The iPhone that never sleep

in ,

Mobile Blogging from here.


I like my iPhone, the apps and games are wonderful. But I can only realize the true power after subscribing to a data plan.

See the above? I can now blog at anywhere, locate myself at any time and what's more is to get the latest information on the road.

But are we not getting connected enough? Now, other devices, such as the digital camera or portable gaming console, can also gain access to the net.

I wonder when would we feel exhausted in sending update to our friends round the clock.

Before that, I will enjoy the using of my iPhone. :)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]


ForkLift

in
There are several apps which I come back and forth and deciding if it fits into my usage pattern.

ForkLift is one of them.

The first thing to intrigues me in using it is the 2 panel display. I've been grown up from the DOS and Norton Commander is my preferred way of file manipulation. There are several offering of apps on the Mac platform that enable this but I like ForkLift in several way.

First, I can create "Groups" on the left panel. For instance, I can crete a new group for work and drag all work folder as a short cut. Then, there's a built-in app delete tools. I can remove application that I no longer needed easily. Also, the lower panel provides information that I need at times, one of them is the size of the folder. And the integrated "Connect" capability let me transfer file to my remote server in the same application.

Yet, there are some features which I want. I use terminal a lot, and I hope there's a short cut to let me open a terminal and change location to there. Alternative, it would be nice if they provide a shortcut key to copy the filepath.

I've mentioned I like the "Connect" option but I couldn't find a protocol that I used a lot - SAMBA. When I need to connect to the SAMBA share, I need to do it in Finder and switch it back to ForkLift.

I've found it can be bought in a discount from MuPromo. Go check it out.

Product Promotion - Timeline 3D

in
I love MacWorld, definitely because of the keynote by Apple (sad that it's gonna be the last one this year) for the new product announcement. Apart from that, vendors will usually offer special promotion in this period.

Today, I came across a very nice offer from BeeDocs. They are offering a big discount on their flagship product - Timeline 3D, which usually cost $65, is now offering to user at a special price of US$30.

I tried this once sometimes ago and love it. But I encounter some problem in using it, which Andy reply to me promptly and turns out it is the driver from Logitech that break the software (to be precise, that driver render Growl from working properly).

If you need to draw some timeline, go grab it before it goes away.

BeeDocs

Software I have purchased in 2007

in , ,
Some people like to buy clothes and I definitely have a desire to buy good software. Be it commercial software, or shareware, I would get myself a license as long as I find it useful.


  1. Springy
  2. BetterZip
  3. PulpMotion
  4. HTTP Scoop
  5. Connected Flow - Aperture Plugin
  6. Connected Flow - iPhoto Plugin
  7. Sticky Window
  8. PDF Studio
  9. Coda
  10. Parallels
  11. Oxygen XML Editor (include the license for SVNClient)
  12. VMWare Fusion
  13. Screen Recycler
  14. iLife 2008
  15. iWorks 2008
  16. Keynote Pro - Eclipse Pro
  17. Graphic Converter 6.0 upgrade
  18. Fission
  19. Write Room
  20. VMWare Workstation 6.0 for Linux
  21. 1Password
  22. IntelliJ 7.0
  23. Mac OS X 10.5
  24. MarsEdit 2.0 upgrade
  25. TheMacPak


The heavily used application


With OS excluded, I still have a couple of candidate.
VMWare Fusion, iWorks, Connected Flow Aperture Plugin, 1Password. This one is tough so there will be two winners - VMWare Fusion and 1Password. You can find both application running on my mbp everyday, my development work rely very much on VMWare and 1Password could help me to manage the password for the different kind of account I am having.

The worst investment


There's several of them, TheMacPak, Screen Recycler, Parallels and Oxygen XML Editor. But if I have to pick one, it will go to Parallels. I bought it even before it ships, it works OK but definitely resources hog. Besides, I am so used to VMWare that I jumped right into it when they have the mac version ready. Sometimes, I should just wait and decide.

The bang of the bucks


Springy. It's very useful, especially with the context menu integration. The good thing is, it even works with JAR files, that helps me to navigate through the java library which I need to tackle in development work.

