Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The Apple Blog (12 сообщений)

 rss2email.ruНа что подписаться?   |   Управление подпиской 

  RSS  The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
другие подписчики этой ленты также читают >>

  • What's eating my disk space?

    grandperspectivelogo.jpg Working on a MacBook Pro is a real joy. It’s a beautiful and amazing machine, and I don’t know how I ever got along without it. But I’m painfully aware of the pitfalls associated with working on a laptop - especially limited disk space. So when I let unneeded files or apps slip through without being deleted or uninstalled, it becomes obvious rather quickly. If my space drops significantly, I’m manually sifting through my files and folders to find the culprit.

    But in this month’s Macworld I was thrilled to read about GrandPerspective, a handy little (free) utility that shows your disk space usage graphically. You can set it to scan a particular folder or your entire disk, find the space eaters, and reveal them in Finder for removal. After running it once I was able to reclaim a couple gigs.

    It’s a great little utility, a must have for your laptop. Did I mention it’s free?

    ,





  • Moody: Mood tag your tunes

    Moody Logo For the past month or so I’ve been using Crayon Room’s Moody app almost religiously. It’s just so good.

    Moody lets you tag your iTunes music based on color with “upper red” being for sad-intense music and “lower green” being for happy-calm music. There’s no right or wrong way to tag a tune, so it’s an extremely personal app that customizes itself to your taste/needs.

    Tagging your tunes

    moodytag-1.png Tagging your music can be a bit of a daunting task at first (especially if you’ve got a huge collection), but it’s well worth it. It’s a fairly simple process of simply listening to your music and clicking on the corresponding “mood color” that you feel the song is. After clicking the color block, the next un-tagged song plays letting you move quickly through your collection.

    Listing to your mood

    moody4.png After you’ve tagged a substantial number of songs (you certainly don’t have to do your entire collection to make this work), all you have to do is go to the “Listen” tab and then select the color blocks that fit the mood your in. You can select as many or as few as you’d like. Moody will then start playing the songs tagged with that color and you’ll have a dynamic playlist created for your the exact mood your in right at that moment.

    How does it work?

    Moody Playlists Moody works closely with iTunes by creating a series of playlists for each color block. When you select the mood colors you’d like to listen to, it creates a temporary playlist with the songs from those colors and plays them.

    What’s really cool about the core of how all of this works, is that the mood color is attached to each song file…meaning you can take your songs out of iTunes and they’ll still have their “mood” attached, letting you create your own mood playlists in other apps/platforms (such as your iPod or to Windows Media Player on Windows).

    Currently the Moody tagging app only works on Mac but a Windows version is coming.

    Oh, and I almost forgot…it’s free. Go check it out.

    , ,





  • Apple's iPhone Bluetooth Headset Now On Sale

    applebluetoothheadset.png Apple’s much anticipated Bluetooth headset is now available to order in the Apple store.

    It will run you around $130 and is scheduled to ship in 2-4 weeks.

    The headset also includes the iPhone Dual Dock and iPhone Bluetooth Travel Cable.

    Thankfully there are no blinking lights on this headset. It keeps true to Apple design and is small, sleek, and unobtrusive.

    Thanks for the tip Chris.

    , ,





  • iPhoney

    Mac software maker Market Circle has released iPhoney, an open-source iPhone simulator for web developers. See how your websites look on the iPhone in both portrait and landscape.

    It lacks a few iPhone features, such as pinch and zoom, but will let you test while developing apps for iPhone (without using your iPhone). I think this is a great piece of software. Even though I have an iPhone, it’s inconvenient to try and view sites on it over and over while testing. It’s much easier to just keep iPhoney open and click refresh.

    I tested the site with Digg (digg.com/iphone) and Leaflets (getleaflets.com), and they both worked well. I look forward to testing one of our iPhone optimized sites on iPhoney.

    iPhoney

    , , ,


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/07/18/iphoney/#comments



  • Postage printing on Mac

    Endicia for Mac I currently run a small urban vinyl toy shop where we run all of the shipment processing from mac-based software.

    At the moment we exclusively use USPS for all shipping (both domestic and international), and lucky for us there is some software that helps streamline that entire process.

    Endicia for Mac provides an interface for calculating, weighing, printing postage, and a few dozen other things. It has probably cut package processing time in half (if not more).

