Some news items and issues to catch up on:
* The photos from our ***Niagara Falls trip|http://gallery.prwdot.org/niagara_falls_trip*** are online. Go look at ’em.
* I’ve upgraded our photo gallery to ***Gallery|http://gallery.menalto.com/*** 1.4.4-RC2, which has some interesting new features such as an ***RSS Feed for new photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/rss.php***. If you plug that URL into your favorite RSS reader, it will keep you up to date with any new additions to our gallery. Pretty cool! There are a few little bugs here and there. For example, when viewing a single photo within an album, the photos is left-aligned rather than centered. Other than that, it’s looking good! Also, the Gallery has released an alpha version of Gallery 2, their next generation project. I have been following this major redesign for a while, as it is pretty revolutionary. Hopefully it will make users and permissions much easier to manage.
* The latest nightly releases of ***Firefox|http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/*** have a couple nifty features. One is a redesigned find feature. Hit ctrl-F, and a slim toolbar appears in the bottom of the window with a search box and some other controls. Searching occurs as you type, which is really great. There is also now support for RSS feeds, by way of a “Livemark” feature. When Firefox detects that a given page has an RSS feed or feeds, a small lightning bolt icon appears in the bottom status bar. The user can then click on this icon to display a list of available feeds, and upon selecting one, it can be added to a “feeds” item in the bookmarks menu. This item will then be accessible as a sort of folder, and within the folder is a list of the entries contained in the feed. Sweet!
* From what I hear, the Macworld Expo in Boston last week was a success! My co-worker Christine took off of work for a few days to go down there. She enjoyed taking some classes on GarageBand and digital photography. She was also nice enough to pick me up a t-shirt from the Expo – it has the expo name on the front, with a spiffy patriotic Minuteman logo in the middle. The expo has already been booked back in Boston for around the same time next year, so maybe I’ll see if we can plan to attend.
* Yesterday ***Apple|http://www.apple.com/*** released a new lineup of ***iPods|http://www.apple.com/ipod/***. There are now just two models besides the Mini: a 20gb and a 40gb. They sport a scroll wheel of the same design as the Mini, as well as a new shuffle songs feature. The 20gb model is $299 and the 40gb model is $399.
* Mac fans may be interested to hear that when we returned from our trip, I found a special package waiting in the mail for me. I can’t officially disclose the specifics of what was in that package, but I can say that it was sent out to seed-holding members of the Apple Developer Connection who did not attend ***WWDC|http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/***. Hee hee.