MacUpdate Bundle Promo – 90% Discount!

The folks over at MacUpdate are doing it again. They’ve bundled together a ton of apps and are selling them off for one low packaged price. The deal is set to expire this Tuesday, December 12th at about 20:00 PST.

The software included in the bundle is:

Full retail cost for the bundle is nearly $600.00, and the bundle will be going for about $50.00 USD until Tuesday.

Random Image Selector 1.2.0 Released

I’ve just put the finishing touches on the latest version of the Random Image Plugin that I originally released in the summer. This plugin will allow you to produce an <IMG> tag containing a randomly selected image from a folder of your choice on any wordpress page (or post if you allow php).

The two biggest features in this version are:

Automatic discovery of your WordPress Folder: One of the biggest barriers to entry for the non-technical folks who tried to use this plugin was a lack of knowledge (or access) for finding the physical path to the WordPress installation. The plugin will now automatically detect and use this path. CAVEAT: If you currently point your plugin at a folder which is outside of your wordpress installation, you will need to move that folder to use the v1.2.0+ versions of the plugin.
Scaling/Sizing of the Displayed Images: One of the most requested features from the first iteration of the plugin was the ability to resize or scale images to fit in a particular location. With older versions, if you wanted all the images to display at the same size or proportions then you needed to resize them all prior to uploading. Well this is no more! Now you can upload tons of randomly-sized images and the plugin will take care of the dirty work (including the calculation of just how much to scale-to-fit.

I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has downloaded the plugin, and particularly those who have taken the extra time to send me feedback. As of this release the plugin has been downloaded over 2,400 times which far exceeds anything I thought I would accomplish.

So give this plugin a shot, and let me know if it works out for you!

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #71: Horse Kennel

Wow! This post is super late, but here’s the Mac Lab Update for Global Geek Podcast #71.

ScriptSaver First up this week is a Screen Saver application called ScriptSaver by Matt Swann. I call this a Screen Saver Application because though it’s launched by your OS X screen saver, it allows you to add an AppleScript to be run at Activation or Deactivation of the screen saver.

This will allow you to perform maintenance tasks, launch applications, automate some job while you’re away or any other myriad activities all by simply doing nothing.

The application will also allow you to select a screen saver to run while Script Saver is active.

Here are a few links to some applescript resources for those of you who aren’t inclined to write your own:

Give ScriptSaver a shot, and make better use of your down time!

Isolator Isolator is a simple OS X application which helps you to focus on your active window. It works by placing itself one layer below the active window so that it hides everything on your desktop (dock, icons, widgets etc. etc.) and leaves only your working window in focus.

Isolator integrates itself into your menu bar and can be controlled from there, or from an activation/deactivation hotkey that you set yourself.

I’m planning to give this a good test run for my school work over the next couple of months. I’ve got a bit of a tendency to procrastinate (hence why this post is almost a week late!!)

Versatile Unit Converter Last up this week is the Versatile Unit Converter widget. This was put together by a group at the university of Geneva. This widget will allow you to convert between various units of measure.

VUC will takes in an initial value and allows you to output it into different formats by specifying the mathematical or scientific symbols that make up the different units of measure. Converting things like temperature, energy, mass and distance just got a whole lot easier. Now I can explain more easily that where I come from, 32 degrees is well above freezing.

That’s it for this week. I’ll try and make sure the post for next week is on time… Maybe I’ll use isolator to help me focus!

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #70: Timmy Opts Out

This week, I join the geeks live to record GGP #70. We decided to make use of the segment I prepped up for last week’s show before I found out about the Second Life Special Edition that Dave put together with the guys from

DMGConverter

As the name suggests this tool will allow you to convert all sorts of disk image files between various image formats. These include three ISO formats, CDR, Mac DMG image files, and others.

This application that will also help to create disk image files from folders on your computer. You can use this to create a burnable disk image like an ISO for easy distribution across platforms, or a downloadable DMG file so that your Mac buddies can download and mount the image on their systems.

This application will also support several Mac and PC file systems, including the new Extended file systems and FAT16 & 32. There currently is no support for NTFS.

