Posts Tagged ‘MAC’

Create To Do items for iCal’s Reminders list by creating a Service that can be invoked from the contextual menu or a keyboard shortcut

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

Make it easier to create To Do items for iCal’s Reminders list by creating a Service that can be invoked from the contextual menu or a keyboard shortcut.

Here’s the procedure:

  • Launch Automator and create a new Service.
  • At the top of the workflow, set the following options, which are the default: Service receives selected text in any application.
  • Add New Action » Set Value of Variable. (To find this action, enter Set Value of Variable in the Automator search field.)
  • Click the Variable: pop up menu and select New variable…
  • Name the variable To Do Title (or whatever you like) and click Done.
  • Add New Action » New To Do Item. (To find this action, enter New To Do Item in the Automator search field.)
  • From the Variable section in the bottom right of the Automator window, drag the new variable To Do Title into the Title: field of the action.
  • In the New To Do Item action, click the Options button and select Ignore this action’s input and Show this action when the workflow runs.
  • Save the new Service as New To Do and quit Automator.
  • Go to any application with some text content, select some of the text, right click, and select New To Do from the contextual menu. (You may have to go inside the Services sub-menu if you have a lot of Services that act on this data type.)
  • A New To Do Item dialog window will appear with the selected text in the title field. You can edit the title if you like. Select the desired options and click Continue.
  • Switch to iCal and you’ll see your new To Do item in the Reminders list.

If you want to be able to invoke the command with a keyboard shortcut, go to System Preferences » Keyboard » Services » Text » New To Do and double-click in the invisible column to the right of the text. (Look for other keyboard shortcut listings if you can’t figure out where to click. The list is divided into two invisible columns and if you don’t double-click far enough to the right, nothing will happen.)

Advanced Notes: There are a few things that aren’t immediately obvious about creating this Automator workflow that might be useful if you create others. It took me quite a bit of trial and error to figure these things out, so let me share them with you.

Most of you probably understand that creating this workflow as a Service allows it to show up in the contextual menu, the Services menu, and to be assigned a keyboard shortcut in the Keyboard System Preferences. Simply adding the New To Do Item action will create a new To Do item in iCal’s Reminders list using the selected text as the title, but you won’t be able to set any other options and you won’t receive feedback that anything has happened. Selecting the option Show this action when the workflow runs presents the dialog box that allows you to set options for your new To Do item. When you create the Service, you can set what the default options should be and these defaults can always be changed by re-editing the workflow document in Automator.

The tricky part is figuring out how to make the title editable. With only the New To Do Item action, the title field in the resulting dialog is blank, but editing the field has no effect on the reminder that is created. This was very perplexing. By adding the Set Value of Variable action and placing that variable in the title field of the New To Do Item action, the selected text appears in the title field of the To Do item. However, editing the text in this field in the dialog box still has no affect.

The New To Do Item action is designed to always use the selected text as the title of the To Do item, no matter what you do in the dialog box. By selecting the Ignore this action’s input option and using a variable to fill in the title filed using the selected text, you can then edit the title field as you are creating the new To Do item. This was the key to achieving the desired behavior.

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Posted in Mac Tutorials, os x, Tutorials | No Comments »

Use AirDrop on any Mac with Lion tutorial

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Use AirDrop on any Mac with Lion

by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld.com   Sep 21, 2011 9:15 am

Back in July, I explained how Lion’s new AirDrop feature lets you exchange files simply between two computers with up-to-date Wi-Fi hardware. As I wrote then, AirDrop is a breeze to use if you have the right Mac. You’re out of luck if your computer doesn’t have the right hardware—specifically, if it doesn’t have Wi-Fi chips capable of personal area networking (PAN) for peer-to-peer connections. Many Macs, even many of relatively recent vintage and many that can run Lion, don’t have those chips and so can’t use AirDrop. (Apple provides a list of AirDrop-capable Macs here.)

But, it turns out, there’s a workaround. An anonymous Mac OS X Hints reader found that, if you have one of those older Macs, you can add a setting to AirDrop’s defaults that allows AirDrop to work over regular networks, not just PANs.

The change is a one-liner: Open Terminal and, at the command line, type: 

<code>defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces 1</code>

Hit Return, then go back to your Desktop and hold down the Option key as you Control-click (or right-click) on the Finder icon in the Dock. Select Relaunch from the contextual menu; relaunching the Finder activates the code you entered above. When the Finder finishes its restart, you should see an AirDrop entry in the Finder sidebar that wasn’t there before. (You can reverse the process by using the same command with 0 instead of 1, and relaunching the Finder again.)

How it works

There’s an interesting reason this switch works. AirDrop uses Bonjour, the technology that lets Macs and other devices on a network announce their presence and the services they provide, so other computers and devices on that network can find them without a lot of tedious configuration on your part. AirDrop is just another service that announces itself over Bonjour, but with a difference: Lion only looks for incoming AirDrop messages on the Wi-Fi PAN interface; it doesn’t look on the Wi-Fi wireless local area network (WLAN) interface as a whole, and Ethernet and other local networking types don’t register either. What the tweak above does is tell Lion to remove that restriction and look for AirDrop announcements on any network interface.

