TUAW reports that the wizards of widgets at iSlayer have come up with yet another really useful tool for the Dashboard. Organized is a free widget with an event calendar, world clock, notes, and to-dos, all of which are synced to iCal and Mail.

I'm not a huge fan of Dashboard Widgets, but I'm always on the lookout for something that can integrate iCal and Mail. This looks well worth a look see, especially since I really like iStat menus.

In a somewhat crowded market, yet another visual CSS editor has been released that's certainly worth checking out.

Flux is a visual CSS editor that uses Javascript to add some flair to your designs. Flux allows you to drag & drop elements onto your page, move them around and watch your CSS files get updated.

Flux retails for $69, and a demo is available from The Escapers Web site.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a good way to specify the styles of fonts and other page elements on your sites. It makes it easier for you to update styles too, because when done right, you only need to make a single change to update the styles on multiple pages and elements.

To help you work with CSS, Hostm.com has created a free tool called Simple CSS, which runs on Macs, Windows and Linux. Simple CSS allows you to easily create Cascading Style Sheets from scratch, and/or modify existing ones, using a familiar point-and-click interface.

Users of Apple's Safari Web browser may be used to the ability to view PDFs natively right in the browser window, but until now Firefox users have been mostly left out in the cold.

Quartz PDF Plugin is a new add-on for Firefox 3 which brings the same capability as Safari. It worked perfectly in my tests. The plugin requires Firefox 3 running on OSX 10.4 or higher.

Several months back, I signed up to be notified of a spectacular new image editor built especially for OSX. This app called Iris, was to be fast, sleek and easy to use. It was a long time ago, and I hadn't heard anything about it since, so I figured it was yet another one of those vaporware apps.

I received an email yesterday refreshing my memory, and quickly downloaded Iris 1.0 and fired it up. Iris runs on Mac OSX Leopard Intel and PowerPC-based Macs. My test machine is a MacPro with 3GB RAM running 10.5.3.

I was distracted by the fact that it has a cool icon, so I didn't really pay attention to the fact that upon launching Iris, you're forced to either create a new document or open an existing one. There's no way to close the New Document dialog window - because if you try, the program quits. No matter. I was ready to open my 35MB test image anyway.

Iris opened the image rather quickly, and the single window GUI I was presented with was very pleasing to the eye.

That's where the good stuff ends.

Doing ANYTHING in Iris was painfully slow. I mean really slow. So much so that I actually closed the document and checked the size of the image to make sure it wasn't really 135MB instead of only 35MB.

One of the first things I usually check with any application is the type capability. Iris allows you to set type in your document, but apparently you must set your font and size BEFORE you enter your text, because once I entered the text, there was no way I could find to go back and edit it. Heck, I couldn't even select it. I hope 128 points is large enough for your type, because that's as large as the slider will allow you to make text. You can manually enter a number like 250 points, but then when I went to actually set the text in the document, the text was "constrained" inside some invisible box - placing around 4 characters on each line. And again, I couldn't select the text once I left the text editing mode (or hitting Enter) to go back and fix it.

All the required color adjustment tools are there, I just had a really difficult time using them - mostly because it took so long to do it. For instance; I tried adjusting the levels on my test image, but upon clicking the slider, Iris seemed to go into a deep sleep. About 6 to 8 seconds passed by before it mistakenly moved the wrong end of the slider to begin with. Rather than wait to fix it, I force quit the app.

At this point I restarted my Mac, thinking maybe I just had a whole bunch of junk in my trunk, so to speak. After restarting, I fired up Iris again. Unfortunately, it was simply more of the same.

At this point, I had already lost interest, so I decided to go back to the Web site and just check out what some of the features were supposed to be. I was expecting a smattering of lists a mile long such as I was used to seeing on the Pixelmator site. Unfortunately, the sparse single page dedicated to Iris offers little in the way of a feature list beyond three useless screenshots.

If you're looking for a single-window, affordable and fast image editor, I suggest you skip Iris and look at a more mature app like Acorn. Perhaps with age, Iris will improve to be a useable app.

Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy.

The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008. Join our community and this effort by pledging today.

For more information, check out the Download Day Web page. So far, over 1.3 million people have "pledged" to download Firefox 3. I suspect that the actual number of downloads will be higher though.

Once you download Firefox 3, be sure to check out some of the great extensions mentioned in my earlier post about great add-ons for Firefox.

Father's Day is tomorrow, which means tomorrow is the last chance to take advantage of the XtraLean Software Annual Father's Day Sale.

I wrote about this earlier this week, but just in case you didn't see it, here's the scoop:

Use the coupon code MACDAD08 when you purchase Shutterbug for $29.95 ($10 off the regular price) at the XtraLean store and you'll receive a serial number for both Shutterbug and ImageWell. For more info, read my original article.

With the release of Adobe AIR, the flood of AIR apps are beginning to roll in. If you don't know, Adobe AIR is a development environment which allows developers to use Flash, Flex and Ajax to create rich Internet applications which are platform independent. You can download Adobe AIR here.

One AIR app that caught my eye is Shrink O'Matic, which allows you to easily (batch) resize (shrink) images. It handles JPGs, GIFs and PNGs.

Simply drag and drop images and they'll be resized as you wish! Options allow you to choose the output sizes, names and formats.

In honor of Father's Day, XtraLean Software is offering a special deal for Mac enthusiasts. Buy Shutterbug at the discounted rate of $29.95 (normally $39.95) and receive ImageWell (normally $19.95) absolutely FREE!

