MacOnMacs: Macworld San Francisco 2006

Posted on 10. Jan, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 2 Comments

Hmmm, what shall I talk about today? :-)

I’ve been waiting for this year’s Macworld in San Francisco anxiously. Being neck deep in news and the rumour mill through commandN (Amber is there right now), I’ve been exposed to many, many cool ideas and predictions for what would be announced by our favourite tech company. Although I would’ve liked to have seen some Intel-toting iBooks, there was plenty of cool stuff to go around…

  • Intel iMacs: Six months before schedule, the first of the Intel Macs (cue Darth Vader music) has arrived. Although there are no other substantial changes aside from a new Intel Core Duo processor (the new machines are two to three times as fast in benchmark tests), the prices for both the 17″ and 20″ screens have remained the same (I like that Apple is adopting this philosophy – similar to what they did with the iPod with video)
  • MacBook Pro: The new Apple Intel laptop (peculiarly only released as a 15.4″ widescreen) boasts a name change and a four to five times speed boost from the PowerBook G4 it will replace. A big part of the move to Intel, I think, was to get this sort of speed into the Mac laptop lines, which couldn’t be done with the roasty G5 chip. Also showing up in the new MacBook is a built-in iSight video camera (like in the recent iMacs) and the Front Row media player application, complete with 6-button remote control.
  • iLife ’06 (including iWeb!): Some great improvements all around in the iLife applications (iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, GarageBand), but the addition of an iWeb application is the most exciting announcement for me. iWeb leverages Apple’s intuitive interface skills to allow for very user-friendly creation of “websites, blogs, and podcasts, complete with photos, movies, and music” and getting them online in just a few clicks. GarageBand has some great additions, too: Podcast recording studio (complete with sound effects and auto-engineering feats like ducking); iChat interview recording (just the audio parts for now, but it automatically records each chat participant on their own track for individual editing); iMovie scoring (with the movie frames displayed above the music); and more.

There were many other announcements (10.4.4; new iLife and iWork running natively on Intel; etc.), and you can watch Steve Job’s Macworld Keynote Address and find out more info on the Apple web site.

MacOnMacs: Keeping Your Media Organized

Posted on 05. Jan, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 1 Comment

With all the media that people accumulate nowadays, it’s getting progressively harder to know what you have and where it’s stored. My favourite Mac application for this type of task is Delicious Library.

Delicious Library helps you catalog, browse, and share all your movies, music, books, and video games through an attractive and easy-to-use interface. To enter your media data, you can type in the title to search and information is downloaded from one of a half a dozen online sources to fill out all the details you’d every be interested in. However, far exceeding this functionality, iSight and other FireWire camera owners can actually scan in the barcodes from their media to conduct the same search with increased precision and accuracy. Your library can be searched through Spotlight, a Dashboard widget, or other methods (including a voice search!). Browsing is just as easy with media covers displayed on a virtual bookshelf for easy identification, and there is tons of other great functionality: sync your library with your iPod, make custom collections (sort of like iTunes playlists), use the built-in loan management system (complete with Address Book and iCal integration) to track borrowed items, and much more. Winner of Macworld’s 2005 Editor’s Choice Award, the $40 price tag on this shareware is well worth it, especially for those of us who are starting to lose track of their media purchases. :-)

If you don’t want to pay for a media manager, and are more concerned about your movie collection than games, books, and music, then try out the less feature-rich, but still very useful, free DVDManager from Fennel. Movies can be added through a built-in online search or manually, loans can be tracked (including Address Book integration), and your library can be easily exported, complete with graphics, for display on a web page or just for use on another computer. DVDManager is great and free (donations are accepted!), providing the essential functionality (though for movies only) provided in Delicious Library without the monetary commitment. ;-)

I’m sure there is a lot of other similar products out there and I’d love to hear what you like best, so leave a comment to let me and my readers in on your organizational find!

