variety in levels, playstyle, and challenges. No two games are even completely alike.
3. iMafia
   There are many types of MMORPG-style games available on the iPhone, but the ones I liked the most are by PlayMesh. They make at least a dozen variations, be it Ninjas, Wild West, Warbots, etc, but they’re all very similar in playstyle. If you enjoy online gaming for your computer, this is a must-have time waster for your iPhone.
4. Sol Free Solitaire
   Hands-down the absolute best solitaire game available for the iPhone, paid or otherwise. The interface is extremely intuitive, it keeps in-depth statistics, and there are a nice variety of solitaire games to choose from.
5. Paper Toss
   This game seems extremely easy and boring at first glance, but for some reason I just keep coming back to it. The concept is simple: Flick a wad of paper in to a trash bin compensating for a fan blowing one way or another. It seems simple, but it’s harder than it looks, even on the easy level. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.
6. Enjoy Sudoku Daily
   It took me a while to find a Sudoku game that is easy to use and offers great features for both novice and advanced players. This game does exactly that. It offers eight different levels from “Just Starting” to “Fiendish” and has a very intuitive hint system, should you get stuck on the tougher levels.. The only downside is that the free version offers only 1 game per day per level, but that’s still 8 games a day.
7. Fish Food Frenzy
   You’re a tiny fish. The more fish you eat, the bigger you get until you can eat bigger fish. Sounds easy, but this game is extremely challenging and is an absolute blast when using the accelerometer to move your fish around.
8. Checkers FS5
   Brought to you by the same folks that did the Mancala FS5 that I’m so hooked on, this is the best checkers game available for the iPhone, allowing you to play against the computer, against a friend, or online against the world.
9. Unblock Me
   What’s a top-ten game list without a puzzle game? Unblock Me is extremely simple to play, yet each level offers different challenge. Just move the blocks around until you can get the red one out. With 400 levels, this will take you quite some time to beat.
10. JellyCar
    This driving-platormer looks like it was drawn by a four year old, but the goofy graphics somehow just add to its charm. Drive your car through the various worlds to try to reach the exit. Careful, though, it can sometimes be trickier than you’d think.

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this list and maybe even found some new games to play. Got any games you felt deserved to be on here that I missed? Feel free to share them with a comment.

Like this post? Read more at The Apple Vine.

If you run one or more websites and have an iPhone, not unlike myself, then you are probably looking for some apps to help you out a bit. The following list of iPhone Apps is useful for pretty much any webmaster, whether you’re a professional or a hobbyist.

