Joshua Topolsky is a man who always gets to take a look inside companies workplaces, like the nerds version of MTV Cribs. Recently he recieved the pleasure of getting to  see inside the Edison Lab on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. Some of the technology they showed is actually outdated and I have seen for years, but some if it is just amazing. 

Two of my favorite pieces of software, Dropbox and Sparrow are now combined to make attaching files to emails even easier. Just as simple as dragging and dropping the file into your composer window will upload the file to your Dropbox and append a link to that file within the email message. I’m sorry for you Windows users, as you are SOL because Sparrow is Mac only software. 

Google Chrome version 16 now supports multiple session or users on the same computer. This makes it easy for developers to quickly do session based testing. This is also great if you sync your bookmarks to Google and you want to be able to use two users bookmarks without having to login/out of each user to view the different bookmarks. There are a bunch of other great reasons to use this, but this is just another reason to love Chrome

YES!! Microsoft has finally decided to take the path of Google Chrome and recently Firefox by automatically pushing the latest version of Internet Explorer to their customers. This is great news if you are a developer or tester. This means you will no longer have to test on older versions of IE. Even though I decided a long time ago that I will not support IE7 and below, I can not officially not have to support anything lower than IE8. 

The update will be pushed out to Australia and Brazil customers running Windows XP/Vista/7 on January before being pushed world wide.

Source | TechCrunch

Whenever I notice my Mac is starting to run a little sluggish or when my laptop’s small solid state drive is running low on space I usually run one or the combination of Cocktail and CleanMyMac. Also, because I have a Macbook Pro and a Hackintosh the MacBook Pro is only used when I’m traveling or at a remote location where I can’t use my Hackintosh. The problem with this is OSX runs daily, weekly, and monthly scripts that get skipped if the laptop is not on, causing things to slow down a bit.

Cocktail - Pilot Tab

Cocktail

The first one I want to talk about is Cocktail. Cocktail is the free one of the two and by itself can do most of the work. All you need to do is download the app, install it, open it and go to the “Pilot” tab. From the “Pilot” tab select all the check boxes and hit run. This will run all the tasks at once. You can have it play a sound or quit when it is done as well. If you don’t want to do things automatically you also have the option of going through each one of the settings and doing them that way. Cocktail will run those daily, weekly, monthly scripts I was telling you about as well as clear caches, repair disk permissions, and clear log files. There is also a bunch of other cool things it can do such as tweak your Network settings and enable/disable certain default Mac settings that could slow or speed up your computer.

CleanMyMac

CleanMyMac

While this next one is not free, it is also not that expensive, only costing $14 dollars for a 6 month membership or $29 for a lifetime membership to the application. It is also not absolutely needed to get your Mac running smoothly but it is nice to have as a backup to catch what Cocktail misses. When you get this and open it just click the green “Scan” button and when it is done scanning hit the blue “Clean” button and your done. When it is finished it will tell you how much space you saved. The Application itself cleans your Caches, Logs Unneeded Langauge Files, Universal Binaries, System Junk, and Trash. It also comes with a Quick Erase to quickly erase files and an Uninstall Applications utility ,and lastly it comes with a Extensions Manager. So overall you are getting more features than just some basic maintenance program. 

If you head on over to Firefox you can now get their latest browser version number 7. The newest version supposivley improves memory handling and is suppose to be faster than some of the other browsers. 

Lifehacker wrote:

Firefox 7 improves memory handling significantly, something we noticed in our tests and the folks at Mozilla Hacks pointed out as well-especially when compared to Firefox 6. Firefox 7 boasts a number of other small improvements as well: the http:// prefix is hidden in all places, bookmark and password changes sync near-instantly with Firefox Sync, and the usual round of bug and stability improvements were included.

Lifehacker just pointed me to PDFExpert as “The Best PDF Viewer/Editor for iPhone“, and now I plan on using this to handle my on site work orders. A lot of my work orders are sent in PDF format that I usually print out, make the changes, scan the paper, convert it to PDF, then send it back to the company. With this I can simply save the PDF to a DropBox location, edit it onsite with my iPhone or iPad, have them sign it, and then email it directly to the company. This will also help with the economy and environment by making everything paperless.

If you do any kind of contract work and usually get your work orders in PDF format then you too should check this out. It will make the job a lot easier and if you are like me it will make your tech notes legible.

Read more to see the features

Features (From Lifehacker’s Article)

• Works with PDFs, iWork documents, Microsoft Office files, Powerpoint presentations, text files, images, music, and video
• Highlight text in multiple ways
• Fill out and sign forms
• Create notes on your PDFs
• Draw on a document with your finger when annotating
• Underline and strike-through words when annotating
• Bookmark document locations
• Copy files via iTunes, Wi-Fi, iDisk, Dropbox, Google Docs, and more
• Save email attachments from Mail directly to PDFExpert
• Email annotated files directly from PDFExpert
• Lock down the app with a password to keep your documents secure

According to an image TechCrunch has found (Image is above) Google Wallet will launch tomorrow (September 19th). TechCrunch said, “We’ve heard from others that this is accurate.”  So what is going to hold me back? Well I don’t have Citi Bank or the right phone. Google please open your Wallet service to all devices and banks. Thank you.

PC world has posted an article saying Microsoft is going to release Windows 8 preview tonight at 8PM Pacific time. The release will be in a form of an ISO file in either 32bit or 64bit on their developers site. Although I did not see in the article if its going to be a public release, there has already been news reported that Microsoft plans to release a public beta and maybe this is it.

It is also important to note that you will have to do a fresh install if you plan on using this. You should never use any kind of test software such as beta releases on real environments because they can always fail.

I just read an email saying that Parallels Desktop 7 for the Mac is going to be coming out very soon. Parallels has also said that if you are a current owner of the software you are entitled to an upgrade for just $49. This is a good chance for you Parallels 5 owners who are running OS X Lion because that version and prior versions are not compatible with Lion. If you have version 6 I recommend you just stick with 6. I run version 6 and have no problems.  

Here is what the email said about the new features:

FASTER – Performs 60% faster than Parallels Desktop 6.
NEW – Support for OS X Lion Fullscreen mode, Launchpad, Mission Control and more.
ENHANCED – Faster graphical user interface built on 64-bit technology.
FASTER – Display graphics 45% faster than Parallels 6.
ENHANCED – Start, stop and resume Windows more quickly.
ENHANCED – Access and work faster with Windows and Mac files.
NEW – Run even more games and 3D applications with support for up to 1GB video memory.
NEW – All new help and documentation makes it easy to find the information you need.
ENHANCED – Support for all Mac OS printers now available in Windows.
NEW – Run OS X Lion as a guest OS.
ENHANCED – Reduced CPU usage improves notebook battery life.
NEW – Support for high-quality audio formats up to 192KHz.
NEW – Purchase and download Windows from within Parallels Desktop.
NEW – Immerse yourself in games, music and videos with 7.1 Surround Sound.
NEW – Easily share your iSight or FaceTime HD camera between Mac and Windows applications.
Plus – 90-day money back guarantee

And much, much more