Mac Bells and Whistles

Semulov – Eject your attached disks quickly

Posted by isaac on May 14, 2008 at 11:05 am

I’ve got an external hard drive attached to my laptop for TimeMachine backups, but every time I need to pick up and go somewhere I need to manually eject the drive or face the dreaded “you didn’t do this like we want you to, and you might have lost data” nag screen.  Instead of digging [...]

Menu Calendar Clock

Posted by isaac on April 19, 2008 at 10:14 am

Continuing on with the Mac Bells and Whistles kick – next up is MenuCalendarClock.
I often need to know the current date (and I can never remember).  I know that iCal displays the current date in its dock icon, but I hide my dock, so that requires mouse work.  I know the current date is available [...]

Spark – One Key App Launching

Posted by isaac on April 16, 2008 at 8:46 am

This will be of no interest to the QuickSilver nerds, but for the rest of us, Spark solves a small annoyance for me.  Unless you want to set up hot corners, there’s no quick way to activate the Screen Saver in Mac OS X (and, by extension, lock your computer).  Spark lets you assign the [...]

Text Expander – Faster Typing for the Typing Impaired

Posted by isaac on April 15, 2008 at 8:06 pm

If you’re a slow (or moderately slow) typist like myself, Text Expander is a great utility.  I’m in the middle of a doctoral thesis and I find myself typing the same phrases again and again – like “Stone-Campbell Movement” or “Lord’s Supper” or “Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ.”  Text Expander lets me set [...]

Caffeine – Quick Control Over Screen Dimming

Posted by isaac on April 14, 2008 at 12:38 pm

I ran across this a while ago, but was recently reminded at the TUAW blog about Caffeine. If you’re nursing an elderly battery like I am, you’re always looking for ways to save power – and having your screen automatically dim after a few minutes helps out quite a bit.  It’s wonderful…until you start to [...]

Jott – Transcribe Your Voice Notes To Text

Posted by isaac on April 13, 2008 at 9:12 pm

Jott is one of those great little utilities that makes a 30 minute commute more productive than you think.  Jott lets you dial your phone and dictate a message that gets transcribed and emailed to anyone on a customized contact list or to web-apps like Evernote.  It’s pretty accurate and takes less time than writing [...]

Evernote for Mac – Keeping It All Together

Posted by isaac on April 12, 2008 at 5:56 pm

Stickies are OK, but when you’re looking for integrated notes management via your computer, handheld, or any browser anywhere; Evernote keeps them all together with an elegant interface and plenty of power under the hood.
I usually collect info in a number of ways:

copy or paste from a document on a computer
type something while I’m at [...]

Camino – the Sveltier Firefox

Posted by isaac on April 11, 2008 at 10:45 am
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I love loved Firefox before it became a third-party extensions nagware experience made possible by a bloated system footprint. If you visit sites that need Firefox to operate properly (I have a few work sites), Camino is a satisfying alternative. It’s built off the same engine as Firefox, but leaves the bloat behind [...]

Fluid – Turn Web-Apps Into Local Apps

Posted by isaac on April 10, 2008 at 12:50 pm
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If you use a lot of web-apps like I do (Gmail, GoogleDocs, Facebook, GoogleReader, etc.), it’s nice to have those websites function more like a stand-alone application that dwells in your dock rather than inside your browser. Those using Leopard can run a fun little app called Fluid to create stand-alone applications that connect [...]

Mac Bells and Whistles

Posted by isaac on April 9, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Since I’ve been using the Mac OS now for around 20 years (started in Junior High), and since a lot of students and colleagues I know are just now jumping into the Mac pool, I tend to get a lot of questions about what “bells and whistles” they should install on their freshly opened Mac.  I’ve been keeping a [...]