To my surprise and dissatisfaction though, while my Delivery Status widget still read that I had 20 days until I receive my little piece of technological joy, I started reading about people all across the states finding the iPod Touch in Apple Retail Stores!. I’m not one to get jealous or bitter, but why are all these people finding iPods in stores, while us “hardcore order seconds after the keynote” saps still aren’t set to receive our orders until early October?

What do all of you think? Am I just being a bit too sensitive or is anyone else a bit irked about having to wait weeks for what many of us could have probably purchase at our local Apple Store?

In our last Quartz Composer tutorial, a tour through exciting QC concepts such as displaying images, layers, mouse input and using the Math Patch, we learned how to create a reactive and visually appealing composition in just minutes. This time we’ll make a great MacApper RSS screensaver while we discuss concepts such as making a really cool visual particle generator, controlling your Composition’s attributes from the screen saver preference panel and using macros from other Quartz Compositions.

Although many great screen savers included with Mac OS X Tiger are written in code rather than with Quartz Composer, I think you would be surprised and excited to see what it can do… Some good examples include the RSS Visualizer, Spectrum and Apple TV’s ‘flying photograph’ screen savers. One really neat thing about a Quartz Composition screen saver is that in it’s native .qtz format, you can generally get inside of a file and poke around to find out how things work.

What’s more exciting is that you can use patches and “Macros” from other compositions in your own, usually involving a drag and drop. I’m using an original illustration here though; I’m not recommending stealing the work of others – that is tacky and will make you pretty unpopular when you’re discovered. Learn from the work of others, and use (drag and drop) from resources that openly share their creations with you, like Apple’s Quartz Composer templates. Apple’s templates are there for you to use, customize, and take macros from.

If you are ever unsure whether a Composition is entirely or partially copyrighted, open it in QC and press Shift-Command-I to view it’s Information sheet with the creator’s name and retained copyrights. Enough talk, right? Let’s get into the good stuff. For this tutorial I’d like to walk you through creating a simple RSS screen saver from scratch, while using pre-made Macro patches to accomplish some of the more complicated steps.

Open Quartz Composer and create a new blank Composition by selecting ‘New’ from the File menu. To make this composition a screen saver really the only special step that is required is saving it to the Screen Savers folder, located at “yourUserName/Library/Screen Savers”. Go ahead and do this now.

The Interpolation Patch

As we learned last time, add an Image Importer patch to the Editor and render it with a Sprite patch. I will be using the same MacApper Logo that I used last time. Set the dimensions of the Sprite so it looks appropriate. I think it would be cool if the logo swept in from a distance when the screen saver first activates, so let’s implement that sort of motion with an “Interpolation” patch. Drag one to the editor and inspect it’s “Input Parameters” (remember you can quickly switch to this be pressing Command-2 if the inspector window is open).

What an Interpolation patch does is outputs a sequence of numbers between “Start Value” and “End Value” over “Duration” seconds. You can also control whether that sequence is repeated or mirrored and the curve of it’s interpolation. So how is this helpful to us? Remember, like we did before you can modify the value of a sprite’s rotation, width, position, etc. with numerical input. We will do likewise here. Connect the Interpolation patch’s “Result” output to the Sprite’s “Z Position” input value. What you will have is the sprite sweeping at you again and again from 0 quartz composer units (let’s call them QCU) to 1 QCU. Play around with this a bit if you like, I bet you can make some pretty neat things happen already.

The coordinate system of Quartz Composer is pretty simple. 0 QCU is in the middle of the screen. An X position of -1 QCU will be to the left and 1 QCU would be to the right. The only dimension that I think can be at all confusing is the Z position; a positive value is “closer” to you and a negative value is “farther” from you. Anyway, with these principles in mind let’s make the Sprite swoop in from far away and then park itself in the middle of the viewer.

In the Interpolation patch’s Input Parameter inspector change the the “Start Value” to -50, that’s pretty ‘far away’. Change the “End Value” to 0, so the motion is towards the user. Adjust the “Duration” to something around 4 seconds so the motion lasts long enough to enjoy. I like the more organic motion of the Sprite ‘easing into’ it’s end value so I will set the “Tension” to -1.

Finally, since I want the Sprite to only sweep in at the beginning of the screen saver’s presentation we will change the “Repeat Mode” drop-down menu to “None”. At this point we might as well add a Clear patch with Black Color, set to draw at layer 1 (at the back).

Not sure if it worked? There is an easy way to find out. Bring forth the viewer window and open it’s toolbar by pressing it’s “pill” button. From the tool bar you can start and stop your composition’s drawing to see if the Sprite sweeps in to your satisfaction.

The Particle System Patch

So far this screen saver lacks much flare, so let’s spice it up with the icons of some of your favorite apps flying by. Add another Image Importer patch to the editor and then a “Particle System” patch. The particle system will initially be covering your Sprite so you’ll want to set it’s layer to behind the sprite. Particle systems are a very versatile drawing technique that can be used to simulate anything from smoke to water. Without an image inputed into the particle system it’s going to look less than impressive so let’s do that first.

Having the icons from your favorite Mac Apps flying through the background would be pretty cool, so let’s add an icon from a great app… I’m going to just use an icon I made myself, but adding almost any app’s icon is easy enough. Find the Application whose icon you would like to use, right-click (or Ctrl-Click) on the application icon in the Finder and select Show Package Contents. These “contents” are the guts of an app; as such don’t tamper with or remove anything or you could risk breaking the app.

Navigate to the Resources folder. Here among other things is generally where the application’s icon is stored. Icons will usually be named with the suffix “.icns”. I’ll leave finding the app’s icon to you, it’s usually named something like “AppIcon.icns” or “icon.icns”, to you. Once you know where the desired icon is return to Quartz Composer, switch to the unused Image Importer’s Settings Inspector and drag the icon onto the inspector’s import from the file drop-box.

If all has gone well you will see the icon has been added to the Settings Inspector. Now connect the Image Importer to the Particle System’s Image input. You should now see dozens of you icon pouring from the Particle System. The icon won’t be blending properly yet so change the Particle Systems Blending drop-down menu to “Over”.

Next let’s work on coercing the particles to move a bit more like stars flying by. One problem you may first notice is that some particles are moving backwards, away from the viewer, so we need to adjust the Z Velocity. Set the minimum Z-Velocity to 0. Furthermore, the particles are moving at a pace that would likely make you sick to stare at for long so let’s slow them down a bit. Do this by changing the remaining Velocity values that read 1, to 0.5 and those that read -1, to -0.5.

Let’s make the starting size of the icons be just a bit smaller, change the “Min Size” to 0.001 and the “Max Size” to 0.005. There might be just a few too many particles in our current system, in fact there are 256 of them. Let’s visit the Particle System’s Settings inspector (Command-3) for a moment to tone the particles down a bit. Since we will be making multiple Particle Systems I think setting the “Number of Particles” to around 10 would be perfect.

There are a number of controls that modify a given particle as it “lives it’s life”, these include: The “Lifetime” parameter which modifies how long a particle will last in seconds. The “Size Delta” controls how much a particle will shrink or grows as is moves along. “Opacity Delta” manages how much if any the transparency of a particle will diminish over it’s lifetime. “Attraction” is the amount that particles are drawn to one another.

Finally, “Gravity” controls how much the particles are pulled done or pushed upwards as they move. I think you can imagine that all these attributes give you the power to do some really cool things with a particle system. Let’s adjust these attributes one-by-one. Take a good look at how the particles react after every change to get a feel for what’s going on. First set the Delta Size to 0.09. Then, set the Opacity Delta to -0.6. Finally, set Attraction to 0 and leave Gravity at 0.

Macro Patches and Publishing Connections

Good work, you’ve made a great Particle System – now let’s make more. We’re going to replicate the particle system in a way that illustrates another very important principle in Quartz Composer. We are going to make the Particle System into a Macro. A Macro in QC is a way of encapsulating complex patches for the purpose of simplifying your composition.

Imagine, for example, you had a series of patches that rendered a particularly cool background. Rather than dragging a massive, complex and confusing network of patches onto you window, you could add a single Macro that contains all of that logic. In fact, let’s do exactly that, add a cool Macro encapsulated background. In the tab bar above the Patch Library you will notice another option, the Clip Library. Click on the Clip Library and take a look at what kinds of things it contains. For our composition let’s add the Gradient Background clip (macro) to our editor and change it’s layer to be behind our particle system.

Double click on the Gradient Background Macro patch to view its contents and peek around; it’s pretty complex isn’t it? Click on the Editor window’s “Edit Parent” button to return to the rest of your composition. Macros can encapsulate other macros indefinitely, so to better understand the organization of nested macros, all can be viewed easily with the Editor window’s “Hierarchy Browser”. You will also notice that the Gradient Background macro patch has inputs; you can adjust it’s enabled state and it’s Luminosity.

For now let’s disable the Gradient Background by double clicking on the “Enable” input and selecting false from the drop-down menu that will appear. We can also “Publish” the Enable input to the outside world by right-clicking on the macro patch, go to Publish Inputs and select Enable. You will now see that the Enable text field has become open to be edited, let’s name it “Gradient BG”. Publishing Inputs and Outputs to the outside of a macro patch is a very important principle in QC.

In case you were wondering, a filled, dark circle means it’s published while an empty circle indicates it’s unpublished. Publishing allows you share an input or output with the parent of the current patch. The published inputs in the Gradient Background patch are accessible to your editor; the input you just published from the editor’s root will be accessible from the “Options” button of the Screen Saver pane.

Select the Particle System patch we were just working on and click the Editor window’s “Create Macro” button. The image input is automatically connected to the newly created patch, but we need one further input for our screen saver. Double click the new macro; you should now see the Particle System. To ensure that each duplicate of this macro has a unique particle system, we need to adjust each version’s particle Lifetime. Right-click on the patch and publish the Lifetime; the default name will suffice. Now would be a great time to name your macro patch, I’ll name mine “Particles”.