1. Domain Scout – Cost: FREE
   If you’re going to be a webmaster, you’re going to need a domain name. This application is as straightforward as it sounds. Type in what you’d like to have as your domain name, choose a TLD (.com, .org, .net, etc. You can set which ones it will display), and it’ll tell you if the domain is available. If it isn’t available, you can choose to revise the search, view the whois entry, or visit the URL. If it is available, go quick register it before someone else does! It keeps a nice tidy history as well as a favorites list for those who do a lot of domain hunting.
2. CSS Cheat Sheet & HTML Cheat Sheet – Cost: $0.99
   Who has the time and patience to memorize every single CSS attribute and HTML tag? Not me, that’s for sure. When I’m at home working on my iMac, I have a handful of reference guides bookmarked. These two offer that same helpful reference, but now it fits easily in the palm of my hand.
3. HTML Colors – Cost: $0.99
   There are probably dozens more apps like this available, but HTML Colors is cheap, easy to use, and offers a nice large view of the color you’re selecting. It even allows you to see how one color of text will appear on another color background, which is vital for webmasters.
4. Ego – Cost: $1.99
   This has got everything you need all in one simple app to feed your online ego wherever you may be. Quickly and easily view your numbers, with support for statistics tracking from Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint, and Squarespace, as well as viewing your number of twitter followers. It’s a simple and intuitive design, so any level of webmaster will love it.
5. SEO Master & iPageRank – Cost: $0.99 & FREE
   These are grouped together because functionally, they both do the exact same thing: They tell you the Google PageRank of your website. SEO Master costs a dollar and has a decent interface, will save the sites you check pagerank of, and will reload the results when you open the app. iPageRank has an interface that is about as basic as they come, but it’ll show you what you want to know and is free.
6. Analytics App – Cost: $5.99
   If you’re using Google Analytics to monitor the traffic coming to your site, this is hands-down the absolute best app available to monitor your Analytics statistics. From what I can tell, any statistic available via Google’s web interface for Analytics is available in this app. It’s a bit pricy by my app standards, but is a must-have for stat junkies.
7. WordPress – Cost: FREE
   This one obviously doesn’t apply to those who don’t use it as a platform for their websites, but if you, like me, are a devout fan of WordPress, then this is for you. It allows you to access your blogs from anywhere, change existing posts, work on drafts saved either locally on the phone or remotely in the database, and publish posts from your phone. Not enough for you? It can also approve comments, reject them, or mark comments as spam and can even upload and manage pictures.
8. FTP On The Go – Cost: $6.99
   Charting in at the most expensive app on this list, FTP On The Go does not disappoint. This FTP application is impressive by desktop computer standards, so it blows me away how much they could pack in to it. Download, edit, and re-upload files via FTP or FTPS and check them on the built-in web browser all without leaving the application. To make all of those features even easier, it even offers Find/Replace functionality and a Go To Line # command for those longer documents. Those are the core features, but it can do even more and is essential if you need to access your FTP server when away from your computer.
9. Crop For Free – Cost: FREE
   As a webmaster, cropping is probably the absolute most common image manipulation I have to do. This app allows you to do exactly what it says: crop for free. Simple enough and more useful than you’d think.
10. Source Viewer – Cost: $0.99
    A rather in-depth source viewer for only 99¢, this program shows you the source of any website you type in. The “Source” tab shows tags, keywords, and CSS are highlighted in different colors for ease of navigation. The “Links” tab allows you to view all links embedded in the HTML or CSS. You can even tap the source while viewing it to toggle word wrap on and off.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the list. If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment and share them.

Like this post? Read more at The Apple Vine.

This classic costume modeled after Apple’s iconic advertising for the iPod is rather straightforward and easy to do. The goal is to make yourself completely pitch black from head to toe, then hold a white iPod and wear the included white headphones.

• iPod
  Obviously, to make this costume work you’re going to need an iPod. If you’re planning on doing this costume you probably already have one, but if you don’t you can click the above link to get one. Not only is it the most essential part of the costume, but it is the best mp3 player around. Obviously a “classic” white iPod works best, but anything that will stand out against the black, such as the brightly colored iPod Nanos, will do just fine.
• Black Longsleve Shirt
  You can find this at any department store. Just make sure it’s very dark black.
• Black Pants
  Just like the shirt, you can get black pants just about anywhere just make sure they’re very dark black and match up well with the shirt.
• Black Gloves
  Another run of the mill costume accessory, pick a pair that match up well with everything else and are long enough to cover any gap between your shirt sleeve and the glove.
• Footwear
  Most people probably won’t be looking down at your feet and judging the rest of the costume based on that, but you should still wear a nice dark black pair of sneakers and some black socks.
• Black Face Paint
  Cover any and all visible skin on your head and neck.
• Hair
  Honestly, you’ve got a couple options here. If you already have naturally jet-black hair or have previously decided to dye it that color, you’re already set and just need to worry about the face paint. If not, the two best choices you have are to pick up some black hair spray or just go with a black hat of some sorts to cover your hair.

Do everything right and you’ll end up looking exactly like the silhouettes from Apple’s famous iPod commercials.

Like this post? Read more at The Apple Vine.

I got my copy of Apple’s newest Incarnation of Mac OS X yesterday, impressively shipped to me by Apple for free via FedEx Priority Overnight. I haven’t put it through a thorough workout quite yet, but first impressions are very important for any new OS, and Snow Leopard has so far impressed me.

The install was as simple as ever, essentially just clicking install and accepting the ToS. It took about 40 minutes to complete on my iMac, reboots itself when it’s done, and that’s all there is to it. The absolute first thing I noticed once it rebooted was a speed boost. Booting up, opening programs, the Finder, Spotlight search, and just about every other major aspect of the operating system is noticeably faster. I didn’t pay close attention to exactly how much disk space I had used before the install, but it freed up at least 5 gigs of space from Apple cutting some of the fat out of the OS. Just about all of the changes between Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10.6) are under the hood, but very next thing I noticed was what is more or less the only visual tweak: Stacks. The the grid that the stacks on your dock appear in got a visual overhaul and, at least in my opinion, look a lot nicer. I am so far very impressed with what I’ve seen, even though most of the major changes are in the background and won’t necessarily be noticed by the casual user.

