Make It Short

If you use Safari, have a look at the Make It Short URL shortener Safari extension. When I need a shortened URL in my clipboard, this Safari extension is the quickest and most convenient way I've found to get it there. It can be configured to work with shortening services. I like bit.ly, and I like how I can configure Make It Short to use my bit.ly API key.

While you're at junecloud.com, have a look at their other excellent tools: Delivery Status touch is great if you'd like an easy way to track package deliveries on any iOS device, and it syncs very easily with the Delivery Status Dashboard widget.

Disabling the Front Row keyboard shortcut

The last couple times I got a new MacBook, I was occasionally annoyed by Front Row mysteriously launching. Eventually I discovered that ⌘-Esc defaults as the keyboard shortcut to hide and show Front Row. To turn it off, open the Keyboard preference pane, select the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab, select "Front Row" and uncheck "Hide and show Front Row".

BusyCal really is like iCal Pro

I've installed plenty more applications on my MacBook Air, but now that I'm using it at work (and no longer have my MacBook Pro) and now that I've started my new job, I haven't had much time for blogging. But the first application that occurs to me that I haven't blogged about is BusyCal. BusyMac's web site does a much better job selling it than me. But if you use iCal, and especially if you also use Google Calendar (or want to sync iCal with Google Calendar), then be sure to try BusyCal. (Also, if you're annoyed by iCal's reminders, with BusyCal you can individually or collectively snooze—for varied periods—or dismiss them.)

The Darkgate Comic Slurper

I believe I found out about The Darkgate Comic Slurper from Andy Ihnatko on the MacBreak Weekly podcast (months or maybe even years back). It is now my daily comics page.

Like Instapaper, there's nothing to install on my MacBook Air, but it does need to be configured for each now browser one uses it with. (I assume one's configuration for each browser is stored on the server but identified by a cookie.) Configuring is simply a matter of clicking on the red buttons beside the comics you wish to be automatically displayed in the web page in the future.

Here's the ones I read:

• Basic Instructions
• Big Nate
• Calvin and Hobbes (a new classic daily)
• Cul de Sac
• Dilbert
• Doonesbury
• Foxtrot
• Frazz
• The Joy of Tech
• Not Invented Here
• Peanuts (a new classic daily)
• Pearls Before Swine
• PVP
• Questionable Content
• XKCD

The Darkgate Comic Slurper allows me to read all these without going to each respective web page. (Unfortunately that means they don't get advertising revenue from me.) I do go to xkcd.com every time I see a new XKCD comic though, because I like to read the tool-tip.

The one comic that I'd like to see included in The Darkgate Comic Slurper is Tom Tomorrow's This Modern Life. I've suggested it (by pressing the Suggest button), but I guess I should take "It can take days/weeks/months or even years for new comics to appear here, so please be patient." to heart.

Are there any comics on The Darkgate Comic Slurper that I don't read that you recommend?

Divvy, the window management utility I was looking for

Resizing windows on Mac OS X is awkward. As you know, the upper-left corner of a window remains fixed while the window is resized by the lower-right corner. Resizing is less awkward in Windows because one can grab either of the sides or the bottom of a window (or any corner, I think) and grow or shrink the window in that direction only. So I went looking for a Mac OS X utility that would replicate the Windows mechanism for window resizing. But Mac Win Man (MWM), the one utility I found, was much more complicated that what I was looking for, so I abandoned my search.

Then my friend Ian Chesal mentioned something called Divvy on Twitter and I checked it out. It gives me just what I needed, even though it doesn't give me what I wanted. It's better than what I wanted. It's much more Mac-like. Check out the video at mizage.com/divvy and see if you agree.

Next install is FastScripts

I've accumulated a number of AppleScripts, mainly for making iTunes a little easier to us. Some of them I run so frequently that I like invoke them using a keyboard shortcut. I find FastScripts very convenient for that.

I hope to make time soon to describe my iTunes, iPhone and podcast "flow" and the AppleScripts I use to help streamline that. But for now, I'm going to list the AppleScripts I restored from my Time Machine backup into my /Users/darylspitzer/Library/Scripts/Applications folder.

Here are my iTunes AppleScripts:

• Disable Selected Tracks: I deselect tracks (often as part of a multiple selection) so frequently that I've assigned this to ⌘0.
• Go To 0 Spoken Word for iPhone: There are certainly playlists I work with so frequently that it's handy to have a keyboard shortcut to go to. To go to "0 Spoken Word for iPhone" I use ⌥⌘0.
• Go To New Podcasts for iPhone: "New Podcasts for iPhone" is probably the playlist I look at second most often (after the above), so I use ⌥⌘1.
• Go To Music: ⌥⌘m takes me to my Music library.
• Selected Tracks to "Spoken Word for iPhone": I typically select podcasts in my "New Podcasts for iPhone" playlist (I'll have to blog later on how I set that up) and then use ⌘1 to invoke this script.
• Selected Tracks to "Spoken Word for Slow Listening": Most podcasts work for me to listen at 2x, but some (like those with music commentary, or the reading of fiction) don't. I use ⌘2 to add them to the "Spoken Word for Slow Listening" playlist.
• Update All Podcasts: It's very annoying that I can't right-click on "Podcasts" (under "LIBRARY") in iTunes and select "Update", like I can right-click on my iPhone and select "Sync". But with this script, I can press F5 anytime I want to update my podcasts.

