I've been around long enough to remember when Netscape was THE browser. It only took about a year for Microsoft to realise that the wide-open-to-the-world Internet was going to take off and that they're closed Microsoft Netwrok was a failure. In those days there were a few different search engines to choose from (Alta Vista was my favourite) and the expansion of the World Wide Web and ubiquitous Internet access were on their way.

Now, almost 15 years later, Internet Explorer is still the most used browser by some margin but almost everything else in the net is strongly influence by Larry page and Sergei Brin's Google. From its start as the fastest, smartest search engine of its time it is now a juggernaut and it has Microsoft in its sites.

Just putting aside things like Google Apps, You Tube, Flickr and a few other bits and pieces for the moment, the release of Chrome last year told us something very important about Google - they're planning to be a force in the tech world for many more years to come. Chrome's popularity is growing rapidly. Regardless of whose stats you look at, Google is either already the third most used browser behind Interent Explorer and Firefox or it's soon going to be number three. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that of all the people who get a choice in the browser they get to use, they're probably number two behind Firefox with Internet Explorer coming third.

Google's multi-platform foundation and standards adherence, combined with Google's huge market cachet makes it a formidable opponent to its rivals. Even the "dev" build (found at this page) is stable enough for real-world use (although I have heard of a few compatibility issues with some CMS apps).

A number of things are happening in the tech world at the moment. People are realising, more and more, that they can choose what software they want to use on their computer. In the past people saw updating their software as being like updating firmware in a washing machine - something you didn't bother doing. That sort of inertia is a big part of IE's significant, but dwindling, lead in current browser usage stats.

Chrome's main rival is, of course, Firefox. Firefox is extremely popular and the entire plug-in ecosystem that's grown up around it makes it a platform for developers and users. However, Chrome has a similar ecosystem developing. IE on the other hand... nothing. This time next year, I expect that Chrome, Firefox and IE will be close to equal in usage stats. Recent security issues with IE have lead to some government agencies moving away from IE and record download stats for Firefox and Chrome.

There's good news in this shift for all of us. Competition gives customers choice and breeds innovation. This will lead to having a better browser no matter which one you choose. We''ll all see better security, more functionality and increased reliability in our browsers. I fear that Microsoft's constant fight to make IE more secure will simply become a marketing cross that they won;t be able to bear. The stigma of security will burden it with a reputation for unreliability even if they resolve their problems. It'll be like Apple's constant and continuing battle to convince people that compatibility issue with files systems and document formats is a thing of the past.

If Firefox and Chrome can escape any serious security issues, maintain reliability and continue to be a viable host for a symbiotic relationship with developers then they'll overtake IE and fight for the tile of The World's Most Popular Browser.

Business cards are a fact of life. But filing them and being able to find the right card quickly is a major hassle. For the last few weeks I've been scoping out a business card scanner but the cost is, in my view, prohibitively high given that it's a piece of hardware that I'm only likely to use a few times a year.

Most scanners come with some software that performs optical character recognition, or OCR, on cards and then uses the text to populate a new entry in your address book. CardSnap turns your iPhone into a business card scanner. Rather than loading all the OCR onto the iPhone, CardSnap lets you photograph a business card. Once you've checked that the image is OK you send the card up to an online service where the OCR is performed. A couple of hours later, the scanned card comes back and you review the result of the OCR.

I put CardSnap through its paces by scanning a pile of 80 cards. Each card was photographed with my iPhone 3GS. It's worth noting that this app relies on the 3GS's superior camera. If you've only got a first generation iPhone or a 3G then you'll need to shell out for Griffin's Clarifi iPhone case as CardSnap relies on a decent camera to get the best result from the OCR.

Once a card is photographed it goes into a queue that you can view using the "Cards" button. From submission to return it takes about 24 hours although we received some cards within a couple of hours.

The OCR process was quite accurate although we did encounter some problems. For example, where the business card didn't have a country on the address the software populated the field with United States. I'd prefer to have an option to set the default country. Also, when an address had a dash or slash in it, like 2-4 Smith Road, the dash or slash was omitted.

Once a card comes back from OCR processing, it's important to review the card. As the photo of the card is retained this is reasonably easy although having a way to review the card and see the photo at the same time would make that much easier.

