Make Tech Easier » Jeffry Thurana

Manage your clipboard items in Mac with Shadow

Jeffry Thurana — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:00:33 +0000

I use Cut, Copy and Paste commands a lot, and computer’s basic clipboard ability to hold only one item at a time really annoys me. That’s why one of my must have applications is clipboard manager. It allows me to copy as many items to my heart content without having to worry about losing any entry.

There are several choices of clipboard managers for Mac users. We’ve discussed clipboard managers for Mac before. Jumpcut was my long favorite manager and it’s a pretty amazing one if I may add. It’s small, fast, and it does the job well. True that Jumpcut can only handle text, but my needs are simple.

So it’s a bit hard for me to switch to other application. But Shadow changes everything. It can do everything every other clipboard managers can do, and more.

Let’s peek at what lurks behind the shadow.

First step into the shadow

Just like most of other clipboard managers, Shadow will reside in the menubar. It can be summoned using configurable shortcut key.

To set the key combination, open Shadow preferences menu by clicking the menubar icon and choose “Preferences”.

Go to the “General” tab, click inside the HotKey field and hold down your chosen key combination.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you choose the Advanced tab and click on the “Start on login” button to make sure that your clipboard is available all the time. Here you can also decide how many items that Shadow should hold inside the clipboard.

Please note that even though you can set as many clipboard items as you want, the bigger the number, the bigger space you need to hold the items. So, those with limited hard drive space please beware.

Walk in the shadow

Using Shadow is as simple as letting it running in the background and quietly collecting clipboard items. You could do the usual Cut-Copy-Paste routine: cut or copy an item and directly paste it. But you can also use past cut or copy items to be pasted.

To do this, you have to bring Shadow window upfront (either by clicking its item in the menubar or by using the hotkey),

Choose one of the past items using the up and down arrow, and use Shift + Enter to paste it.

By default, there’s one clipboard that comes with Shadow called “System Clipboard”. You can’t modify nor delete it but you can choose to share it with others by clicking Edit (pencil icon).

However, the Shadow’s true power lies in it’s ability to create multiple clipboards and share them to other computer within the networks. To add more clipboards, open Shadow window and click on the plus (+) button below the window.

A new clipboard options window will appear. Fill in the clipboard name and choose whether you want to share the clipboard to others by ticking the checkbox. There’s also an option to password protect the connection should you need the extra security. The password allows you to choose which clipboard to share to which person.

The ability to store as many items as you want in the clipboard and to add as many clipboards as you want bring about new problem: information overload. When Shadow has stored too many items, using the clipboard will become difficult and impractical.

Luckily Shadow comes with search ability. All you have to do is put the search string, hit Enter, and all the clipboard items that match your query will appear. Choose the one that you need and press Shift + Enter.

Have you tried Shadow? Do you know other free alternatives to clipboard manager for Mac? Share using the comment below.

Manage your clipboard items in Mac with Shadow originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Skitch – Powerful Screen Capture Application for Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:22 +0000

I never thought that I would find screen capture utility as one of my indispensable tool. But I do. So it’ only natural that I keep on searching for the best alternative to fill in my need.

Once I’ve settled with Jing, a nice multi platform screen capture app. Then one of my Mac-user friend recommend Skitch – a Mac only alternative. After trying it out, I was hooked. Skitch has several features that I can’t find in Jing.

Screencapture tool plus image editor

Most of the screen capture utilities that I came across so far is usually limited to one main feature only: making screenshots. Skitch has many more features that complement the screen capturing process.

You could say that this app is also a light image editor because you can use it as one. You could just open any image file and edit it using Skitch. But before we dig deeper into the features, let’s adjust the basic settings.

My first favorite place to visit every time I open any application for the first time is the Preferences. Same thing goes here.

Open Skitch,

Click on the “Tools” menu

and choose Preferences (or hit Command + Comma on the keyboard).

Even though you can spend some time here and adjust many values according to your liking, I think the most important items here is the Snapping settings. Here you will decide what Shortcut keys to use to do Crosshairs (part of the screen), Fullscreen and Frame (adjustable location of part of the screen) snaps.

Now for the main show, let’s see how this app does what it’s built to do: screen capture. The one snap option that I use the most is the crosshairs. Just hit the pre-defined shortcut key and you’ll have the crosshairs lines appear, ready to capture the screen.

You could click and drag the lines to define the part of the screen that you want to capture. Or you could just click on a window and Skitch will capture that window for you.

Then the image that you’ve just capture will be opened in Skitch editor. Here you can do some light editing to enhance the image.

There are basic drawing tools at the left vertical bar such as pencil, rectangle, fill, text, and arrow; there are additional tools at the right vertical bar such as color picker, undo and clear buttons; file name and file info at the bottom bar, webpost button and settings also at the bottom; Settings button, Photos button (to open any image from the hard drive), Save button, and History button (to view recently captured images) are all at the top bar.

To resize image to the size that you desired, drag any corner of the window. To crop the image into the area that you prefer, click and drag the edges of the image.

And finally, to quick save the image, just click and drag the “Drag Me” button at the bottom bar to the location that you’ve want: in finder or in any other application such as Mail or Text Edit.

Now about the name bar at the bottom, you could write the name of the file and decide the image format before dragging it and the image will be saved using that preferences.

Using Skitch, you have the option to save the image into web location. Click the little arrow next to the Webpost button and choose “Open Webpost Settings”

You’ll have the Skitch.com as the default location (registered at the first installation of the app). To add more location, just click the plus button,

And fill in the necessary data according to the types of your account. There are several options here ranging from MobileMe to FTP to Flickr.com.

Final Notes

There are still many other things haven’t been discussed here about Skitch, including the ability to take a snap of itself. The best way to find them out is to explore and use the app yourself.

And as much as I like and prefer Skitch over other screen capturing tools, there’s one thing that I find a little bit annoying: that the only option to save the captured image is by dragging it to our desired location. It would be better if the developer add configurable buttons to save the image to several pre-defined locations in the hard drive (like the one that Jing has).

Sometimes, dragging images could be troublesome. Especially for those who doesn’t have wide area for mousing.

Have you tried Skitch? Do you know other alternative of screen capture tools for Mac? Share using the comment below.

Skitch – Powerful Screen Capture Application for Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

7 Useful Little Things in Snow Leopard That You Might Not Know

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:36:32 +0000

After about two weeks meddling with the latest Mac OS X: 10.6 Snow Leopard, I found several nice little improvements that might be useful for other users. I’ll keep on looking because I’m sure that there are more, but let’s see what we’ve got in our treasure box so far.

1. Date in Menubar

Not everybody will care about this, but for those who’s been longing to be able to glance at the menubar to see date and day, your wish has come true.

2. WiFi Signal strength indicator

While this is also not for everybody, those hotspot hunters will appreciate the new ability to know which spot has stronger signal. There’s also the indicator to show secure (password protected) or non-secure (free) spots.

