This is the perfect compliment for anyone using GPG, Gmail, and Firefox. I use it on Windows as well as in OS X. This Firefox plugin integrates PGP signing, encryption, decryption, and verification all in the Gmail web interface. Buttons are added alongside the standard Send, Save Now, and Discard buttons for Sign, Sign and Send, Crypt, Crypt and Send, Sign and Crypt, and- you get the idea; a button for every possible combination. Signatures are automatically verified if present against public keys in your keyring and you can decrypt messages while viewing by clicking a 'Decrypt this email' link.

Installation and setup are easy. Install the plugin, then go into the plugin preferences and make sure it has the correct path for GPG.

Get it here.

For those of you unfamiliar with Phil Zimmermann and his PGP legacy, the Background section on his web site offers a decent overview. In a nutshell, PGP is a very strong private-public key cryptography system, not easily cracked even by large governments, that enables confidential communication as well as author validation over a public network, e.g., the internet. Being a fan of the technology, I recently set out to find the ultimate freeware PGP implementation for my MacBook Pro. I found it in the Mac port of GnuPG.

Blizzard recently released a new beta version of World of Warcraft. This version has way too many enhancements to mention here, so you can find more information on the Public Test Realms forum. There are a bunch of Mac-specific improvements.

One of the coolest enhancements that I saw in the 2.2 software is the ability to record in-game video to QuickTime. It does this using H.264, Motion JPEG, or Pixlet codecs. This is a configurable option. You can also specify the resolution and frame rate. Not all Macs are capable of smoothly capturing video at high frame rates, and users will have to find settings appropriate for their specific machine. This function requires OS X 10.4.9 or newer and QuickTime 7.1.6 or newer.

Blizzard also notes that additional graphics optimizations have been made which utilize AltiVec on PowerPC-based Macs and SSE on Intel-based Macs. These enhancements have have increased performance on systems where vertex animation shaders aren’t available, such as Mac minis and MacBooks that use Intel integrated video.

A Mac Options dialog has been added to the primary options panel. The dialog contains options for features that are exclusive to Macs, such as iTunes Remote and Movie Capture.

I stumbled on this convenient little widget looking for an easy way to secure delete a private key I copied to my flash drive temporarily while working on a upcoming post about using GNUPG on the Mac.

"Here's a nice way to recover notes from your iPhone without having to mail them to yourself--although it's not for the faint of heart. James Duncan Davidson located where iTunes stores its iPhone backup data--at least mostly." Click here for the full story.