This is a great tool for anyone who needs to distribute large quantities of information, or needs to make copies of any type of existing disc (legally of course!).

Where I see this for myself is creating image files and using them to archive things like photos, or music and podcasts that I’ve finished listening to.

DMG Converter is a free application.

Secret Notepad Plus

SecretNotePadPlus is a dashboard widget created by Japanese developer N. Wajima that will allow you to make and keep notes on your OS X dashboard the biggest difference between this widget, and many other similar ones is, you guessed it, the secure part.

SNP allows you to password protect the widget so that its secrets can be kept hidden away from the world, and would be particularly useful in one-mac homes where the computer is shared among many different people.

Yes, there are many other ways to do this, and storing the information in this way isn’t the most secure mechanism available. Where this might be useful though, is keeping a list of your frequently used ID’s and Passwords for various websites. It’s easily accessible, and can be quickly hidden once you’re done your session.

Finally, SNP makes use of keychain to store its own password information as well as the notes and text. So this is a fairly secure method of being able to write this information to the disk. While you’d never write your latest novel, or the secrets to cold fusion technology in SNP, it’s great for quick notes.

SecretNotepadPlus is a free application.

AirPort Radar

The folks over at MacWireless.com have put together Airport Radar, a simple wifi scanning tool which shows you the networks in the area as well as the strength of their signals. Airport Radar performs it’s scanning magic from your OS X dashboard. This is a good way to troll for networks in those cases where you just have to download the latest episode of the GGP and can’t make it home to the comfort of your regular broadband connection.

The scans are done at a user-configurable interval; the default is just under two seconds. The widget will display any networks it detects. If a network drops off, or drops below a detectable level it will remain on the screen in a ‘greyed out’ state, and will stay on the screen for a set number of scans (default is 5).

While not the most full-featured wifi scanner around, it’s a pretty good little tool. It should be noted that it only searches for “Infrastructure” networks, or access points. It won’t detect the wifi connection on other wifi ‘client’ devices like laptops, xboxes, ipod touches, psp’s, cell phones… well you get the idea.

Airport Radar is a free application.

XBox 360 Controller Driver

Last up this week is something kinda fun that I just had to share. For any of you who own an XBox 360 and have always wanted to use the controller in your favourite Mac games, I have the solution for you! Developer Colin Munro has created a driver package for the 360 controller to allow it to be used on the Mac.

For me there’s just something deliciously ironic about using a Microsoft controller on an Apple computer. The 360 Controller driver is also a freebie.

While I’m sad to see Tim go, he’s moving on to new challenges and I think we’ll see him around from time to time… I’d like to extend a personal thank you to Tim for his help with my budding podcast career. Looking forward to seeing the next big thing!

Project “Gutsy Gibbon” — Adventures with Ubuntu

I’ve been running a Linux machine at the house for some time now, experimenting with trying to use it for a central file server where I can get at things like music and pictures from any of the computers in the house, and in some cases from over the Internet.

I’ve tried using various incarnations of Red Hat including the Fedora Core (5 & 6) series, but eventually I hit some kind of a wall and give up. After all the technology is supposed to be there to serve me, not the other way around.

'A Grid' Photo Credit: IO_Burn on Flickr

Last week I listened to the second episode of the Knightcast. This was the continuation of the series “the Grid”. The main focus of the episode was getting started using Ubuntu as a “power-station” in a home or (very small) business network.

I listen to most of my podcasts in the car, so the first time I listened to this episode, I was driving around the city on my daily commute and it gave me lots of time to think about just how useful this type of “home server” might be. When I got home, I pulled the podcast up and went through the first part of it again, the bit that explains some of how the server could be put to good use. Most of it is pretty common sense stuff. The “power-station” server machine allows for a central place in your home where documents, media and other files can be stored and it provides a mechanism for making that data remotely accessible.

Knightwise also discussed a couple of options for remote administration, which is always a good thing. I’d much rather be able to addess and deal with my server by way of my MacBook from the deck (or the bedroom) instead of tromping all the way downstairs where the (very noisy) desktop machines have been relegated.