Return to the root macro by again pressing Edit Parent. Select the Image Importer and Particle System Macro and press Command-D to duplicate them. These will make another icon that will be flying by in the Screen Saver. To make things easier drag the pair of patches a little ways away from the first. Now choose the image or icon you wish for the next particle system to draw and add it to the new Image Importer.

You can duplicate and change the icon of your systems as many times as you care to; I’ll have three total. There is just one problem though. All the icons are following the same path at the same time; this is an easy fix, I just set the published Lifetime of my macros to 2.0, 1.9 and 1.8 respectively. After the initial release of particles they will now seem to flow randomly.

Like we discussed before, this is going to be a simple RSS screen saver, to make room for the RSS titles let’s move the Title’s Sprite upwards slightly to a Y Position of about 0.07 QCU. To add the RSS feed we’ll be borrowing from an Apple Quartz Composer template. Create a new composition from template by choosing from the menu File -> New From Template… and selecting the Mac OS X RSS Screen Saver.

What you will see here is a bit much for our needs, as such scroll to the right hand side of the root macro and delete the “Background” and “Article Contents” macros patches. Select all the remaining and create a macro – you should probably name this macro “RSS Macro” to avoid confusion. Copy this macro and then paste it into your own composition.

Once added to your composition double click the RSS macro to view it’s contents. We have to move the RSS titles down a bit, so we will look inside the RSS macro’s Article Title macro. Here modify the Y Position of the two Billboards to -0.4. Move back to the RSS macro and inspect the “RSS Feed” patch (it’s blue and located on the left). Here you can modify the URL input and enter MacApper’s RSS feed if you like, although any standard RSS address should work fine. Finally you’ll want to publish the RSS Macro’s Enable input as something like “RSS Feed”.

That was really tough, but you made it. Again, I hope these tutorials have helped you get a better grasp on creating Quartz Compositions and the power that QC contains. Feel free to share your creations and composition ideas in the comments, I really appreciate knowing if and how these tutorials helped you out. Stay tuned in the coming weeks when we’ll present another series of Quartz Composer tutorials focusing on more advanced topics like widgets and Xcode integration.

Note: You can get the QC file for this Tutorial here, hosted courtesy of Hipp Software.

Sure, you might be able to compete with other indie software companies, but when it’s the mighty Apple that we’re talking about, boy will it be rough (see Cabel’s experience). Yet competing on Apple’s turf is exactly what Typeset has done, and I think they’ve done a good job of it.

I began thinking about Typeset at this year’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference (WWDC). It was during WWDC that I was lucky enough to hang out with Coca Developer and Visual Designer Drew Hamlin, most famously associated with Delicious Monster in the past and Facebook more recently. I was struck by how much of a friendly and bright guy Drew is, and left the party trying to remember the other app that he was involved in. A little bit of searching revealed Drew’s connection to Waterfall Software and the very interesting font viewer application, Typeset.

Typeset is in a lot of ways a program created so you can get to know your fonts better. You can easily view your fonts in any number of ways to find your favorites, learn information about them or group them into relevant collections. Moreover if you’ve downloaded or have been emailed a font by a colleague and aren’t sure if it’s worth keeping, you can quickly view that font in Typeset without the need to install it anywhere on your Mac.

With it’s silky smooth interface and great layout,Typeset feels like what Apple’s Font Book application should’ve been. The layout of the user interface just seems a lot more natural than that of Font Book. Like Waterfall Software claims, you can “Adjust Everything”. The font viewer window is very flexible, allowing adjustments of font size, color and background color, dividers between fonts and alternative tones behind subsequent fonts. Although Typeset’s interface looks great from the get go, you can tune it to your needs even and make it look even better in just seconds.

Typeset’s Font Identifier is a very interesting feature that I never realized I needed until I had tried it. Say you were making a web site and wanted to use the same font as Daring Fireball, but what font does DF use? I can think of three easy ways of discovering what font was used. First you could poke around in the DF’s CSS files to try and find the right font.

Second, you could copy and paste some of the font into Pages and look at the text inspector to discover the font type. Finally, and recently my favorite method, you could drag and drop some text onto Typeset’s Font Identifier, discover which font it is you were looking for and then mark it as a favorite in Typeset for later use. Ah… Verdana. Unfortunately, the Font Identifier is not a magic silver bullet, it won’t be able to extract what a font is from within an image or a scanned image of text.

I should mention briefly that I love Typeset’s implementation of favorites. Beside every font is a small heart that clicking upon ‘favorites’ that font. It might sound like sort of a juvenile way of approaching favorites but I think it’s much more tactile and approachable than the standard drop-down “gear” menu method of ‘favoriting’ used in the Mac OS X font inspector. To put it in perspective, in all my years working around Mac OS X text inspectors I’ve never fav’ed a font; after loading up Typeset finding my favorites was the first thing I did… and it was even a bit fun.

Waterfall software suggests using Typeset as your viewer while still relying on Font Book for your font managing needs. Again, this is an area in which I think they have really excelled. Between Typeset and Font Book you really have everything you need. Waterfall Software makes the relationship as seamless as possible by making font collections created in Typeset usable in Font Book and vice versa. Yet great integration aside, I wish Waterfall had decided to make Typeset the “complete package”.

Typeset is so close to being the prefect solution, it may eventually evolve into such. Particularly lacking from Typeset’s features are three things. Typeset’s font properties lacks the “Description” category that is available in Font Book. This isn’t a serious offense but will drive me to have to go back to Font Book when I want to see the font creators comments about a given font. The lack of font validation in Typeset again could drive some more hardcore users back to Font Book. Finally, and simple enough to fix, Typeset has no “Reveal Font in Finder” option, something I find myself using fairly often.

Over all, though, Typeset is excellent. The user experience is very pleasant. The UI is very easy to figure out and master. My only reservations have to do with whether or not there is “room” for an app like this in a lot of people’s tool belt of purchased shareware, especially with free options like Linotype FontExplorer X. I really think it would be great if Apple purchased Typeset from Waterfall, making it an integrated replacement for Font Book…

But, that said, most users touch Font Book rarely enough that I’m not sure many average consumers would even notice if that happened. Typeset might not be for everyone but I recommend you try it out, especially if you work extensively with font and text at all. I didn’t think I would find a real use for it, but was pleasantly surprised that I have and enjoyed the experience. You can pick Typeset up for $12.95 here.

Pros:

• Does nearly everything it is intended to do very well
• Preview uninstalled fonts easily
• Fantastic UI layout and design
• Font identifier is an interesting concept

Cons:

• Perhaps a slightly high price for what remains a font viewer
• Sadly is not made to be a complete Font Book Killer

Needless to say, this comes as a very welcome perk for those of us spending all of our money buying texts and all our time studying them. While Apple’s student discounts are offered year-round, we are currently in the season of an even more exciting and limited time discount being offered to University, College and other post-secondary students: Buy a Mac, get a free iPod Nano.

Time is running out for this great opportunity. Qualifying Macs (MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac or Mac Pro), purchased with an iPod or iPod nano from an authorized Apple Campus retailer before September 16 2007, will receive a further mail-in discount up to the value of one iPod Nano. I took advantage of this fantastic deal last year with the purchase of my MacBook Pro and would recommend it to any post-secondary student thinking of making an Apple-related hardware purchase before school begins.

The mail-in discount went fairly smoothly, although I was surprised by the length of time it took to receive my actual discount. All the same, if you’ve been on the fence about whether your back to school computer was going to be a toss-up between the new iMac, a mid-range PC laptop or the MacBook, this program will hopefully make your decision a bit more easy.

Remember, the program ends September 16 2007.
Details for the American Apple Store can be found here.
Details for the Canadian Apple Store can be found here.

It’s also likely that hard drive manufacturers will, foreseeing this trend, do what it takes to get you and I to purchase their drives and make the most money off it. It’s now more important than ever to be smart and informed when making your hard drive purchase. To that end, I hope you’ll let me share my experience using the LaCie 320GB USB 2.0 hard drive.

For the last 4-5 years I’ve been solely a laptop user so naturally I’ve relied heavily on using external drives when more storage space is needed. Based upon fairly good experiences early on with LaCie’s CD and DVD drives, I’ve only purchased said brand of external hard drives for quite sometime. The most recent LaCie drive I’ve been using is a 250GB Triple-Interface (Firewire 400, 800 and USB 2.0) d2, which I’ve been using via Firewire 400. Over all, it’s been great but it did cost me a fortune.

The price of the 320GB really caught me off guard though; it was actually pretty cheap. This truly startled me as a long time LaCie owner because they’ve never been offered at such a low price. The 320GB’s MRSP is US$149 but it retails anywhere from $100 to $130, which is comparable with other external drives. If price told the entire story of this drive, I’d stop this review now; unfortunately not everything else is complete sun and rainbows.

When I unpacked the 320GB I was struck by something that I should have seen coming. I knew this drive only had a single interface (USB 2.0), but still, as I peered down into the open box, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by the lack of cables. That’s not to say there were none; in contrast to my d2, one short USB 2.0 cable was awfully disappointing. How short of a Cable? It’s about 22″ (56cm).

My desk is relatively small and I’ve already got several drives around, so some unwelcomed shuffling around was necessary to make everything fit. To put it in perspective, a bargain brand external laptop drive enclosure I have included a 43″ (110cm) long cable. Each of the d2′s cable is a lengthy 5′ (152″)!

The drive itself is fairly attractive despite the case’s plastic construction. It sports a faux brushed metal look that works surprisingly well. Unlike many external drives, the 320GB thankfully lacks big ugly, superfluous lights and buttons – it’s front features only a single, small activity LED. On the rear you’ll find the power connector, a single USB 2.0 connection and an on/off switch. It’s a conservative, minimalist look and I think it’s pretty nice overall.

