In today’s MacApper How-To, we’re going to show you a little app to bridge the divide between Facebook and your Apple Address Book.

1) Head on over to the Apple.com downloads section, and grab a handy little app called AddressBookSync.

2) Once you’ve downloaded the disk image, and dragged it to your Applications folder, go ahead and launch the app. Upon launch you’ll be prompted to give it access to your Facebook account via Facebook Connect.

3) Once you connect, the app should start downloading your friends list, and comparing any names within Address Book to your friends list. AddressBookSync will also download your friend’s current profile pictures, and show them side-by-side with the current picture you have assigned to them in Address Book (if any).

4) Hit “Sync to Address Book,” and all of the photos will be assigned in Address Book.

You can feel free to trash the app once finished, but I suggest keeping it around. That way you can keep photos up-to-date for all of your contacts. Facebook’s TOS prevent developers from calling other useful info like e-mails, screennames, and phone numbers through the API (likely out of privacy concerns), but getting the photos is a definite first step. No more digging through photos and cropping!

The Easy Way

Naturally the easiest way to keep your Palm Pre syncing with iTunes is to download an older version of iTunes, or refuse to upgrade to the new 8.2.1 release. This limits you to the features (and security) of the older version, and isn’t very practical. Although, if you have multiple machines, it could be just as easy to leave iTunes at 8.2 on an older machine. Click here to download iTunes 8.2 from Version Tracker.

The Other Easy Way

A few months back we previewed the doubleTwist software released by famous DVD encryption cracker DVD Jon and his small team. The concept of the software is simple: sync your all devices from one piece of software, without all of the hassle. doubleTwist is still fairly new, but it offers support for a few hundred smartphones, Mp3 players, the Sony PSP. Recently added to that mix is the Palm Pre. A note for Palm Pre PC users: the doubleTwist is available for Windows as well on the company’s website.

1) Download and install the doubleTwist software from the company’s website, and launch the app.

2) Sign up for an account with the company in the dialogue box that appears at your first launch.

3) Once loaded, you should be able to see tabs for your music, photos, and videos from your iTunes or iPhoto libraries.

4) Connect your Palm Pre (or other smartphone/device) with the USB cable to your machine.

5) Your device will show up in the column under the “Devices” section. This should look remarkably familiar for iTunes users. Then syncing both ways works the same way as it would in iTunes. Select the music you want to transfer to your device, and drag and drop it onto the device in the sidebar. When transferring video, doubleTwist will automatically convert the video for the right format of your device.

doubleTwist’s interface is attractive, yet sparse. It’s merely a sync manager,
you’ll still want to use iTunes for content management.

It’s as simple as that. While normally I would think it’s a hassle to have yet another step to sync to my phone, I find doubleTwist a friendly, simple, and intuitive solution.

This video is a company demo of how doubleTwist syncs content from an Android phone (or similar phone).

What you’ll need:

1. A Mac running 10.4+
2. A mobile phone with text messaging capabilities
3. An e-mail account set-up with Apple Mail

Step 1

Direct your browser over to the Apple.com download section, find the Lock Desktop 1.0 automator application, and download it to your Mac. (if you prefer, you can build your own workflow in Automator and save it as an Application. I personally would prefer to just put my Mac to sleep, so I built an Automator workflow to sleep my Mac, and went to File-Save As… and chose “Application” as my file type. You must have the screen lock enabled in your security System Preferences for that to work though.)

Step 2

Now we’re going to write a short AppleScript, but don’t worry – it’s only one line. Open up Script Editor (Found in /Applications/AppleScript), and copy and paste the following line:

activate application "Lock Desktop"

If you created your own application in Step 2, then use that application name in place of Lock Desktop.

Now save this script in the same folder that you’ve saved your locking application. You should be able to click Run to test that your script is working.

Step 3

Now for the fun part. Launch Mail, open up the preferences, and navigate to the “Rules” tab. Click on “Add Rule,” and fill in the following information:

• Description: Remote Lock
• If all of the following conditions are met:
• From | Is equal to “your phone’s e-mail” (if you don’t know your cell phone’s e-mail address see this guide, or simply send a text message to your e-mail and copy the “From” field)
• To | Is equal to “your e-mail address”
• Message Content | Is equal to “________” (choose a word or phrase like a password)

Now we’re going to tell Mail what to do if it gets the “lock” message:

• Delete Message
• Run AppleScript “_______” choose your script from the menu here

Step 4

The last step is to tell Mail to get new messages as often as possible. In the preferences window, click the General tab, and set Check for new mail to Every minute. If you want to be especially thorough, you can set Mail to open at login, assuring that your e-mail will be received. To do this control+click on the Mail icon on the dock, and select Open at Login.

We’re done! To test it out, send your password in a text message to that e-mail account, and within a minute your Mac should lock itself! This is especially handy if you want to lock your workstation while you’re out, or a great April Fool’s prank on a friend.

You may know dashcode to be a really useful tool to create dashboard widgets – but what are dashboard widgets but miniature web pages.  I’ve chosen this tool because it’s simple and free to download.  Here is where you can find Dashcode:

Like Xcode, Dashcode is free to those who have an Apple Developer Connection membership.  Go to http://developer.apple.com/mac/ and look at the paragraph at the top to sign up.  You then can click log in.  Once you are logged in, locate the download Xcode section halfway down the page.  Yes I know it says Xcode, but Dashcode is bundled with it.  Depending on your connection speeds, this might take a while. Open up the disk image “if it hasn’t already opened” and click on the Dashcode package installer.

In the Finder, create a new folder that will contain all of your web page’s files so that you can locate them in one convenient place.  Now, download the following template.