    What has really be fantastic is that it will fill in all the various customs forms for you instead of having to hand write it all yourself which not only helps cut down on time but helps eliminate mistakes.

    We use Endicia in conjunction with a DYMO LabelWriter 400 to quickly print off postage, delivery confirmation, and address labels.

    A couple of other highpoints:

    • Discounted domestic and international postage (up to 8% in some cases)
    • Automatic Address Verification - Helps avoid mistyped addresses
    • Mailing Log - Very useful when needing to find a previously shipped package
    • Bulk postage payment - Purchase your postage upfront in “bulk” instead of having to pay one transaction at a time
    • AppleScript integration
    , ,





  • Flickr Interestingness: 7-18-2007

    Here are a couple of photos with Apple related content from Flickr. I have plans of doing this type of post regularly…we’ll see how that turns out.

    Wake Up

    This is a killer angle that shows a near perfect reflection of his computer screen in his coffee.
    Wake Up

    Home Office

    This pic almost looks like an ad for Coke…
    Home Office

    Ci-Ci & PB

    Don’t sit there and say this isn’t cute…you know it is.
    Cat on Mac

    ,





  • Add Ringtones to your iPhone

    iPhone Ringtone Hack Hack The iPhone has posted an in-depth walkthrough on how to get custom ringtones working on your iPhone.

    It requires quite a bit of hackery and, if you’re not careful, could very well kill off your iPhone altogether.

    I honestly don’t think I’d want to risk that considering it costs a small fortune to purchase an iPhone in the first place.

    If anything, it’s a pretty good read just to learn more about the inner workings of of the iPhone (atleast from a software standpoint).

    The usual disclaimers apply. It’s your own fault if you break it. :)

    , ,





  • iCal Turns Five Today

    iCal Birthday Today Apple’s iCal application turns the rip old age of five.

    In case you hadn’t noticed, the iCal application ican stays a constant “July 17″ which, not surprisingly, also happens to be the day it was released to the masses (ie. its birth).

    iCal is currently at version 2.0.5 with a fairly major update coming when Leopard is released next decade.

    Hat tip: TUAW

    ,


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/07/17/ical-turns-five-today/#comments



  • 7-17-2007: Community Activity

    Here are some active topics in the community that might be of interest to you.

    No Tags





  • Leaflets: Suite of iPhone apps arrives

    Leaflets

    Design/interactive shop Blue Flavor, has released a suite of small iPhone apps called Leaflets.

    Straight from the horses mouth:

    Leaflets are fun, useful applications designed to run fast on your iPhone—even over AT&T’s EDGE network.

    Apple’s iPhone allows developers to harness the power of web-based development to create applications that can be used on the iPhone via Safari.

    Leaflets currently provides 9 applications that help you access all sorts of info via your iPhone:

    • Search (Google, MSN, Yahoo, Wikipedia, etc)
    • Feeds (read any RSS feed)
    • Newsvine
    • App List - Browse, rate, and comment on a complete directory of iPhone apps.
    • The New York Times
    • Upcoming
    • Flickr
    • del.icio.us
    • Le Tour de France

    All of these apps move at blazing fast speeds as they are optimized to run over AT&T’s EDGE network.

    Be sure to check out their screenshots & demo to get a feel for how things work!

    , ,





  • Optimize Content for the iPhone

    Developers have been buzzing since Jobs’ announcement at WWDC to make Safari the unofficial SDK for the iPhone. Many have voiced (or screamed) their disappointment, while others have rejoiced. But despite the variety of opinions on the matter, everyone has questions about how to develop and optimize content for the iPhone.

    Fortunately Apple has released a handy guide on the Developer Connection outlining some high level concepts on how to optimize content for the iPhone. Topics such as user iPhone interaction, audio and video experience, and Safari’s supported media (in case you haven’t heard, Flash Player didn’t make the cut) are covered. Here’s a few points of interest:

    The finger is not a mouse

    iPhone dev guide - finger & mousePerhaps the easiest to remember and forget. The finger doesn’t have the same precision as a mouse (which I think is painfully obvious right off the bat), and the iPhone handles it’s own special sets of events and gestures that are NOT equal to the desktop. The guide outlines all of the gestures and results as well as supported events.

    Think windowless

    iPhone ViewportThe iPhone doesn’t have a resizable window like a desktop browser, it has a viewport which it scales content to fit. Once a user double taps on the page, Safari looks at the closest block level element (div, ol, table, etc.) and zooms to fit.