As with any major update to any major operating system ever, third party programs written for prior versions of the OS are bound to have issues. Snow Leopard is in no way immune to this. Apple has a handy short list of known issues for some major applications, but as I don’t use any of specific versions listed on that site, I didn’t run in to any of those known issues. Instead, I noticed immediately that my awesomely useful iStat Menus were gone, but iSlayer already has a compatable v2.0 in the works that they say will be available soon. I also immediately noticed that the non-standard buttons on my Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 have stopped working. I’ve managed to get one of the buttons working again, but I’ll have to wait until Microsoft decides to release an update, which will supposedly be “on or before 10/2/2009“. Other than those two issues, I’ve yet to notice any other incompatibilities.

Unless you have a vital use for the programs that Apple lists as not working, I highly recommend upgrading to Snow Leopard. There are no major user interface changes, so the learning curve for users upgrading from Leopard is exactly zero and the speed boost is well worth the $29 to upgrade.

Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard – $29
Mac OS X Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User) – $49
Mac Box Set (with Snow Leopard) – $169

I’ve gotta admit, I’m pretty excited about Apple’s forthcoming new incarnation of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard (10.6). It certainly isn’t going to be wowing anyone with visual changes and enhancements as prior releases have, but what Snow Leopard packs under the hood is enough to excite me. Pretty much everything about the operating system, even including the non-essential bundled applications, has been recoded to minimize the footprint, utilize 64-bit processing, and all around just move faster. They’ve slimmed it down so much that it will reportedly free up an additional 7GB of space on your hard drive. Needless to say, I’m excited to try it out and will post a review here once I’ve had the chance to put it through its paces. Best of all? Apple just announced the release date and it’s earlier than expected: August 28th!

Want it as soon as it’s available?
Pre-order your copy today from Amazon.com:
Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard – $29
Mac OS X Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User) – $49
Mac Box Set (with Snow Leopard) – $169

The iPhone is a very awesome palm-sized computer and phone and is the catalyst of a new generation of smart phones, but there are certain things it lacks that would greatly improve it. Some of these features are even already available to those willing to jailbreak their phone and install unauthorized 3rd party software, so Apple should take the hint and build them in to the OS.

1. Lock Screen Display
   There’s some useful information already displayed on the screen when you first wake your phone from its slumber, including battery life, date, time, wireless signal and, “slide to unlock”, and of course, whatever picture you chose for your background. Some of this comes in handy, but there is just so much wasted space. The improvements needed are pretty straight forward and, at least in my opinion, obvious. Display upcoming calendar events, quantity of unread emails (if push/fetch is enabled), and the weather. Some or all of this would obviously eat in to the battery life a bit, so allow users to enable/disable which they want to see and how often it is updated.
2. Home Screen Improvements
   Generally, I like the home screen and the way it works, but it still feels like a cluttered OS X Desktop after doing “View -> Clean Up”. First and foremost, flipping it over to landscape mode would be nice. Just about everything else can change orientation, so why not the iPhone OS’s equivalency of a desktop? On top of that, how about cleaning things up by organizing apps in to folders. The Palm Pilot had this a decade ago. It was a good idea then and it’s a good idea now. Last, but certainly not least among home screen improvements would be the ability to add more rows to the dock. It’s nice to have 4 icons on every screen, but doubling or tripling that would be terrific.
3. Enable/Disable Default Applications
   My guess would be that very few iPhone users actually use every single default app. Most, like myself, probably just put the unused ones all the way to the back screen where they sit and collect dust. All I’m asking for is a simple setting that allows you to toggle these applications on and off so the unused ones don’t take up space. I’m not a programmer so I don’t know this for sure, but that seems like it would be easy enough to implement.
4. To-Do App
   I realize that there are approximately a thousand different options for a to-do list on the app store, some free and some not so free, but there’s really no reason Apple should have their own. This has been a staple application of PDAs and smart phones since their inception and for Apple to not realize that and write there own (perhaps with a syncable Mac OS X counterpart) is a bit embarrassing. Just like pretty much every other default application, something simple and easy to use yet fully featured would be terrific.
5. Improved Home Button
   The home button is under-appreciated. I’m not saying it needs any physical changes, as I like the button itself just fine. It just needs the option to double click it and open any application you have installed. Currently you just have the options of Home, Search, Phone Favorites, Camera, or iPod. Those are all useful, but it would be nice to be able to double click it to open up that default or 3rd party app that you use more than any other.