MacOnMacs: iTunes Scripts

Posted on 09. Dec, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | No Comments

iTunes is a great application, no question, but even the greatest applications have room for improvements. Thankfully, Apple has built scripting into iTunes so as to allow users to increase the program’s functionality. First, I’ll tell you how to install scripts in iTunes and then I’ll point you to some good scripting resources.

Installing Scripts

  1. In the Finder, go to your Home folder and navigate to Library->iTunes (unfortunately iTunes scripts must be installed on a per-user basis, so you can’t do this at the MacintoshHD->Library level).
  2. All your iTunes scripts will go into the Scripts folder here – if one doesn’t exist then just create it (File->New Folder and name it “Scripts”)
  3. Drag and drop any scripts you’d like to install into this folder and they will appear in the Scripts menu in iTunes (that’s the scroll-looking icon between Window and Help in the iTunes menu bar). To activate a script, simply select it form the pulldown.

Some Good Free iTunes Scripts

  • Apple’s iTunes Scripts let you Build CD Tray Inserts, Make Playlists By Artist, Remove Missing Tracks, and more.
  • Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes contain some absolute must-haves. There is a huge selection (over 375) of scripts you can download here, including ones to manage tracks and their info, manage playlists, control iTunes/iPods/other apps, manage files, and more. There are even some Automator actions here too!
  • Hubi’s iTunes Scripts let you rename, move, and manage your tunes in a variety of ways. Scripts to swap Artist and Title (and other) tags are useful, creating a playlist of tracks that aren’t in any other playlists is a good way to see if you’ve been missing some good listening, etc.
  • …a simple search on Google or other search engine should yield plenty more results too.

If you haven’t used scripts before then give them a try – it’s very easy. So have fun in making a great app even better by adding some scripts to iTunes!

MacOnMacs: File Types and the Applications That Love Them (Part 1)

Posted on 06. Dec, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 3 Comments

I’m still having problems with jeffmacarthur.com not forwarding here. Is there anyone else out there who has had that problem? If so then please leave me a comment to let me know (as the hosting company thinks I’m on crack and that there’s never a problem with forwarding). In any case, on to the post…

It’s frustrating not knowing what to do with files that bear extensions that you haven’t seen before, so I thought I’d give everyone some handy tips on which applications will open some strange file types (keep in mind that there are usually more options to open a file than the ones I present here). I figure there will be many occasions to expand on this list, so I’ve decided to tag this post as “Part 1″ ;-) .

  • .rar open with UnRarX – RAR is a file format (most common on Windows) that takes multiple files and packs them into one file (like .zip files). There are also multi-part RAR files which may have extensions such as .r00, .r01, .r02, etc. OR .001, .002, .003, etc. To expand unpack these, just open the first file with UnRarX and it will reassemble all the components into the original file.

  • .chm open with Chamonix – CHM stands for Compiled HTML. It’s commonly used as a Help file type with Windows.

  • .cbr and .cbz open with FFView – CBR and CBZ files are typically archives used for comic books. CBR is the same as a .rar file and CBZ is the same as a .zip file. These file types can be opened with the programs that open .rar (above) and .zip (built into Mac OS X) files, but FFView gives you a nice viewer/interface to read them.

  • .wpd and .wp open with AbiWord – These are both WordPerfect document formats (a very popular word processor before Microsoft Office dropped all support for its files).

BONUS

Since I only had a few file types up this time and since this is the first in the series, I figured I’d add some value by letting you know how to get certain file types to open with specific applications by default…

  1. Find the file you’d like to open and Get Info on it (choose the file and hit command-I OR right/control-click->Get Info OR File->Get Info);
  2. Go to the “Open with:” section of the pop-up and expand it (by making sure the arrow points downwards);
  3. In the pulldown menu select the application that you’d like to use to open this file by default (the currently assigned application will have “(default)” written beside it in the pulldown);
  4. Hit the Change All button to make the selected application open all files of this type (as opposed to just the individual file you’ve selected).

