Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Perian. Swiss Army Knife For Quicktime.★
No, I still haven't got Leopard, and no, I still haven't managed to get this blog back in order - this is just a quickie.Whilst hunting for a solution for my quicktime movie file that played only video and not sound, even though VLC played both, I stumbled across a shiny gem inscribed: "Perian".
Codecs galore, in one simple, easy to find place. It's open source and donation driven. Check it out if you're having quicktime blues, it supports pretty much everything.
Till next time!
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Tuesday, December 18, 2007 1:02 PM
Saturday, July 7, 2007
App Pick: RCDefaultApp★
Ever had files that refused to open with your application of choice? I own Dreamweaver but much prefer TextMate so when I go to a folder and see all my files with Dreamweaver icons I have to drag each of them to TextMate on the dock before I can continue my development work.Control clicking, and setting always open with is far too tedious, and the whole process just bugs me. Dreamweaver won't let me say, "Hell, I don't like you, relinquish your grasp on my files and give them to TextMate", and TextMate won't take the offensive and snatch back what belongs to it.
So I found a great app called RCDefaultApp so cunningly named from Rubicode. It's good, it's very good indeed.
Install it, and it simply adds a preference pane to System Preferences. Open that pane and every option, preference and parameter related to the art of double clicking files is available to change as you see fit.
With a few clicks I had confirmed TextMate's position as Big Daddy. With a few more I could've given the title to TextEdit. Which would have been blaspheme, and then I would've been burned.
So check it out, its worth having around for when a filetype goes awol, or starts misbehaving.
RCDefaultApp
Happy Mac'ing!
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Saturday, July 7, 2007 7:22 PM
Saturday, May 5, 2007
App Pick: iPhoto Diet★
With a new template in development and on the way, I thought it apt to take the time out and write yet another 'Take' on an application.
Meet: iPhoto Diet. If you have a messy iPhoto library with images all over the place, unassigned, duplicated or you're library is just sitting pretty at a leisurely 10gb too fat, then iPhoto Diet may just be your savior.
True to its name, iPhoto Diet puts iPhoto, on a digital byte-saving diet. It checks for duplicates, redundant backups, unrotated originals and of course strips icon thumbnails (allow iphoto to generate more up-to-date versions that my just save some space).
iPhoto Diet can also check for unassigned photos, or in other words, photos that aren't in an album or categorized in any way.
My only advice would be to use the program slowly, and when you're not using the computer. It'll take probably 5 minutes if you check all the options, but I'd recommend that you perform actions one at a time. For instance, checking Move: Unassigned Photos, and selecting New Album is a good start. The same goes for duplicates.
I wouldn't move photos into the trash first however; if you find a photo you want to keep in the trash it can only be dragged back into the library, where it becomes unassigned and nearly impossible to find. However, If you move them to a new album, you can restore chosen photos into albums and then to delete the unwanted, repeat the process with 'Move to iPhoto's Trash' selected.
I think that iPhoto Diet could do itself a favor by improving its gui and usability even more. For now, it does the job, and it does the job nicely. Check it out at FreshMeat
Labels: app-pick
★ 3 Comments. | By Skippy, Saturday, May 5, 2007 9:24 PM
Thursday, May 3, 2007
OpenOffice, with added Matrix.★
NeoOffice 2.1, the Mac 'port' of OpenOffice with an injection of matrix-like oomph was unveiled not long ago to the percussion-like fanfare of thousands of jaws world-wide hitting floors.You see, NeoOffice has earned the title of the one-and-only office application for OS X. It trumps Microsoft Office's clunky gui, poor loading time and weak functionality and is very much on-par with the iWork applications, although I would say that Pages has quite the upper hand when it comes to creating page layouts and churning out template based content.
Gone are the days of clunky OS 9 gui's, poorly designed Microsoft Office mock-ups, and sub-standard word processors. NeoOffice boasts a delicious aqua interface, clean gui and oh-so-wonderfully designed buttons.Install a new dictionary with ease via your internet connection (no hunting for the Office CD), and switch input languages with the click of a button. NeoOffice isn't (as afore mentioned), a sub-standard mock-up of Microsoft Word, purporting to deliver the same features at a 0 Alex Price tag, its the true-blue real thing (with added spice).
The argument that a product is worth every penny of its price tag is mute in this instance. NeoOffice is open source, and has proven to its users that its developed with extreme care and dedication, by people with a passion.
What would you rather have? An application that is pumped out lethargically by a giant organization paying cubical-refined employees to code for a word-processor app one day and a video game the next, or an application that has been created with zeal, attention to detail and energy by people who really care, and therefore do it in their own time for free?
