In a previous post, I mentioned that you can post to Twitter using Google’s Quick Search Box.

This article assumes two things. First, you have a Twitter account and second, you have Google Quick Search Box installed on your Mac.

Let’s set up your Twitter account information on Google’s Quick Search Box. To do that, go to QSB Preferences.

From here you can change some of the Quick Search Box’s basic behavior. To enable sending status updates to Twitter navigate to the ‘Accounts’ tab

Next, click the ‘Add Account’ button. You can enter two types of Accounts. Your Google account for Gmail and Google Documents or your Twitter account.

Enter your Account name and Password and then click ‘Setup’

Assuming you’ve typed in your account name and password correctly, Google Quick Search Box will inform you that for some account types, the Quick Search Box can also search it’s items, but you need to enable it on another tab. As of this writing, Twitter is not searchable from the Quick Search Box so you can close this warning and close the preferences Window.

At this point you can now ‘tweet’ from the Quick Search Box. To do this, open the quick search box either by clicking on the Dock icon or using its keyboard shortcut. The default is command-command.

Now that the Quick Search Box window is open, it will search your system on what you type, just like Spotlight. To send a tweet though, you need to start with a space. A space tells the Search Box you want to do something with what you’re typing.

Once you’re finished typing, hit the tab key and the menu switches a list of actions.

Hit the Arrow key to select your action, in this case ‘Send Twitter Status’ and press return. In a second or two, you’ll be notified if your tweet was successfully sent to Twitter.

That’s all there is to it from start to Tweet. Although it takes a little setup, posting to Twitter from the desktop becomes very quick and easy to do.

If you’re one of many Americans that have long commutes to and from work every day then you must also seek for a faster way home when ever you can take it. The iPhone in your pocket, may be just the tool you’re looking for to help you decrease your time wasted in traffic jams.

Maps

Since the original iPhone was released one of its built in apps has been Maps. Maps combines the latest Google Maps technology and offers it to users right on their iPhone.

Maps include satellite photos, can pin point you based on your GPS location , track your movement, route you to your destination, and even show you the traffic conditions on the roads you commute on everyday.

To view the current traffic conditions you’ll need to enable the feature.

1. Open Maps and click on the small button to the right. This opens up your Map display options.

2. Once your Display Options have opened, touch the Show Traffic button.

3. Your map should now include green, yellow, and red lines over the major roads in your area

With the feature enabled, you can see the overall flow of traffic along your path to and from work. I’ve found that its often faster to change my rout and avoid any red traffic if I can end up closer to home with just green traffic along the way. I’ve often saved 10 to 15 minutes on an average 1 hour daily commute by doing this.

The Google Maps color legend is detailed as followed:

Green: average speeds greater than 50 mph
Yellow: 25 – 50 mph speeds
Red: less than 25 mph speeds.

Keep Checking that Map

If you’ve tried to use this feature before and found that the traffic details for your commute just weren’t included in Google Maps, keep checking back. Google recently added more roads to their traffic data and continues to improve the service.

Try it out, and let us know how your iPhone and Google Maps are helping you save time on your daily commute.

As you may already know, Apple released an update to the iPhone software (3.0) that include a number of new features such as copy & paste, voice memos, and many others.

Over the next few weeks, Maciverse.com will periodically spotlight a new feature of the latest iPhone OS.

Podcasts

Shortly after installing the iPhone OS update, I found myself listening to one of the podcasts that I subscribe to. When the Podcast loaded up, I noticed that Apple had added a few things to the Podcast User Interface.

Now, when you start listening to a Podcast, 3 buttons will appear below the play status bar. The first new button is an envelop. Clicking this will open up mail and include in the body of the email a link to the podcast you’re listening to as well as text letting people know this is something you’d like them to check out.

These buttons aren’t available on normal songs, so it doesn’t appear that Apple is hoping to increase sales by allowing individuals to spread the word easily about everything they like and listen to. The effort must be to help spread the word on Podcasts and their popularity.

The next button is a 30 second skip back button. This is a great feature for listening to podcasts that often cover subjects and include detail that you’d like to listen to a time or two again to make you sure you got the point of the discussion.

The final new feature is the ability to speed up, or slow down, the speed at which the podcast is playing. Click the 1x button will change it to 2x (double the speed). Clicking it again will reduce the speed to 1/2x (Half speed). I’m not sure how often this feature will be used, but maybe people just wanted to hear their podcasts as if they were being done by Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Overall, its nice to see Apple continually try and add features and capabilities to the user experience. Let us know if there is a new feature in the iPhone OS that you’ve found and we haven’t covered.

Apple announced last week their latest version of the iPhone (3g S), as well as the upgrade to the phone’s operating system. One of these features includes the capability for full turn by turn direction software from GPS companies like TomTom. While this is a nice upgrade to the iPhone, current users (as well as those that aren’t willing to pay for additional features and support) can get accurate driving, walking, and public transit directions on their standard iPhone 3g.

Directions with Google Maps

To get started with directions on your iPhone, open Maps and follow these steps:

1. First, have the phone find you’re current location by selecting the small location button at the bottom left hand corner. Once your location has been found, the map will reload with a small pin drop showing where you’re currently located.

2. Next, click the Directions button and enter the address or name of the place you need directions to in the END: field.

3. Set your current location as the start point by selecting the Start field and then clicking the Address Book icon

4. Select the Bookmarks button at the bottom of the screen and then pick “Current Location” from your bookmark list.

5. Click the Route button to see the route to your destination and details about distance and length of travel

6. Select how you’d like to get to your destination (Car, foot, or public transportation)and click start to get your first instructions for your route. Click Next, to see each turn you’ll need to make while in route to your destination, and watch your location pin follow along the route as you follow the provided directions.


If you need directions that your iPhone has all the tools needed to get you to where you need to be. If these steps seem a bit to time consuming or not as vocal as you’d like, keep your eye out for the latest releases from Apple and GPS mapping service providers for their direction software. Below is the TomTom latest advertisement of their software.

Its been a while since Google originally released their own web browser, but at that time the software was only available for Windows machines.

We’ve posted in the past ways to download and build the Open Source version of the Chrome browser Chromium, but Today Google officially released a Developer Build of the browser for OSX and Linux.

Head over to the Chromium Blog to access the link for the download of the browser. But be warned that the browser is still missing a lot of features, including the ability to watch youtube videos and other flash supported features.

THe browser so far seems to do a fair job of rendering web pages, but the application is a bit clunky on my machine. I also prefer the Safari 4 UI for the tabs up top over the current design for Chrome.

Let us know what you think about the the initial developer release of Google Chrome for Mac OS X. Will it be enough to get you to ditch Safari or Firefox?