This release puts pressure on existing browsers for Mac OS X, Mozilla, Safari and Opera to implement their own versions of the Google Gears application space in order to compete with Google.

Also a simultaneous release of Linux version of Chrome is a welcome sign of Google focusing on all operating systems, rather than sticking to the most used and popular ones.

Even though still in beta, Chrome promises to become a fresh and innovative way to use the Internet on Mac OS X.

Get it Here

First stop, iPhoneLand. The phone that does everything. As Apple says, “it can do that too”. After a bit of research I came across iFitness app. It is an application for keeping track of your exercise activities, which also comes with handy pictures for different types of exercises, from back to shoulders to stomach to legs. At the cost of $1.99, I was a bit skeptical about getting it, even though its two bucks I was going to waste money on something that might potentially be useless.

The next step was to find a few reviews to read up on and decide whether I should get iFitness or not. The one that I found to be the most useful and straightforward was from this web blog Diet and Things.com. It gave a nice overview of the app and even gave me more screenshots to see than the ones available from the app store.

Here is the article on iFitness iPhone App from Diet And Things. Reading the article, I became more and more convinced that iFitness could be an app ideally suited to get me going with my exercise routines. I’ve been using it for a week, and all of you will complain right away that a week’s worth of testing is not enough and I would agree with you, and it seems to be working well. Getting into my second and three week will be a true test of how it performs in terms of its usefulness. I will post an update a month or so from now to give the final verdict on this app.

Such a bold statement might stir some emotional response, however, I will standby by my comment and further discuss this issue.

In the previous years, we have all seen our fare share of Operating System releases, including two new Versions of Windows, a hunderd or so releases of different Linux Distributions and flavours. All of these releases focused on adding more neat features to the os, updating the ways we use computers, etc. OS X was not in the least bit behind this rush. First six releases were all about adding new features, improving user experience and guess what, adding more features.

The 10.5 release of OS X was all about new features, stacks, preview, finder features, Time Machine, etc. If the Mac users were happy with 10.4 Tiger, then the Leopard brought them into heaven. And if you ask some of these folk, using OS X was like heaven.

Meanwhile the friends at Microsoft were busy copying and yet again screwing up their copy of OS X. What copy you may ask, well the taskbar attempt in Vista was a poor version of OS X’s Dock. Previewing windows didn’t work as well as they would want and other things they they copied in order to make Vista the best user experience better. Well, it didn’t not work and Windows 7 is coming to prove that Microsoft still has some people intelligent enough to design an OS that is easy and enjoyable to use.

So both camps were busy getting their respective releases out the door, except that Apple, already ahead in the race, decided to actually approve the user experience by reworking the internals of the operating system, rather then packing it full of untested, and full of problems features. Snow Leopard, named accutelly to reflect its relationship with the 10.5 Leopard release, was presented as a trully better user experience.

New features included [From Wikipedia]:

• An improvement to Stacks which now allows viewing a subfolder without launching Finder.
• Contextual menus which come out of Dock icons now have more options and have a new look, with a semi-transparent charcoal background and white type.
• The ever popular Exposé gets a new facelift and now ca display all windows, arranged in the grid pattern, for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock.
• Windows can now be minimized directly onto their application’s icon in the dock.
• Faster PDF and JPEG icon refreshes.
• Artificial intelligence algorithms used for selecting of columned text in PDF documents.
• Faster startup, shutdown, installation, Time Machine backup and connection establishment.
• Smaller OS footprint on disk, freeing 7 GB or more.
• Printer drivers are now downloaded/installed only as needed, rather than installing all drivers and wasting disk space. The default install only contains those drivers needed for existing printers and a small subset of popular printers.
• When searching for a network, the AirPort menu-bar animates until it finds a network.
• Prefixes for bytes are now used in strictly decimal meaning when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1,000,000 bytes, as commonly used by hard disk manufacturers.
• Better use of Processor power, including the new system core built to take advantage of the 64 bit Core 2 Duo processors.

Focused on user experience, these improvements have been presented to provide a better, stable, more responsive operating system. Snow Leopards stands on its own as the best OS update to have come out of any os developer.

We’ll start from the assumption that you actually installed Version Cue. To use a Version Cue Server, you’ll need to turn it on and configure initial settings. Once you’ve configured initial settings, you can configure additional Version Cue Server settings in the Version Cue preferences and specify advanced server settings (such as enabling SSL) in Version Cue Server Administration.

For a video on setting up the Version Cue server, see Version Cue Video.

1. Do either of the following:

Click Start My Server in the Adobe dialog box or in Adobe Bridge.

Open the Control Panel and double-click Adobe Version Cue CS3 (Windows) or click Adobe Version Cue CS3 in System Preferences (Mac OS), and then click Start.