If you ask me, OpenSource is moving faster these days, towards a common beneficial goal, than anything before it.
Overall application verdict?Download it free, today!
NeoOffice is not just a substitute for MS Office, its a complete and far-superior replacement.
http://www.neooffice.org/
Happy Mac'ing!
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Thursday, May 3, 2007 6:04 PM
Sunday, April 29, 2007
App Pick: It's about time to learn the switch to Mac (1.0)★
Straight from the 'It's about time products' company, comes an all-singing, all-dancing new Mac switcher guide.I've always pushed for more and more switching guides, tips and just anything that will make a new user's or even accomplished quicksilver-toting veteran's lives easier. It's actually why I started the good old MacTake, the more help there is out there, the easier it will be for everyone.
Switch to Mac features a tastefully designed and intuitive gui, and covers the essential basics of OSX. If I had access to this app when I made the switch, I would've found the whole task a lot less daunting. The way that Switch to Mac helps you to analyze your previous Windows habits and learn the more logical* Mac approach. You'll find split screen video presentations of both Windows and Macintosh systems in there, as well as a fairly new and intuitive presentation structure; users can simply click a link to the task that they'd like to perform & learn about, rather than sit through the whole thing learning the rigid basics.
However, I'm a little less pleased at the price tag. It's $29.95, not exactly on the cheap side for something that I could only see someone using a couple of times.
In a way the program has disadvantaged itself; because the content is so memorable and well-explained, I don't see users having much of a need to refer back to it at all.This might be a good choice for a new switcher, picking it up with a new Mac for an additional $30, but I feel that the price tag, however well justified might keep the rest of us away from it for a while.
The better news is that there must be quite a switcher market out there, expect to see more products like this soon.
You can check Switch to Mac out by clicking here.
* (sometimes more logical for those of us who harbor that cynical dark-side - me included)
Happy Mac'ing!
Labels: app-pick
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Sunday, April 29, 2007 1:38 PM
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
App Pick: Joost.★
You're downstairs, watching TV. Its pretty good quality, no real problem there but it strikes you that from what you've heard, Alex Lindsay would be tearing his hair out with everything from the color-depth to the resolution of the broadcast.
Total recall is on and David Hume is just about to walk around a creepy corner when suddenly he just stops in his tracks. Dead still, not moving at all. Has he noticed something on the floor? Is he interfacing with the Internet via some kind of retina display? No, because the clock on the wall next to him has stopped too and there is a sort of motion blur around his arm.
5 minutes later he jumps back to life, the clock resumes ticking, and he walks around the corner to find nothing but shadows. Suspense to the extreme? Welcome to Joost.
If you haven't heard of it, check it out at http://www.joost.com/; its going to revolutionize the way you watch, think-of and interact-with tv.
I've had a beta-version for a little while now, and I am in a lucky position to be able to review it, as it is, right now.
Imagine a TV on which you could choose what you wanted to watch, when you wanted to watch it. Its all out there, everything that's been released on the tv, so far, to date. Want to check up on an old episode of Joey? Did Michael ever do anything about his chicken-legs, and get hooked up with the hot girl from the fish-store? Pick up the remote, use it like a cell phone keyboard and type in Joey Fish store, and satisfy that little niggling curiosity.
That's the potential I think that Joost has. But right now? Well the quality is good enough, but not good enough to keep Alex Lindsay's hair on. HD is far, far away right now, but entirely feasible in the future I'm sure.
You see, Joost is tv content delivered via the Internet.
There are going to be some bugs to work out though, the GUI isn't really that great. Yes its shiny, yes its semi-transparent, glass-like and slick, but is it easy to use? No way!
I think that Joost need to get their act together in that respect, they need to bring over more of the features and feel from (for instance) the Sky Satellite GUI, or just your average cable tv gui. It's what we're used to, and right now it's working great. Sure, implement some enhancements. Joost has already brought in more features for its GUI than Sky could dream of. There are thumbnail images of what each channel looks like, funky 'My Channels', and Smart channels; it's all just a little foreign though, the enhancements are good, but they need to be a litle more familiar.
When Joost makes it into our living rooms ( I don't think there's any doubt about if it will ), we don't want to learn a whole new system of channel navigation. Joost has built support right in for the Apple remote, I'd like to see them make that jump and build support in for the Fox cable remote, Sky remote and whatever else is out there.
Joost is borderline standard media broadcasting. It's tv, but its not a podcast. It doesn't quite make it out into the equal, free playing field yet, and if you ask me, that's what is going to get it right into your living room. Media corporations are going to be more willing to take one small step at a time in the direction of equal playing field broadcasting, rather than making the big jump in there.