Almost immediately a few new possibilities began rolling to mind…

For some of the software development that I do, it would be very handy to have access to a SubVersion repository that I could use to manage the code from anywhere on the Internet. Oh sure, there are other services like SourceForge and GoogleCode which offer similar services, but it never hurts to be able to have full control over your machine, and your information.

With a built-in server, adding FTP (or better yet SFTP) capability makes it that much easier to share specific files or data with friends and colleagues. Again you could sign up for a service like X-Drive or Box.net for this, but why not take advantage of owning all your own data. If done correctly, the self-hosted model can be much more secure.

Add to this the fact that my router, by way of it’s spanky new DD-WRT firmware, supports several free DDNS services, and I have a new server set up to serve my content on the web or anywhere else. And I don’t even have to remember my IP address (which admittedly hasn’t changed in the over 2 years I’ve had my service… thank you Mr. ISP!)

It sounds like there are going to be some more great tips coming up in future Knightcast episodes featuring “the Grid”. I wonder what else my 6-year old P4 desktop will be able to do for me!

Take it with you — Portable Apps

I realize that for some of you, this story isn’t exactly news. To be honest, even I’ve known about PortableApps for quite a while, but I’ve never put it to use until recently.

PortableApps is a series of applications which have been built and configured for the sole purpose of running from an external device such as a flash drive, memory card or external hard drive. This allows you to port not only your data from PC to PC, but your applications as well. You can keep your email client (Thunderbird), web browser (Firefox) and many other tools and applications on the USB key and run them on any computer with Windows and a USB port.

How is this useful you may ask? A recent example:

I have been doing some presentations at work last week we had a laptop whose Powerpoint application refused to open (read: Runtime error every time it started). Admittedly a reboot probably would have fixed the probem, but I couldn’t take that chance. I had to get another laptop, (wait for Windows to boot), and get it all set up. This wasted about 15 minutes of everyone’s time.

A perfect solution to this would have been to use the OpenOffice slideshow application Impress and run the entire thing from my USB drive where the presentation was stored. So over the past couple of days, I’ve been trying out my new setup (Firefox, KeePass and OpenOffice) in the office to see how it runs on various other computers. So far, so good.

Have a look at the PortableApps suite. There are tons of great applications for this technology, and I’ll probably cover some more examples in the coming weeks.

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #66: Pres my Dead.Licious Lobster Butan

Another week, another instalment of the GGP, and some more Mac goodness from the GGP Mac Lab.

The first application for the week dead.licious by Malarkey Software. This is an OS X application for validating the bookmarks stored in your delicious account. It provides an interface for reviewing and testing the bookmarks you have in your account, and identifies those that are broken or otherwise invalid. At that point it will allow you to either fix or remove the dead link. Dead.licious provides support for Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia & Simpy.

The application is offered as Freeware, but there is a donation nag box every 5 times you use it. It’s important to note though that this isn’t criple-ware, and won’t stop working if you decide not to contribute.

You can download dead.licious from the Malarkey Software website.

The second application this week is Pres Butan from developer Brian Kendall. This is a little OS X application that will let you open files or applications by pressing the enter or return key. This is a feature that makes OS X behave more like Windows or Linux, and will undoubtedly help many of the folks out there who are switching from one of those platforms. After a quick installation, I tried it out and used it to launch Garage Band when I was recording this week’s segment.

One thing that did bother me is that the application requires the “Assistive Devices” setting to be turned on in the System Preferences panel. So anyone who installs it will have to turn on that setting manually. I’d like to see the system provide a mechanism for turning that feature on all by itself, or with a prompt to the user.

Download Pres Butan from the developer’s website.

Next up this week, I have an update on a product that I covered back on GGP #62. Moodblast is an application that allows you to update your ‘mood’ or status messages on IM applications like iChat or Adium and microblogging services like Twitter and Yappd.

The update is that FaceBook support is back for MoodBlast. The new version integrates with Facebook’s new “remember me” features and allows you to use MoodBlast to update your status message. It does make you log in about three times before it will successfully remember everything, however once that’s done it won’t bug you again.

A nice bit of silliness to end off this week. Have a look at Lobster Petting. I really can’t say much about this. It’s a picture of a lobster. You pet it with your mouse. It squeaks. ’nuff said.