3. Automatic Time Zone

Still related to WiFi, Mac users can set their machine to adjust the time zone automatically by determining the location of their current WiFi location. So if you travel a lot around the world and use WiFi to connect to the internet, you don’t need to manually go back and forth to the “Date and Time” settings in System Preferences.

4. Undelete the trash

People do “accidental deletion” all the time. And because the accidentally deleted files will be kept in the “Trash” folder until you really delete it, you can drag the files you still want to keep back to their original folder. But doing that manually over and over again can be annoying. Now in Snow Leopard, you can right click (or Control + Click) on the poor files, choose “Put Back”, and everybody will be happy again.

5. Better (Image) Drive Eject

Sometimes you can’t eject the (image) drive because it’s still in use or one of the content of that drive is in use by other application. You can fix this problem easily by closing the application and then you can eject the drive. Problem is, you don’t always know which application is using the drive. Snow Leopard makes it easy for its user to solve the problem by showing which application prevent the drive to be ejected.

6. Enlarged Icon

When you are using Icon view (Command + !), there’s a slider in Snow Leopard’s finder. The function is to adjust the size of the icon. So what? You might ask. Big icon, big deal. Actually, the cool things about this is you can actually “see” the item in the icon view. Image’s icon is the image itself, text’s icon is readable (if you set the view large enough), and you can even flip the page of a document’s icon.

7. Delayed Screensaver Password

One of the easiest way to secure your computer from the prying co-worker’s eyes is to set a screensaver password. But if often leave your computer in a short moment only to repeatedly type the password, this simple security system could be annoying. Snow Leopard let the users decide how long should the screensaver (or sleep mode) run before you need to type in the password. So if a user goes for a glass of water in the dispenser, he/she can continue right away.

I know seven is just a tiny part of Snow Leopard whole improvements. But I’ll add more along the way. Do you know other useful little things in Snow Leopard? Share using the comment below.

7 Useful Little Things in Snow Leopard That You Might Not Know originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

What’s New in Snow Leopard? Technologies Review of Snow Leopard

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:12:59 +0000

If there were awards for the boldest announcement in personal computing history, maybe the introduction of Snow Leopard in WWDC 2008 would win. Apple’s Bertrand Serlet stated that the latest and greatest Mac OS X would have 0 new features. In the world where new features are always the major selling points of every new OS, the announcement was a bold move.

Instead of selling new features, Apple emphasizes on “refinements”. Snow Leopard comes with new technologies which makes it a leaner and faster OS than its predecessors.

Why don’t we take a look at the new technologies and improvements of the youngest feline of Mac OS X family.

New Technologies Explained

Here are new technologies that introduced with Snow Leopard:

1. 64-bit computing

The entire computing industry is moving from 32-bit to 64-bit technology,” Apple said, so nearly all system applications in Snow Leopard are rewritten in 64-bit code. To common users, the benefits of using 64-bit technology are faster system performance, support for larger system memory (up to 16 Terrabytes), and higher level of system security.

2. Grand Central Dispatch

I personally think that Apple has chosen the right icon for GCD because from my understanding, Grand Central Dispatch is like a train traffic controller. This technology will assign every running process to available processor resources, so the whole system can efficiently use the machine’s computing power to its optimum limit. The result is better and faster OS.

3. OpenCL

If GCD is the technology to optimize the CPU power of a machine, then OpenCL (stands for Open Computing Language) is the counterpart for GPU. This technology will enable unused graphic processing power for non-graphical process.

4. QuickTime X

The QuickTime that we are talking about here is not just a mere media player but more to the next-generation media technology that powers the audio and video experience in Mac OS X. Included inside this technology is the media player, the ability to deliver smooth media playback, support for advanced video streaming, the ability to edit and share media to various devices including mobile gadgets like iPod and iPhone.

Few of the many improvements

There are too many improvements in Snow Leopard to be listed down here, so I’ll just pick few that are the most apparent – at least to me.

1. Dock and Exposé

You can now acces Exposé directly from the Dock just by clicking and holding the item’s icon on the dock. Now, along with Alt + Tab, this is my favorite way to quickly access another open window. You may also noticed that items in Exposé are neatly arranged.

2. Scrollable Stacks

You can create Stacks easily by dragging a folder to the Dock. The main purpose of this feature is to quickly look at the content of a folder. In Snow Leopard, users can do scrolling within a stack, and navigate through folders by clicking at the folder.

3. More hard drive space

Apple claims that you’ll free about 7 Gb of hard drive space if you upgrade to Snow Leopard. While I fail to make the pictorial documentation to back up the claim (I was too excited to upgrade), my hard drive went from about 13 Gb in Leopard to about 24 Gb in Snow Leopard. But that’s also because there are a lot of internet cache that being cleared out because of the system restarting.

4. Address Book and iCal sync to Google and Yahoo

The organizing freaks would surely appreciate the new ability of iCal and Address Book to synchronize with Google and Yahoo account. Even those whose life is more of the happy-go-lucky type (like me) wouldn’t mind getting these improvements.

One new feature, he lied!

It turns out that Snow Leopard is not without any new feature. There’s one: support for Microsoft Exchange 2007. This must be a good news for those who uses MS Exchange server. I myself don’t have access to any Exchange since I worked alone in my home office so I can’t provide you with any comment.

Maybe there are some readers who can share first hand experience on this feature?

Any other opinions (or corrections to my limited knowledge) on Snow Leopard’s new technologies and improvements are also welcomed. Share using the comment below.

What’s New in Snow Leopard? Technologies Review of Snow Leopard originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Things to prepare before upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:07:32 +0000

Don’t judge the book by the cover. That statement might be the perfect analogy of what I feel after upgrading to the latest OS from Apple – Snow Leopard. At first glance, everything looks the same as the previous Leopard – as beautiful, but nothing new. (And honestly, I was expecting a little bit drama here). But the more I use it, the more “wow moments” I get – starting from the bumping number of my remaining hard drive space to the tidy-organized look of Exposé effect. (I am on the treasure hunting mode now trying to find tiny gems scattered all over the place.)

Being the techie-geek that I am, I jumped out at the first chance of upgrading my Mac system from Leopard (10.5) to Snow Leopard (10.6), but everyday Mac users might not be as eager as me. So, if you are still considering on whether you should add the snow to the leopard, here are few things to help you make the decision.

To upgrade or not to upgrade

This is a simple question to answer: upgrade! All of the improvements should be good enough reasons to do so, but Apple has made the decision making even easier by pricing the new operating system at a ridiculously US$29.

But there are some caveats here: Snow Leopard is designed for Mac Intel only, so if your system is still PowerPC based, you are out of luck. (Maybe now it’s the perfect time to go Intel?) Apple also made it clear that the US$ 29 upgrade is only for Leopard, while Tiger (10.4) users should go with the US$ 169 Mac Box Set (iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09 included).

