Friday, July 20, 2007

The Apple Blog (9 сообщений)

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  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
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  • Quick Tip: Window Title Bar Icon

    Yeah, sorry, I don’t really know how to title this little trick. Let me see if I can set this up so it’s clear what you’ll be looking at, before you actually look. (Or you can skip me stumbling over myself and just watch it anyway…)

    When you’ve got a window open - be it Firefox, TextMate, etc, etc - there’s a title to that window at the top, and if it’s a file, there’s an icon positioned to the left of it. A nice trick in OS X is that you can drag that icon to the Finder to create an alias, or by holding down the OPTION key, you can make a copy of that file someplace as well.

    Also, if you hold the COMMAND key (Apple key if you’re new ’round here) when clicking on that icon (or any part of the title in that bar) it’ll show you the path in which that file resides. So for instance, lately I’ve been going through some Ruby tutorials. The folder structures are many and a few levels deep. As I’m a relative n00b to this, the folder structures lose me quickly, so being able to CMD click on the title/icon at the top of the window and quickly see where I’m at is a huge help.

    Ok so you’ve basically got it now. Below is a quickie screencast I recorded so you visual folks can get the idea. There’s no sound - it’s not broken, I just didn’t record any.

    Window Bar Trick from nick and Vimeo.

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  • Share Your iTunes — Simply

    Simplify MediaThanks to innovative software Simplify Media, sharing your killer iTunes library has never been easier. In the good ol’ days before DRM was such a hot topic, libraries could be shared unfettered across the Net. Simplify Media makes that possible once again by allowing users to invite others to browse and stream their iTunes to their own systems, whether they are in the next room or on the next continent.

    The name is truly appropriate, I’ve found, as installing and configuring Simplify Media couldn’t be, well, simpler. There are no old-school Stuffit files to contend with; nor does Simplify Media require installing packages or rebooting. In the spirit of Mac simplicity, simply drag the app from the disk image into your Applications folder and run it. Configuration is nothing more than selecting the folder or folders with media you wish to share. The default /Users/username/Music/iTunes is already added to the list, so for most users, no additional configuration is needed.

    Sharing Media

    Simplify Media List
    Adding friends (and, please, only share with people you know; pirating music and videos is bad for you) is also easy. In the main Media List window (pictured right), click the Invite button and you’re presented with three different ways to invite a friend: a preexisting user’s screen name, by email direct from your account (as opposed to mail from Simplify Media’s server which is more likely to be flagged as spam by a friend), or by copying to the clipboard and pasting, for example, to Twitter, an IM client, or your blog.

    When friends join Simplify, they “invite” your screen name. The two of you are connected are able to browse and stream — but not save files from — one anothers’ iTunes libraries. Simplify Media even streams WMA files. Obviously, DRM-locked files of any kind will not play on a remote computer unless that system is authorized to play them.

    Is It Legal and Safe?

    According to Simplify Media, sharing in such a way is legal because songs cannot be transferred from one person to another, burnt to disc, or accessed when a peer is offline. Also, each person can share with no more than 30 others, thus minimizing both the legal liability and the risk of nasties that can happen when connecting directly with other systems.

    Interoperability Is Simple, Too

    Those nasties can, actually, present an issue for others or those using Parallels, VMware, or Boot Camp, because Simplify Media is cross-platform and available for Windows as well as Mac OS X. In addition, the developers are working on a version to support both WinAmp and Windows Media Player — not that we Mac folk would care. ;-)

    Simplify Media is exactly what has been missing from iTunes for years. This little app is completely free and promises not to spy on you. Running it for three days, I’ve yet to see the first sign of instability, and it handles streaming over 6-Mbps DSL quite well.

    The only kickback Simplify apparently gets is that streaming a track pops open a window with links to purchase the currently playing album, should you decide you wish to do so.

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  • Captivate for Mac?

    captivate.jpgAdobe’s Captivate, the demonstration and training simulation creation software, is moving into the final development stages of it’s third version. I had the privilege of being a beta tester, and I must say that it is really cool. It really is easy (and fun) to create interactive software simulations and demos.

    But unfortunately the program is stuck on Windows, and there are currently no plans to bring it to the Mac. When I questioned the Adobe engineers about it they responded in a very polite, almost rehearsed way.