BTW, if you want to open an individual file once with a non-default application then just right/control-click->Open With OR File->Open With, and then select the application you’d like to open the file for this time only.

MacOnMacs: Bittorrent Basics

Posted on 01. Dec, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | No Comments

I’ve been putting off writing about Bittorrent for a while, since I covered on one of our first episodes of commandN. However, having been asked directly to cover it here, I am happy (albeit somewhat belatedly) to oblige.

Bittorrent is essentially a way to download files over a network. The advantage Bittorrent has over other peer to peer (P2P) protocols is that Bittorrent inherently shares the files that users are downloading with other users while they are downloading. This aspect is makes it so, a little counterintuitively, Bittorrent files download faster the more people are downloading them (this is why Bittorrent isn’t always the best choice for older files that may not have a lot of other downloaders).

There are two things you need in order to start using Bittorrent: a web browser to locate .torrent files and a Bittorrent client application to download the actual media files (I’ll use that term for clarity, though it can be any type). In a nutshell, a .torrent file is just a pointer to, or gives the location where, the actual media file is located – the .torrent file is NOT the media file itself (which is obvious if you notice that a .torrent file is only around 20KB). So the first step is locating the .torrent file.

Using any browser, go to a website that identifies itself as a Bittorrent search engine (you can Google this term or just try the Pirate Bay, isoHunt, or Torrent Reactor). When you find a suitable site, you can (usually) either Browse or Search for torrents. When you find a torrent that you are interested in, simply download it as you would any other file from the web (typically just by clicking on it).

The next step is to take that file and open it in a Bittorrent client application (again, there are a lot of these: I use Azureus, which has a lot of controls that you may never need, or you can try the official Bittorrent client for Mac, or any other suitable application). When you open or drag and drop that .torrent file in the Bittorrent client, the client will use the directions given in the .torrent file to locate the media file you’re looking for. It may take a few minutes (or longer) for a download to begin, so be patient.

A couple of rules of thumb: don’t try to change your program’s settings so that you aren’t sharing (i.e. uploading as you’re downloading) because if you don’t share then you won’t be able to download either – Bittorrent enforces this and is very tit-for-tat this way. Keep in mind that a seeder is someone who has a fully complete copy of the file that you’re trying to download, so make sure you choose .torrent files that have numerous seeders (because if all the seeders stop seeding then you will never be able to get a whole copy of that file – this is why you should also seed any file you’ve completed for a bit, as this is a community effort). Peers are other downloaders who don’t have a complete copy of the file – generally, the more of these there are (as long as there are also seeders), the faster the file will download.

Remember, Bittorrent has lots of legitimate uses (which is why I’m covering it here). For instance, it is a great benefit for people like me who do video casts, as it makes it so we don’t have to maintain enormous amounts of bandwidth for downloads (as this bandwidth is distributed through all the downloaders with Bittorrent). Finally, be conscious of what you’re downloading. If you would typically go out and buy something and can afford it then don’t think of Bittorrent as a way you can spend that money somewhere else. If we stop paying (however ludicrous and nonsensical payments may be doled out in a given industry) then they will eventually stop producing. Remember: it was massive purchases of Family Guy DVDs, not the letter campaign, that motivated Fox to put that series back on the air!

NOTE: Downloading copyrighted material is illegal. The official Bittorrent site has recently stopped tracking torrents for copyrighted material, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has prosecuted a number of people for illegal downloads. Be forewarned.

MacOnMacs: Saft-enhancing Safari

Posted on 25. Nov, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 2 Comments

I recently got the chance to use Apple’s Safari web browser with the fantastic Saft extension. Saft brings a host of new functions seamlessly into Safari, much as the extensions for Firefox do. You can see a more robust list on the Saft website above, but my favourite extensions are: sorting, searching, and otherwise manipulating bookmarks; full screen browsing; it can disable scripts from bringing a tab to the front; customized search tab with additional search engines/tools; dragable tabs; and much, much more. I’m not that big on skinning, but I do actually prefer the new Aqua interface setting here, which transforms all the brushed metal to an iPod-like white.