While the higher price of Mac Box Set is justified by iLife and iWork, please note that Tiger users has other option because many Mac users has confirmed that the US$29 Snow Leopard will upgrade any Intel Mac.

Preparing Your System

If you’ve decided to take the chance, there are few things to do prior upgrading to Snow Leopard.

1. Check for incompatible applications

As with any OS upgrade, there are always issues of incompatibilies. To give you a headstart of what might happen to your softwares after Snow Leopard upgrade, Apple has released a list of incompatible software which will be moved to a folder called – well – Incompatible Software.

You might also want to check other Snow Leopard compatibility list on this Wikidot page.

2. Do some spring cleaning

It’s also a good idea to clean up your system a little bit before doing the upgrade. You can do this by uninstalling unused applications – using uninstaller like AppTrap, and by doing some system maintenance – using something like Onyx. Both apps are free and ironically, both haven’t had Snow Leopard-compatible version – yet.

3. Back up your data

There are just too many examples about how important backing up your data is that I don’t have to do restate it again here. Beside Apple’s Time Machine, another free alternative to back up utilities is CarbonCopyCloner.

4. Make a bootable back up system

If you have an unused extra external hard drive and if you are really paranoid, you could copy a bootable system of your current Mac before installing Snow Leopard. You can use the free trial of SuperDuper for this purpose.

The Upgrading Process

And finally, the upgrade. You may say this is like an anticlimax to the whole story, but the upgrade process itself is a snap. You just:

insert the Snow Leopard Install DVD,
reboot the system,
hold down the Alt/Option key during rebooting to make the booting option appears. (Or not. I need to hold the Alt/Option during my upgrade, but some users report that they don’t have to).
Choose the install DVD to boot,
Follow the instruction on the screen (and for those who want to do clean install: choose Disk Utility from Utility menu at the welcome screen, and do some formatting and repartitioning the disk. Warning: not for the faint hearted!)
Go get something to drink while waiting.

With the system upgraded to Snow Leopard, it’d be perfect to look at all of the improvements the new OS brings. So, please save that thought for our next discussion.

Have you upgraded your system to Snow Leopard? Or will you? Share your thoughts, opinions, upgrading tips and tricks, using the comment below.

Things to prepare before upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Two Useful Mac Tools to Help Students Track Their Assignments

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:34:03 +0000

If you’ve been a student before, you must know the feeling of overwhelmed by all of your assignments at school. As if having to finish all of those ’slacking time’ killers is not awful enough, you also have to keep track of everything and not drawn in the ocean of deadlines.

Some students just accepted everything as part of their life and moved on (while mumbled red-penciled words along the way), some thought that they’ve had enough and tried to make their points by protesting the authorities, but some others tried to find the way out and came up with these free applications.

Schoolhouse vs iProcrastinate

1. Schoolhouse

As the name suggest, this app is designed to help school students manage their assignments. It has the ability to add, sort and organize assignments, exams, and projects quickly and easily. Students can create notebooks (collection of notes) and notes (the place to actually write class notes). Files and links can be attached to the notes for easy references.

Beside the intuitive iTunes-like interface, other thing that I find cool about this app is the ability to easily add “partners” to each assignment. The name of the “partner” will be picked up from the Address Book. Alternatively, if your partner’s name is not in the address book, you can add new person.

Schoolhouse goes further by providing Classcast, a feature which ability is to publish assignments to the web automatically for anyone to subscribe to. And as the final touch, students can chart their scores over the course of the term to keep a general outlook of their progress.

In general, this one is a great application for students. But one important thing is missing, the ability to synchronize the task to iCal. This means no mobile alarm or reminder available when the users are away from the computer.

2. iProcrastinate

This app will allow students to prolong their slacking time and procrastinate more by giving those classroom citizens the ability to create and edit subjects and tasks and breaking them into more simple and manageable steps.

Other than all the standard features of task and assignments tracker for students, iProcrastinate has a nice feature of associating files to an assignment and burn those files to CD as backup or as a way to share the materials to peers.

If you compare this app with Schoolhouse, iProcrastinate should have an advantage of having the ability to add the tasks to iCal as to dos. But when I tried this feature, nothing happened (maybe it’s just me?). More on having task reminders on the go, iProcrastinate also comes as iPhone application which gives it an edge over Schoolhouse which only available as Mac desktop app.

As for the interface, I prefer Schoolhouse over iProcrastinate. Another downside of iProcrastinate is the “too minimalistic” help file and Preferences. It’s difficult to dig deeper as the website is also too uninformative. For example: the developer claimed that users can create quick task instantly from any application, but even after really trying, I failed to find the way to do so.

Other alternatives

There are other free task and assignment trackers which are not created by students, such as: AssignmentTracker X (an open-source project) and Task List (no longer under development and is unsupported, but still works fine under Leopard).

What about you? Do you use one of these tools or do you know other better alternatives? Share using the comment below.

Two Useful Mac Tools to Help Students Track Their Assignments originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Google Quick Search Box: A Great Alternative to Quicksilver

Jeffry Thurana — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:02:06 +0000

There are only few applications so good and useful that people mistakenly thought it’s a native part of the OS. For Mac OS X, Quicksilver is one of the few. With the correct plugins, this application launcher can be expanded into almost anything that users need; from text editor to clipboard manager.

But despite the popularity, the developer has decided to let it go and move to another project: Google Quick Search Box (QSB); which promises to do even better than its older siblings.

I personally think that keeping the promise would not be easy because it’s very difficult to surpass the greatness of Quicksilver, even for the creator himself. Many have tried without any significant result. But if Google is at your back, almost anything is possible.

Taking a peek

At first glance, QSB is just a plain search box with the colorful word Google in it.

I can’t help but feeling that this one is the other side of the same coin as Quicksilver – similar but on the opposite side. If Quicksilver is an application launcher with an additional file searching capabilities, then QSB is a search tool with the additional ability of a file launcher.

Even the usage is more or less the same: you hit the shortcut key combination, and it will pop-out waiting for the users’ input; hit the Esc key and it will disappear. The default shortcut key for QSB is hitting the Command key twice. A genius solution to the overused Command + Space or Control + Space combination used by other launchers.

When you type something in the box, QSB will try to help you complete the word or phrase by giving you the nearest guess. This autocomplete feature is similar to the one in Quicksilver. QSB will also give you the possible action that you can do after typing the keyword. You can navigate through the menu using Tab, Arrow keys and Enter or using mouse clicks. The differences between the two is only cosmetics, and I like QSB interface better.

