Twitter mania keeps going, so we decided to get a ride! Typpz posts (titles) will be tweeted! You can follow us by clicking the “Follow Typpz on Twitter” link on the sidebar. Many posts are in the pipe, so stay tuned!

Mac OS X comes with great and powerful tools pre-installed. The scenario is simple: you have coded your app and designed a great logo for it. How you create the OS X icon for your app? The answer is: very easily.

• First of all open the logo in illustrator if it is .eps file or in photoshop if it is in psd format.
• Save the image as .png after resizing to around 512×512 pixels.

• Open Icon Composer (it is in your Developer>Applications>Utilities folder in your Macintosh HD drive. Drag and drop the png file you saved in Icon Composer window and select “copy to all smaller sizes”

• Save the image, giving it the name you want.

• Open IconDroplet (it is available for free here). Drop the icon in IconDroplet (or choose File>Choose File.

• The output icon is placed in the same folder with the image you dropped in IconDroplet.
• Double click the icon and see it in your Dock like a running app.

Here is a list of ten apps I use on a daily basis (both web and desktop apps). The main system I’ve been using for a while is a unibody MacBook, so many of the applications on the list are mac-only.

Mint

Mint is a site-stats program that promises to give a “fresh look” at your site. Many of you are probably familiar with mint. I use it a lot for tracking visitor habits and to see stats from this blog. I’ve installed lot of peppers, which add extra functionality  like Secret Crush, User Agent, Feedburner and Visits Differ. Be aware that more peppers means more javascript code loading when someone visits your site, which leads to slower page loading. Mint costs $30 (no subscription or year-by-year costs). All updates until the next major version (which will be version 3) are free as long as most of the available peppers (about 90% of them). Keep in mind that mint is self-hosted, which means that after you buy it, you have to install it on your hosting server.

Safari

I’ve been using only Firefox for almost three years now, but recently switched to Safari, which seems to run faster on my MacBook. Safari lacks the extensibility of Firefox, but its clean layout alongside with fast page loading are huge pros. The only thing I miss is Google Toolbar which is not available for Safari. Plus I am now used to Safari bookmark management and it will be a hard time for me to make a switch again.

WordPress

WordPress is probably the best piece of software I’ve ever came around. Free, 0pen-source, bringing tons of new features with every major release. I use it on a daily basis for managing this blog, update plugins, read comments and clean spam. I’ve tried some time in the past to use other software for blogging, but it lasted only for about two days. After using WordPress for about two years, I feel very familiar with it, and I cannot even imagine my online life without it.

iTunes

iTunes has become my main music player. I love the options it offers for organizing music. Most of my albums have full ID3 tags including cover arts and genres. I use iTunes also for managing movie trailers, movies and for syncing my iPhone and my iPod.  What I love in the last version of iTunes (version 8 ) is the grid option which is the way I usually use to navigate through my library.

Things

Before Things I’ve never used a GTD application. I’ve read lot of reviews on Things application after the recent Macworld 2009 expo, so I decided to give it a try. Things is the best to-do management application out there. I downloaded the trial version (which lets you use the app with full functionality for 15 days) and I bought a license just after 4 days of trial use. I am so excited with the features of this app, that I will write a separate post reviewing the app alongside with its companion product for the iPhone.

Transmit

Transmit is an ftp client by Panic. It offers great capabilities and is the only ftp program I use for managing the files of this blog. Transmit offers drag and drop interface which makes file exchange between your mac and your server a piece of cake. It supports ftp and sftp and integrates well with Panic Coda, the well known editor.

Coda

Coda is a text editor by Panic. Although it is called a text editor it offers much more like terminal, svn capabilities, css, even books and in general everything that a web developer needs.  I use it for editing the php files of the blogs, manage css files (I use also CSS edit for this purpose) and of course for html editing. When I need to edit a file on Typpz’s server, I find the file using Transmit ftp click, ctrl+click>edit with Coda, and after editing cmd+s to save it directly on the server. Coda costs $99 and worths every penny. I find it better and much more easy to use than Adobe Dreamweaver which costs much more. Both Coda and Transmit are mac-only apps.

Xcode

Xcode comes built-in in every Mac. It is a great IDE. I use it on a daily basis for practicing with the iPhone SDK. I also use it as a simple text-editor for java and c programs I write for my studies. I write the programs in Xcode and I prefer to compile them using the Terminal. In general Xcode and the other development programs that come with every Mac, offer everything you need for developing applications for Mac OS X using cocoa, java and objective-c.

iPhoto

I use to snap large amounts of photos each day with my camera. Right when I am back home I plug my camera to my mac and import them to iPhoto. iPhoto offers exactly what I need and use: tagging, album creation and most important it is easy to use. For professional users there are also Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom.

Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop needs for sure no introduction. I use it daily for editing images for this blog, editing my photos and for designing layouts for web sites I design. 

Next to come is a post about apps I use on a daily basis on my iPhone.

As you know, if you use a Mac, you can uninstall programs just by moving them to the trash. That uninstalls the program but leaves on your hdd some preferences files which have to be deleted manually (they are too small though, so you do not have to delete them as they do not slow down your mac). AppCleaner is a small, free app that manages to completely delete applications. Another key feature of AppCleaner is that it deletes widgets from your Dashboard with a single click. That is for me very useful, because I do not have to navigate to user>library>widgets to delete them. The video above shows how easy this process becomes using AppCleaner.

