It’s currently in Beta 1, which means it will blow something up if you’re not careful. But, if you’re interested, take a peek, download, and have fun!

One thing I tell my clients when they talk about getting a new blog, twitter account, hopping onto Facebook or entering Second Life, it’s less about yourself and more about engaging these social communities you’ve entered. These mediums are great for discussing your product, service and getting your name out but know when you should pass the mic! Having your blog isn’t about promoting your all of the time, it’s best used when also highlighting related items, customer stories, or other people. Know when to pass the mic to someone, something more deserving.

If you haven’t a clue of what I’m referring to, see the video below:

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about watch below:

I’ve had Snow Leopard for about a week, and there’s a few things I’ve noticed with Apple’s recent operating system.

First, there’s a slight focus on security. Outside of the introduced malware scanner in Snow Leopard, removing files from the trash has become more security. The default has been changed to secure delete, a feature in Leopard, but was optional. It’s almost as if Apple is trying to stay a step ahead of the game for a looming attack or marketing towards business use. The downfall, deleting a large amount of files now takes a ridiculous amount of time.

The next change with Snow Leopard relates to my interactions with it. I find myself the Finder more often instead of opening applications. With the new thumbnail abilities and an improved Quick Look, I find myself not having to open applications as often to determine what I may or may not need.

Snow Leopard did not change a lot on the surface. All of my old programs work as anticipated and there are plenty of improvements, but I’ve not used half of them. This is not to say they aren’t welcomed, but Snow Leopard is clearly the groundwork for something’s to come.

Todays social media world is very concerned about the amount of information individuals publish about themselves. From hobbies, likes, dislikes on Facebook to the information blogs posts and personal information, everyone tries to control the flow of information about themselves. Personas, a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit asks a different question, How does the Internet see you? By typing your name, Personas scours the Internet for keyworlds to characterize a person and displays them on a bar with each of those characteristics.

Some of these results are interesting, mine displayed some obvious key words “online, design, social” and some keywords such as “illegal, aggression, genealogy” are interesting. Personas is a nice look in how we’re characterized online and I would love to see a SEO related application based on this idea.

A few days ago, NYPD conducted a 24-hour cell phone crackdown while driving, which snared a Daily News reporter. The crackdown is a part of a growing trend of laws seeking to ban texting while driving (a just law In my opinion).

To help gauge how much texting interferes with your driving, the New York Times has released a game, “Gauging Your Distraction” on their website, simulating the act of texting and driving. At the end of the game you receive a report card of performance, my initial try was not good at all. For those who don’t quite understand the issue or distraction, this game is an eye opener.

(Source: Silicon Alley Insider)

Apple released Snow Leopard today and I decided to join the early adopters and perform the upgrade. Snow Leopard is Apple’s recent update to OS X and an upgrade to Leopard, building on many of it’s impressive features. Snow Leopard is akin to what Windows 98 was to Windows 95, same interface but new useful features. With a price tag of $29 ($25 on Amazon as of this posting), and a MacBook Pro that’s barely 6 months old, it was a no brainier to perform the upgrade.
Apple claims Snow Leopard is “Better. Faster. Easier.” while many of the new features aren’t Earth shattering they are interesting and add value to any Intel based Mac. The installation process was simple (a few simple clicks) but not quick, roughly 45 minutes long. After installing, some of Apple claims were seen immediately: Snow Leopard does have a smaller footprint then Leopard, recovering  8.41 GB worth of Hard Drive space; the new Dock and Expose features really do help manage screen real estate; and QuickTime X has a new impressive interface. Although Snow Leopard seems to perform faster, but not by much and the start-up and shutdown performance gains don’t seem to be any quicker. Then again, I am using a 17″ MacBook Pro, which has been pretty fast before the upgrade.

It is clear that Snow Leopard is a “refinement” to an already easy and simple operating system. Snow Leopard has been out for several hours and there hasn’t been news of major compatibility issues (just possible software bugs with older software), all of my old software works well in Snow Leopard and everything seems to work. Unlike other upgrades, so far this has been the easiest and cheapest computer upgrade I’ve ever made.

