Last week on the GGP, we reviewed an service called SlideFlickr. On that episode (#64) I promised a demo of SlideFlickr using my recent vacation photos. Well, here it is.
This took about 10 seconds to generate, copy and paste into the blog post. It’s a great service, though I’m not sure how long it will be able to remain due to the amount of processing that needs to be done.
This week marked my first appearance on the GGP as a full-fledged guest host. We had a great time recording the show despite Tim’s headset being all fubar. Here’s the notes from this week’s edition, it’s a short one, so don’t blink or you’ll miss it. 
The first app up this week is an iPhoto plugin that will allow you to send photos via your Gmail account directly from iPhoto. iPhoto2Gmail is a simple plugin which will allow you to send email messages from your iPhoto application and attach up to a 20 MB image to the image. It’s pretty straight forward and offers other features like encrypted storage of your Gmail credentials. If you like to send photos by email, and want to avoid firing up a browser or Thunderbird to do so, give iPhoto2Gmail a shot.
Download the plugin from author Juan Leon’s website.
The second application for review this week has become, for many, the industry standard for backup and data replication on the Macintosh platform. Carbon Copy Cloner will allow you to backup data to and from almost any media including disk drives and disk image files.
It’s a simple to use application which will allow you to schedule your backups and make them completely mindless. Now you don’t have any excuse for not getting those backups done.
On this week’s Global Geek Podcast I’m going to be recording the show “live” with Dave and Tim. I’m really looking forward to it, hopefully I won’t stumble all over myself when I lose the opportunity to edit out all my blunders. 
It’ll be an early morning for me and a late night for the guys as we try to mesh our schedules and disparate time zones. Wish me luck!
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:
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
It’s that time again, time for this week’s edition of the Global Geek Podcast.
Before I get into the week’s review of Mac Apps, I wanted to mention that Knightwise has produced his first Video Podcast KW-tv. This inaugural episode is a review of the new stack of Apple portable devices. Definitely worth a look. Well done KW!
On this week’s Mac Lab Update we start with a Dashboard Widget from developer Paulo Avila called WallSaver. This widget allows you to take one of your screensavers and use it as your desktop background. The widget is quick and easy to implement, and activates with the click of a single button on the dashboard. If you wish to deactivate it, simply click the button again and it will restore your previous static picture.
The widget will however limit your selection to the currently selected screen saver, so to change it you’ll need to change the screen saver in the System Preferences dialog then re-activate WallSaver. The motion of the screen saver that looks so good with photos for slideshows (the so-called Ken Burns effect) tends to make me a bit queasy when it’s used as a background.
Download Wallsaver from Paulo Avila’s website.
Second on the docket this week is an OS X port of the network utility MacDaddy. This application, MacDaddyX, serves two basic purposes:
MacDaddyX has a couple of very handy features, the first being it’s ability to generate a Random MAC address. It also keeps a list of address prefix codes by vendor which can be used to generate MAC’s that will appear to have originated with a specific company. Finally the all-important “Restore” button to put all the features back the way they were. Though a bit on the technical side MacDaddyX can prove to be a very useful application.
You can download MacDaddyX from their website.
Our final application this week is a tool for interfacing with your IM & microblogging world. Moodblast will allow you to update your “mood” or taglines for IM services like Adium, iChat and Skype as well as online services like Twitter and Jaiku though they recently had to discontinue their support for the Facebook platform citing “legal reasons”. This is a menu-bar application can be brought up using a system-wide hotkey and lets you type in a single message to push out to all your favourite IM and microblogging services simultaneously.
MoodBlast also provides “parameters” that you can input into your message to insert things like iTunes Tracks, weather or date/time. Once the message has been posted to the selected sites the MoodBlast window will hide itself.
I’ve hardly used my twitter account since I set it up, but can see myself actually using it by way of MoodBlast.
I can’t really find any downsides to this one, it’s a simple app that does what it advertises… and it’s free!
Here we are again, with this week’s reviews from the Mac Lab update on the Global Geek podcast for this week.
Our first review this week is the Google Reader Notifier from Troels Bay. This is a easy-to-use menubar application that tracks your Google Reader feeds and displays a message when new items show up in your feed. Once the application is installed and set up, it takes in your Google ID and password and then begins scanning your feeds. By clicking on the icon in the menubar, it will list out some of the unread items in your reader.