I can see a future version of Apple TV with Joost built right into it. In fact, someone could get started hacking the box (albeit an elegant, popcorn-popping sleek shiny grey cube), and sticking a Joost player right on there.
So on a final note, the advertisements; oh yes, the dreaded word. Well in actual fact, I simply love the approach Joost have taken. Its one ad at a time, not 20, 30 or 40. Its 1 minute of advertisement, 10 minutes of show, 1 minute of advertisement... etc. Its all in bite-sized chunks. Admirable.
My suggestions would be to include a few pre-loaded advertisements with the Joost install and then if the user's connection stalls, play them from the hard-disk, whilst buffering the broadcast in the background. It would mean that people with slower connections would see a lot more ads, but it would give a more smooth experience, and I doubt that they'd notice.
So ladies & gentlemen, Joost has the potential and its delivering a good chunk of it right now. I've been a little tough on it, but at the end of the day, its in beta and I've seen beta applications completely transform and dominate as their production cycle matures. Expect to see it on your Apple TV soon.
Happy Mac'ing!
Total recall is on and David Hume is just about to walk around a creepy corner when suddenly he just stops in his tracks. Dead still, not moving at all. Has he noticed something on the floor? Is he interfacing with the Internet via some kind of retina display? No, because the clock on the wall next to him has stopped too and there is a sort of motion blur around his arm.
5 minutes later he jumps back to life, the clock resumes ticking, and he walks around the corner to find nothing but shadows. Suspense to the extreme? Welcome to Joost.
If you haven't heard of it, check it out at http://www.joost.com/; its going to revolutionize the way you watch, think-of and interact-with tv.
I've had a beta-version for a little while now, and I am in a lucky position to be able to review it, as it is, right now.
Imagine a TV on which you could choose what you wanted to watch, when you wanted to watch it. Its all out there, everything that's been released on the tv, so far, to date. Want to check up on an old episode of Joey? Did Michael ever do anything about his chicken-legs, and get hooked up with the hot girl from the fish-store? Pick up the remote, use it like a cell phone keyboard and type in Joey Fish store, and satisfy that little niggling curiosity.
That's the potential I think that Joost has. But right now? Well the quality is good enough, but not good enough to keep Alex Lindsay's hair on. HD is far, far away right now, but entirely feasible in the future I'm sure.
You see, Joost is tv content delivered via the Internet.
There are going to be some bugs to work out though, the GUI isn't really that great. Yes its shiny, yes its semi-transparent, glass-like and slick, but is it easy to use? No way!
I think that Joost need to get their act together in that respect, they need to bring over more of the features and feel from (for instance) the Sky Satellite GUI, or just your average cable tv gui. It's what we're used to, and right now it's working great. Sure, implement some enhancements. Joost has already brought in more features for its GUI than Sky could dream of. There are thumbnail images of what each channel looks like, funky 'My Channels', and Smart channels; it's all just a little foreign though, the enhancements are good, but they need to be a litle more familiar.
When Joost makes it into our living rooms ( I don't think there's any doubt about if it will ), we don't want to learn a whole new system of channel navigation. Joost has built support right in for the Apple remote, I'd like to see them make that jump and build support in for the Fox cable remote, Sky remote and whatever else is out there.
Joost is borderline standard media broadcasting. It's tv, but its not a podcast. It doesn't quite make it out into the equal, free playing field yet, and if you ask me, that's what is going to get it right into your living room. Media corporations are going to be more willing to take one small step at a time in the direction of equal playing field broadcasting, rather than making the big jump in there.
I can see a future version of Apple TV with Joost built right into it. In fact, someone could get started hacking the box (albeit an elegant, popcorn-popping sleek shiny grey cube), and sticking a Joost player right on there.
So on a final note, the advertisements; oh yes, the dreaded word. Well in actual fact, I simply love the approach Joost have taken. Its one ad at a time, not 20, 30 or 40. Its 1 minute of advertisement, 10 minutes of show, 1 minute of advertisement... etc. Its all in bite-sized chunks. Admirable.
My suggestions would be to include a few pre-loaded advertisements with the Joost install and then if the user's connection stalls, play them from the hard-disk, whilst buffering the broadcast in the background. It would mean that people with slower connections would see a lot more ads, but it would give a more smooth experience, and I doubt that they'd notice.
So ladies & gentlemen, Joost has the potential and its delivering a good chunk of it right now. I've been a little tough on it, but at the end of the day, its in beta and I've seen beta applications completely transform and dominate as their production cycle matures. Expect to see it on your Apple TV soon.
Happy Mac'ing!