Check out the Lobster homepage to download. Enjoy!

Random Image Plugin — 1000 Downloads!

Exactly 2 months ago, I released my Random Image Selector plugin for wordpress. Every now and again I take a look and see how many people are downloading the random image plugin.

On average, in the exactly 2 months since it’s release about 15 people are downloading the plugin. And on September 22nd, it hit the 1000 download mark!

Thank you to all who have provided feedback on the plugin, and suggestions for the next version. I am working on it now and expect to have something released by mid-October once all the WordPress 2.3 testing is completed.

Thanks again, and happy downloading!

Mac Lab Rat #8 – Global Geek Podcast

Another week, another edition of the Global Geek Podcast. Here’s the detailed notes from this week’s GGP Mac Lab Update.

The first application up this week is MacTracker by Canadian developer Ian Page. This is an application that contains historical data on virtualy every model of Apple computer and their peripherals released since 1983. The current release (v. 4.3.1) also includes the updated iMac models from August 2007.

MacTracker provides detailed hardware specifications for each model, including:

Detailed CPU information
Hard disk and Optical Drive options for that model
Maximum & Shipped RAM configurations
Graphics card & Display details
Expansion ports and more…

There’s also a MyMacs section for you to track specific details on the devices you own, this is particularly useful in case you ever need to call Apple Support. Much quicker than trying to remember where your serial number is stored (or read the microscopic printing from the bottom of the case).

Finally, there’s also an iPod edition which allows you to look up much of this same information directly from your iPod. If you’re in a job where you need to have this type of information at your fingertips, (or like me are just a total geek), this option is a great way to eat up a few more Megs on that 160GB iPod Classic you just bought.

MacTracker is a free download, but it is offered as donationware. If you get some good use out of it, consider making a donation to support the project.

The second application up this week is targeted at those of you, who like me, would rather put tacks through your fingers than rely on the mouse or trackpad for basic tasks on your computer. I give you ABFL “A Better Finder Launcher”. This application lets you bring up on a hotkey a dialogue box that you can use to find and launch applications. For those of you who are Mac Switchers and have just come over from windows, this will work very much like the Windows “Run” menu, only smarter.

As you type characters in, ABFL will search your computer for files which match your search string, applications are prioritized and pushed to the top of the list. Once you’ve typed enough for the program or file you want to appear at the top of the list, hit the enter/return key to launch it.

ABFL will also search for documents on your system. The initial indexing process happened very quickly, so quickly in fact that I didn’t realize it had its own index until I was searching through the preferences dialogues. I thought it must have tapped into the Spotlight index instead. The preferences can be set to allow the application to index on a set interval, or manually. When scanning the default locations, the indexing took approximately 12 seconds on my Macbook.

The only downside to this application is that there’s no way to terminate it and remove it from the Dock & Fast-switch menus) when an application is launched. Other than that, it really does deliver as promised and has become another one of my favourite OS X tools.

Download ABFL from the developer’s website. Last up this week is a bit of Apple-related tech news. SixApart announced this week that it will be providing an iPhone (and iPod Touch) interface option for users of TypePad and MovableType. This interface will detect the new Apple mobile browsers and reformat the screen to best advantage on the small display. This will allow anyone with the supporting blogs to not only view their blog, but edit & create posts, manage comments and more from their spanky new Apple handheld.

It’s not enough to make me want an iPhone, or switch away from wordpress, but it definitely shows that SixApart is still capable of playing a leadership role in the CMS Space. Of course it won’t be long until support exists for WordPress as well.

Source: TechCrunch

WordPress Plugin: Admin Links Widget

I’ve just launched the first version of a new WordPress widget, the Admin Links Widget.

This very simple widget does as the name suggests. It provides links to administrative functions from the sidebar of your WordPress installation. The catch is, only administrators will be able to see the links so the general public won’t have their view cluttered up with links they can’t use.

Give it a try!

Download the Plugin
Unzip into your WordPress plugins folder
Activate the plugin
Add the widget to your site!

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please feel free to post below.

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The crossroads of life and tech

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