Marco.org - The Mac App Store isn’t for today’s Mac developers Marco’s take on the announcement of Apple’s Mac App Store, and what it could really mean for developers and the user community.
bookmarks
I saw a man driving down a busy street the other day, with a cigarette in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I was driving toward him, and in the brief period between his coming into my field of view and his passing by, I observed him attempting to juggle the aforementioned accessories as he tried to downshift. I didn’t get to see the final outcome of the procedure, but his panic was clear as I watched him pass. I laughed, but then the gravity of the situation hit me. This man&rsquo…
commentary, productivity
I found a great new service via Smashing Magazine today: historio.us. It’s a bookmarking service with some seriously impressive twists.
bookmarking, productivity, quicklink
A quick script in response to Donald’s query on my TextExpander Experiments post. He wanted to know if I could make the bit.ly script which expands to a bit.ly-shortened version of a url in the clipboard work with an authenticated account, presumably for click tracking. Well, sure! Just adjust the script below to contain your bit.ly username and your API key (in lines 6 & 7), and replace the existing script in the TextExpander experiments bundle with this one (or create a new snippet with…
bitly, ruby, scripting, textexpander, url shortener
This is a song I recorded a couple of years ago. I like it, although it’s a bit dark. Yes, even darker than my usual. You may be happy to know that — since getting my new electric guitar — I’ve actually been writing some happier music. I haven’t recorded any of it yet, but hope to find some time soon.
music, personal, recording, something precious
I recently wrote a tiny web app called PromptDown to let me drop in some Markdown (or plain text) and use it as a teleprompter for screencast voiceovers. I wasn’t going to put any more time into it, as it did what I needed. Then it started to bug me that it didn’t work on my iPad, which could actually be really handy. So my lunch break fine, and an extra half an hour went to making it work a little more smoothly as an iPhone/iPad app. It’s also ready to install as a web app…
css, experiments, ipad, iphone, javascript, jquery, markdown
If you’re a Things.app user (and a Terminal user), I’ve got a quick function for your .bash_profile that will allow you to quickly add todo items to your inbox with notes and natural-language date parsing.
productivity, scripting, terminal, things
Manton Reece recently released an excellent iPad application called Tweet Library (go ahead, read my post about it on TUAW. You know you want to). He priced it at $9.99, and I have no doubt it’s worth that. I plunked it down about 30 minutes after I started reading about the application. However, I’m apparently one of the weird ones.
commentary, opinion
If you use Skype and happen to be as clumsy as I am, you may have run into this at some point: you see a call come in, you fumble for your headset, you go back to your mouse, find the cursor on your big screen and then try to click the “Answer” button on the call window… only to miss the call because you took too long. I solved this for myself a while back, and thought I’d share my solution.
applescript, scripting, skype
I tried out a tip recently for controlling a Mac via Mobile Safari on your iPhone, and it got me thinking, which is often dangerous. I put together this little web app today as a proof of concept (that got a little out of hand). It basically provides a full interface for volume control, application starting and stopping and many iTunes functions, including volume and EQ. All features provide interface feedback and update you with current info from your Mac.
applescript, iphone, javascript, jquery, php, scripting
I keep trying out the social stream web app, HootSuite (I made a new icon for the Fluid app a while back), both in Safari 5 and in a Fluid browser. I like it, and given that I end up in it pretty often, I thought I’d polish up some edges that were bugging me. These changes may or may not be your cup of tea.
css, userstyle
I ran into a question yesterday that didn’t seem to have an obvious answer: how can I clear a stack of sticky Growl notifications using only the keyboard. It’s not been any secret that I’m a fan of keyboard shortcuts, as indicated by the extensive keyboard support I’ve added to Instapaper Beyond. So I decided to make an interim solution until a specific feature for this is added, either to the Growl preferences or via AppleScript support.
applescript, growl, keyboard, macos, scripting
I’ve been doing some screencasts lately, and have wanted to post them as HTML5 videos in many cases. I also wanted to serve them from my Cloudfront CDN. This is not a how-to post, just some things I learned that I couldn’t find existing answers to. For an excellent primer, see Video On the Web from Dive Into HTML5.
browser, chrome, firefox, html, safari, video
Update: Download link has been updated with a new Bing version. The Yahoo search API was sunset recently and the original service fails to work now. The new download will work for the time being…
experiments, search, searchlink, service, snow leopard, yahoo
