[via Apple - Pro - Tips ]:

The Apple Pro Tips are really good. I've learned a bunch of things that I never would have learned another way. This one is that if you hold the command key while copying to another volume, OS X will make the copy and then delete the original. I've been using Mac OS of one form or another since 1984, and I never knew about this one. Works in PathFinder, too.

As a followup to yesterday's post, here are two scripts for getting stuff from NetNewsWire to del.icio.us.

1. selection to del.icio.us - send the currently selected news item to del.icio.us.
2. tab to del.icio.us - send the current browser tab to del.icio.us

You will have to edit the scripts to point to your del.icio.us account.

Ian Holsman describes a CSS based trick for blocking some ads in NetNewsWire's browser. It definitely cut a bunch of ads in pages that I was looking at...

Mark Lentczner left a really cool tip in the comments of my window hiding post:

Also note this nice trick: Once you have Exposéd the Application Windows, you can hit tab to cycle between applications -- they swap in, Exposéd - just mouse over the one you want and click. Boom - that app is in front, and that window is on top. For me, this works better than Exposé All Windows since I often have many applications and windows open and so doing them all makes them really too small.

Here are some handy tools for automating stuff on your Macintosh.

Stakeout with Growl support

Run a script when files change

CocoaDialog

Mac OS X user interface dialogs that you can use from your favorite UNIX scripting language

osxutils

A set of command line tools for maniuplating Mac specific information

mmv is a really useful utility that I've used for a long time. On Debian there are packages for it, but there aren't fink packages or other prebuilt binaries for OS X. So yesterday I got fed up with not having mmv on the Mac, so I went to the Debian package page for mmv
and grabbed the sources for the Debian package (I had a devil of a time finding the sources elsewhere). After that it was

gcc -o mmv mmv.c

and I was in business.

Brent has released the latest public beta of NetNewsWire. I believe that in this version he's taken care of the last bugs that were annoying me in my daily work flow.

Remember, THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE. Before you download, backup your existing data files, and be aware that things may be unstable. I haven't found that to be the case, but you might have a problem, since there are some features that I don't use. Click here to go the the beta page.

For those of you that like iPulse, the latest version can put up a display in the menu bar (the leftmost stuff):

I didn't like MenuMeters because my menu bar is too full when I'm using the PowerBook display. This is the best of both worlds...

[via fintanr's weblog ]:

wget --post-data 'really_long_set_of_options' http://foo.com/cgi/myScript

I'm a heavy user of OS X's Command Tab application switcher (a holdover from my Windows using years). I also use the Hide Application functionality that Tim Bray wrote about yesterday, which has been around from pre OS X days. But I didn't learn that that you could hide application from the application switcher until I read this week's Apple - Pro - Tip of the Week.

SubEthaEdit 2.1 is out. One undocumented feature is a command line tool to integrate a shell with the native app. The thing that isn't documented is the name of the command line tool. So here it is:

see

Here's an update of my Macintosh Tips and Tricks. The contents of this post have been folded into the main file.

Software

• AB-FOAF
Export your address book to FOAF
• OnMyCommandCMshop
Add more actions to your command (control-click) menu
• Adium
The best (such as it is) multiprotocol IM client for the Mac. Jabber support is horrible
• Paparazzi
A neat little utility for taking perfectly sized screenshots of web pages
• Download comment for Safari
Store the url of a download in the Finder comments of the downloaded file
• Unicode Checker
A useful tool for dealing with Unicode. Also makes itself available via the services menu
• Growl
A system wide notification service with command line tools and Python bindings. Supported by Ecto, Adium.
• svnX
A standalone installable subversion
• cscreen
Set the screen resolution and refresh rate from the command line
• chatmaster
Manage iChat and Adium archives
• AntiRSI
A very nice app that forces you to take those RSI breaks

Tips

Getting to hidden folders in open/save dialogs

You need to know how to do this!

Using iChat to send SMS's to a cell phone

The advantage of doing this is that the SMS reply goes to the iChat window, not your e-mail mbox

How to launch a GUI app as root

If you must, you must

Nicer separators for Safari Bookmarks

I'm using Safari a bit more

Rebuilding the Launch Services Database

These sorts of hints remind me of Windows...

