I tend to listen to Podcasts (one of the best is MacBreak Weekly) while I work. But when my wife starts talking to me from the other room, I have to stop what I’m doing to navigate to iTunes just to click Pause. It finally reached a level of annoyance that made me fired up Script Editor and throw together a little script to do it for me. This is just about as simple an Apple Script as you can get:
If you’ve been following along with this blog, then you know I love Apple’s Aperture application. I upgraded from iPhoto shortly after I started using my first DSLR camera (the Nikon D80). Aperture is pretty straight forward to use. It’s elegant and intuiative, but there are many different workflow options when managing a large photo library. I started by reading through the Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 1.5 (Apple Pro Training)which is a wonderful reference.
The new D80 has kept me pretty busy. This is my first “Pro-sumer” camera. I’ve never even focused a camera my self let alone adjust the f-stop and shutter speed. It’s all quite interesting. I rely heavily on Wikipedia and the Nikon user groups for help. But when it comes to the processing side, I’ve taken full advantage of the 30 day trial of Aperture. After playing around with it for a week or so, I can say that it is far superior to iPhoto, but you will pay the learning curve tax.
Versiontracker and Macupdate are some great services for Mac owners. With a paid membership you get regular notices when new versions of software are released. I let my membership lapse though so I periodically have to go out and look to see if I have the newest versions (because it makes me feel good to have the bleeding edge). But now there are some new ways to accomplish this tedious task.
Tax time usually means that I remember how much I wanted to organize my finances last year. I’ve used a nice little application called iBank from IGG Software. It has suited most of my needs over the past year and is about half the price of Quicken for the Mac. But this year I had the itch to see if I was missing anything by using independent software like iBank. I purchased Quicken 2007 from my local Apple store and got to work moving all my finances over from iBank.
Remember back in the day when you had to BUY mapping software? I can. I plunked down $30 for some mediocre software that was out of date in a year. Then Mapquest saved us. It brought forward free software to find out where we could go and how to get there. Google has since elevated online maps to an impressive level. There is still a major issue with creating waypoints and paths.
Yes, the Finder could be better. I think many of us are hoping that the next OS release brings tabbed finder views and a simple way to deal with moving and viewing files. But until that day comes, there is Pathfinder by Cocoatech (PF4). It's been touted on 43Folders a couple of times, here and here. Cocoatech have produced a quality product that feels right at home on my desktop.
Now that we all have a bunch of new holiday photos it’s time to get them uploaded to Flickr and other various photo sharing sites. If you’re running either iPhoto or Aperture on the Mac you have limited choices to automate the upload process. I have used the plugin ApertureExport in the past, but to purchase the full version is kind of pricey for a one trick pony. After trying out some of the options out there I’ve finally settled on PictureSync from uVerse.
A little while ago,I wrote about using Podtube to download flash videos from Youtube. As Youtube pulls more and more videos off, due to complaints from studios like NBC, I enjoy keeping local copies for future viewing. Well, I'm happy to report the easiest way yet to capture these video. VideoDL is web service that simply fetches the flash file and provides you with a simple download link. Just put in the URL from a video that you want to keep.
Today I had the need to print out a calendar for my wife. She needed a blank printout to write a schedule to hang on her wall. My first thought was "I think there is a template in Apple's iWork Pages that could do this." Well, that was a poor assumption. No such luck. I went to the iWork community site to find a template but nothing was really useful.
