Just a quick heads-up in case you haven’t noticed yourself…
If you’re running the Saft plugin for Safari, it WILL break Safari following the update to 10.4.2. Opening Safari will pop up a window telling you that Saft isn’t supported in the current Safari version and it gives you the option to Try Anyway, Quit [...]
This morning I chatted with my Grand-Ma’ (Mamie) who lives in France for about 50 minutes. It cost me around $2. Little did she know, our crystal-clear conversation was happening while I was doing the dishes, through a Motorola HS810 bluetooth headset connected to the powerbook that was sitting in the living room, [...]
The SIP protocol, by its open nature, enables various providers to interoperate and compete for your loyalty, so you might shop for SIP services the exact same way you’ll shop for e-mail services. This open protocol also enables every industrious Software Author in the World to build best-of-breed real-time communications tools. These tools are coming. For all platforms. Mac. Linux. Windows. Developers are working around the clock to be the first-to-market with the next Skype-killer, in a race to earn your loyalty.
Just a little note about the new Podcasts feature in iTunes: it’s really cool. For a while now, I’ve been listening to Leo Laporte’s KFI Radio Podcast, so it really interested me when I found that I could plug in his podcast link into iTunes, and it worked! Really well!!
I didn’t like the way that [...]
We all love our Macs, and most of the time, they love us back. But occasionally, programs start crashing, or the spinning-pinwheel-of-death becomes a common sight. In these situations, there are a few steps you can take to try and remedy the problem. Today, we will be looking at repairing damaged file permissions.
What are [...]
I attended a cousin’s wedding last week. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind taking candid photos during the wedding. I being the closet photog, starved for scenery other than the sunsets from my front yard was more than happy to oblige him.
So morning of the wedding, I took my job very seriously. I started snapping away. Trying to get all angles, people, emotions and so on (ok, so that translates into angles that I’m not sure what I was shooting, eyes half open, food being chewed, etc, etc) I ended up with about 400 pictures by mid day.
SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol, and is to real-time communications what SMTP and e-mail are to message delivery, and is slated to become the next major revolution in the ways we humans communicate. Want to start playing? Start here.
Right now, if you need your VPN client to work, I’d recommend steering clear of Cisco’s recently-released 10.4 VPN client. When it works, it seems to work fine. When it’s not working, you have to uninstall and reinstall it to get it to work. However, if you’re on 10.4 and you have to use Cisco’s [...]
Slashdot is pointing at a terrific write-up detailing the speed gains in running a Mac Mini off of an external Firewire drive instead of the relatively slow notebook sized hard drive it has inside.
The idea makes great sense, and being a desktop computer (even though it’s small enough to take with you…) makes it a [...]
While Spotlight is definitely cool, it doesn’t quite fit my workflow. Quicksilver remains the supreme app on my Tiger installation. At a glance these tools may seem similar - even potential competitors - but in the end they’re VERY different tools. Alas this is a discussion/argument for another day. Let’s set that aside and move on to the point of this post.
Spotlight has made itself a little home in my workflow by including Spotlight Comments. If you’re unaware, Spotlight Comments are a new section in each file or folder’s Get Info screen. You can add your own information to each item indexed on your system for additional Spotlight specificity.
For me, Spotlight Comments represent a way to tag my files a la Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. This is immensely more useful for me than the default full text indexing that Spotlight offers. I want a narrow result set most of the time. Adding tags that make sense to me accomplishes this nicely.
But there’s a problem. I’m lazy. I don’t want to have to click each file, CMD I to Get Info, enter my Spotlight Comments for that file, close the window, and move to the next file. That’s like 5-10 seconds of mouse movement and typing and, well, I’m tired just thinking about it. Enter my faithful sidekick, Quicksilver. (Hi-Ho Quicksilver!)
I received an email from Charles Pazos this past weekend asking how to set up Mail to check your GMail account. Here you go, Charles.
From Google’s help page :
—–
Open Apple Mail.
Click ‘Mail,’ and select ‘Preferences…’
Open the ‘Accounts’ tab, and click the plus sign (+) along the bottom to add a new account.
Enter ‘pop.gmail.com’ [...]
Support for RSS in Firefox, then Safari, are mostly encouraging developments to slowly further bring RSS into the mainstream. Both browsers are implementing the concept of “Live Bookmarks”. Bookmarking a site now offers us the ability to not only save its location, but also become aware of its changes and store its updates on our own computer for future consumption. The question remains whether or not said content will actually be consumed by the end-user.
