Archive for Resource
The Power of Dashcode Compels You!
Gnomie William (MacintechStudios on YouTube) writes:
Hey Chris,
I just read your 50 Reasons to Switch from Microsoft Windows to Apple’s Mac OS X article, and saw that you mentioned Dashcode. It’s quite timely as over the past few days I’ve been fiddling around with Dashcode myself. While it does take the “geekery” out of widget-designing, it does offer a lot of power with the integration of JavaScript to help increase the flexibility of Dashcode.
I decided to put it to the test and create what I call the “Ultimate Search Widget.” It’s technically not the “ultimate” search widget out there, as there are others which can do slightly more, however those sacrifice simplicity for power while I tried to stick to simplicity and balance out the power.
What my widget will do — and again, it was created entirely in Dashcode — is allow you to search Web sites like Google, Yahoo!, Mahalo, and the like right from its interface. However, that’s not all. It’ll also allow you to search YouTube, Flickr, Digg (and yes, I Dugg your podcast), Apple.com, eBay, Wikipedia, and other sites similar to those. Again, that’s not all. With my widget I also was aiming to prevent clutter in the dashboard (this also reduces system resource use as it’s simply one widget versus four or more to do the same task). So I also included searching of YellowPages.com to find phone numbers and home addresses, weather.com to find out the local weather or the weather of a place you’re going to (not as fast as a weather widget, but far less system resources are used), and Google Maps to get directions.
All of this from a simple to use interface that is easily browsed. Probably the best part is that Dashcode allows anyone to easily edit widgets created in it… So of course I opened its source for anyone to edit and add things they want.
I attached a zip of the latest build for you to mess around with (as well as its source), just in case you were looking for a dashboard widget with this kind of functionality.
DEVONthink Professional Becomes An Information Hub
DEVONtechnologies, LLC releases DEVONthink Professional Office as a public beta. The long-awaited extension to its DEVONthink product line adds email archiving, paper capture, and Web sharing to the only document manager for the Mac that is based on artificial intelligence.
Email Archive
The advanced email archiver connects to all major email programs and imports messages or complete mailboxes to a database while keeping formatting as well as attachments intact. The simple interface resembles an email program and allows to easily select mailboxes or messages to import. In addition, the user can filter messages by flags, priority or date range, and hide already imported messages. The new ‘Export > as Email’ function can be used for both sending documents as attachment using the default email program and for replying to archived messages.
For Apple Mail, DEVONthink Professional Office installs a plugin that inserts convenient commands into Mail’s main menu for archiving mailboxes or messages directly from within the application. Also, the plugin speeds up the transfer of messages compared to AppleScript-based solutions. The email archive tool of DEVONthink Professional Office supports Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage, PowerMail, BareBones Mailsmith as well as all email programs using standard Unix mailboxes, e.g., Thunderbird or GNUmail.
Paper Capture, Fujitsu Scansnap Support
The second enhancement over the regular edition of DEVONthink Professional is the integrated support for paper capture via flatbed scanners or the Fujitsu ScanSnap. Users can scan paper documents directly from within DEVONthink Professional Office. The embedded ReadIRIS optical character recognition (OCR) makes the created PDFs searchable while maintaining their layout. It places an invisible but machine-readable text layer behind the scanned image. It is possible to run OCR on files scanned earlier without OCR, too.
In addition,the Fujitsu ScanSnap auto-feeder scanner is recognized when installed, and reconfigured if desired. The ScanSnap does not come with optical character recognition out-of-the-box, so DEVONthink Professional Office jumps in and automatically runs optical character recognition on all PDFs sent from the Fujitsu ScanSnap.
“While email programs offer means of organization for email messages, the computer’s file system takes care of electronic files. Finally, paper is kept in piles on the desk, in folders, or ‘filed’ in shoeboxes in a board. Why not store everything in one single place, organize it, and find whatever one is looking for in an instant? This is the question that drove us, and DEVONthink Professional Office is our answer” says Eric Bohnisch-Volkmann, President of DEVONtechnologies. “It brings all the data sources together, email, Web, paper documents, electronic files, and presents them in a unified ‘workbench’ perfectly tailored at organizing and navigating large amounts of data. Powered by our artificial intelligence technology unique to the Mac, DEVONthink Professional Office assists its users with determining the right place for new documents, finding exactly the items they need, and drawing relations between them.”