I noticed at least two other differences between QSB and Quicksilver. They are:

When you type something in the QSB box and you pause, the word/phrase will stay there unless you hit the backspace button – like in Spotlight. But in Quicksilver, pausing the typing means retyping it again. Sometimes Quicksilver’s input method can be annoying, but you don’t have to hit backspace all the time you want to change the string.
QSB has the additional Google search option for the inputs. Hitting the Enter key will open Google search page with the input as the search string. Quicksilver don’t have this luxury.

Other goodies

There’s a small arrow button at the right side of the interface. If you click on it you could find other goodies offered by QSB. For example: quick access to GMail, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Each one of these goodies has its own shortcut key combination, so users can navigate QSB features only by using keyboard. If I want to open my GMail inbox, I just open QSB (hit the Command Key twice) followed by Command +1 (GMail) and then Enter. The GMail page will be opened in your default browser.

QSB Preferences also can be accessed from this little arrow button (or using Command + Comma key combination). There are few settings that can be adjusted here, such as: Basics,

Searchable Items,

and Under The Hood.

But the important things to do to optimize the usage of QSB is adding Account(s). There are two types of account that you can add: Google and Twitter. You know what that means, right? Aside from Google Services, QSB users can also update their status to Tweeter.

Just write whatever you want to tweet in QSB, hit Tab and choose Tweeter, then hit Enter.

Given what QSB has already capable of today and all the future possibilites, I think I’m going to go with QSB instead of Quicksilver. Granted, Quicksilver and all of the plugins are far more powerful than QSB today, but I don’t think I’d need all those bells and whistles.

What about you? Have you tried QSB? Share your thoughts using the comment below.

Google Quick Search Box: A Great Alternative to Quicksilver originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Mac – Customizing Growl to The Fullest

Jeffry Thurana — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:38:31 +0000

There are great applications that can do many things, and there are also other great applications which can only do one thing but do it best. Growl falls into the second category.

I’ve installed this great app a long time ago and totally forget about it. Yet it works flawlessly in the background while I began to accept that all the pop-up notifications were naturally part of Mac’s native features.

Then one day, when I was going through the list of things in my Mac’s System Preferences, I rediscovered Growl and realized that there are many customizations available to adjust it to each user’s preferences.

Download and Installation

For those who hasn’t had the opportunity to meet Growl, this is a system wide notification application. It will display some specified changes from a range of supported applications. If you want to know what applications that can use Growl ability, you can find the list here.

To use Growl, the first thing to do is to download this small app. Then open the 4.5MB .dmg file, double click on the installation file, and follow the easy-installation process. Growl will then reside inside your Mac’s preference pane.

However, inside the package you will also find some documentations, uninstallation script, and a folder called Extras. Inside this folder you’ll find some extra features that you can add to Growl’s capabilities:

GrowlDict (a plug-in for Apple Dictionary)
growlnotify (a command-line tool to post Growl notifications)
GrowlMail (a plug-in for Apple Mail that posts a Growl notification every time new mail arrives)
GrowlTunes (an application that tell users info about the song that currently played by iTunes)
HardwareGrowler (an application that sends Growl notifications when devices are connected or disconnected from your Mac)

Each extra comes with the necessary documentation but you can find more info about these Extras by visiting Growl’s page on Extras.

Customization

After installation, Growl will work fine. There’s no tinkering necessary. But users can customize many aspect of Growl from System Preferences.

Users can tell Growl to act differently for different applications. There are list of Growl-able applications in the Applications tab. Choose one of them and click the “Configure” button to edit the settings.

One of the adjustable settings is the type of notification skins to use for that specific application. Users are also able to choose what kind of condition that will trigger the notification.

“Display Options” tab give users the ability to change the default ‘face’ to use for the notification window and to change the behavior of every elements of the skins.

There are many skin styles that you can choose, such as the default Smoke,

Brushed,

Bubbles,

or many others. Everytime you change the style, Growl will give you a preview of the notification window.

And if you are the person that loves to meddle with the look, you can expand the choices of Growl’s styles by downloading and installing some of the available choices.

If your Mac is part of a network, it is also possible to receive and display notifications from other computers in the same network. It is also possible to send notifications from your Mac to other computers. Network tab is the place to set everything related to network notifications. Ask you network admin for help if necessary.

Do you have any tips or tricks on using Growl? Do you know other alternative to Growl? Share using the comment below.

Mac – Customizing Growl to The Fullest originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Managing Windows StartUp Items With Chameleon

Jeffry Thurana — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:39:53 +0000

Several of the most troublesome problems that Windows users face – viruses, trojans, bloated softwares – reside in the start up items. So it would be logical that we should watch all the citizen of StartUp Menu carefully.

Unfortunately, those annoying programs have an amazing initiative to add themselves to list of start up items. On the other side, selecting which items that can and can not load at Windows start up is not as easy as saying it.

We need a help from a start up manager to do that, and one of the best out there is Chameleon Start Up Manager.

The Lite Bouncer

I don’t know why, but this little app reminds me of a club bouncer who stand guard in front of the cool club and selecting which ones of the people standing in line who could get in and which ones should hit the road home.

There are three versions of the app, the free Lite one and the non-free Standard and Pro ones. If you want to know the differences between the three versions, you can find their list of features on the developer’s website,. For everyday computer users, the lite one should be sufficient.

For the first time users, the interface of Chameleon StartUp Manager might look a little bit too hectic. But you have everything you need there.

The main view in the middle is the list of things which load when the Windows starts. Users can quickly stop any items from starting up with Windows by checking/unchecking the boxes on the left side of the list.

The alternative way to stop any item is by hovering the mouse over the item. A pop-up toolbar with buttons will show. Choose the Stop button to stop the item, or Remove button to completely remove the item.

The Settings button will give users more possible actions. But most of the options are only available in the Standard/Pro version.

To get more Options, users could dig deeper to the Preferences menu (Options -> Preferences or combination of Ctrl + I keys).

For those who really pay attention to appearance, there are several themes available from the Options -> Themes menu.

Find Out More About any startup items

But the coolest thing about this app is the ability to find more info about the start up items. Windows users know too well that the naming process of most of these items doesn’t use human logic. Everybody can guess what iTunesHelper is and what it does. But what about Alcmtr or Ifgx?

Chameleon makes it easy for users to find out more about those items and what exactly they do. Just select one item and then click the “Find a detailed description on the internet” button.

Alternatively, user can click the More button from the pop-up toolbar and choose Find –> Find in SysInfo.org from the pop-up menu.

With complete information at hand, users then can decide whether to keep or ditch the items.

Have you used Chameleon Startup Manager? Do you know other alternatives? Share using the comment below.

Managing Windows StartUp Items With Chameleon originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Download RSS Content Automatically in Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:00:34 +0000

One of the internet activities that I love most is downloading. The feeling of about to get something new from the Internet reminds me of the nostalgic feeling of waiting for the postman to deliver a package from my overseas penpal.