I released (thanks to Mint for that) that around 1% of Typpz visitors view the blog using their iPhone and Mobile Safari. As with almost every site that is not optimized for viewing on cell phones, viewing from an iPhone means zooming in and out the parts of the page you want to read. To make those 1% a little bit happier, I built a very simple web app that parses and views Typpz blog content right from your home screen and as shown on the screenshots above, content is readable without having to zoom in and out. The web app is built using Dashcode and one of its preinstalled templates.

The url for Typpz blog mobile edition is http://blog.typpz.com/mobile. When viewing from an iPhone, you can push the “+” button on mobile Safari and bookmark the app right on your home screen. When accessing typpz mobile app from a saved bookmark on iphone’s home screen, there is no top and bottom  navigation bars (yeah no chrome at all) like in Safari which means more space filled with content.

Every user that uses a Mac has came across Dashboard widgets. Creating widgets is very easy using the Dashcode IDE which comes preinstalled with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. So I decided to create my first widget, which parses typpz blog feed and displays it on your dashboard. Dashcode provides a ready-to-use template for RSS feeds, so if you want to build such a widget, you only have to make it look as you want and tweak in few things in the code.

Most of the operations like changing the appearance or adding images can be done with few clicks, without even write a single line of code. Below are some screenshots of Dashcode (clicking the run button on the upper left side, deploys the widget on your dashboard, so you can see how it acts in real time).

You can download Typpz widget to bring typpz feed on you dashboard here. After you download the .zip file, double click it to extract (most of the times it will be extracted by itself when download finish) and click the widget icon. When Mac OS asks if you want to install the widget click “Install”. If you later want to uninstall a widget you installed, you have to visit Mac HD>Users>”Your Name”>Library>Widgets and move to trash the widget you want to uninstall.

Ok here is a bunch of photos I took since I got my iphone! Next to come are a review for iPhone 3G (I want to use it for two weeks so I will be able to judge the battery life better), a list of the apps I use on it and reviews for some of those apps .

If you have an iPhone, you will probably have came across webclip icons.  Webclip icons are the icons that apear on your iphone homescreen when you bookmark a web site. It is very easy to create a webclip for your own web site. Let’s see how:

1. Create a 57×57 png icon with your logo or whatever you want.
2. Save the image as “apple-touch-icon.png”.
3. Upload the image to the root folder of your web site (not the root of your server, the root of your site).
4. Do not mind about designing a glossy icon because MobileSafari (the browser of iPhone) will create the glossy effect by itself.

You can see the webclip I created for Typpz blog on the screenshot. As I mentioned glossy effect and round edges are created by Safari, I just uploaded this image.

So I bought an iPhone 3G. I have installed the WordPress app from the app store, so I am writing my first post straight from my iPhone alongside with some screenshots (you can take screenshots on your iPhone by pressing the home and sleep/wake button). I will post a review for the iPhone and for WordPress app soon. The screenshots are from Big Oven iphone app (free app with lot of recipes), iphone ipod playing Atmos, MacBreak weekly podcast and my home screen’s second tab with my installed app (all of them are free).

Most of you have sometime listened to a podcast. If you do not know what a podcast is, wikipedia explains it in well written way. Most of the podcasts I listen to are technology-oriented. They cover a wide variety of technology topics though, from MS Windows to Mac or general tech topics like security or Programming. So here is the list of the podcasts I usually download alongside with a short description (the podcasts are randomly listed, so it does not mean that number one is my favorite and number ten my less fave).

1. Windows Weekly by Paul Thurrott: Ok most of you know Paul from his great blog about Windows. Great podcast with many information on future Windows versions and reviews for MS products.
2. MacBreak Weekly: Leo Laporte and company talk about everything on Macs and all the thing that Windows should do, but they do not.
3. Apple Keynotes: This one should be known to everybody. A video podcast with the Apple Keynotes. I love the moments when Steve Jobs talks about new Apple products. The podcast is updated only when an Apple keynote takes place, so do not expect weekly updated.
4. Floss weekly: Thats another podcast from the TWiT team. The podcast is Linux oriented with wide theme coverage about KDE, OpenJDK and various Linux and Unix themes from programming to user interface and security.
5. Security Now by Steve Gibson: That is the ultimate podcast about IT security. If you are interested into these subjects you should definitely give it a listen.
6. net@night by Amber McArthur: Amber talks about various web themes such as web trends, web too and reviews some known services like Gmail, Yahoo mail and others.
7. The WordPress Community: This podcasts is here to keep listeners informed on what is happening in the WordPress labs, so if you love this open-source platform as I do, this podcast will give you all the info on what to expect from WordPress future versions.
8. Identity Management Buzz by Sun Microsystems: A podcast targeted to those that like security and identity topics like OpenSSO, OpenID, identity information management etc.
9. Daily GizWiz: This is a podcast about gadgets. So if you count yourself as tech-addicted, listen to this podcast and discover future technologies straight from the labs.
10. NASACast video: Video podcast from NASA with small clips from experiments and missions and many info about planets (especially Mars).

Occasionaly I listen to some podcasts with general themes. Some of them are: The Wall Street journal, Wild Chronicles Digital by National Geographic, Transitions by John Digweed and Futures in Biotech. All the podcasts I mentioned in this post can be downloaded from iTunes music store for free, so if you are interested in them, just type the podcast title in itunes search field.