The preference pane provides options for things like
An application like this could be very useful for some people, particularly if you don’t have a ton of feeds to check, or are subscribed to items which are only updated sporadically. The usefulness goes down as the number of unread items goes up. If you’re getting a reminder every time it checks (10 mins by default) that new items have arrived, it could get a tad tiresome. That said, it’s still easy to use and it is a free application.
http://troelsbay.eu/software/reader
Second this week is COCOApp’s “Dockables”. This is a small suite of dock icons which perform routine operations on your system with a single mouse click. Some of the functions covered by this are:
Since I found this a couple of days ago I’ve made pretty good use of the “Empty Trash” utility. I realize it’s only about a 10th of a second faster, but it’s one less mouse click, and I’m al for that.
If you tire of multi-click operations for simple things, give Dockables a shot. It is a free application.
http://cocoaapp.com/products/dockables/
Finally this week, something out of the “if-you-believe-this-I’ve-got-a-bridge-to-sell-ya” file…
A tool called SubliminalMessages which while running can display text or images on the screen for a fraction of a second with the intention of conveying a message to your unconscious mind. Sample messages like “hungry” “play with the dog” “buy groceries” and “pay the bills” are built in. The preference pane offers the ability to add& remove messages as well as customize the time that a “flash” lasts, and how long to wait between flashes.
I have no idea if something like this actually works, but for some strange reason I have a burning need to go walk the dog… problem is I don’t think I own a dog… wierd. As you may have guessed, SubliminalMessages is also a freebie.
http://customsolutionsofmaryland.50megs.com/subliminalmessage.htm/
I realize that this post is quite late, but it has been difficult to get enough time to find an Internet connection to post this week’s notes. Here’s all the details for the MLR segment on Global Geek #60.
Our first application this week is from “Fluffalope Factory” software called Miyu. This program allows you to quickly and easily add text to a movie file. THis can be very useful for home movies, or in subtitling a video in another language. The simple interface allows you to select the section of video you want the text added to, and simply type it in. The realtime preview shows precisely where the words will line up in relation to the frame, so it’s easy to make adjustments in timing and wording on the fly.
There does seem to be some issue with file types. I tried to run through some files using MPG videos that I had gotten from friends, one worked and the other didn’t. When I ran through a QuickTime trailer I got off the Internet, it worked without a hitch. Miyu is a free application.
http://www.fluffalopefactory.com/miyu/
Second on the docket this week is another desktop updating application called Desktoptopia. This application is another automated desktop changer like DeskLickr that I covered a couple of weeks back.
Instead of taking images from Flickr, it can read from any RSS-based photostream including flickr, iPhoto “photocasts” and others
The interface offers options to change the desktop at a set intervals, and will allow you to select from one or more of the RSS feeds that you’ve entered into the system.
Desktoptopia is not a free application, and does cost about $20 USD. But it works well, integrates directly with the System Preferences panel and is very quick and responsive. The initial trial of Desktoptopia is a 10-day trial and will give you a good idea whether or not you want to spend the money for this nice aesthetic touch.
Third up this week is a Mac-specific browser based on the Mozilla “gecko” platform called Camino. Camino started life back in 2001 as the “Chimera” project, a mozilla based browser targetted at the OS X platform. This was the first “browser only” project to breakaway from the old Netscape suite. just under a year later, a project to fulfill the same need for all platforms. That project was called Firefox.
Camino is like Firefox’s little brother. it does most of the same things, some of them more quickly, but it’s always been a step or two behind.
It does do a few things more quickly, page render times have been documented on several websites as being 10-15% faster. This isn’t a huge difference in most cases, but it is a “feature”.
Many firefox extensions have similar counterparts for Camino, but because of the different codebase, the extensions typically aren’t interchangeable.
If you want a Mac-specific browser, and Safari just doesn’t “do it” for ya, check out Camino. As for me, I’m sticking with Firefox.
This week’s edition of the GGP is up and available, and with it the latest update from the GGP Mac Lab.
First up this week is a quick review of AutoResizer from Optunis. This is a great little image utility which provides an easy method of batch-resizing or re-formatting images. Simply point the tool at a file, or folder and it will process the file(s) into the selected output format. Some of the supported file types include JPEG, PNG and Adobe PSD. It works fairly quickly too. I was able to process a folder of 96 PSD files on my MacBook in about 45 seconds. AutoResizer will resize images to a fixed size, or scale to a preset vertical or horizontal value. It also provides a faciltiy for converting the files to a new format (PSD to JPEG for example).
Download this free application from the Optunis website.