The interesting candidate


Apart from the application above, I would also like to mention a service which I used a lot over the year. I purchase the stock photo and vector graphics which I used in presentation from iStockphoto. They used to be quite cheap ($10 for 10 credit) but have increased the price recently. Still, they offer a wide range of quality photos that could liven up the boring presentation.

Applause to MacRabbit, Panic and others.

in
The winner for Apple Design Awards 2007 has just been announced and I am glad in seeing names that I feel familiar with. :)

I've started using CSSEdit since v2.0, it stood out of the crowd at the time when I was looking for a nice CSS Editor. Simple, elegant and fast is a short summary. But it's not only skip deep, the X-Ray, live preview, real time updating and style lookup features simply blew me away! Validation, to-do list, style grouping, smart comment ... I can just keep going on and on. The features continue to grow in v2.5, like tabbed editing, style override, etc. Updating the website can now brings so much fun!

Panic, I've been the fans of this company since Transit. Now, Coda has entered the market for not so long, but has already stirred up a lot of discussion. Following the tradition of Panic, the interface is clean and beautiful, and it brings almost all the tools that a developer ever needs into a single application.

The FTP client, editor is top notch. The build in terminal is the feature I like most and the reference book is useful when you want a quick lookup. You can even setup a number of sites as your favorites in speeding up the connection. It is a very useful tool for the developer although there are still some rough edges. For instance, I find it difficult to change back to a file I was editing if I changed the functions (e.g. from FTP to Preview). Besides, the CSS editor simply pales when compare with CSSEdit 2.5. Also, it's a bit difficult to work with local files, since "Site" is the major idea of the application. You have to ftp back to the own machine if you want to work on local files.

Anyway, a big applause to all the winners, especially to MacRabbit and Panic.

How to connect to a printer shared as a MS Windows print queue

in
To connect to this printer, all you need to do is similar to adding a local printer. The tricks in getting this done is step no. 3. So, watch out!


  1. Open the System Preference -> Print & Fax
  2. Click the "+" sign to add printer,
  3. Press the "option" key and mouse click on the "More Printers ..." button
    You can then find a menu item called "Advance" from the drop down list, which you can then specify the URI in reaching the SAMBA share.

    Follow the rules below to define the print que, userid and password.


    smb://<username>:<password>@<server>/<queue name>



    e.g. smb://paperdrip:xxx@printer.paperdrip.net/hp_printer

Attention to details in iChat

in
Apple, apple.

A company famous in addressing issue in details. There are already a lot of examples shown before but I am amazed there is still something new being found today.

I am having an audio chat with my friend, turned up my speaker and started talking. But I've noticed that the left channel is muted. I am scared if it might be something went wrong, started to look around in System Preferences and such but noticed nothing wrong.

Then my friend reminded me that, the mic on the MBP is located on the left hand side, near the speaker. So it is muted on purpose to prevent the echo from happening.

I am simply amazed. :)

A joy to do software development in OS X

in ,
I have been enjoying to do development in OS X for years, in JAVA most of the time. Eclipse, SVN, Apache ANT, Tomcat, Mysql .. all runs flawlessly and I can do deployment easily.

But I am enjoying even more lately with my first rails app. I do this with 3 apps most of the time, which I can "flow" nicely in between.


  1. Textmate
  2. CSSEdit 2
  3. DBVisualizer


Using the GUI of Textmate is like licking a tasty candy - Syntax highlighting, auto closing of tags, project navigation pane. It allows me to modify the different files in both tree mode and tabbed pages.

When I am doing the frontend, I start with the CSS. In this new version, the "X-ray" and "preview" are the 2 features that I like a lot. I can open the preview window and check out how my changes are like. When I am done, I switch back to Textmate for the logic. BTW, Textmate allows me to open CSSEdit from the project tree when I right click on any CSS file.

Upon execution, I will need to check if the backend operates as desired. Now the DBVisualizer comes into picture, I can do SQL query, browse through data easily. And not to mention, this is a FREE application.

