Tips

Is After Effects Gobbling Up Your Hard Drive?

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Adobe After Effects CS3 Cache - Cache.MACC

I recently discovered that After Effects (CS3) wasn’t deleting it’s Media Cache files when I quit the application. The folder had swelled to 6.19 GB.

I’m not sure if this is a bug in CS3, or if all versions of AE suffered from this problem. But, if you’re an After Effects user you may want to make sure you haven’t (unnecessarily) lost some drive space. On a Mac, the folder is located at ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/After Effects CS3/Media Cache Files. You can either manually toss the content of the folder, or you can open AE on go to the Memory & Cache preferences and click, Clean Database & Cache.

How to upgrade your music to 256 kbps DRM-Free versions in iTunes

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Upgrade iTunes Library

Earlier today Apple announced that they’re removing Digital Rights Management (DRM) from music bought through the iTunes music store. They also announced that you could upgrade your previously purchased music from the old standard (128 kbps protected file) to the new format (256 kbps DRM Free) for $0.30 per song on individual tracks or 30% of the current album price on full albums, but it’s not immediately apparent on how you go about doing that.

It’s actually very easy… simply open iTunes and select the iTunes Store in the sidebar (on the left). On the store home page, look in the upper right, under QUICK LINKS, for “Upgrade my Library”. Clicking that will take you to a summary page of what it would cost to upgrade everything you’ve bought. Don’t worry, you won’t be charged unless you click the “Buy” button on that summery screen.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any way of upgrading individual tracks or albums… it’s either everything you’ve bought, or nothing. Also, since the entire catalogue offered through iTunes hasn’t been upgraded to the new format yet, not everything will be available. In my own tests, only about half of what I’ve bought is available for upgrade. Apple should have everything updated by the end of March, 2009.

Personally, I’m bummed about the all or nothing approach Apple has taken. I really don’t want to upgrade everything I’ve bought.

UPDATE (1/07/2009): Macworld has posted much more information about this.

Don’t change your Mighty Mouse batteries before you have to

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Apple Mighty Mouse Battery Warning

If you use an Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse, you’ve probably seen this battery warning at some point. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a little premature in when it tells you to change batteries. I sometimes get 2-3 weeks of additional use after I get the warning before the batteries actually die. And that’s using my mouse all day, every day.

Ignore the warning. Don’t change the batteries until they actually die.

iPhone copy/paste between Safari and Mail with pastebud

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pastebud

Starting tomorrow (12/12) we’ll be able to copy and paste text on the iPhone between Safari and Mail, or between 2 web pages. And, it doesn’t require any software to be installed, or the iPhone to be tampered with.

It works by using 2 Javascript bookmarklets provided by pastebud. There’s a video of it in action over on Gizmodo (fyi… the video won’t play for me in Safari, I had to use Firefox).

All in all it looks pretty cool. I can’t wait to try it out. It is sad though that Apple hasn’t provided this ability long ago. Who knows, maybe it will be announced at Macworld in January.

via The Apple Blog

UPDATE (12/12/2008): The service went online today, and apparently there’s some concerns about security. use at your own risk.

QuickTip: Save money by searching for Coupon Codes before buying online

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Whenever I’m in the final steps of buying something online, and I see a field for Promotional Code on the order form, I immediately open a new browser tab and do a quick google search for the name of the store plus “Coupon Code” or “Promotional Code” (without the quotes). More than half the time I find a code in less than 2 minutes, especially if it’s a major online shop. You’ll find that it can be very easy to save 10%, or get free shipping, etc… It doesn’t always work out, and I won’t spend a lot of time looking, but I’ve made it part of my routine when shopping online.

Force Safari to open targeted links in a new tab, instead of a new window

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There is one feature in Firefox that I’ve always wished Safari had. The ability to always force targeted links (those that would normally open a new browser window) to open a new tab.

For example, if you’re viewing this in Safari and you click this link, it will open a new browser window taking you to Google. I would rather it open in a new tab instead. You can temporarily do this on a link-by-link basis by holding down the Command key when clicking the link, but I want it to work that way all the time.

Fortunately, this feature is already built into Safari (at least on the Mac), but it’s turned off by default. In order to turn it on, all you need to do is paste the following command in to the Terminal (quit Safari first):

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

That’s it. Safari should now open all links that would have opened a new window, in a new tab instead. If you want to turn this feature off, paste the same command, but replace the word “true” with “false”.

Thank you Roger Johansson!