Second on the block is a new Mac take on a UNIX classic. It’s Aquamacs. Acquamacs is an OS X compliant version of the ever popular Emacs text editing program from the UNIX and Linux platforms. Aquamacs sports the regular set of text-editing features that you’d expect from any good OS X tool, including full use of the OS X keyboard shortcuts for operations like copying, pasting etc. However it also supports many of the original Emacs key combinations as well which will make seasoned Emacs veterans very happy. Aquamacs also supports syntax highlighting for 24 different language variants right out of the box. These include PHP, HTML and AppleScript as well as some more obscure formats like matlab and Lisp. One criticism that I had of Aquamacs is already making its way into regular rotation on my Macbook, pushing TextEdit further and further to the outside.
Download Aquamacs from the project website.
Finally this week a maintenance application called OnyX. It provides a quick one-stop centre for performing some of the tuning and maintenance tasks that we often neglect, as well as a spot to set preferences for some of the more hard-to-find settings in OS X.
Among the tweakable parameters are things like:
In Maintenance Tasks, OnyX can restore many of the settings and options to their defaults, as well as perform system optimization. OnyX also provides direct call-outs to many of the UNIX utilities present in OS X. I really couldn’t find any negatives about OnyX, it’s a utility program that does what it says it will, and does it with a bit of style.
You can download OnyX from Titanium’s website.
That’s the end of this week’s review. If you’d like more tech news from the past week, as well as links to other downloads, sites and services, check out the Global Geek Podcast.
Another week has come, and with it episode #58 of the Global Geek Podcast was released this morning. Here’s a recap of this week’s Mac Lab Rat segment.
First up this week is another fix for the somewhat troublesome 10.4.10 update for OS X. Users of MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Mac Minis may be experiencing some problems with their AirPort Express network adapters. The problems range from unstable connections, to in some cases, kernel panics.
I was definitely having problems with my WiFi connection which I’d unfairly attributed to my DD-WRT patched Linksys Router. Since the update has gone in, all my network issues have automagically disappeared.
This is starting to bring back memories of some past Windows Service Pack releases…
Link to the patch on Apple.com
Second on the block this week is a Flickr-based desktop changer called DeskLickr. Aaron Wallis‘ the application provides a way to “flickrize” your desktop by allowing you to select from your photos, or anyone elses and pull up images from a set, an entire photoset, or from a “tag” search.
One thing I did notice, is that it doesn’t do any scaling of the images and just chopped off the extremities of the photo. This has the unfortunate consequence of chopping off the extremities of people in the pictures as well. That said, it works very well for images of scenery or scaled backgrounds.
The final download for this week is a couple of Applescripts from Apple itself which allows you to convert text to AIFF files. These scripts are quick and easy to use. One script can be used to arbitrarily convert any text string. This is good for short clips, or words. The other will convert the text in the top-most TextEdit window to audio. This is great for converting eBooks or readme files to an audio format. The next time you just need to get some text converted to an audio file, use one of these scripts and then convert it to MP3 using iTunes!
http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/text2audio.html
If you haven’t done so already, head over to the Global Geek Podcast website and give this week’s show a listen. Better yet use these links to subscribe to the podcast with iTunes, or your preferred PodCatcher [rss].
Episode #57 of the GGP is out today, and with it the latest segment of the Mac Lab Rat. Here’s the detailed show notes from the MLR segment… if a few hours late. 
First up this week is a slick little FTP client called ClassicFTP from NCH Software. It’s a fairly basic tool which provides all the usual suspects for features including stored credentials and SFTP compatibility. What I really liked about this versus other popular tools like Cyberduck is the second pane for viewing files. This helps to keep things easy to find, and is a feature I was used to having from Windows apps like CuteFTP. ClassicFTP is available for Mac OS X 10.2+ and most Windows platforms.
The second app this week is an SSH manager called sshOpener. This tool, written by Boris Penck, is a simple menubar application for OS X which allows you to open up a terminal session and connect to an SSH connection. You will still need to enter your password, so the tool isn’t perfect, but it’s saving me time and energy already and has become indispensable over the week or so that I’ve had it installed.
Number 3 on the hit list this week is Dashalytics, a Google Analytics widget for your OS X dashboard. This provides a look at your site’s Google Analytics stats from the comfort of your own dashboard. Dashalytics shows the basic stats including the all important visitors graph to show general traffic to your site. The only thing I’d like to see is the ability to switch the sites you’re monitoring from the main view, without switching back to the info screen, but maybe that’s just me.
Finally a tidbit of iPhone news. (Yes, I’m sorry) It now appears that someone has managed to crack open the SSH server on the iPhone. It’s only a matter of time now until large suites of iPhone ready tools (and probably the first iPhone virus) will start to flow from the blogosphere to your phone.
Thats it for this week. Download the latest copy of the Global Geek Podcast!