How to solve Mail.app index problems

Because Mail.app does hang/crash.

Getting to the console from the login panel

This is handy when troubleshooting your machine

You can pipe the output of a shell command to "open -f" to get that output into TextEdit [via Macworld 10/2004 p. 87 ]

Some of this type of stuff can be done with Quicksilver

Docklet folders

Put commonly used folders into the dock for easy access

Turn on the Safari Debug Menu

There are a few useful items in the Debug menu - like import/export of bookmarks

I'm feeling a little slow on the blogging front. I did discover the MacWorld blogs (via the download edition of MacWorld):

• Mac 911
• Editor's Notes
• MacGems

There's also the new MacGeekery, which looks quite techy (a good thing).

One app that I just started using is AntiRSI, which a nice OS X app that prompts you to take a break so that your RSI doesn't get worse. I found it via this nice ONLamp.com article.

Merlin Mann has started a blog called 43 Folders, named for the number of folders needed to implement David Allen's "tickler file" If you're interested in Quicksilver, Getting Things Done, or general computer productivity (on a Mac), 43 Folders should be at the top of your aggregator. And get the del.icio.us feed too.

A reader wrote in suggesting the MacTruck as an alternative to QuickerTek's Powerbook handle. While the MacTruck looks like the invincible case for a Powerbook, it doesn't solve the problem that I have. I like to wander around in conferences, and being a small guy, I don't like toting a lot of stuff around with me. If Powerbooks had battery lifespans comparable to Centrinos, I could just carry the laptop for most of a conference. As it is, I minimally need to carry the Powerbook, the charger, and a spare battery, which is really too much. Since the MacTruck weighs in at 2.4kg (about 5lbs), it weighs as much as the Powerbook does, it's clearly way too much.

I go to SeaJUG to hang out with people. If the presentation is good, that's just a bonus. Here's an example of why. As we were riding over to the meeting, Wilhelm was telling me about see, which is basically emacsclient/gnuclient for SubEthaEdit. It allows you to invoke SubEthaEdit from the command line and have it open a file in a running SubEthaEdit, or start a new SubEthaEdit if one isn't running. Wilhelm picked this up off some blog that I never heard of. It comes in Objective-C source format.

It's been a while since I did an update of my Macintosh Tips and Tricks...

• Remote Desktop Connection Client 1.0.2
This application lets you remote control a Windows machine using the Microsoft RDP protocol. Now the only thing I can't do is pipe the video from my ATI AIW 8500DV onto the Mac, or I'd be set.
• natcheck
A tool for checking the firewall that you are behind for suitability for P2P (really iChat) usage.
• Set iChat status
Set your status according to your Physical Location
• A Groovy mode for SubEthaEdit 1
• Jet Clock
Menu bar clock that shows the time in up to 3 other time zones
• iCalibrate
Lets you customize the appearance of your iCalendar

iTunes related

• Fetch Art for iTunes
• LameBrain a LAME encoder
• iTunes-LAME a LAME encoder integrated with iTunes
• Ogg Drop Ogg Vorbis encoding

Command line tools/scripts

• Command line method to quit applications. I'm using the nice zsh functions.
• Shell script to make it easier to launch Mac apps from the command line
• Andreas Amann's Mail Scripts, a set of AppleScripts to make Mail.app do various cool things. The one I like the most is Schedule Delivery.

[ via the excellent Tao of Mac ]

DisplayWatcher is part of the solution that I've been looking for to manage my PowerBook usage. It allows you to run commands at display switches and wake from sleep. The second part of the solution is commands/Applescripts that get run to set up the right configurations. I tend to leave the PowerBook docked to the external monitor because it's just too much of a pain to reshuffle all the windows after a display switch. Maybe this will get me back to looking at solving the problem of keeping my windows laid out properly.

I've run into a number of people looking for a native Emacs for OS X. The one that I am running is a build of Emacs from CVS. But a few days ago Nelson Minar posted a list of Mac software, and one of the links is to a dmg for a prebuilt Carbonized Emacs.