iTunes integration finally complete!

Complete... that's a rare state around here! But after months of tweaking, rating songs, and trying different iTunes utilities, iTunes is working seamlessly and effortlessly.

The biggest challenge was to rate all of my music. I have almost 50 gigs, so leaving iTunes on Party Shuffle makes sense. Shuffle has an option to play higher rated songs more often, so this is the main point to rating your music.

As my favourite music gets played more often, it gets ranked more accurately on last.fm, the popular self-charting service (check it out if you aren't using it!).

QuickSilver integration: I used Synergy (I even paid for it!) for a while, but QuickSilver can do almost the same thing (for free!), and I have QuickSilver running anyway, so I get to free up a token amount of memory by removing Synergy. Is QS, I created triggers to control iTunes with global keystrokes for fast forward, pause, display artwork, assign a rating, etc.

QuickSilver displays artwork when a song begins, but I am also using a sweet little iTunes plugin called DockArt, which replaces the iTunes icon in the dock with the cover art from iTunes. Why bother? Because you can!

And if you don't have the cover art for your songs? You can use a dashboard widget that finds the art on Amazon. It's called... Amazon Art!

Introduction to QuickSilver

Everybody I know has probably heard me mention QuickSilver at some point. No other application exists that has as much buzz, while being nearly impossible to describe. While you could just install it and poke around, I'll try to outline some cool things that you can do with it, and as I find ways to make my workflow more efficient, I will share those tips with you.

The first thing you need to do is download QuickSilver. Download it from here and install. The preferences menu is where you will create an infinitely complex program -- eventually -- but for now just change the HotKey Activation to something easy, like Command-SpaceBar.

The most basic function of QuickSilver is an application launcher. Invoke QuickSilver, type the first few letters of the application you wish to load. If the application you wanted did not show up, press the down key until it is highlighted. If you want that application to show up first, by default, the next time you enter those letters, click the radio button beside the application name. Press Return to launch the application.

You will notice that second panel, beside the application name, displays the "Open" action. While this is useful (I use it all the time), there are many other actions within QuickSilver. But we'll leave that for next time. For now, enjoy the launcher.

What are RSS feeds?

In a previous post, I talked about the ideal way to view your RSS feeds, and already there are some new options out there. But I neglected to explain what RSS really is, or how it works. If you aren't aware, this post is for you.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (and used to stand for Rich Site Summary). It's delivered by a mark-up language - XML - and its purpose is to summarizes new web content, so users can track updates to a site rather than revisit the site to check for updates.

This can be of great benefit to you for three reasons: you need not miss new content on your favourite sites; you will be alerted to the update immediately, so you will not miss time-sensitive updates; no more tedium of checking sites for updates, and trying to figure out what's new.

Any page that has an RSS feed will have a little RSS icon, or just a subtle RSS link. Click on it to see what the feed looks like. The URL should end in .xml, and that's the URL you will use if you manually add that page to your subscriptions (If you run NetNewsWire, just click Subscribe).

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are a fantastic way to quickly see the latest news from your favourite sites, without having to check those sites frequently. Safari supports RSS natively, and Firefox and some other browsers support news reader extensions, but I prefer to use a web-based aggregator called News Gator Online, set to my homepage. It's free, and does a great job of displaying content. As you would expect, it updates itself, so if you leave a tab open in the browser of your choice, you can see all the updates without refreshing.

The same company that created NewsGatorOnline has a wonderful RSS application (i.e. not browser-based) called NetNewsWire, which does a wonderful job of organizing multiple feeds. This is not freeware, but you download the demo here. It features a very intuitive interface and I'm really digging it so far (update: there is a new freeware version called NetNewsWire Lite 2.1).

While I'm on the subject of RSS feeds... here's a tip: some sites like Craigslist create RSS feeds based on a custom search. This means you can perform a search once, and your RSS aggregator will keep a constant eye on the site for new results. For example, I searched for "foosball" on Vancouver's craiglist (for sale category), and it created this RSS feed for me. Now NewsGator will let me know whenever someone in Vancouver has a foosball table for sale.

Manage your bookmarks with cocoalicious.

Over time, one tends to build up a huge collection of bookmarks. Using my .mac account, I used to sync my bookmarks where I used to work with the ones at home, so if an interesting page caught my eye at work, I could check it out later without having to send myself a link. But after a while, the amount of bookmarks you have to manage is overwhelming, and a particular bookmark can get lost among hundreds of others.

The popular website del.icio.us allows users to post their links in an online database, and can access them from anywhere. The commonality allows del.icio.us to track site popularity, so you can view other popular bookmarks by going to the home page.

I decided to decentralize my bookmarks and move them all online. Here's the process:
1. sign up for an account at del.icio.us
2. download Safarilicious from http://www.StyleMac.com/safarilicious
3. run Safarilicious to export all of your bookmarks to your delicious account
4. Download Cocoalicious from http://www.scifihifi.com/cocoalicious/
5. Run Cocoalicious to organize your delicious bookmarks, tagging them to become searchable. This is the hardest part of the process, but it's a wonderful organizational tool.
6. Download the Firefox extension for del.icio.us. Once installed, you can bookmark pages with a simple CTRL-click.

Now, when I want to play a game online, I can type in "gaming" to Cocoalicious and I can launch the site from there. To search for font websites, I look for any site tagged with "fonts". And so on. If I'm at another computer, I can just login to the website to access my bookmarks.

You may still want to keep some daily bookmarks in Firefox, but Cocoalicious can manage all your bookmarks for you, so there's no more need to have a huge tree of folders to organize.

Welcome to The Mac Tuner

Welcome to The Mac Tuner, a(nother) blog dedicated to getting the most out of Mac OS X operating system. Here I chronicle my experiences with utilities, applications, and hacks that make my life easier.

A little profile on myself: I'm a freelancing graphic designer who also dabbles in web design. I work from home, and spend practically every minute at, or near, my Mac - a 2.5 year old PowerMac G5. When I'm not actually working on designs, promoting myself, writing blogs, or checking out the coolest new Mac apps, RSS feeds, etc... well actually that doesn't leave much time for anything else =D Okay, just kidding. Actually I do a lot of other things, but they're not really relevant.

It is my wish that you will find this Blog useful. If you're a Windows/PC user, note that I am not a snob; I appreciate the advantages of the PC, but I enjoy the Mac experience much, much more. It would be nice to have more PC users convert, but maybe if everybody did then Macs wouldn't seem so cool.

Anyways, see you soon!