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I have been playing around with the Chrome web browser this week and have to admit that it is fast, smart, and elegant. Don’t get me wrong…I am a bit of a browser whore. I move from Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and yes, even IE throughout the day. As a web designer I am currently forced to test websites in multiple browsers for compatibility. This is a necessary evil until the browser community get’s their act together and can agree to support and render the web the same. So my official take on Chrome is that it is a great and fast web browser for your general surfing. It won’t become my developer browser until I get Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar, two essential dev tools, but it has picked up steam as my surfing browser. So I encourage people to check it out and see what you think. Easy to download and install.

I spend much of my day weeding through lines and lines of PHP and CSS while working on crafting a custom WordPress template for my clients. It can be very boring staring at thousands of lines of text. I use a text editor for the mac called TextMate and it is phenominal. Even has a built in WordPress bundle that saves me countless keystrokes by auto-text combination for common WordPress tags. Anyway…I have their tips window popup when I load up the program to discover little features that I never knew about. Well the other day this popped up!

Of course this doesn’t make any sense at all unless you are a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! A very awesome book and a pretty darn good movie too! I love when people really love what they do and put a piece of themselves into their projects. The guys who worked on this must be fans…and I appreciate that!

If you know me, you know that I hate math. I hate anything having to deal with numbers! So financial management software is not a happy fun priority on my list, but as a small business owner I can’t live without something! Well unfortunately I haven’t found a solution that I like yet. I have tried alot of different things out there and nothing quite fits the bill. Maybe I have to high of a goal for my software!

A perfect picture of financial management software for me would need to include the following:

1. Intuitive and looks like a Mac app (I won’t hold my breath on this one)
2. Seamless integration with OS X and my other tools (iCal, Address Book, Spotlight, Mail)
3. Invoicing (specifically to estimate, invoice portions of the estimate, and have custom designed invoices)
4. Billing (track accounts receivable and accounts payable)
5. Bank Reconciliation and Register (preferably something my account can take and work with)
6. Reasonably priced

I know, I know Brains and Beauty in a financial app…in your dreams! But I have scoured the internet and tried quite a few  different things that do one or two of the jobs but not everything. Here are my quick reviews of the best, at least what I think, are out there.

• Billings 3: Great invoicing, slick templates and easy to customize; sucks on invoicing before work is complete so deposits are a pain
• iBank: Simple register, iPhone and MobileMe integration is awesome!; won’t export to my accountant, not easy to see snapshot of my business
• MYOB: powerful, full featured; pricey, complicated (feels like my accountant would have a hard time using it)
• Quickbooks: Full featured, solid invoicing and banking integration; Intuit doesn’t think Mac (see screenshot of Safari, and they don’t support anything except IE for online), the software still feels like a port, they make the comment when you ask them for support, “if you want that run the PC version in Parallels or VMWare.”
• LessAccounting.com: completely in the cloud, awesome banking, great invoicing; sucks for invoice customization, pricey when you look at the cost for more than a year.

So anybody have a good idea of what to do? What do you use? What works and what doesn’t!

UPDATE: I caved in and got Quickbooks for Mac 2009. After searching and searching it became my only all-in-one solution. Intuit is taking strives to reach out to Mac users. I am also beta testing their online version.

(image courtesy of: Michael Witthaus: localrhythms.wordpress.com)

I think this is a whole new world of happiness for me. I have just discovered that TiVo has struck a deal with Domino’s that allows you to order pizza directly through your TiVo. You can go through all the steps and pick the type of pizza, sides, and drinks all through the TV. Then it will submit the order to your local Domino’s and even give you status on the order. All that is required is setting up a Domino’s account online.

Amazing! I can’t wait to convince my wife to let me try this!

Gaff tape galore could be found at a recent commercial shoot we had at the beginning of the week in which we tested out the tethering feature built into Aperture 2. It was big success as a first test of in the field tethering. It was a commercial shoot for the Color Bar salon. You can see some more behind the scenes shots that I fired off on Jamie’s blog.

If you are curious about the tech here is what we did…

We setup lights, background, other photo gear as normal. Then we setup our MacBook Pro running Aperture 2 with two RAID 1 LaCie Rugged external hard drives. We were shooting with the oh so nice Nikon D3. The D3 was tethering to the MacBook Pro via a USB 2.0 cable which was securely attached with miles of gaff tape as you can see in the picture below. We also had a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB Compact Flash card inside the D3 so files where written to both card and the two hard drives simultaneously. It sounds sort of complicated, but Aperture 2 made it extremely easy.

Shooting tethered saved alot of post production time and made us able to turn the job around alot faster than normal. Having the ability to let the client “proof” images on the spot and make selections right away saved the time of choosing images, running web proofing galleries, waiting for choices, then narrowing selections, and finally editing shots. It also gave Jamie the freedom to see exactly what the shot looked like and no second guessing about lighting, focus, etc. Although a shot like this did require quite a bit of tech-pre-planning to make sure that everything would work seamlessly. The gaff tape is also to prevent Jamie from accidentally turning the camera off during the shoot. Something he is hard-wired into doing!

Enjoy!

You know not many posts on this blog ever mention the ill-fated word PC, unless of course it is some rant concerning Microsoft Internet Explorer. But I have come across a PC that could make me drop virtualization and run a PC in our office. I know the idea of having a beige box is scary, but this one is pretty slick! The only reason I need a PC of course is for web site testing. It is getting harder and harder to emulate real world issues on virtualization trying to run both IE 6 (my arch nemisis) and IE 7 on the same system. I also run into the issues of design especially concerning the gamma difference between Mac and PC rendering. I am tired of forgetting and hearing a client say why is the site so dark. Anyway…this might actually be a consideration.

I am testing out the new iPhone WordPress App. Pretty slick and very seamless.

Being the uber-apple-geek that I am I have been watching with hawk eyes for the new updates Apple has been passing down to their various services. MobileMe was up for a few minutes this morning…then the App Store is actually live on iTunes (just search for something like aim then hit the back button to see all apps)…and of course iPhone 2.0 was sneakily released!

If you are brave and want the official update now before waiting for those pesky waiting periods you can follow the instructions below to get the update!

1. Go here and download the new version of iTunes 7.7
2. Download the iPhone 2.0 firmware here. (It is 225MB so start your downloading right away!)
   
3. Hook up your iPhone to your laptop and open iTunes.
4. Sync your phone so that it has a current backup!
5. After syncing go to the iPhone Summary screen and while holding the Option key click the “Check for Update” button. (UPDATE: If you are on a PC hold the Ctrl + Shift key when click the “Check for Update” button)
6. Then browse to the file you downloading and begin your update process
7. After all the patient waiting…welcome to iPhone 2.0!

DISCLAIMER: I am just passing information on that I found at MacRumors.com and they as well mention that I make no promises that this process will work! If you brick your phone it’s not my fault. I myself have done this and other’s I know as well. It works. All the apps work and everything seems kosher.

Well after a couple of days FIGHTING with my new Airport Express I have learned a few things.

I submit my struggles and some hints.

• Don’t try to install multiple network devices at the SAME TIME. 
• Firmware updates are hairy business…be sure things are hard lined and secure. 
• Forums can be your best friend.
• Search Google and just dig when you get lost. 

As many of the readers of this blog might know, I am a twitter addict. It is one thing that I actually can stay pretty updated with. I think it also has the social networking factor that you are able to “stay in touch” with people and let them know what you are up to with very little effort. You can follow my twitter here at twitter.com.

(comic courtesy of Penny Arcade)