Web Sharing Inclusive
Finally, DEVONthink Professional Office comes with integrated Web sharing. Any database can be published on the local network as well as on the Internet with a single click. Users can search a shared database using standard Web browsers such as Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or Internet Explorer on any operating system, from Mac OS X to Microsoft Windows, or Linux. The Web interface resembles common Web search engines. Found documents can be either viewed directly in the Web browser window or they can be downloaded to the local machine as .zip files. Bonjour support allows users of, e.g., Safari to easily locate shared DEVONthink Professional Office databases on the local network. Password protection keeps unwanted guests away.
“Collecting and organizing data is just one part of the game. Sharing and collaborating is what really drives creative people. This is why we’ve added Web sharing to DEVONthink Professional Office. Making your documents or your research results available to your coworkers or just everyone on the Internet was never easier” so Eric Bohnisch-Volkmann. “DEVONthink Professional Office propels the successful concept of DEVONthink a huge step forward. with the integration of email archiving, paper capture, and Web sharing it’s now the Mac incarnation of what they had in mind when they invented the term ‘paperless office’.”
Availability And Pricing
DEVONthink Professional Office requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. It is immediately available as a public beta from here. The final release is scheduled for January 2007. DEVONthink Professional Office does not require a valid license code within the public beta period, but the email import function is limited to 200 messages per day and the OCR function is limited to 20 documents per day.
DEVONthink Professional Office sells for an introductory price of US$139.95 during the public beta period in DEVONtechnologies’ online shop. After the end of the public beta period, the regular price will be US$149.95. Users of DEVONthink Personal or DEVONthink Professional are able to upgrade for the price difference of US$60 or US$100 respectively. Upgrade coupons are available. DEVONthink Professional Office is also available together with DEVONagent as the ‘Infoworker’s Pro Office Bundle’ for US$159.95.
Tags: devonthink professional office, os x 10.3.9, fujitsu scansnap
Kernel Panics Explained
I got an email that directed me to an awesome article about kernel panics. For the people who really don’t know what kernel panics are, here is a short explanation.
A kernel panic is pretty much worst thing that could happen to your lovely Mac. It causes OS X to hang, and it can only be fixed when you restart your computer. Click to Read the Full Post »
Protect Your Apple Keyboard From Dirt And Fluid
I remember the first time I saw a plastic cover for a keyboard was at an automotive repair shop about ten years ago. Man, that thing was dirty and black. Good thing they had it as it probably lengthened the life of the $5 keyboard that the plastic was on.
I never did find such a thing at my local Fry’s Electronics or CompUSA and since I kept my IBM Model M keyboard in top shape, I wasn’t too concerned. Well life has changed and now we have a wireless Mac keyboard that seems to be collecting nuggets of food. One time I spilled some coffee and by the grace of God, none of it got into the keyboard itself. ‘I need protection!’ I thought to myself. Now it’s here. Click to Read the Full Post »
OS X Commands Explained!
I stumbled on this site which could be a great help when you work in the terminal. It’s very handy overview on most of the UNIX commands within OS X.
For the newbie but also for the expert, this is a great resource! It’s a definite bookmark for me!
Load Fans In The iMac G5s
A colleague mailed me the following how-to. I thought that it was too good to keep this for myself. This how-to is for the people that have iMac G5s. This problem is very common and can appear “out of the blue.” The fans will start producing a big noise and it only stops once you reboot your system. As you can imagine, this is very annoying! This how-to could help to solve this problem.
The SMU (System Management Unit) is a microcontroller chip on the logic board that controls all power functions for your computer. If your computer is experiencing any power issue, resetting the SMU may resolve it. The SMU controls several functions, including:
- Telling the computer when to turn on, turn off, sleep, wake, idle, and so on.