Just use the coupon code MACDAD08 when you make your purchase before June 15th through the XtraLean Father's Day store.

iPhoto Custom Photo Books
If you're an iPhoto book fan, you'll be happy to know that now through June 3rd (or June 8th with Express Shipping) you can get 20% off on custom photo books and cards in honor of Father's Day.

I find that these iPhoto books make great portfolios at a fairly reasonable price when you compare them to printing & binding at your local Kinkos. And the cards can be used as "thank you" cards after your interview or upon completion of client work.


Apimac Slideshow
Apimac Slideshow is a slideshow and presentation tool for multimedia files, movies, sounds and images that allows you to quickly and easily create slideshow presentations and portfolios that can be distributed as freestanding programs for Mac and Windows or as movie files optimized for YouTube, CD-ROMs, the Web, iPod, mobile devices and computers.

Apimac recently updated Slideshow for OSX to version 2. New users can purchase Slideshow for $37 USD for the standard edition for Mac (it creates free-standing presentations for Mac) and $54 USD Professional Edition for Mac (which creates free-standing presentations for Mac and Windows). A free demo is available from the Apimac website.

This little gem also makes it easy to create a nifty electronic version of your portfolio which can include TV spots, radio spots as well as images.


ImageFramer
Apparent Software has recently announced ImageFramer 2.0, their custom image framing utility for Mac OS X. With a focus on ease-of-use, ImageFramer can apply photo-realistic frames to digital images, drawings or any original artwork. Users can add single frames (with multiple mats), watermarks, batch process several images at a time, as well as colorize or adjust Hue, Saturation and Brightness of the frames for maximum flexibility.

ImageFramer 2.0 can be purchased for $39.00 USD (per single computer license). A Family option is available for only $49.00 USD. A full-featured, trial version can be downloaded. This version 2.0 release is a free and recommended update for all existing customers.


Adobe InDesign & OSX 10.5.3
With Apple's release of 10.5.3 earlier this week (which updated perfectly on all the systems I installed it on, and works fine with all Adobe print-related apps), some of the Nav Services crashes in Adobe InDesign have been fixed. Tim Cole discusses it further in this blog post over at the InDesign BackChannel.


Live video coverage of Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote
The Digital Lifestyle will be providing live coverage before, during, and after Steve Jobs' keynote address at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, Monday June 9th. Live video coverage will begin at noon ET / 9AM PT, one hour before the scheduled start of the Keynote. Throughout the Keynote, The Digital Lifestyle will summarize and comment on the latest details from blogs across the internet. The site may take a while to load, so don't get frustrated if you don't see any video immediately.

With Firefox 3 in the final stages of beta, I've been looking at what extensions I use and whether or not I wish to continue using them. Since most extensions don't work in the beta version of Firefox without the use of Nightly Tester Tools, I've been living without most of them for a while.

Below is a list of extensions I consider must-have. All the extensions I've listed either work already with Firefox 3rc1, or work with Nightly Tester Tools forcing them to work.

Adobe did the unprecedented with Photoshop a year or so ago when they offered the next major upgrade available for public beta testing, something they had never done before. Next came Lightroom, Flex, Kuler, Air and Photoshop Express.

Adobe is at it again, offering what will likely be Creative Suite 4 (supposedly being made available later this year) versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth.

One of the biggest features, in my opinion, is that the former Macromedia applications appear to have finally gained the Adobe face-lift. Both are sporting a new Adobe-ized interface which promises ease, familiarity and tighter integration.

You can use the betas for 48-hours, at which time former CS3 Suite or Dreamweaver/Firefox users can enter their CS3 serial numbers to receive a new beta serial number. See the notes at the bottom of the linked pages for more info.

Note: A word of caution. A LOT of people had difficulty installing CS3 when it shipped because they had not fully removed the Photoshop beta properly. Who knows what these betas will install, so be warned.

If you use Microsoft Office 2008 (ugh!) and find yourself at a loss for quick and easy designs for your PowerPoint or Word documents, look no further than Microsoft itself. Yes, that's right, Microsoft is GIVING AWAY some pretty good templates for Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Six different designs which come in nine different colors each, and include a complete set of PowerPoint templates, letterhead, Excel invoices, newsletter template, and similar small business documents.

Download them now before Microsoft figures out that other people are actually charging money for quality templates. I must say they are pretty nice looking templates, too.

Some of the easiest and most useful things you can add to OSX are Menubar items; little applications that live in the menubar across the top of your screen. App launchers, notifiers, Web & RSS trackers, shortcuts to system functions and more are just some of the things available to you.

I came across this list of Super Menubar Items the other day and thought it worth linking to. The list is categorized for easy searching and includes the menubar icon, description, link to the site, and cost (most are free). I'm not sure how old the list is, nor have I tried every item on it, so some may work with Leopard, some only with Tiger. But it's definitely worth checking out if you're looking for ways to save time and screen real estate.

As most of us had guessed a few years ago, Adobe has finally killed off GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver.

For many professional Web designers, this is really no news. But for thousands upon thousands of "one or two small sites per year" designers, this is horrible. If you learned using GoLive, the switch to Dreamweaver for those one or two sites per year you design will be a huge uphill battle. I recently tried to build a 3 page site and couldn't even immediately see how to code a rollover navigation. Dreamweaver is absolutely NOTHING like GoLive.