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Bookle - An ePub App for Mac OS X

Bookle is an ePub reader for OS X. I have a bunch of technical ebooks from O'Reilly in the epub format DRM free. So to read them I have used Adobe Digital Editions which is free and gets the job done but is a bit clunky.



Bookle is OS X native and seems to do the reading job quite well. So for $10, it it worth a look.

Bookle on Mac App Store

Coda and Diet Coda on Sale Today Only (5/25)

Are you a fan of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP development on the Mac? If so then you are probably a fan of Coda, which is a Web Site development tool for OS X made by Panic Software.



New Version 2

Well the new version 2, is out this week. Panic is offering Coda at 50% off this week only for early purchasers Today, Friday 5/25, is the last day of the deal so if you are interested, head to the Mac app store and get code for $49.



Coda 2





Diet Coda

In addition to Coda 2, Panic is releasing a programming editor for the iPad called Diet Coda. I have always found the idea of programming on iPad type devices intriguing. So for $9.99, definitely give this app a look. It looks like it might make the whole coding thing work on a pad.



Diet Coda for the iPad.

NetBeans 7.2 will Add JQuery Support

Hey JQuery fans. Found this story from the h-online. The NetBeans dudes are updating the JavaScript editor for 7.2. As part of that update they are gonna include JQuery support. Sounds cool!

Star Wars the Old Republic: Thoughts and Patch 1.3

IGN has a story on a new patch 1.3 for Star Wars the Old Republic. So I have been playing the game the last few months and thought I should comment. By the way I started, The Force Journal blog to document tips for those new to the game so check it out if you ever play.



What is Star Wars the Old Republic?

A massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) similar to World of Warcraft. The main difference, of course, is that this game takes place in the Star Wars universe. Specifically, the game takes place thousands of years before the events of the Star Wars universe when both Sith and Jedi roam the galaxy.



You can play the Sith (Empire) side or the Jedi (Republic) side. You can play as a Jedi Knight, a Sith, a Smuggler (like Han Solo), plus a number of other options.



What's new? What's cool?

• Each toon you play has its own story line that changes based on your choices. Stories are done using video cut scenes which is pretty cool. Definitely well done and the best part of the game.


• Each toon gets a series of companions that help you play the game. This makes game play easier. In addition, it makes grouping easier as companions can substitute for real players.


• You can romance some of your companions. Given the high degree of hotness of the female companions this is quite fun. The romantic action is pretty tame and pretty much G rated, so don't get your hopes up kids.


• You get your very own Starship to roam around the galaxy in, complete with robot butler.

What's meh?

• In the game you can choose if you are good or bad. (Yes you can make a good Sith for example). Some of these light/dark side choices are questionable at best. For example, on a Sith toon, my dark side choice was to kill the person. My light side choice? Let the person be tortured to death by my master. Really Bioware?


• Game graphics are good and bad. When released the hardware requirements were way to high. I only have 1 machine that will run the game. Blizzard figured this out a long time ago. People can not play your game if they can't play your game. Bioware really hurt themselves with this I think. Any game today, should play well on an average laptop because that is what most folks play on.


• So the scenery and background look spectacular. Which is stupid. I could care less how good the grass and the rocks look. Non-player characters don't look very good and do not behave naturally. In Warcraft, you can see a NPC because the move naturally. In SWTOR, NPCs often don't move at all, which makes them difficult to see.


• Lots of nonsensical monsters. For example, the rackgouls (sort of zombies, but they aren't undead) have survived without a food source for 300 years. Nice trick.


• The social/chat system is unchanged or even more primitive than World of Warcraft. Come on people, stuff like this needs to be improved not ignored.


• Tank/healer/DPS paradigm is unchanged from World of Warcraft. You still need these roles if you want to raid.

What sucks?

• Playing groups is very buggy, here is why
  
  
  • Remember all those cool cut scenes. Well they don't always work if you are grouped. Sometimes you can see another players class quest, sometimes you can't. Very sucky.
  
  
  • Getting on another player's ship when they have a class quest on the ship, is impossible. As soon as the cut scene starts, which is usually right away, you get kicked out. Maybe to your ship, maybe to the fleet, maybe to a space station. You just don't know.
  
  
  • When asked a light/dark question in a group, only 1 person gets credit for answering. This totally sucks because there are a lot of game mechanics that rely on your light/dark score. So you are penalized for playing in a group.
  
  


• The economy is messed up. Essentially, your toons are bankrupt from level 1 until about level 28. That is over half the game! The cost of training is totally ridiculous.


• Once you pick a class type, you cannot change it. Totally stupid if you ask me. Respeccing a class is not that difficult, but still is way too costly and difficult.

Summing Up

Overall, it is a very good game. I think the story angle provides a lot fun and playability. Haven't tried PVP or raiding, but I probably don't have time for either.