- Handling system resets from various commands.
- Controlling the fans.
Note that resetting the SMU does not reset the PRAM. Resetting the SMU will not resolve issues in which your computer is unresponsive - in these situations, restarting your computer will generally suffice.
Resetting the SMU can resolve some computer issues such as not starting up, not displaying video, sleep issues, fan noise issues, and so on. If your computer still exhibits these types of issues even after you’ve restarted the computer, try resetting the SMU. To reset the SMU on one of these iMacs:
- Turn off the computer by choosing Shut Down from the Apple menu, or by holding the power button until the computer turns off.
- Unplug all cables from the computer, including the power cord.
- Wait 10 seconds.
- Plug in the power cord while simultaneously pressing and holding the power button on the back of the computer.
- Let go of the power button.
- Press the power button once more to start up your iMac.
Unlike earlier iMac G5 computer models, the iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) and iMac G5 (iSight) computers do not have a button on the main logic board for resetting the SMU. This eliminates the need to remove the computer’s back cover to reset the SMU.
Turn Your Mac into a Media Center
In search for a good screen capture tool for my MacBook Pro (SnapNDrag is the one I went with,) I found a great site called Pure Mac. Since it had done such a great job helping me find a screen capture utility, I figured I’d browse. Guess what else I found? Mmm-hmm, a spot where a bunch of software listed all can turn your Mac into a media center. In fact, that’s the name of the page. :)
Check out the Media Center page for a good day of wasting time and then start enjoying your Mac in a new way the rest of this week. Be sure to also browse around the rest of Pure Mac to see what else it has to offer, too.
Tags: audio, software, video, media center, web site
Security Update 2006-001
Apple released another security update and yesterday I got an email from CERT Advisories regarding this. Most of the time Apple does not release a lot of information about its security updates. CERT, on the other hand, gives you all the information you might want to know. So I thought I’d share. Click to Read the Full Post »
Baby You’re a (Half) Star
iTunes is probably one of the best music managers available but it could stand for some improvement. One such advancement would the be the inclusion of half-stars. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wrestled with rating a song that just isn’t quite a four star but really isn’t as bad as a three star would project. Same goes for songs that aren’t the best, but don’t really suck like the two star rating would shout. Ugh, how I wished Apple could learn from the movie ratings in the papers.
Guess what? Looks Apple has had it all along. Some snooping hackers found that Apple is actually using a 1-to-100 based rating system. 20, 40, 60, etc. each represent 1, 2, and 3, respectfully, and thus find something in the middle and you’ll get a half-star. So if that 2.5 is needed, give it a 50 and thus 2 stars and a 1/2 shows up in your My Rating column! Happy, happy, joy, joy!
So how do you get this magic number to work? Well, head over to Mac OS X Hints’s forum and follow the links. A few people have some great little AppleScripts to help getting just a bit of that star in your rating column. Of course since this is an AppleScript hack, Windows users are forced to envy.
It’s not clear if this works on earlier versions of iTunes (6.0.1 and earlier) or on the iPod itself, but the half-star does appear in both Windows and Mac versions of iTunes. The half-star does not show in the Info window, however.
Tags: itunes, hack, half-star, applescript
Mac Training Videos
As I was checking out some of my favorite forums, I found this great resource of Apple training videos. I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time now, so I was very pleased to find out about this Web site.
The site is called Atomic Learning and it’s a great resource for not only Mac stuff but for loads of other tutorials!
The Mac tutorials can be found here. Click to Read the Full Post »
VideoEgg Publisher For The Mac Unveiled
Mac and PC Users Can Now Easily Publish, Share, and View Digital Video on the Web; Multiple Formats & Camcorders Supported.
VideoEgg, Inc., a leading innovator in Web-based video publishing solutions, today announced support for the Mac with the introduction of The VideoEgg Publisher for Mac.
