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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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How To: Access your iPhoto '08 Library from your browser
Since iPhoto ‘08 came out back in August, I’ve had mixed feelings on its new features.

I’m not a huge fan of Events and there are lots of little things that just annoy me now. One of which is that the iPhoto library now exists as a “package” instead of a readily accessible set of folders. Even after doing “Show Package Contents” on the library file it can get pretty hairy trying to actually get to the raw photographs.

Generally the only time I really have a desire to get to said files is when using a browser to upload photos. You can’t just navigate to your library files and grab the picture you want. There is a way to make it possible, though and it’s fairly straight forward.

1. Access the iPhoto Library Folder

Control-click (or right-click) on the iPhoto Library file and choose “Show Package Contents.”

2. Create Folder Aliases

After doing “Show Package Content” you should now see the folders and files contained in the package.

You’ll see two folders, “Modified” and “Originals,” which contain the actual photo files that iPhoto uses. These folders contain sub-folders which seem to be, for the most part, identical to the Events you might have set up. These are the folders we want access to when getting single files to upload in a browser.

What we have to do is create a folder alias to give us access directly to these folders outside of the iPhoto Library package.

Control-click on the “Modified” folder and choose “Make Alias” from the contextual menu. Leave it named “Modified alias” and then drag the new alias folder to the same directory that your iPhoto Library is in.

Repeat this for the “Originals” folder.

You can then rename the aliases to whatever you choose. You should end up with something like this:

3. Access the Files

Chances are the aliases still won’t give you access to the files when you are just in the Finder, but they will work when you are using a browser to open them.

Take a site like Flickr, for example. I’d like to upload a few of the original photo files to my account. I’m presented with the “Choose File” upload buttons and I can now access the files from within the browser:

And there we have it! It’s definitely a bit of a hack job for what should be a simple task, but until Apple changes this format we seem to be stuck with this solution.

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Riiiight…
For the most part, I find Apple’s marketing messages to be clever, engaging and somewhat accurate. Usually, pretty imagery accompanied by a five to eight word sentence is enough to make me drool and start fumbling around for my wallet to fork over my hard earned cash.

But then there are times where Apple’s wording misses the mark and makes me snort in disbelief (remember the “too thin” iMac banner on Apple’s site?). Such is the case with the most recent email I just received touting Leopard:

Yeah, right. After witnessing my co-worker’s MacBook Pro get totally nuked after an attempted upgrade and reading some of the horror stories on the support forums, I’d have to say that there are plenty of folks out there that would beg to differ. And I’m sure there are many who would be angered by this message (though I guess it should be noted that Apple isn’t really touching on the quality of the install, just how simple and “easy” the process is).

But in all fairness to Apple and Leopard, the majority of installs seem to have gone pretty well. Despite some discouraging stories, I’m looking forward to upgrading my machine. Well, when I have an entire day to dedicate to creating backups, deauthorizing apps and actually installing the OS that is.

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Leopard's Green Tint
Separate from the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death - it’s generally a Windows term, if you’re somehow unaware…) that some folks experienced after upgrading to Leopard, there’s word of a new bluish, or greenish tint that’s occurring on some user’s screens. Up until now I’ve been familiar with the bluish tint that results from Fast User Switching, but the symptoms I’ve heard of from Leopard are much different.

A friend’s MacBook Pro seemed to progressively get worse as the operating system’s uptime increases. Over that time, the tint to his screen got greener and greener - similar to the way an old CRT would look when it lost one of its color channels. A reboot fixed the issue, but it wasn’t a one time thing - nor does it seem to be predictable.

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of similar occurrences found around the internet, thus, little else to point you toward at this time. If you’ve experienced this issue, we’d love to hear about your experience - what happened leading up to the tinting? How many times has it happened? Is there any rhyme or reason to when it occurs? Or maybe my friend’s MacBook Pro is just going south…Help us shed some light on this problem!

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Mail 3.0: Links in subject now clickable
So either no one has emailed me with a URL in the subject line since I’ve been a Mac user (a little over 3 years), or Leopards Mail 3.0 has a new “feature” (if you want to call it that).

No, I don’t send emails to myself. Someone emailed me and in the subject they had a full link, which I then in turn noticed was now clickable when you view the message. It isn’t clickable in the listing of messages…just when you are actually viewing the email.

I haven’t fully made up my mind on if this is annoying or convenient. For some reason the first that that popped in to my head is how PR folks are going to start included URLs in the their subject to try to get you to click through to the site more…a negative thing.

Your thoughts? Or is this something that’s existed for a while and I’ve just apparently been oblivious to it all this time?

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Spaces Review
I’ve been using multiple virtual desktops for years, in just about every operating system imaginable. Since sometime in 2004 I’ve used them in OS X, generally in the form of the now-mostly-defunct Desktop Manager. It’s a fairly good program, but lately I kept noticing an error reading: “<Error>: The function `CGSUniqueCString' is obsolete and will be removed in an upcoming update. Unfortunately, this application, or a library it uses, is using this obsolete function, and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system performance. Please use `CFSTR' instead.” Troubling.

