It’s become common practice to use services such as bit.ly to shorten URLs, but this is usually done using a bookmarklet script, which only works in browsers. This Automator service allows you to select an URL in any application and shorten it using the bit.ly API. Read More »
Apple
OS X includes a great tool called Automator, which makes it really easy to take the sting out of repetitive tasks. Recently, I ran into a situation where I had to combine a bunch of PDF files into one. Luckily, Automator makes it dead simple. Read More »
Shortly before Christmas, my iPhone started misbehaving. I’d get an odd little notification message popping up on the screen telling me it “Could not activate cellular data network.” Despite not usually getting odd little errors on the iPhone, I didn’t worry too much about it. After… Read More »
If you believe the marketing hype, you aren’t really a true Mac user unless you have MobileMe. MobileMe is pushed heavily in the Mac and iPhone UI as well as the Apple retail environment. Fancy terms like “beyond the box sales” are a clever way… Read More »
I’ve been playing around with Google Quick Search Box lately and am especially enjoying this services plugin from Martin Kuhl which lets you activate and pass input to OS X services right from within QSB. One snag though has been that services created through the… Read More »
Originally introduced in OS X Tiger, Automator is a drag-and-drop form of scripting. You can create workflows to easily speed up many tasks. With each version of OS X, Automator has seen some improvements, but with Snow Leopard, it finally realizes its… Read More »
Much like a migratory bird is genetically driven to fly south for the winter, I am driven to bloviate online. And so over the years I’ve accumulated my fair share of blogging accounts. I’m very active on Twitter, have a Wordpress blog, a Flickr account, Facebook,… Read More »
Last week Gizmodo published a leaked proposal (32MB PDF) from marketing agency Lippincott detailing plans for Microsoft’s upcoming brick-and-morter retail stores. It makes for mind-numbing reading, running at a mammoth 124 pages of (mostly) brain-freezing execu-speak. I’m glad I don’t work in Marketing. It’s… Read More »
There are a few really handy features in OS X that get very little attention – perhaps because they don’t have a snazzy GUI, or maybe it’s because they only appeal to certain users. Whatever the case, Summarize (found in the menubar under the Application menu)… Read More »
According to a report in Friday’s Charlotte Observer, North Carolina lawmakers are falling over themselves to entice Apple to build a state-of-the-art server farm in their backyard — specifically, Catawba or Cleveland county. The carrot they’re dangling? In this case, nothing short of a multimillion-dollar… Read More »
There’s a trusted maxim in the marketing game: cheap razor, expensive blades. It comes from the practice of selling razors like the Mach3 or Fusion for next to nothing, and then selling the disposable blades for said razors at a rather more expensive price. Consumers tend… Read More »
ShareTool is a piece of software which allows you to easily access your Mac from a remote location. To quote their tagline: “ShareTool is hands down, the fastest, easiest, and most secure way to access all of your Bonjour services from anywhere in the world.”… Read More »
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