Thanks to the RSS technology, you could get automatic notifications of some regular downloads that you do – such as TV shows, manga series, podcast and other kinds of casts – if the provider of the content support RSS, that is.

Automate the RSS Content Download

And then I found Automatic. This small application for Mac which reside in the preference pane takes the pleasure of using RSS one step further by allowing users to automatically download the content in the background.

The installation is a snap. Just double click on the installer and choose whether you want to install the app for that active user only or for all users of the computer. Unless there’re more than one user who uses the machine, choose all users.

After the installation, Automatic Preferences Pane will be opened in the “General” tab. The first thing to do is to start the app by clicking on the “Start” button. The next step is to decide where should the download be saved.

Note: Users can set individual saved location for every specific download group if they want to and overwrite this general setting.

To add RSS content download groups, choose the “Subscriptions” tab and click on the “+” (plus) sign on the bottom of the window.

Put the name of the download group in the “Description” field. Give check mark on the “TV Options” box if you are downloading TV shows episodes. Then add the RSS feeds by clicking the “+” (plus) sign on the bottom.

Paste down the RSS URL address and give description. You can add keywords in the filter field if the feed’s content contains unwanted items and you want to include only specific items. But if you prefer to filter out unwanted items, give check mark to the “Invert” button.

If you want to know more about the filtering rules and the regular expressions that you can use, there’s a quick-start guide available at the downloaded package.

After adding all the download groups and all their feeds, you can sit back and let Automatic do the dirty job for you. Every time a new item appears on the list, it will be downloaded automatically and saved in the preferred location(s).

Sidenotes on the story

Automatic keeps record of all downloaded items. You can access it by going to the Subscriptions tab and click on the “Complete History” button.

If you want to see more elaborate logs of all activities, go to the General tab and click on the “Log” button.

Automatic really makes the process of downloading RSS content easier. But upon using it, please keep several things in your mind.

First, downloading large files (like TV show episodes) using regular Internet connection will take a long time and consume parts of your bandwidth. So, at the times when you are wondering why it takes so long just to connect to Google home page, remember that you have Automatic running in the background.

Second, there are tons of free files out there available for download, but not all files on the net are legal. Please download only the legal files and remember that you are fully responsible for all of your actions.

Have you used Automatic? Do you have other alternatives? Please share using the comment below.

How to Download RSS Content Automatically in Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Convert Your Video Easily in Mac with Evom

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:52:59 +0000

The world of videos is the perfect example on how impossible it is to monopolize a format. This is of course a good sign of open market. The problem is, there are too many cases that users have to go few extra miles just to be able to watch a video on their chosen gadget. There are also many cases that users failed to do so just because of the differences of the formats.

It seems that a good video converter is already a necessity for every computer. And while I was out on the quest of finding one, I stumbled into this free application from The Little App Factory called Evom. (The name is the backward spelling for the word ‘move’, maybe they deliberately gave the app that name to make it memorable.)

The small preparation

Before downloading this app, please make sure that your system is Mac OS X – Leopard. If you have no problem with that, go and download the latest version (0.94b at the time of writing).

Another thing to prepare before running this app for the first time is the internet connection. Upon installation, Evom will ask users to download video components required for the converting process.

After the download process finished, you are ready to go.

Move Formats Easily

The first thing that you would notice from Evom is how simple its interface. It’s like a dropbox where users can send their video files to, either from the hard drive or from a video link.

Evom provides users with a bookmarklet to enable one-click-downloading of their favorite flash videos from sites like YouTube. To use the bookmarklet, drag this link to the bookmarks bar of web browser.

Then users can choose where they want to save (or ‘Send’) the video and what format the video will be. I think the first choice – even though it’s located at the very right – should be Folder because here you have the most choices of format and quality.

Another possible saving location is:

- YouTube, as a web video. Don’t forget to fill in your username and password in the ‘Login Credentials’

- iTunes and iPod. Here you have the option to save only the video sound as MP3 file.

- Apple TV.

After choosing the location, click ‘Convert’,

and wait for the process to finish.

The one little thing that’s missing

Evom does its job smoothly and the conversion process is quite fast. But I think there is one little thing missing from this app.

It is the “remaining time” indicator in the conversion process. Most users – like me – would like to know how much longer they have to wait for the process to finish. But maybe that indicator would pop up in the final release, as the one I tried the beta version.

I think Evom is a nice app and a good free alternative to all of the other paid video conversion apps out there. Don’t forget to check out another article here in MakeTechEasier about other free video converters for Mac.

What do you think? Share your opinion in the comment below.

How to Convert Your Video Easily in Mac with Evom originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:06:23 +0000

In my personal opinion as both Mac and Windows users, iTunes is the best music player I’ve come across. The simple yet intuitive interface alone is enough to make me ditch other players out there. And there are many other powerful features which hides behind the simplicity of the appearance.

One of the iTunes features that I like most is the rating system. Users can tag any song with one to five stars based on their preferences, and users can sort or filter the playlist based on the rating. A quick glance at someone’s iTunes display and you can clearly tell which songs he/she likes and dislikes.

The rating system really is a great idea; but, and this is a big but (no pun intended), the bigger the song list, the more difficult for users to give rating to each and every song. Can you imagine editing 2376 songs one by one? That’s the size of a tiny part of my current song list. (And I don’t know anybody who has less than 100 songs on their list).

AutoRate to the rescue

Luckily, there’s an application called AutoRate which can help iTunes users to rate their songs. This app tries to ‘guess’ user’s listening preferences and give rate to each song automatically by looking at how often each track is played and how many times each track is skipped.

The formula uses a combination of play and skip frequency (averaged out over the life of each track), and the play and skip count. Tracks that are frequently skipped are penalised, while often-played tracks are given a higher rating.

Both the track play count and skip count are used in conjunction with the length of time each track has been in your library to determine, on a relative basis, how much you like each track. Ratings become dynamic and change with your taste in music following how you listen to your songs.

That is why you will get no rating for the track that has never been played.

The Simplicity

Before using AutoRate, please make sure that you have iTunes version 7 and above, and Mac OS X 10.5 (and above). If those requirements are met, download and install the app.

The usage is simple: you just open it, and click the “Begin” button. It will analyze your playlist, then assign the ratings automatically based on the result.

There are some adjustments that you can make via the Preferences, such as:
- which playlist folders to be given ratings to. (General)

- how would you like to set up the rating system. (Rating)

- whether to use full star or half star rating. (Advanced)

With AutoRate, my iTunes playlist has grown a little bit more mature without me having to do the hard work.

One last note, you would want to run AutoRate every once in a while to keep the rating system up to date.

Have you use AutoRate? Or do you have other alternatives of similar app? Please share using the comment below.

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Manage Your Email More Efficiently With Postbox

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:48:54 +0000

I’ve been a web-mail kinda guy since a long time ago. I ditched my email clients (Mail, Entourage, and Thunderbird) and prefer to keep my GMail handy on any computer (or sometimes cellphone) that I use, wherever I am. But Postbox might just change my mind.