Version Cue starts Version Cue Server Administration and displays the Initial Configuration window.

2. In the Initial Configuration window, specify a system administrator password in the Password text box.
Note: Be sure to note the password you specify. If you forget the system administrator password, you’ll need to reinstall the Version Cue Server.

3. Specify a name for the server in the Server Name text box.

4. Choose an option from the Server Visibility menu:

To prevent other users in your network from seeing the server, choose Private. Private Version Cue Servers can be accessed only from your local computer.

To make the server visible to other users in your network, choose Visible To Others. (You must configure the server to be visible to grant others access to projects on the server.)

Note: If Version Cue is installed on a Windows computer that uses a firewall and you want to share the server with others, make sure that TCP ports 3703 and 5353 are left open. If you’ve enabled SSL for the Version Cue Server, also leave port 3704 open. If Version Cue CS2 is installed on the same computer, also leave port 50900 open (and 50901 if you’ve enabled SSL).

5. Choose an option from the User Accounts menu:

To enable users to access the server without an existing user account, choose Automatic User Creation. If you select this option, Version Cue creates a new user account without a password when a new user accesses the server.
If you enable automatic user account creation and then subsequently enable LDAP support, LDAP users are automatically imported when they access the server with their LDAP account name. Users imported in this fashion are added to the Everyone group, given a user access level of None, and are not able to log into Version Cue Server Administration. Use this technique to automatically assign LDAP users default access rights to projects on a Version Cue server without having to explicitly import users.

To specify that only named users, defined in Version Cue Server Administration, can access the server, choose Manual User Creation.

6. Click Save & Continue to log in to Version Cue Server Administration and specify advanced server settings.

Set Version Cue Server preferences

You can configure many Version Cue Server settings in Version Cue preferences, such as the amount of RAM available to Version Cue and the location of the Data folder. To configure advanced settings, such as enabling SSL, changing the name of the Version Cue Server, specifying server log options, resetting user locks, or backing up the server, you must use Version Cue Server Administration.

Access Version Cue Server preferences

1. Do one of the following to access Version Cue preferences:

Open the Control Panel and double-click Adobe Version Cue CS3 (Windows) or click Adobe Version Cue CS3 in System Preferences (Mac OS).

In Windows, double-click the Version Cue icon  in the system tray at the lower-right of the screen.

In Mac OS, click the Version Cue icon  in the menu bar at the top of the screen, and choose Version Cue CS3 Preferences from the menu.
Note: The Version Cue icon is hidden by default. To make it visible, select Show Version Cue CS3 Tray Icon (Windows) or Show Version Cue CS3 Status In Menu Bar (Mac OS) in Version Cue Server preferences.

2. Click the Settings tab in the Adobe Version Cue CS3 dialog box.

Make the Version Cue Server visible

1. To grant others access to shared Version Cue projects on the server, choose Visible To Others from the Server Visibility menu. To hide the Version Cue Server from other users, choose Private.

Note: If Version Cue is installed on a Windows computer that uses a firewall and you want to share the server with others, make sure that TCP ports 3703 and 5353 are left open. If you’ve enabled SSL for the Version Cue Server, also leave port 3704 open. If Version Cue CS2 is installed on the same computer, also leave port 50900 open (and 50901 if you’ve enabled SSL). For instructions, see Windows Help.

2. Click Apply.

Specify a workgroup size

1. From the Workgroup Size menu, choose the number of people who use the Version Cue Server on a typical day. This setting controls how the Version Cue Server handles the potential load.

2. Click Apply.

Keep the Version Cue icon visible

1. Select Show Version Cue CS3 Tray Icon (Windows) or Show Version Cue CS3 Status in Menu Bar (Mac OS) to keep the Version Cue icon visible.

2. Click Apply.

Turn Version Cue on when the computer starts

1. Select Turn Version Cue CS3 On When The Computer Starts.

2. Click Apply.

Connect to remote servers

Note: You can perform this task only if you have access to the full Version Cue feature set. See Accessing Version Cue features.

When you need to work on Version Cue projects that are located on a different subnet, you can use the IP address of the computer to access the remote Version Cue Server, as long as it is configured to be visible to other users. Version Cue Servers within your subnet that are configured to be visible are visible automatically.

1. Do one of the following:

In Acrobat, Flash, Illustrator, InCopy, InDesign, or Photoshop, choose File > Open. If you’re using the OS Dialog box, click Use Adobe Dialog. Click Version Cue in the Favorites panel, and choose Connect To Server from the Tools menu or Connect To from the Project Tools (Acrobat) menu .

In Bridge, choose Tools > Version Cue > Connect To Server.