The decision to promote a product as a theatrical trailer has been done before; usually with some mention of features, displays of the product, and some cheesy catch line. If anything, Microsoft is promoting keyboards, Pac-Man, and Blackberries with this video. Of all the things to waste money on, a movie trailer for your software isn’t one of them.

The release of Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5 release candidate 2 available for Mac I wanted to know which browser performs the best. Other websites have performed benchmarks comparing a bevy of browsers within a Windows environment. While the results may be similar, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are not available for Mac (Chrome is currently in Alpha). I wanted to provide a benchmark for Mac users comparing the two major browsers in their ability to render JavaScript, their ability to display websites, the amount of memory they used, and their adherence to web standards. For this test I compared Safari 4.0.1 and Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2 using my 2.66 GHz MacBook Pro 17” with 4 GB of RAM.

JavaScript Performance

Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5 sport new JavaScript engines. In today’s Web 2.0 world, websites are becoming increasingly dependent on JavaScript to provide useful and powerful features. The faster a web browser is able to manage JavaScript the quicker today’s web experience would be. Using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, I ran two tests and compared their results. In each test, Safari 4 clocked faster than Firefox. In individual tests, there were Firefox was significantly faster than Safari, especially during the Math computation. Overall, Safari 4 runs JavaScript faster than Firefox 3.5 RC 2.

See the Full JavaScript Benchmark Results

Browsing Speed

Apple claims Safari 4 is the fastest browser available, a claim that has been disputed. The question asked here is if Safari 4 is faster than Firefox 3.5 and by how much? To compare the speeds of each browser, I chose 11 websites (my website, plus 10 other popular sites) and used the development tools in each browser to determine their loading speed. In Safari this meant using the integrated developer tools, and in Firefox I used the Firebug plugin.

While there are several factions that can limit the speed of a website (such as the way the website is coded, the amount of images and files used to display a website, and bandwidth), a majority of this relies on the browsers ability to interpret that information. To help compensate for any errors, I loaded each page without using the browsers cache, and then with the browsers cache several times and recorded the highest load speed possible.

Safari 4 vs. Firefox 3.5 RC 2 - Website Performance. Click For Full Results

Safari is a very fast web browser, and for websites like the New York Times speed matters. It’s able to load a massive amount of content quickly. When a website is visited for the second time, Safari becomes faster, in some cases speeding a website’s display time by nearly half. There are some cases were Firefox is faster, especially with Google websites. The presentation of search results look different in Firefox than they do in Safari, and even load a bit faster. Overall, Safari 4 takes the crown in speed!

Memory Use

Memory use is always a concern. The amount of memory a browser uses helps determine it’s footprint and use of resources on a system. In order to test the browsers memory use, I compared each browser against 1 website (mine), 5 websites in tabs (mine including 4 others) and then all 11 websites used in the speed test. By using the Activity Monitor I recorded each browsers memory use.

Safari 4 vs. Firefox 3.5 RC 2 - Memory Use. Click for full results

Between the two browsers, Firefox is the clear winner. Firefox uses significantly less RAM across all tasks. With 11 tabs open, Firefox uses a significantly less RAM than Safrai, almost half the amount. My assumption is, Firefox’s low memory use can be explained by it’s ability to include extensions. Firefox’s footprint grows when extensions are installed, the less RAM Firefox uses, more can be available for installed add-on’s and extensions. Even with several extensions installed, Firefox tends to use less RAM than Safari.

Standardization

I highly believe in web standardization. Code should display the same way across all browsers. The best way to measure this is by pitting the web-browser against the Acid Test. Both Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 pass Acid1 and Acid2 Tests with 100%, but only Safari 4 passed the Acid3 test with a complete 100/100 score, Firefox 3.5 obtained a slightly lower score of 93/100.

Conclusion

Safari 4 runs better than Firefox based on these benchmarks. While Firefox uses less memory, Safari 4 blows past it when handling web-sites, javaScript and web standards. This is only comparing the browsers benchmarks, not their features or ability to customize. If your concerned about speed on a Mac, Safari 4 is the browser to use.