December 2007
Google Gives us a Triple Treat →
This week has been a pretty busy week for Googlers, as a lot of Google Services and Products have received considerable upgrades. The latest in line are Google Reader and Blogger. Google Reader has added a couple of handy features in Drag and Drop Support and Feed Recommendations, While Blogger has added support for OpenID in the comments.
The addition of Drag Drop will be greatly helpful to...
Review: Wicked Lasers Elite 150+ →
155mW. 532nm. $699. Green. All of those can be used to describe the newest addition to Wicked Lasers’ product lineup, the Elite Series. As you might imagine, Wicked Lasers specializes in powerful and expensive exotic lasers. I wouldn’t call them laser pointers as they are much more powerful than your typical red laser pointer. This Elite Series laser is classified as a Class IIIb laser product, as...
November 2007
Then There Were Seventeen →
Time to brush up on your design history: Pentagram asked Hillman Curtis to make a short film about them. At the start Paula Scher narrates the partners’ various comings and goings (and demises) at breakneck speed – pay attention at the back!
Did you know that although named Pentagram for the five partners in 1972 (Alan Fletcher was reading a book on black magic at the time) the name only made...
Take a CandyBar 3 video tour →
Filed under: Cool tools, Tips and tricks, Odds and ends, Leopard
If you’ve ever used CandyBar before, you probably already grabbed version 3 when it was released the other day. But just in case you haven’t seen it in action, Ged put together this great screencast of just how easy it makes controlling the look of your icons and Dock. I especially love the icons inside the...
ConceptShare V2 Sneak Peek →
We’re getting really close to launching ConceptShare V2, the first major upgrade to our online tool for design collaboration. We’ve been testing it, but we know that we can’t possibly find every last bug ourselves. We’re setting up a testing account where you will be able to get a sneak peek. In return, we ask that you kick the tires and report any issues you find.
Please go to the ConceptShare...
Run IE on your Intel Mac, if you absolutely have... →
If you’re a Mac-based web developer, a sysadmin at SomeBigCo, or an Outlook Web Access user, you might find yourself needing to use MS Internet Explorer from time to time. No, not IE for Mac OS X, frozen in amber within Applications folders around the globe; I mean IE for Windows, the hairy scary Active-X enabled browser that for better or worse represents a huge chunk of the web-surfing...
Leopard Trick - Secondary Mouse Button →
Feeling irritated to reach those far away F8 to F12 key for activating Space, Exposé, or Dashboard for your Mac? If you use double-button mouse, this trick will be very useful.
Follow these simple steps :
Go to System Preferences
Enter Exposé and Spaces Preferences Pane
Click on Exposé tab
Expand the second option box
Hold down one or more modifier keys and choose the modified...
Tip: Enhance QuickLook with Plugins →
I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite new features that was introduced with Leopard is QuickLook. This oft-forgotten feature allows you to preview files without ever having to open up an application, and it’s only a space bar click away.
Now, a team in Japan has released what appears to be the first external plug-ins for QuickLook, and they really add some awesome functionality to this...
Mac 101: Photo Booth tricks →
Filed under: Software, Mac 101
I’ve got a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, so Photo Booth is a big hit in my house. They love to mug for the camera and send silly snapshot to grandma and grandpa. I’ve used it quite a bit, and thought I knew all the tricks. This morning, Macsupport has pointed out a few new ones. First, you can disable the countdown if you want to snap a photo immediately...
Run IE on OS X →
You can have several versions of IE installed side by side… try that on a PC ;). Once You’re done with IE, drag it to the trash, and it’s gone. ies4osx makes use of wine to install and run IE. And wine needs a Intel processor…
ies4osx
dFlover Wordpress Theme →
dFlover was one theme we were thinking to use on our site but after so good feedback we decided to give this lovely resource for download. This is a dark theme with lot of flowers (some like it and even some didn’t…)
Features:
Compact Wordpress theme.
Wordpress 2.3 Compatible
Included Flickr and Gravatar Plugins
Installation Notes
Unzip and replace wp-content in your Wordpress installation...
10.5: Use Preview to merge or create multi-page... →
The new Preview.app in 10.5 has many new features. One that appears to be undocumented, however, is the creation (merging) of multi-page PDF documents. It’s simple:
Use Preview to open up the two PDFs you would like to merge. Choose View » Show Sidebar (or click the Sidebar button). Make sure both PDFs are visible on the screen at the same time. When the Sidebar pops out, you will see...
ies4osx: Run Internet Explorer 5/6/7 Natively in... →
Without using Parallels, Crossover or Bootcamp, or even having a Windows Partition! Today we’ll be using Wine to emulate Windows and run all version of Internet Exlorer, which will make for a much lighter overall system footprint. It will also integrate perfectly into OS X.
I get asked this one a lot by web developers so I thought I would throw this up here for posterity. Not everyone wants to...