The VideoEgg Publisher is a small Web site plug-in that is dramatically simplifying the way videos are captured, edited, and published online. A “universal adapter” that captures directly from hundreds of devices and reads dozens of formats, the VideoEgg Publisher allows internet users to painlessly publish video in a format that anyone can watch without worrying about player compatibilities, encoding settings, or extra software. Click to Read the Full Post »
Get More Out of Your OS X Install
It’s tough to get the most out of your system some times. But there are little things that can be done that the average user doesn’t think of. For example, Widgets are nice, but even though you don’t see them, they’re stealing all your memory from you. The more of these you have open, the slower your system will run. Having a ton of applications will also reduce system performance, surprisingly enough to some. Memory is one the largest keys to upping the performance curve and I’m always telling people, “too much is never enough.” Memory is cheap, so ram (pun intended) as much in as you can.
If you’re curious what else you can do to gain more performance from your Mac OS X install, I’d suggest taking a look at the Mac Guide: Enhancing Performance Of Mac OS X. It’s got the basics, but again, basics many don’t think of. Give it a read over and apply your new found knowledge…and close some of those Widgets, please. :)
Tags: os x, enhancing, performance, guide
10 Apps Every Mac Needs (and More)
If you’re new to the Mac or been around for a while and are just looking for something new, then there are two sites you need to check out. The first is a great starter. 10 Apps Every New Mac User Should Download is an excellent list put together by Paul Stamatiou. The list has basically everything you’d need such as web browser, e-mail, instant messenger, ftp/sftp client, back-up and text editor to name a few. I found a lot of my favorites on the list that I already use but did find a couple of other applications I hadn’t seen before. So even an old dog like me found something useful.
The second list is one that has many of the applications Paul has but then there are a whole slew of other titles he doesn’t. There’s also one other difference, every application here is free. It’s all open source and hence the name, Open Source Mac. The sites slogan reads, “Free and open-source software is good for you and good for the world. This is the best OS X software that we know of.” It has my favorite ftp/sftp client, Fugu, as well as the awesome VLC. Man, without VLC, I could had never watched Chris Pirillo on Call for Help when I yanked the video off of my ReplayTV back in the day. VLC is powerful…and free.
The list goes beyond Paul’s with a lot more categories. With RSS readers, audio editors, graphics editors, IRC clients, and even office suites, this should be your second stop on your trip of hunting for the best in OS X apps. And don’t let the free price fool you, I’ve used a lot of these programs and some of them beat out the commercial competition! This is all good stuff and it all deserves to be on any Macintosh Hard Drive.
Tags: mac, os x, freeware, open source, software, 10 apps every new mac user should download
Freeway: Quality Web Design For The Rest Of Us.
Freeway from Softpress is an application aimed towards people who want to create a Web site and need something more powerful than the average entry level tools available on the Mac but not as complicated as something like Dreamweaver. With version 4, Freeway moves far beyond its humble beginnings by incorporating some extremely useful high end features that allow you to craft some truly beautiful Web sites, all while getting your hands as dirty as you like. Click to Read the Full Post »
Set Up Print and File Sharing with Windows
Apple still has a large hill to climb up in this Windows world and like it or not, Mac users are faced with working with Windows clients and servers. So how can we, as Rodney King once said, just all get along? Well Apple and Microsoft (surprised you, huh?!) do have little tricks to help break down the wall and talk to each other.
I found a great resource that may help our readers set up a mixed network to allow for both file sharing and printing. With informIT’s article, you’ll be up and running in no time and grabbing MP3’s off of your Windows server to play on your Mac mini’s iTunes like my wife does. You’ll also be printing to that snazzy color laser printer from your PowerMac with the same amount of ease.
I’ve been doing this for a few years and have to say this is probably the most easy to understand and helpful resource I have seen. It even helps with that yucky Active Directory nonsense! So give it a try and starting listening to the Christmas music on all of your computers Christmas morning!
Macintosh Internet Resources
You know, I have always used the word “pique” as in, “Hmmm, that has piqued my interest.” But two dictionaries I checked list that usage as a secondary / alternate meaning for “pique.” Okay, never mind.
