Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, Mail – we all get more links to articles and webpages nowadays than ever before. I would often find myself coming across an interesting article, but would lose track of it in a mess of tabs, unless I read it right away.

Bookmaking is the most obvious option, but you risk cluttering your useful bookmarks with lots of items you’ll only look at once.  So how can you organise your reading? Here’s the system I use…

One-hit wonders

If I’m skimming Twitter (using Twitter for iPhone or Echofon on the Mac) or my RSS feeds (using Reeder app on my iPhone or NetNewsWire on the Mac), I probably will only read the linked items once.

But if I haven’t got the time right away to fully immerse myself in the article, I send anything that catch my eye to Instapaper, using the handy Instapaper bookmarklet. This service will store the URL for you, until you’re ready to read the full article. The nice thing about Instapaper is that most Twitter clients and RSS readers now have “Send to instapaper” functionality built-in. You can either browse stored articles via the website, or use one of the many Instapaper clients available for several devices, including Amazon’s Kindle.

Then, whenever I have a slot of time set aside for reading, I head over to Instapaper and go through the articles. Anything that’s been read is archived, unless I know I’ll what to reference it at some point later – which brings me to…

Reference Material

These are the tutorials, how-to’s, cheat-sheets and other million useful sites that the internet seems to churn out daily. If I know it’s a topic I might need to look-up later at some point, these types of links get sent to my Delicious account, where they are tagged and can be easily looked up when I need them. This helps me to save time doing research on a project or subject later, and helps solve “if I could only find that one site”-anguish.

Essentials

Any website I find myself using daily eventually gets added to my Safari Bookmarks bar (I don’t bother with the “non-bar” bookmarks). Alternatively, if it’s a project-specfic URL, it might get added to a VoodooPad document for later reference.

That’s basically the way I do most of my online reading – I’d be interested to hear the apps and services you guys use!

Unfortunately, the password protection can cause other issues:

• Preview’s full-screen “Slideshow” view will display a blank screen (rdar: 7757682)
• Not all iOS apps can open encrypted PDFs (although iBooks and GoodReader have both recently been updated to support this feature)
• PDF Passwords aren’t saved – so you’ll need to look it up and enter it each time

But if you have the correct password and can open the PDF file, there’s a (slightly tricky) way to store a non-password protected copy for personal use. There are a few different ways you can do this, but after trying out several methods, I believe this is the easiest.User CarlRJ over at MacOSXHints.com came up with this great, single-line command that does the job nicely (it’s further down on OSXhints in a comment below the original hint).

Make sure you have a postscript-capable printer installed and configured. Then:

1. Open your PDF document using the required password
2. Go to System Preferences > Print & Fax, select “Open Print Queue” and pause your printer
3. Now go back to your PDF and print the document. Select “Add to Queue” when asked.
4. Next, open the Terminal and paste this command and enter your OS X account password when asked:

sudo -s "cd /var/spool/cups; /usr/sbin/chown -v `id -u`:`id -g` d* | xargs -I@ mv -iv @ ~/Desktop/nopassword_@.pdf"

All done! You should now see a copy of your document on your desktop that can be opened without requiring a password.

Please note: This hint is provided for educational purposes only.

I use the equinux TubeStick to watch TV (full disclosure: I work for equinux) so this tutorial was written for The Tube, but it’ll work with other software or online streaming sites as well.

Update:

My colleague has put together a small application that eliminates the need to use Garageband. Check it out for even easier Vuvuzela filtering.

Step 1: Install & Configure Soundflower

Download the free Soundflower utility from Google Code. This utility allows you to pass audio from all applications back into your system, allowing us to filter it using Garageband.

Once installed:

• Open System Preferences > Sound
• Select Output: Soundflower (2ch)
• Select Input: Soundflower (2ch)

Your audio will now be muted – don’t worry, this is normal.

Step 2: Install VuvuX

There are other ways to filter out the buzz of the Vuvuzela’s manually, but Prosoniq offer a free AU plugin that takes care of it for you. Download it, then drag it onto the ‘Components’ alias:

Step 3: Start filter with Garageband

Prosoniq suggest using their filter with Audio Hijack Pro, but if you’d like to save yourself $32, you can use Garageband which probably came free with your Mac.