Setting up the 320GB was as easy as it could be. I simply plugged everything in and it worked without any fuss or configuration. My experience with the drive thereafter was smooth and pleasant. Although I didn’t notice any problems with its speed when using it to back up odds and ends, I thought it would be fitting to do a speed test to see how quick the USB 2.0 interface actually was. What I found surprised me quite a bit.

I used two fairly controlled, but certainly not scientific tests to compare the speed of the LaCie 250GB d2 connected via Firewire 400, the MacBook Pro’s internal Seagate Momentus 5400RPM 160GB drive, an 80GB 5400RPM Hitachi drive in a Coolmax bargain-brand USB 2.0 enclosure (my former internal drive) and the LaCie 320GB Porsche drive.

For the first test I used XBench’s Drive Test to determine a score for each drive based on XBench’s arbitrary score system. I ran the test twice in a row to compensate for the deficit that could arise from having to spin up to full speed for the first test.

XBench Disk Test Scores (Longer bar is Better)

As you can see the 320GB and the external laptop drive got pummeled. What’s strange to me was that the external 5400RPM laptop kept pace so respectably with the 7200RPM LaCie 320GB. To ensure there wasn’t anything else confounding the results I repeated the test a few times using different USB ports, but still ended up getting similar scores of about 16 – 18 for each.

To me at least, XBench’s arbitrary score doesn’t mean a whole lot so I did another test that I think is a bit more practical. This time I loaded the same 2.18GB MKV movie onto each of the drives and opened them one at a time in QuickTime. MKV movies (often used for storing HD movies on Mac and PC) are interesting because although you can play them in QuickTime with Perian installed, an MKV has to loaded completely before it can be viewed from start to finish.

This loading time is what I set out to record. I quit QuickTime between attempts to ensure that the video was completely flushed from memory between trials.

2.18GB MKV Video Loading Times (Time in minutes)

Again, the 320GB Porsche and the external laptop drive rounded out the bottom of the group but this time the 7200RPM LaCie 320GB did come out ahead by about 45 seconds. To be fair all of the tested drives loaded the 2.18GB MKV movie with sufficient speed that it could be watched without lost frames or skipping.

The LaCie 320GB USB 2.0 external designed by F.A. Porsche is definitely a good drive overall, especially for the price. As far as speed goes though, the 320GB will undoubtedly be a disappointment to prior owners of LaCie’s Pro line of triple-interface or new quad-interface drives. If the results I found were accurate I can’t see this drive being very popular with HD video editors or other high bandwidth requiring professionals.

The 320GB drive is billed as stackable but this ‘feature’ is all but nullified by it’s lack of an extra USB 2.0 port from-which to daisy-chain off of and the inclusion of a relatively short USB 2.0 cord. Still, as a consumer storage device for maintaining backups of media libraries or for use in the future as a Time Machine backup drive, I have a feeling this will be just fine.

I’ve used 320GB drive for several weeks and despite the test results, I have noticed no startlingly appreciable speed difference between it and the other external drives I use. The bottom line is that LaCie 320GB USB 2.0 external isn’t going to spoil you for it’s low price but it also isn’t likely to let you down if you know what you are getting.

Pros:

• Good Looking
• Perfectly easy to setup
• Fair price
• One year limited warranty (Two years in Europe)
• Transfer speed seems acceptable for daily use and backup.
• Runs silently (most of the time)

Cons:

• Fared poorly on XBench Disk Test and MKV loading test – results on par with an external laptop drive
• Makes an unnerving “clack” noise when the hard disk’s head parks
• Short USB 2.0 cable.
• Probably not fast enough for creative professionals or gamers
• Lack of Firewire means PPC users can not boot off this drive
• Intel users booting Mac OS X from this drive would have noticeably sluggish load-times on boot-up.

The Quicksilver Dictionary Plug-in is a bit different from Mac OS X’s standard Dictionary.app, and instant look-up in three ways. The first is the window in which the results are displayed. The plug-in uses it’s own custom low-profile display panel. The second difference is the addition of another source from which the definition can be gleaned. Yet, this other source, www.dict.org, is only queried when the “Define…” action is activated (and we won’t even touch on that in the scope of this tutorial). Otherwise the results mirror Dictionary.app’s New Oxford definitions exactly. Finally, and the reason I think this plug-in is worth using in spite of it’s apparent similarity to Dictionary.app, you can open multiple definition windows concurrently.

Well, let’s get started. First, you will need to ensure that the Dictionary Quicksilver plug-in is installed on your computer. If you have already installed the plug-in or know how you may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph. For the rest of us, let’s through installing the plug-in as a bit of a refresher. Open the Quicksilver preference window from the menu bar or dock contextual menu (if you have either of them enabled) or by activating Quicksilver and pressing Command-” (Command-Shift-Single Quote). Now, if it is not already selected choose the “All Plug-ins” tab on the left hand side of the window. In this window you should notice the Dictionary plug-in. If the plug-in’s associated check box (the little square to the left of it’s icon) is not checked press it and wait briefly while Quicksilver downloads and installs the plug-in for you. Once you’ve seen the cue to relaunch Quicksilver you are ready to go.

Now that the Dictionary plug-in installation is taken care of, looking up a word using Quicksilver will be quick and easy. Activate the Quicksilver window as normal and switch to “Text Mode” by pressing either “.” (Period) or ” ‘ ” (Single Quote). In the resulting text input type or paste the word you desire to look up. Press the “Tab” key to bring up an action modifier. Here you will want to enter “Dictionary” (or as many letters as it takes to reveal the appropriate action). Upon pressing return you will be presented with your definition in a simple panel window. You can also look up synonyms using the same plug-in by typing “Thesaurus” after entering your desired word.

Dictionary Look-up Trigger

Now we can set up a Trigger Hot-Key to let us look up words on the fly in a similar fashion to “Command-Control-D.” If you have been with MacApper a while, and read our ‘How to Control iTunes with Quicksilver’ Tutorial the following will likely appear pretty familiar. Activate Quicksilver and open the Trigger window by pressing Command-’ (Command-Single Quote). Select the “Custom Triggers” tab on the left and add a new trigger by pressing the plus sign in the lower left hand corner.

Double clicking the newly created action will reveal a panel with several text inputs. The commands you add in these inputs will cascade during activation in the same way Quicksilver actions always do. In the first input box type “Current Selection”, obviously this will pass Quicksilver the currently selected text. In the next box down type “Dictionary”. Now Quicksilver will pass the selected text to the dictionary plug-in’s action.

You still need a way to activate the trigger. Do this by pressing the “i” info button in the bottom right-hand side of the window. The drawer that will be revealed lets you do a number of things but we are only concerned with setting a Hot Key and a name for the action. A Hot Key combination I found works pretty well for me is Control-Option-Command-D. Sure it’s a bit hard to push that many keys but it’s similar enough to the default Apple Dictionary look-up hot keys that I won’t likely forget it. Finally name your action what ever you like.

If all has gone well you should now be able to do a quick Dictionary look-up of your text selection from almost anywhere with multiple look-up instances at once. Remember you make this a synonym look-up trigger by just replacing “Dictionary” with “Thesaurus” in the Trigger’s action panel It’s a simple trick that’s been helpful for me and I hope it will be helpful for you too.

Even with the most basic level of knowledge, you can use Quartz Composer to create “Compositions” that take advantage of fairly powerful technologies like OpenGL, Quartz and Core Image to create beautiful transitions, filters and screen savers. The creative possibilities are truly vast with Quartz Composer as your canvas. In this first of a two part series I’d like to walk you through a interesting tutorial to help you discover Quartz Composer and perhaps inspire your imagination to create cool compositions on your own.

First if you do not already have Quartz Composer on your Mac, you will want to install it with the Apple Developer Tools. These are located on the Mac OS X install disk. If you can’t find those, the latest developer tools are available from the ADC website if you have a free ADC account.

I think the interface of Quartz Composer can be pretty daunting at first glance, but rest assured that once you put the effort into learning it, you’ll be able to do some really interesting things. Thankfully Apple has gone to lengths to standardize the interface of their entry level development apps like Quartz Composer, Automator and Dashcode. If you’ve ever used Automator or tried one of our Automator tutorials Quartz Composer’s layout won’t seem too foreign.

The main window is called the “Editor”; here you’ll do most of the designing and organizing of your composition. Within the Editor window on the left side, is the “Patch Library” and “Clip Library”, these essentially comprise your tool chest. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what a patch is yet, we’ll discuss that in further depth a bit later. In that same pane, near the bottom, there is a small sub-pane that shows a simple explanation of what a given patch does and what it requires to do it’s job.

To the right, the gridded window pane is your work area, where you will drag, place and connect your patches and layout your composition. At the top of the work area you may notice a horizontal divider bar, pulling this down reveals the Hierarchy Browser, which we will discuss in part two. As you create you composition you will want to inspect and edit values within your patches; for this, you’ll use the “Inspector” window which can be opened by clicking the button on the toolbar icon. Likewise you can open a “Viewer” window to see how your composition looks live.

I think the best way to really get the hang of the interface of Quartz Composer is to dive right in. Let’s make something simple – a basic single image viewer for admiring a picture or image you are particularly fond of. To get started create a new blank composition by opening Quartz Composer and selecting new from the file menu. First we will want import an image with the “Image Importer” patch.

Finding this patch can be made easier by typing “image” into the Library search field to narrow the patch results. You can add the Image Importer Patch to your editor by either double clicking the patch in the library or just dragging it onto the grid. Just a point to note for later, that little circle on the patch’s left-hand side is it’s “Image” output. Once you’ve added the patch open up the inspector to take a look at it’s stats.

The inspector for each variety of patch varies greatly but the Image Importer inspector, as you will notice, has three inspector modes. “Information” deals with the patches name, notes and a description, while “Settings” let you control which image is imported and how it will be displayed. Ignore “Input Parameters” for now. These inspector modes can be easily navigated by pressing Cmd-1, Cmd-2 or Cmd-3 to get each respective setting.