Labels: alex-lindsay, app-pick, joost
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 4:57 PM
Monday, April 16, 2007
App Pick: textmate★
I just finished my 30 day trial of textmate, and I have a few thoughts on it. Its brilliant. Go get it; I just bought it, and since I am your perfect role model, emulate me. Review over (Feel the love?).
Happy Mac'ing!
Okay so no? Not getting off that easily? Didn't think so.
The new Streamk website, and Dunhenry beta website are all being coded in textmate, from scratch and by hand; that isn't even a bragging statement now though as textmate makes writing markup a precise, web 2.0 activity peppered with loads of charm.
If you're a blogger, web developer, developer, (and I'd even go as far to say: writer), then Textmate may be the program for you.
I personally just threw Dreamweaver 8 in the bin. Although its a lovely, incredibly useful program, it just doesn't compare to textmate's ease of use, minimalistic gui and sleek loading time, or even in my opinion (à mon avis), code libraries.
And thats where I think people are going to stop and muse; Dreamweaver has got to be the main competitor for Textmate.
One side of the coin suggests that textmate is for pros and people already familiar with code; but the flip-side of that is Dreamweaver's price tag. It really doesn't scream 'Beginner level app' to your eager ears (unless you 'purchase' it from the pirate bay... but then you're immediately tagged as a 'script kiddie')
There are some features I'd like to see brought over from Dw8, such as the drop-down code suggestion menu, and the automatic tag closer ( triggered by a '</' keystroke ). However, these little things may not even encourage best-practice coding (of which I am an advocate).
So definitely go on over and check textmate out, on the macromates website.
Happy Mac'ing!
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Monday, April 16, 2007 7:06 PM
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
MainMenu Update (Support for 10.4.9)★
Well, I loved this app before, and I love it now. MainMenu initially ran into some trouble with the 10.4.9 update, but I'm glad to say that the dev's have now fixed that, and released a juicy update.
Definitely check it out, over at:
http://www.santasw.com/
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Wednesday, April 11, 2007 3:09 PM
Friday, March 30, 2007
App Pick: Onyx★
Consider Onyx to be MainMenu's big daddy. Its not a light app that does a few little tweaks, its a heavy, incredibly detailed app that does just about everything tweak-related on your mac.
From cleaning up the system to changing OS X parameters and hidden settings, Onyx is your digital deep system config and cleanup butler.
Its definitely a must-get app, and will come in handy when you want to say, change the start-up behavior etc.
Check it out at:
http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/download.html
Happy Mac'ing.
Labels: app-pick
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Friday, March 30, 2007 10:37 AM
Thursday, March 29, 2007
App Pick: Natural Worlds★
So I may just be back on track with posting rhythms it seems, although I've yet to prove this.
I stumbled across a wonderful app called 'Natural Worlds'. It loads up in your dock and plays one of three available world sounds, Thunderstorm, birds or 'gurgling creek with birds'. Worlds can be submitted and created via instructions on the dev's website, my point is; there's no limit to the number of possible worlds that could be created and freely distributed.
If you are working on a project requiring intense levels of concentration, but the 'sound of silence' is buzzing through your skull, or perhaps you just need the iMac to pump out a few dB's of noise to mask the fan over-head, load up natural worlds!
Not as intrusive as music but its just as effective at silence-killing.
The sound quality of the 3 worlds is sublime and really quite convincing. My reflex to the bird chirps is sometimes to raise my head, initiating the process of shouting to quiet them down.
Primary complaints is that the app sits in the dock instead of the right side of the top menu bar along with spotlight etc. Perhaps this is a good thing, as it clearly shows that the app is open and that the ambient sounds of lush rain forest and birds chirping aren't coming from inside the filing cabinet.
Natural Worlds gets a total recommendation from me, definitely check it out at:
http://www.mts.net/~gbeggs1/NaturalWorlds/index.html
Consider making your own world and submitting it... I'll be doing that as soon as I find the time also! (Hyena's anyone????)
Labels: app-pick
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:05 PM
Saturday, March 10, 2007
App Pick: Growl★
Most Mac users have at least come across growl in one form or another, but if you haven't then you're in for some fun.Growl's simplest function is to alert a user in a non-interfering and discreet manner of what is happening on their system. Its most commonly used for IM apps like Skype or Adium, to alert a user that Person X has just sent them a message on Y account, eg:
Any app that has growl support built in, will automatically register with the growl service and update the user on things like transfer progress, to 'burning complete'.
Growl has an impressive range of customizable preferences, everything from the position, shape, size and design of the notifications, to the option to have a notification read out by the system speech synthesiser.
Changing appearance of notification, on this window you can see the option for speech.
