Webware

Tomorrow may be the day OS X Leopard makes its way out to the unwashed masses, but we were lucky enough to get our hands on a (legal) copy of the operating system earlier this morning directly from the mother ship in Cupertino. Besides the snazzy new look and feel, the big things we wanted to get our hands on were all the Web features we've been drooling over. We picked four that we think people are actually going to use, including Web Clips, RSS feed reading in the new Mail app, Web search history in Spotlight, and Wikipedia as a part of the Dictionary application.

Just narrowly missing the cut was the GPS feature in preview, which we think is cool, but definitely not quite mainstream until more cameras get GPS integration. In perfect conditions, assuming your photo has GPS bearings in its metadata, you'll be able to see where it is on a Google Map, which we wrote about earlier this week.

Enjoy the video, and if you're picking up a copy of Leopard for yourself, be sure to check these new features out. For more Leopard News, visit CNET's Leopard page.

(Credit: Apple)

There were a lot of one-liners to sift through in Apple's feature list for the Leopard, the Mac OS X 10.5 update due Friday, so I thought it worthwhile to call out the geotagging support.

The Preview software, which lets users get details on files they're browsing, "pinpoints the location where you took the photo on a world map," according to Apple's Leopard feature list. "From there you can even open the GPS location in Google Maps."

I gather from the adverb "even" that I should read this news with a sense of amazement, but really converting latitude-longitude coordinates in a file to a dot on a map isn't rocket science. What's more notable is how rare this feature remains in photo viewer software. The fact that Flickr has 42 million geotagged photos should be a wake-up call that photo enthusiasts are beginning to embrace this technology.

(Credit: Apple.com)

While the WebClips function of Leopard is a handy way to turn various bits of Web content into insta-widgets, there's a more exciting feature in Apple's new operating system that I'm looking forward to: a desktop version of Wikipedia.

It comes in the form of an added resource for the Dictionary app--Apple's in-house solution for word lookup. In Leopard you'll be able to look up a word in Wikipedia without actually visiting the site, or relying on the awesome Wikipedia Dashboard widget. Even better, using the on-the-fly lookup shortcut that was introduced in the Tiger (Apple + CTRL +D), you'll be able to cross reference any word you come across while viewing files in dictionary-enabled OS X apps. It's similar to what some chat apps (including Trillian) have done, although far more extensible for enterprising developers.

Leopard is also adding a new Web history search to Spotlight, OS X's integrated search tool. Users will be able to search for site names, along with any of the content that was in the pages. This relies on Safari being enabled for history. For users who enjoy similar features from Google's desktop search, this might mean one less app to install, and the potential for this to work with Firefox given the right Spotlight plug-in.

Earlier today Apple announced it'd be releasing Leopard on the 26th, just a week and a half away. More news on that over at Crave.

Related:
Get Leopard's Web Clip feature now
.Mac users getting remote goodies this holiday

Webwag is a single-page aggregator that's been around for nearly a year now. Like other similar services, it lets users create one or more customized start pages, filled with modules of content that update continuously throughout the day. These feeds can be searched and browsed through a fairly large directory, along with the capability to drop in any old RSS feed. What's a little cooler, however, is Webwag's Widget-on-Demand tool, which will let you grab a live snippet of any Web page, and turn it into its own widget. If you're familiar with the Webclips service on the upcoming Leopard OS from Apple, this does exactly the same thing.

Webwag's mobile version is a simple smattering of widgets

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In addition to displaying widgets on your browser, Webwag also lets its users access widgets on their mobile phone--assuming they have one of the eight supported handsets. There's also the option to send an optimized version to generic phones based on screen resolution. The mobile version provides small, thumbnail-size versions of each widget, which can be rearranged ad hoc via the mobile module on Webwag. Users can click on any of these on their phone to see the entire feed.

I ran into only a few problems trying out the service this morning. The first is that things can be slow going. Having a few of the Widget-on-Demand modules going at a time can get a little laggy, since Webwag is continuously rendering that part of the site, instead of working on something small and simple like an RSS feed. My other quibble is with module rearrangement, which requires users to hover over the zone they want to drop a module until a little red box shows up. If you don't, your module will be relegated to a zone in the bottom of the page where you must pick it back up and restart the process. It may be a small inconvenience, but when you're trying to work with 15 or more modules, the one- to two-second delay is off-putting.

Small quirks aside, Webwag is a really solid aggregation service. It's feature competitive with some of the big boys such as Netvibes and Pageflakes, although it's a bit lacking on some of the extended theme support, module directory, and customization you get on the others. Is it worth using over the other two? While the Widget-on-Demand feature is pretty neat, ultimately it comes down to speed and the module directory--both of which leave me wanting more.