This will be used as a template which you can use to start creating any web page with.  Notice that it’s called “index.html”  By default a web browser looks for a file with the name “index.html” to display first as your web site’s home page.

Once you’ve downloaded the file, drag it onto Dashcode’s icon.  Be sure to also double click the file in the finder so that it opens up in your default web browser.

Switch over to Dashcode.  Notice how Dashcode automatically formats the code giving different “tags” a specific color. Dashcode, as well as many web development apps these days, does this making it easier for you to parse through your code.  Double click on a red tag and hit the escape key.  Notice the Dashcode brings down a popup menu with a list of tags in it.  This is a way that Dashcode helps you so that you don’t need to remember every single aspect of HTML.  This is known as auto completion.  Don’t worry if you don’t understand any of the code we’ve typed so far or any of the suggestions that Dashcode is giving in the auto completion feature,  We’re going to delve into HTML and all of it’s glory in the next installment.

Dashcode is a very easy to use program.  Though it is mainly used for developing widgets, Dashcode’s built in features like auto-coloring specific tags, and the popup menu that helps suggest the correct HTML syntax, are useful in any form of developing for the web – and best of all, it’s free!  Unfortunately Dashcode won’t allow you to create your own HTML files without them being part of a widget BUT because this series implements example files, you won’t need to worry about creating them from scratch.  Stay tuned for our next installment which will talk about Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML for short.

One of the greatest blessings that Apple has given us developers is documentation. And not just documentation, but in-depth, clear, and understandable documentation. There are also lots of sample codes and coding guides. And when you install the SDK you automatically get all of this free of charge. You can even access it all right from Xcode; just go to Help>Documentation. You will then be presented with the documentation window. Based on whether or not you have the iPhone SDK installed, you will see Mac OS X and iPhone sections. You can search through certain sets (like OS X 10.5, or iPhone 2.2) or search them all. If you have the iPhone SDK installed, though, you will want to search by sets so you don’t accidentally try to put Cocoa Touch in Cocoa. If you click on a set in the sidebar, you can view its main page, which can help you find what you need if you don’t know what its called. The documentation is going to be your best friend as a Cocoa developer. You are never expected to remember those long delegate methods like tableView:targetIndexPathForMoveFromRowAtIndexPath:toProposedIndexPath: or even short methods like initWithCoder:.

Another great tool that can be used for remembering methods or blocks of code is Code Collector Pro (which we have previously reviewed). Code Collector Pro allows you to create code snippets and then sort them by tags, description, language, etc. It is very useful if there are large chunks of code that you use very often. You could use something like TextExpander, but Code Collector Pro is built for coders. It even has syntax highlighting.

One of my personal favorite tools is Class-Dump. Class-Dump allows you to feed it a binary file, and it will give you all the header files associated with that binary. This is great for finding private header files in things like UIKit, or if you just want to see the header files of your favorite application. The basic syntax for it is class-dump -H /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes. Before you run it you may want to call mkdir ~/Dekstop/headers and then cd ~/Dekstop/headers. This is just to make sure you don’t end up with 100+ header files in your home folder.

The final tool (or tools) I will leave you with are websites. These are my favorite websites for finding tutorials and answers to my questions:

• CocoaDev
• iPhone Dev SDK
• Cocoa Dev Central
• Cocoabuilder
• Cocoa-Dev lists

Apple provides a completely free package of Applications that can be used to develop in Cocoa and other languages, such as Java. To download this package, you will want to register for a free account from ADC (Apple Developer Connection). This will allow you to download the latest SDK (package of tools), and provide you with lots of sample code and guides. You can also purchase paid memberships, which include things such as hardware discounts and pre-releases of OS X builds. But if you are just beginning Cocoa development, I suggest you just register for a free account.

Once you have downloaded and installed the SDK, you can just begin programming. But if you have never programmed in any type of C before, you will most definitely need some help. This being the first part of a Cocoa series, I will not be giving sample code or instructions for how to do things, but I will point you to a few great books. The first one is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, by Aaron Hillegass. This is usually known as the must-have book for any Cocoa developer. It is an especially great source for those starting out. It guides you through how to do many things in Cocoa, starting with the basics, and ending with topics like Core Data and Core Animation.

Another great book that’s not so much about Cocoa as it is about Xcode is Xcode 3 Unleashed, by Fritz Anderson. This book focuses on the Xcode programming environment, and teaches you how to use Xcode to its fullest. But if you are more concerned with learning Cocoa than learning Xcode, then you may want to hold off on getting this book until you understand Cocoa a little better.

Although people have differing opinions on whether this book should be read by beginners, I will still recommend it. It is The C Programming Language, by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie (sometimes known as K&R). Although, as seen in the title, this is not about Cocoa or Objective-C, this can give you an understanding of C. Although knowing C is not necessary for programming in Cocoa, it is very helpful. Objective-C is pretty vast, but there are some things that you may have to do in C, so it can be very helpful too. It is really up to you whether you would like to read this book.

The last book I will recommend is Stephen G. Kochan’s Programming in Objective-C 2.0. Objective-C 2.0 is very new, and some other books may have not been updated yet to cover it. It is great for beginners; it really teaches you how to program (as suggested in the title). It is much along the lines of Hillegass’ book, even though it is not usually seen as a must-have. I highly recommend this for you beginners.

I hope this has given you the tools you need to begin learning Cocoa. You should expect many more of these articles which will cover more advanced topics in Cocoa, Xcode, and anything related to Cocoa development. Happy programming!