As well as testing CardSnap with a batch of cards we've used it at meetings to quickly capture the cards of other people. It works well - there's lots of "cool" factor when you do this - although it does mean that my meeting trick of arranging cards in front of me on the table so I don;t forget names is not longer practical as I don't keep the cards any more.

At $9.99USD ($12.99AUD) CardSnap is much cheaper and more portable than a business card scanner. It works quite well and the OCR accuracy is over 90%. The daly between scanning and receiving the result is annoying but given that I'd probably not carry a scanner to every meeting it doesn't make the actual workflow any slower.

If you collect lots of business cards and lack the time or discipline to enter all the details into your contact list then CardSnap is excellent value.

I'm not sure that the title bar on Apple's mail.app had this right.

I do get quite a bit of spam but not that much!

Boy, was I ever surprised when this appeared on my screen yesterday.

OK, it was just for a port scan but at least I know the software (the latest version of Norton Internet Security Dual Protection For Mac - this was a review copy given to me by Symantec. There's a full review in Australian Macworld's May edition) is doing something.

What's it for?: Copying stuff from your iPhone to your Mac
Score: 3/5
Pros: Easy to use, just works
Cons: No file syncing, wired connections only Mac only
Cost: $19.99USD
Buy from: Ecamm PhoneView

Syncing an iPhone through iTunes works well but there may be times when you need to extract data from your iPhone. For example, if the disk in your Mac dies then the photos or music on your iPhone might be your only backup. Ecamm's PhoneView application lets you connect an iPhone and browse its contents so you can copy data between your Mac and the iPhone without using iTunes

After installing PhoneView it automatically launched and was ready for my iPhone to connect.

After connecting my iPhone by its USB cable I was able to view its contents and copy content to and from its filestore. In addition I was able to read SMS and Notes, with an option to save them to my Mac (this may be important for business users concerned about record keeping), copy music and photos from the iPhone and use the iPhone as a portable disk. iPhone 3GS support arrived in the latest version so you can even copy your videos to your Mac.

Using the iPhone as a portable disk does add to its usefulness but it would be great if Ecamm developed an iPhone app so that copied files could be read on the iPhone. Having shelled out $20 I'd like to be able to read the data I've been able to copy. Given that the iPhone OS supports reading of many different file formats it's a little disappointing to not have a companion app for this purpose. However, the ability to store a backup of key files is very handy.

If only...

The one thing I'd really like to be able to do with PhoneView is create SMS from my Mac and have the iPhone send them. While I'm working, it'd be great to be able to use my Mac that way. But that's a small criticism.

Connection to PhoneView requires connection by USB - no Bluetooth or WiFi allowed. Given that the ability to connect over WiFi for data transfer is supported in a huge array of apps this is a serious omission. For me being able to connect my iPhone wirelessly would add significantly to PhoneView's utility as I could use it while commuting.

Should you buy it>?

PhoneView is a very useful piece of software. The ability to copy data from your iPhone is very handy and the $20USD price tag is reasonable. I picked up PhoneView as part of a recent MacHeist bundle and it's proven to be one of those handy little apps that I'd probably not have purchased on its own. However, I really like this app and find it very useful.

When Apple launched OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) one of the heavily pushed features was integration of RSS into Safari. This was extended to add RSS integration into Apple's Mail.app. As I recently upgraded to a shiny new 13" MacBook Pro I've not yet reinstalled all my favourite apps. Partly this was through being too busy but another part of this was to see which I apps I really used and which I could live without.

I've been using NetNewsWire for ages and it's a great app - particularly as it now offers iPhone syncing via a free web service. However, I've never really put Apple's built-in RSS support to the test till now. In my view, the RSS support in Safari and Mail is only barely usable. I suspect that if you only look at 10 or fewer feeds it's OK but even my relatively slim collection of a hundred or so feeds is too many to be effectively managed.

Non-existent OPML Support
Why didn't Apple support migrating feeds into Safari and Mail by OPML? By ignoring the lingua franca of the RSS world they have effectively stopped potential users from migrating to their software from third party applications.

Last night I searched for a way to migrate my RSS feeds into Safari. I had an OPML file that I'd created by using Google Reader's export function. However, I had to visit the Google Fairy to find a way to import this into Safari.