Office Paintball Photo Shoot →
See how the photo was taken by watching this YouTube video. It wasn’t so much taken as composed: five separate elements were shot a number of times to get the right images, then those integrated and tweaked with Photoshop. Credit goes to Brandon Voges at Bruton Stroube. To see more of his work, click on Portfolio, then select his name from the list of photographers.
iPhone & iPod Touch Wallpapers →
Here are some my favourite iPhone & iPod Touch wallpapers that I’ve found online. I can’t take credit for any of these, so if you get a chance, send a note to the artists/creators of these wallpapers for such great work!
From Bartleme Design
Get these wallpapers here.
From Flickr
Get these wallpapers here.
If you’re looking for other options, there’s always Google!
Lights, Camera, Crochet! →
Director Aaron Duffy has combined his love of crochet with stop-motion to create The Special Guest. His new studio, SpecialGuest, is dedicated to the use of stop-motion, CG and cell-animation, and has created some quite charming story-driven animations. See them at his crafty website. Link
Google to Launch GDrive Soon →
For how long has this rumor been going around in the blogosphere? Well atleast this time Wall Street Journal believes that Google is working to release a service rumored to be GDrive pretty soon. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on specific online storage plans aside from “storage is an important component of making Web [applications] fit easily into consumers’ and business users’ lives.”...
CandyBar 3 →
Panic and The Iconfactory are delighted to announce today the launch of CandyBar 3, the latest and best ever version of our venerable icon-changer. So, what’s new? Quite a bit! Leopard Ready
CandyBar 2 doesn’t work on Leopard. There were just enough changes in the new OS that it wouldn’t work as it was.
The good news is, CandyBar 3 is fully Leopard-compatible. In fact, it...
Developing a Wordpress Theme →
Wordpress is one of the most successful blogging platform which we too are currently on. From the past few articles we have been giving out a few cool wordpress themes for download. Instead of coming up with some more themes, we decided to write a tutorial on how to develop a wordpress theme which we are sure will help a lot of you to design as you wish and bring them out into wordpress.
We are...
Four Minutes Past Gill Sans →
The perfect Christmas gift for any budding typographer this year has to be this lovely Font Clock by Sebastian Wrong (for Established & Sons) incorporating 12 different fonts. The only problem is you’ll have to put a few more hours in to afford one.
10.5: Scroll background windows via the mouse →
I just noticed that in 10.5 you can scroll in any unfocused window by simply moving the cursor above it and start to scroll up/down with the mouse wheel. No need to pull the window into focus.
[robg adds: You could scroll background windows in 10.4, too, but you had to be able to see the scrollbar; Command-dragging would then scroll the window. In 10.5, as long as you can see some of the...
Undercover 2.0 Giveaway →
A few weeks ago, the great people over at Orbicule released Undercover 2.0. For those of you who don’t know and haven’t read our review, Undercover is a security tool that helps you recover your Mac if it is stolen.
Undercover 2.0 dramatically reduces its already low memory footprint by about 75% and also reduces its CPU and internet usage by only “calling home” when your network connection...
MacDust: Because Vacuums Are Too Noisy →
After trying and looking for several Mac “Cleaning Apps” I came across MacDust from The Apple Geek. At first glance, MacDust appears to be a simple and elegant cleaning app; however, it also brings in many more obscure features that other apps like Onyx don’t have.
MacDust includes basic cleaning functions that most apps of this kind have, like Cache and Log cleaning, but many more are also...
3 Leopard Apps That I Am Looking Forward To →
Today marks the 1-month anniversary of when Leopard was released to the masses. Now I haven’t seen any statistics yet, but based off what I have seen, I am going to say that Leopard was a smash success.
In this last month, Apple has pushed out one update of Leopard, and developers all across the globe have pushed out updates of their own. As of now, all of the major applications I use have been...
Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site →
I just re-found this article from Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain (of 31three.com) in which he details the process for his redesign of the ExpressionEngine site. I love seeing this kind of step-through for a design, and love his attention to the small details.
View this site →
Unzipped file list in Quick Look view →
Quick Look shows archived file list without unzipping after installed Zip.qlgenerator.
A Preview of OmniFocus →
The internet is saturated in GTD (Getting Things Done) mania, a system created by Religious Figure GTD Guru David Allen.
David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” has been hailed as the in-vogue system for, naturally, getting things done. Or as I like to think, a to-do list on steroids. I will admit, I’ve read David Allen’s book, and it does make sense.
As for keeping all of my to-dos in one...
Tutorial: Hack your iPhone/iTouch →
Before you all start thinking I’m going crazy and say mean things like “He’s Nuts!” and “Hasn’t this been posted before?”, let me explain; please. I recently (and foolishly) upgraded to 1.1.2 on my iPod touch because I wanted to see the non-existent new features it brought.
Yes, it gave me the much desired calendar “Add” button and yes, it gave me the useless battery indicator in iTunes, but I...
Quick Look Plugin for Folder →
Folder.qlgenerator shows pretty good file list on Quick Look window.How do you think Quick Look view for “Folders” in Leopard?It’s only huge folder icon image:-(.Developper’s SiteFolder Quick Look Plugin
The 10 People You'll Find in Any Gym →
Extremely funny (and extremely accurate) description of the gym idiots we all know.
First Beta of Firefox 3 Now Available →
Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability.