Doing so actually removes one of AirDrop’s key advantages: In its default mode, it can connect Macs that don’t already have a network connection. The pair may be connected to separate networks, or not connected to any network at all. If their Wi-Fi chips are active, though, AirDrop can still connect them. The setting above connects Macs only if they’re on the same local network, regardless of how they’re connected (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or both).

How to use it

In testing, I found that you can make this change on just one single machine and still reap the benefits, but it’s best to enable it on all the computers you’ll use together.

For example, I have a Mac Pro and a MacBook Air, and the Pro isn’t capable of AirDrop. I made the setting change initially just on the Pro. It could then “see” the MacBook Air in its list of AirDrop devices (because it was now receiving all Bonjour messages on the local network); the Pro wasn’t visible from the Air (which was still receiving messages on the PAN interface only). However, I could still transfer files to the Air by dragging them onto the Air’s icon in AirDrop on my Mac Pro. When I clicked OK to start the transfer, a new connection was initiated from the Pro to the Air, which received it properly and displayed the Mac Pro in the AirDrop window when the request to transfer dialog appeared. The Mac Pro remained visible during the transfer and for a few seconds afterward. After applying the settings change to the Air, too, the Pro was continuously visible and accessible.

I tested with other machines, using Ethernet and Wi-Fi in various combinations, and as long as both machines were on the same local network using any interfaces, they could see each other and transfer files.

The only downside to this tweak is that Apple enables strong encryption over the PAN connection, ensuring that a separate layer of security wraps files being sent back and forth. With the LAN or WLAN transfers, Apple doesn’t add any such security, and you’re at the mercy of whatever protections are in place. You might avoid using AirDrop on public Wi-Fi networks or campus Ethernet, or use a program like Truecrypt to encipher files on a disk image before sending them over an insecure network.

There’s no knowing how long this feature will remain active. Apple has a habit of disabling hidden features (often retained for debugging purposes) that it doesn’t want to support. In the meantime, you can get all the advantages of Lion’s AirDrop over a local network with the flip of a single switch.

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Five unexpected uses for Copy and Paste in Snow Leopard

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Five unexpected uses for Copy and Paste

Use these commands in the Finder to manipulate more than just graphics and text

by Sharon Zardetto, Macworld.com

Sure, you copy (Command-C) and paste (Command-V) all the time. But did you know you can copy and paste a whole lot more than just text and graphics? When you start in the Finder, you can use the Copy command to lift all sorts of information from a selected Finder item: the item’s name; its icon; its pathname; its content; and, in effect, the entire file. What you get out of the operation depends on where you choose to paste. Here are some of my favorite tricks.

1. Quickly copy a file or folder’s name

You have a file named Docket#OCN-L-3854-09 and want to create a folder for it and related files. How do you do that without introducing a typo? Just select the file and press Command-C—you don’t even need to specifically select the name. Now create a new folder (Command-Shift-N), and while its name (“Untitled Folder”) is selected, use the Paste command.

If you need that docket number referenced in a document, select the file in the Finder, copy, and then go to your word processor and paste: there’s the name.

Bonus tip: Would you like a list of all the items in a folder? Open the folder, use Command-A to select everything in it, and then Command-C to copy them. Now switch to your word processor and paste to get a list of all the selected files.

2. Copy an icon from one file to another

I don’t like that by default both my e-mail and Web downloads go into the Downloads folder; I prefer them segregated. But after setting up a separate download folder through the general pane of Mail’s preferences, I’m stuck with its generic blue folder icon. Or, not.

It’s simple to copy and paste a file’s icon to customize a folder. In this example, click on the Mail application in the Applications folder and choose Edit -> Copy. Then select the new, plain e-mail downloads folder and use Command-I to open its Info window. Click on the icon in the Info window and then press Command-V. The Finder pastes the Mail icon over the default folder icon.

Copy and paste Finder icons
It’s simple to give a file or folder a new icon. At the top here you see the Get Info window before (background) and after (foreground) pasting in the new icon. At the bottom, you see the Finder’s window sidebar before and after an icon change.

3. Grab a file’s pathname

Need to use a file pathname? You don’t have to type out something like /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/dsmappings. The alternative is a two-step process, but it’s quick, and guarantees accuracy. Select the file or folder, press Command-C, and then open Terminal (in your Applications folder). Press Command-V and the full path name appears at the Terminal prompt. Now you can select, cut, and then paste it wherever you need it.

4. Turn a file’s contents into a Preview document

Apple’s unsung workhorse, the Preview program, can open PDF files and a wide variety of graphics formats for viewing, annotation, or file-format changes. That means you can use it to put bookmarks in a PDF file, adjust the color or file format of almost any graphic file or photo, to annotate a Photoshop file, or even to mark up individual frames of a GIF. But you’ll probably want to work on a copy of your original file—particularly if, for example, you’re worried about mistakenly saving over the original document with markups.