My Tiger upgrade went smoothly. I took some notes on my personal blog while adjusting to and playing with the new system.
Feel free to gather your own upgrade notes in comments to this post!
Pre-order tiger from Amazon for $35 cheaper?
The invasion of the PodPeople.
Ever notice that your OS X system isn’t running as quick and efficient as it once seemed to? Are things opening slower, taking more resources to operate, and generally causing you to become more impatient while using the computer? It’s probably time to deal with the gunk build-up that’s accumulated over time in OS X. Here are a few tips that will help you regain that lost efficiency from your system.
Unix has a lot of utility apps built into the operating system, and since OS X is built on a Unix framework, you’ve got those utilities right there and waiting to be used. In fact, you don’t even have to know what those utilities are, or how to use them! I know, right now you’re going, “Huh?” Here’s the trick:
Let your machine run while you sleep at night. (If necessary, tell it not to go to sleep, or to automatically wake in the early AM.) OS X has a few tricks up its sleeves, but they’re only set to run in the middle of the night by default. So letting things run on their own while you rest will help to keep your system running a little smoother than it would otherwise. You really don’t have to do anything about it!
Last week we posted an introduction piece to Quicksilver, meant to walk the un-innitiated through the world of Quicksilver.
This week Dan Dickinson has a great mid-level piece on tweaking Quicksilver. It’s meant for the more Quicksilver-familiar crowd, and is a great next step for those who didn’t get enough from our piece last week.
Dan [...]
UPDATE:
I’ve noticed this post getting a lot of play lately. Glad to see it’s viewed as useful to so many! Look for a Quicksilver & Tiger piece with new and exciting Quicksilver goodness in the coming days, here on The Apple Blog.
Quicksilver is one of the most innovative applications to be found on OS X. That may be my opinion, but there hasn’t been a person I’ve introduced to it that hasn’t said [in some form], “It’s changed the way I use my computer!” That’s awfully telling I’d say.
To be fair, LaunchBar and Butler are two more popular alternatives to Quicksilver - LaunchBar is $30 for a 5 computer license and Butler is Donation-ware. In contrast, the founding developer of Quicksilver (known as Alcor on his forums - look for an interview with Alcor in the coming weeks) seems to spend more of his time working on QS than getting around to creating a donation section on blacktree.com.
Why is it better? Alcor is one of the most responsive developers I’ve come across. Beta updates seem to come - on average - about every couple weeks. He is constantly answering questions and listening to the multitude of fans on his forums. I’ve not seen a similar, consistent practice by a developer…in my memory. So not only is Quicksilver fully featured and powerful as all get-out, but it’s always evolving.
OK, what does it do?!
Short answer: It’s a launcher. It allows you to open files from a keystroke instead of clicking through the Finder for them.
Long answer: What doesn’t it do? QS indexes your hard drive into a Catalog. That Catalog is available at a single keystroke and then allows you access to everything on your computer. Not only can you open applications, but using QS, you can move files around, append text to files, locate a file and attach it to an email…The list goes on and on and on and…
But to really appreciate Quicksilver, you’ve got to dive in. Nothing I could write would explain it nearly well enough (you’re probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, that’s painfully obvious…”). Seeing absolutely is believing. And as it says on the Quicksilver Preview page:
In the end, Quicksilver has one very important effect. , The effort associated with frequent tasks fades into the background and you are able to act without thinking. After an adaptation period, Quicksilver becomes an extension of yourself; the process fades away leaving only the results.
So let’s get started!
Recently, I was fortunate enough to get a Cingular-branded Treo 650 for my birthday. This was an upgrade from my Treo 270, and included a number of new features including Bluetooth and an SD slot for PalmOne peripherals and SD memory cards. Since I’m a geek, the first question I had was “Can I get [...]
In DAILY FEEDING, I’ll attempt to help you simplify some of the more daily and mundane tasks of computing. To kick things off, I’ll start with protecting your data through regular backups.
I consider myself somewhat of an expert on this topic - why? I’ve lost way too much data due to poor back-up practices. But the past few months have brought some break-throughs that will hopefully help you avoid my mistakes.
I actually lucked out about 5 months ago: I’d just run my first backup of my Home folder (after having my powerbook for almost 2 years), when I hosed myself the very next day. Thank goodness I’d made a backup the night before! And oh yes - the biggest issues arise from user-error, and I generally know what I’m doing on a computer…