As I mentioned, Desktop Manager is dead, for all intents - still downloadable, but no one’s really expecting any further updates, and the Softpedia link to the latest update, 0.5.4, is really a link to 0.5.3. I’m not expecting the error to go away, so I was looking for another virtual desktop application. I went through a number of others, and just as I was about to give up - Apple announced Spaces. So, more than most other things, I was looking forward to Spaces.

Sadly, it’s not nearly the beauty I’d hoped. Yes, it does have all of Apple’s usual flash, but in many ways, it’s sadly lacking.
(more…)

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JLab MiniBlaster

I’m not the biggest fan of Apple’s ear buds, or headphones of any kind for that matter, so when I received JLab’s MiniBlaster to review, I was pretty stoked, but, I was pretty sure I’d be disappointed. These speakers are small (about the size of 4 old nanos one on top of the other) and I didn’t hold out much hope that they’d sound much better than the original tape deck in a ‘82 Ford Fiesta. But, I promptly loaded up 4 AAA batteries, slipped my Nano into it, cranked up the volume (how loud could these things be?), queued up a track, and hit play.

One word: Wow.

Now, one caveat, I’m not an audiophile and these things aren’t B W Nautilus series, but they rock. I am very impressed. They aren’t going to make your review mirror vibrate in your car, but if you’re looking for some speakers to play music in a meeting, or listen to your iPod while you’re studying, or play some music in the hotel room on vacation, these will definitely do the trick.

The package says 5 hours of battery life at max volume, which, in my brief testing, seemed to hold true. This isn’t the greatest, but it does include a charger

The only major flaw I see is that you must use the included iPod nano case (the one that came to review was white). It’s purpose, from what I can see, is to secure the iPod in the speakers, which it does well. But, if you LOVE your current case, or white won’t work for you, you’re going to need to look for something else. I however, haven’t used a case in the past and don’t mind the one that comes with the speakers.

Would I recommend these speakers? Well, if you’re in the market for sub-compact speakers, then I’d defiantly recommend them. If you’re looking for something to replace your home hi-fi system, these aren’t the speakers you’re looking for, plain and simple.

They are available here for around $50.

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Community Activity: November 5, 2007
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xScope: Web Developer's Toolkit

xScope, from the guys at IconFactory, is a suite of on-screen tools for web and creative professionals that includes Rulers, Screen overlay, Loupe, Guides, Frame, and Crosshairs. The tools are meant to assist in the design and testing process, allowing you to measure and inspect your website or software program on-screen in real-time.

Rulers

Rulers let you position a translucent set of perpendicular rulers over any element on your display, and adjust the width and height giving you pixel measurements. The current position measurements change as your mouse moves, so you can get the coordinates of any element relative to, say, the top left of your website. This is really helpful in trying to determine the actual spacing of content and sidebars, for instance.

The ruler feature works well, and does very simply what many browser plugins and standalone applications can’t seem to get. It’s the tool from xScope I used the most in my testing.

Screen Overlay

The Screen Overlay gives you a window that lays over your browser and shows you the available content area of every major browser, IE and Mac. It includes IE 4+, NS4+, Safari, Firefox and AOL and all 3 popular sizes: 640, 800 and 1024 (and a custom size option, maybe for a WAP or iPhone site?).

Most people design their layout within constraints from the beginning, so while this tool is somewhat useful, it’s also a little overkill for most developers.

Loupe

I have tried out several loupe programs but the loupe in xScope is simple and effective. It shows you a super blowup (up to 600%) and tons of useful information including HEX and RGB color, Hue, Saturation, and X & Y coordinates (from the top left of the display). You can copy the current color, copy the blowup image, lock the current settings, or freeze the mac’s display - all without a button or interface on the loupe. Simple and elegant.

Guides

The guides do just what you think - they put vertical and horizontal guides on your display, just as with Photoshop or many other graphics applications. Only these guides are global - they stay on top of all your applications and are not clickable unless xScope is selected.

The guides are a feature I did see much benefit from using. One feature I think would make them very useful is measuring the distance between any two guides. That would allow you to create two guides based on elements on a web page and measure the distance between them, but that can be done with the ruler so it’s not a feature that is really missed.

Frames

The frames are 1px thin boxes, just like the crosshairs only they are containers that you can draw to any width and height. You can get the exact dimensions of an element or frame content on a web page. You can make a frame an exact width and height using the frame wizard, and can specify the X and Y coordinates also.

One interesting feature of the frames is you can set the height of the frame based on a predefined ratio and the width. This is a great feature for video editors, as they could overlay a box and see what a 4:3 ratio video would look like cropped to widescreen (2:3 or 16:9).

Crosshairs

Crosshairs give you a simple, easy to see visual of the current X/Y coordinates of your mouse. You see the entire vertical and horizontal guide as a solid black line that tracks your mouse movement.

Used with the loupe, you could get the exact pixel coordinates of a dead pixel on your display, for instance.

Overall Opinion

xScope is a solid, well-built application for creative professionals who demand pixel-perfect accuracy. The suite has virtually every feature you could need to measure, troubleshoot and perfect your websites and software programs.

At only $16.95, with a free trial download, you can’t lose. Download xScope and give it a try.

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