The first step is getting familiar with Internet Sharing.  As mentioned above, you need to navigate to System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing (which is an option listed on the left).  Once on the Internet Sharing option page, you need to setup exactly what you want to do before you proceed to turn it on.  As you can see, you need to select where you want the shared connection to come from and then where you are going to output it.  So, if you want to turn your Mac into a wireless hub, you would select “Share your connection from: Ethernet”…”To computer using: Airport”.  You can mess around with any configuration here including Airport to Ethernet, Bluetooth to Ethernet, etc.  In order to enable it, you must click the check box next to internet sharing.  You can now turn your Mac into any sort of internet hub that you want it to be.  This works great when you are somewhere such as a hotel which might only have one Ethernet plug but you have 4 laptops.  You can create a wireless hub for everyone else in the room to connect to.

One of my favorite uses for this feature is sharing my MacBook’s Airport connection with my Xbox 360 through an Ethernet connection.  I have been doing this for years, and it has saved me the $100 I would have had to spend on a wireless adapter for my 360.  Here is a step by step guide on how to setup your Xbox 360 to share an internet connection with your Mac:

1. Enable internet sharing as described above in System Preferences.  You will want to select sharing from Airport to Ethernet.

2. Connect your Mac to your Xbox 360 using an Ethernet cable.

3. Open up Terminal on your Mac by going to Applications > Utilities.

4. In terminal type “ifconfig en0″ (that is a zero)

5. In the terminal screen, you need to look for the line which displays as “inet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”.  Write this number down.  For example, mine is currently 192.168.2.1

6. Also get the IP Address of your wireless router.  This can be found in System Preferences > Network> Select Airport > Advanced> TCP/IP Tab > Router.  Write this number down.  Mine was 10.0.1.1

7. Start your Xbox and get to the Network Settings menu.  You will now have to put some numbers in manually…

8. For IP Address you need to enter the inet number you found in your terminal but with the last number being 1 digit higher.  For instance, mine would be 192.168.2.2

9. For Subnet, enter 255.255.255.0

10. For Router/Gateway enter the inet number from earlier.  Mine was 192.168.2.1

11. For DNS (both primary and secondary) enter the IP of your router.  Mine was 10.0.1.1

12. You need to leave PPPoE and advanced settings blank (default was off and automatic).

13. Test the connection and enjoy having a shared internet connection to your Xbox from your Mac.

If you need any help with this, please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

For the people that don’t feel like shelling out for Apple’s push-enabled MobileMe service, Google offers a highly competitive set of services that rival Apple’s. For the low price of $0.00, you can have all of your iCal appointments synced up to the cloud. Additionally, any changes you make to Google Calendar online will be pushed down to your iCal calendar on your Mac. While it doesn’t offer the same instantaneous changes as MobileMe claims to offer, the 15 minute interval default sync time should be more than enough for some.

Integrating Google Calendar with iCal is as simple as adding an account to your iCal preferences. After you open the preferences in iCal, click on the Accounts tab. Hit the “+” button to get the “Add an Account” dialog box. For the username option, put in your full Gmail address (including the @gmail.com), followed by your password. Additionally, you have to put in the address for the Account URL. This address can be found here: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[YOUR USERNAME]/user (just replace the [YOUR USERNAME] with your own Gmail address). Again, this should include the “@gmail.com” at the end of it.

After following those simple steps, you should be up and running. You can sync manually by clicking Command+R and you can also change the sync interval. With the iPhone Google interface, and Google Sync app for BlackBerry, you can truly have your calendars in sync everywhere. I have a strong feeling that Apple will allow native syncing to the iPhone with a future update. That would make it even easier to make sure that you never have a reason for missing an appointment again.

The first thing that you want to do is download the latest copy of Fluid. (You can get it from here). After you’ve downloaded, drag the application into your Applications folder. Open it up and click past the security warning (because you’re opening it for the first time). You’ll be greeted by the familiar Fluid interface that has been fairly constant throughout Fluid’s development stages.

For this demo, I’m going to be making a Facebook application, as shown from the information that I’ve provided above. Additionally, I’ve chosen to use one of the Facebook icons that I found in the Flickr Fluid Icon Pool, which is a great resource for finding Fluid SSB icons for almost any website. The icon I chose to use can be found here. Anyways, after entering the URL of the site and the name for your new application, click on the “Create” button and let Fluid work its magic. After a few moments you should get a message saying that your browser has been created successfully.

After you’ve created your browser, click the option to open it and you will be greeted by your newly created SSB. Up until the latest versions of Fluid, this would be the end of the road for your browser. However, using a few tricks and the new features in this latest version of Fluid, you can take your SSB to the next level.

From this step, there are two main options for what you’d like to do with your new SSB. I’m going to show you both, but I’ll show you the one that I prefer first. After creating your browser, click on the menubar location for the Application menu (where it says the name of the Application on the top left of your menubar) and click on “User Agent”. For this particular site I’m going to select the iPhone User Agent, because I know that Facebook has a really nice iPhone interface and it will work perfectly for what we’re about to do next.

After changing your user agent, restart your browser and you should immediately notice the change in the interface of your browser. Now, instead of seeing the full Facebook desktop interface, you should see the specialized iPhone/iPod touch one. (If it doesn’t work, you can click on the lozenge-shaped button on the top right of the window and enter the iPhone Facebook mobile address on your own: http://iphone.facebook.com/?w2m).

After you’ve changed the user agent to get a different interface, you can choose one of two main options. The first option is to click on the “Facebook” menu (top left of the menubar) and choose “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…” After selecting that option it will give you a notification that you have to relaunch your SSB to see the changes. Afterwards you should see a small version of your icon on the top Menubar, and when you click it you will have a fully functioning SSB available without having to launch any other applications. By changing the interface to the iPhone interface, it’s super compact and super easy to use.