Safari can only import feeds from a HTML file. That means that I needed to find a way to convert the OPML file to HTML. After some searching I found this article. Basically, you need to copy the script on that page into a text editor (I use TextWrangler). Then save it to your desktop as convert.php.

To make life easy, I saved the OPML (actually XML) file from Google Reader to the desktop and renamed it to "subscriptions.xml". I then opened a Terminal (it's in the Applications | Utilities folder on your Mac) and ran the following:

cd Desktop

This line makes the current directory for executing commands the OS X desktop. If you don;t do this you'll need to ener the full file paths for the various files referred to in the next command.

I then ran this:

php convert.php subscriptions.xml > MySubscriptions.html

If all goes well, you should end up with a HTML file that will open in Safari and display a nicely arranged list of all your feeds.

You can then import that file into Safari (File | Import Bookmarks...). I then dragged the imported feeds into a folder called Feeds that's on my Bookmarks Bar.

Broken and Missing Functionality
Once I had all my feeds imported I was mightily annoyed that none of my carefully arranged folders, for logically grouping feeds were retained. There's another half an hour of my life I'll never get back! On the upside, this did get me to clean up dead and unwanted feeds - a task I'd been putting off for some time.

Apple's approach is then to use their bookmark folders for managing feeds. If I open the highest level folder I see all of my feeds. Open a lower level folder and I see the appropriate subset. It'd be nice if I could set that up as a sidebar. However, I can see how many unread items I have.

RSS in Mail.app
I don't know how many people use RSS in Mail.app but I imagine that the number would be small. You'd expect that all those carefully arranged folders could be brought across to Mail nicely. Well, you'd be disappointed. You can bring the feeds across but only one at a time. Which fool thought that would be a good idea?

Pop over to the File | Add RSS Feeds... command and you'll see what I mean.

The Better Way
Clearly, Apple's implementation of RSS leaves a bit to be desired. Perhaps it'll be one of the hundreds of enhancements we'll see in Snow Leopard although I'm not holding my breath given that Safari has only just been updated.

As I mentioned before, NetNewsWire is a great alternative.

However, if you're a Firefox user then there are several plug-ins that work nicely. Wizz RSS Lite isn't too bad and works with Firefox 3.5. High on people's favourite list is Sage although when i looked last night it wasn't FF3.5 ready so I couldn't test it out.

The folks over at FileMaker have delivered one brilliant iPhone app. Bento for iPhone is an iPhone port of Bento - not some cut back imitation.

If you're looking for powerful information management on your iPhone then it's a no-brainer - buy Bento for iPhone. For $5.99, it can replace several other iPhone apps. Sure, there are a couple of rough edges but we're sure these will be sorted in the fullness of time.

My full review can be read over at Australian Macworld.

In the March 09 issue of PC Update, I've got a story on the latest version of iMovie. Released as part of the iLife 09 suite at this year's Macworld Expo, it rights many of the wrongs wrought by Apple when it abandoned the orignal iMovie codebase.

Even the most ardent Apple fanboi couldn't deny the colossal mis-step Apple made with iMovie 08. In one fell swoop, Apple took a brilliant and simple consumer video editing application, iMovie 06, and removed almost all the decent functionality and replaced it with an application that was so woefully inadequate that Apple had to make the old version available to those who upgraded too hastily. That was 18 months ago and iMovie 09 seeks to repair the damage.

The full story can be read here.

Over at "The Age" I've penned a comparison of four online music services.

It's worth noting that The Sanity LoadIt service was shut down between my writing of the story and the publication.

Here's the story for your reading pleasure.

 Online Music Stores

I've picked up a semi regular gig writing for one of the most esteemed newspapers in the land - The Age. I've written a couple of roadtests recently that look at online storage services and RSS readers.

Compare: RSS readers: The near exponential growth of the internet has had a serious side-effect - information overload. How do you keep track of the ever-expanding list of websites you like to visit and find out when something new that's of interest appears?

Roadtest: online storage: The people most vigilant about backing up data are those who have lost data. Large corporate IT strategies can afford to store their backups away from the office so if the office is destroyed the data can be recovered. But most of us can't afford to have someone collect our daily or weekly backups from home and store them securely.

 Backup • RSS Readers