Let’s go to the Settings mode to import our image. Although you can import any image you’d like, I would recommend something with an alpha map (transparency) so we can illustrate an important point in a moment. I will import the above MacApper logo PNG (you can save it from this page if you’d like to use it in your composition). Import you desired image by pressing “Import From File…” and navigating to the file you want and select it in the file browser.

Wait a second! Nothing happened! No image appeared in the Viewer window… That’s okay. We’ve only imported the image, not done anything with it. To get the image you’ve imported to display, you will need to pass it to another patch that can do something with it. The two most common ways of displaying images in Quartz Composer are the “Sprite” and “Billboard” patches; we’ll use “Sprite”, the more complex one for now.

The differences between these two patches can be discovered in the Patch Library pane if you are interested. Add a Sprite patch to the work area somewhere near to the Image Importer patch. Now the fun part. You will notice on the a bunch of empty circles with descriptions along the left-hand side of the Sprite patch; these are the inputs for the patch. We are going to connect the Image Importer’s “Image” output to the Sprite’s “Image” input.

To do this click and drag from the Image output to the Sprite’s input – you will see a connector dragging along with the mouse if you are doing it right. If that connector were to turn red after you have placed it, you’ve connected an output to an input that’s not compatible. If all is well, you will now see that the image has appeared in the Viewer window, but still doesn’t look quite right. The image is a bit skewed and the transparent background is opaque and black. We’ll take care of these problems next.

Select the Sprite Patch and look at it’s inspector, specifically the “Input Parameters”. If you are using the MacApper Logo you will want to change the Width to 1.58 and the Height 0.4. To make Quartz Composer maintain the image’s transparency select “Over” from the inspector’s “Blending” drop-down menu. So far, what you have created will look fine in Quartz Composer or as a video overlay but wouldn’t look so hot as a screen saver or on a web site.

The reason for this is that the MacApper logo is being drawn again and again over itself on the same spot, while nothing is being drawn around or behind it; we need to make the composition refresh every frame. To do this we will use the aptly named “Clear” patch. If you go ahead and add a Clear patch now it’s likely your sprite will no longer be visible, this is because the clear patch is drawing on top of the sprite.

The number contained in the small yellow square at the top right-hand corner of your two ‘rendering’ patches represents their respective layer or drawing order. Here, my sprite draws first, but is overwritten when the Clear patch draws next. To modify the Clear patch’s layer right-click on the patch and select the desired layer from the menu that appears. The MacApper logo should again become visible.

I’ll admit, what we have here is a bit boring thus far, so let’s do just a bit more work to spice it up. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could control the rotation of the sprite with the mouse. Luckily there is a “Mouse” patch that outputs the coordinates of the cursor in Quartz Composer units. The cursor’s movement alone won’t be enough to rotate the sprite very much so we’ll also apply a “Math” patch to multiply the coordinates.

First of all, drag out a Mouse patch and a Math patch onto the Editor, then connect the Mouse patch’s “X” output to the Math patch’s “Initial Value” input. In the Math patch’s inspector set the “Operation #1″ drop-down to Multiply and enter a number into the “Operand #1″ input; I found the number 50 works great for playing with this composition in fullscreen mode. Connect the Math patch’s “Resulting Value” output to the Sprite’s “Y Rotation” (I know this seems funny, X connecting to Y, but it feels the most natural controlling it in this manner).

Whenever the mouse moves, the sprite’s rotation will be set to the Mouse’s “X” position multiplied by 50. Next, duplicate the Math patch (Command-D) and connect the Mouse patch’s “Y” output with the new Math’s initial value input. In the inspector for the duplicated Math patch change the value of “Operand #1″ to -70. This value will give the vertical rotation a bit of a boost and make it seem the logo is always facing the mouse cursor. Finally connect the “Resulting Value” output to the sprites “X Rotation” input. You should now be in business.

Good work! You’re now done with part one of this two-part Quartz Composer series. Check back next week or watch your RSS feeds for part two; we’ll explore more techniques for making great Quartz Compositions including how to making you own screen saver.

Note: Here is a link to the QC file for this Tutorial

The new addition to the Insanely Great Tees line, aptly titled “iShirt” features a pixel art iPod that calls back to the good old days of 256-shade grayscale and the user interface of the original iPod. The new iShirt design is available for US$17 + Shipping and, as always, is printed on super high-quality American Apparel cotton.

If you feel like wearing your love and pride for the iPod and Apple on your chest – check out the new iShirt and all of Insanely Great Tees’ other awesome threads. Oh, and if you bought some, why not post a pic or two in the forums?

Traditional “Contextual Menu Style” Image Uploader
My method of choice requires slightly more effort each time I upload, but provides much more freedom in naming, tagging and describing my individual photos. Rather than uploading a pre-designated folder’s contents in every run of the plug-in, it will only upload that image (or those images) that are selected in Finder. In other words this plug-in will act a bit more like the contextual menu actions you may have used before – like the “Create Archive of… ” and “Toast It” contextual menu commands.

First, in Automator, create a new workflow and add to it a Finder “Get Selected Items” action. This is what will pass your selected image or images to the upload step. Next drop in an “Upload to Flickr” action. This time, there won’t likely be a single theme that is carried through all of my uploaded photos so I will leave the Title and Description input-boxes blank.

Fortunately, I usually use the same camera so it’ll save me some typing if I add in some of my camera information into the Tags input-box. Because those aren’t the only tags I’ll use, I’m going to select the “Upload to Flickr” action’s “Show Action When Run” option. Now when the workflow is run a prompt will open allowing me to append a name, description and further tags to my image. Honestly this method is not ideal for multiple photos because only one prompt will show even when many images are in the queue.

After I’ve uploaded an image I often like to catalogue it away in the “Pictures” folder of my home directory. To do this, simply add a “Move Finder Items” action to the workflow then select your desired destination from the “To:” drop-down menu.

Again, like the first plug-in you will need to “Save As Plug-in…” your workflow, giving it a relevant and meaningful name so it can be accessed from the Finder’s contextual menus and you can remember what it does in the future.

Cleaning up Finder Plug-ins.
Since you now have the ability to make Finder plug-ins, you might eventually find yourself wanting to eliminate a particular plug-in you no longer have need for. This isn’t very difficult, but is a good thing to know about. The Finder Automator plug-ins folder is located at Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/Library/Workflows /Applications/Finder. When you’ve opened this folder you can simply drag unwanted plug-ins to the trash to uninstall them from your contextual menu.

I really hope that this tutorial has helped you get an even better grasp on working with Automator and also introduced you to a helpful and convenient method for sharing your photos on Flickr using Finder plug-ins. Check back for more tutorials, or subscribe to our RSS feed for updates.

In this tutorial I’d like to show you a very easy way to upload images from the Finder with a little help from Automator. Making a simple Automator Workflow Plug-in for the Finder to move your images to Flickr is an excellent and unobtrusive method I’d like to walk you through.

The key to making this project easy is the OSX Automator Flickr Upload Action kindly created for free by TurtleHead. You’ll need to download the action to proceed. Once you have the disk image on your Mac, mount it and then open Automator. You’ll next import the the Flickr Upload Action by selecting “Import Actions…” from Automator’s “File” menu and then navigating to the “FlickrUpload” disk image and select the Automator action contained therein.

It’s good to note that Apple’s Automator Actions download page has a wide selection of useful Automator Actions to add to Automator this way. If you feel like what you’re seeing here is a bit over your head please go and check out the Automator Basics Tutorial.

When you first add the “Upload to Flickr” action you will need to authenticate it with Flickr. This will be fairly painless if you have a Flickr account but if you have network security app like Little Snitch installed you’ll need to allow Automator to connect to the Flickr server. I’m sure there are countless useful ways you can have your plug-in select which photos are to be uploaded. I’ll discuss two methods I’ve found particularly useful.

Easy Sync Upload Folder
Often after a trip or taking a number of photos I’ll slowly weed through my shots to find the ones I’m pleased with and temporarily drop them into, for example, an “Upload Soon – My Trip to San Francisco” folder. After I’ve collected all the best shots I’ll upload them together. Our first plug-in will help us do exactly this, when we activate it our images will be uploaded and then cleaned out of the upload folder.

To get started, create a new workflow project in Automator. The First step here will be to tell the workflow where you want the photos to be selected from. Drag a “Get Specified Finder Items” action into the workflow then press it’s plus button and select the folder you wish to have “sync” with Flickr. Next, to ensure you are sending images to the Flickr Upload Action as opposed to just sending the folder, add a “Get Folder Contents” action to the workflow. If for some reason you are uploading images within folders that are within other folders you will want to select the “Repeat for each subfolder found” option.

Finally drag the newly added “Upload to Flickr” action to the end of your workflow. Since I’ve already named my photos correctly I will leave the “Title” input-box blank. Next is the “Description” input, if you wanted to add a general description to the whole batch, that is give the same description to each photo, you would type it here. I’ll leave the description blank also, I usually add them once the photos are all on Flickr.

Finally you can add tags to your batch. In my case these photos are all from San Francisco so I will tag them as such. You’ll want to remember that as a good citizen of Flickr you are to tag your photos accurately; the Flickr team does not accept using your favorite tags as entirely appropriate. Simply put, don’t tag random photos and screenshots with the same name, instead, tag your photos in a relevant way.

After they have been uploaded I would like to have all the “Upload” folder’s photos moved to the trash so I can later toss other photos into this folder without worry of double uploading a bunch of them. To do this, in Automator drag the Finder’s “Move to Trash” action to your Automator workflow.

Finally we’ll make the workflow into a Finder Plug-in. This is done by selecting the “Save As Plug-in…” option from the file menu. In the ensuing info box you will want to name your Plug-in the title you wish it to appear as in you contextual menu. You will likely want to name it something like, in the case of my example, “Upload SFO Shots” so you can remember what the plug-in does a couple months or weeks in the future.