This free open-source mail client (available for Mac and Windows) combines few great features that can help users manage their emails better.

The developer’s site have a comprehensive list of Postbox’s features and abilities, but here are few that I personally find useful.

1. Create new accounts

The first time Postbox is opened, it will offer you to create a new account. You can also create another account later by going to File -> New -> Account menu. Compared to other email client that I’ve used so far, Postbox’s new account creation is the easiest. It supports major web mail services like GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo and even MobileMe.

2. Browse mails with tabs

Each time you select a mail, it will be shown on one of the window’s pane. There are two pane’s layout that you can choose: Classic View and Vertical View. You can toggle between these two views from the View -> Layout menu.

If you double click on one of the messages, it will be opened in a new tab instead of window. I think the idea is nice and produces less cluttered workspace.

3. Organize messages with topics

In Postbox, you can organize messages by topics. You can set and add any topics that you can think of according to your preferences.

The easiest way to add topic is by right clicking on the favorite topic pane and choose “Create New Favorit Topic” on the popup window. Then you can to assign messages to the topic by clicking the Plus (+) sign next to the “Topic” option in each message.

But if you need to assign topic(s) to many messages automatically, use filtering option for the fastest result. Go to “Message -> Create Filter From Message” menu.

4. To Dos

Postbox comes with the ability to create to do list easily. Not as elaborate as Outlook, but most people – like me – do not need advance organizing capability.

You can create a to do entry manually by clicking “New To Do” icon, or you can ‘tag’ a to do entry to a message by selecting a message and clicking the ‘To Do” button in the message view.

After that, if you go to “View -> Pin To Dos” menu, all the message with the ‘To Do’ tag will be listed above other message.

5. Attachment (and other) List

This app also has a attachment list feature that will show all the attachments from all of the messages in one page. Just click on the Attachment button under the search field. There are 3 other list buttons that you can choose: Images, Links, and Contacts.

The list will open up in a new tab. From here on you can choose to Save (to your hard drive), Send (to others via email), Upload (to Google Docs, but I don’t think this service is compatible with every filetype), or just to have a Quick Look.

This list is based on my short encounter with Postbox for Mac, but the feel for Windows version should not be far off. As time goes by, I’m sure I’ll add more to the “what I like about Postbox” list.

Have you tried Postbox? Whether you will like it or not, this nice app deserves at least a try.

And as always, share your thoughts and experiences in the comment below.

How to Manage Your Email More Efficiently With Postbox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

8 Alternative Web Browsers for Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:05:22 +0000

It’s a competitive world out there, and in the world of web browsers the phrase would be “extermely competitive”. Remember the good ol’ days of browser war back in the 90s? While there’s no more IE in the Mac universe, the competition is still very stiff. The not-so-famous names try so hard to get their brands out to the masses.

Most Mac users I know use either Safari or Firefox. But there are other good browsers out there that deserve a decent attention. Even though at the end you’ll get back to your old love, there’s nothing wrong on giving these alternative a try.

Mac-Only Browser

1. OmniWeb

OmniWeb is a veteran which need no further introduction. OmniWeb used to be a paid app and has been the alternative browser for Mac for so long that it has its own “cult” follower. Now that it’s available for free, there’s no other reason why you can’t try it.

2. Shiira

Shiira is the result of a (bit idealistic) project from Japanese developer to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari. That’s why it’s based on Web Kit and written in Cocoa. So whether the project’s goal is reached or not, is for you – the users – to decide.

3. Camino

Camino is an open source web browser developed by Mozilla Project with a focus on providing the best possible experience for Mac OS X users. So if you want Firefox which built specifically for Mac, this is the one.

4. Stainless

Stainless used to be the ‘twisted’ Mac version of Google Chrome. But in the development, Stainless grows to become a unique browser with its own unique features, such as: parallel sessions, which allow users to log into a site using different credentials in separate tabs at the same time. (I’ve tried this with GMail but failed).

5. Sunrise

Sunrise is another Japanese Mac browser project based on Webkit. It has some unique features like visual bookmark and the ability to take snapshot of an entire web page. Another tiny useful feature is the ability to visually watch the loading progress of a page which is missing from Safari 4.

Not Mac-Only Browser

6. Opera

Opera is an ‘old’ browser who survive the browser war. The company which creates Opera is also one of the pioneers on development of ‘great’ mobile browser. The Mac version of Opera is also a good and stable alternative browser, but the existence of Safari and Firefox (and some people said also the un-Mac look of Opera) makes this oldies has to struggle to get more attention.

7. Flock

Flock is a browser which dubbed itself as the “social browser” and equipped itself with many social-ish features from blogging to facebook-ing and flickr-ing. The easy-WYSIWYG blog editor itself makes Flock worth the look.

8. Chrome

Chrome needs no further explanation. This Google’s browser is predicted to be one of the strong names in the future. At this moment, there’s no stable Mac version released to the public yet, but the alpha tester reported that we can expect good things to come.

Have you used any of these? Or do you know other alternative web browsers for Mac? Share using the comment below.

8 Alternative Web Browsers for Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

5 Simple Drawing Applications for Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:45:32 +0000

Being the chosen platform for creative high-level graphic artist and such, or so everybody say, Mac has many options of heavy-duty graphic softwares. But not everybody needs Photoshop-level applications. Sometimes you’ll only need to do simple and quick drawing.

Believe it or not, one of the Windows softwares that I missed most when I first moved to Mac, aside from Minesweeper and Freecell, is MS Paint. So, for the nostalgia sake, I compile a small list of simple drawing application for Mac.

1. Paintbrush

I think it’s best to start the list with this app because Paintbrush claimed to be “the clone” of MS Paint. This one is a very simple drawing application with minimal tools. That’s why it’s fun and perfect for quick doodling.

2. MacPaint X

MacPaint X is a basic drawing tool for Mac which is based off the original MacPaint that was created by Apple. It comes with many other small applets such as a auto saver and updater which makes it one of the good alternative drawing application for OS X. The simplicity of MacPaint X makes it fit for everybody, from children learning how to draw on their first computer to adults doing a quick sketch.

3. Tux Paint

If you are (or have) children ages 3 to 12, then you have to try this award-winning multi-platform drawing application. The app combine easy-to-use interface and fun sound effects to encourage children to draw. There’s also the cartoon mascot which will guide kids on using the program. But even if you’re not young anymore, this program could be a fun time waster. We all have the little child inside of us, don’t we?

4. Drawberry

It is a free vector drawing software application for Mac OS X. This one is an alternative to the free but bulky: The GIMP or Inkscape. With DrawBerry, you have all the possibilities the vectorial drawing offers you in a free, easy to use and powerful application. At the time of writing, the developer’s web showed near-blank page, so I get the app from one of the Mac download sites.

