Posts tagged with "mac"

Notational Velocity with Fullscren Mode, Horizontal Layout, Menubar Icon

Notational Velocity is one of my favorites apps for the Mac: it’s a minimal and focused writing application that enables you to entirely navigate between notes using the keyboard, it integrates with Simplenote and can store its plain text files anywhere on your computer - Dropbox folder included. It autosaves notes so that you don’t have to worry about losing anything. Also, you just have to press Enter to create a new note. It’s simple and powerful at the same time. It’s free and open source.

Its open-source nature gave birth to a plethora of “forks”, alternative versions of the software with custom modifications and features. Maybe you remember Steven Frank’s excellent Markdown fork. Today’s mod comes from Elastic Threads: it’s the Notational Velocity you’re used to, only with horizontal layout and fullscreen mode enabled. Read more

.Mac HomePage Shutting Down on Nov. 8th, iLife ‘11 To Drop on Nov. 9th?

The Loop is reporting that earlier this morning Apple sent an email to MobileMe members announcing that web content published via the old .Mac service will no longer be available starting November 8th. The email:

Dear MobileMe member,

Over a year ago, we retired the .Mac HomePage application for publishing new pages, but allowed previously published pages to remain viewable on the web. On November 8, 2010, we will discontinue online viewing of photos, movies, and files shared using .Mac HomePage.Please note that your content will not be deleted. Any photos, movies, or files you have published using HomePage will continue to remain on your MobileMe iDisk in the Movies, Pictures, or Public folders.

We recommend MobileMe Gallery as a great way to share photos and movies on the web. Please read these instructions on how to move your HomePage photos and movies to MobileMe Gallery.MobileMe members who have published web pages using iWeb will not be affected by this change. If you have used other software to publish web content to MobileMe or .Mac, or have questions about this change, please read this FAQ.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for being a MobileMe member.

Sincerely,

The MobileMe Team

Now, Nov. 8th is a Monday. Web content is published through iWeb, which is part of the iLife suite. Shall we expect iLife ‘11 to drop on Nov. 9th, a Tuesday? That’d be likely (and definitely welcome). Previous rumors about iLife ‘11 included iDVD, iOS integration and 64-bit speculations.

HimmelBar Lets You Launch Apps From Your Mac Menubar

Mac users have been debating for years whether applications should be launched from the dock, from the appropriate Finder window, from an app launcher (Launchbar, Quicksilver, Alfred) or even via keyboard-triggered Applescripts. The truth is you can’t find a “better way” for everyone, as a user’s specific workflow is always to be considered and it’s impossible (and silly) to make people agree on a particular way of doing something with a computer.

Debates aside, here’s neat little app I didn’t about before and I’ve just discovered thanks to One Thing Well: HimmelBar lets you launch (and browse) installed applications directly from the menubar. Read more

Do We Need an iTunes Server Version?→

Do We Need an iTunes Server Version?

iTunes Server would allow each user to set up an account and build a personal library. These accounts would ensure that the server program knows exactly which files each user wants to access. Users’ library files would remain on their individual computers, and they would be able to create their own playlists, add ratings, and keep track of their play counts and last played dates.

When the server is first set up, users would be able to choose which files they see in their copies of iTunes; this would also affect what they can sync to their iOS devices.

Sounds interesting, but my money is on iTunes in the cloud making the whole process easier, faster and, overall, better.

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Seven Steps To Mastering Your Web Browser→

Seven Steps To Mastering Your Web Browser

Thing is, the stock installation of any browser is only telling you half the story; it’s perfectly serviceable right out of the box, but there is a metric poop-ton of additional functionality and efficiency available. Thankfully, nerdy goofballs like myself have, mostly through trial and error, stumbled upon a host of great ways to make your browser work better and faster.

And lots of great tips in there. I agree: bookmarklets are little miracles.

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How To: Display WebP Images On Your Mac Browser

WebP is a new image format announced by Google last week which aims at making the web faster by providing the tools to use high-quality, yet lightweight, images. While preserving quality and resolution, Google’s engineers figured out a way to compress images so to make them even smaller than usual .JPEG files. About the technical details:

WebP uses predictive coding to encode an image, the same methodology used by the VP8 video codec to compress keyframes in videos. Predictive coding uses the values in neighboring blocks of pixels to predict the values in a block, and then encodes only the difference (residual) between the actual values and the prediction. The residuals typically contain many zero values, which can be compressed much more effectively. The residuals are then transformed, quantized and entropy-coded as usual. WebP also uses variable block sizes.

Being a new file format, it’s not officially supported in browsers yet. Maybe it’ll be very soon, but right now it’s just a cool developer preview that shows what it’s possible to do with Google’s technology. Here’s how you can enable WebP in your Mac browser right now. Read more

Shawn Blanc on OmniFocus→

Shawn Blanc on OmniFocus

Getting actions in is easy. It’s in the processing of those actions where the most friction exists. However, that’s because the organization and output is what makes OmniFocus so mind-blowingly powerful. I’m not exaggerating when I say that OmniFocus pretty much organizes your lists for you. It will take your relevant tasks and intelligently order them for you so you only see what you need to see without worrying about other stuff. After years of keeping a to-do list, I just may now be finally understanding what people mean by a “trusted system”.

That’s exactly what OmniFocus is all about: giving you powerful (yet unobtrusive) tools to help you sort your tasks and projects. Integration with other applications is the next logical step.

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My 3 Favorite OmniFocus Addons

I stash my GTD in OmniFocus. For many months now I’ve been a die-hard OmniFocus user, and no one - I repeat, no one - can’t take my GTD away from OmniFocus and me. Not even a buggy iOS 4.2 beta that prevented me from loggin in my Omni Sync Server database in the iPad app. OmniFocus perfectly fits my workflow because it lets me add tasks and throw anything in there in seconds, but it’s also got the power I need when digging through dozens of projects and contexts. OmniFocus keeps my workflow on rails.

In the past two weeks I started looking for some neat hacks/tweaks/addons to integrate the OmniFocus desktop application with other parts of my workflow: the browser, Google Reader and DEVONthink. Here’s what I found. Read more