Here are a few further tips for using your new plug-in. To make tagging the photos a bit more simple, you might notice I choose to group them by topic (they are all from a trip to San Francisco). You might also want to do so. This sort of “syncing” method can be made even easier if you choose to put your “Upload” folder into the dock so you can easily drop photos into it whenever it pleases you.

If you’ve decided to move uploaded images to the trash, please be sure you have back ups of these photos elsewhere. Alternatively, you may just want to have the workflow move the images to a storage folder, for example the “Pictures” folder. Finally keep in mind that the Flickr Upload action retains the original names of photos you send to Flickr, as such I find it helpful to name my images as I add them to my “Upload” folder.

Check back tomorrow when I will go through the process of creating a plug-in that is better suited for uploading single images, with different attributes.

Naturally the first thing I noticed about Tables was it’s price. Tables is offered as shareware for 34 Euro, which is around US$55. This is a price which might seem steep for just a spreadsheet app but, I think, is actually very reasonable when you consider that Microsoft Office for Mac still sells for US$399 for Standard Edition and around US$129 for the Student edition. Even if you were to combine iWork and Tables as an Apple fan’s alternative to MS Office it would only cost you around US$135. I think it’s price makes Tables fairly attractive to people who are sick of the abandonware-like state of Office, and just want to do our casual spreadsheet work without having to fork over $400.

A reasonable price means nothing if the software is no good. Fortunately, using Tables is a pleasant experience, although not without it’s rough spots. I’m not a pro with spreadsheets, but for my fairly average spreadsheet needs, I’ve really enjoyed using Tables. My use of Tables began, coincidentally, the same day my copy of Midnight Apps’ Cha-Ching stopped working (that’s another story), so tables became my make-shift financial app. In-spite of the fact that it had been about a year since I last used a spreadsheet application, I was able to load Tables and have a fairly complete sheet of my finances, with auto calculations of total earnings and expenses, in just a couple minutes. Tables includes all of the features I ever used in Excel like cell functions, charts, cell formatting, and multiple sheets. Charts stands in my memory as causing me particular pain in my early days of Excel use, how about Tables? In Tables just select some data then press the charts icon in the toolbar and you’ve got a chart… it’s that easy.

Mind you, Tables does also impose some limits as a result of it’s simplicity of use. For example, want a rainbow-colored chart? Sadly, you are limited to the seven Color Schemes provided. Still, for the most part I really enjoyed the simplicity of Tables’ interface. When Tables opens you aren’t confronted with a whole lot. The document window is as you’d expect in a spreadsheet app but it’s toolbar contains surprisingly few buttons. Further controls for document, sheet, text, format, style and graphing are contained in handy little inspector windows. What’s more, you can open multiple inspector windows to cater to your spreadsheet needs, a feature I’m very glad Daniel borrowed from the iWork apps.

Another piece of UI polish I enjoyed is the Styles Drawer. The Styles Drawer makes applying cell formatting styles a breeze by letting you store common and favorite styles in a slide out drawer. You simply select a cell that is formated in the desired manner, create a new style in the drawer and apply as you like. I think it’s a really excellent feature. Tables’ interface icons and layout make the entire user experience fairly clear, but I did have a few complaints. Strangely the aforementioned Styles Drawer does not have a corresponding icon in the toolbar. This oversight is two-fold because I think it will prevent potential users from finding this great little feature. My other worry was with some of the inspector controls, a few of them don’t seem to work quite right. Particularly the Graphic / Cell Style inspector just seemed a bit “weird”. The Graphic inspector’s opacity control works with imported graphics but not with data charts. Finally, the Graphic inspector’s “Fill” drop-down menu was never enabled, I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, it does.

Although I have had a few complaints all of them are things that can be added or tweaked in a new release in a week or month, and I’m sure they will be because Daniel Schwill is working on Tables constantly. In fact, several free updates have been released since I began writing this review. Daniel Schwill seems to be a very committed developer who has put a lot of thought into the direction he wants to take Tables. This gives me a lot of confidence in it’s future.

In many ways I feel Tables is about keeping it simple. Obviously there are other spreadsheet options on the Mac but Tables stands out by aiming to make spreadsheet work and organizing your data a very “Mac-like” experience. I know this is a big thing to say, but I consider Tables to be “real competition” for Excel on the Mac. It has a lot to offer; competitive pricing, ease of use, consistent support… Yet the most startling thing I realized while using and reviewing Tables, is that small concerns aside, I really enjoyed working with and organizing my data in a way I never had in Excel or Mariner Calc. Whether you have “had it” with Microsoft and Excel in general, want a more easy to use spreadsheet, or have just never found use for a spreadsheet application before – I suggest you give Tables a try.

Pros:

Cons:

• Opening a new inspector window requires visiting the View menu.
• Spell-checking is absent from the spreadsheet’s cells.
• Toolbar icon for the Styles Drawer is absent.
• Where the heck are the Horizontal and Vertical divider bars?!
• It’s cheaper than buying Office: Mac but still feels a little pricey for casual spreadsheet users.

System stat apps and utilities make monitoring system memory usage, processor activity and other numeric data, usually hidden bellow the surface of the OS a bit more visible. These kinds of apps can be useful in a number of situations: Is this web page I’m looking at loading or just stalled? Just look at the network bandwidth stat. Why is the computer running so slow? Am I out of memory? Just check the system memory stat. Personally I monitor the processor activity statistics to make sure dashboard widgets I am writing aren’t using too many resources.

Whatever sort of use you find for monitoring your system stats a key feature of any monitor app should be that you can check your needed information quickly and without interrupting your work. Activity Monitor, which is included in Mac OS X, did a pretty good job of this allowing you to open a floating window of processor usage. Unfortunately didn’t provide a whole lot of other information without opening the app’s main Activity Monitor window. iStat menus does a great job of giving you a lot of information in a small space without being ugly or overly distracting.

The many system information stats that can be displayed in iStat menus include: CPU, Memory, Drives, Network, Temps, Fans, Bluetooth and Date & Time. Most can be customized to fit your liking and all seem to work as advertised. Since I began using iStat menus I have found the CPU, Memory and Network utilities particularly of great use, and each has helped me in a big way to debug and tune the widgets I’ve been working on.

The menu stat that I found to be a particular and surprising pleasure to have in my menu bar was the Date & Time. Not only can you customize it to show the date but also a calendar and a number of international analog clocks, a very nice touch. Moreover, clicking the calendar will open iCal, and clicking one of the international clocks will open the iStat menus Date & Time preference pane. Interestingly, this was the only way I could find to open iStat menus’ pref pane from any of it’s own menus, which is a little disappointing.

Although I really loved most of the menu extras in iStat, I was still left desiring one further small feature (I know, I demand too much), I simply wish the CPU stat would show me what apps or processes are chewing up the most processor cycles within the CPU stat menu. It is frustrating to see one processor pinned at 100% and then having to open Apple’s Activity Monitor to find out what process is hogging the processor.

A big part of what makes iStat menus so informative and unobtrusive is the level of customization control they provide you with. You can choose from five colored skins provided to find a style that matches your desktop or your work environment. Further you have total control over which information stats are displayed in the status menu bar, all of the eight menu extras provided in iStat menus can be displayed or hidden at your pleasure. The level of customization extends beyond what you are being shown by each stat to how it is being displayed. Often you can adjust the style of graph or numerics used to portray the data, for example as a vertical graph of total usage or as graph of usage over time – very useful choices to have.

As much as I really liked the customization it’s not to say that it’s perfect. I know it’s petty but I’d love to have more control over the color of the stat graphs than iSlayer provides, for me five preset color choices is not enough. I told you it was petty. That said, the customization options within iStat menus fulfill their purpose very well. They allow you to tune the menu extras you need, so you are not bombarded with pointless information you don’t care about. iStat menus enables you to cut out this extra information that would only serve as a distraction from your productive tasks.

It’s hard to review something like iStat menus because I think many people will use it for totally different purposes. Regardless I think we will see a lot of people very satisfied with this great little app for all of their system stat monitoring needs. There are few donationware apps with this level of polish, beauty and thoughtful implementation. I thoroughly recommend anyone, particularly MenuMeters users, give iStat menus a try. If you enjoy your experience with iStat please consider donating to ensure iSlayer continues developing more great software and widgets.

Pros:

• Looks great.
• Lots of customization options.
• Huge selection of stats and information.
• Unprecedented level of quality and polish for donationware.

Cons:

• More color customization of stat graphs would be nice.
• No obvious way to access preference pane from the menu extras.
• Menu bar can become pretty full with all of the many menu extras.

Written in Cocoa with Core Data and wrapped in a pretty good looking UI, FolioCalc could be just what the doctor ordered for people wanting more convenient control over their finances. FolioCalc is loaded with useful and advanced features including the ability to track your stock portfolio in near real-time, stock-splitting support and a system that takes a lot of the work out of buying, selling and following your portfolio. FolioCalc also promises to be, from the ground up, a great way to manage any of your interest-bearing investments, not just stocks. There’s a lot to be done with FolioCalc especially if you are serious about where your money is and how it’s growing.

It’s been said before but beta testing is not only a great way to get your hands on cool software but also having been a beta tester can be a really great addition to your resume. Plus, it’s usually pretty fun! Beta testing is probably the only time that developers really like it when you find things wrong with their software. Rhodosoft says they’re particularly looking for feedback and suggestions.

The free beta version of FolioCalc is feature complete and should offer a pretty good experience. To get involved and begin using the free beta, head over to FolioCalc’s download page and start filing your suggestions, bug reports and error messages on Rhodosoft’s bug report page.

In a perfect world, the iPhone would be open to all third party Cocoa development. For the time being, the most realistic change we can hope to see is Apple opening iPhone Cocoa development to a few trusted applications or games that the public demands. If you’d like to add your voice to the many others trying to sway Apple towards letting Frenzic onto the iPhone you can do your part to support this grassroots campaign by telling Apple what you think.