One setting that I didn’t like (though some people might) was the saving and reloading of browser tabs and windows after a Safari restart – I thought this would be great, and it would be good to turn it on from time to time if you’re doing research or something where you have to come back to a lot of tabs, but it’s very annoying to have all the old windows and tabs pop up on each launch for most of my use. Oh, and and Focus Last Selected Tab drove me crazy! ;-) The Saft extension cost $12, which really isn’t much considering the amount of functionality it adds to Safari and how it can make your surfing pass more quickly and pleasantly. A small annoyance is that Saft needs to be upgraded when Safari is upgraded – this isn’t annoying in terms of cost, but it might be a little laborious for some.

All in all Saft is well worth its small price and makes me feel not as compelled to switch to Firefox for my main browser (though the plugins and extensions are pretty tempting, and I definitely use Firefox at times). Safari is a solid browser and is well integrated into the OS, but it is nice to see some great extensions like Saft making it even better.

MacOnMacs: Front Row for everyone!

Posted on 22. Nov, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 3 Comments

Front Row is an application (actually, more of a front end) that lets you access your iTunes music, iPhoto pictures, DVDs, and video content through a simple iPod-like interface. Front Row activates in much the same way as Dashboard, in the sense that a simple click causes your desktop to recede off into the background in order to give you Front Row’s unobstructed (and huge – for easy reading from across the room) interface. As simple as it is, it’s actually pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately, Apple only released Front Row with its new, slimmer iMac, complete with its snazzy little 6-button remote (which looks remarkably like an iPod Shuffle).

But fear not, some industrious Mac users have been hard at work to bring the rest of us non-new-iMac-using Mac-heads a way to enjoy Front Row without such a costly purchase. The process involves going out and finding a recent .torrent file (the older ones won’t function after the upgrade to 10.4.3), downloading the referenced .dmg file, expanding that file, putting three (at least as I’ve seen it) files in their places, and restarting your machine. The result: Front Row installed on your Mac. [NOTE: As much as I'd love to point you to a .torrent file, I'm not going to for legal reasons. However, it's not hard to find, though you might want to look for a file named "YAFRR" - yet another Front Row release. It should come with instructions BTW]

Now that you’ve installed Front Row, you might be wondering how you can control it from across the room (assuming your name isn’t Mr. Fantastic or Plastic Man or whatnot :-) ). Strangely enough, the Front Row interface does not use your mouse, it just uses your keyboard (don’t ask me why). However, if you have a wireless mouse and/or keyboard, that may be just the solution for you. A wireless keyboard is straightforward – just use the arrow keys, space bar or enter key, and escape key to navigate through the Front Row interface. If you have a multibutton mouse (unfortunately, you really need more than three buttons), you can map the buttons to those keystrokes for when Front Row is active. However, there are some other really cool options (NOTE: I have not used any of these – read before you use them as some are not yet Tiger-compatible): try out your cell phone (not all work) as a remote by using Romeo and related WiseWeasel’s Plugins; I’ve heard that the Keyspan Remote works fine for this and other apps; there’s also a hack for Griffin’s AirClick Remote; and I think Sailing Clicker can be made to work too. If you have a somewhat strange set up (this would work for me actually), you can control Front Row from another networked Mac with Front Row Remote.