To complete the package, I relies on "Transmit" for ftp transmission (btw, it's nice to be able to right click on any file and open with Textmate for editing) and "Color Schemer Studio" in preparing the color scheme. It's always good to get inspiration from others.

As a side note, the environment switching in Ruby is welcoming. Since the DB setting on my local machine differs from my server, I only need to setup accordingly in the "Test" and "Development" environment in the file database.yam. Startup my webbrick with additional attribute, and I am set.


ruby script/server -e test



I treasure these little thing since I work on my mbp many hours in a day.

Application I use regularly on my PowerBook

in
I am now gathering the latest version of the applications that I use regularly, for my soon-to-be arrived mbp c2d (Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo).

Documentary



  • Keynote
    I use both Keynote and Powerpoint, the decision point in using which depends if my file needs to be used by others. Personally, I like Keynote more, main because of the interface. The only thing I dislike before was the presentation tools, which I couldn't scroll up and down on the presenter's note, until now I figured out the hotkey. Besides, the templates looks more appealing to me, even the buildin one looks better than those from Powerpoint.
  • MS Office 2004
    Word, Excel, Powerpoint. Do I need to elaborate more?
  • OmniGraffle Professional 4.0
    OK, buying this tool is one of the best investment I have made. I made all the diagram for the documents or presentation with this program. The interface is very natural and un-obstructive, I have even made some vector graphics with the bezel tools in Omnigraffle. The license is a bit steep, I get the standard version firstly but I find myself enjoying a lot of the pro features like the support of multi-pages and master canvas.
  • OmniPlan Beta
    To be honest, I am not fond of tracking schedules with graph like Gantt Chart or work with resources allocation (I am an XP guy!!). But when things become un-avoidable (i.e. when you boss ask you for such a diagram), I will use this to entertain their request. Following it or not is another thing. :)

    And yet, I am not sure if I will pay for it when it comes out of beta.
  • Pages
    Compare to Keynote, I am using far less with Pages. But there is a project that I am working on right now (sort of like coming up with a book for myself) and I find it is very easy in using the tools to do my page layout. I have even bought a commercial template which renders my half-bake book looks great!
  • Paparazzi!
    Have you come across this unknown gems? It helps me A LOT in doing my documentation for the web application! I don't need to stitch the screen capture for a long web page into one after locating this tool!


Entertainment



  • Audion 3
    I know everyone use iTunes, I am one of it's user, too. But at times, there are mp3 that I want to play but not importing into my library, I will bring up this app. Too bad it had been dropped and I need to look for another UB mp3 player.
  • Audio Hijack Pro
    I use this to capture the audio off my DVD and also for tapping the internet radio broadcast. It's nice but I am not using it as often as I thought, I found myself unable to catch up with the program I tapped, no time to listen to in short. Besides, the mp3 I captured off the DVD is always resulted in a long single piece, and they have just recently released a new application to cut the mp3 into pieces.
  • HandBrake
    Media Center, what a hot topic, but I need to digitize my DVD or MP3 collection before I can enjoy it with the nice remote. HandBrake (or Hawkeye) is the tools I use to convert my DVD into MP4 so that I can browse it through with Front Row.
  • iTunes
    Do I need to say more? Oh, one thing you might of interest, is the size of my MP3 collection. It is now well over 60G and closing to 70G soon.
  • RealPlayer
    I only use this for Radio 4 internet broadcast. I find it difficult in locating the free version and the need for registration before you can download is annoying.
  • VLC
    The nice little app to play back all the .avi or mp4 movies I got.


