Archive for January, 2009

Mathomatic for iPhone

Friday, January 23rd, 2009


Yes, I’ve been a negligent father – I didn’t blog about Ben’s release of Mathomatic for iPhone.  It’s a very cool port of Mathomatic, an open source symbolic algebra engine that’s been around on the desktop for quite a while.  Ben’s integrated it into a very slick package, and the equation formatting and display is really top notch.

Yeah, it’s pretty geeky, but I have to say it’s also VERY cool!  Whether you’re doing homework, simplifying some equations for use in your own development work, or just want to be amazed at what you can do on an iPhone these days, it’s worth playing with – check it out!

OpenMeta coming soon to Default Folder X

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

I’m very excited about Ironic Software’s establishment of OpenMeta, a new standard for storage of tag metadata on OS X.  Storing spotlight keywords in the Finder/Spotlight comments of files has always been problematic, but up until now, it was the best solution available if you wanted general-purpose access to the tags via Spotlight.

Now OpenMeta uses the metadata capabilities in HFS+ to uniformly store tag information – and provides open source code to make it easy for developers get on board.  Ironic’s Deep application uses it, and Gravity Applications’ new Tags app is doing it too – you can assign tags to files, email messages, photos – it’s very slick and oh-so-much-better on a technical level – we just have to get more people to adopt it!  As always, one of the missing pieces is being able to tag documents as you’re saving them – Default Folder X already supports this using the traditional Spotlight comments, so it makes all the sense in the world for DFX to support OpenMeta.

So in answer to all the emails I’ve been getting – YES, Default Folder X will adopt the OpenMeta standard (while still supporting Spotlight comments too, for those of you that aren’t ready to switch).

Default Folder X 4.1.1 is out!

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

The latest fixes and improvements to Default Folder X are now officially available in version 4.1.1.

The changes are mostly compatibility and bug fixes, but a side effect of one of them has been to speed up the login process in a lot of cases.  DFX was asking the Finder for a list of its open windows while the Finder was still trying to get itself organized, and that could bog things down.  So grab version 4.1.1 – you’ll be happy you did!

Murray Alexander discovers Default Folder X

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Wow – it’s been a while!  December flew by, what with the MacUpdate Bundle, a great trip to Vancouver (before the snow), family and friends visiting for the holidays, and all kinds of other distractions materializing out of nowhere.

Now we’re seeing some fun feedback from the MacUpdate Bundle – new people discovering how great Default Folder X is.  Murray Alexander at typepad.com wrote about how DFX makes his daily life on the Mac much easier.

If you see any other “Default Folder X discoveries,” let us know!  It’s great to see new people finding our software!