nutMac

Ahhh… what I wouldn’t give for horizontal typing in the WordPress iPhone app. All else considered that is my only gripe with it.

Is it a productivity tool worthy of presious space on a blog about productivity and increased workflow on a Mac? Mmmm… Yes and no. Is it fast to blog on a phone? No. But what if you blog for a living?

That, in my opinion, is what makes then WordPress iPhone app a little gold nugget. Say you are a paid contributor to a well known blog and for whatever reason you find yourself in front of a killer story without a laptop in sight. Just whip out your iPhone and post your breaking news.

Or say you just made your draft deadline and you’re off to Grandmas’s for Sunday dinner when you suddenly realize you’ve made a terrible mistake. Whip out your iPhone and correct it on route.

The app includes all of the WordPress 2.6 goodness and is extremely intuitive to use. If you’re like me and you contribute to a number of WordPress blogs you’ll apreciate the ability to write to each one, all from a single app.

Ok, you KNOW I am a total QuickSilver freak and that there is no way around a computer that is faster for me then QuickSilver. And you also I’ve gone on about making web search triggers for QuickSilver and on and on… Trouble has been that you have to have a Mac and you have to have the patience to put up with Quicksilver’s idiosyncrasies long enough to recognize it’s pure God-like power over your operating system… ok, a bit over zealous but you get the point.

So imagine QuickSilver as a web app, to do all the things that online like you would offline with QuickSilver. Well I just got wind that Julius Eckert and friends have done just that; put QuickSilver functionality on the web.

It’s called chosr and it functions like QuickSilver, uses the same commands as QuickSilver and turns your online life into a productivity whirlwind just like QuickSilver would… if it could… which it can… sort of… anyway, go check out chosr!

Given that it has been a month and a half since I’ve written to this blog, I feel compelled to tell you why it has been so long. I, Adam Merrifield, mild mannered web designer by day, and… er… mild manned web designer by night, have been so swamped with work that contributing to this little blog has been all but impossible. I could have jumped all over a dozen new apps that I had been given for beta testing, but sadly I had no time to test them.

There are two however, that are worth mentioning, as I really do want to try and work them into my daily flow. The one is Dropbox, which is a remote syncing type app that will “push” all updates and changes made from one computer to all other computers linked to the same account. Now from what I can tell the intent is that it be more of a storage/portal device that takes what you are working on here and sends it there so you can keep working on it when there become here… er.. or there… anyhow, you get the point. You’re working on a project at work and the boss tells you it need to be done by tomorrow so you send it through the pipes to home, work on it there, send it through the pipes back to work in time for the big presentation the next day, landing your company the BIG account and your boss loves you and gives you a raise and the keys to his Cadillac and owe it all to drop box…

But that’s not what intrigues me about Dropbox, no, what really has me interested in Dropbox is to see if it can be used as a remote backup device and what capacity is available to the user. As soon as I get the chance I will put this one to the test to see whether it’s worth getting my clients excited about a beta.

The other app for which I have been waiting to get my hands on for more than a year is Versions, a subversion client for the Mac. If you don’t know what subversion “Subversion (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”), I am not going to explain it here, but in short it eliminates the problem of multiple developers working on a single project at the same time. You don’t need an app to take advantage of the power of subversion (command-line in Terminal or TextMate will do just fine), but it does make it a tad sexier when you put a GUI to the process.

I did try Versions.app just briefly, signing up with a free beanstalk account for testing purposes, but I failed to get the connection. I will have to come back to this one in a few days.

So if you have any experience with either of these apps, feel free to leave your comments and let me know what you think.

This one is too cool for words. I think this one came to me from Dan Counsell of Realmac Software. Anyhow, as are most of my articles about apps, this app is the perfect tool for any web designers toolkit (well what did you expect from a web designer). I find there are a lot of times where I just need a little (or a lot) more space on my screen to see what’s below the fold on my web designs. Well there is a great little app called Paparazzi! that takes care of all that for you and will take a screen shot of any URL you throw at it. But it won’t just snap what your browser can see, it takes a picture of the whole thing, from header to footer.

It’s free for the time being and I don’t know if there are plans to make it a paid-for app but it would be certainly worth it to me. To get an idea of how insanely col this app is, take a look at this image of an extraordinarily long wed page that I posted on Flickr.

I’ve been pretty quite about ExpanDrive despite my HEAVY usage of it over the last week. I kept quiet simply because I really wanted to drill this one to death before getting behind something with this kind of power.

