David Jack Wange Olrik

This weeks pick is cute little utillity app from the Iconfactory¹ called xScope. If you do any kind of design work xScope will most certainly help you in your day to day work. xScope is really a compilation of seven small tools combined in a great looking package. For only $26.95 you get the following tools:

1. Dimensions Measure anything on the screen instantly. E.g. the distance between two elements.
2. Rulers How much is 200 pixels again? – Use the rulers to quickly align stuff on your screen.
3. Screens Ever wondered how big the viewable area of IE 6 is² with a resolution of 1024×768? Screens gives you an overlay that you can configure with the measurements of every major player on the browser marked³.
4. Loupe Zoom in on anything and copy the pixel color to the pasteboard or use it for precision editing in programs that do not have a loupe.
5. Guides Just like guides in Photoshop but here they fill the whole screen.
6. Frames Square guides for when you need to contain stuff.
7. Crosshair A mouse cursor that fills the whole screen.

I mostly use Dimensions, Rulers and the Loupe and that easily justifies the $26.95 price tag.

1. You know, the ones with the Twitter bird icon that everybody copies [↩]
2. Its 1004×568 in case you were wondering [↩]
3. And you can configure your own if that is not enough [↩]

I have been using source code management systems¹ for more than a decade, but I have never been quite happy with how they worked until I switched to git². There were always something that couldn’t be done³ or something that had to be done in a silly way⁴ to please the system.

Well, no more of that! We now have Git! Git is a Distributed Version Control System which is lightning fast and able to handle a project of any size. Git makes branching and merging really really easy and almost a no-op, and this gives you the freedom to experiment without loosing the ability to go back to an earlier decision point and branch out from there⁵. The most cool⁶ thing about git, is that it works in much the same way that people interact with each other: via a web of trust.

Git was initially created by Linus Torvalds of Linux fame, when Larry McVoy pulled the plug on BitKeeper back in 2005. In the beginning Git was a very complicated tool, but that has since changed with Junio Hamano as project lead and an veritable army of  developers who has polished Git into what it is today.

My latest adventure with git has taken me to github⁷, which is a really nice webinterface to git. Github helps facilitate the social process that exists between developers who share code with git or work on the same project using git.

You can find out more about git on the git website or on the git mailing list⁸.

If you already are a casual git user, you might find gitready.com useful. There you’ll find small tips about both simple and advanced uses of git – in nice bite sized chunks.

If you are serious about development and source code management you’ll switch to Git…

All the cool kids have

1. Including, but not limited to: RCS, CVS, Subversion, Bazaar, Darcs & Mercurial [↩]
2. I switched to git late in 2006 when I got fed up with Subversion and the way it looses meta data during merges [↩]
3. E.g. no way to rename a directory in CVS [↩]
4. E.g. Relinking file objects to avoid evil twins in ClearCase [↩]
5. Who hasn’t delayed a commit in subversion, only to find that the code needed to be reworked from what should have been a commit 8 hours earlier [↩]
6. Actually, the most cool thing is that git is content based, and will track a method moved from one file to another while keeping the author meta data intact – I know, it’s magic! [↩]
7. I have moved all of my Open Source projects to Github a couple of days ago [↩]
8. Very high traffic and very high signal to noise ratio – lots of nice and knowledgeable people [↩]

Everyone’s favorite credential manager will be out in version 3.0 later this year with a completely redesigned UI. Agile offered us a sneak-peak of the new Locked Screen, and I must say it looks spiffy.

While we wait for 3.0 I suggest you upgrade your keychain to the Agile Keychain format which features stronger encryption, allows for file based syncing¹ and much more.

Another thing you can do is get² or upgrade³ 1Password touch which have just been upgraded to version 2.0. This is a huge upgrade which finally brings full support for Wallet Items to the iPhone in addition to faster and more reliable syncs.

1Password is one of my most used applications and I can hardly wait for version 3.0.

1. Which means that you can do backups with rsync or Dropbox [↩]
2. 1Password touch is free until June 5. 2009 [↩]
3. Be sure to upgrade the desktop version first and sync your iPhone before upgrading your iPhone [↩]

Every ones favorite VPN client interface GUI has been updated and is now on Google Code. For awhile there, it seemed to have gone stale, but it is now more alive than ever!

Get the latest beta here

Kudos to the Tunnelblick team for bringing it back from the great void.

The most promising “bring your files” app has finally appeared in the App Store, and at a very nice price as well

I have tried both Files and DataCase, both are nice – each of them have their strengths and weaknesses.

For now I think I’ll stick with DataCase, as it has most of the features I want.