Simply launch Garageband, create a new real instrument project and adjust these settings:

• Go to Garageband > Preferences > Audio/Midi and select Audio Input: Soundflower (2ch)
• Go to your real instrument track, select the Edit tab and click a blank slot to add a new effect
• Choose VuvuX from the drop down list and make sure it is turned on
• Switch back to the Browse tab, select Input Source: Soundflower (2ch) and turn on the Monitor

You should now hear audio again. Now fire up The Tube and you will notice that Vuvuzela’s are a fair bit quieter. Turn the filter on or off to really hear the difference. You can also click the filter in Garageband to manually adjust the level of noise reduction – be careful though, too much reduction will cause the commentary and other game sounds to sound distorted.

Any there you have it! Enjoy a vuvuzela-free World Cup!

Follow me on Twitter for further updates and tips!

If you play guitar, you’ve probably tried the various tab and chord sites out there. I recently discovered Chordie.com and it has quickly become my favourite.

One thing I often do is look up chords for songs I’m listening to in iTunes. I do it so often that I decided to put together a little script to make it a bit easier to do.

Head on over to my Projects page to download Search Chordie and to find out how to use it.

Download Search Chordie

Search Chordie is based on Search Wikipedia by the fantastic Doug Adams – check out his other iTunes scripts at DougScripts.com.

Thanks also to Chordie.com – if you play the guitar, you’re going to love this fantastic resource.

• Consumers that don’t own a DSLR see these new cameras as an attractive compromise offering DSLR quality with a consumer-friendly interface and lower cost
• Prosumers that already own a DSLR see them as a great alternative to their bulky DSLRs that they can take out and about

Which models are on the market?

Until now, Olympus and Panasonic have been the only two companies offering cameras in this space, so they have generally been referred to as “Micro Four-Thirds” cameras – after the joint standard those two companies established together.

However, Sony have recently announced their “Alpha Nex” series, which uses a larger APS-C sized sensor, that should give the Micro four-thirds competitors a run for their money.

Is it a DSLR? Is it a Micro Four-Thirds? No, it’s…

With Sony entering the fray, a new term is needed to describe the cameras within this category. In the interest of keeping things simple, I’m just going to refer to them as “Micro DSLRs“.

Latest Developments

So what has happened since the release of the original Olympus E-P1 that kicked everything off?

• Olympus have followed up with the overpriced E-P2 and the lower-end E-PL1
• Panasonic’s GF1 has been established itself as geek’s camera of choice
• Sony have dialed their shrinking machine to eleven and introduced the tiny Alpha Nex-3 and Alpha Nex-5 models

If you’re in the market, it’s probably worth waiting until the new Sony models are released in July, but it’s definitely turning into an interesting year for Micro DSLR fans.

I should have a chance to take a look at a few of these new models in the upcoming months, so stay tuned.

But OS X has gone through a lot of changes since Transmit 3 was first introduced and the app is starting to show its age. Enter Transmit 4!

This latest update adds a completely new user interface, innovative new features like Transmit Disk as well as a slew of customisation options. I was fortunate enough to be a beta tester for version 4, so I’ve had a few weeks to play with the new version – here are some of my thoughts.

New UI

Panic is know for their sleek user interface design and attention to detail and Transmit 4 is no exception. First off, the biggest change of them all: A NEW TRUCK!

But the logo isn’t all that has been refreshed: The entire app feels brand new. Most UI elements have been given a 2010 update and the interface feels a lot tidier.

You start off with a list of your configured servers that uses a sleek black look that was made popular by apps such as Pixelmator, CoverScout 3 and SongGenie (disclaimer – I work for equinux).

Selecting a server puts you into a familiar file browsing mode – more on that below:

Buttons and features are usually exactly where you would expect to find them and unobtrusive animations and pretty icons round out the package and give the app a nice touch of Panic personality. Here are a few bits of eye candy I noticed during testing:

File Browsing, Places & Quick Look

An FTP client fundamentally has two jobs: show me my remote files and allow me to move files between my local and remote storage. To accomplish that, an FTP application has to replicate a lot of the functionality of a regular file browser, so users can browser their local files as well as their remote files.

Transmit 4 offers single and dual file-browser layouts, (rearrangable!) tabs and the icon, llist, column and cover flow viewing styles you are familiar with from the Finder. But it also has a few additional tricks up its sleeve, that you won’t find in the Finder.