    Optimize readability & images

    iPhone fontsizeEven though Safari automatically scales text to a “comfortable” size after a double tap, you can feed it an iPhone specific stylesheet to optimize the readability of your site or application on the iPhone. Safari also has a unique user agent string so you can track iPhone’s Safari separately from its big brother.

    GIF, PNG & TIFF images can be up to 8mb. Animated GIF images can only be up to 2mb. Anything larger and Safari will only display the first frame of the animation.

    Whether you’re a web developer or not, this guide is an interesting read, especially if you haven’t been able to play with an iPhone yet. But if you are, this is a must read. It was obvious to me during the 5 minutes I got to play with an iPhone in the store that web content needs to be tailored to the device. This guide should make things alot easier.

    ,





  • TechTool Pro 4 Review: OS X Utility Suite

    TechTool Pro has always been known as a big player in the community of Mac utilities, but has maintained its unique approach to combining an extremely powerful program with a very user-friendly interface.

    Unfortunately for utility developers, OS X is a fairly robust system and doesn’t need a lot of monitoring or performance tweaks (in my opinion). That makes a review of a product like TechTool Pro 4 very difficult. Do you really need a product like this? Read my thought and then you decide.

    Just as in previous versions, TechTool Pro 4 allows you to get your hands only as dirty as you want. The program divides its myriad of features into five sub-categories that are displayed as beautiful icons in the application’s only window.

    techtoolpro4_1.jpg

    Suites: TechTool Pro’s automated test suites are my favorite feature of this application. Suites allow you to run an automated group of tests to check a variety of components and sub-systems. If you don’t really care to drill down into the many features or individual tests, simply choose the Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced test suite and walk away.

    Tests: If an automated test suite is too much for you, TechTool Pro 4 offers individual tests to check components, drives, files, etc. You can run a single test, or a number of tests simultaneously, which I absolutely love. After the tests are run, you can read the detailed report of the results, including whether or not the component has passed or failed.

    techtoolpro4_2.jpg

    One of my favorite features within TechTool Pro’s tests is the ability to press the little ‘i’ button next to each test to read a detailed description of the test. Not quite sure what the “Mathematics” test is? Neither do I, but you can read all about it with the click of a button.

    Performance: This category contains features to enhance the overall speed of your computer system. However, I found this area a little lacking, again because of OS X’s ability to keep itself fairly slim and fit. Basically, you are able to perform a volume optimization and directory maintenance. Maybe I was thinking back to my PC days, but I expected some memory optimization, prioritize CPU processes, or some other technical optimization magic.

    Tools: Beside great tools like Data Recovery, Volume Journaling, and Secure Wipe, TechTool Pro 4 also has the ability to create an emergency startup partition without needing to reformat. This “eDrive” gives you immediate access to your basic Mac OSX system as well as a copy of TechTool Pro to allow you to perform diagnostics and repairs. Say goodbye to bootable CD-ROMS and carrying a repair CD with you on the road.

    It took me only about 3 minutes to set-up an eDrive which I was able to boot from easily by holding down the option key during boot-up.

    Safety: TechTool Pro’s Safety tools provide you with a way to automatically run diagnostic and protection feature while your system is running. For example, the Protection Setup feature allows you to backup the volume structure of your hard rive, which will assist TechTool Pro with recovering lost files or volumes.

    Let’s recap.

    Price: $98 from micromat.com

    Pros: Easy-to-use interface, varying degrees of diagnostics, fairly comprehensive reporting, clear and detailed documentation.

    Cons: The high price, statistic die-hards will want even more information.

    Final Word: If you are overly concerned about the status of your system and want an easy way to keep your system running like a well-oiled machine, this product is for you. Many people have proclaimed that TechTool Pro is the best utility for OS X.

    If you’re like me and have never had any problems, and are performing regular backups, you may want to stick to a few high-quality freeware diagnostic tools and save the $98 for an iPhone (heaven knows you’ll need it). However, if TechTool Pro 4 was available for PC, I would buy it in a heartbeat!

    No Tags







rss2email.ru       отписаться: http://www.rss2email.ru/unsubscribe.asp?c=6893&u=24004&r=311667163
управлять всей подпиской: http://www.rss2email.ru/manage.asp
читать наш блог: http://www.olevarty.ru