We have heard rumours of new profile pages and a complete re-design for the past few moths, and just a few days ago they started to allow user to opt-in for the new design. All you have to do is go to www.new.facebook.com, and next time you login you will automatically have the new design.

Facebook has had a good design, but especially on the user profile pages it started to get difficult to manage thing when you have 20 app on your Facebook page. The new theme adds addition functions such as it now contains your mini-feed and the ability to update your status, publish photo’s and write a note. It also allows you to control how a story (say something like a change in your top friends or a new set of photos) by setting if it is shown or how it is shown so large, medium or small.

There are now tabs at the top of your page just above the wall that have links to photo’s, info and boxes. These obviously lead to what they say they are. having boxes as a tab really make it easier to communicate on Facebook and if you want to see all those boxes you can but I don’t really like super wall ,fun wall, extra wall, community wall, ect.. taking forever to load.The chat remains the same at the bottom but it now seems to look out of place as it is a more yellow grey and just does not feel like it fits in.

In all the new update is great and I would recommend you opting in for it as it make Facebook more fun to use, as if it was not fun enough. Check out their blog post at blog.facebook.com

I have had mine for about a month now, so have had a good amount of time to play with it. The one thing I initially found about Facebook chat is that it was slow, to send and receive messages. but the more time I have spent with it the less you notice it,. One thing about it that is not a feature that is cool, is that during this month of using it I have only once logged on to find no one on and that was at 1 in the morning, so no surprise there. I think this is due to how easy it is to add and find friends compared to thing like MSN. The UI is really nice to use and simple, it fits in well with the Facebook look.

One thing that has annoyed me is that since they have put this feature in they seem to have become Twitter (always down). This really annoys me as it is a great feature and now I use Facebook a lot morebecasue of it. the feature appear at the bottom of the browser windows, there are 3 buttons at the bottom of your screen that make up this feature far left is notifications, Who is online and your chat . When you chat you get a little bleep telling you have a message, and you can see other peoples status.

Overall Facebook chat is great reason to use Facebook on its own. The only real down fall is the that it is a bit slow to send and receive messages, but other wise it is great addition to Facebook and i love it.

Speed

I did not think that FTP apps could have varying speed that were noticeable and compared to Cyberduck Flow is extremely quick some people have said ti is the fastest FTP app out there, that is a big label to carry and yet it keeps going fast.

Quicklook

The new feature in leopard that allows you to view any file with a tap of the space bar in seconds. Yep that is the one it is in Flow and works great there is a little icon that you look for and then it works as normal. Cyberduck and Transmit do not have the feature but Cyberduck beta 3 does so you might see that soon in Transmit but Flow is the only one to have it now.

Feel

One of the things that make a Mac amazing is how everything looks great and feels it and Flow is not exception it has one of the best UI’s I have seen. With the help of Core-animation There are quick a few effects and transition inside that app that add its slickness.

Path and Tabs

The path is one of those small but yet oh so helpful features. Flow has a path at the bottom of the window so you can just click back and forth really quickly. Tabs again is an amazing feature I makes it so easy to copy things from one folder to another from one server to another.

Editing

Most of us edit our piece of code and then upload it to your sever but when we need to edit again we have to download it then edit it and upload it again. This can be really complicated and long to do. Flow offers the ability to edit with in it and on to the server. You juts click edit and you are off. It also offers a live previews for stuff like HTML so you can view it.

The Downsides

There are really very few downsides to Flow but I have come across one problem. Some of the time when you upload an image it get corrupt and the only way to fix it is to disconnect and reconnect. It does not happen that often but it is very annoying. Another problem I have come across is when you quit the app which out disconnecting it can destroy some files, for example once I lost a whole styles sheet to it but luckily I had a backup.

Conclusion

Flow is a great app for FTP and I reckon in a couple weeks they will have all the kinks out. The is really not that much missing and the whole app could really improve you workflow and the speed you work at. It cost $29 which for an FTP app is about average.

I would really suggest looking at different techniques of photography and trying a few out to see if you like them. When you are about to snap away at something look at the shading in the image and look left and right to see if there is any other detail that would be good to include. Not only is it important to think about you image it is also very important to play with the settings on your camera.

Even if you don’t have your camera keep on the look out for good photo’s even if you are not able to capture them you will be able to train you eye into looking for the right things to make a good photo so when you do have your camera you now what you are looking for to make a good camera.

I know training your eye sounds silly but it really does help because you are able to translate the image better from what you see to what a viewer sees such as if you were to think of putting a back and white filter on something can change it radically and the only way to know what looks good to to try!!

I have a giveaway of Picturesque for two licenses click here, and there are more to come.