Google Reader is a free RSS aggregator web app that integrates with your personalized iGoogle home page, and can be accessed from essentially any computer or phone with an internet connection and a web browser. This makes it pretty handy, though it can be annoying to have to open a browser window to check your feeds – it’s an obtrusive step away from the Mac desktop-app experience.

The free Google Reader Notifier widget by Rusty Brick Software aims to bridge the gap between web app and desktop app by displaying how many new stories you have in Google Reader from within the Dashboard.

It sure isn’t the most beautiful looking widget but it does one task and does it very well. Google Reader Notifier is definitely worth a look if you are interested in using Google Reader and want a more smooth and simple way to check your feeds.

Editors note: Ironic that we post this piece first thing this morning as Google Reader has been offline for several hours. NewsFire has been working great for me though! -Jordan Golson

Best Mac OS X Game
Predicted Winner: Frenzic by The Iconfactory
Predicted Runner-Up: Star Wars: Empire at War by Aspyr

This has really been the year of The Iconfactory. Their icon creations in Windows Vista were released to the world, their Twitter client Twitterific took the world by storm – going as far as become synonymous to the service itself. Icon Factory also released the addictive Mac only puzzle game Frenzic which I think stands a very excellent chance of taking home the little glowing aluminum cube this year.

Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution
Predicted Winner: ResolutionMD by CalgaryScientific
Predicted Runner-up: Mathematica 6 by Wolfram Research

While Mathematica is the more well known name in scientific software I really think ResolutionMD by CalgaryScientific really has a chance of giving them a serious run for their money. I happened to sit beside Dr. Ross Mitchell of the CalgaryScientific research team on the plane to San Francisco and was very impressed by the work they’ve done. ResolutionMD has a strong offering on Mac doing important and groundbreaking medical imaging that has even gotten Apple’s attention.

Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget
Predicted Winner: iStat Nano by iSlayer
Honorable Mention: Photo Drop by Dropping Inc.

It seems to be a general consensus that iStat Nano will be winning an ADA this year. iSlayer has a lot going for themselves and their little widget, they’ve been in the “Staff Favorites” on the Apple Dashboard Widget page more time than anyone can count, they’ve got literally millions of downloads and iStat Nano looks and works great – a winning combination. Personally I was hoping Dropping Inc. would enter Photo Drop into the ADA as well but when I asked Kenichi about it he said that unfortunately he forgot when the deadline was and didn’t enter it this year.

Best Mac OS X Student Product
Predicted Winner: Skim by Michael Mcracken

Skim, an awesome PDF reader, works like a dream, as it has some really cool features that make you say “wow” and has been a bit of a sensation across the Mac universe. Not only do I think this great freeware app will win the ADA for best Student Product but also an Apple Engineer job in the Preview.app unit will be waiting for Mr. Mcracken when he’s ready for it, it’s just too bad he won’t be making it to WWDC personally this year.

Best Mac OS X Leopard Application
Predicted Winner: Delicious Library 2 by Delicious Monster

This is the only category to allow unreleased software, that is, software the world has yet to see. Delicious Monster’s team of gremlins has been working like mad-men since WWDC06 to make Delicious Library 2 use every cool piece of technology in Leopard. Those that have seen the recent work on Library testify to it’s greatness. It follows that Delicious Monster’s yet uncovered Delicious Library 2 could rock the world the way Delicious Monster did in 2005.

Best Mac OS X Developer Tool and Best Mac OS X User Experience
Predicted Winner: Coda by Panic

Panic turned a lot of heads with their release of Coda, including the heads of a lot of people at Apple. Further, Coda is now positioned perfectly to help those who want to start developing 2.0 quality web apps for the iPhone – I really have a feeling Panic will be rewarded for their great timing with this awesome app, but I guess we will see soon enough.

Stay tuned for announcements about the outcome of the Apple Design Awards later this evening.

The premise of WebcamTweaker is pretty similar to Photo Booth, there is a main viewer window that shows your iSight video, to this video you can apply a number of live Quartz Composer effects and see how they look. The included effects are a bit of a mixed bag, many you’ve seen before, some are really cool and original but lots are nearly useless and very gaudy. My personal favorite filter is ColorEdge (see above), sadly most of the other original video filters are absolute garbage.

Part of the reason for the existence of these unimpressive filters is that it’s so easy to make them. TweakerSoft provides simple (and somewhat unclear) instructions in the WebcamTweaker FAQ explaining how to make your own filters. As a tip, if you want to use your on Quartz Composer filters, you’ll probably have to make your own “Filters” folder in the location the FAQ specifies and then you will need to create your own folder within “Filters” in-which to place your home-made Quartz Compositions. In-spite of some trouble with the FAQ I find the custom filter feature of WebcamTweaker very well executed.

The feature set of WebcamTweaker is pretty diverse without being overwhelming. On the main viewer window you are presented with five simple options: time lapse video options, record video, take photo, show multimedia drawer and finally show effects drawer. The interface is simple but fails to shine. Tool-tips are lacking from the five options I’ve described making things more confusing than is necessary for first time users. From the preferences window you can control the save destination, whether or not the image is mirrored and what format to save your videos as. WebcamTweaker allows you to save your recorded video to a wider range of H264 and Raw video dimensions than Quicktime Pro’s iSight recorder but you are still not offered the ability to save to any format or dimensions you wish. The preset video export modes are H264 iPod, H264 640 x 480, H264 email, No Compression 320 x 240 and No Compression 640 x 480. Thankfully if you need your videos converted to another format it won’t be hard to do so from the “No Compression” modes. WebcamTweaker also makes easy it for you to set your iChat or Mac account user icon to a photo you have taken or send a photo to your email or iPhoto all with only the click of a button. Controlling when a shot is taken or a video starts is brought to a new level by letting you control WebcamTweaker with the Apple Remote.

Still, my biggest problem with WebcamTweaker came when I needed it the most. I was filming a very important “Speaker’s Corner” type video with my MacBook Pro’s iSight where a few fellow students would sit down and share their opinions for a moment. WebcamTweaker seemed like the perfect solution. The filming itself went very well, we set WebcamTweaker to record and let the students have their turns. Disaster struck when the last student pressed Command-Q (Quit) after he was done his segment of the video. This shouldn’t big a big issue, right? If I select quit in any reputable Mac Application while having unsaved work open the application will either save the work itself or prompt you to make sure you’d like to quit. Unfortunately this major oversight that made it into WebcamTweaker, you can quit without your video being converted into a usable form. So in the end I was left with a 20Gb chunk of data about which the developer of WebcamTweaker explains “there is nothing I can do for you to recover that movie”. Was it a stupid mistake for us to make? Yes, of course it was, but a great piece of software will always make it really hard to do something really stupid.

I wish I could say that $15.99 was an excellent price for a simple application like WebcamTweaker, but unfortunately I can’t. I feel like it’s just not a finished product. Furthermore, rumor has it that Mac OS X Leopard’s new version of Photo Booth will include many of the features of WebcamTweaker, so if you can make due with a free alternative until October your video will likely be more safe and you can save $16 to put towards your Mac OS X upgrade. You can try WebcamTweaker here.

The Student Membership and Scholarship program each year sponsors several hundred post-secondary students from across the world to attend the World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. The ADC Student membership is not free, it costs $99, but consider this a small price to pay for the included Mac OS X and Developer mail-outs and a one-time special hardware discount.

A free online membership which includes such things as access to up-to-date development tool downloads and an ADC news subscription.

Technical Support Incidents, a (paid) way for developers to speak to Apple Developer Support Engineers familiar with Apple code to help resolve difficult to pinpoint or troubleshoot bugs.

ADC Business Resources offers marketing strategies and programs exclusively to ADC members. Business resources include distribution, advertising and product development related information as well as Apple’s Hot Deals and Dashboard Widget Browser websites. Of particular interest to independent developers is the ADC Developer Pavilion at Macworld which offers devs a booth at Macworld next to Apple and an attractive advertising package for a fairly low price.

Mailing Lists where developers can tap the deep well of knowledge of many other developers and Apple engineers.

Bug Reporting, a web app based system for reporting and tracking bugs in Apple hardware and software. This isn’t tech support but it’s an excellent way of passing your concerns directly to Apple.

WWDC tickets, if you are a developer and are interested in attending Apple’s main developer event in San Francisco the ADC is the only place to purchase tickets. Besides being a fantastic place to learn cutting edge information about Mac OS X, it’s a great place to speak to Apple engineers about solutions for your development project’s needs and network with other developers (if you’re there, you might meet me!).

If you are new to software development and want to start wading through the ADC libraries there are just a few other words and acronyms you should know to get by:

API – Application Programming Interface
MVC – Model View Controller
Radar – An Apple Bug Report. “Have you filed a Radar about that bug?”
SDK – Software Development Kit
WWDC – World-wide Developer Conference
WWDR – World-wide Developer Relations, essentially this is the team that organizes and runs WWDC and the ADC website.

For those brave souls who want to dive into the exciting and fun world of OS X development I wish you good luck and hope the Apple Developer Connection and the many services they provide can help you on your way.

The Basics of Automator

First, load the Automator editor application located in the Applications folder. On the upper-left hand side of the Automator window you will notice the Library pane which lists the applications on your system that are supported by Automator. If you don’t see your favorite App in this window write the author of the software, only they can add Automator support. Just to the left of the library pane is the Actions pane which lists the available actions for a selected application. These two windows act as your toolbox while making an Automator action. Naturally there is also a search field to quickly find an action without needing to select a specific target application. Below these two panes is the Action Description pane. Here you can find important information about different actions like what sort of “Input” it expects, what “Result” it returns and any other requirements.

This concept may be familiar if you have any experience with the programming concept of “protocol”, if you you are unfamiliar don’t fret! It’s not that hard, I promise. Every Automator action expects a certain “type” of input. For example the iTunes action “Add Songs to Playlist” expects “Songs” as the input, naturally if you sent this action a text file, an email address and a sandwich it would be unable to add them to a playlist. In return for you giving an action what it expects it “promises” to consistently return a certain type of response or “Result”. These Results can often be passed into other actions making a sequence of events that does something useful for you.