This menubar window is fully resizable and interactive. The movements are just as if they were happening on an iPhone itself, complete with sliding motions and other visual effects. This is really helpful and makes having your most visited sites very easy to access at any time. Additionally, you have the option to turn the SSB into an “Embedded SSB”, which basically overlays it onto your desktop and remains fully interactive and live. This is excellent for Google Reader and other things that are constantly getting refreshed. Also, because it’s still a full Fluid browser, you have the opportunity to add Userscripts to even further customize your browsing experience.

With these new features in Fluid, it’s super easy to have your favorite websites literally a single click away! Fluid is a free download from FluidApp.com.

The answer seemed to come when it was announced that Firefox 3 (now well into it’s beta) would have OS integration, giving Firefox a Safari-esque look. The new look is nice, but it’s not quite Safari, still retaining features in the interface similar to features on Windows and Linux, like an enlarged back button (which, frankly, I think is ugly). This post is intended to get your Firefox 3 Beta 5 looking 99% like Safari, even down to the resizeable text boxes.

For this interface overhaul I used OS X Leopard 10.5.2 and the Firefox 3.0 Beta 5. This isn’t supposed to be risky, but it might just might break Firefox, so beware. First, download Firefox 3.0 Beta 5. I think we all know how to do this. Mount the DMG, drag to your applications folder. If you want, call it something else like Firefox 3 as opposed to the regular Firefox if you want keep your old Firefox intact.

Once Firefox is installed, open it up and download Aronnax’s Grapple Yummy theme for Firefox. Once it’s installed, go to Add-Ons and activate it, then restart Firefox. Oooh! Pretty, right? If you want the Safari bookmark button down at the beginning of the bookmarks toolbar, you can! Just drag the regular bookmark button down and it will change its look to match. At first glance you’d think this was Safari, except for a few small things which will be covered below. From now on I’m going to be covering small, nitpicky things that most people probably don’t even care about. But they are add-ons and tips for Firefox that can duplicate some of Safari’s unique features.

First, we want to get a combined reload/stop button. To do this we’re going to have to download the Stylish extension for Firefox. Once it’s installed, enabled, and Firefox is restarted, download this style from userstyles.org. Make sure to follow the directions on the website by putting the stop button in front of the reload button before adding the style.

Next we’re going to get that Safari combined address bar/loading bar. The Fission Firefox extension does this for us. (As usual install, enable, restart.) You can even change the color of the loading bar if you really want to.

Finally, one of Safari’s really nice features is resizeable text fields. You can easily replicate this using this bookmarklet from the Man in Blue. Just drag it to your bookmarks bar and click it whenever you want to resize a text field, and then drag the corners. Dead simple.

There you have it. Yes, it really is Firefox, only beautified and integrated into the OS. Or, you can think of it as Safari plus all of the amazing extensions available for Firefox. (Although some extensions may not work because they are not compatible with the Firefox 3.0 Beta). Enjoy Safox!

I have four email accounts that I use the most, which means I have four different mailboxes that I check often. When using mail.app, the left sidebar of your mail.app application can become a mess with all of its folders. I decided to figure out a way to make my four mailboxes, one.

As some of you may already know, you can create one account in mail.app and in the email address field on the “Account Information” tab, you can enter a comma delimited list of all your email addresses. However, you may not know that if your .mac account is the primary account you use, the comma delimited option will not work.

But there is a solution that you can use with your .mac email account in mail.app:

First, you will need to forward your email accounts to your .mac email address. Now, if you use Google Apps or Gmail, under the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, you can put in your .mac email address and then you should choose to archive your account’s copy of the message. You will want to do this in case you need to search for an old message that is no longer available in your mail client.

Second, create your .mac email account in mail.app. You will then want to create different signatures for your different identities. Now in order to create different identities, you will need to add your outgoing servers for each email account. Make sure to give a description of each account, and I will explain why a little later. Please take note that the different outgoing servers serve as your different identities.

Third, on the “Account Information” tab for your .mac email account, you will need to choose your .mac outgoing server. Unless your do so, your signatures will not be saved to the .mac account you created. When composing or replying to a message, a list of available outgoing servers (identities) will populate on the left just below the subject field. This is why you need to give a description for each of your outgoing servers (i.e. Personal, Work).

If not, it will give you a list like smtp.googlemail.com. That might work if you only have one, but if you are like me and have three (Google App and/or Gmail accounts), you will need to give them a description in order to know from what email address your message will be sent.

By using this method (or the other method if .mac is not your primary account), mail.app will be much cleaner and uncluttered. Also, it will help with your work flow. Lastly, you should create two folders: a hold folder and an action folder. Your hold folder should contain the messages you need to reference to at a later date. The action folder should contain the messages that need immediate attention. You can create an archive folder to archive your old messages, but this is not needed if you use Google Apps or Gmail.

The only painstaking task is that when you are composing a new email message or replying to an email message, you will need to choose the identity from the drop down list as well as the signature from the drop down list. Perhaps there is an applescript or rule that can be written to make this automated for you? If I come up with something, I will definitely make it known. Now, go and have fun with mail.app.

But for less than 1/3rd the cost!

You might want to grab a coffee as this tutorial is quite large. It was also designed with both the novice and newbie in mind, and therefore is full of plenty of screenshots to help you along.

Disclaimer: Please note that I am not interested at all in cries of software piracy or license misuse involved with using a patched Leopard DVD to run OS X on a PC. I have bought more than my share of Jaguar, Tiger and now Leopard software to really have much of a problem with it. If I am making you queasy already then you might want to read Apple’s OS X SLA and go back to watching Cosby Show re-runs with your sister.