Here are some of the more interesting file browsing options:

• Folders above Files changes the sort order, so that folders are always displayed before your files in a view
• Quick Look makes it easy to see a file’s content and even works with remote files stored on your FTP server
• Places can store shortcuts to your most frequently used folders, so they are just a click away. You can also drag files to a Place shortcut.

Places is really useful, but the way you add locations by dragging them to the breadcrumb area is a bit unconventional. Once you’ve figured it out though, it quickly became one of my favourite Transmit 4 features.

Transmit 4 offers enough view options to suit almost anyone’s preferred file browsing style. Whether you perfer to work with multiple windows, tabs, split layouts, column view etc – Transmit 4 has got you covered. While it’s debatable whether most users need so many options, file browsing habits are usually so ingrained that it was probably a good idea for Panic to include as many options as they could.

DockSend, Droplets, TransmitDisk and more…

Most of the time, I find myself uploading files to the same place over and over again. Transmit has a number of ways that give you an easy way to send a file to your FTP server straight from the finder:

• Drag it to a custom droplet you can create in Transmit 4
• Enable Docksend and you can drag it directly to the Transmit 4 icon in your Dock
• Turn on TransmitDisk…

TransmitDisk is a nifty new feature, that uses MacFUSE to allow you to mount your FTP server as a volume that the Finder can see. Once mounted, you can interact with your FTP folders like you would with a drive on your local network.

In my experience this worked fairly well, but occasionally felt a little bit more sluggish than using Transmit’s own file browser – but your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

Overall this is a great upgrade to an already very useful application. The new features are well thought out and make working with your FTP server a lot easier and faster. While this isn’t a revolutionary upgrade, it is solid enough to make it worth your while.

You can buy or upgrade to Transmit 4 in the Panic Online Store.

But nowadays, RAM is no longer the primary bottleneck on your Mac – it’s the aging, mechanical technology that powers your harddrive. But conventional mechanical harddrives are slowly but surely being replaced by solid state drives (abbreviated “SSD”). Whilst early SSD drives offered limited storage capacity and had a finite number of read /write cycles,  The current generation of Intel X25 SSD drives are very compelling alternatives indeed…

Pros & Cons

Although still pricy when compared against conventional harddrives with similar capacities, SSDs have steadily been dropping in price and now only cost about 100-200 dollars more than a conventional drive. So what are the benefits? Well, speed primarily: SSDs offer blazingly fast read and write speeds. And unlike conventional drives, that can be damaged if jostled or dropped whilst in use, SSDs are extremely sturdy, making them ideal for notebook computers.

Installing the X25-M

It took me about 10 minutes to swap the stock Fujitsu harddrive in my 13″ MacBook for the X25-M. You basically pop the battery lid, unscrew one screw and pull your old drive. Slot the X25 into its place, close everything back up again and you’re done!

As my previous harddrive was larger than the 80GB review unit I received, I opted for a clean Snow Leopard install, instead of trying to partially migrate my data and settings from my Time Machine backup. The entire OS X installation was very fast (~10 minutes) and after a quick Dropbox sync, I was up and running with my most important apps and documents.

Crunching the Numbers

Intel’s X25-M is currently considered to be one of the best SSD drives on the market and the raw numbers tend to agree:

So how do the numbers translate to your everyday, real-world experience? I mean, are you really going to notice if Safari loads 0.4 seconds faster? Probably not.
But in my experience, the big difference wasn’t that any single task felt much faster, it was the fact that everything felt faster. Whether copying a file, opening a DMG or launching an application – everything feels very responsive and snappy.

Here are two videos to give you an idea of what to expect:

Cost vs Benefit

All this performance doesn’t come cheap though: the 80GB review unit I tested currently retails for about €200 / $250. The larger capacity models can be several times as expensive. But if you use your Mac professionally, installing an SSD is an easy way to give your Mac a speed boost. The Intel X25 is ideal for professionals and performance junkies who need the highest possible performance. Enthusiasts and casual users might want to look at some of the cheaper alternatives on the market instead. They still trounce the performance of a traditional harddrive, without making too large of a dent in your wallet.

Conclusion

The Intel X25 is a fantastic upgrade for your MacBook and will boost the speed of even mundane things like opening an application. It’s ideal for performance fanatics and professionals, casual users may want to wait a while longer until the price / capacity ratio improves.

