Great Extensions for Safari - Tabletoy & PopSearch

Ever need (or want) to sort a table on a webpage that for some reason was built so you can’t?

Then Tabletoy is the extension for you!

Check it out and enjoy some of the other amazing Canisbos extensions. He humbly calls them amateur code work, but they are masterpieces. You can even get help with this Google Group.

Another very useful tool is PopSearch. This extension allows you to make almost any search engine your easy-to-access friend in Safari.

I have search engine configurations for:

• Amazon
• Bing
• DuckDuckGo
• EasyNews
• Facebook
• Fanhattan
• Google
• Google Images
• IMDb
• ixquick
• MacUpdate
• Netflix
• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• Wolfram Alpha
• Yahoo!
• YouTube

Let me know if you’d like the configuration URL information for any of the custom searches!

Enjoy your Mac - fully!

Need to search your FTP server?

Note: I found these instructions while helping a client. The hero of this post on Super User about searching FTP servers is slhck and all credit for this post goes to him. Thank you for your service, you are a true warrior for the tech community!

With Cyberduck and SSH access, searching all of your files on an FTP server is rather easy.

First, install Cyberduck. As with most apps on Macs, it’s a simple installation. The trick is setting up your connection to the FTP server via SFTP, this uses SSH, commonly known as secure shell, to connect for file transfers and gives you access to the server’s command line.

Note: you should be very careful using the command line on a remote server. This is an easy way to screw your FTP server up completely. Just use the commands in these instructions or you will be sorry!

From Wikipedia:

Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers that connects, via a secure channel over an insecure network, a server and a client (running SSH server and SSH client programs, respectively).[1] The protocol specification distinguishes between two major versions that are referred to as SSH-1 and SSH-2.

Inside Cyberduck, you’ll want to configure a connection as shown above, only input the correct information in the blurred parts.

Once done, click the red dot (there’s no save button), and you get a list of bookmarks. Double-click the new bookmark to connect.

Then send a command using Option-Cmd-C.

Use the GREP command to search for the file you want and you’ll locate the path, making it easy to navigate to the file you want.

Again: I found these instructions while helping a client. The hero of this post on Super User about searching FTP servers is slhck and all credit for this post goes to him. Thank you for your service, you are a true warrior for the tech community!

Cover Your Wireless Keyboard!

You should definitely cover your keyboard with this 99 cent cover. I just ordered one of these Topcase Silicone Cover Skin for Apple Wireless Keyboard with Mouse Pad - Black but I already have one from the same company for my old MacBook. It’s a great bargain!

Need to Rapidly Tag MP3s outside of iTunes?

There are so many applications available for updating your MP3 file tags, but unfortunately most of them are substandard and not free. In case you don’t know, tags are pieces of information in MP3 files that identify the artist, track title, album and many more details (because it is quite expandable). Some MP3s will even have information about track number on an album, composer, release date, comments and track art. With iTunes (and the tool I’m about to recommend) you can even embed multiple image files into a song.

Tagr is the best tool I’ve found for tagging MP3 files quickly and easily. First, it’s completely free. Well, it’s actually donation ware without a nag screen. If you find it as useful as I have, you’ll paypal the author a donation like I did.

 

Using Tagr is easy. First, start the app. You can do this by the usual method of opening the app directly or you can right-click on an MP3 file and choose open with Tagr.

In the example below, I’ve opened two files with Tagr. Notice that one has no title or artist.

The other file has everything filled in:

This tool is especially helpful with large collections of MP3s where you need to manually update the tags.

Using the Capitalization button is helpful, and copy/paste operations make the whole process quickly.

Finally, be sure to click the Save to Disk button when done so your changes are stored.

Enjoy!

MacJournal for iPad - just $2.99 right now!

As you might know, I use MacJournal for all my blogging because it works with every blogging platform.

Right now the iPad version is available for just $2.99.

Check out AppShopper for the iPad version of MacJournal here.

Saving money on apps, another easy way!

Having a Mac means having access to incredible software bundles several times a year. In fact, you can usually find major groupings of apps for between $29.99 and $50 for each of the four seasons that will include apps worth ten times the cost (retail).

Some of the apps I’ve gotten on bundles over the years include BoinxTV (a TV studio in an app), Scrivener (a leading editor for authors of novels, screenplays and just about anything else including nonfiction), Path Finder (a Finder replacement that is amazing), and Disk Tools Pro (a great way to defragment Mac drives and backup critical volume information in case of disaster). In each of these cases, the bundle cost was a fraction of the cost of the single apps listed above and the bundles included many more cool programs!