2. In the Connect To Server dialog box, type the IP or DNS address and port of the Version Cue Server (for example, http://153.32.235.230). If you’re connecting to a server that is on the same system as a Version Cue CS2 workspace, append the port number 50900 to the end of the Version Cue URL (for example, http://153.32.235.230:50900).
Display the Version Cue Server Administration login page to identify the Version Cue URLs that remote users and WebDAV applications need to access the server. Alternatively, view the URLs in the Inspector in Bridge.

3. Click OK.

A shortcut to the remote server is automatically included in your list of available Version Cue Servers.

Connect to a Version Cue Server using WebDAV

Adobe recommends managing non‑Adobe files with Adobe Bridge. However, if you’re collaborating with other users who don’t have access to Adobe Bridge, they can use the Version Cue WebDAV Server URL to access projects on a Version Cue Server.

You can access a Version Cue Server by using a WebDAV-enabled application, such as a Microsoft Office application. In Windows, specify a project on a Version Cue Server as a network place by specifying the project’s WebDAV URL. In Mac OS, specify the project’s WebDAV URL by using the Connect To Server Command from the Finder. Before attempting to connect, refer to your application’s documentation on using its WebDAV features.
Enter the Version Cue WebDAV URL, the port number (3703, or 50900 if you’re connecting to a server that is running on the same system as a Version Cue CS2 workspace), webdav, and the project name. For example: http://153.32.235.230:3703/webdav/ project_name

A word of note before we begin.  I found that it works great in XP, and will work on most installations of Vista.  You don’t actually have to install the program, you just extract it and run the .exe.  Download RK Launcher and extract it to a folder.  Then just launch pklauncher.exe and away you go.  That’s all there is to it.  You can also use the right-click functionality on the Dock.

Dock Spaces will let you create a custom dock for each of your spaces in Leopard. This is a feature that finally makes the Dock a truly complete product that is easy to use, and greatly enhances the User Experience.

You can click here to get Dock Spaces.

The program is called Crossover Linux from Codeweavers.  It’s a neat little app that will allow you to run the most common Windows programs within Linux easily and efficiently as well as be able to install and use shareware ad no so common programs as well.  Crossover calls these programs Unsupported Software, but it basically means any program that is not from a well known, brand name vendor.

If you are using Ubuntu you can just download the .deb package from www.codeweavers.com.  They also have Mac packages.  Once you download the file just double-click the .deb file to get the install started.

Click Install Package.

This is the trial version, so if you ever want to buy the full version just select Applications – Crossover – Register and unlock this Demo.  You will be prompted for your account info to unlock the program.

To install a Windows program, go to Applications – Crossover – Install Windows Software.  You will see the following screen;

If the application you wish to install is on the list, just click on it to highlight and click Next.  Just follow the on screen instructions to finish the installation of the application.

If the application you wish to install is not in the list, just place a check mark in the Install unsupported software box.  Then follow the on-screen instructions.
Menu items will be created for the installs, and you can access the programs from the Applications menu.

You can do some pretty sophisticated things with this software, so play around with it and see what you can do!

Here is the disclaimer;

We have nothing to do with these sites, this information is provided solely as a service to our readers, and do not condone downloading of any copyrighted material, files, etc.

• Mininova
• ThePirateBay
• BiteNova
• Bitsoup
• Demonoid.com
• Torrentspy.com
• Torrentreactor

In walks BitLet!  Bitlet is a very basic, no frills Torrent applet that lets you download any torrent file directly in your browser without needing any additional software!.

Bitlet is a program that enables the use of torrent file sharing protocol inside any Java enabled web browser without the need to install any desktop client.

Caution Time!  You’re not installing a program but you are using bandwidth!  Don’t download 13 GB of movies and then wonder why your boss or principal is talking to you!

First step is to find the torrent you want to download.  Go to your favourite BitTorrent site such as Mininova or ThePirateBay and find the torrent that you want to download.

Right click on the download torrent link, copy the link location (or Copy Shortcut in Firefox) and then paste it in the input box at http//www.bitlet.org/.

You will see a Loading Virtual Machine window and then you will be prompted to select the download location for your download.

Select the location and click Save. Your file will start downloading.

Bitlet also has a whole array of neat features including support for resuming downloads, configuring speeds and port numbers.

The .SFV file is just a checksum file.  What that means is that it verifies the integrity of the archive and repairs it if it is possible.
SFV compression is just a RAR file.

If you already don’t have it, download WinRAR from here.  Install the program.

Right click on the .001 file and select Open With – and then Select WinRAR (You may have to browse for the executable which is located at C:Program FilesWinRARWinRAR.exe.

You should now see the files in the archive.  You can just highlight them and click Extract or extract all to a destination.