Glad you’re still with us! So in order to install Leopard on a PC you need to remove the code built into OS X checking for authentic Apple hardware. You could download a torrent of a ready made patched Leopard DVD (which is likely illegal in most countries) or you can choose to build a patched copy of your own store bought DVD, or the one that came with your Mac (quasi-legal). If you want to go the torrent route you could try searching for Kalyway leopard 10.5.1 but that’s as far as I can help you with that. As far as patching goes the guys at lifehacker have an immensely thorough procedure for building a patched DVD so I won’t rehash the process here. Either way get yourself a copy and prepare for the real meat of the operation ahead.

Without these guys none of this would be possible. The OSx86 wiki and InsanelyMac are ground zero for all of this stuff so you can direct your browser there to get aquinted with the project. They would prefer bloggers don’t link to files or threads over there so I will do my best to comply with that.

The Parts

There is no definitive hardware selection to build a perfect Hackintosh box but the following gear worked very well for me and others. To be more accurate, the wrong hardware can cause serious issues and drivers can be a problem so be sure to check that your stuff is going to work okay. You can also expand on what I have selected here, like adding more drives for RAID, as the motherboard I chose supports this. The nice thing about building your own system is that you can configure it to your needs.

The following image shows all of the internal parts I used for my Hackintosh.

• Motherboard: Asus P5W DH Deluxe.
• Processor: Intel Coreâ„¢2 Quad Q6600 LGA775 (Retail Package).
• RAM: 4GB DDR2 5300 @ 667 Mhz.
• Video Card: eVGA eGeForce 8600GTS w/256 Megs RAM.
• Hard Drive: Seagate 320GB SATA II. 7200RPM. 16MB buffer.
• DVD Drive: Creative 8x (ancient, from old computer. Model DVD8401E. May 2000!)
• Case: Ultra Wizard ATX Mini-Tower w/350watt Power Supply.

Next let’s take a look at some of the costs involved…

There are 3 very important applications that every Mac user should download. These applications will allow you to play almost every video file on your mac, and make you a happier, more entertained person.

Just follow these steps in order:

1. Download Perian – This is the ultimate Quicktime addition, as it adds the following codecs:
AVI, FLV (Flash Video), MKV, “MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivX, H.264, FLV1, FSV1, VP6, H263I, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), MPEG Layer II Audio [...] AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3″.
Wow… that’s a lot. Perian will install an preference pane, which will allow you to check for updates automatically, and tweak audio settings. Perian is Free, and is available from Perian.org.

2. Download Flip4Mac WMV – Microsoft stopped supporting the Windows Media Player a short while ago, and told the Flip4Mac guys to take over. They have done so with their Flip4Mac WMV components. After the download, it will install the components on your computer. If you want to give them money, they’ll reward you with extra importing and exporting functions.

By this point, Quicktime should be able to play most media formats.

If not, then try to…

3. Download VLC – This is the “swiss army” knife of video players, and can handle most video formats out there. This is my go-to if my Perian-Flip4Mac-Quicktime system doesn’t work. There are so many formats supported, I’m not going to write them out. VLC is free, and can be downloaded from videolan.org.

Hopefully these 3 items will get your video files playing. If all fails, try exporting a video file out of Quicktime to a format that Quicktime can understand, like MPEG4. Good luck!

Now, a team in Japan has released what appears to be the first external plug-ins for QuickLook, and they really add some awesome functionality to this already useful new tool. So in this article I will take you through the installation of a nifty Quicklook enhancement, that I really found helpful.

User XDD from .Mac has uploaded the Folder.qlgenerator QuickLook plug-in to his .Mac homepage as well as Zip.qlgenerator. To install, simply download this folder and uncompress it. With the folder uncompressed, you should see a couple of files inside, including a Readme, and the actual Folder.qlgenerator file.

Head over to your root ~/Library (the one when you click on your HDD, not the one in your home folder) and then find the folder entitled QuickLook. Now, simply drop the Folder.qlgenerator and Zip.qlgenerator into that folder.

Try and QuickLook a folder and you should see a new screen that shows the contents of that folder and not just the one large icon that QuickLook displays by default. If it doesn’t happen right away, either give it a minute, or try opening a Terminal window (located in /Applications/Utilities) and typing killall Finder. This relaunches the Finder application, and should restart QuickLook properly.

Once you have it working, you should see that there’s a significant amount of new info that is now available to be viewed through the standard QuickLook window.

And another shot.

I found Zip.qlgenerator is incredibly useful to see what is actually contained in a Zip file without having to uncompress it. You can just invoke QuickLook with a .zip file selected and it will show you a list of the files that are within it.

Keep in mind that this is still BETA software, so there are definitely some bugs, but personally this seems to be working fine. One thing that I’d definitely like to see implemented is better scrolling to see all of the folders (or other contents) of a folder, as well as the ability to click on something in the folder being QuickLooked and have the option to launch the app. Also, it would be really cool if QuickLook on external drives could be enabled somehow?

So yeah this is a bit of a hack and it’s really done at your own risk, but if you have any problems, it shouldn’t be a big deal to just trash the Folder.qlgenerator file and go back to the way it was.

Let’s hope that this is just the beginning for home brew QuickLook plug-ins and that there are many more to come!

I get asked this one a lot by web developers so I thought I would throw this up here for posterity. Not everyone wants to taint their Mac by running full blown Windows on it (am I right?), but if you’re a web developer it’s pretty critical that you build pages that render properly in Internet Explorer. If you have done this type of work on *nix you might remember using a great tool named ies4linux. Well you guessed it, ies4osx was recently ported to the Mac by Mike Kronenberg.