I hear you all say “but hang on Rupert you are a Mac user why do you listen to a Windows Podcast”. Well I find when you are writing about Apple stuff you often get absorbed into the whole Apple universe where King Jobs is always right, and I find by listening to it you get some perspective because Microsoft has been hit by hundreds of antitrust cases and so has been forced to open up, yet Apple is still closed because they have not been hit by any (yet). It is also very good because they don’t believe that everything that Microsoft does is perfect, this is a problem with the Apple community (even me), we think Apple does everything right no matter what.

Another reason to listen to it is because they actually compare the products very well between the two companies. By listening to it you realize that the two companies have very different ways to advertise, Microsoft try’s to set standards and they like to announce things early, while Apple is very secretive until the very last minute. These advertising techniques make Microsoft come across as a big fluff ball were things sometimes go wrong and Apple a perfect circle where nothing ever goes wrong.

Even if you have never or never will use windows, it is always good to get the other view!!

In the modern day we have all our HD TV’s, but do we really understand what the i’s and p’s mean? after 1080 and 720 you will find either a p or an i. The i means interlace, this is because old TV’s did not have enough bandwidth to fit the whole image on the TV at once, so it would carry every other lines worth of information and then the remaining lines. Technically this is an older technology and less advanced. The p stands for progressive and this is when the whole data is sent over at once and displayed at once. Progressive TV’s can display interlace signals as well. I hope this cleared things up it helped me.

Pixelmator has recently come out of beta and I have been on the invite list for a while, but it finally came out and I got an email to tell me. I have downloaded it and installed it; I spent about half an hour playing on the demo and it is great. It is like a Photoshop for a normal budget. Pixelmator use Mac OS X core image making it super fast. I takes seconds to start up and the filters are really fast and the animations are great. It uses layers and has selection tools.

Tools

Layers and other Palettes are floating

It has a full feature list of blending modes

Pixelmator has the full layers ability with alpha channels. It has all the basic filters that you need to touch up any image.

Pixelmator contains everything I and most people use in Photoshop, but only costing $59. Pixelmator has such nice animations like the rope and a pin head with you place at the centre of were you wish the filter to be the rope attaches the pin to the floating panel and moves just like a rope. It has a great full screen view that blocks out all detractions. Pixelmator can open and save Photoshop files and has its own file type. it opens a large number of file types. Pixemator is a must buy and with that price why not.

I use Google reader for my RSS feeds because it is so plain and I can access it from any were and when. When I am on holiday and come back and have thousands and I do mean thousand of unread rss feeds. I feel like killing myself so like in Croatia I try to read some their to lighten the load when I get back.

Google reader is very useful because of the staring and share features. The share feature is and option at the bottom of every post and I can tick it if I think you might like to see it if you look on he side of my blog (no longer there) there is an Google reader rss widget and all the ones I share go there. The star feature allows me star post I like so I can go back and read them later

The term Freeware is copyrighted software, which is made available for use free (hence the name), for an unlimited time and no functionality is removed. Authors of Freeware often want to “give something to the community”, but also want credit for their software and to retain control of its future development.

The term Shareware refers to commercial software which is copyright, but which may be used for a trial period or have a lower functionality over the paid commercial version. Shareware is often used to entice people into paying for a product if at first they were not sure they should buy it.

1. Firefox

Firefox is one of the most common browsers used to view the internet. Most of you

probable use it, but if you don’t I suggest you do. Here is a link.

Download Link

2. iTunes

O k I know everyone has it, except if you don’t have an iPod, but billions do. It is in my opinion the best way to organize and store all your music and podcasts (Videos).

Download Link

3. Outlook 2003

This is actually very easy to use, which is surprising from a Microsoft product. I have Gmail, and downloading it is straight forward and easy. I also use mail from my site and it works and was really simple to setup. I send and manage my email through Outlook 2003. You can’t buy it now but you can buy it is upgrade as part of Microsoft Office 2007 (not student).

Click to Buy Office 2007

4. Pownce

I don’t mean the site i mean the client. It runs on Adobes air platform and has a nice rounded look with a great drop shadow. It keeps you in contact with what your mates are doing like at the moment I am Click Here. To use it you must have a Pownce account, which you must be invited to join, I have a few invites so just send an email to me@rmaspero.com.

Download Link(you must download Adobes air platform for it to work)

5. Corel’s Paint Shop pro X

They no longer do this product but it is one great cheap version of Photoshop. It has more than elements but not much and is still cheaper than elements. It also is very easy to use. They now make an upgraded version of it called Paint Shop pro Photo XI.

Buy Here

6. Skype

We all know it and have it installed. It is so low on my list because not many of my friend have it, and prefer MSN (arrr) but I think it is one great app and a must download. It so useful for all the podcasters and business conference calls that happen out there in the big wide world.

Download Link

7. VLC

All of you videoing people probably have this to watch videos. It is across platform app and plays almost every video format. It is one of the best apps to play .flv files and if you download Youtube videos this one app for you.

Download Link

Tell me what you though and if you think I missed and app on the windows side out and what apps you use on a daily basis.