A great utility for RENAMING files (Mac OR Windows)

While I have used their products in the past (A Better Finder Attributes), this morning I discovered this renaming utility from Publicspace.net.

A Better Finder Rename is a neat file renaming utility that I use on my site.

Check out Better File Rename for Windows!

This application offers more renaming options than any of us might need to use ever! As I began developing my new Magento web store (opening later this month, http://20zen.com ) I noticed that all of my filenames have spaces and some have price information, as storing the cost of a product with a scanned image of the cover seemed like a quick fix until I built my database.

With Better Rename I can replace spaces with dashes and even grab picture dimensions from the file to append to the filename, making it easy for me to know which files should be used for dedicated thumbnails and which would be used for zoomed picture links.

You can buy the application from the developer’s website or on the Mac App Store.

Enjoy!

Low-Cost Self-Improvement (Training for a New Career!)

All it takes to get a competitive edge in today’s changing economy is the right skill set. While there are many amazing free online courses available, these courses offered as part of a Name-Your-Own-Price bundle from Mac App Deals (and StackSocial) are a great place to start for a low cost. First hand experience tells me some of these courses are not only delivered with excellence, they are up-to-date and feature some of today’s most in-demand technologies, including developing for iOS!

This cross-platform Game Design Bundle covers Unity 3D, art design and even engaging customers! Another offering covers iOS 8 and Apple’s new programming language, Swift, at $89 for more than 36 hours of course material. Check out the Complete iOS 8 + Swift Developers Course.

I highly recommend Mac App Deals just like I did Paddle.com in the past.

There are other promotions currently active that feature great Mac applications, also at a crazy-low bundled price. You can see them by clicking the Mac App Deals link or image above.

Enjoy!

Perfect Case and Keyboard for the iPad Air -

One of the disappointing things about the accessories for the iPad series, going back to the original model that I owned, has been the difficulty getting a solid keyboard/case that is both compact and effective. The original keyboards offered by Apple were basically a translation of the standard Mac keyboard layout into a device with an original iPod connector/stand. This unit lacked flexibility and was surprisingly expensive considering the few features it had. Remember, this keyboard wasn’t even wireless!

Fast forward a few years and each new model of iPad has a number of keyboards from an array of manufacturers.

This post is about one that I absolutely love - it’s perfect for the iPad Air and it is available for a steal right now on Amazon.

The Kensington KeyFolio Exact with Removable Bluetooth Keyboard is a compact accessory, barely bigger than the iPad. The bluetooth keyboard is rated at more than 900 hours of time on a single charge of its easily rechargeable battery. The keyboard features dedicated buttons for volume, the home screen and even Siri.

Make no mistake, this keyboard does not make the iPad Air a replacement for your laptop. The Surface Pro advertises as such and may even do it; however, this keyboard will make using the iOS versions of the iLife applications much easier. The combination of the iOS design aesthetics and easy keyboard typing make creating rich documents a breeze.

Right now this keyboard is available for just $25.22 via Amazon Prime, a great savings over the suggested retail price of $89.99.

Last Chance to Pick a Bundle of 10 Mac Apps - Paddle + mac.creatable

This $39 offer is about to expire - don’t miss your chance!

 

Swift Programming Language (XCODE Beta)

The Swift programming language beta is now available to even free memberships in Apple Developer.

You can access the download here. Remember, an annual membership is just $99 for individuals and allows you to publish apps to the Mac App Store, opening a world of customers to you!

Enjoy!

Macs Fan Control - Solving Freezes on iMac Late 2009 Models

Readers of this blog might know I’ve complained about frequent lockups on my desktop machine, an iMac Late 2009 model. The problems have been happening since 10.6 and I’ve made little progress at determining the source.

The freeze is an odd one: the mouse pointer still moves fine and you can even remotely connect via SSH for a brief period after the freeze, but it is impossible to control applications or reboot. A full reinstall seemed to resolve things for a while, but then it started freezing again. I tried to isolate the running apps, but nothing is different from my MacBook Pro install, so that didn’t help.