Note: This only works on Intel based processors. Sorry PPC users.

1. Tiger users will need to install X11 on their Macs. Leopard comes with X11 pre-installed so carry on to step 2 if you are running OS X 10.5.x.
2. Download and open Darwin 0.9.49_2.
3. Copy Darwin to your Applications folder.



4. Download and install ies4osx.
5. Choose your browser and language and click the play button. If you click the log icon you will see ies4osx is downloading all of the needed components for the browsers. Depending on your connection this may take a while, so grab a soda or something.



6. In your Applications folder you should now see the available browsers. Ahhh web developer bliss.

The browsers will install the components necessary to run Flash, and everything should work nearly identically as it would under Windows, except the system fonts will be pulled from your Mac. Most importantly IE will render as it would under Windows. In my case I have been hacking CSS bugs via this method for a few weeks, and I can say it is a great deal better for me than attempting to do this under Parallels or another virtual machine. Another bonus is that an X11 virtual machine running IE uses only about 25mb of system memory on my system, a heckuva lot less than any other solution.

Oh and as far as I know you can’t do this under Windows quite nearly as easily as this – which I suppose is more than a little ironic.

ies4osx is free and licensed under the GPL. Be sure to check out Mike’s blog for updates.

Yes, it gave me the much desired calendar “Add” button and yes, it gave me the useless battery indicator in iTunes, but I already had the Calendar button and had no need for the battery indicator, so I set on my mission to downgrade back to 1.1.1.

I read on some sites that the process was hard to do, with having to download an extra application or input a secret button sequence into the iPod. However this was not the case. After getting my copy of 1.1.1 from Apple’s site, all that was left was to Option + Click on the update button in iTunes, and navigate to the downloaded zip file. This process leaves all personal data and music on the iPhone or iPod Touch, but allows you to downgrade easily and safely.

After the downgrade was complete (which is exactly the same process as an upgrade) I set about re-hacking my shiny little Touch. The hacking process on the older firmware is ridiculously easy. Simply point Safari to jailbreakme.com and click install. This will JailBreak your iPod or iPhone, install the Installer.app and also patch the TIFF exploit, so you get the same security as in 1.1.2.

After the installation completed I set about looking for the iPhone apps. I installed the BSD Subsystem and Community Sources from Installer.app and then added http://repo.us.to to the sources manually. This then allowed me to install the iPhone apps from the list of packages.

There are also literally hundreds of community developed apps including games, chat apps, and the AnySim unlock app for the iPhone to allow it to be used on any network. That’s it, happy hacking! (Please Note: Hacking of devices is at your own risk. The above tutorial is simply for educational purposes only).

While OS X offers keyboard shortcuts for most commands in the menu bar, there are a few orphaned commands worth adopting. Not a problem though, because OS X allows you to easily adopt any menu bar function and map it to a keyboard command, without the assistance of any third party software.

To access this often forgotten tool, simply navigate your way into the ‘Keyboard & Mouse’ preference pane and tab over to ‘Keyboard Shortcuts.’ When you click on the plus sign, you’ll be presented with three inputs.

First select which application you want to commandeer. You can have your new keyboard shortcut effect a certain application, or work globally across all applications. The great thing about this trick is that you can also remap existing keyboard shortcuts. Secondly, choose which menu command to map by simply typing the menu title. For example, to add a keyboard shortcut for the ‘Zoom’ command under the ‘Window’ menu, simply enter “Zoom.” Finally, decide what you want the keyboard command to be.

It’s that simple. Restart the application and marvel at your new custom keyboard command. What are some of your essential custom keyboard commands in OS X?

To check if you machine has been afflicted with the malware, check the top-level /Library -> Internet Plug-Ins folder, and look for a file named plugins.settings. If it’s there, then you got a bad case of the OSX.RSPlug.A trojan horse.

In OS X 10.5, your DNS entries will be altered to point to a malicious server to handle further requests. This can be disastrous if you are using Paypal, your online bank controls, or any other heavily phished targets.

So how do you combat this problem, and free your Mac from this obnoxiously nasty malware? The easiest route (and most expensive) is to install an anti-virus program like VirusBarrier. Sure boys, it may bruise your Mac ego but hey its either that or skipping surfing porn altogether.

If investing in an Anti-Virus Software is not in the cards, then OS X 10.5 and OS X 10.4 users need to:

1. Navigate to /Library -> Internet Plug-Ins.
2. Delete the plugins.settings file and empty the trash. This is the file that resets your DNS info.
3. Type sudo crontab –r in the terminal and provide your admin password when asked. This will kill the cronjob that runs the malware to change your DNS info if you tried to fix it.
4. Now, proceed to the Network System Preferences panel and copy the entries on the DNS Server box and retype those same values in the box. Once you’re done, click Apply.
5. The final step involves rebooting the system.

For more info on OSX.RSPlug.A check out Infinite Loop.

Your system should now be free from the little bugger but just to be on the safe side, avoid installing software from untrusted sources. Yeah we know we sound preachy, but hey its good advice.

They’re great, but I never use their dock icon; I use their keyboard shortcut instead. So, why have them sitting there taking up space in your dock? There is a relatively simple hack that fixes it, so that when launched, the application still runs but does not appear in the dock (or when command – tabbing).

All it requires is a simple addition to the application’s “info.plist”. For those who don’t know, a .plist file (short for preferences list) is a small xml file that you can find all over OS X. Each application contains at least one called “info.plist” that, among other things, tells the OS how to deal with the application. To find this file right (or control) click the application and select “Show package contents.”

