Sad news

After a long, hard fight with cancer, my ferret, Ginger, passed away today. It is a sad day for me as my ferrets truly are like children to me.

Battery Update

Apple has released a battery firmware update today to help improve the life and functionality of laptop batteries for the following Mac portables:

MacBook
MacBook (Late 2006)
MacBook Pro (15-inch)
MacBook Pro (15-inch Glossy)
MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo)
MacBook Pro (17-inch)
MacBook Pro (17-inch Core 2 Duo)

This is good news for those experiencing poor charge times. I've been thinking about picking up a new battery and extra charger for a while now. Perhaps this will delay my need for the former.

For more information on the update, pop by Apple's Battery update 1.2 page.

Blogger problems

Seems Google is having a great deal of trouble with Blogger today. Whether it be their overall service or just their API. So, if you're reading this then Google has most likely resolved the issue. Though, earlier in the day they seemed to have overcome these issues, only to later revert to an inoperative status.

Thanks for hanging in there with us through Blogger's problems.

Software excitement

Today has been an exciting software day for me and thought I would share.

Graphics bliss

I awoke to find that the FedEx guy came like Santa in the night. Well sort of. I slept late and he left the box on the doorstep instead of under the tree. And well he didn't wrap it. Anyway, the point I am getting at is that I was excited to see that my very expensive purchase arrived earlier than I expected and in one piece. I can now work without the aid of Rosetta. I still cannot believe Adobe took so long to release updates to make these major applications compatible with the new Intel based Macs.

Coding joy

The second exciting software announcement today was from the folks at MacRabbit. They have released a free update to CSSedit. The new version, 2.5, adds plenty of new features. Here's a quick look at the updates:

• Tabs. Yes, this one may not come as a surprise anymore. However, I am sure you will be quite surprised once you try them out. Pictures simply don’t do them justice.
• X-ray Inspector. This must absolutely be the most popular feature request of all time. Lo and behold, here it is: the X-ray inspector shows you what styles apply to the selected element in X-ray
• Selector Builder. Selector what? This is a brand new innovation that should make life much, much easier for anyone starting out with CSS (or teaching it). Define your selectors in plain English, and it generates the necessary code for you.
• Various improvements all over the application: a navigation bar in the Preview, a font picker, selector CodeSense, a text shadow editor, brand new shiny wonderful HUD inspectors, etc. Major changes everywhere!

And thirdly... is thirdly a word... whatever... The folks at Panic, the creators of Transmit, have released a brand-new piece of software — Coda. Coda combines text/HTML editing with a powerful CSS editor, terminal access and FTP. This integrated package is a great deal for $79 ($69 if you already own Transmit). It also allows for collaboration between various people. Have a look. I would like to get everyone's impression of this new package. I use CSSedit heavily and am wondering if I should or would want to switch to Coda for both my CSS and HTML editing. Your thoughts?

ZOT'ed out.

Our ZotPack sale has come to a close, and it seems Friday the 13th wasn't all that unlucky. Tons of people got some elixir themes at a steep discount to go with their brand-new RapidWeaver installs.

Thanks to all who participated.

ZOT'ed!

For Friday the 13th, MacZot! is running a huge special. Thirteen great Mac applications for an amazing $13. Why do I mention this Zot over others in the past? Well, it is because everyone's favorite web site design application, RapidWeaver, is included in the Zot!

We thought that since everyone will be getting ahold of RapidWeaver today we would give you all something to use in your newly purchased application. We thought we would stick to the Friday the 13th theme, so we've put together a bundle of themes for only $13. In this Zot! bundle you will get the following themes: Sprout, Paper, Plastic and Cloud. This sale will last through the weekend only. So get it fast. Come Sunday evening at midnight, EST, the sale will end.

Click here, or the image above to purchase this ZotPack now.

Success

Our first Twitter special was a success. So, we plan to do more discounts like this in the future. Be sure to sign up for Twitter and add elixirgraphics as a friend.

We'll also pre-announce product launches on our Twitter account among other things.

More thievery

This one follows up on yesterday's theme of thievery. Thankfully this time it was not my own artwork that was stolen.

While popping around to the various blogs I read each day, this little gem caught my eye at Daring Fireball today.

People are shameless. I just don't get it.

Twitter discount #1

We've just posted our first discount code to our Twitter account. For all of you signed up go to our favorites and get your code. It will give you $10 off of our Office Icons and $6 off of our Chameleon theme. The sale will last through 11:59 pm on April 11, 2007. So your theme and/or icons quickly!

If you're not a Twitter member or just have not added us as your friend — do it! It is free and will get you huge discounts from time to time. Our username on Twitter is: elixirgraphics

See our post on Twitter for more information on signing up.

Thievery

Inspiration is one thing, but this is what we

like to call stealing

.

Seems that note only did they swipe our custom icons (beakers and video clapper), they also swiped the site design from

Ben Watts

, who has been featured on

CSSTux

. Funny thing is they didn't even remove his copyright from the page.