5. HeliosPaint

This one is a bit more advanced, but not too complex. Maybe somewhere above Paintbrush and (way) below Photoshop. It’s written in Java so it would work on every OS. But as most Java apps out there, HeliosPaint is a bit sluggish.

Of course there are other drawing apps available for Mac and there’s no way I could list them all here. Which one(s) do you use? Share your thoughts below.

5 Simple Drawing Applications for Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Movist – Soon To Be The Best Mac Movie Player

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:20:59 +0000

Most of the Mac people that I know don’t go out looking for a movie player because Mac OS X bundled with one of the best out there – QuickTime. You can make QuickTime more irreplaceable by perfecting it as described in this article.

But that doesn’t mean that there are no alternatives. But there is only one name that keeps popping up is VLC. The two – QuickTime and VLC – shade other Mac movie players for none of the rest could keep up.

Until now.

Meet Movist

Recently I came across Movist. The developer’s homepage is in Korean – no wonder this app is not widely known, yet. But fret not as language is beginning to lose the role as a barrier. Or better yet, you can view the google code page instead.

This baby is barely a rival for the two giants – as it’s just starting to walk the earth. The latest version of Movist is still 0.6.1 at the time of writing; but most reviews predicted that this is the name that you are going to hear a lot in the future.

Here are few of the many Movist features: adjustable play speed, loop movie within a pre-set range, the ability to play partially downloaded movies, and keyboard shortcuts for almost every action. But the first thing that mad me fall in love for Movist is the great subtitle features (Movist –> Preferences –> Subtitle). Just remember to have the subtitle file ready with the same file name with the movie located inside the same folder.

Another cool thing that I found from Movist is the ability to play a movie as a desktop background (Movie –> Desktop Background or Command + D). This will be useful for example to continuously play your company’s promotional video.

There are a lot more features that you can access through the menus, most have their own set of shortcuts combination – good news for the keyboard people. And don’t forget to also peek into Preferences.

One thing that most people find annoying about Movist is the logo. One reviewer said it’s the rip-off from one alternative to VLC logo. It even has the VLC name carved there. If the developer want to be serious with the app, Movist should have its own logo designed professionally.

Ditch the Rest

The best way to take the most advantage from Movist is to make it the default movie player. Here’s how:

Open the Finder window and navigate to a certain movie file (mp4, FLV, mov, etc)
Right click on the file and choose: “Get Info” or simply use Command + I
Expand the “Open With” section of the file info and choose Movist from the drop down menu.
Click “Change All” and click “Continue” in the confirmation window.
Repeat the process for other types of movie file.

Now you can enjoy watching all movies with Movist. Just remember that this one is still in beta, so expect to have few glitches here and there.

Have you tried Movist? Do you have other alternative movie player? Share using the comment below.

Movist – Soon To Be The Best Mac Movie Player originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Work Without Any Web Distraction In Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:06:06 +0000

The Internet is like a coin with the good on one side and the bad on the other. It makes our life easier by providing us with tons of information and acts as the medium to connect to the world, but at the same time it often distract us from the immediate task at hand.

How many of you who never peek at your chat windows, check your mail inbox or keep your Facebook page open while you work? I’m sure the number is low – if any.

I personally think it’s OK to refresh your mind once in a while. The problem is sometimes we don’t have the luxury of spare time due to the deadlines, and yet most of the time our will power is not strong enough to resist the temptation.

We could use some help.

A little bit of Self Control

I found an app – with a scary icon – that can help me strengthen my will power. It’s called Self Control. This app does one simple thing: blocks access to incoming and/or outgoing mail servers and websites for a predetermined period of time.

For example, you could block access to your email, Facebook, and Twitter for 90 minutes, but still have access to the rest of the web. This selective blacklisting feature is very useful if you still have to do some research and post to your blog while eliminating other distracting sites.

Click the “Edit blacklist” button (or use Command + D) to add (+) or subtract (-) blacklisted sites. Please note that you have to type in the site address manually as the app won’t allow you to copy and paste. Another limitation is that you can’t add sub-folder address (something like www.apple.com/itunes/).

The import button is for you to add incoming and outgoing mail servers from Mail and Thunderbird.

Other settings are accessible through Preferences windows (Command + Comma)

After everything is set, you can click the “Start” button and have your distractive web gone for a while. But remember, once started, the process cannot be undone by the application or by restarting the computer – you must wait for the timer to run out.

Going to the extreme

In the extreme case where you absolutely must have no web distraction at all (I am still having difficulties imagining what case that would be), you can use Freedom to block all access to the net.

The appearance is simple. There’s a box where you type in the amount of minutes you want your network blocked – with the maximum of eight hours.

After clicking “OK”, the second window will appear giving you the option to cancel, limit access to local network or block all access (Normal Mode).

What make Freedom a little bit different from Self Control is that you can ‘cheat’ the process by doing a system reboot. It’s a bit of a hassle, but still do-able. Maybe this is the option to take if you accidentally start Freedom.

To me, these two apps are not really useful as most of my distractions are not from the net. But what about you? Do you find SelfControl and Freedom useful? Do you have other alternatives? Share your thoughts using the comment below.

How To Work Without Any Web Distraction In Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Smack Your Mac to Switch Spaces

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:42:01 +0000

Back in March 2005, Apple introduced a new feature to its laptops line called the Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) to protect hard drive with the data inside it. This feature utilizes an accelerometer to detect a sudden movement (such as falling or heavy bumping) and then quickly lock the hard drive’s head if such condition is present.

But the geeks see this feature from different point of view – fun. Few “unordinary” SMS-based applications came to life. One of the favorites is Smackbook Pro which function is to switch virtual desktop every time user “lightly smack” the side of laptop’s monitor.

Knock-knock! Who’s there?

As time goes by, maybe the geeks decided that SMS is no longer fun, thus abandoned the development of many – if not all – of the applications. So most Apple’s newbies never knew that there were such cool applications available for their Macbooks.

Meanwhile, Apple developed its own version of virtual desktop called Spaces and put it as a part of Leopard.

I’m sure that here are a lot of people who realize that the same cool trick that was so popular before could also be applied here. But I only could find one – a dude called Chris – who takes some action to materialize the idea.

He created “Screen Knock” and made it available to public. To use it, you have to download the small ScreenKnock.zip (less than 300 Kb), install it, and adjust some settings.

Adjusting the Spaces Settings

In the video on the screen knock page, Chris explained that for his app to work, Spaces has to be set to work with the Command + Arrow (Left, Right, Up, Down) shortcut keys.

Chances are, the settings on your computer are different (such as Control + Arrow), so you need to check and adjust them. Here are the how:

1. Go to ‘System Preferences’ (Apple –> System Preferences) and choose ‘Expose & Spaces’.

2. Choose ‘Spaces’ tab.

3. Tick the ‘Enable Spaces’ checkbox.

4. Look at the lower part of the window and find the drop-down option box called ‘To switch between spaces’ and choose ‘Command + Arrow Keys’

Run the Screen Knock application and you are ready to go!

