Latest Posts in Mac Gems

iPhoto2Twitter lets you share iPhoto images via Twitter

Now that I’m a parent, I like sharing my photos more than ever. I regularly take advantage of iPhoto ‘09’s integration with Flickr and Facebook, but sharing photos on Twitter is a bit more complicated, since you need to get a photo out of iPhoto and onto your desktop in order to upload it somewhere.

That’s where Blue Crowbar Software’s iPhoto2Twitter 1.5 comes in handy. This €5 plug-in for iPhoto ‘08 and ‘09 lets you select a photo in iPhoto, publish it to Twitpic or Mobypicture, and then tweet the link. (Which service should you use? Twitpic is for photos only, while Mobypicture lets you upload photos or video to multiple places simultaneously—Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo, and YouTube, as well as to WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal blogs.)

The iPhoto2Twitter interface.

After installing the plug-in, you can upload it for Twitter via a new iPhoto2Twitter option in iPhoto's Export dialog: just select a photo and choose File -> Export. The first time you use this option, you’ll need to click on Setup and enter your Twitter account info; you'll also need to choose whether you want to use Twitpic or Mobypicture (you can switch between them at any time).

You choose the export size, in pixels, for each photo—500 by 500, 600 by 600, 1200 by 1200, 2000 by 2000, or the original size. The fixed sizes make it seem as though you’ll be uploading a square picture, but the numbers actually refer to the longest size of your image; for example, using the 500 by 500 option for a horizontal image from my camera results in photo that's 500 pixels wide by 332 pixels high. (The plug-in currently limits photo size to 4MB; if your image is larger than that, you must choose one of the reduced export sizes.)

There’s also a box for typing your 140-or-fewer-character message (tweet); a live character count shows how many characters you have left. The software is smart enough to alert you when you’ve typed more than will be allowed once the photo URL is included, although the overage display uses gray text that's difficult to distinguish from the normal black text.

An image on Twitpic after uploading from iPhoto2Twitter.

Click on Export and the plug-in takes care of the rest. In my tests, uploading to Twitpic worked flawlessly. When I used Mobypictures to upload to Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr at the same time, I ended up with double posts to my Facebook page—one with the photo displayed, one without it—but that was due to Mobypicture's Post Status Messages option. Once I turned off that option, Mobypicture uploads functioned as desired, although pictures tagged using iPhoto’s Names feature didn’t come across with the tagging intact when posted on Facebook (iPhoto ‘09’s Facebook export retains that information).

My only issue with iPhoto2Twitter is that you can’t select other image services, such as yFrog and img.ly, with shorter URLs (and thus more room for your personal text). The developer says he has no plans to add other services unless he becomes unhappy with the current ones, or if a new service becomes available with interesting new features. Still, if you use iPhoto and enjoy posting pictures to your Twitter account, iPhoto2Twitter is well worth the registration fee.

Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your Inbox.

Docks gives you more Docks

As flexible as Mac OS X’s Dock can be, one feature request that’s been around as long as OS X itself is the capability to have multiple Dock configurations and to easily switch between them. For example, as a tech writer, I often need to take screenshots, and I want those screenshots to include OS X’s stock Dock—my Dock looks nothing like the stock version. Or you may want different Dock configurations for different groups of tasks.

Over the years, I’ve covered a number of utilities that provide this functionality, but my new favorite is Thoughtful Tree Software’s aptly named Docks, mainly because of its ease of use and its clear and attractive interface.

The first time you launch Docks, you take a snapshot of your current Dock and give it a name. Next you customize the Dock for another task—for example, for media consumption, or for writing, or for Internet activities—and take another snapshot. You repeat this process as many times as you need different Dock configurations. (Note that programs currently running that aren’t permanently in the Dock aren’t captured as part of a snapshot.)

Read more...

Bluetoggle lets you toggle Bluetooth status

A comment question from Mac users is, “Can I toggle Bluetooth on and off using the keyboard?” The Bluetooth menu extra lets you quickly toggle Bluetooth status, but some people would rather use that menu-bar space for other items—and some just prefer keyboard shortcuts. The answer to the question is, “With a little help.”

Axonic Labs’ Bluetoggle is a utility that lets you assign a keyboard shortcut for turning Bluetooth on and off. Via a new Bluetoggle pane of System Preferences, you choose a key from F1 to F12, along with one or more modifiers (Shift, Control, Option, and Command). Toggling Bluetooth is then as simple as pressing your shortcut; an on-screen display appears to confirm the action.

Unfortunately, if you have a keyboard with more than 12 F-keys, you can’t use F13 or higher as your shortcut. On the other hand, a clever option lets you toggle the Bluetooth menu extra, as well: When Bluetooth is enabled, and you’re likely to want quick access to the commands in the Bluetooth menu, the menu extra is visible; when Bluetooth is disabled, the menu extra is hidden.

Simple? Yep. But I’m finding it useful as a way to quickly enable Bluetooth when I open my laptop at my desk—where my Bluetooth devices are—and disable it before I go out. Now if only I could get a similarly convenient feature for my iPhone…

Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your Inbox.

