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Telligenti

Serving up fresh ideas every day, Telligent style

Jason Alexander

October 2007 - Posts

  • Must-have apps and answers for Windows Mac converts

    So, in my ongoing task to convert people over to the Mac platform (at least for day-to-day work), I was able to convert Eric Smith, of CodeSmith fame.

    He had been asking little questions here and there for a few weeks, and one day I got a rash of questions throughout the day. Lo and behold, the next day he came to work with a brand new, fancy schmancy Macbook.

    So, after having taken the red pill, he had lots of questions of what apps were must-have's, how does he do certain things, and so on. With that in mind, I thought these were all great questions! So, I'm going to cover them here.

    What are the must-have apps for Windows converts on a Mac?

    1. FireFox and/or Camino - I'm not a big Safari fan, personally. And, I love FireFox. Now, add in a little Mac flare and you have Camino. It's awesome.
    2. Quicksilver - This is THE must-have launcher app. I rarely ever use my task bar any more in OS X. A quick control+spacebar, start typing, three letters in (typically) hit enter. Bam. Done.
    3. Adium - Awesome messenger application. Supports MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, GTalk and so on. Highly customizable and has tabbed conversations. Greatness.
    4. Thunderbird - If you have your own personal IMAP or POP accounts that you check, I like T-bird. It's a bit of a hog, so I don't leave it open. But, it's great for getting in, replying and getting out. I'm looking forward to Gmail IMAP support.
    5. Flip4Mac - This lets you play WMV or WMA within Quicktime on the Mac. Must, must have.
    6. Growl - Many Mac apps will use Growl to do toast pop-up's like you're used to on Windows.
    7. DoubleCommand - With my MacBook Pro I have weird keys that are in odd spots (or at least spots I'm not used to), and I have keys missing all together. DoubleCommand lets me change and re-map keys on the keyboard.
    8. smcFanControl - This lets you change the settings of how the fan works on a Mac. As you've probably heard, Macs tend to run a little hot sometimes. For me, I like running smcFanControl and setting the default speed of my fans a little higher so that it stays cooler all around and doesn't need to kick in so often. The plus side to this is that the settings stick so that if/when you boot over to BootCamp in Windows the settings stay.
    9. iStatPro - This is a great Dashboard widget that lets you watch and monitor the resources of your machine, including CPU, memory, harddrive usage, processes, etc... this is a MUST have.
    10. CallWave Widget - This is visual voicemail before the iPhone got it. I talked previously about how I switched my mobile's voicemail over to CallWave. Using this widget you can view and listen to your voicemail all from the Dashboard. For introverted hermits like myself, this is awesome.

    Other tips:

    • Apple -> System Preferences -> Dashboard & Expose - Set the top right corner to "All Windows" and the bottom right corner to "Desktop". This lets you move your mouse to the top right corner and Expose will kick in, showing you all windows that are open, laid out for you to pick and switch to. This is THE way to move between windows on a Mac instead of the old alt+tab (although, that works on a Mac too). Moving your mouse to the bottom right corner will clear all the windows out of the way, showing your desktop. This is ideal when you have a ton of windows open (like I'm apt to do) and you can move everything, clck on something on the desktop, move back to the bottom right corner and everything restores behind your newly opened window.
    • Dashboard - Press F12 - This is Dashboard. You can install all kinds of widgets and such. Install the few useful ones I have listed above.
    • Trackpad settings - If you are on a Macbook with a trackpad, you need to go into Apple -> System Preferences - Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad and check "Use two fingers to scroll" as well as "Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click". The first option lets you use two fingers and with a scrolling motion on your trackpad you can scroll anything on the screen. Very, very handy. You'll get used to this and love it. The second option lets you tap the trackpad with two fingers and do a right-click on anything. One of the big misconceptions of Macs is that there's only one mouse button. Wrong. Only if you let it only have one mouse button. ;)
    • Spotlight - Anytime you have a question, get lost, can't find a setting or a screen, using Spotlight. This is the little search icon/textfield that is on everything. Remember that Spotlight is contextual based on whatever screen you're on. If you're in System Preferences and type "network" in it it will highlight all icons within System Preferences that have to do with networking. If you click the magnifying lens at the top right of the screen and start typing, it will show you all files that have the name of what you're typing or have contents that may contain the text you're typing. Very handy for beginners when feeling your way around OS X.
    • Locations - If you have different network setups at home vs. work you'll want to use Locations. Apple -> Location -> Network Preferences... will open the network preferences screen. Clicking on the Location drop down you can edit locations and add in various network profiles for how you want to configure your separate networks. Then, whenever you change physical locations simply go to Apple -> Location and choose the appropriate location to pick up your network configuration.
    • Force Quit - YES, it is possible to have an application hang in OS X. I know, I know. You thought OS X was just all flowers and cotton candy. Well, it happens. When it does, just right click the icon on the task bar and choose "Force Quit" and this will kill that application with great prejudice.