Got other ideas for future improvements? Feel free to leave a comment and share them with me.

Emoji Icons are a rather extensive set of icons (Emoji being the Japanese word for what we call emoticons or smilies) that are common in Japanese text messaging and web sites and are essentially have been standardized in Japan. They are available on the iPhone and are very fun to use, but it takes a bit of trickery to get them unlocked. Here’s a step-by-step on how to unlock them. Once unlocked, you can sent them in text messages, emails, or whatever else you can type on the phone and they will be viewable by anyone who has a phone or computer that supports them. Even other iPhone users, even if they haven’t done these unlocking steps themselves. So, without further ado, here’s how to unlock them:

1. Install the “Spell Number” app at the iTunes App Store. Don’t worry, it’s completely free.
2. Once installed, launch the app.
3. In the box, type this exactly: 91929394.59
4. As soon as you have that typed in, without doing anything else, press your ‘Home’ button.
5. From your home screen, go to Settings -> General -> Keyboards.
6. Choose International Keyboards, then scroll down to Japanese, click it, and turn on Emoji.
7. That’s it! You’re done! Thought it might be harder? Too bad. You can delete the app now, unless you feel you need it for other purposes. Whenever you’re typing, there will now be a little icon on the bottom left to switch back and forth between Emoji and English (or whatever other languages you use).

Here’s a small selection of the 461 emoji icons now available to you:

There’s been a ton of talk about the big new features that everyone loves in the latest version of the iPhone’s operating system. Copy & paste, landscape keyboard, MMS (Still waiting on you, AT&T!), and of course better speed come readily to mind. What hasn’t been discussed as much, however, is the small stuff that might not be headline worthy, but is still great to have. In case you’ve missed them, I’ve put together a list of my five favorite of the smaller features.

• Keyboard Updates
  No, I’m not talking about landscape keyboard. Click and “hold” (don’t remove your finger) on certain keys, and you now get new options. It’s much easier to show than it is to explain, so here are two of the new options:
  
  
• Undo Typing
  You typed something you didn’t mean to type. It happens. Instead of holding down that delete key, just give your phone a shake and it’ll pull up a nice little box asking if you want to undo the text.
  
  
• Linked Phone Numbers
  You’ve probably noticed that if you get a text message, email, or visit a website that has a phone number on it, it looks like a web link. Click on it, and it will automatically call that person. So how could Apple improve on this? Click and hold the phone number and you’ll see. Now you’ve got the option to call the number as before, but also to send a text message to that number, create a new contact card for the number, or add it to a previously existing contact.
  
  
• LAUGHING OUT LOUD
  However much I resist the urge, I still somehow let the letters “lol” be typed on my keyboard. No matter how many times I tried to get it to learn, the prior iPhone OS’s auto-correction demanded that the letters be in all caps. I don’t know about everyone else out there, but rarely if ever do I type the letters “lol” and simultaneously actually laugh out loud. As such, the appropriate way to type it would be lower case. There’s no need to shout it, when it really means something more along the lines of “hey, that’s kinda funny”. One of the first things I noticed when typing text messages is that Apple finally realized this and it now defaults to it’s lower case form.
  
  
• Closing Apps While They Open
  Previously if you clicked an app to open it, even if accidentally, you had to wait until it fully loaded until you could then quit it. Especially with some games, this took a bit. Now all you have to do is press the home button and it immediately closes it. There’s not really a way to post a screen shot of it, so just try it out and see for yourself.

I hope you learned a little something new about your phone with my list. Got something else you love that I missed? Feel free to share it in the comments.