Tweetie for Mac brings excellent iPhone app to the desktop

While the iPhone-app market has gone ga-ga for Twitter, the social networking service that lets you send 140-character messages, Mac developers have been less prolific. Tweetie, from Atebits, has gone the unusual route of jumping from iPhone app to full-blown Mac OS X program. This lineage shows, too: as pretty as the program is, at times it makes interface decisions that don't quite fit with established Mac conventions.

Unlike the Iconfactory’s Twitterrific, which can float above the windows of other programs, Tweetie is a program unto itself, with its own Dock icon and, optionally, menu-bar status icon.

The program's interface is clean: on the left-hand side of the window is a large icon for your Twitter account, with a set of icons just below it corresponding to different types of messages: tweets from people you follow, mentions (@ replies), and direct messages. There’s also a search icon. Click on one of these and the chosen view scrolls into place to the right.

Read more...

Xmenu lets you access files from the menu bar

One of my favorite OS X add-ons is FinderPop, in part because of its menu-bar menu that provides quick access to my favorite files and folders. But if this is the only one of FinderPop’s many features you need, a suitable alternative is Devon Technologies’ XMenu. I wrote a one-paragraph review of XMenu back in 2005, but the program is worth revisiting: since that time, it’s been updated for Intel Macs, gained some impressive speed boosts, and added some useful features.

XMenu lets you add one or more menus to the menu bar for browsing files and data. The available menus are Applications (for the main Applications folder), Developer (for the /Developer folder, if you’ve installed Apple’s developer tools), Home (for your home directory), Documents (for your personal Documents folder), User-Defined, and Snippets. User-Defined is a custom menu you create by dropping files, folders, and aliases into ~/Library/Application Support/XMenu.

XMenu's menus displayed as icons (top), text (middle), or icons and text (bottom)

The new Snippets menu is for frequently used text files, rich-text files, text clippings, and Internet Location files. Place these items in ~/Library/Application Support/XSnippets, and when you want to use one, you just choose it from the Snippets menu; XMenu inserts the item’s contents into the current document or text field.

You can choose to view any combination of these menus. Each menu has a unique icon to help you distinguish it from the others, though you can instead choose to view the menus by their (editable) names—or by both name and icon. You can also choose how the contents of these menus are displayed: in small or large text, or as small or large icons with text. (You can dramatically increase XMenu’s performance by enabling the option to use generic icons.)

The XMenu documentation claims you can perform different actions on menu items by using modifier keys; for example, control-choosing an item in a menu is supposed to show the item instead of opening it, and command-choosing an item is supposed to open the Finder’s Info window for that item. However, I couldn’t get these features to work on two different Macs. Luckily, I rarely wanted to use them; I mainly used XMenu to open frequently-used files and folders.

A couple features I miss from FinderPop are ways to organize the custom menu without having to fool around with spaces and special characters, and the capability to add dividing lines between groups of items. Another feature I’d like to see is the capability to create multiple custom menus, as well as to designate any folder—for example, the Desktop or a project folder—as a new menu.

Of course, FinderPop has many other features not found in XMenu. But FinderPop also injects its code into every running application, whereas XMenu doesn’t touch other programs, so it shouldn’t affect the stability of the OS or applications. It’s a simpler solution for those who don’t need much more than a few quick-access menus.

Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your Inbox.

Meerkat digs SSH tunnels

Mac OS X includes the OpenSSH suite of command-line tools, most notably ssh for tunneling, a mechanism for securely shunting data across the Internet on behalf of other programs. Tunneling is useful for secure communications between two computers, and tunnels are often used for working around firewalls (which may allow ssh but block other useful services) and for providing secure communications to programs with less sophisticated encryption capabilities.

Unfortunately, establishing OpenSSH tunnels directly is complicated. For example, here’s a snippet of code I use to tunnel Screen Sharing (VNC) through firewalls and initiate a Screen Sharing connection:

alias ivnc='(sleep 4; open vnc://127.0.0.1:5901) & ssh -C -4 -L 5901:127.0.0.1:5901 inspector'

Ouch.

Read more...

Power Manager gives you more control over your Mac's schedule

The Energy Saver pane of System Preferences offers a number of features for conserving energy; for example, sleep mode and scheduled startups and shutdowns. Mac OS X also gives you the option to automatically log out of an account after a period of inactivity. But for many people, these features are frustratingly limited. Those who need more flexibility should check out Dragon Systems Software Limited’s Power Manager. (Christopher Breen mentioned Power Manager in a column last year.)

Power Manager’s System Preferences pane lets you create multiple, customized schedules that determine when your Mac should be awake, asleep, or shut down, along with actions that can occur at specific times. Each schedule includes an action and a trigger—what causes the action to occur.

Actions comprise start up/wake (whichever is appropriate), wake (which affects only a sleeping Mac), sleep, switch to the login window, log out, restart, and shut down. Triggers can be a specific date and time, a daily time, or—for appropriate actions—a chosen period of inactivity. By using multiple schedules, you can customize your Mac’s activities to a much finer degree than using Energy Saver settings.