See also: Roundup: single page aggregators

Webwag's Widget-on-Demand service will grab any snippet of a Web site, and turn it into its own widget. In this case, it's the front door of CNET.com

(Credit: CNET Networks)

At Apple's WWDC a few weeks ago, the crowd was oohing and aahing when Steve Jobs showed off one of Leopard's new features called Web Clip. Web Clip is a feature built into the Leopard version of Apple's Safari browser that lets you take a section of any Web site and turn it into a widget for OS X's Dashboard. WWDC 2007 wasn't the first time Apple had shown off Web Clip. In fact, the feature had been demonstrated at last year's WWDC conference in August, although not during the high-profile keynote.

For Mac users who don't feel like waiting until October to get their hands on Leopard, an enterprising developer has created a widget called Dash Clipping that has nearly identical functionality to Web Clip and runs in Tiger. Users just plug in a URL and the Web page will open up right inside the widget. It's essentially a miniature browser that can be cropped and maneuvered to fit the desired content. Users can also set how often they want the widget to refresh.

Dash Clipping isn't quite as easy to use as Leopard's implementation, as users can't just toggle a Web Clip right from the browser (a feature that's only available in Leopard's version of Safari) or highlight various sections of the page with a neat light-box effect. Also, like Web Clip, it's also only useful with sites that present their content within certain boundaries, such as online crosswords, comic strips, and news sites with fairly standardized layouts like Yahoo and AOL's start pages.

I haven't been able to track down a similar widget for any of the Windows widget engines like Yahoo Widgets or Vista's sidebar. If you find one, please feel free to post it in the TalkBack.

To make your own custom widget out of any part of a Web site, check out Dash Clippings.

(Credit: CNET Networks / Scott Adams)

One of the more interesting takeaways from this morning's keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference was the news that .Mac subscribers running Leopard would be able to enjoy a new remote desktop feature called "Back to my Mac." Users will be able to sort and scavenge through the contents of computers far away from their home network machines using Leopard's new finder and transfer files to and fro freely. The service works with any Mac running Leopard that's been set up with .Mac authorization.

During this morning's demo, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs previewed the upcoming feature by accessing an off-site "work" computer. Using Leopard's new finder, he was able to sort and search through the contents of these computers using Mac OS X's Spotlight technology.

There are two interesting aspects to this new feature. One is the cannibalization of Apple's iDisk service, which functions as a built-in remote storage disk. While the service also allows others to access shared files, many use it as a go-between for transferring files from computer to computer. Apple also makes some of its profits off of those who choose to pay for the higher storage capacity .Mac subscriptions.

The other Apple service this affects is its remote desktop application. While aimed mostly at the IT administrators and the educational field, this application also functions as a fairly simple way to share screens and files between two or more Macs. Remote drag and drop in particular will be making the move, a feature .Mac subscribers will be able to take advantage of in lieu of paying $499 for the remote desktop software.

The update to the .Mac service with this feature is expected alongside Leopard's release in October.

OS X Leopard users who are also .Mac subscribers will be able to browse remote computers right in the finder.

(Credit: Apple.com)

SpaceTime is a new tool for searching the Web in three dimensions. You can search using Google and Yahoo, or dig deeper into niche services like eBay and Flickr. Results show up in a swirling sky-like environment where you can sort through rendered pages in stacks, similar to Windows Vista's Flip 3D window-shuffling effect and the upcoming Time Machine in OSX Leopard. You can maneuver around any page, and zoom back and forth. To see any result up close, just double-click on it and it will revert to a customized browser window that's running a shelled version of Internet Explorer.

SpaceTime installs as an extension, and is by no means a lightweight Web app. The minimum hardware specs will likely put it out of the range of most computers that are over two or three years old. In our testing, we found it to hog a considerable amount of RAM and CPU, so unless your machine is beefy, you're likely to have an undesirable experience. It's also limited to Windows machines, so Mac users are out of luck.

This is by no means the first venture into the world of turning the internet into 3D. 3B, which launched at last year's Web 2.0 conference, turns bookmarked pages into walls in a Doom-like 3D world. Users of the popular MMORPG Second Life are also able to put up live Web pages inside the virtual world.

Frankly, I really don't find a use for these services. When I am searching for something, I want it to be as quick and easy as possible. If I have time to dedicate to a search, I'm often using multiple search engines or the built-in search on Web sites. While SpaceTime is visually appealing, the amount of resources used and slow search speeds make it too prohibitive to take the place of something like your browser's built-in search box.

Yahoo search results show up as a stack of windows. Users can drift through them, or double-click on a window to view the page in their browser.

(Credit: CNET Networks)