This may come as a surprise to some of you but an OS X .app is actually a folder that contains most of the files that the app needs to run. We’ll leave the intricacies for another article. Anyway, Finder will open a new window and there will be a single folder displayed: “Contents”. Open this and you will be presented with a few files and folders. One of these will be called “Info.plist”. That is the one we’re after.

After backing this up, right (control) click on this and open with text edit. What you will see is a small xml file, don’t panic if you haven’t played with xml before we’re not going to do anything drastic. The file will have a central column of data enclosed after a “<dict>” tag and before a “</dict>” tag (this is quite obvious to see). Now at the end of the column add 2 lines (remember before the “</dict>” tag):

"<key>LSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>"
(without the quotes).

They don’t have to line up with the others, but it will certainly make reading much simpler. Now, save this as it was (remember to back up the original as a different file name in case you make a mistake). Next time you launch the application it will not appear in the dock.

N.B. – to quit the application you may have to manually quit its process in the activity monitor, but this depends on the application.

Mac OS X seems to think that some of my applications are more useful than others by listing them twice. There has to be an easy way to fix this right?

The first thing you need to know is that the list is automatically generated by OS X. It depends on what applications you have installed, and if those applications can handle particular files. The problem is that it doesn’t update itself very often, and the list can get very bloated if not cleared out every so often. Everything is stored in a single file located in your preferences folder. Take the following steps to delete this file so the list can get a fresh rebuild.

1. Go to your Home/Library/Preferences folder
2. Find “com.apple.LaunchServices” file and trash it (you can back it up if you want)
3. Test it out!

There you have it. The next time you right-click on an item and select “Open With” in the Finder, only current applications will be listed. Some items may return if the application that controls them adds itself back to the list. You can delete the file again if you are having problems.

If you want to, you can create a script to automatically trash this file for you at any interval you desire. Check out this page for help doing that.

Apache is the most common web server used on OS X. It is the industry standard and is actually the most widely used web server software available. While the nuts and bolts of Apache are out of the scope of this article, I’ll show you how to quickly set up the server, as well as make it internet accessible with an easy to remember free domain name.

First, go to System Preferences and then click on Sharing. From here, you need to tick the ‘Personal Web Sharing’ check box. This starts up Apache.

The next step is to decide where to store the web files. Your best bet is to put files in /Library/WebServer/Documents. These files will show up in the top level of your web site. You can also put files in the Sites folder within your home folder.

Just for fun let’s drop to a command line by firing up terminal. Type:

httpd -v

You should see something like this:

Server version: Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin)
Server built: Aug 19 2006 07:55:18

So you can clearly see your version of Apache along with the date it was compiled and installed. Another important piece of information is to know where Apache stores its logs:

/var/log/httpd

If you have problems be sure to check the most recent error.log file for clues.

Apache has a plethora of useful configuration flags, which again is really outside of the scope of this quick guide. The Apache configuration file is at:

/etc/httpd/httpd.conf

The Apache configuration file is fully commented, but do yourself a favor and check out some literature on the configuration before messing around. O’Reilly has a decent guide for Mac users here.

Okay you’ve learned a tiny bit about Apache so lets copy a photo, movie, song or text file to the /Library/WebServer/Documents folder. Once you’ve done that, go to http://127.0.0.1/hello.mov (or whatever file you chose) in your browser. Did you see your file okay? Hooray! 127.0.0.1 is what’s called the “localhost” IP address. It will always redirect to your current computer without you having to know what your network IP is.

So now you can publish your site to this folder. For example, in iWeb, publish your site to a folder; then copy the contents of that folder to the appropriate web server folder, mentioned above. The key is that you must have the index.htm(l) file in that root directory. The same is applicable for all other publishing apps, or even basic html in a text editor.

So, if you’ve managed to get this far, you can go to http://127.0.0.1 (or http://127.0.0.1/~username) and you’ll see your page.

So now you can access your files anywhere on your local network. Simply visit your local IP address, which is shown on the Sharing Preference Pane when Personal Web Sharing is selected. You should see it in the white box, and you can simply click on it to test it, or bookmark it to make it easier to find.

So this is fine and dandy but if you can map your router so that incoming requests come to your Mac, then you can view your website from any internet connected computer in the world. Now that could be useful. This will usually work by logging into the configuration for your router, and using web forwarding to point port 80 to your Mac’s internal ip address. It’s different for all router brands but I bet if you do some Googling you’ll figure this step out.

Now simply go to your external IP (which you can find here) and you should see your web accessible Mac. Ensure that you are properly firewalled, because leaving ports open on the internet is a bad idea.

So what do you do if you are using an ISP that changes your IP dynamically or you want to have an easier to remember domain instead of an IP? There are some great dynamic DNS services out there, but the one I use is from no-ip.com. The service is free and they have a decent list of domains to choose from as well as provide a great simple to use client for Mac. Make an account at no-ip and under Hosts/Redirect > Manage you will need to create a Host name, and select a root domain to use. Be creative!

Now download and fire up the Mac client from no-ip. This is the program that tells no-ip what your IP is and keeps it updated. You will need to login with your no-ip username and password as well as set the client for an update interval. I use 1 hour for this but a better setting might 5 mins if your IP changes frequently.

If you are going to be operating like this a lot you also might want to enable Launch Deamon at System Startup under the Deamon tab so that np-ip launches at startup.

So that’s about it! Keep in mind there is lot more I could have said about Apache web server, its configuration, security and its other many facets but I will leave that for another article(s). For now, as long as the no-ip client, and Apache is running ok you should have a publicly accessible web server with an easy to remember domain name. This is a great way to quickly share files, do some web development, or simply be that much more l33ter than everyone else. Have fun!