I wonder about the focus on leveling, stats, and gear. It just makes these games way to complicated. I just want to play the game and work through the story. Having to figure out things like surge rating just wastes my time and I don't have time. to waste.

An HP Ultrabook with a Matte Finish (June 2012)

I ran across this a couple of weeks back, but I didn't have time to write about it.



HP EliteBook Folio 9470m

The HP EliteBook 9470m will be a 14" 3.5 pound ultrabook coming out in June 2012. Why am I blogging about it? HP announced a number of Ultrabook and Sleekbook notebooks a week or two ago. This machine (if I'm not mistaken) is the only one with a matte display. The base price should be around $1000.



I'm still waiting around to see what we are gonna get from Apple. Their new slim 15' MacBook pros could be interesting. But it is nice to have some alternatives.



Here are a couple of detailed reviews on this machine:



Laptop Review

Lilliputing

Really Cool Looking CSS3 Buttons

One of the advantages of CSS3 is you can create some really good looking widgets without images. After looking around a bit for some really good examples, I have decided these buttons on Web Designer Wall are the best.



The buttons look really good in Webkit and Firefox and the CSS is relatively simple. Believe me, you can find some really complex stuff out there. Anyway, if you are looking for some really good buttons to use on your site, check it out.

Great Cross Platform Programmer's Editor

I am always looking for good tools. When I just need a text editor, I typically use JEdit. It is free, open source, and since it is written in Java, works well on Mac, Linux or Windows. However, JEdit is not always the simplest tool to configure and use.



Recently I ran across Sublime Text. For $60, you get a really nice editor, with an easy to use interface. Plus, the editor is skinnable so you have a number of options on how the editor and your code actually look. It has nice code completion features with customization options. Top that off with the fact it runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. It is definitely worth a look.

Who has the fastest wireless network?

There is a lot of talk about which wireless network is the best. Most opinions are based on anecdotal evidence. For example, the assumption that the AT&T network sucks everywhere because it sucks in San Francisco.



Well PC Magazine went out and did some real testing and here are the results.

• T-Mobile has the fastest 3G


• AT&T and Verizon have the fastest 4G

The article has lots of graphs, pictures and city by city data. Well worth a look.

A Personal Computer for $35? Meet the Raspberry-PI

A $35 computer? Well that is what the Raspberry-PI (RP) is. Created by an education foundation in the UK, the RP is a fully functioning computer on a board the size of a deck of cards. There are a couple of Linux distros available to run your new tiny powerhouse.



$35 Really?

Well sort of, you still need to buy a keyboard, a mouse, a power supply, and an SD Card for your hard drive. So you really are looking at more like $100. But it still is a really amazing achievement.



Impact

Well PCs now are fairly inexpensive where a basic machine from Dell or HP goes for $300 dollars. But $100? That really changes things if you ask me. Computers become really affordable for anyone. And given the size, you can create specialized devices to say control your heating system, or security system, or any number of other tasks.



Stories with Pictures

I found a couple of stories with pictures of the actual computer, check it out.

TechSpot

The Australian

Google News worth Another Look

Have you looked at Google News recently? I had not in a while and was surprised by the improvements after using the system for a while.



Customize

The main thing that is different is you can customize a lot of stuff. You can choose which news sources you prefer so those are favored over others. You can also add new categories to the list of topics on the left. This is a bit hit and miss. For example, I added a category for Java which seems to work pretty good. However, when I added JavaScript, I received a number of stories that had a JavaScript error message in them. That was a bit of a hoot.



Trending Topics

One other feature that I really like is how trending topics are incorporated. If you click on "Technology" for example, under that heading a list of the current trending topics related to tech are displayed. This is a great use of their search data and very useful.



So check it out, it is another good data point when looking for the latest news in tech.

Custom Launchers with Ubuntu Unity 12.04

As you know I have been playing around with Ubuntu 12.04 lately. I found this article on creating custom launchers and Quicklists for Ubuntu unity. Being able to customize the main interface is key to any operating system. That has not always been an easy thing to do in Linux.



In the article it looks fairly easy to customize entries for specific applications. However I'm not sure you can customize an icon to launch random applications, but I intend to look into that. Anyway there are a lot of examples here you can work from and it's a very informative article.

Check the Version of JavaDB

How do you check the version of JavaDB you are currently using?



Use the sysinfo utility included with JavaDB depending on the situation, it will be in the following locations on a Windows system.



c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_03\db\bin>sysinfo

or

c:\Program Files\glassfish-3.1.1\javadb\bin>sysinfo



Of course it will be a little different OS X or Linux, but you get the gist of it.

Duck Duck Go, a Retro Search Engine

Do you miss the good old days when your search engine just searched? When it only searched for information on the Internet and didn't try to show you localized information? Or social information?



Then DuckDuckGo.com may be the site for you. It is a retro style search engine that doesn't track you. Simple, easy to use. Check it out, its worth a look.



In fact, the site has been doing well, check out the story on SearchEngineLand.