First is support for Autosave and background saving. Gone are the horrors of losing hours of editing due to a crash or waiting seemingly endless minutes while a large image is being saved. This change alone is worth upgrading for anyone who uses Photoshop every day.

Up to 75 per cent of the energy used by free versions of Android apps is spent serving up ads or tracking and uploading user data: running just one app could drain your battery in around 90 minutes.

Interesting read from Quirks Mode, on how the iPad 3′s display will actually hurt the mobile web in particular, by creating a demand for larger downloads to accommodate for the hi-resolution screen.

In order to display properly on the iPad 3, all graphics of both web apps and native apps must be doubled in pixel density, which means their size roughly quadruples. Clever compression will solve part of that problem, but not nearly enough.

The problem is even worse with the mobile web. Jason Grigsby delved into the way Apple itself serves Retina-optimised images to its new iPad site. Essentially, they download the normal images first, and if a check for the iPad 3 is positive it then downloads the optimised images.

A memory game using instagram photos.

BBEdit 10 now provides a native interface to create, switch, and save your own color schemes. That sure doesn’t suck. I packaged all the older themes, U23D, Gentle Honey and Zen and Tea, along with four brand new schemes, inspired by the colors used in Version 3 to the latest, Version 6 of the 2A site (2Advanced.com).

Download the color schemes (.zip)

To install, unpack the .zip and place the contents in BBEdit’s color scheme directory; ‘users > username > Library > Application Support > BBEdit > Color Schemes’. (your ‘Library’ directory is most likely hidden by default)

Update: I’ve also been collecting several BBEdit Color Schemes and keeping them in this BBEdit-Color-Schemes-Pack github repository. Feel free to fork, add your own, and send a pull request.

I figured out how to run NPR and surf the web at the same time on the iPad. Multitasking, months before iPad iOS 4 is slated for availability.

1. Open up Safari and surf to your favorite site (I chose my Delicious.com network page, great links in there).
2. Buy an $8.00 radio from your local bodega and tune it to NPR.

The greatest thing about this hack is that you can continue to use NPR outside of available wifi zone’s (note: most iPad apps will cease working). You can also tune your NPR to MLB for the latest baseball game. No monthly, extra, or one-time fees required.

I don’t see myself using the iPad on the subway. I know it’s price tag amounts to nearly the monthly wages of the guy sitting next to me. Surely he can better spend the money I’ve wasted on this thing. I will however, use it in the park. While I’m often mistaken for the Greenpoint neighborhood native, Polish, my hip ass outfits are a dead giveaway that I’m really part of the gentrification. Why not add an iPad? As long as we’re not on top of each other in a tin can under the ground, I’m OK with people knowing that I make more money than them.

After just about two weeks w/ my magically revolutionary iPad, I’ll say that just like the conclusions Salon.com arrived at, I’ve been reading, reading, reading. Not books. I am looking forward to giving that a try though, as reading is really quite enjoyable on this thing. If only the iBook store had costs similar to that of the public library. Instapaper Pro is the must have app. I’ve re-tagged many a ‘toread‘ as ‘read‘ with afternoon breaks in the park. I also find myself actually finishing the editors picks in the NY Times Editors’ Choice app and very much so, admiring the photography in The Guardian Eyewitness app. It’s rare to read past the headline or take a minute to absorb, when a screen is involved. This thing has brought the focus back.

Throw in a handful of other great uses, like email for Susan, our shared calendars (yay for caldav), and actually deriving some pleasure out of the hundreds of photos we take weekly, via the photo slideshow mode… and this thing has totally replaced that large footprint laptop on the kitchen table in our teeny tiny apartment. So far, it seems to be the internet-enabled appliance we’ve all been promised since the dawn of the web.

That’s why I use Xyle Scope.

Don’t let the safari look fool you, this most certainly is NOT a plugin for that subpar browser. It’s a stand alone application that lets you dive into your CSS efficiently & effectively.

Do you ever find yourself asking:

Where’s that extra padding coming from?
What selectors are affecting this H2?
I swear I overwrote this particular class…

Find your answers to these questions and more, get Xyle Scope today!