The world is a buzz with news of the resignation of US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The Macweb is a buzz with this very clever representation of that event, done by Brian Topping. Nicely done, Brian.
via Boing Boing
Month: November 2006
Cocoa Dev Central
If you’ve ever entertained the thought of building your own Mac application, or becoming a Mac software developer, then a good place to start may be Cocoa Dev Central. It looks like a good resource for pros and newbies alike.
found via Mac Fanatic
Quicktip: drop “www” and “.com”
Did you know that in most Mac browsers you don’t need to bother typing the “www” or the “.com” in URLs? For instance, if you’re going to Apple’s site, just type “apple” in the address field and hit return. Your browser will add the rest for you. This even works for other sections within a site, for example, to visit Apple’s support site, just type apple/support. Your browser is smart enough to place the .com before the /.
This, and other surfing tips can be found in this article on Macworld.
When Cats Attack
The suspense kept me on the edge of my seat.
YouTube Link | found via Lost in the Rain
Resize web forms on the fly
How many times have you been filling out a form online, and the text field just isn’t big enough to see or edit what you’ve already written? Fortunately, Cameron Adams has come up with this cool Form TextResizer Bookmarklet. It allows you to simply drag the corner of those text fields to resize them, in real time. It’s a very handy little tool.
Cameron has also set up a demo form for you to check it out.
tip #1: When you activate the bookmarklet, and then hover over the form field you want to resize, your cursor will change to an arrow indicating you are in the proper location to click and drag.
tip #2: In order to use the bookmarklet, you need to save it to your bookmarks. Cameron’s site says, “Right-click here and ‘Bookmark’ FormTextResizer”. That command isn’t available in Safari, so instead of right-clicking, simply grab the link and drag it to your bookmarks bar.
found via Shaun Inman
Spell checker in Safari
I don’t know why I never noticed this before, but Safari has a built in spell checker. This come in extremely handy if you comment on a lot of blogs, or fill out a lot of online forms.
When I comment on blogs, I was spell checking the stupid way… I would write my comment in TextEdit, and then copy/paste into the comment form. Finding this just totally streamlined my commenting process. I don’t know why this option isn’t turned on by default.
tip: you must have your cursor in a text field on a page (or in the address field) to access the spelling menu items. If it’s not, those items are grayed out.
found via Electric Spork
Sync iCal with Google Calendar
I don’t currently use Google Calendar, but that may change soon. Spanning Sync is a system pref pane that will allow true two-way synchronization of iCal, and Google Calendar. That means that changes made in either location will show up in both places. You can also specify which individual calendars get synced.
I say that it will provide two-way syncing, because Spanning Sync is currently unavailable. It’s in private beta. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the site for their public release. In the meantime, you can check out this video demo to see how it will work.
Currently I keep my Macs in sync via .Mac, but that doesn’t do me much good if I want to access my calendar from another machine. iCal does allow you to export your calendars to the web, but they are read only… you can’t make changes online. To me, that makes that feature almost useless. I really hope Apple is paying attention to this, and they are planning to do to iCal, what they recently did to .Mac mail… and give us a full featured online iCal equivalent.
found via TUAW
Who wants free Disco?
The other day I reviewed the new Mac disc burning utility, Disco. To do so, I actually bought a copy of the public beta, through MacZot. I did this partially for testing, because I was hoping it was going to be a Toast killer, and also because I had received a free copy of App Zapper through MacZot a few moths back. I figured $14.95 was a small price to pay for 2 apps (and I really love App Zapper).
Purchasing Disco through MacZot lead to a happy surprise. They are giving me a 2nd (free) license. So, I’m going to pass that license on to one lucky odl reader.
All you have to do to win this free license is leave a comment on this post. I’ve chosen a number at random, and whoever ends up being the commenter at that number in the list, will win (example: if I have chosen the number 9, and you are the 9th comment, you win). That’s it… it’s completely random.
Sometime tonight between 6:00pm-10:00pm (PST) I will be closing the comments and announcing the winner. If the number I have chosen is higher then the number of comments, then the last commenter will win.
There are 2 rules:
- You can only comment once! I will be checking. If you comment more than once, you’ll be disqualified!
- Leave your full name in the “name” field of the comment form. I’ll need that to license your copy of Disco. I’ll need your email address too, but DON’T leave that in the body of your comment. I can pull it from the comment form itself.
Once the winner is chosen, I’ll give his or her name and email address to MacZot, and they will email you your free license.
Good luck!
UPDATE: Sorry for the delay in posting the results. This simple giveaway ended with a little dilemma.
First, let me say that the number I chose was 36. Surprisingly, we didn’t reach that number, even though I kept it open until 10:00pm. I had said that if the number I chose wasn’t reached, then the last person to comment would win. However, if you recall, there were 2 rules to this giveaway… 1. you can only comment once, and 2. you must leave your full name in the comment form. Wouldn’t you know it, the last person to comment did not leave their full name.
So… what to do? On one hand, rule #2 didn’t explicitly say that you would be disqualified if you didn’t leave your full name (like rule #1 did). However, it was still a rule that was supposed to be followed.
After a little deliberation… I must adhere to the rules that were originally spelled out, and disqualify Alessandro for not leaving a full name. Sorry Alessandro… rules are rules.
Congratulations go out to Mark Huelsing, for snagging this copy of Disco. I’ll be shooting you an email shortly.