Finally, I found a few posts suggesting this was a result of the GPU overheating in iMacs of that era. I had tried several fan control apps but still couldn’t get one to work. For one thing, the feature in some fan control apps that checks the sensors to decide when to increase fan speed does not seem to work with the Late 2009 hardware. I was about to give up when I found out about Macs Fan Control.

With this app, I have to manually set the fan higher - the select by sensor doesn’t work (as mentioned). Below is an image from the same app installed on my laptop.

I generally increase my CPU fan to 3000+ RPM on warm days before the temps rise much, and I am happy to report that after almost a month, no freezes.

Prior to that I was averaging at least one per day.

If you’ve run into the same problem, let me know in the comments if this fix works for you.

Microsoft OneNote - Step-by-Step

In March I told you about Microsoft OneNote’s free release for Mac OS X and iOS. Since that time, I’ve gotten far more into using the application and I must say, it’s a perfect note-taking tool that lets you keep your content synchronized across all devices. Using the app effectively is easier thanks to continuing improvements to the design.

Not Sure You Want OneNote?

Check out Microsoft OneNote from the Mac App Store and look at the screenshots. This notebook is quite powerful, with full rich text, images, controls like checkboxes and much more to make it the perfect companion for basic project work. No, it’s not a replacement for a powerful CRM or other SFA tool. It’s not Excel or Word. It is a synchronized notebook, and it’s a pretty good one at that.

Today’s post walks through adding a new synchronized notebook, then adding a page and forcing a synchronization.

Make sure you have a Microsoft account, such as a live.com email address. You can create an email account for that domain by clicking here.

Once you have that account and you’ve installed OneNote, walk through these steps.

Make a new Notebook

 

Add a Page

Click the (+) on the right side of the box, or use the File menu.

Name the Page

Click above the day of week, date and time then type a page name. It will appear in the blue column at right.

Rename the Section Tab

Just double-click the tab and type.

Synchronize

Click the notebook name, then scroll down to the name (again, kind of redundant, right?), click the > and select Sync.

UP NEXT

This week we’ll explore how to open this Notebook “Example” on another Mac and on an iPad Mini.

Thanks for reading!

Need a System Configuration Summary? Try EtreCheck!

If you’ve ever gone to Apple’s support forums and asked for help with a problem (or any support forum, for that matter), chances are a savvy guru will tell you they need some basic configuration details for your Mac. There is a great (and free) tool that will help you gather that information quickly, and it’s called EtreCheck.

After installing into your application folder, running EtreCheck will scan your system and full information from settings files and scan important system folders for things like Kernel Extensions, User Launch Agents, Internet Plug-Ins and 3rd Party Preference Panes. Here’s what you see on launch:

On completion, you’ll see a window with a scrollable collection of this data, like this:

From here you can copy the report to the clipboard and paste into a forum window or a rich document with even the free TextEdit app provided with Mac OS X). A detailed overview of the sections is available at this About EtreCheck page.

The nature of each section, typical problems and corresponding solutions would be too much to cover in a single blog post. For that matter, you’ll find dozens (hundreds?) of posts about topics like iMac freezes on Apple’s own support site, so this isn’t a problem solver. However, the first step to getting (free) help from people in the know is often providing them all of the details about your system in one post so they don’t have to ask you for these facts interactively.

As always, it’s a great idea to know your closest Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP). I want to give a shout out to a favorite near my hometown, maccentric. They have provided service for my Macs, both in-warranty and out-of-warranty, and I have always been satisfied to say the least.

If you have a favorite non-Apple AASP, please share the name and URL in the comments below!

For Those Who Missed It - Apple Opens the OS X Betas

In case you (like ME) missed the news, Apple has opened OS X betas to consumers who join the Beta Seed Program. Previously limited to developers, this programs aims to assist both Apple and power users by providing more testers that can report issues as they are discovered (through a bigger range of testing) and shortening the release cycle for fixes. After joining the program, consumers have the ability to test drive pre-release versions of software and use the new Feedback Assistant to report bugs. While these pre-release versions might have issues that require a full erase-and-restore operation, some of us are willing to take that risk to have advance access to new features.

