I decided to spend sometime today to tweak some of my core applications and workflow. Part of that was finding a new theme for Growl. While I always have thought the Smoke theme as OK, I was looking for something more…substantial. My find is the Mono 2.o theme by Christopher Lobay which I think looks very nice! Try it yourself.
Late last week I read a review of Blotter, a new application on the Mac App Store that puts your weekly iCal calendar just above your desktop background as an overlay. In many ways, this might seem like a way to surely increase the stress, however I find it to have some advantages for me.
First of all, it is very clean and simple. Sure, it works best on top of an equally clean and simple background, Blotter lays the calendar out in a very nice way. You get a good view of not just the current day, but the entire week ahead (which can be customized to only show workweek or full week, as well as show the coming 7 days instead of the current week). It will display all the different calendars that you tell it to, no more, no less and to some degree also keep the color coding, which is a must for me.
What I found particularly useful with this app is that it makes me use my desktop for something useful, while adding the ease of previewing what is coming up right now, without looking too far away. For me, seeing my calendar is not a way to get more stressed, but a way to become relaxed in knowing that I am in control.
I did mention that Blotter supported the color coding to some degree. I would like to see the color coding be spot on the same thing as in iCal. I have noticed a few of my calendars not retaining their proper color which is very bad for me since I use that to get a good overview of where I am expected to be and what I am expected to do. Basically, I live on color coding.
Secondly, I desperately want a way to get rid of the menu icon for this app. An option to put it in the menu bar would be appreciated as I prefer that for utilities compared to the dock. The best thing would be to run this in the background not having any icon, although I can see that being a problem in terms of development.
I’d recommend you trying out this app if you want the calendar on the desktop. At $9.99, Blotter isn’t too badly priced, even though the lack of trial in the Mac App Store makes it harder to justify when you are not sure it will do what you want. I however must say that it is fully worth all its $9.99 price tag.
I wrote a couple of entries ago about starting to use Bit.ly Pro for custom URL shortening for Bernskiold Media (bmedia.co). Starting the the good things first, it has been nothing short of an excellent experience with Bit.ly Pro and it is cool to use your own shortener. The only gripe I have with it is that it is just an alias and not a pure custom shortener. This means that you cannot reuse hashes that has been used with the regular bit.ly. What a shame!
Anyhow, the single biggest dislike that I have is not with Bit.ly Pro itself but with my Twitter application of choice: Twitter for Mac. A few weeks ago, Tweetie for Mac was updated and released as Twitter for Mac (following being bought by Twitter). The update is 99% positive for me, except that the app now automatically shortens links.
For most users, this is a behavior that might be positive, but it gets ridiculous when it starts shortening my already shortened links. It’s not just my custom ones either, but every short link is replaced by their own t.co shortener.
The solution is simple of course. Post links from the web interface or just switch application. The latter is something that I don’t want to do because, as I said, I like 99% of Twitter for Mac. Using the web interface is just a pain with multiple accounts because, hey! That’s part of what I use the app for in the first place.
End of rant.
I’m very excited about the brand new Mac App Store released yesterday, not only because I think that that the store makes finding new and unknown apps relatively easy and that it removes the “How to install apps?” barrier for new and non-computer-savvy users.
The other reason why I am intrigued by the launch is for companies and especially all IT departments worldwide. This thought was sparked by my friend Peter, as we were tweeting about the possibilities for Apple to offer an instant download of all your apps. Here is where the store could be a blessing.
When seeing a few tweets this morning from Don McAllister who was wondering over if Apple imposed the same 5 device limit to application as it does in the iTunes Store, almost everyone had been agreeing to the fact that surely that would be the case.
After a little digging, Don found a text in the help files that says that you can use a purchased application on any number of computers that you have.
Sometimes I just want to leave my MacBook Pro working by itself, without falling asleep. Other times I want to lie down in my bed with me mac on the other side of it, used as a TV either watching real TV (shocker!) or podcasts.
Anyhow, the problem with this is that I have set my computer to automatically fall asleep after X amount of minutes without use. Normally, 95% of the time, this is my desired action, however there are the remaining 5% when I don’t want it to do that. Rather than going into my System Preferences and changing the setting that controls the time it takes before it goes asleep every time I want to make an exception (and then changing it back afterwards), I found a utility.
The utility is simple enough and called Jiggler. What it does is equally simple but nevertheless brilliant. The application, when launched, jiggles your mouse cursor at an interval which you can set yourself. The computer will think that it is being used and will not go to sleep, saving a lot of settings hassle while still giving you the desired result. Oh, the best part about Jiggler is that it is a free download!