There’s no need to open a file in Preview and then use Save As to make the copy. Instead, select the file while you’re in the Finder and copy it. Switch to Preview and use Command-N to activate the New From Clipboard command. Preview will create a new untitled document from the contents of the Clipboard—even if it’s a 200-page PDF file.

5. Paste a copy of a file wherever you need it

You can Option-drag a file or folder in the Finder to make a copy in a new location, but to do that you need both locations accessible at the same time. Instead, select the file in the Finder and copy it. Then open the perhaps deeply nested target folder and paste a copy of the file there.

Bonus tip: Once you’ve copied a file in the Finder, switch over to Mail and paste into a message window for a quick and easy way to attach the file to your message.

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Posted in MAC, Mac Tutorials, Snow Leopard | No Comments »

Copy music off your iPod with a MAC

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Copy music off your iPod

by Kirk McElhearn, Macworld.com

It’s happened to the best of us: a hard drive crash takes our precious iTunes library down to Davy Jones’ Locker, and we either don’t have backups, or our backups are corrupted or out of date. If those files are on your iPod, however, you can restore them to your computer—with a little bit of work.

I’m so obsessive about my music collection that I keep two backups of my music, because Kirk’s First Rule of Computing is that you will, one day, lose your files. But let’s say something happens to your backups and you can’t get your music files restored. Apple doesn’t provide any way for you to copy files from your iPod back to your Mac. While there are legitimate reasons for blocking bi-directional copying—it would be simple to dump your entire music collection on a friend’s computer, for example—there are also good reasons why you might need to do so.

A friend of mine e-mailed me the other day asking how he could recover files from his iPod. There are several ways and utilities to help you, but let’s start with the easy and free way.

First, connect the iPod to your Mac; as soon as you do so, hold down the Command and Option keys, which will tell iTunes not to sync to your iPod. You’ll then see the iPod (but not iPhone or iPod touch) show up in the Finder sidebar. If you click it, to see its contents, you’ll see four folders by default: Calendars, Contacts, Notes and Recordings. But what you won’t see are any of the music files stored on your iPod; that’s because Apple has hidden them. You’ll need a way to display these hidden files in the Finder. If you’re comfortable using Terminal, you can run this command:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Then hold down the Option key, click and hold the Finder icon in the Dock, and choose Relaunch. The Finder will quit, then restart and display invisible files. (After you’re all done, repeat the above Terminal command but replace YES with NO.)

If Terminal’s not your thing you can use a free utility such as Onyx to simplify this change in visibility. Click Parameters, then Finder, then check Show Hidden Files And Folders.


The contents of the iPod_Control folder, with its Music folder selected. The dimmed files and folders are normally hidden.

When you look at the contents of the iPod now, with hidden files displayed, you’ll see a folder called iPod_Control. Inside this folder are a number of sub-folders; double-click the Music folder to see more folders containing your music files. They are numbered from F00 to F50, and each one contains a number of music files. Look inside one of these folders; you’ll see cryptic names like “ACXD.m4a”. In other words, your music files don’t retain their original names; just another way to hide them from you.

If you’ve lost all your music, you can simply select all these folders (or the Music folder that contains them), and drag them into iTunes to copy all the files from your iPod back into iTunes. Your files will retain all of their tag information, but you won’t have your playlists.

If you’ve only lost some of your music, your best bet is to create a new playlist, then drag the music folders to that playlist. You’ll have to sort out which files are duplicates (you can select Library in the sidebar, then choose File -> Show Duplicates to find out), and delete the extras. There are also a bunch of utilities that can help you deal with dupes.

There are some limits to the above trickery, however. First, you can’t use this technique with an iPhone or iPod touch; they don’t show up in the Finder. Second, you can’t pick and choose what you want to copy, and you can only copy music files, not playlists.


Senuti compares the contents of an iPod with an iTunes library. Songs with blue dots at the left are already in the library.

To get around this, there are a number of utilities that can help, such as Findley Designs’ $20 iPod Access, KennettNet Software’s £10 Music Rescue, The Little App Factory’s $20 iPodRip, Sci-Fi Hi-Fi’s $8 PodWorks, or FadingRed’s $18 Senuti (many of these utilities also work on Windows PCs). Most apps look at the contents of your iPod—even an iPod touch or iPhone—and compares it with your iTunes library. They shows which tracks are not in the iTunes library, and let you copy the ones you want back to your Mac. Technorati Tags: , , , ,

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Posted in iTunes, MAC, Mac Tutorials | 1 Comment »

Extract DVD’s with Mac The Ripper

Monday, October 27th, 2008

This software is great and easy to use if you are trying to backup your DVD collection.

Download it out at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14414 or http://www.mactheripper.org

Wordup,

DJ

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