Posts tagged ‘mac’
Address Book URLs
February 3rd, 2012 at 9:23 pm by Dr. Drang
Last night, Brett Terpstra wrote a post about how to get links to Notational Velocity/nvALT notes into your Address Book via AppleScript. Since I don’t use either of the NVs, linking from Address Book to a note has no value for me, but I have needed to link to Address Book. Brett’s links work because…
Photo location service (and Bing)
January 27th, 2012 at 9:18 pm by Dr. Drang
Following up on this morning’s post, I’ve expanded my map script to include an option for using Bing Maps to display the location of a photograph, and I’ve created a Service so I can get a map by right-clicking on a photo in the Finder and choosing “Photo location” from the contextual menu. Here’s the…
Old problem, new trick
January 26th, 2012 at 10:49 pm by Dr. Drang
I went on a business trip to upstate New York this week and tried out a new system for keeping track of my expenses. It’s simple enough that I might actually stick with it. There are a bunch of expense tracking apps for the iPhone. Most of them either require you to open some sort…
Radius 81/110
January 22nd, 2012 at 10:52 pm by Dr. Drang
This old warhorse has finally come up lame. It’s a Radius 81/110 one of the Mac clones that Steve Jobs killed off when he returned to Apple. This one aped the Power Mac 8100. It’s been in use in my company’s office since 1995. At first, it was my computer (my last Mac before going…
iBooks Author
January 22nd, 2012 at 12:44 am by Dr. Drang
Between Kieran Healy, Glenn Fleishman, Andy Ihnatko, and John Siracusa, almost everything I might have said about iBooks Author at this early date has already been said. Kieran and Glenn made the point that we’ve been hearing about computer technology revolutionizing education for decades—Kieran even got off a joke comparing iBooks Author to Encarta, something…
Simpler Apple affiliate linking
January 5th, 2012 at 9:26 pm by Dr. Drang
Last night I posted a TextExpander snippet that automated the procedure for generating Apple affiliate links for the items in iTunes and Mac App Stores. This morning I got an email from David Smith, who pointed out that affiliate links can be much shorter and easier to read if you’re willing to forgo the click…
Apple affiliate links via TextExpander
January 4th, 2012 at 9:26 pm by Dr. Drang
This is a relatively simple way to get affiliate links to Apple’s digital offerings: Mac apps, iOS apps, songs, albums, ebooks, audiobooks, movies, TV shows—anything Apple sells through iTunes or the Mac App Store. It’s a bottom-up rewrite of a workflow I described last week that’s more accurate and more flexible. Affiliate link primer Let’s…
Paper calendars with pcal
January 1st, 2012 at 9:35 am by Dr. Drang
I’m sure almost everyone reading this uses some form of electronic calendar, and for good reason. A calendar on your computer can be changed at will, never getting cluttered with scratched-out appointments that got rescheduled. And when it’s synced with your phone, you always have an up-to-date version in your pocket or purse. But sometimes…
Affiliate links with Fake
December 26th, 2011 at 10:05 pm by Dr. Drang
One of my regrets is not reading Gabe Weatherhead at Macdrifter earlier. Like Clark Goble and Brett Terpstra, he has one of those consistently interesting and helpful blogs for people who like to use scripting to show their Mac who’s boss. This past weekend, he wrote a post on how to use Todd Ditchendorf’s Fake…
Ignoring my own advice
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:34 pm by Dr. Drang
Back in June, I wrote a post in which I pointed out how much easier it is to catch errors in your writing if you use the Mac’s Text to Speech feature. At the end of the post, I said Despite the effectiveness of these tricks, I don’t use them nearly as often as I…