Here is a short listing of the Macintosh resources that I like (well… the ones that I have found so far).
I hope there are some new ones here for you! Click to Read the Full Post »
The Unofficial Apple Weblog, another great Mac resource
You’ve already figured out that Lockergnome is one of the best spots on the Web for learning more about Mac OS X and your Apple computer, and if you’ve read my articles here you also know about my Ask Dave Taylor site, where I field lots of Mac-related questions, from the simple to the, um, sublime.
But there are some additional Web sites worth adding to your bookmark file, including Ric Ford’s terrific MacInTouch and the troubleshooting nirvana of MacFixIt. You probably know those too, however.
So I’d like to introduce you to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, where not a day goes by without some goofy posting or three, a smart piece of news analysis, or a pointer to a slick app or widget worth investigating. To get you started at TUAW (as they call it), let me list my ten favorite articles… Click to Read the Full Post »
Create Your Custom Music Discovery Station Now
Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?
“Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.”
A new service allowing you to create your own radio station, shareable with friends, and made up with as many, custom-created and personalized music-channels as you like has made its public debut in the last few hours.
Accessible only by invitation up until a few hours ago, the new service has just gone officially public making your search for the perfect radio stream a tangible reality; if you know what you like, this is the tool that can help you consolidate a full music channel around it, which can be shared and sent over to your best friends.
Here is a music discovery service designed to help you find and enjoy music that you’ll love. It’s powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken.
It works by taking your personal music selection (any song or artist you may like to name) and feedback (”I like this”, “I don’t like this”) and use then the information available within the Music Genome Project to create music stations that play songs that are in tune with what you have selected.
“
Only the music counts. We don’t care how popular the artist is, who’s backing them, and we don’t care which genre bin they usually belong in. Only the music matters.
“
Robin Good’s New Media Picks of the Week
New media picks of the week is my weekly basket of tasty new media resources, online tools and new software tools I think are worth your attention.
Try for yourself, download, install and learn some pretty interesting things with these great new resources and tools.
Here is my selection for this week:
- Full-featured digital photo-sharing service
- Online clearinghouse for digital images
- Online service to host video clips
- Open-source platform for internet television (Mac)
- Custom postal stamps creation service back online
- Seamless VoIP mobile connectivity over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G
- Visually plot breaking news by location
- Resources and tips for creative thinking
- ICTs for critical thinking
- Free machine-translation service integrates on your web site
- Free digital calculator with tape
Wordpress Becomes a Major Part of My Online Life
I know this article might be a bit of a drift from my normal Mac and Apple Switcher comments, but I just realized how important Wordpress has become in my everyday life and thought I’d share a few ideas and comments with you. Wordpress is a free personal publishing platform. What is that? Well if you’re looking for a blog, or a website of any type, and you’re willing to work a little with CSS layout, Wordpress is a great solution for you.
Now to get a good feel of Wordpress you can check out the basics by going to a website called Blogsome and sign-up for a free account where you can have a Wordpress blog with almost all the administration and options available to you in the stand alone version. Spend some time and play with it, learn what happens when you make changes in the style sheets and templates, change themes, find themes and add them. Just get under the hood and learn what you can do with Wordpress.
That’s how I started and before long I was uploading Wordpress to my hosted websites and installing it in a matter of minutes and I had it up and running in an hour or less. In fact, if you go to The Mac ReviewCast website, you’ll see that it’s a simple layout, nothing fancy, but it looks clean, professional and easy to read, That took me a few hours to set up and then every week I’ve been adding a little extra to it and eventually I plan to have both columns on the left and right full of special features and graphics. This is the fourth website I’ve done in Wordpress and it will not be the last. If I can figure an easy method to move my database with stories and members and graphics and features from here at Surf-bits to Wordpress, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.
Read the Entire Article at Surf-bits.com
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Dedicated to the world of OS X, Carbonized and Cocoa downloads, terminal tips, GUI tweaks, cross-platform help, application skins, new fonts, and anything else we care to share with the Apple community-at-large.
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