Now keep in mind that Front Row is pretty new and I think there’s lots of room for improvements. You don’t see album art when you’re playing Music; you can’t easily control your slide shows when viewing Photos; Videos have to be in your Movies folder to be accessed (I just put an alias in that folder to wherever else I store videos); and it’s a little slow at times. However, these are all problems that are easily fixed, and I really like what Apple is aiming for here. Keep in mind that this is NOT a Media Center application – this is just something to allow you to access all the media on your computer from the comfort of your couch. Apple has built in some nice supports so that you have easy access to your iTunes Music Store television and music video downloads (this is quite telling and is another thing that reinforces that this is not Media Center-lite – Apple doesn’t really want to give you a video capture card, etc., as that would just bastardize its sales through iTMS), the little preview window on the side is a great help for browsing, but my favourite little perk is that you can easily browse all the movie trailers online at Apple’s QuickTime site without leaving the comfort of Front Row (which lets you sit across the room and casually watch any number of trailers without getting up – a nice alternative to being trapped in front of your computer, clicking through your browser or iTunes to do this). You can also view fantastic video podcasts that you’ve subscribed to through iTunes, like commandN. ;-)

There is no good reason why Apple couldn’t just release Front Row to the masses and then sell its own remote separately (same thing with PhotoBooth, for which there is also a hack out there). I’m not quite sure what the motivation is for not doing this (aside from selling more new iMacs), but I’m sure it will be revealed in due time. But for those of us not willing to wait, Front Row is still within reach, so go try it out – if you dare! :-)

PS: If you want to take a tour of Front Row, click here.

MacOnMacs: MPEG tools without the command line

Posted on 15. Nov, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | No Comments

Unix has a variety of great command line tools (i.e. tools that are activated by entering text in the Terminal) to perform simple tasks on MPEG files. Well, given that MPEG is such a popular file format for videos, it would be great if someone wrapped all these commands up into a little interface so that those not quite comfortable using the Terminal (or too lazy, like me ;-) ) could access them easily. Well, they have and it’s free!

mpgtx is an MPEG toolbox that allows users to access commands to split, join, demux, and get info on most MPEG files through a simple user interface. After downloading the file from the link above, you will have a folder with the mpgtxwrap app in it. When you launch this, you will be presented with the GUI and some simple instructions. The GUI, though much appreciated, has some idiosyncrasies, which I’ll mention below.

The GUI allows you to specify the number of chunks you’d like to split a file into if, for example, you’re trying to write a large MPEG file across multiple CDs, or you can specify exactly where you’d like to split the file to do things like remove commercials from a video or the like. One strange thing about this application is that if you are dragging and dropping a number of files to join them, for example, you actually drag them onto the “File-List->” button, which is a little odd to say the least. This action will open a drawer to the side of the GUI and will then allow you to reorder the files by dragging and dropping them within the list or ordering by name, etc. The “Basename”, which is the prefix of split files or the name of joined files, can be changed through the “change” checkbox beside this text area, although I’m unsure why an additional element is needed to do this. The “mpgtx output” box is useful to help isolate any difficulties, and selecting “desperate mode” can help when all else fails (though I’ve yet to have to use this). One final remark: depending on the player that is used, you may see some artifacts (e.g. video distortion) right at the join point in your resultant files – these are pretty easy to live with but I thought I should mention them so that you don’t think you’re doing something wrong should they appear ;-) . The FAQ for this app may be of further help.

PS: Gumby is another free app that manipulates MPEG, DVD, SVCD, PS2, ISO, and RAR images/files. I haven’t used this one, and apparently it doesn’t work on as many types of MPEG files (e.g. MPEG-2 files from TiVo) as mpgtx does, but it might be of interest to some of you.

MacOnMacs: I miss my Apple Applications menu from OS 9

Posted on 01. Nov, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 1 Comment

As much as I love OS X, there are a few things I miss – one of them being the ability to access directories and applications through the Apple menu “file/application launcher” feature from OS 9. Well, like most things that you might miss, there are solutions out there…

Butler is a multi-functional application that gives you access to file/application launcher in your menu bar. But Butler does much more than this. It is great as a bookmark manager, allowing you to access the bookmarks from any of your web browsers in a centralized pulldown menu while also enabling you to drag and drop new bookmarks into the same interface. Additionally, it has an enhanced “multi-pasteboard” ability, lets you control iTunes, access your Address Book, and much more from the same menu bar pulldowns. I found Butler did almost too much for what I wanted, and the access to certain features, e.g. your Address Book if you have a lot of contacts, can be a little slow. However, the app is free, very customizable, has plugin support, and would be a great addition for many people.