The most annoying thing about Growl, is that it isn't bundled with OS X at all. No, users have to download it (for free) at http://www.growl.info/
What I find to be so, special with Growl is that it is understanding of a user's ability to process information. Growl doesn't shout things out at you, it doesn't wave things in front of your face till you finally throw in the towel and pay attention, it is discreet and quietly provides the user with updates, and then merely fades into the murky land that lives behind the desktop.
Happy Mac'ing!
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Saturday, March 10, 2007 2:17 PM
Monday, March 5, 2007
Adium★
Sam Stafford (versuscom.com) is a great friend and colleague of mine, and recently made the switch to a Mac. I've invited him to do a new switcher story and contribute to the MacTake (along with Alasdair Corbett (theworldtodayblog.co.uk).When he made the move to his Mac Sam brought with him a copy of windows messenger for Mac so he could IM to his chatty buddies on his new shiny white box. Upon hearing of this I had to shake my head a little and wonder about the ethical issues of running things like boot camp, msn messenger and ms office on the Mac.
"Bah!" I said, in my polite and tactful way. "Zis is a terrible miztake! You must use Adium".
Adium ( http://www.adiumx.com/ ) is a absolutely brilliant IM (thing). It'll connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo and much more, within its shiny, well designed gui.
The level of control you have with the app is almost disturbing. You can configure everything from the messages layout, to window capacities and growl notifications. There's almost no part of the gui and behavior that you can't customize.
Best of all, Adium doesn't behave like some 'nextbestthing' to your normal IM apps. In most (in my opinion, all) cases its genuinely better and more featured packed, yet it still retains the core functionality for custom emoticons, nudges and whatever else is dreamt up.I can happily say also, that Adium's update cycle leaves none wanting, and each update really (and I mean really) packs a punch. Kudos to the dev team, and well, I love it!
Check it out:
http://www.adiumx.com/
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Monday, March 5, 2007 7:31 PM
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Flock.★
I was sure that Firefox and Safari were simply the best browsers out there, but I was wrong. Terribly wrong.Today, I met Flock 0.7.11 (catchy, but free). Its a 'sort of' port of Mozilla and retains all of what makes Mozilla shiny, tasty and vaguely web 2.0. I was familiar with this app back in its beta days, but simply lost contact with it after deleting the installer and its been great to rediscover it in its v0.7 glory.
It's really about the features in Flock. User friendly and aesthetic GUI, and a plethora of beautiful little features that make grown men drool, and young babies cry.
Flock is more than web 2.0 ready, its almost web 3.0 ready. It'll automatically detect that you have a blogger account (when u sign in), and after quickly giving it your login details, it'll present you with the option of being able to post to your blog from within the browser gui.
It'll do something similar with photo gallery accounts like flickr, although I haven't looked into to it yet.
Flock also has a bar at the bottom that you can drag snippets of text onto, to store and retrieve later.
Simply put, this app is dead handy, and has become the ultimate browser for me. For something in its pre version 1.0 development stages, this browser is just stunning.
Check it out at http://www.flock.com/
technorati tags:App_Pick
Blogged with Flock
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Sunday, March 4, 2007 5:23 PM
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
MainMenu (Nifty App!)★
Every now and then one comes across a very nifty app and feels a desire to spread the love. Well, I stumbled across MainMenu ( http://www.santasw.com/ ) a while ago but being an emotional chunk of granite and well, you know, qu'est-que c'est? L'amour? C'est quoi?Information you need to know first: MainMenu is made by the folks at santasw.com, its free, beautiful, and completely essential (for me anyway).
MainMenu will perform things like health checks, restart the dock, restart finder, clean caches, clean log files, repair permissions, and much (oh so much) more.
After installing, a little icon will appear up by the nether-nether land of the airport and bluetooth menu, and of course, spotlight. MainMenu allows you to choose what icon you want to appear (and since i've changed mine i have no idea what the default one actually was) It should all look something like this:
The icon to the left of the bluetooth icon is my MainMenu icon.Clicking the icon reveals the great looking gui.
From here everything is at your finger tips. Dock acting up? - Restart it:
Same goes for toggling showing of invisible files in finder.
Check out the options under 'Other Tasks':
Advanced users might create maintenance scripts to run say, a log clean out every Friday afternoon. MainMenu can hide or show its log window ( it remembers your settings ) which looks something like this during a permissions check:
There is no aspect of this app that disappoints me, aside from its decided inability to make me a turkey sandwich. ( Please add this at some point Devs. )Though roughly recommend using this app, check it out at
http://www.santasw.com/
Happy Mac'ing.
★ 6 Comments. | By Skippy, Tuesday, February 20, 2007 7:44 PM