Support the site and pimp your Mac with an Intel X25 from Amazon.com:

• 40 GB Model
• 80 GB Model
• 160 GB Model

But there are a few areas that feel a bit crummy, when compared with the rest of the experience. Considering how many apps Apple had to completely overhaul for the iPad’s presentation in January, it’s no surprise to find a few rough edges, on the otherwise fantastic device.

File syncing

I understand why Apple is hesitant to add any kind of file system to the iPhone OS, but considering how much emphasis was placed on the iPad apps at launch, you would think that they would have come up with an elegant way to get documents on and off your iPad.

Unfortunately, in reality it’s a huge pain. Ted Landau took the time to document all the steps it takes to actually get a document into iWork on your iPad, none of which are particularly intuitive. Plus you then have the hassle of managing revisions and tracking multiple copies of the same file.

The iPhone app SimpleNote and Notational Velocity on the mac show how document sync can be done right. Some apps are also adding Dropbox support, which gives you an idea how file sync in general could be improved. Given the fact that Apple has already done a lot of the hard work by creating the MobileMe and iWork online services, one can only hope that we’ll see seamless, cloud-based file syncing added sooner rather than later.

Safari caching

If you open multiple tabs in safari on your Mac, switching between them is instantaneous. In mobile safari, you can never be sure whether the tab will open immediately, or whether it will need to be reloaded over your wifi or 3G connection. On the wifi-only iPad, where users can’t be sure they’ll always have access to an internet connection, webpage persistance is particularly an issue. The fact that Offline Pages (iTunes link) is currently one of the top free iPad apps in the App Store would seem to underline this point.

Mobile Safari’s limiting caching abilities are most likely due to the limited amount of RAM in the iPad, which has just 256MB, however as Rentzsch has pointed out, it should be possible to offload pages to the solid state drive as a workaround, although it’s not a trivial problem.

Calendar event creation

Making event creation in calendars difficult seems to be one of Apple’s favorite UI slip-ups. The calendar app on the iPad is gorgeously designed and it makes browsing through calendar entries a visual pleasure.

But the interface for adding entries seems to have been cut & paste directly from the iPhone version and doesn’t make any use of the additional screen real estate the iPad offers. You get the impression the designers spent all their time working on the rest of the UI and simply stuck the editing controls in there at the last minute.

Consistency between the two platforms is of course a good thing, provided it doesn’t slow the user down unnecessarily. I would argue that you could better use the iPad’s screen real estate to make a much more efficient and intuitive event creation UI.

Let me know if you find any weirdness, or just what you think!

The problem is feature overlap: if a netbook can do some, but not all of the same things a notebook can do – why not just take the notebook? You’ll need a bag to carry either, so there’s only a slight difference in size and weight to consider. Smartphones on the other hand can do some of the same things a notebook can do, but have a clear size and weight advantage, as well as a telephony features that a notebook doesn’t offer.

The iPad might suffer from the same problem as netbooks. It offers a lot of features offered by both other device categories, but it also presents these features in a new, multi-touch interface. But is the new interface and compact form factor enough to convince users to ditch their smartphones and notebooks for certain tasks?

Browsing some of the initial comments about the iPad, most users are initially very enthusiastic, as you would expect with most highly anticipated new CE devices. However, some users are already reporting that the initial excitement has worn off:

Jeff Jarvis tweets:

“After having slept with her (Ms. iPad), I am having morning-after regrets. Sweet and cute but shallow and vapid.”

Update: Turns out Jeff is actually returning his iPad:

[...] “(I) simply don’t see a good use for the machine and don’t want to spend $500 on something I’m not going to use.”

Funemployed entrepreneur Nat Friedman posts on Facebook:

“24 hours later, I must admit I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be using this thing for. The charm is wearing off.”

On a more anecdotal note, I recently had a few friends over for a party and they were playing with an iPad borrowed from work. Most of them were fascinated by the device and wanted one, but couldn’t really see much use for it apart as a “toy”.

Unlike the iPhone, which you always carry with you anyway, the iPad is something you need to actively seek out and use. With many people purchasing iPads without a clear idea what they’ll be using it for, it’ll be interesting to see whether Apple’s latest can win a permanent place in user’s day-to-day lives, or whether it will be yet another gadget collecting dust somewhere. My guess is that it’ll be the type of gadget you use regularly – just not as often as your phone or notebook.

What are your thoughts? Are you starting to get bored of your iPad – or has it already become indispensable?