Presently →
I am motivated, professionally, by this idea that I can always do better — or, more accurately, that whatever level of accomplishment I can currently claim isn’t enough. In a sense, I don’t allow myself to enjoy whatever success I’ve attained; I’m forever re-assessing my status or beating myself up for not yet having reached some higher, better plateau that seems to lie perpetually just beyond my...
[PIC] A lighthouse picture like never before →
As a photo bug myself, I was stunned by this shot. According to the story, you can only get this shot once a year, and in the first 5 minutes only…
The Most Dangerous Drug in the World →
Scopolamine is a colorless, tasteless, odorless drug. It is also known as hyoscine and is classified as a tropane alkaloid. The drug can be obtained from plants in the Solanacea (nightshade) family. Most scopolamine comes from jimsome weed, or as in Columbia, borrachero trees. The plants it can be derived from are many, and abundantly available.
Enjoy the ViewS →
Just updated my source viewing utility ViewS to automatically create links from src and href attributes to simplify viewing CSS and JavaScript source—as well as embedded images—in MobileSafari. #
Tip: Make Your Hidden Applications Translucent →
One of my favorite features in OS X (and probably one of the least used ones for that matter) is the ability to “Hide” an application rather than just minimizing it to the dock.
However, once a window is hidden, it’s really not that useful because you can’t even tell that it’s hidden, other than not seeing it.
You can always use the little triangle under the dock icon (if you’re on Tiger) or the...
Tweaking Leopard →
Here are a bunch of little tweaks you can make to leopard from the command line in terminal.
Usingmac.com - Leopard Tweaking - Terminal Codes
Assassin’s Creed is Consuming My Life →
Tuesday, November 13th was an odd day. The long awaited and highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed was released and the reviews started to make their way online. The way it all played out was what made it odd. 1UP seemed be the first to get their review online and it made its rounds like wild fire. 7.0, wow! Within a couple hours, IGN’s review was published… 7.7! W…T…F?! I this point, I was a little...
Best iTunes Batch Tagging Application: TvTaggr⇡ →
TvTaggr easily allows you to edit the metadata on a single movie file or to apply changes to a batch of files. The interface is familiar to anyone who has edited tags in iTunes. It is perfect for adding information to home movies or podcasts.
Uncut Guide To RAM For Macs →
I have a constant flow of emails reaching my inbox subjecting RAM on a day-to-day basis. I struggle to keep up with all of these emails/questions, and see the need for a detailed piece on a few of the most frequently asked questions.
Let’s start with a quick explanation of RAM for those who know the term, but aren’t exactly familiar with what it does.
RAM stands for Random Access Memory. It is...
Back To Regular Operation →
Yes - I was indeed hacked yesterday. I didn’t expect it to stir up so much conversation in the community. The Digg homepage piece contains over 450 comments, a number which is very rarely achieved on an Apple related Digg piece.
I’d like to quickly thank all the people who have sent me emails offering words of kindness, my designer Andreas Lengyel, and the great guys at my host, Media Temple for...
Get Things Done - Things First Looks →
Cultured Code recently posted to their site about a new app they are working on called Things, it is a GTD application, but is very different then the rest. […] The moment I saw the interface, and organization structure, I knew that it would be an amazing application to help me get more organized!
Terminal Codes for Leopard Tweaking →
Beautify your Leopard with single liner terminal codes.
See how your web site looks in a bunch of... →
Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.
Fun with Google's Calculator →
Google’s Calculator is a fun diversion, with several undocumented features.
Paul Murphy, Jackass →
ZDNet “blogger” Paul Murphy has decided to compare Linux to Mac OS X Server, and he starts with: Please note that I have not had a chance to see and use the new MacOS [sic] X “Leopard” server release. Comments specific to Leopard Server here are, therefore, based on third party reports.
Please note that I have not bothered to read the rest of your “review”. My calling you a jackass, therefore,...
Installing OS X 10.5 Leopard on an Eee PC →
Filed under: OS Updates, Macintosh, Linux
One of the great things about the Eee PC is that, unlike a $400 PDA or phone, the $400 laptop is a full fledged computer that just happens to weigh less than 2 pounds. And while Asus went through a lot of work to load a customized Linux interface onto the Eee PC, the company also made it pretty easy to slap your own operating system on there. In fact, the...
10.5: One way to create an opaque menu bar →
It’s no secret that the transparent menu bar is unpopular. Since I keep a bare minimum of stuff in my menu bar, I decided to get rid of it altogether. The Info.plist trick detailed in this hint works in Leopard. Note that somewhere in the comments it’s pointed out that you need to move the app before opening it again with a hidden menu bar to bypass some cached files.
Much to my...
Muggezifter Is Running From Camera →
From the site:
The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.
He also has pictures on Flickr.
A feast of interesting macOSXHints Tips →
In the past few days, my macOSXHints RSS feed has churned out an astonished number of interesting tips for iCal, Address Book and Mail.app.
Not all of them are equally useful or productivity-boosting, but all of them are interesting, if only because there are sometimes better ways to get these things done.
1. Use Quickview for Mail.app attachments
One tip explains that highlighting an...