Wish List

When you open the ScreenKnock application for the first time, you are in for a surprise. There’s just a small empty window there. No instruction, no options, no preferences, no nothing.

Maybe Chris thought that the app needs nothing else but does what it is built to do: switch Spaces whenever you (lightly) knock the side of the Macbook. But…

If I may suggest something to add to improve this little cool app (and I hope Chris read this), it would be to add the option for ordinary users:
- To change the sensitivity of the “knocking”
- To choose what shortcut keys Spaces uses.

Reason: Sometimes it took me quite a knock to finally able to switch spaces (and I intend to keep my white Macbook for a little bit longer…) And, as a writer, I already got use to Command + Arrow keys as the mean to go to the beginning/end of the line/paragraph. So, with ScreenKnock application open, my writing workflow is disrupted by Spaces switching wildly every time I tried to move between my words.

Have you tried ScreenKnock? Are you familiar with the old Smackbook? Share your thought, experience and opinion using the comment below.

Smack Your Mac to Switch Spaces originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

The things I Hate About Safari 4 Beta – And How To Easily Fix Them

Jeffry Thurana — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:59:47 +0000

In terms of browser choice, I love Firefox on my Windows. For Mac, nothing beats Safari. When Safari 4 beta comes out, I downloaded it and upgraded my Safari 3 in no time. But lo and behold, there are many changes – supposed to be for the better – that are not to my personal preferences.

I surely wouldn’t complain about the speed. To me it feels faster. Recent test showed that Safari 4 beta is the fastest among other browsers. It was done by Apple so it’s a subject of bias. But so far there’s no objection to the test result from other browser makers

The problem is, I missed several things from Safari 3 like the position of the tabs – which are moved to the top, the full title of the opened page which will be shortened as more and more tabs are opened, and the blue bar which show how far the page has loaded.

And I’m not alone; there are a number of people out there who don’t like a number of new features of Safari 4. After a little googling, I found several solutions to the problems.

Tinkering With The Terminal

The first discovery was the method to bring back Safari 3’s familiar environment by tinkering with codes through the Terminal. There are about 8 codes found in this Random Genius page, including how to undo the changes should you prefer to have the Safari 4’s look and feel back.

Safari has to be restarted every time any changes were made for them to take effect.

If you are familiar with Terminal, the codes will surely help you. I myself am not a coding guy and the thought of writing one (even it’s just a copied and pasted line) make me shiver with fear. So I move on and continue with the search.

With a little help from little apps

So far, I’ve found two apps that will do the same task: changing individual elements of Safari 4 beta and revert back the changes if needed. They are:

1. Safari 4 Buddy – about 220 Kb of size and has options to change seven elements including the option to undo the changes.

2. Safari 4 Modifier – about 2.9 Mb of size and has options to change nine elements including the option to undo the changes.

Both apps using checkbox style options and users just simply check or uncheck the elements based on preferences.

Whichever method you choose – either the Terminal coding or one of the apps – their goals are the same: to have a speedy and convenient surfing experience without having to deal with unwanted eye candy.

If you have opinion or experience to share about Safari 4 beta, please use the comment below.

The things I Hate About Safari 4 Beta – And How To Easily Fix Them originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Accessing The Built In Screen Capture Utilities In Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:46:55 +0000

After reading my recent article about screen-capture utilities for Windows, my friend asked my recommendation of the similar tool(s) in Mac and where can he download it/them. As unbelievable as it might sound, there are many Mac users who do not know that, unlike Windows, Mac OS X comes with built in screen capture utilities.

Here’s how to use them.

Shortcuts to Screenshots

To utilize the first set of screen capture utility, Mac users need to know some shortcuts – key combinations. They are:

To capture the entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3. The screen shot will be automatically saved as a file on your desktop.
To capture a specific area of the desktop, press Command-Shift-4. A cross-hair cursor (with x and y pixel values to help you measure the area) will appear and you can click and drag to select the area you wish to capture. When you release the mouse button, the screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.
To capture a specific application window, press Command-Shift-4, and then press the Spacebar. The cross-hair cursor will change to a camera, and you can move it around the screen. As you move the cursor over an application window, the window will be highlighted. The entire window does not need to be visible for you to capture it. When you have the cursor over a window you want to capture, just click the mouse button and the screen shot will be saved as a PNG file on your desktop.

Note: You can add Control key to the shortcuts above to place the screen shot on the clipboard instead of saving it to the desktop. For example, the key combination to capture the entire desktop become Control-Command-Shift-3. Then you can paste the shot into another program (such as Photoshop).

Give Way to Grab

Mac OS X also gives you another method for capturing screen shots; using the (often overlooked and forgotten) utility called Grab, located in the Applications > Utilities folder. Grab is useful if you need to include a cursor or a menu in your screen shot, or if you want to save your screen shot to TIFF format.

Another additional feature that make Grab better than Mac’s basic screenshot feature is that Grab will open the result image in a window and let you choose where to save it and under what name you want the saved file to be. This will save time spent on renaming the files later.

1. To capture the screen with Grab, open the app. Then you can choose one of the capture modes from the “Capture” menu: Selection, Window, Screen, Timed Screen.

2. To include a cursor, first go to Grab Preferences and select the cursor icon you wish to have in your screen shot.

3. If you choose the Selection (Command-Shift-A) mode, you can capture a specific area of the screen by dragging your mouse around it. Just like the basic screenshot function in Mac, Grab will display a tooltip showing the size of the region you have selected. No cursor will be shown in this mode.

4. If you choose the Window (Command-Shift-W) mode, an instruction window will appear asking you to select the window you wish to capture. Click the “Choose Window” button then the instructions will disappear and the window you click will be captured, including the mouse cursor at the position where you click (if a cursor was selected in Preferences).

5. If you choose the Screen (Command-Z) mode, an instruction window will appear asking you to click the screen when you are ready to capture. The mouse cursor will be included in your screen shot at the position where you click (if a cursor was selected in Preferences).

6. If you choose the Timed Screen (Command-Shift-W) mode, an instruction window will appear, allowing you to prepare your screen for capture. When you are ready, press the “Start Timer” button and you will have ten seconds before the screen is captured. This allows you to open menus and sub-menus, if necessary. After ten seconds the entire screen will be captured. The mouse cursor will be included in your screen shot if a cursor was selected in Preferences.

I personally prefer the basic screenshot feature of Mac since it’s faster and simpler. But at times when I need advanced screenshot feature, Grab is always there to help.

Do you have other alternatives to capture screenshots in Mac? Share your opinion using the comment below.

Accessing The Built In Screen Capture Utilities In Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)