At this time it is not specifically stated which betas consumers have access to, but it is my educated guess that it will strictly be bug fixes and minor pre-releases. I would not expect to see a developer seed of 10.10 at the same time it is offered to developers after next week’s WWDC.

Join or Login - Apple’s Beta Seed Program

Learn more about the Beta Seed Program

 

 

 

 

 

Pixelmator - 3.2 Released - "Sandstone"

Readers of my blog have heard over and over how Pixelmator is a steal of a deal. Well, the app just got better. With the latest update (Pixelmater on App Store), the repair tool has been rewritten from the ground up. Once again we have access to Photoshop-quality bitmap element removal and background restoration for < $40.

More information about the product and this update, including instructional videos, can be found at the Pixelmator website.

UPDATE: as of 12/14/2014, Pixelmator version 3.3.1 is available - see this blog post from the developers.

PS3 Controller to Mac Setup and Use

If you want to use your PS3 wireless game controller for gameplay on a Mac running OS X 10.9 (or higher), it's never been easier!

Here are the simple steps to connect your dual shock:

1. Open System Preferences

2. Select Bluetooth

3. Plug your USB charging cable into the PS3 controller, then plug the other end into your computer.

You should see the red lights on the controller flashing. Press the PS button in the center of the controller for a few seconds and you should see it connect in the Bluetooth screen on your computer. If it does not connect, or you did not get the flashing lights, it probably means your controller is paired with some other device. If that is the case, disconnect that pairing by either turning off the PS3 or (in the case of another computer) deleting the device where it is showing (such as another Mac's Bluetooth preferences area).

Many popular games ported to Mac OS X, such as the Lego series done by Feral Interactive, support PS3 controllers natively and will recognize and use the controller with the same layout of buttons as the games would on a PS3. Easy to switch platforms, huh?!!?

Remember, if you buy games through the Mac App Store, you can download them for all of your Macs that use the same store account, but since the PS3 controller can only be paired to one Mac at a time, you'll need to quickly delete the pairing before connecting to another Mac. This isn't obvious since the dual shock won't give you any visual alert that the step is needed, you'll just find it impossible to pair the device.

Enjoy! Please share any information about games that work well with this controller as well as any that don't!

IMPORTANT Apple Security Update 2014-002

Security Update 2014-002 is out (as of yesterday) and it contains some extremely important vulnerability fixes.

You can read all about it from Apple at the link above.

Components:

• CFNetwork HTTPProtocol
• CoreServicesUIAgent
• FontParser
• Heimdal Kerberos
• ImageIO
• Intel Graphics Driver
• IOKit Kernel
• Kernel
• Power Management
• Ruby
• Security - Secure Transport
• WindowServer

… feature updates for various operating systems from 10.7.x through 10.9.2, although each component is not updated for all operating systems. The key risks associated with not updating include creation of WindowServer sessions by sandboxed apps, man-in-the-middle attacks for SSL, situations where screen lock does not occur when it should, buffer overrun issues that could allow maliciously crafted applications, images and PDFs to execute code arbitrarily, user access to kernel pointers that defeats memory space randomization, and potential access to unprotected cookie content (and, therefore, access to secure sites) by stopping an in-progress HTTP header transfer before security data is finalized.

For Mavericks users, this update also contains the security content of Safari 7.0.3. Issues addressed in this release of Safari cover multiple memory corruption issues existing in WebKit.

Click here to launch the Mac App Store’s Updates

Remember, on Mavericks all updates default to automatic, but system updates require a restart and if an app is loaded it cannot update. Check the Notification Center to see if you have missed an alert. The Mac App Store updates tab will also show all updates installed in the last 30 days, in order of most recent first.

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FYI, this is the device I use to keep my iMac device batteries charged. It is many levels above the typical retail device, and now it is available for 30% off what I paid!

 

 

The Little Low-Cost Bluetooth Speaker That Rocks - Oontz Angle Ultra-portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker

If you’ve been in any retailer recently, you’ve surely seen a row of portable speakers. From the as-seen-on-tv variety for $20-$30 on up to the highest quality Bose units, it can be overwhelming to make a decision.