For those looking for a way to best describe ExpanDrive, it’s like iDisk without a .Mac account, it’s like Jungle Disk without the transfer rate$, it’s WebDAV without jenky WebDAV protocol (can’t pass many programming commands since WebDAV uses those same commands) or it’s like an external Firewire or USB drive that you access anywhere with physically carrying an hard drive around… ExpanDrive brings mounted disk functionality to remote storage locations.

Like I said, I have been driving this thing to wall since I got it last week, and yes it gets a little shaggy at times (which could be to blame on the server or the ISP as much as the app itself) but overall, this is a must have app. I have been beating the snot out this doing web development from the Finder (or Path Finder, truth be told) once I need to move beyond local development yet not ready to go live. I have installed and run apps directly from ExpanDrive drives. I have used it for storage, a file server… the reality is, anything you use any mounted volume for you can use ExpanDrive.

It’s brilliant.

Be warned: I have found that when using it as a web development platform the odd edit I make to a remote file will suddenly render that file useless leaving me no option but to replace that file with a local copy (this happens most often with style sheets). I have yet to watch my console to really see what’s going on but when I find out, I’ll let you know.

You might all be aware of my fetish with productivity, right? Well it’s really what this blog is all about. What I enjoy about time off, such as this recent stint we had with Christmas, is I get to fool around a bit with things that may or may not make me more productive but I just won’t know until I try. Enter Fluid! To preface where I am going with Fluid, here are some things that you have heard me go on about more than once, I am sure:

• web apps suck
• portability rules
• consolidation is king
• proprietary kind of stinks

This being said, there is more than enough contradiction in these statements to make a philosophers head spin until 2010. Yes I think web apps suck, but I do enjoy the freedom and portability they provide. I do believe that consolidation is the way to go (I can do most of my daily web design tasks using TextMate, Quicksilver and Path Finder) but I also feel that using a single browser with multiple tabs to edit some docs, post to your blog, update your calendar, Tweet your friends and watch YouTube videos is a bit much to ask.

This is where Fluid (from the developer of my favorite TextMate plugin, BlogMate by Todd Ditchendorf) comes in. Fluid allows you to create Site Specific Browsers (SSB) which essentially turns any of your favorite web apps into a native OS X apps. The benefit being that if your web app does something wonky, it doesn’t crash your browser and everything you had open at that moment, it only crashes that specific app. And with a web browser I tend to always lose focus of my sessions on particular web apps and close a multi-tabbed browser before I realize that I was in the middle of something in one of those tabs. Having a standalone app of each of those web apps prevents me from losing my place.

Here is another benefit I found; Safari, on a good day, sucks up 250 Mb of Ram… throw in a few tabs, some video, ajax, and that number begins to climb! Why, I don’t know, but when I run any of my new SSB web apps, each of their ram usage remains under 40-50 Mb respectively. So if I am on Facebook, for instance, with my SSB Facebook.app, I am pulling about 40 Mb.

One advantage to SSB apps that might only apply to guys like me; I keep my browser cache clear and my bookmarks light (I hate fumbling through bookmarks), so when social sites come and go, and web apps rise and fall, keeping tabs on the ones I like is a bit of a nuisance, typing in URLs etc… However, launching an app on my system with Quicksilver is a matter of 2 keystrokes.

So how has Fluid changed my life? There are a few web based services I have resisted, more because I couldn’t stand the thought of accessing them via my web browser. I now use Google Reader as my RSS reader, iCal has been replaced with Google Calendar, I know use Google Docs instead of MS Excel, Stikkit is more accessible to me (I love that service) and Blogger is at my finger tips (the only API BlogMate doesn’t currently support…Todd).

I am constantly working at different computer stations in different locations, I have to accept the fact that I need the portability of web apps. I also have to accept that I can’t always be on a mac (though I am 99% of the time). Web apps are a reality for me, Fluid just makes that necessity a nicer reality to live in.

Technorati Tags: Fluid app, Mac OS X, web apps, Fluid, SSB

In case you didn’t already know this, I love TextMate! There is no other text editor for the Mac the comes remotely close. Don’t try to refute me on this or I’ll strike you down with my hand coded php saber… er.. I mean… never mind.

Well today I love TextMate even more. Yes that is possible. Today I found two ridiculously cool bundles to enhance the built in HTML and CSS bundles (if you don’t know what a TextMate bundle is then go away and never come back, you are no friend of mine). These bundles take all the repetition out tagging your markup or building you css. Seriously! All the repetition… GONE!

Let me put it to you this way. In web design, coding a nav list can be tedious work; you have your ul, your li’s, your id’s, your classes, your anchors, and all the attributes and values to go along with this… then you have to close it all. I’ve learned a few TextMate shortcuts to make this a bit quicker, but with the HTML bundle from Minimal Design it’s as simple as typing your page names, selecting them and performing a shortcut key binding and you’re done. Imagine this type of workflow all throughout everything you do in you web development. Having intelligent ways to get every common routine done is my kind of thinking.