*Editor: If you are looking for a full-on LAMP (Linix, Apache, MySQL, PHP) style development server check out our recent MAMP review.

We’ve covered applications that fetch cover art for you on MacApper, but this solution is unique. It’s free, it requires no application download or registration, and it’s drop-dead simple to use.

The process is simple:

• Use an Applescript to magically create a playlist containing all of your coverless music.
• Export a list of the coverless must.
• Use a free online tool to locate art for all of those tracks.
• Drag the art from Safari into iTunes. You’re done!

The first step is to download the Tracks without Artwork to Playlist script from Doug’s Applescripts. If you don’t already have Doug’s site bookmarked, you should. The script is not guaranteed to be perfect, but it will do a great job of locating the tracks in your library without cover art and placing them into a new playlist called “No Art.” It took about five minutes to run on my MacBook and found that 959 tracks in my library out of 1,962 tracks had no art. Of those tracks, 30 already had artwork, which I had already manually entered by poking around on the web a while back. It was a piece of cake to simply run through the Cover Flow view, find those tracks and delete them from the list.

The second step is to create a text file listing all of the tracks in your No Art playlist. You do that via the Export command in iTunes’s File Menu.

Third, head over to Art4iTunes, the site that is going to do the heavy lifting. It is a totally free service that, in my experience, does exactly what it says it will. You use the simple form there to upload the text file you created in the previous step and – presto! – you get cover art for each album. I would not suggest uploading all 900 of your tracks at once, since the results will span several pages and the process of moving the art into iTunes is the most tedious step. Still, for those tracks too stubborn to get art automatically from iTunes, this is a great alternative, and it’s totally free!

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.

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.

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.

So, if you have, say, an iMac in your home office and two MacBooks floating around your home, you can share a single cable modem connection between all three computers without purchasing any more equipment.

The idea is pretty simple: the first thing you need to do is get one Mac connected to the Internet. The good news is that, if you have a working Internet connection, Mac OS X is smart enough to do that for you; just plug an Ethernet cable between your broadband modem and your Mac. That is the only wired connection you’re going to need to make.

The second step is to set that Mac up to share its Internet connection with others, and to configure all of the related preferences. Finally, you connect your mobile machines to the network you created in step two, and you’re done.

The only requirements are that the “base station Mac” has to have both an Ethernet port (they all do) and an AirPort card (all of the current notebooks, iMacs and Mac minis do, it’s an option on the Mac Pro). Also, you need to be running Mac OS X. I am not sure which versions are required, but I know both Tiger and Panther can do this. (If anyone tries with a version earlier than Panther, please let us know in the comments how it goes.)

This works best if your Base Station Mac is a desktop machine because it’s got to be up and running whenever the other machines want to connect to the Internet. So if you use a notebook, your network will go down whenever you put it to sleep or shut it down.

On your Base Station Mac, open System Preferences and choose the Sharing Pane. This is where you go to turn on things like Printer Sharing and File Sharing… and it’s also where you’ll find the setup options for Internet Sharing, the magic mojo that will make your network run.

Once the Sharing Pane opens, click on the Internet tab at the right end of the bar to bring up the relevant options. Now, this screen is so simple that most of this explanation is totally unnecessary. Nevertheless, here it is: before the big Start button becomes clickable, you’re going to need to choose which “port” you want to use to share your internet connection.

Keep it simple and check AirPort. All that means is that, when the Internet comes in to your Base Station Mac’s Ethernet port, you’re going to share it out of the AirPort port. The AirPort Options button is where you give your network a name and set up its password. Do this, then click the big, ol’ Start button. Once you’ve done that, you’re home free.

Now look up at your Menu Bar where your AirPort icon usually sits… it’s different! The icon now shows that you’re running an outbound network and all your other Macs should see it automatically. Just turn on one of the machines that you want connected to your new network and hit the AirPort Menu. Type in the appropriate password, and off you go. Simple, no?

Except for the fact that your Base Station Mac needs to be on all the time, there is no real downside to this technique. Your ISP may limit how many computers you can connect to a single modem but, barring problems with that, you should have no trouble at all. Experienced readers may want to check out the Printer Sharing settings in the Services section of the Sharing Pane to setup a single USB printer on your Base Station Mac, which can be accessed from all your wireless machines.

Let us know in the comments how it goes!

To begin, select one of your favorite albums. Go down to the bottom of the window and click the + Calendar button. iPhoto will ask you to choose a theme of your liking. Use the scroll bar to go through the available themes. A preview of that theme is shown to the right.

Now that you’ve chosen your theme, iPhoto will ask you to set when the calendar will start and how many months it contains. You can also choose to show holidays from any country, events from your calendars in iCal, and Birthdays from your Address Book.

Once you hit “Okay” iPhoto will create a blank calendar with “drop-zones”. iPhoto automatically handles the effects and positioning so all you have to do is drag your photos into these drop-zones to insert your photos. If you want iPhoto to fill in the pictures for you, simply click the “Autoflow” button. If you don’t like a certain layout of one page, click on the layout drop menu to change how many pictures you want to see at once. Not only can you drag photos on top of the calendar, but on the actual dates as well. Drag a photo onto the date and iPhoto does the rest.

You have your calendar just the way you like it, now what can you do with it? Click the “Buy Calendar” button to have Apple print your calendar in high quality and ship it to you. Currently, a 12 month calendar is $19.00 (USD) without tax. You also have the ability to print your own calendar. To do so, go to File > Print or hit Apple + P.

Now you have a professional calendar filled with your very own digital memories. Enjoy!

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!