Still in search of a way to contact the Muzik Vids' owners.

Contacted them and their service provider. I have yet to hear from Muzik Vids' owner, Travis, but his service provider was very helpful so far.

[Update]: Travis has offered an apology and has removed our icons, but is still using Ben's web site design.

Blogging just keeps getting better

Loghound has released a new beta of RapidBlog, which we use for our blog here at elixir. This plug-in is just outstanding. Head on over to the RapidBlog Change Log page and get your free update now. Here are a few of the additions, per the Change Log page:

• Localized Dates. You can now provide a 'translation' dictionary to localize the dates as you like. Even if you speak English this could be fun (e.g. rename "Wednesday" to "Humpday") See the setup menu
• "Header", "Footer" and "Interblog" text is now available
• RSS Feed now identifies itself properly, you can add it as a feed in safari
• More descriptive error messages
• GUI redesign to get rid of useless boxes, should be more clean.
• Archive's will not (mostly) skip months with no posts
• You can now select archives to view 'Earliest First' or 'Oldest First'
• The RSS Feed has an experimental new feature to support Simile Timelines,
• Lots of various little internal Fixes & Tweaks.

One of our favorite new features are the header and footers as well as the ability to place items between blog posts intermittently with the InterBlog feature. The new cleaned up look of the plug-in is very nice as well.

Going back in time

Here's a little flashback to the days of OS 9. Donelleschi Software has introduced a new app titled Sticky Windows that adds the ability to dock your windows to the base and sides of the screen as tabs, just like in good, old OS 9.

While I didn't use this feature a lot in OS 9, I know many people who did, and were quite sad that it was omitted from OS X.

All the kids are doing it

I have decided to take the plunge and see what this Twitter stuff is all about. I have begun to see a ton of people flocking to Twitter. (get it, flocking? birds. tweets. get it? anyway)

At first I thought it would just be one more thing, like e-mail or iTunes, that would be a sort of distraction while trying to get some work done. But, I am always one to try something new. So I have setup a Twitter account and picked up my free copy of Twitterriffic from Icon Factory and will be trying it out. If you're interested in keeping track of what elixir graphics is up to you can add me to your list of Twitter-ers. My user name is elixirgraphics.

Also, if you're using Twitter post your Twitter user name in the comments or e-mail me. I would be interested in seeing how other's are using Twitter. Perhaps I can think up some sort of special or discount for those following my every Tweet.

Sealed up tight

Here is a look at another set of icons for some future e-junkie services that we recently completed. We can't spill the beans on the details behind these icons or some of the other icons we've done recently for e-junkie, but I can say that there are some very cool things in development. Click the above image to view the icons.

Apple announces DRM-free music

Am I the only person that doesn't care one bit about Digital Rights Management (DRM)?

Today Apple and EMI announced that they would be offering songs on the iTunes Music Store [iTMS] that do not contain any sort of DRM.

Mac News Network reports:

The Cupertino-based company will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads and without any [DRM]. Pricing will be $1.29/€1.29/£0.99; however, iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/€0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. The new higher-quality, DRM-free songs will be available in May.

I suppose this is good. Though it opens the door to more expensive, single tracks on iTMS in the future.

I don't get why everyone has such a problem with DRM. While I am one of those people that doesn't like being dictated to what I can or cannot do I go into buying DRM'd music knowing that I can only use it with a specific player or specific software. If I were not OK with this, then I would avoid buying that product. But I don't have a problem with this, and obviously a LOT of other people do not either. I am one of the millions of people that loves iTunes, and loves their iPods.

So who are the people that dislike DRM? Why do you dislike it?

Maybe I need a little enlightenment. Maybe I am just not picky when it comes to my purchases from iTunes. Of all things, I would rather see higher quality video on iTMS than I would to have non-DRM music and videos.

Expand your mind [Updated]

One of the web's leading Rapidweaver experts, Nik Fletcher has just published his second episode of RapidWeaver Tips. Nik, who is also now employee of Realmac Software, has been creating these screencasts to help both newbies and experts alike the ins and outs of RapidWeaver. Not only does he created wonderfully narrated screencasts, but he keeps a running blog of great tips as well at http://www.nikfletcher.com



His latest screencast is based around explaining the Site Path and a bit about publishing within RapidWeaver. This episode builds on the last show. If you'd like to watch the last episode, have a look on our videos section, but it is no necessary in order to watch this latest show. Since we're now sponsoring Nik's RapidWeaver Tips, you will be able to find them both on his site and in our videos section, where they will be marked with an orange band around them.

Oh, and just a tip of my own — You might find a discount inside of Nik's tips screencast this week.

[Updated]: Nik has added the ability to subscribe to the RW Tips Screencast through iTunes. The best way to view video podcasts, in my opinion. Head over to this link to get the subscription link. It's totally free.