    “Captivate is built from a program that ties deeply into the core Windows. To bring it to the Mac would require a total rewrite, something that we’re not sure we can justify at this point. If we had significant interest from Mac users, it’d be a different story”.

    So what do you guys think? Is there interest in bringing Captivate to the Mac? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

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    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/07/19/captivate-for-mac/#comments



  • Color Your iPhone: Let your teenage girl come out

    Don’t think that just because you’ve got a new phone that cost as much as some PC’s that you are somehow above customizing the look of your phone. You know good and well you want to be in the crowd of 13-year-old teenage girls who customize their phones by changing out the shell of their phone with something pink and then sticking on fake diamonds all over it. Admit it.

    Unfortunately I can’t help you out with your freak need to look like a 13-year-old girl, but I do have something here that can help you out with changing the color of your iPhone!

    ColorWare iPhone

    ColorWare has just released their Customized ColorWare iPhone product.

    You can send in your iPhone to get colorized for $149 (you’ll need to part ways with it for 8-10 days). Or you can purchase a new iPhone at $649 for the 4GB or $749 for the 8GB.

    They have 29 color combinations available letting you pick practically any color you want.

    This certainly isn’t for everybody (I personally love the simplicity of the iPhone’s design)…but if you’ve got the cash and your in to it, then these are guys to do it for you.

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  • Save time in Safari

    Single Click Downloading

    safari I was cruising around looking to spruce up my desktop and got to a page that offered many wallpapers and different screen dimensions. All of these dimensions are of course linked to a file that has to be saved somewhere. A simple click on the link causes Safari to open a new window or move away from the page to display the file. This means the user has to then save the file, usually with File-Save As, pick where to save it, and click Save. What a waste of time! Instead of the maddening save dialogue boxes, simply hold down the Option key and click on the link. This tells Safari to download the file to the Desktop (unless the downloads folder was changed in Safari preferences) in one step.

    Fill out forms

    Safari will take a look at your ‘me’ card in Address Book and fill out web forms with anything it knows. Click on the first field (Name: for example) and press Command-Shift-A. This will fill out the forms in a flash. If the information isn’t spilling in correctly or not at all read this.

    Emailing and Saving images

    I taught my family how to do this with .Mac and we share a lot more pictures these days. Drag a photo from Safari onto a new email message and Mail attaches the file. However, if the image is dragged to the Mail icon in the Dock, Mail creates a new message but puts the URL of the image instead. Also if you CRTL-Click on an image Safari offers the ability to save to the Desktop (or whatever your download folder is). Hold down option and this changes to Save As…

    Links, Tabs, and Windows

    Links can also be opened in a new tab or window. To open the link in a new tab press Command and click. To open a new window use Command-Option-Click. Now in Safari 3 Tabs and Windows can be combined, separated, and reordered!

    Disable In-Browser View of PDF Files

    Safari can render PDF files in the browser using Preview by default or Acrobat if installed. However, Apple put the ability to view PDF’s in Preview/Acrobat in the most unlikely places! Open System Preferences, go to the Quicktime preference pane, and then the Advanced tab. Click on the MIME Settings… button. Under the Still Images category, uncheck the PDF Image box to disable this feature. When clicking on a PDF link, Safari will download the file instead of opening it. If ‘Open Safe Files’ is enabled, the default PDF reader will launch.

    Assign a keyboard shortcut to a bookmark

    OS X includes the ability to create and override keyboard shortcuts for most applications. Bookmark the URL and put it in the Bookmarks Menu folder. It is better to choose a short name for this bookmark than the suggested one Safari provides. Copy the text of this bookmark name  (i.e. if you bookmark theappleblog.com and save it as TAB, copy ‘TAB’) Then, open System Preferences and click Keyboard and Mouse. Click on the ‘+’ button. Choose Safari for the Application. Paste or type in the title of the bookmark. The key combination has to be unique, so a good practice is to use Control and a letter (like ^T for TAB).  Once that is done, click Add. Quit Safari and reopen. Click on the Bookmark menu to see the newly assigned keyboard shortcut. This won’t work if you want to assign it to a bookmark folder.

    Do you have a favorite time saver in Safari? Please comment and share with the rest of the readers!