Graphical / Imaging



  • Adobe Photo Elements 4
    The little brother of Adobe Photoshop, now what I want is an UB version!
  • Color Schemer Studio
    I have been eyeing on this tool for a long time, but the price tag drive me away everytime, until I saw the discount from MacZOT! The complimentary color suggestion, text color suggestion is so useful. And I can import color scheme provided on the web site, too. The original price is too costly and I find it worth the discounted value more.
  • Comic Life
    A funny idea to play around with photos you have taken in an event. My first trial on this is to present the photos taken in the C# Boot Camp. The layout and dialog is funny but my only gripe is the change in resolution means a redo. It's even nicer that a complete version was bundled with my mac mini. :D
  • DoubleTake
    Panorama, not something you will take regularly. But me, as a user of XPan (a camera that takes panorama on films), need this apps everytime when a roll is shot. I scanned in the films and stitch the two half back into one. It's tedious (for the scanning) but the stitching is easy. I have even used this for my wedding photos, too.
  • GraphicConverter
    I bought the licesne for this when I need to work on a bunch of photos, resizing to the resolution I desire. Later on, I tried to use this in place of Photo Elements. But it's a no go, simple action like copying or cropping, takes me a lot of effort. Mainly becoz of the weird shortcut key combination, and the lack of support of layering.
  • iPhoto
    Now my de facto tools in organizing my digital photos, especially important as I will publish them to my .mac website.
  • iView MediaPro
    I use this only for one thing - slide show. But I am not using it much now, especially as I am using iPhotos in doing my photo organization.


Productivity Boost



  • Curio
    I learnt about this idea tracking tools a long time ago but the price tag drive me away instantly. Until last month, when they were offering free license, I re-visited this apps and find it nice. I have used it in my latest project, to keep track of the ideas, requirement, screen mockup. I have even pay for the professional version. The idea sounds but could be done even better, e.g. the HTML export. I know it's hard to export since the data might consist of both text and graph but the decision in making each idea page an image is just too obscure. When I export the idea to HTML, I want to share with others and it's very likely that they will want to use the text. The PDF export is not much better, too. The page orientation keeps changing and get truncated most of the time. I have to go back and forth in changing the layout before a proper PDF can be generated. It has a lot of potential but I just don't get clicked with this yet. It could be my own problem, wish that I could get accustomed to this soon and turns my investment fruitful. ;)
  • Hog Bay Notebook
    After MacJournal gone commercial, I used this in place of it. It's simple and can do the job nicely. I know they have morphed into Mori lately, I am not sure if I am ready for the new layout yet. Maybe it's a good time in forcing me in phasing out the old version.
  • LaunchBar
    Apart from OmniGraffle, this is another tools that I feel my investment worth every penny! I am a notebook user and this tools allows me to focus my work on my keyboard, be it opening an app, dropping files into an app or even opening an URL. I can do it all with combination of keystrokes. It's resemble to Spotlight somehow but it's only a skin deep level comparison. Spotlight is SLOW and cannot do many of the thing I mentioned. Get this, or QuickSilver if you want a free alternative.
  • Pzizz
    I have an habit in taking a nap after lunch. I have heard about this apps before but again, the high price tag driven me away. I got a free copy from MDA sometimes ago and I find the Energizer Nap works quite well. After that, I pay up for the sleep module and the MDA offer on the upcoming version. I am now using it almost daily and on Sunday night when I find it uneasy to relax and sleep.
  • SplashID Desktop
    I have many serial number to keep track of, as well as login ID, this apps helps me to keep track of them nicely. Last thing I've heard from them is a version of Symbian OS. I have yet to check it out and it will be great if I can use it on my M600i.


Socializing



  • Adium
    Instant Messaging! Something I need to use both at work and home, with my colleagues, or overseas friend. Like many of you, I have identity for ICQ, MSN, Yahoo ... and it will be tiring if I need individual client for each of them. And with Adium, I can use them all at once, in styles! If I need to pick a top free app for Mac, this one can easily find it's place.
  • Firefox
    Safari is good, but it is still not a dominant player, in the Web 2.0 arena. Many of the features are not being supported and a second browser is always nice to be on hand.
  • iWeb
    How many photo gallery software has been released? But not until now, we have something so nicely integrated! Importing your photo into iPhoto for organization and then putting them up as a gallery with iWeb. The templates are gorgeous and the limitation they impose results in a very easy to use software. Are there downside? Yes, of course! It's SLOW! I don't know why it takes so long in doing action like adding a new blog, inserting a new image.
  • Mail
    Using mail is a joy, most of the time, it's intuitive and conversation highlighting is something very useful. So, when will be the time that I feel frustrated? It is when an email fails to get downloaded or somehow they can't render the email into readable text. But it's rare.
  • MarsEdit
    A simple (or too simple) blogging editor, it does the job alright and allowing me to blog offline is a big plus.
  • NetNewsWire
    RSS feed reader. I can organize the feed that I feel interested in nicely and have them synchronized to their server. So that I can get the same set of feeds on every machine. The built-in tabbed browser is a nice touch.
  • Thunderbird
    You may be wondering why I need a second email client. Well, I prefer to split my office email from my personal email. I used Entourage for about a year but given up lately. I don't know why it keeps telling me it cannot get the lock of my mail box (an IMAP account).