If you want to find bundles, you need to know about Squidoo’s Current Mac Bundle List. Annual and seasonal bundles from MacHeist.com, MacUpdate.com, and the year round Build Your Own Bundle store are usually filled with great apps and often include free apps just for posting on Facebook or Twitter about the bundle offer.

You can watch this blog for posts as new bundles become available, that way you don’t miss out on one like the MacPhun Fantastic Bundle that just ended.

Pixelmator 2.2 - Is it REALLY that good?

Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry is REALLY that good. It is an extremely powerful tool for editing photos (or any image files) that rivals Photoshop. Currently available for only $14.99 on the Mac App Store, this app regularly retails for $89.99 and even then is a worthy competitor to Photoshop.

The company offers a large number of tutorials on the Pixelmator website, with new videos covering using shapes, light effects and removing backgrounds from images. All of this, in an app priced less than Snapheal. This is not to say that Photoshop can’t do way more than Blueberry. It can, and it is still the professional photo editor of choice for magazines and professional photogs and artists. That being said, if you want an easy-to-use tool that packs much of the punch of Adobe’s products, this is the app for you.

If you have always wanted to dabble in photo editing, you can give Pixelmator a test run with the 30-day free trial available here. However, don’t wait too long to buy since the $14.99 offer is expected to expire soon. As many of you know, Adobe has moved their licensing exclusively to subscription (monthly or annual fee-based) plans. You can no longer buy their software and stay at a particular version for a single, fixed cost. In fact, even if you wanted to stay at an older version, you have to continue making your monthly payments to use the software. With Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry, you buy once and (as with all Mac App Store apps) receive upgrades when they are available provided your operating system version is current (or meets the required level for the upgrades).

Best of all, if you share your App Store account among multiple machines like I do, you’ll have Pixelmator available on all of them, making this $14.99 deal even sweeter.

This blog brought to you by? (MacJournal)

This Apple blog is really new, but I’ve been blogging a while and I manage all of the blogs (even one client’s blog) in the same way, using a Mac-only application called MacJournal.

Mariner Software makes many great tools for authors who use Macs, and even a couple for Windows users (like WinJournal). While they do have a spreadsheet package, the best of their apps are (IMHO) for writing, whether it’s simply a word processor or a tool for character development.

You’ll find something for every kind of author at Mariner Software.

Note: I still recommend Scrivener as an excellent tool for writing as well, but MacJournal is my only choice for blogging.

Minibox is a Mac-only YouSendIt/Dropbox Alternative

As they tout in their YouTube video, Minibox is a fast application-based alternative to YouSendIt, Dropbox or other methods of sharing large files. You can download the application for free in the Mac App Store by clicking here.

Some of the cool features offered now:

• Menubar button application - always ready for fast access
• No file size limits
• Any file type
• Send by email, including Gmail
• Fast image galleries, as demonstrated here
• Scheduled sending - set a time and date for your file delivery
• Drag and drop multiple files

Biggest drawback so far: files are only kept 30 days unless you select a paid (“pro”) plan, and those plans are not yet available.

Here are a few screenshots:

The image collections are really cool and clicking the cloud download link will download all of a collection at once.

Do you use iCloud? Consider Dropbox for more storage.

Mac users got the integration of iCloud a while back now, and it’s slowly working its way into more applications as a seamless background transfer and replication tool. That being said, if you use something like 1Password for synching passwords to non-Apple platforms or use Open Office across platforms, you probably still need another “cloud” storage service.

Let’s step back and remember that cloud storage is (essentially) a virtual USB stick that you login over the internet to access, giving you your files wherever you are. ReadWrite did this great analysis of the big cloud drive providers and came up with a simple answer: Dropbox performs the best out of the current crop of providers. I use Dropbox myself, mostly to synch between desktop and laptop Macs, but also to synch inside my virtual machines (I write Windows code on Macs).

Signup for Dropbox here and you and I both get rewarded with extra (free) space. Free accounts get a base 2GB of storage and you can get up to 16GB more through referrals (500MB per person). Additional pay plans exist and are covered on the Dropbox website.

Installing is easy -- Dropbox uses a dedicated folder on your machine that automatically synchs when you are connected to the internet, but you can limit which files and folders inside of that dedicated folder you want synched too. For example, I synch my Windows LiveCode projects to all my Windows virtual machines, but not to any of my Macs.

Do you think Apple should provide iCloud access to Windows machines?

 

Free Mac Apps!

There are some great websites to locate the best free applications for Mac OS X.

Some are easier to navigate, while others are more comprehensive. A site with nice categories and well-vetted applications is called Free Mac Apps. Here you can find a choice crop of web browsers, PDF editing and viewing tools, graphics apps, video converters and players, alternatives to the default Mail application and even handy utilities for unarchiving RAR files, burning DVDs and audio editing.

