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.)

Twitter Push Notifications (to your iPhone)

Prowl is one of those "I wish I had thought of it" ideas. Sometimes after I look at the implementation of these ideas, my next reaction is "I could have done better". But not this time. Zachary West didn't miss anything that I would have thought obvious, and his implementation seems quite robust so far.

I won't waste time explaining what Prowl does (or what Push Notification is), except to observe that because Growl is quite well supported on Mac OS X, there are many possibilities for sending notifications to my iPhone when (what I decide are) interesting events occur on a Mac (or even on a Windows PC).

The first thing I thought of was to get notifications on my iPhone of Twitter mentions and direct messages. Tweetie for Mac, my preferred desktop Twitter application now supports Growl, so of course I went with it.

Installing Prowl is quite simple (and well documented). It only took me a couple minutes after buying the iPhone app to register for an account, log into Prowl on my iPhone, download the Growl plugin and set it up. Then I pressed the Preview button and got my first push notification on my iPhone.

Next I tried the growlnotify command-line tool and got my second push notification. (I will definitely exploit sending push notifications from the command-line, or from Python scripts.)

I thought the next (and final step) would be simple also: configuring Tweetie to use the Growl plugin. First I confirmed that Tweetie was set to use Growl notification for new mentions and new messages (but not new tweets). (Press the Notification Options… button in the Accounts tab of Tweetie's Preferences… window.)

Next, I configured Growl notifications from Tweetie to use Prowl. In the Applications tab of the Growl Preference Pane, I selected Tweetie and pressed the Configure… button. Then I selected "Notifications" and selected in turn "Direct Message" and "Mentions" in the Notification popup, and selected "Prowl" for the display style for both.

Then I sent a direct message to myself (@yacitus) from a test account, and I immediately received a notification on my iPhone. But tweeting a mention didn't work. I watched as Tweetie displayed the Growl notification on my MacBook Pro, but it appeared the plugin wasn't sending it along (through the Prowl servers) to my iPhone. I fiddled around for a while (with plenty more testing), and finally concluded it must be a Tweetie bug and wrote it up on getsatisfaction.com and called it a day.

Today I finally made enough time to try again. This time "for real", on the Mac mini I have connected to my TV. (Since it's on all the time, it can be running Tweetie all the time so I can receive notifications when my MacBook Pro isn't on.) I went through the same steps (after installing Growl and Tweetie) and had the same problem. But I noticed earlier (when configuring Adium to use Prowl) that I had to also set the "Application's Display Style" popup under "Application Settings" (in the Growl Preference Pane, after selecting Tweetie from the application list) to Prowl. So I tried that for Tweetie, and it still didn't work.

Then I set the "Display Style" popup for Mentions (in the "Notification" popup under the "Notifications" tab) back to "Default" and then back to "Prowl" and it worked!

So if you have trouble trying to get this working, I guess my advice is, keep fiddling with it, and try all the settings (in the Growl Preference Pane) that I mention above. Good luck.

Let me know if you think of some creative uses for Prowl.

Update: Clarified the location of the "Application's Display Style" popup.

New Blog

This will be my third blog (or fourth if you count my tumblelog—I don't, since I mainly use it for storing links for later reference). The other two are yacitus.com, which (until now) has been my catch-all, and PyPap, for Python programming posts.

I decided as I was about to sit down and write another Macintosh-related post for yacitus.com that I'm writing enough of them (the new one will be my fifth) that they deserve their own home.

So here it is.