ExpanDrive

We’ve just released ExpanDrive 2.1.0! To upgrade you can use our auto updater in the Preferences tab for Software Update or download and install by hand.

This release brings a major improvement to our S3 engine. It is a near-complete rewrite with a new high-speed connection engine that will really boost performance for most users. Large files still take time to transfer, but browsing and interacting with S3 is even better. We’ve also fixed a variety of of small bugs and made a number of small but meaningful improvements.

In addition ExpanDrive 2.1.0 adds a Strongspace drive type for our upcoming online storage service. Keep your eye on this blog for more info about Strongspace coming soon.

This is a great update and we highly recommend you install it.

• NEWStrongspace drive type for easy connection to ExpanDrive’s upcoming Strongspace online storage service.
• NEW All-new high-speed Amazon S3 connection engine that will drastically performance during transfers and while browsing.
• NEWImprovements to ACL handling with S3 – Access-control policies on existing files are now preserved through modifications, including renames.
• NEW Sequential polling in large directory structures to improve browsing performance in large trees
• NEW S3 Files now have an r/w extended attribute named “com.expandrive.s3fs.ContentType” allowing access to set MIME-Type.
• NEW Symbolic links are now emulated. When viewed in earlier versions of ExpanDrive, these will appear as empty directories; when viewed in other S3 browsers, they will appear as keys containing the link target.
• NEW [Experimental] If a file has not been assigned a MIME content type, then when it is written back to S3, a content-type is inferred from the file’s contents and its filename. The result can be overridden using the extended attribute.
• NEW [Experimental] Experimental support for inheritable S3 ACLs on directory keys.
• CHANGED Improved stability against temporary network errors
• CHANGED Increased timeout for connection and slow operations
• CHANGED Updated logging interface
• CHANGED Updated to use Python 2.6.5 internally
• CHANGED Updates to German, Dutch and Lithuanian localizations
• CHANGED More robust handling of FTP servers with broken SSL implementations.
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would occasionally not notice unmounted drives.
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would not correctly clean-up its mount point.
• FIXED Fixed a rare issue which could cause a stall launching ExpanDrive on Snow Leopard
• FIXED Fixed a rare issue that could prevent a password from correctly being saved
• FIXED Fixed an issue that could prevent automatic updates from being noticed
• FIXED Several fixes to the FTP directory-listing parser.

You may have notice from out sidebar that we’ve played a little bit of Flight Control, a simple but extremely addictive iPhone game. If you think Flight Control is exciting, then this FAA simulation of real events at Charlotte Douglas International Airport will probably get your heart racing.

I’ll set it up for you a bit, because the radio chatter can be hard to follow if you’re not used to listening to it. The blue blip labeled JIA390 is a regional jet with 46 people on board. It’s leaving the commercial airport and planning on taking off from the end of runway 18L, which is the left end up the upper horizontal runway. On the radio they’ll refer to this aircraft as “Blue Streak 390”.

The yellow blip labeled N409DR is a single engine turbo prop with 3 people on board. It’s leaving from the civil aviation part of the airport, and it’s told to expect to take off from the middle of runway 18L, by means of taxiway A (which is pronounced “Alpha”). This aircraft has the radio call sign is 9DR (pronounced “Nine Delta Romeo”).

The that after the incident:

ASDE-X is a radar and transponder system that sounds an alarm in the control tower if it thinks there’s a “runway conflict”.

ExpanDrive 1.8.4 is now in testing – you can download it here:

www.expandrive.com/windows/1.8.4b1/ExpanDrive1.8.4b1.exe

The most important new features for this release is that Strongspace [our upcoming online storage service] users are automatically licensed when they connect to their Strongspace account using ExpanDrive. In addition quite a variety of small bugs surrounding some installation quirks and Windows 7 problems have been fixed.

Werner Herzog is the director of Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man, and many other films.

Maybe there’s a killer app on the way, something on the order of VisiCalc for the Apple II, but as far as I can tell, this’ll be the biggest dud since the G4 Cube.

–Cosmo on the iPad. Saved for posterity.

Also, don’t miss the making of.

Today Apple released a new 27″ iMac with impressive specs, a unibody design and an impressive LED backlit display. Somewhat hidden in the announcement is a small but important feature – the DisplayPort connection on the back of the 27″ iMacs operates both as a jack for an external monitor and also as an input for an external computer if you want to use your 27″ iMac as a monitor.

The 27″ iMac [starting at $1699] has the same modern LED screen as Apple’s 24″ LED Cinema Display[$899] – noticably higher quality than Apple’s dated 30″ Cinema display [$1799]. It is of comparable size and weight, nearly the same resolution [2560x1440 vs 2560x1600] – $100 cheaper, and comes with a free Mac – namely a 3Ghz Core2 Duo with 4 Gigs of RAM and a 1TB hard drive in the base configuration.

30″ Cinema display – $1799               27″ iMac – $1699
          

I’ve had Dell’s 3008WFP 30″ monitor [MSRP $1699] sitting on order for a few days now – which I just canceled in favor of Apple’s 27″ LED version, which comes with the free Mac.

A Typophile user named miha has done some amazing pixel art that exploits subpixel antialiasing. In his first post he reworked the YouTube favicon from a pink mess into something that looks sharp and legible.

His second post debuts a draft of a completely legible typeface with an x-height of 3 pixels. The picture above (taken from miha’s comment on the post) shows the word “ipsum dolor” at 16× magnification. The original size text, so small you might not notice it, is in the lower right corner.

Subpixel antialiasing is some magic stuff. As he said in his YouTube post “If you want to be suprised: white text on red is not really white, it is purple & yellow! There is no spoon.” I’d love to see a 9× mockup of what it looks like after antialiasing is applied.

(Mac users can open Digital ColorMeter, in Applications -> Utilities, for a quick way to zoom in on the pixel art.)