And what about the CSS plugin? Oh please don’t even get me started on how brilliant that one is. I am already a big CSSEdit fan but there are times in a in a project, particularly in a RapidWeaver theme, where I want to have full access and control of all the files that I am working on in one window, more or less. That said, mind you, I have always found editing CSS in TextMate doable, but not lightning quick like CSSEdit. However, the brilliant mind behind this CSS bundle for TextMate made CSS editing a pure joy. Type one character of a property, press tab, then select from a list of likely choices. It not only finishes the property for you, but completes the whole line including the value. Tweek the value numbers a bit and you’ve written a whole line of CSS in two to three key strokes. CSSEdit can’t touch that kind of speed (but TextMate can’t touch CSSEdit’s grouping architecture so tit for tat).

I know in RapidWeaver theme development I am forever creating and perfecting markup pages that coincide nicely with template css files and vice-versa. These two bundles are going to rock my workflow like nothing else before it. If you spend any time in web design at all, you owe it to yourself to check these bundles out or at least watch the movie.

For a list of other useful TextMate links, try my del.icio.us links.

Technorati Tags: TextMate, CSSEdit, HTML, CSS, Minimal Design, Bundle

One of my favorite features of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is the screen sharing built right into the Finder (the only thing I’ve come to find the Finder useful for). What used to require an expensive seat of Remote Desktop For Mac, or a slightly hackish Chicken-of-the-VNC setup, is now accomplished with the built in screen-sharing goodness of Leopard.

At the home office this is great; it adds an additional level of sophistication to my complete and total laziness that only cool technology can afford. My wife and I share a common space in our home where our computers exist no more than 6 feet apart from each other. We tend to share a lot of files and tend to want to show each other things on the others computer. As you can imagine, before Leopard came along, we used to physically get up and down from our office chairs, walk the 6 long feet and peer over each others shoulder to have our common viewing experience. It was a dizzying, trying time, but we somehow managed.

Now we simply share each others screen with the click of a button. But what if my wife’s computer is asleep? Then what? Do you really expect me to get out of my chair, walk 3 paces of wake it? Hell no. That’s what God created WakeOnLan.app for. Simply put, WakeOnLan is the greatest lazy mans invention. I can wake and sleep my wifes computer at will, even while she’s in the middle of doing something, making for hours of completely impractical, totally irrational, yet entirely enjoyable fun… until she discovered the same app herself.

I drive a lot from client to client so I tend to spend a great deal of time on the road. About a year ago I started to listen to podcasts religiously as an outlet for my ever increasing frustration with monotonous radio shows and repeating playlists. Some of the first podcasts I listened to then was BoagWorld, This Week in Tech and some Mac Radio show with two obnoxiously cheesy radio personalities pretending to care about Mac computers but are really just paid to pedal the latest offerings from their sponsors.

Along the way many podcasts have come and gone in my rotation as I grew tired of poor audio quality, lackluster hosts and overall poor choices of material to broadcast. BoagWorld fell by the wayside once it seemed that Paul and Marcus had lost the spark and chemistry they once had, This Week in Tech fell out of favor with me when it became obvious that Leo Laporte was clearly a tech pimp who’s opinions were constantly in conflict between one production and another (TWiT vs. MacBreak Weekly) seemly just to fuel what ever fire would get him the most advertising revenue. Countless other podcasts have come and gone and still do in my quest to find new things to listen to (the fact that I have the choice is what makes podcasts great).

Over the past year though I found a few gems; Spark, Search Engine, The Linux Action Show, The Vinyl Cafe, You Suck at Web Design, Alt Text, Buzz Out Loud, The Hour, and my personal favorite… MacBreak Tech. It’s this last one, MacBreak Tech, that breaks all convention as far as format is concerned. The CBC productions, Spark and Search Engine, are just that… CBC productions. The Linux Action Show and Buzz out Loud follow a familiar news, reviews and Q&A format. The Vinyl Cafe, The Hour, Y.S.A.W.D., and Alt Text are purely for entertainment… But MacBreak Tech? Man, if you are reading this blog then MacBreak tech is for you.