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/07/19/save-time-in-safari/#comments



  • Snapz + Skitch = Jing

    Jing projectAlright, so while the title of this post is more or less accurate, the polish and full suite of capabilities are not there. But Jing certainly does a nice job of combining the power of Snapz Pro X’s video capture abilities with the simplicity of Skitch to grab screen captures.

    Jing’s image editor is lightyears away from being as awesome as that of Skitch, so beyond the ability to grab a screen capture, there’s little similarity. However like the MySkitch service, you can quickly upload your pictures and video to an online storage service. The video capture function seems slightly limited, in that you select a part of your screen, and [from what I could tell] it doesn’t allow the option to follow your cursor around. Additionally, the video is compressed into a .swf Flash format. That’s ok for embedding in websites, but limiting if you want to do much else with it.

    Limitations aside, Jing is a really nice collection of tools and services for those who want to produce screencasts and take screen captures to share easily. Jing is available for both Windows and OS X. For now it’s free, but based on this quote,

    It's something we want to give you, along with some online media hosting, to see how you use it. The project will eventually turn into something else.

    I’m weary of a bait-and-switch down the road. Ok, maybe bait-and-switch is a bit of a harsh term. Likely this method of product offering is just a good way to determine product and service placement for future projects. But I read it as the service not remaining in this format forever, but only for the data-collection period. Anyway, my conspiracy theory be darned, it’s worth a try.

    On a side note, I’ve got a handful of Skitch invites if anyone wants them. Email me. I’ll post whenever I get more, but for now they’re all gone.

    Oh, and incidentally, I still used Skitch to grab/post the Jing graphic for this post.
    hahaha

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    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/07/19/snapz-skitch-jing/#comments



  • Bookmarklets are Power Tools for iPhone

    LifeClever posted 17 Bookmarklets that iPhone users should be using. For the most part they are simple functionality that would be ideal to have built-in to Safari, but for now these 3rd party solutions will have to suffice. Get the ability to search a page for words/phrases, open links in a new windows, list links, and find similar sites. Further, there are bookmarklets for searching for just about anything without having to explicitly hit those sites first.

    I don’t have an iPhone (no, I’m fine, really) to test these out on, but assume they work pretty well. It’s nice to see the user/dev community stepping it up and taking care of the things that Apple has left out (at least in the Rev A). Interesting too, to see the way people have been altering their development to address the iPhone’s limitations framework. The likes of bookmarklets and iPhone/Safari-specific web apps such as Leaflets and nytimesriver.com are proof that a tilt toward developing for the Apple-made mobile device is indeed in progress. I guess that’s the answer to my question posted a few weeks back…

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  • Dash - Quicksilver for Windows

    Yes, this is The Apple Blog. However, as many of our readers cross over [to the dark side] for work, or maybe aspire to be mac owners one day, i think it’s useful to point out Dash for Windows. So who cares? Any Quicksilver users out there should care, at least if they’re frequently stuck in the world of Windows.

    Dash is the latest attempt for the Microsoft platform to emulate the power, flexibility, and usefuleness of Blacktree’s Quicksilver. There have been several popping up in the past year, with just as many disappointments (in this Quicksilver-addict’s opinion). But on the surface, Dash seems to be a great step in the right direction. It’s clean, and looks mighty fine, and the functionality is even fairly fluid - at least moreso than it’s Windows-based competition.

    Worth a try if you spend more than a little time on Windows…Course it’ll cost you $20 to register under the special pre-release pricing - $50 normally. (Quicksilver by the way, is free.)

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  • Democracy is now Miro

    miroAs the world of internet tv heats up, there are more and more options to keep track of. Joost has made the most noise, though YouTube has been a large internet-based presence. Well for most of the time there’s been Democracy Player, which allowed users to grab just about any internet video streams and play them in a single application.

    If you’ve launched Democracy Player recently you may have found it’s ripe for an update - and a name change. It shall henceforth be known as Miro. Miro looks a little more polished, and boasts some great features. Many have been there all along, but the whole experience feels much more fluid now. Grab HD content, YouTube, BitTorrents, and just about anything else you can think of from around the web.

    A nice update and change to a good piece of software. Have a look when you’ve got some time to kill.

    Thanks to Chris for the tip

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    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/07/18/democracy-is-now-miro/#comments





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