mac os x tip
Twitterverse Screensaver Visualizes Your Twitter Activity
7:50AM Adam Pash | An adventurous Flickr user dug up a file in Leopard’s example developer documents called Twitterverse, a screensaver that displays your Twitter world in a circle of thumbnailed activity. To use Twitterverse, find the file (a quick Spotlight search for Twitterverse should do the trick), open your Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane, and then simply drag the Twitterverse.qtz file into the preview window of the Screen Saver preference pane. To get it downloading your friends’ tweets, click the Options button, enter your username and password, and try it out. I had trouble seeing results (just a blank screen), but if you have more luck, the screensaver is eye-tastic! Twitterverse Quartz Composer [Flickr via TG Daily] More »
Smart-Open Files and Applications for a Cleaner Desktop
8:00AM Adam Pash | If you’re keen on keeping a desktop free from the clutter of a hundred open windows, weblog AppleDoes points out a simple OS X keyboard shortcut that will simultaneously open a file or application while closing the Finder window you launched it from. How? Just hold your option key. So if you’re about to launch an application, for example, holding option and then double-clicking the app will open the app and automatically close the Finder window you opened it from. This trick also works from the keyboard—so Cmd-Opt-O will open your app or file and automatically close the Finder window. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s a handy little shortcut to keep your virtual world just a touch neater. Open an application from the App folder and close its folder [AppleDoes] More »Shut Down a Mac with a Text Message
1:00AM Kevin Purdy | Blogger and remote-control enthusiast Tim Matheson, who previously showed us how to shut down Windows using a text message, posts a script and easy-to-follow guide for doing the same on a Mac. Everything needed for the hack comes included with OS X Leopard, except the cell phone, of course. Matheson suggests setting up a “super-secret” email address that you only use for shutdown messages, but there are other ways of remote-controlling a Mac using keywords. Hit the link to download a safe shutdown script, and post your own remote-control computing tricks in the comments. HowTo: Shutdown your Mac with a text message [Tim Matheson Blog] More »
Set Up Better Time Machine Access
7:00AM Adam Pash | Weblog MacApper prefers to keep a clean Dock, and as such doesn’t particularly like the new Time Machine icon cluttering up the Dock. Since Time Machine is basically an extension of Finder, the post suggests adding a Time Machine shortcut directly to the Finder toolbar. Setting it up is simply a matter of heading to your applications folder and dragging the Time Machine icon to your toolbar. Once you’ve done that, just activate Finder and click the Time Machine button whenever you want to hit up your files in Time Machine. Simple, yes, but it makes a lot of sense. If you want the Time Machine button to fit in better with the rest of the toolbar buttons, go download this Time Machine button. The Quickest Tip for Time Machine [MacApper] More »
Speed Up Sleep Mode on MacBooks
1:00AM Kevin Purdy | Tech blogger Dan Warne notes that MacBooks loaded with serious memory—like MacBook Pros with more than 2 GB—can take a long while to activate these days, since the entirety of that memory is being written to your hard disk in the default “safe sleep.” If you’re almost always plugged into a wall socket or aren’t the type to run your battery down entirely, Warne recomments a one-line Terminal hack that brings back the old swift-moving sleep: More »
Find Out What Will and Won’t Speed Up Your Mac
7:15AM Kevin Purdy | Wired’s How-To Wiki takes a look at the most common suggestions for speeding up your Mac OS X desktop and picks out a few that really can help scale back memory use—and also highlights the perennial suggestions that don’t do a thing and waste your time. For example: Cleaning up an icon-laden desktop = small but real memory savings. Repairing file permissions = Not at all necessary. Hit the link below for more tips and a chance to throw your own $.02 in. For another angle on system speed, try software tuneups to speed up your Mac. Speed Up Your Mac [Wired How-To Wiki] More »
Force Time Machine Drives to Unmount
1:30AM Kevin Purdy | Tech blogger Phil Windley grew tired of trying to eject his external back up disk, first the suggested Apple+E way and then by yanking a cord, just to see that ominous red stop sign of warning every day, even when he knew his disk operations were (or should have been, at least) done. His suggestion for others suffering from clingy back up drives: Parse together a terminal command similar to the one below (substituting name and other portions for whatever fits your system): More »
Create a Keyboard Shortcut for Any Menu Action in Any Program
11:45AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X tip: Nothing’s more heartbreaking to a keyboard lover than discovering that a common application action is lacking a keyboard shortcut. Luckily OS X makes it wildly simple to add new shortcuts for any action available in the menu bar. Here’s how it works: More »
