I’m sitting here realizing I need to manage some files on Amazon S3. I’m currently using S3 Browser which, while nice enough, doesn’t feel like a good client. Ideally, I’d want an FTP-client-like interface. Then, I think, “Gosh, I wish Transmit worked with S3.” On a whim, I fire up Transmit to see if I missed some fancy option. Lo and behold, I’m greeted with a notification that a new version is available. I go over to the web site and what do I see under “New in Transmit 3.6!” but this:

Seriously, how weird is that? It’s like it read my mind. Apparently, this feature came out last week, just in time for me. Thanks, Panic!

If you’re looking for a good FTP/SFTP client for Mac OS X, I highly recommend Transmit. Great client with loads of useful, smart features. Someone here at Fanzter also uses Coda as their HTML/CSS tool, which also comes with a lot of the Transmit functionality built in. I’d be using that, too, except that I already own CSSEdit, which I also highly recommend. Good stuff all around.

Update: Quick review after five minutes: It works great, as you’d expect from Panic. Nice stuff. (ah, except with stuff already on S3. It got confused by paths that are not really paths. Bummer, that’s part of what I was looking for. It does a decent job with stuff that’s put on there via Transmit, but that’s an easy putt)

In what has to be a record, I’ve just finished filing my 2005 Federal Tax Return. It’s amazing what owning a home can do to motivate you to file that return as early as possible. That, and well, there’s that looming wedding which makes the refund check more than a nice thing.

One problem I ran into this year was that H&R Block discontinued TaxCut for the Mac. I’ve happily used that software for the last 3 years and was looking forward to using the new version this year. So, I was faced with the choice of either switching over to TurboTax or going the web route with H&R Block.

Ultimately, I chose using the online tax preparation tool, TaxCut Online Premium. A word of warning, I had trouble getting started using Safari. For some reason, I was unable to launch the application and I don’t think it was the popup blocking in Safari. I switched over to Firefox and had smooth sailing from that point on. There were some visual glitches in the interface. For example, some of the buttons seemed to only show their top half (they’re the green slivers you’ll see). I was able to get through the whole preparation interview, though, and file my federal taxes.

Overall, the online offering felt a lot like the Mac program from last year. It offered all the features I needed at a reasonable cost. The help was as robust as the desktop application and the UI made smart use of JavaScript and DHTML. I wish that they had a desktop application, but I’m sure I won’t miss it. Hopefully, filing my state returns will go as smoothly and I’ll have a successful experience with the product.

One nice thing in the report at the end of the product shows you your effective tax rate vs. what bracket you’re in. My effective tax rate was 12% lower than what it should be according to the tax schedule. Had I donated another huge chunk of money to charity (something like $8K more), I would’ve actually dropped a bracket. Something to ponder when comparing our tax brackets to those in other countries.

The Connecticut software hasn’t come out yet, but once that’s out, I’ll be done my taxes earlier than ever. Gotta love it.

Dan Wood pointed out InquisitorX on his blog. Inquisitor is a search plugin for Safari on OS X that adds some neat capabilities to the search box, most importantly the ability to search different sources from the same box with simple keyboard shortcuts.

Dan really likes this app:

Inquisitor: Must-Have add-on for Safari

Check out Inquisitor. A Safari add-on that replaces the Google search in Safari. Wow. Real-time search results. A gorgeous UI. Also you can configure it to search other sites using different keyboard shortcuts. This is what I’ve been looking for. There’s also an online version.

If this is what “Web 2.0″ is about, then sign me up!

I just wanted to point out that there is a dearth of good software or web site tools that work well for a live, in person, auction draft. I’m working on my cheat sheet tonight and am thinking about what an ideal software package would do for me. Ideally, it would contain a screen that could be projected onto a screen for the rest of my league members to see. Currently, I get the ESPN.com Draft Board and try to run it during the draft while managing my own draft, but I would LOVE it if there was a software package that would do this while letting me run my draft.

Here are some things it should probably do:

• Traditional live draft features - Pre-ranks, including dollar value, stats, any updated news, etc. should be a part of this application’s database.
• Projectable/Public Screen - A two screen application would be ideal where one screen could be projected onto a wall during the draft. It would function similar to the draft board we use now, but keep me from searching for the right sticker among all the sheets. It could also show the current player up for bidding. The second screen would be private, allowing me to manage my own draft, including budgeting, remaining cap space, and other features.
• Team Assistant - The planning tools for live, online drafts are pretty good at getting a sense of what your team is made of now. Auction drafts, on the other hand, have the whole cost and salary cap variable thrown in. So, it would be nice to know, based on your current cap limits, the best way to split up the remaining budget based on, say, your un-drafted positions and TD projections.

This is one of those, “when I have spare time projects,” but I already have three of those right now (and I’m planning for my fantasy draft instead, go figure). It would be nice to build this one. Of course, it would ideally hook into ESPN.com’s online game so that there wouldn’t be that post-draft roster entry pain, but I can help whoever add that functionality in later.

This is unbelievably cool. Seriously. Check out some actual presentations given using this software: Emergent Semantics and Elements of Meaningful XHTML.