XMenu is a further step toward simplicity. It doesn’t have all the features that Butler does (some of which you might not even want), but it is free and provides access through the same type of menu bar-based interface as Butler to folders and applications. Nice, simple, and does just what you want it to do.

Finally, for those of you who don’t want to add any extra software to accomplish a relatively simple task, you need look no further than your Dock for a solution. If it’s applications you want to access then just locate your Applications folder in the Finder then drag and drop it onto the Dock BELOW (or to the RIGHT of, if you’re using the “too Window-sy for me” default Dock placement at the bottom of your screen ;-) ) the line that separates your applications from your documents in the Dock. To access the contents of the folder simply right/control-click the Applications folder now in your Dock and, voila, convenient one click access to all your apps. You can use the same trick for other file folders to obtain the broader file launch ability.

That’s a few quick tips to bring back the beloved application/file launcher that many of us thought we lost when we moved to OS X. See which one you like and then enjoy your newfound efficiency and speed! :-)

MacOnMacs: Screenshots on your Mac

Posted on 29. Oct, 2005 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 2 Comments

I’ve used screenshots (i.e. capturing what’s on the screen of your Mac as a picture or video) a lot. They are essential for doing some of my commandN segments, especially techTIPS, but I find them useful for a lot of other things too: performing website evaluations with my MGImedia.ca company often requires capturing the contents of browser windows, and captures are a great help when you’re dealing with tech support issues (e.g. trying to describe what you see on your computer screen can be difficult over the phone, so just take a screenshot and email it to the person you’re talking to – if they’re tech support, chances are they’re in front of a computer and will receive the file in moments ;-) ). But how do you do this? I’ll outline two ways, a simple method that uses software that comes with your Mac, and a robust paid application that can help you record movement on your screen and a host of other things.

Grab: You may not know it, but if you look in your Applications/Utilities folder you’ll find that the good people at Apple have included a screen capture application called Grab for free with your computer. To use Grab, launch the application and then choose to capture either a Selection, Window, Screen, or Timed Screen from under the Capture menu. Selection lets you drag over a portion of the screen you want to capture, Window lets you select any open window (e.g. your browser window), Screen lets you capture everything on your whole screen, and Timed Screen gives you a ten second countdown to when your screen will be captured. The resulting capture will pop up in a window and can be saved as a .tiff picture file (you may not recognize this format, but almost all image editors, including Preview, will recognize it and can convert it to a .jpg or .gif if you’d like). If you want to capture your whole screen with just a keystroke, and you haven’t changed these settings, just press Command-Shift-3 to have a screen capture saved directly to your desktop (to see where this is set, just check out System Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard Shortcuts).

Snapz Pro X: Now if you need to capture video from your screen (e.g. you want to make a little movie to show your Mom graphically the steps to take to, say, capture her Mac’s screen ;-) ) then you’ll need something more powerful. The solution is the fantastic Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia Software. Snapz Pro lets you do everything Grab does, but also allows you to capture video (and audio simultaneously if you’d like to), include your mouse in the captures, select your frame rate and resolution for video captures, save to a variety of formats, etc. As they say on the website, think of it as a digital video camera for your screen. About the only complaint I have about Snapz Pro is that it’s always on – it’s sitting in the background and, by default, is activated by using the Command-Shift-3 shortcut that would have formerly been assigned as mentioned above. However, don’t let that hold you back. The full video version costs $69, but there’s a free demo available too (I believe this leaves a watermark on the capture). If you need to make training videos, produce simple product demos, archive streaming video, and more, then I don’t think there’s anything else out there that’ll match this app!

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