An action option I’d like to see is the capability to run an AppleScript. I also wish the date/time settings provided the familiar calendar and clock controls; instead, you must manually type the date and time. But overall these schedules are easy to use.

Read more...

ScreenSharingMenulet makes quick work of Screen Sharing

Leopard’s Screen Sharing feature, which lets you view and control the screen of another Mac, can be quite handy, especially for performing remote tech support for family and friends. But my experience is that many people use it mainly with computers on the same local network—in the same house or office. For example, I frequently use it to peek in on my desktop Mac from my laptop.

If this describes your use of Screen Sharing, Stefan Klieme’s ScreenSharingMenulet aims to make such connections easier by providing a menu-bar menu that lists any computers on your local network with Screen Sharing (or Remote Management—aka, Apple Remote Desktop) enabled. Choose a computer from the menu and the Screen Sharing application launches and initiates a screen-sharing connection to the chosen computer.

(Just as if you’d connected normally, the connection will be made immediately if you’ve previously saved the required username and password to the keychain; otherwise you’ll be prompted to provide this info.)

Thanks to Bonjour, ScreenSharingMenulet’s menu updates in real time, showing new Screen-Sharing-compatible computers as soon as they appear on the network.

The menu also provides a submenu that includes any computers to which you’ve recently connected. And if you’ve tweaked the Screen Sharing application to display its hidden browser, the menu displays any non-local hosts you’ve previously connected to, as well.

One feature that would make ScreenSharingMenulet even more useful would be an option to enter an IP address to connect to a computer over the Internet. But for quick connections on your local network, this simple program is tough to beat.

Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your Inbox.

WhatsOpen helps you eject stubborn volumes

Last October, I reviewed What’s Keeping Me, a utility that helps you figure out what, exactly, is keeping a drive or disk image from being ejected. In the comments for that article, a Macworld reader recommended a similar utility, WhatsOpen. At the time, WhatsOpen didn’t stand out compared to What’s Keeping Me, but several updates since then have improved the program considerably—WhatsOpen 2.5 is now a good alternative that offers several unique features.

Whenever you try to eject a disk, disk image, or other volume and get the dreaded “is in use and could not be ejected” message, launch WhatsOpen, choose the volume from the Volume pop-up menu, and then click on List Files. WhatsOpen will display a list of all open (meaning in-use) files that reside on that volume, including information about each file: the application using it, the user using it, its file size, and the full path to the file.

To ensure you’re seeing all open files on the volume—including those being used by other users and the system itself—choose All from the Users pop-up menu and choose Enable Super User from the Actions menu. This gives WhatsOpen (or, more specifically, the underlying lsof program) administrative privileges. When using this option, the file listing also shows the CPU use and process state of processes.

Read more...

Flickery makes uploading photos to Flickr easy

If users of the popular photo-sharing service Flickr have one complaint, it’s that the image uploader on the Flickr Web site is horribly inconvenient to use. Flickery offers a desktop-app alternative with a great Mac-like interface and a good balance between features for novice and pro users.

Once you’ve entered your Flickr account info, the left-hand side of Flickery’s iPhoto-like interface shows a list of the various areas of your Flickr account. Clicking on an item in the list—Photos, Favorites, Photosets, Flickr Groups, etc.—displays that item’s photos in the preview area on the right. You can also view Saved Searches and the photo streams of your Flickr Friends and Contacts.

Uploading your photos to Flickr with Flickery is simple. Select Upload on the left and then drag your photo(s) into the preview area. You can give each image a title, description, and keyword tags, as well as set the Flickr visibility, safety level and more. You also have the ability to do some minor editing of your images, including cropping, rotating, and adding image effects, as well as adjusting exposure, white & black point, saturation, and brightness. Once your edits are complete, you simply click on the upload button to post them on Flickr.

Once the files are successfully uploaded, you can still edit basic photo info such as the title, description, and tags from within Flickery and apply them to the uploaded imges. You can view comments from the Flickr community, and add your own, right in Flickery with a click on the Info button. You can also share your images via e-mail or Twitter, and there’s a full-screen option for viewing your photos or any collection of photos from Flickr Contacts or Groups you belong to.

I particularly enjoy the Search function of Flickery, which allows you to search all of Flickr by text description, tags, Flickr user, Type, Safety Level, and Creative Commons License. The results of your search are displayed in the preview area, where you can enlarge the thumbnails for a better view.

After a couple months of use, I’ve come across only two drawbacks, one functional and one cosmetic. First, adding an image to an existing Photoset is cumbersome. You have to first upload the image, then select it in the Photos view, then click on the Add to Set (or Group) button. This brings up yet another dialog box where you must scroll through a Cover Flow-like list of Sets (or create a new set). The process would be much easier if you could simply choose a Photoset in the initial upload screen. My second complaint is with the ugly, wrinkled-paper background of the photo comments window, which is unnecessary and makes it difficult to read the text.

Those issues aside, I really like Flickery. It’s a great application for both novice and serious Flickr users, it looks fantastic, and it’s very simple to use.