Paul Tow » Mac

Mac pick: Tangerine!

Paul Tow — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:35:49 +0000

In my iTunes library and on my iPod, I have two thirty-minute playlists. One is called “Energize” and contains songs ordered by increasing speed. The other, “Rest,” is ordered by decreasing speed and helps me fall asleep. These playlist are automatically created by my computer and are constantly changing. My computer does this using the BPM (beats per minute) field in the iTunes metadata. Normally, this requires manually determining and entering that information by hand for each song, but there’s a much, much easier and less time consuming way.

Tangerine! from the Potion Factory is a $24.95 shareware application that quickly analyzes your each song in your iTunes library and automatically calculates the BPM and beat intensity. Within its very well done, very Mac-like interface, it lets you create iTunes playlists following a desired pattern. For example, you can make a workout playlist which becomes faster and more intense, reaches a climax, and then slows for your cool down. You can also control the playlist’s length, BPM range, and/or beat intensity range. Perhaps most importantly, BPM data can be exported to iTunes so that you can make smart playlists such as the two I described earlier.

A competing application which may be worth looking into is beaTunes, which is $31.95 shareware that runs on both Windows and OS X. Personally, I prefer Tangerine for its interface.

How to: Get started with a Mac

Paul Tow — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:29:21 +0000

If you’re new to the Mac, welcome. I hope you enjoy it, and I’d like to point you to some resources to help you get started. Apple, of course, provides some help itself. The Mac comes with a useful but often forgotten Help menu. Apple provides a support site, AppleCare phone number, and genius bars at their retail stores where you can go to ask questions. Then, of course, there’s Google. Let’s move beyond those, though.

Even in the age of the Internet, there’s nothing quite like a book to give you a nice starting point. David Pogue has written some excellent books, such as Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard edition and Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual. Reading either of those from start to finish would get you off to a great start.

Popular Mac magazines include MacWorld and Mac|Life, but frankly I’ve come to prefer the Internet because it’s so much more up-to-date. Don McAllister has a video tutorial podcast named ScreenCastsOnline, which has both free and paid lessons. Victor Cajiao has a free audio podcast called Typical Mac User. For Mac news, there’s Adam Christianson’s MacCast and the TWiT network’s MacBreak Weekly. As for regular websites, you can try TUAW and Mac Forums.

The best places for finding software are IUseThis, MacUpdate, and VersionTracker. Each are directories of Mac software from all over the web, but IUseThis puts an interesting twist on that. People can register on IUseThis and tell it what software they actually use. Not just have, but actually use. IUseThis then ranks all apps based on number of users or recent spikes in interest. It’s a great way to discover new apps, and I’ve only scratched the surface. It’s worth pointing out that many of the best Mac apps are either freeware or inexpensive shareware.

Hopefully this helps. If you’ve got any further suggestions, please share them in the comments. Also, notice the “Share” link below for passing this on to someone you know.

Mac pick: RSS Menu

Paul Tow — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:03:05 +0000

RSS feeds have changed the way many use the web. People don’t go to content; content comes to them. Instead of manually checking individual websites for updates that might not have been made, they check just one place- their feed reader- and see new stories from all of their favorite websites. Feed readers are often used as an alternative to visiting the actual web site, but they don’t have to be. If you like the update notifications of RSS but prefer to visit the actual web page, there’s an app for that.

RSS Menu is a free menu extra for OS X, and its interface is very simple. When closed, it’s just a little icon that sits in the right side of your menu bar, and when open it looks like a standard OS X menu. Choose a feed, then a headline and the web page opens in your default web browser. It’s like having Firefox’ Live Bookmarks without having to use Firefox. It also has scheduled checking of feeds, notifications via Growl and/or speech, and optional integration with iTunes podcasts and Safari RSS. RSS Menu is free as I said, but if you like it the developer accepts donations via PayPal or Kagi.

What feed reader do you use, and why? Sound off in the comments.

Camino theme: Dark Blue Steel tabs 1.0

Paul Tow — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:08:23 +0000

Screenshot of "Dark Blue Steel tabs 1.0"

With Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard,” Apple made all window backgrounds very dark, and this has been problematic for apps which used to be Aqua. For various reasons, Camino is particularly affected by this and likely will be for the foreseeable feature. All that being said, if you’re a Leopard user who’s using Camino either (1) without a bookmark bar or (2) with UnifyCamino, I’ve created a darker variant of Blue Steel tabs that may suit you better.

Camino theme: Blue Steel tabs 1.0

Paul Tow — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 05:23:42 +0000

Screenshot of Blue Steel tabs 1.0

With helpful feedback from 8-bit and other mozillaZine members, I’ve created my first Camino tab theme: Blue Steel tabs 1.0.The active tab appears to pop to the front, giving your tabs a sense of depth.