To the right side of the Automator window is the Workflow pane. Here you place Actions which will occur one by one from top to bottom. Actions can be placed into the Workflow by either dragging an action to the Workflow pane or by double-clicking on an action.

The toolbar also contains two buttons you’ll be using a lot, the Run (Command R) and Stop (Command .).

Instant Backup Automator Action

This is a handy little Automator action I use all the time on projects or assignments where I’m experimenting with a file (usually code) enough that “Undo” won’t suffice and setting up a version control system feels over-kill. This action when placed in the dock will make a copy of whatever file or folder you have selected in the Finder and conveniently append a date-stamp onto the name of the copy. Please keep in mind that the following example is definitely not the only way and likely not the best way of backing up your files, so while you’re working through the tutorial think of how you would do it better and go ahead and give it a try.

The first step of this workflow involves letting Automator know which file(s) you wish to deal with. For this example we’ll simply tell Automator to make a back up of the file (or folder) that is currently selected in the Finder. To do this you will want to find the “Get Selected Finder Items” action by selecting Finder in the library pane and dragging “Get Selected Finder Items” to the work flow window.

Next we will want to copy the file to your backup destination. I’ve created a “Backup” folder in my home directory (the directory named with your user name) in which to place the backed up files. The Action that will do this for us is called “Copy Finder Items”, lets try using the search to find it this time. Drag the action to the workflow pane and take a look at the action “bubble” you’ve created. You will notice that unlike the “Get Selected Items” action this one contains some further controls. In the “To:” drop-down menu I will select my Backup folder. If you choose to place your files elsewhere please change the “To:” destination directory accordingly. There is another option here to replace existing files in the destination directory if they have the same name. I would not recommend you check this box, it will erase similarly named files without asking. If you leave the replace check box unchecked when there is another file sharing the same name the Finder will rename the new file to prevent a collision.

Rename your Backup

Although this action is pretty good already, when I’m making many revisions and changes to a file I like to keep track in the file name that it is a backup and the time and date the backup was created. We can do this very simply with Automator.

First I’d like to append onto the file name the suffix “_Backup” to remind me I’m looking at a backed up file. The action we will use to add this suffix, date and time is the “Rename Finder Items” action. As we will use this same action three times in a row go ahead and add three of them to the work flow.

To append the text suffix focus on the first of the three “Rename Finder Items” actions. From the action’s drop-down menu select “Add Text”. In the “Add:” text field type “_Backup”. I preceded the word “Backup” with an underscore, “_”, so the title is easier to read. Set the next drop-down menu to “after name”, this will make the text act as a suffix to the prior name rather than a prefix. Mac OS X recognizes when there is a file extension visible at the end of the file name (.mov, .pdf, etc.) and will append your text between the file name and the file extension.

To add the time of day you created the backup you will edit the second “Rename Finder Items” action that you added. This time you will set the first drop-down menu to “Add Date or Time”. Because I want to see when I made this backup rather than when it was last modified I select “Current” from the “Date/Time:” drop down menu. The “Format:” drop-down menu will be the only difference between adding the time and the date, here we will choose “Hour Minute”. Again the we will want to add the text after the name by selecting “After name”. You can choose whichever “Separator:” drop-down selections you find easiest to read for the next two options, I’ve chosen “Dash” and “Underscore”. You can also enable the use of leading zeroes with the final check box. For example, with leading zeros, eight o’clock and one minute in the morning will read 08-01 rather than 8-1, it’s a matter of personal preference.

Finally to add the date to the third “Rename Finder Items” action, do the same as you did for time in the second “Rename Finder Items” action but select the “Format:” drop-down menu option “Day Month Year” instead of “Hour Minute”.

Finishing Up

Now would be a great time to save your work, this can be done by pressing Command-S or by selecting Save from the File Menu. In the save window you will notice a “File Format:” drop-down, this gives you the choice of saving as a Workflow or an Application. For our example we’ll choose to save an Application. As an Application your Automator action can be double clicked in the Finder and be activated. I would recommend you save your new Automator action “application” to your Applications folder for easy access. A cool little feature of these Automator action applications is that unlike a complied Application built in Xcode you can just drop your creation or one you downloaded that you want to learn from onto Automator to examine and edit its workflow.

We’re on the home stretch now, you’ve got a working Automator action but… what to do with it? If you double click on it now you will likely just end up with a backup of your Automator action application in your backup destination (remember it’s setup to backup Finder’s current selection). I think an excellent solution would be to drag your Automator Application to the dock so you can access it anytime from the Finder. Now select the file you wish to backup, click on the your application in the dock and like magic you’ve got a dated backup!

The Future of Automator

Rest assured, your new little robot friend, Automator, will not be disappearing with the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. In fact Apple is adding many very helpful enhancements to Automator in Leopard that will make the automation process even easier. According to the public WWDC course page, actions will no longer be just scriptable but also recordable in Leopard, that’s really exciting. I can assure you there are other neat things in the works and can’t wait until we can all get our hands on the Leopard version of Automator. Until then, happy Automating!

Well, you are correct, this review comes smack on the Nike+ iPod’s birthday, May 23. The reason for my review is three-fold. First, it’s spring (at least in the northern hemisphere), it’s a great time to get into running, and I would recommend it to anyone. Second, I think after a year of on the road usage, it’s a good time to see how some people’s concerns about the system have turned out. Finally, I really believe right now we’re in the renaissance of this great product  the Nike web apps have matured, introducing excellent new features and very helpful Dashboard widgets. The wildly popular Nike+ iPod Sports kits can at last be easily found on store shelves. It’s a great time to be a runner and iPod Nano owner.

One worry I heard a lot in regards to the Nike+ kit is about its accuracy – it’s a worry I’ve found is completely unfounded. I run the same route very often and find myself measured at almost the same distance run to run. Truthfully I’ve been very impressed at the accuracy of the Nike+ iPod sensor. Running with either the sensor inserted into my Nike+ shoes or strapped onto the laces of my Adidas runners, the Nike+ iPod sensor measured distances very consistently. As far as I can tell, it approaches an accuracy of plus or minus one meter over four or five kilometers. Even without calibration when I map myself a 4km run on Google Earth, 4km is really close to what the iPod tells me I’ve traveled. I’m sure GPS options do provide more distance accuracy as well as information like altitude climbed and the exact route run, but for the casual runner I really think they’re a little excessive  loads of features, generally bulkier and often carrying a higher price tag.

The second complaint I’ve often encountered about the Nike+ iPod kit is Nike’s quality of shoes. I only partially empathize with this complaint. I find the quality of the Nike shoes I purchased very acceptable but I can completely understand that for some people Nike shoes just aren’t an option, that is, Nike shoes won’t fit or be comfortable for all people. It actually took me trying on quite a few pairs of shoes before I found a set that was both comfortable and fit me properly. I am glad I took the time to find the “perfect” pair, though, because I really like my Max Air Motos.

Despite worries from the nay-sayers I find the Nike+ shoes extremely well made, comfortable and very light. That said they weren’t terribly cheap, so if you have a pair of runners you are already enamored with you might want to use one of the many available options to attach your Nike+ sensor to them. For six months I used my older Adidas runners and put the sensor in a home-made fabric pouch which I attached to my laces. My home-made pouch worked fine but there are much better options that won’t set you back too much like the Marware Sportsuit.

There was a bit of uproar upon its debut about the Nike+ sensors built-in battery which can’t be replaced. I’ve used mine for almost a year and several hundred kilometers and the sensor’s battery is still going strong. I do dread having to replace my Nike+ kit eventually but $29 every couple years doesn’t really seem that bad.

What I’ve been the most pleased with over the course of my year with the Nike+ has been the improvements to the Nike+ web app. Although what was provided upon its release was very acceptable Nike has continued to add features and improvements on a fairly consistent basis. Initially the Nike+ web app gave users access to goal setting, challenges and a view of all their runs; recent upgrades brought Map It, Nike+ Dashboard widgets and a number of other lesser additions. Map It is an interesting collaboration between Google Maps and Nike+ that allows you to map your running routes and then share them with the Nike+ community. Additionally you can keep track of how many times you have run a given path or even comment and tag the routes of others.

The two Nike+ widgets that have been introduced are the Nike+ Goal Widget and the Nike+ Challenge Widget. Both widgets help you track your progress without having to log into the central web app. The past year hasn’t been without some annoyances; as much as I praise the Nike+ web app, I still long for a desktop version of the system. Flash based web apps have really come a long way but can still suffer from lag and every so often can become unresponsive. A further complaint is that while recently some consistency has been achieved, the features of the Nike+ web app vary from country to country, creating no continuity through the global community. To see all of the available Nike+ features, you have to log onto the American version of the web app. This isn’t a real problem for the individual runner, who registers in the country he lives in, but for the runner wishing to interact with the global community of running enthusiasts, the difficulty of living in a country that does not support Nike+’s more advanced features can become a frustrating one.

Overall, the last year of running with my Nike+ iPod sport kit has been very smooth and very fun. It hasn’t been perfect but it has been very close.

Pros:

• Great way to get started and keep motivated to run
• Not as expensive as most GPS units, especially if you already have an iPod Nano
• Surprisingly accurate even with non-Nike shoe options
• Widgets help keep goals in mind
• Mapping is a cool way to remember routes and discover other’s running paths

Cons:

• Questionable quality and fit of Nike shoes
• Nike+ shoes can be expensive
• Those outside of USA pay slightly inflated price for Nike+ iPod Sports kit
• Non-USA residents who use their nations’ “local” Nike+ site may be disappointed by lack of features
• Shuffle seems to malfunction when starting a run  same playlist starts with the same song every time
• Still only compatible with iPod Nano  presumably because hard disk iPods would damage during running

This first group of commands is absolutely essential to working quickly with the keyboard. Just forget the mouse is there and navigate your words or code quickly with only those 109 keys before you. Seriously, if you learn to work using the keyboard almost exclusively I think it can speed you up almost as much as learning to touch-type.