    So, this is a huge post. And, there's so much more. Assuming you guys like this content, I may follow-up with more. Particularly, I've been an avid Parallels user for awhile, and I'm switching to VMWare Fusion as we speak. I'll blog about that experience later.

    But, hopefully this is helpful to someone!

    Posted Oct 25 2007, 12:37 PM by Jason Alexander
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  • What's on your Phone?

    Wow, who woulda thunk it?

    5 years ago I was adamant about the fact that you should only use your mobile phone as a phone. I really didn't like using email on the phone, I hated text messages... yes, call me a grumpy old man.

    But, just this morning while I was driving in, I realized I use my phone for EVERYTHING these days. I'm talking on it (though, as some of you that know me personally can attest, I HATE talking on the phone), sending text messages, answering email, and then browsing... oh man, do I browse.

    So, I'm wondering, what all do you have bookmarked on your phone browser? Here's mine:

    1. Gmail - http://gmail.com - Gmail sniffs the browser and sends you a mobile version. It's great, and very handy. Very usable as an email client still, amazingly enough.
    2. Google Mobile - http://www.google.com/pda/ - PDA version of Google for searching. Also gives you a cool little widget news screen on the search page. Very nice!
    3. Google Reader - http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/ - The mobile version of Google Reader. The ultimate time waster. I've drained many a battery reading my feeds at my daughter's gymnastics class with this thing. Curse you Google!
    4. Jaiku - http://m.jaiku.com - My new best friend. New post forthcoming, but Twitter is so Web 1.0 (insert tongue in cheek here).
    5. Twitter - http://m.twitter.com - My old best friend. Unfortunately, it's plagued with problem after problem, and I've just had enough. I keep it bookmarked so when I'm bored I can still review what's going on.
    6. My Blog - http://JasonA.net - I have my blogmailr setup to post to my blog, and my flickr setup to be able to snap and send pictures to my blog. So, I use this bookmark to double check to make sure things went through (maybe Brendan Tompkins is right, and blogs really ARE ego driven... hmmm...).

    Obviously, everyone's been talking about how the mobile industry is heating up, and I denied it until now. But, I'm curious to see if this is the trend overall, or am I just weird (definitely could be the case!).

    So, in the spirit of those terrible, nasty meme's, I'm starting another one! :)

    I'm calling out five others to answer this meme, and pass it on to five others! What say you Scott Watermasysk, Robert Scoble, Rob Conery, Phil Haack and Jeff Atwood?

    Posted Oct 12 2007, 02:29 PM by Jason Alexander
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  • MarsEdit - Blogging Tool for OS X!

    So, Scott pointed me at MarsEdit as a blogging tool on OS X. I had always tried to use ecto for my blogging client on OS X, but I think I like MarsEdit better. It's much simpler, cleaner and better looking. ecto seems to be more advanced and have more features, but at the end of the day I just want a blogging client, dammit. I don't need it to cook me breakfast, speak to me in French, and give me a back massage (scratch that, I DO want that).

    But, so far I likey.

    Rating? 4 out of 5 stars.

    PROS: Nice, clean OS X style interface. Non-nonsense, get down to business blogging client.

    CONS: The editor is somewhat archaic feeling. I can do markup, but it doesn't appear to be WYSIWYG, instead you work directly in markup source and you have to click "Preview" - that seems so old school these days.

    Anyways, interesting app. Definitely worth a peek.

    Posted Oct 09 2007, 02:22 PM by Jason Alexander
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  • Live Writer support!

    The great thing about Graffiti is that it also supports the MetaBlog API so that means you can use your favorite posting application, like Windows Live Writer (my personal favorite).

    Well, it should work. We'll see if this post gets there. ;)

    Posted Oct 08 2007, 06:09 PM by Jason Alexander
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  • New site launched!

    So, I spent much of Saturday night working on a new skin for my site.

    I knew that I wanted to roll out our new product, Graffiti (website coming soon!), to use on my site (I wouldn't be a good Telligenti if I didn't dogfood it!). I started off by not even booting my Parallels XP VM up, and worked just on the OS X side with TextMate, and CSSEdit. I was convinced that I could just design a site from scratch. And, I probably could have, but ultimately my laziness won over and I started digging around.

    In doing so I found this great Wordpress theme called Redoable. I was instantly in love. I've never really run a dark theme, so I had to give it a try. After a few hours of work I had converted the skin over to a Graffiti skin, and all was well with the world.

    And, all I can say is: WOW!

    You guys are going to love Graffiti. It's very, very powerful while at the same time it's so easy to work with. I really think it's going to change the world. :) But, I'm also a little biased.

    Unfortunately, I've had to disable my comments temporarily while I work through a bug on my side (I'm sure it's something I've done). But, I'll turn them back on soon! Meanwhile, drop me a line at jalexander [at] telligent [dot] com with your feedback! I'd love to hear it!

    Posted Oct 07 2007, 11:54 AM by Jason Alexander
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