I’m happy to share the best value for your money after wasting my own money on some real lousy units over the past few years.

Many people are hesitant to spend top dollar for the highest quality models from Bose, and most reviews on popular electronics sites read more like a sales pitch than true reviews. The $100-$200 range is filled with products with confirmed clarity and loudness as well as some that are no better than the cheapest products that can be found in a dollar store or truck stop. Expensive units like the Beats by Dre are very popular, and they work well, but for much less you can get a comparable level of clear, loud sound.

My personal favorite is available on Amazon for $39.99, the Oontz Angle. I’ve never been so happy with a tech purchase at $40!

First, it isn't the loudest device and quite a bit of the sound quality depends on the source, as I can compare low bitrate streams from my iPhone and my own high quality encoded music. If you don't have the budget for a Bose or Beats by Dre, this is as loud and clear (with the right source) as many of the speakers that sell for $150-$200. Don't put it in the category of the other < $50 speakers. I've had several and they all had problems, from sound quality to length of life. At least two of my other < $50 purchases stopped working within a few months.

The sound booms well enough to play in the bathroom and hear over the shower water in the mornings.

The unit works well with smartphones and tablets, and for audio engineering like I do on my MacBook Pro, it’s a perfect separate monitor. The loudness is impressive, especially with a quality audio source.

Don’t get me wrong, if you have the money for a high end system, there’s no debating that you get better sound from a $400+ unit. However, for under $100, there is nothing that compares to the rich sound of this device.

Final notes:

10 hour rechargeable battery (I’ve gotten 11 hours on an audiobook, listening to the entire book over three days via the speaker)

Recharges via included USB cable

Comes with audio cable for direct connect, carrying case is sold separately

Total weight 9 ounces, I carry it from room to room often

When paired with smartphones, it functions as a speakerphone (I felt the volume output from my iPhone was too low for use in a car, but fine for the office)

Full list of Portable Speakers at Amazon.com

MacHeist Apple Design Award Bundle 2014

Awesome MacHeist bundle - $19.99 for some amazing apps, I’ve used BoinxTV and MacJournal for years. In fact, this very post is being written in MacJournal for my blog.

The hidden app at the bottom could be iStopMotion 3 or some other video recording tool. I’m looking forward to trying out Toon Boom Studio myself.

Enjoy!

Microsoft OneNote - Free Digital Notebook and More

If you’ve ever used OneNote on Windows, you probably know that it’s more like a blank scratchpad for your computer than anything else. Now that same functionality is available for Mac OS X and it’s free!

The editor of OneNote supports rich text documents and images, and all notebooks can be synced with your Microsoft Live username and password. All content is readily searchable and the plan is to never charge for this functionality.

Check out the application OneNote on the Mac App Store and remember to get the iOS versions if you want to access the content from your iPad or iPhone.

Enjoying HDMI Output from Thunderbolt Ports

If you have a Mac with a Thunderbolt port, you might really enjoy watching movies or simply using your big screen TV as an extra desktop for your computer with an HDMI output. There are a number of manufacturers of Thunderbolt to HDMI cables, but you don’t have to buy the Apple-stocked (and expensive) Belkin models. Amazon stocks multiple low-cost versions ready for shipping via Amazon Prime, and I can recommend two of them that I use.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with one of these cables:

• Mirror your desktop
• Extend your desktop onto the HDTV
• Use the HDTV as a “space”
• Display fullscreen apps on the HDTV while using the regular Mac desktop to continue working on other things
  • Safari or Chrome
    • Netflix
    • VuDu
  • VLC for watching videos
• When combined with a wireless keyboard and mouse (or trackpad), work using the HDTV as the only screen

I initially bought a 10 foot cable, this one from Cable Matters:

It turned out that the cable was just a little short if I wanted to sit back comfortably on the living room sofa and work while watching videos on my HDTV in the living room, so I got this:

With prices like this, there’s no reason for you not to have the fun of your Mac on the big screen anymore!