Option ( ⌥) – The single word modifier. Holding either the Option key and tapping the left or right arrow will allow you to skip the cursor to the other side of the next word in that direction.

Command ( ⌘) – The line modifier. Much the same as Option, holding the Command key and tapping the left or right arrow will move the cursor to the end or the beginning the current line. Doing the same with the up and down arrows will wove the cursor to the top of bottom of the document.

With these two modifiers in mind there are a number of possible combinations such as the ones below:

Select an entire line left or right – Shift-Command-Left or Right Arrow

Select an entire word left or right – Shift-Option-Left or Right Arrow

Move cursor to end of next word – Option-Left or Right Arrow

Move cursor to end of line – Command-Left or Right Arrow

Erase an entire line before cursor – Command-Delete (Backspace / ⌫)

Erase an entire line after cursor – Command-Delete (⌦)

Erase an entire word before cursor – Option Delete (BackSpace /⌫)

Erase an entire line after cursor – Option-Delete (⌦)

The Character Palette can be super handy if you need to throw down a few weird Unicode characters but don’t know the key combination. For example if you can’t remember the keys for the Apple logo (Shift-Option-K) you can search for it in the Character Palette.

Show Character Palette – Option-Command-T

I think most people know next two of these, but the third is much less known yet very useful. The “Take a Screenshot of a Single Window” key combo will change the mouse cursor into a camera icon which you click on whichever window you would like to screenshot. Best of all, the PNG file of the screenshot even places the window over a transparent background making it especially easy to integrate into a blog post or website. Remember, it only screenshots one window element at a time, so if a given window has a slide-out panel you must capture the slide out and the main window separately and manually edit them together afterwards.

Take a Full-Screenshot – Shift-Command-3

Take a Selection-Screenshot – Shift-Command-4

Take a Screenshot of a Single Window – Shift-Command-4 and then Space. Click on the window to capture.

Here are a few “bonus” key combos not many people are aware of.

Look up word in Dictionary or Thesaurus – Control-Command-D

Continue Dictionary looking up any word under the mouse pointer – Continue holding Control-Command after pressing Control-Command-D

Slow-Mo Quartz Effect – Hold Shift while activating a Quartz effect like showing the Dashboard or minimizing a window

Remember, most of these are listed and and can be edited in the System Keyboard & Mouse / Keyboard shortcut pane. I’d recommend looking through and learning these commands, as it will give you more control over your Mac using your keyboard, as well as help you work more quickly.

As you would expect from a creation of the Iconfactory, Dine-O-Matic features skillfully rendered, eye-catching graphics and an interface that is very approachable. You just flip over the widget enter a number of your favorite restaurants and places you’d like to try, tagging each with it’s respective type of cuisine, flip it back over and start making choices.

I know it’s just a silly little widget but I really find Dine-O-Matic helpful when I can’t make up my mind and I think you will too. I can’t promise that ‘fate’ won’t still send you to MacDonald’s sometimes though.

If you’ve got a skill you think might apply, go ahead and contact them. Working on a project like Growl, even just helping with smaller jobs, can do a lot of good for your resume. Especially if you are interested in software development as a career this kind of volunteer work can open a lot of doors for you. The added bonus is that you not only get to help with an awesome Mac app but also get to work and make friends with some very bright and friendly people in the Mac community.

Please contact the Growl team at discuss_AT_growl.info or Chris Forsythe directly to volunteer your skills and time.

Quicksilver, for those who don’t know is a powerful and flexible freeware application launcher and more. It’s really pretty hard to describe, so if you haven’t tried it yet definitely give it a go. In this tutorial I’d like to show you how you can configure Quicksilver on your Mac to make controlling iTunes more simple and fun with something called Triggers.

First things first, if you don’t have Quicksilver installed do so by downloading a copy from BlackTree, drag it to your Applications folder and open it up. One thing to keep in mind is that Quicksilver must be running, but not necessarily visible, for your triggers to work. Next you’ll want to ensure the “iTunes Module” plug-in is installed, bring up the Quicksilver window by double clicking on the application icon. Go to the plug-in pane by either selecting “Plug-ins” from Quicksilver’s drop-down menu or pressing Command-Shift-Apostrophe (in other words ⌘”).

Plug-ins are Quicksilver’s way of letting other pieces of software interact with Quicksilver’s seemingly omnipresent resources. Many applications have Quicksilver plug-ins and I highly recommend you look around in the plug-in pane for add-ons that interest you or connect to your favorite apps.

Now that you have opened the plug-in window ensure the “All Plug-in’s” tab is selected in the left pane. Find the “iTunes Module” and toggle it’s check box if it’s not already marked. If this is the first time you are enabling the iTunes Module it will take a moment to download and install.

Next move to the Triggers window by pressing Command-Apostrophe ( ⌘’). You can think of triggers sort of like universal hot-keys, as you may already gathered this is how we will interact with iTunes. Luckily for our purposes the iTunes Module provides us with a number of pre-configured commands to which we only need to attach a key combination.

Personally my favorite iTunes triggers are Next Song, Previous Song, Play / Pause and Search Artists. These triggers really help you control your music without getting distracted from your current task. In the case of the Search Artists trigger you can search for a given artist on the fly – it’s pretty neat.

The only marginally difficult part of setting up these triggers is not selecting key commands that overlap with those of the apps you already use. Having such an overlap is called a collision. Quicksilver won’t let you ‘highjack’ control of a key command so if you have a collision the app you have in focus will react as normal and Quicksilver will act as if nothing has happened. This can be confusing when you’re getting started with triggers so I recommend you choose your keys wisely. I have found “option-command-something” to be fairly free of collisions on my system. The first step to take when you want to set your trigger commands is to open the “Trigger Info” slide out window by pressing the “i” button located in the lower right hand corner of the window.

Next select the trigger you would like to give a key combination to and click on the Hot Key’s “Edit” button. Now simply type in your desired key-command. For example, if I were setting the command for the Pause Song trigger, I would click the Edit button and then type the key-combination option-command-down arrow key (⌥ ⌘â ). After doing so I could pause my iTunes music from any application (which doesn’t collide) simply pressing those keys. Note that these key combination is completely arbitrary, yours can be whatever works for you.

The keys and triggers I recommend are as follows:
Play / Pause Option-Command-Up Arrow ⌥⌘⠘
Next Song Option-Command-Right Arrow ⌥⌘â 
Previous Song Option-Command-Left Arrow ⌥⌘⠐
Search Artists Option-Command-Down Arrow ⌥⌘â 

There are a couple of other interesting ways you can tweak the performance of your new triggers. Below the Edit Hot-key we discussed earlier you will notice a number of other options. The first four options will effect when exactly in relation to the key-stroke the trigger is activated. “On Press” and “On Release” set the trigger to activate when the key is pressed and when the key is released respectively. “Repeat Every” causes the trigger to repeat every x seconds while the key is held down, this can be very useful for adjusting iTunes’ volume. The “Delay” option effects how long after the key-stroke until the trigger is activated. Finally, the “Show Window” option does exactly what you would expect, it momentarily shows a window representing your trigger upon activation.

There is almost limitless depth to Quicksilver but I hope this tutorial has sheds some light for some people on the mysterious and powerful QS preference panes. As a continuation of what you’ve seen here I recommend that you play around with triggers on your own a bit. Quicksilver’s triggers are a very powerful and generally untapped feature which can really help you to do diverse tasks more quickly and easily.

While Photo Drop features a very simple interface it is deceptively full of cool features. After dragging your image onto the widget, by dragging the image and activating the Dashboard, it only takes a couple of clicks and you can apply one of a number of stylized effects to your photo. Photo Drop includes eight excellent Quartz-based effects such as 1 Bit color, Pushpin, Shadow, Toy Camera and Reflection. Shadow and Tape are two effects in particular that make me wish something like this had been around years ago. It seems I’m always taking time to start up an application like Photoshop just to add a very simple drop shadow or a stylized boarder to a couple of shots, a task that would only take moments to do with Photo Drop.

Further adjustments you can make in Photo Drop include scaling images, rotating them to correct crooked or sideways pictures and applying a copyright watermark of your name and the year. When you start scaling or rotating your image a grid and some useful information like image dimension and angle of rotation appear to aid you in editing the image to perfection. Exporting your edited photo is especially easy. When you are happy with the changes you have made to the image press the “Done” button and Photo Drop will display the edited photo with a few options. From here you can choose one of three handy ways to export: you can save to the desktop, save to the clipboard or simply drag the photo to wherever you want to place it. Photo Drop gives you the option of exporting your image in a number of standard formats including PNG, TIFF or JPEG.

Generally all of Photo Drop’s features are easily controlled; the cropping, scaling and sizing are controlled from the widget’s front, and the watermark, export, and effect selections are made on the back of the widget. The single concern I have about Photo Drop’s interface is the presence of a mysterious “Color Adjustment” toggle located on the back of widget, the use of which is completely beyond me. In a number of trials I was unable to find any difference in color output with and without the Color Adjustment toggle enabled. That said, for it’s intended purpose Photo Drop is almost perfect. Photo Drop doesn’t include batch processing so it probably won’t replace Photoshop or Fireworks for users who are adding effects to dozens of images at a time, but it supplies a satisfying, stylish and simple way to quickly edit a couple of photos in a few seconds – and all for free.

I’ve really enjoyed my experience using Dropping Inc.’s widget Photo Drop. It has made me more productive and I plan on keeping it in my Dashboard indefinitely. I think the Japanese duo Kenichi Yoshida and Tomonaga Tokuyama of Dropping Inc. have hit a home-run with this handy little widget and I’ll be keeping an eye out for their future creations. Photo Drop is free, and can be downloaded from Dropping Inc.