The only other AppleScripts I use frequently enough to associate with a keyboard shortcut is for the Finder:

• Terminal At Selection: This will open Terminal (or iTerm, as I prefer) and cd to the directory containing the selected file.

Time Machine FAQ FTW!

I couldn't figure out how to use Migration Assistant to copy data from the Time Machine backup of my MacBook Pro to my new MacBook Air. I gave up and turned to this Time Machine FAQ: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html. Question 17: "How can I see my backups, or the Backups for a different Mac?" and question 16: "How can I restore a file/folder to an alternate location?" told me all I needed to know to restore my iTunes data.

Next install is Mailplane

If you use Gmail and a Mac, check out Mailplane. It truly is the best way to use Gmail on a Mac. Especially if you have multiple accounts.

I have a second Gmail account for urgent email that few know about. I've set up my Mac mini at home to monitor that account and use Prowl to send push notifications to my iPhone when I get a new email. I can then setup Gmail rules in my main account to forward email to my urgent account, so I can selectively get push notifications (such as email from a certain person, or containing a keyword).

Setting up Mailplane for both accounts was quick and easy. I think the only preference I changed was to set each account to show in the menu bar only the number of unread emails in my priority inbox.

Update: It's nifty how easy it is to register Mailplane. Just download the license in the registration email (in Mailplane), and you're done.

The awesome Instapaper is next (though there is nothing to install)

Instapaper was the next thing I setup on my new Mac. There is nothing to install, but I did drag the Read Later bookmarklet to the first slot in my Safari Bookmarks Bar, so ⌘1 will mark a page for reading later on Instapaper. (I noticed accidentally that if I run the bookmarklet on http://www.instapaper.com/, instead of dumbly marking that page, a dialog pops up saying "The bookmarklet is correctly installed." Nice touch.)

Instapaper allows me to note pages I don't have time to read (typically as I find out about them while reading Twitter while taking a break at work). I usually end up reading them in bed on the excellent Instapaper iPad app.

BTW, the second bookmarklet in my Bookmarks Bar is bit.ly, which allows me to shorten the URL for any page with ⌘2, and then tweet about it if I wish.

1Password was second to be installed on my Mac, followed quickly by Dropbox

I needed to install 1Password in order to write the previous post. (I wanted to log into LinkedIn to remind myself the dates when I started at VMware and Netflix.) 1Password, or something like it is almost required for security nowadays, so one can use a different (very secure) password for all the different web sites, but only have to remember a single master password.

I also use 1Password on my iPhone and my wife's iPad. All versions support keeping its "agile keychain" (the encrypted file that includes all the passwords, login IDs, URLs, etc.) in a Dropbox volume, which makes keeping the keychain synchronized between these devices effortless. And it made installing the keychain on my new Mac very easy. I installed Dropbox, waited for the keychain to sync, and then told 1Password where it is.

I think I'm probably only just skimming the surface of what Dropbox can do for me, but I keep all my ebooks (PDFs that I've bought mainly through O'Reilly Media's deal of the day) in a Dropbox folder and mainly read them in Goodreader on the iPad.

LaunchBar is first to be installed on my new Mac

When I got a new MacBook Pro when I started at VMware (back in August 2008) I thought it would be a good idea to keep notes on the apps I installed on it (as I transitioned to it from my PowerBook Pro). I intended to turn those notes into a blog post, but got caught up in learning the ropes at my new job and never got to it. I kept the same notes when I started at Netflix (and transitioned to the new MacBook Pro they provided), and once again failed to make time to write them up amidst the demands of climbing the steep learning curve at work.

This time, I've got a new 13" MacBook Air (MBA) that will become my primary computer, and I thought about taking the same notes. But I'm not a believer in third-time's-the-charm. It's likely I'll just make the same mistake again, since I'm going to be busy tying up loose ends during my remaining days at Netflix, and I'm sure I'll want to quickly get started climbing the learning curve at my new employer, and it's likely to be steep. So instead, each time I install a new application on my MBA, I'm going to create a blog post. So be prepared to see a lot of posts here over the next few days.

The first app I installed was LaunchBar. I prefer to remove everything possible from my Dock, and open apps, do searches, open web pages and (as much as possible) manipulate files using LaunchBar. I used to use QuickSilver, but I was never a power user, so the transition to LaunchBar was easy for me. I find it easy to use, powerful, and bug-free.

I've seen a lot of buzz on Twitter over Alfred. It sounds good, but no one has (yet) given me an example of something I can do in Alfred that I can't do with LaunchBar, or that I can do better with Alfred.

After installing LaunchBar (and entering my license code, which I have conveniently archived in Gmail), I changed the Spotlight keyboard shortcuts (in the Spotlight System Preferences panel) to ^⌘ Space for the Spotlight menu and ^⌥⌘ Space for the Spotlight window. Then I could set LaunchBar's Search keyboard shortcut (in the LaunchBar preferences) to ^ Space and Search in Spotlight to ⌘ Space. (And I noticed I had never used the Calculator keyboard shortcut—I've always just opened LaunchBar and started typing numbers. For now I've set it to ^⌘C.)