So you are a geek right? Of course you are. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. And by default you love Macs (if not than you are really off course and better look at getting your GPS navigation unit fixed). So, Mac geek, imagine passing the water cooler at the office and everyone is taking about Survivor, JailBreak (not the iPhone hacking kind that might interest you) or Grey’s Anatomy and you think to yourself, “Man wouldn’t it be great to hang with a bunch of Mac geeks like me?” MacBreak Tech is exactly that, a bunch of Mac geeks sitting around the proverbial office water cooler talking about the mac geekery that truly interests you. You coming away with a new opinion, perspective or idea and a new trick or tidbit of information that you might not have known previously. MacBreak tech is the ONLY Mac podcast worth anything right now. It is a true gem glistening from the inner depths of my iPod.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few email interactions with MacBreak Tech’s main host, PixelCops John Foster, spurred by a comment I posted after listening to one of their particularly interesting podcasts reviewing Path Finder (yes, I am THAT fanboy). Here is a guy that really and truly puts himself into a podcast. He is the same guy behind the scenes as he is in the show, totally approachable with little to no ego about him. A genuinely cool guy… in the geek sense of the word.

If you haven’t done so already, I strongly urge you to go into iTunes and subscribe to MacBreak Tech. You will thank me for it.

I picked up my copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard from the Apple Store area of BestBuy (it must be a new thing, I didn’t question it) last night. I rushed in at 6:00pm sharp to beat the crowds (the Apple rep there told me there would be a lineup) only to find a lonely unmanned stall with a full compliment of Leopard boxes locked behind glass… not a single copy sold. I swear I am the only Mac user in Kitchener Ontario… Anyhow, I spent the evening downloading all the latest releases of all my apps (VersionTracker Pro.app is the bomb for that stuff), and backing up my drives, and backing those up on more drives, and so on. Then this morning I pulled out TechTool Pro and ran the full suite, to get me all optimized and what not (I would hate to copy over a mess of frags and discombobulations to the new setup). I also had a fresh new 500 Gb SATA drive ready to migrate to. Once I felt safe and secure, I popped in my Leopard DVD. No, I did not perform any sick, Apple product disrobing ceremony and no, I most certainly will not post pictures of how I opened the box.

So all went smoothly despite all the FUD I had read on MacFixit over the last few days. The install and migration took all of about two hours, including updating apps that didn’t make the cut so well and resetting keyboard shortcuts that got jumbled in transit. So here are a few thoughts;

• Finder…

  Cooler than before… but it still sucks. Path Finder still blows it out of the water from a productivity standpoint.

• Coverflow

  Coverflow is cool if you don’t keep anything in folders, but not so cool when you actually organize your life. You know where coverflow is cool? In iTunes! ‘Nuff said.

• Quick Look…

  Path Finder has had that built right in for quite some time and still does it better IMHO.

• iChat…

  I might have to open that app for the second time since it’s introduction way back when… I do think the desktop sharing is going to be cool though

• Time Machine…

  Now here is a great piece of software that is going to get in the wrong hands and generate all sorts of false security. For a guy like me this is cool because I will still do my regular cron backups, but I will have time machine going too. Why? Because time machine only keeps backups for as long as there is space n the disk to hold it. You can’t just keep shoveling crap into and figure it will be there for all time. I guess what I am saying is, don’t start arbitrarily cleaning off your main drive without a care in the world because you think Time Machine has got your back. I still recommend a daily regiment of backup, preferably automated.

• The Dock…

  There is a lot of extraneous visual information here that really impedes productivity. Until I get used to seeing reflections and transparencies and swoopty Web2.0-like lines and what not, I am going to struggle to see active versus inactive apps. This isn’t a huge deal for me though since I rarely use the dock but still, trying to spot those shining lights is a little tough, especially if you use the default star-scape desktop background.

• Stacks…

  Could be cool and I definitely plan to really play around with it. This is one of those new features, like expose, that might be a sleeper concept but something that everyone should use to make life faster. As of right now though I have the two default stacks. I have one for my Downloads folder (which I made myself and put in a special place, so how did it know where to find it?) and one for my Documents folder. And my documents folder is not one that should ever be sprung open without fair warning. It’s a big, scary, messy, unorganized place that should strike fear into all those who stumble upon it unsuspectingly.

• Front Row???

  Did I miss this in the press release somewhere? I have a Mac Pro… which has no IR capabilities… therefor Front Row is disabled… except now??? I did try to hack it a long time ago, but the hack never worked. Or did it?

• Speed…

  For all the griping that I may have had with all points above, that all pails by comparison to the fact that Leopard is FAST. Nothing add up to productivity like speed and Leopard has bags of it!

Was it all that bad to have made the switch? No, I am actually glad I did. The experience so far has been enjoyable… I just complain a lot. It was a quick and painless transition that could not have been any easier. WELL worth the $129 price tag… worth double if you ask me.

Technorati Tags: Mac, OS X, 10.5, Leopard