Recommended top apps from that site include VLC, MPlayer, Burn and Open Office. Burn is especially handy and lean if you need to share files or even make video DVDs for your friends who use Windows or Linux operating systems.

App Donkey is an example of a more comprehensive freeware site. The site hosts descriptions and links to more than 1200 applications in many categories including audio, business and office, development tools, productivity and utilities. This is a great place to browse and discover something you didn’t even know you needed until you found it! It’s definitely happened to me many times.

One of the goals of this blog is to help you learn to use your Mac even better with the apps and features built-in without any additional software purchases. You might find that things you think need an extra app are already easy to do in the native operating system once you know how to use OS X better. There are some good tips for novices (and even a few for experienced Mac users) in Macs All-in-One For Dummies on Amazon for just $23.31.

We’ll get back to other free Mac websites in a future post, so until then, happy computing!

Growly Notes - the Free Alternative to Microsoft OneNote

The fine folks at GrowlyBird Software offer a number of free applications that are definitely worth big money. Growly Notes is a note storage tool that makes capturing content easy. You can store text, web links, PDFs and even video clips in notebooks, organized into pages inside sections of content with the ability to indent and show the content in a hierarchy.

From the website:

Growly Notes lets you capture everything you’re interested in, all in one place. Organize research projects, trips, to-do lists, or journals. Scrapbook your images, web links, and video clips. Your imagination is the only limitation.

Pages can contain almost anything: formatted text, images, movies, audio clips, PDF files, tables, lists, web and file links, and drawings you create in Notes. There are no rules for where things have to go: put an image beside text or under it. Draw shapes on top of other notes. Put two snippets of text right next to each other. Click anywhere and start typing. It’s really that simple.

Notebooks are organized into sections (the larger tabs on the left in the image above), each of which contains as many pages as you like. All the open notebooks are shown in one window, for easy navigation and quick jumps.

You can find out more about the features of Growly Notes by clicking here. The application is free and includes comprehensive documentation. Two important aspects that you might not notice at first: you can print directly to a page in Growly Notes, like printing to a PDF, and you can use the standard format (pictured above) or a more business-like outliner format without the pretty colors and rounded buttons.

While this app (and the many other free offerings from GrowlyBird Software) are not (and will never be per the programmers) open source, they are regularly updated and maintained well so that they work well with enhancements to Mac OS X as those enhancements are added.

Read the FAQ here and take a moment to check out the “About Us” page here.

Saving money on APPS, the EASY way!

If you’re a user of a recent version of Mac OS X or almost any version of iOS, you’ve undoubtedly spent lots of money on apps via the iTunes and the Mac App Store. Thanks to the folks at AppShopper.com it is easy to make a wish list of apps and get notifications via email or push notifications (on your iOS device).

Click the image below for the Top 200 list and use the filter buttons to choose iOS or Mac, category, and between Paid|Free|Grossing.

The wish list feature shows you changes including price drops, increases and updates to applications as seen below:

Clicking the Buy Now button launches the appropriate application (iTunes or the Mac App Store) to install your choice.

If you choose a particular app from anywhere on the website, you can see a price and update history as shown below:

Use the integrated sharing buttons in Safari to Tweet or post to Facebook and let your friends and followers know about the apps you find interesting.

For your convenience, there is an app for iOS that has fullscreen iPad and iPhone versions bundled in a universal app.

Typical savings can be huge - some apps go on sale for free and things like popular games (Angry Birds Star Wars HD, anyone?) regularly drop for a day or two from the iPad price of $4.99 to 99 cents.

Getting to Know the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge

I’ve been using Growly Notes to collect the solutions to problems I've encountered using my Apple products since becoming a total convert in 2008. If you are a big fan of Apple products and the software you need to power them, this blog might help you find just the answers you need to get the most out of your (often expensive) purchases. 

Your suggestions are appreciated. I'll try to address topics that you want to know about and post links to the best products including special discount offers and limited time promotions. 

With any luck, we'll both become more knowledgeable about the power of Mac OS X and iOS to make almost any task easier and more effective. 

Apple has a long history of greatness, and while the products they make are (even now) mocked for simplicity, the higher costs for similar classes of machines (computers, phones, MP3 players), the equipment has noticeably greater performance when compared to a machine with the same internal hardware (CPU, graphics adapter, etc) running a version of Windows from the same year.

Now, the a little nostalgia. The image below was the original logo for Apple Computer Company:

Within a year, the logo became the standard-bearer we know today, minus a few changes over the years to coincide with the company’s move from a solo focus on computers to consumer (and professional) electronics and software.

Finally, today’s logo, a simple but iconic representation of taking a bite (or byte) out of knowledge:

Thanks for reading! More posts featuring all sorts of topics to come soon!