Software Development



  • Chmox
    CHM reader.
  • DbVisualizer
    This java based application enable the user to hook up to any database server, as long as a proper JDBC driver is provided. SQL statement execution, a spreadsheet like data browsing and editing. A very useful application for anyone that needs to deal with databaases.
  • Eclipse
    The java IDE, it's very common in the office. But at one point, I have selected to use Netbeans instead since it is more responsive. For the new mbp, I haven't decided which one to go yet.
  • iTerm
    Terminal, terminal, terminal. I used this almost daily and the tabbed shell support is one thing I cannot miss! But are there an UB version available?
  • TextMate
    I first heard about the apps from the Ruby guy and I keep wondering why do I want to pay for a text editor when I can find a free one (TextWrangler, Smultron, etc). Upon testing it out and enjoyed the feature of tabbed support, project tree and auto completion (sort of, like bracket closing upon opening), I feel the power of this editor. One interesting side note, when TextWrangler was still in the V1 phase, I have contacted the developer and tell them how much it means in supporting tabbed editor. But they reply frankly that no one would want this feature ... but see what do they do now. ;)
  • Transmit
    FTP is dated, but SFTP is not! Together with the support of WebDAV makes this a very useful application. Not to mention the integration with editor like Textmate which enables me to do updating on the fly without hassle!
  • X11
    OK, this is not really an application. But I do need this to install many thing like Fink, FreeNX Client.
  • zsCompare Lite
    One thing I still miss from the world of Windows is ViceVersa - a very nicely developed folder comparison application. zsCompare is a very closed alternative but still missed little thing like easy copying of the highlighted files to alternative location, exception by wildcard/regular expression. Anyway, it's better than having no choices.


System Utilities



  • ChronoSync
    I use this to syncrhonize the folders between my macs (ah, can't wait for Portal!) but I find it is not working as much as I desire. The file diff functionality for 2 way synchornization is far from satisfaction, so I haven't used it for much now.
  • Cocktail
    Ah, everyone wants a healthy mac, I will run the cron job and fix permission when I remember. I have once setup the schedule thing but I found my using pattern is a bit hard to get a proper schedule from working.
  • Split & Concat
    I am a newsgroup guy and I always got a bunch of files segment. This little gem helps me to join them back together into one piece.
  • Stuffit (Deluxe?Expander?)
    I have been using it since version 4 or 4.5? But now, I am uncertain if I still need to Deluxe version. The only thing I miss is the short cut (cmd-u) to expand files, and also to package files from the context menu. Give me some more time to decide if it worth the US$29.99 for version 11 upgrade.
  • SuperDuper!
    Backup, backup. I was once a user of Retrospect but the time it takes to backup my folders renders me from doing it frequent enough, which also results in having an aged backup. Since I got SuperDuper, I am doing much more frequent and I feel secure. :)
  • UnRarX
    RAR is nice, I even have WinRAR registered. This tools ease the pain to unrar file segments from commandline.


Update (Nov 7, 2006) : Turns out I have some apps missed mentioning.

  • xScope
    It's a suite of tools especially useful for web page creation, on screen ruler, browser sizes.
  • Unison
    I like newsgroup and Unison is king in managing all the content. The binary post manipulation is especially good, it can gather all the segement and joint as a complete file to ease the download.