A suggestion I just sent in to Apple via their handy dandy feedback form:

I've been using Safari's RSS feature and I love it. That said, I've got several groupings all in one master rss folder in my bookmark bar. Those groupings, Mac, News, Tech, etc are also bookmarked on the bookmark bar. What I'd like to be able to do is load up a group, say all my Mac rss feeds which contains 60+ feeds and see, in the sidebar of the rss page, which feeds have been updated (bold) and how many new items in that feed... all in the RSS sidebar. Would be a fantastic improvement. As it is now I have to click each one to check for updates or go to the folder of groupings which requires a good bit of mousework to navigate through the menu.

I've tried various RSS readers: NetNewsWire, Endo, NewsFire, and the Sage extension for Firefox. Of the bunch NetNewsWire and the Sage/Firefox combo were my favorites. I stopped using Firefox because it seemed a bit clunky and a resource hog. I tried NetNewsWire with Camino as my browser for a bit. Not too bad... in fact a great combo. I don't know that I want to buy NetNewsWire though and I've discovered that Camino keeps my processor going at a consistent 15 - 20% which means the PowerBook fans come on often. Between the two apps they use a good bit of my RAM.

My latest experiment has been Safari as both my browser and RSS. I'd tried it just after Tiger was released but stopped using it because Camino was faster for me, most notably going back through cached pages. At this point though, after a week of constant usage I've got the RSS set up with my groups of feeds and on the whole I'm very happy with the memory usage and low processor idle. In particular the Saft plugin lowers the processor, fan noise, and heat of my PowerBook with its animation/ad blocking. Saft also has the benefit of features such as saved tabs, moveable tabs, and type ahead search (it is a long list).

Of course I'll continue checking in with Camino. It's been my favorite browser for most of the past 2 years. For the moment though, I'll stick with Safari. I'll probably send Apple a couple more Safari feedbacks but I'm really very happy with Safari RSS.

Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Safari, RSS

Apple has posted a page covering ten basic steps for Mac Maintenance. Generally good advice as you would expect given the source.

Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Mac Maintenance

Wow. One of the best tips ever. If you use Tiger and iPhoto you can use Automator to create a contextual menu plugin that will bring up a mini iPhoto photo browser anywhere, anytime. No need to open iPhoto to use your photos!

1. Open Automator, and click iPhoto.
2. From the list of actions, select Ask for Photos, and drag it to the right-hand pane.
3. Save this as a plug-in, and optionally select Script Menu (the script menu that displays in the menu bar) so it is accessible anywhere. (If this menu is not visible, launch the AppleScript Utility in /Applications/Applescript, and check 'Show Script Menu in menu bar.')

Next time you need a picture from your iPhoto library, use your contextual menu or select this action from the AppleScript menu.

Via MacOSX Hints

Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, iPhoto, Automator