Briefly: Otis now on the iPhone

In brief: The game Otis is now on the iPhone, iZen Garden was updated to version 1.5 and FlipBook for iPhone is now available for purchase. Wonder Wrap software has added a port of Otis to the App Store. The object of the game is to remove all the blocks from a board by clicking on grouped blocks of the same color. Additional points are added for c...

published on Monday, the 4. August 2008, macintosh-news-network

An AppleScript to convert PDFs to Safari bookmarks

Copy the following AppleScript into Script Editor, and save as an application: on open pdfFiles tell application "Finder" repeat with pdfFile in pdfFiles set thedestination to folder of pdfFile set theName to displayed name of pdfFile -- convert pdf to base64 and copy result to clipboard do shell script "/usr/bin/perl -0777 -e 'use MIME::Base64; $text = <>; $text = encode_base64($text); $text =~ s/\s+//g; print "data:application/pdf;charset=​utf-8;base64,$text\n";​' < " & quoted form of POSIX path of pdfFile & " | pbcopy" set theurl to the clipboard make new internet location file to theurl at thedestination with properties {name:theName} end...

published on Thursday, the 31. July 2008, macosxhints

Easily add lyrics to iTunes songs via AppleScript

Often programs like PearLyrics or SingThatiTune just don't find the song I am looking for, and I have to find the lyrics manually. I found it tedious to find the lyrics in Safari, switch back to iTunes, highlight the song I want to add the lyrics to, open the song's info panel, paste in the lyrics, and finally, close the window. So I wrote this simple AppleScript instead: tell application "System Events" set sel to (the clipboard as text) end tell tell application "iTunes" set lyrics of current track to sel end tell I then bound this AppleScript to a keyboard shortcut using iKeys (any macro-capable program should work just as well). It will copy any text currently in the clipboard to the currently playing song's lyrics.

published on Wednesday, the 16. July 2008, macosxhints

Clipboard Evolved updated

Mach Software has released a new version of its popular clipboard manager, Clipboard Evolved. Designed to fit neatly into Mac OS X (and so that it offers the most functionality with the smallest learning curve) the software offers two views, a clipboard window plus a menu for easy access to copied items. Clipboard Evolved adds an icon into the men...

published on Saturday, the 12. July 2008, macintosh-news-network

Corkboard "tricks out" your clipboard

A new Texas-based developer says he has found a way to build a better mousetrap, with an application that soups up the traditional clipboard. The clipboard is a staple of the Mac OS and a place to put stuff you want to copy or paste, but the new utility brings new functions: Ayluro Corkboard 1.0 runs alongside a userís clipboard, providing additio...

published on Monday, the 7. July 2008, macintosh-news-network

SnopesClip 1.0

Have anyone in your Address Book who keeps sending you loads of those mass-forwarded emails that may be hoaxes but every once and a while they're true Check 'em with Snopes. Copy a key word or short phrase (i.e. 'Klingerman Virus') from the email then run this script. It will pop open a new browser window (or tab) in your default browser and automatically search Snopes for whatever text is on the clipboard. For ease-of-use put this script in your Scripts folder so you can run it from the Scripts menu in the menu bar. Editable script released free under the GPL.

published on Monday, the 7. July 2008, scriptbuilders

WikiClip 1.0

If you use Wikipedia to look stuff up on a regular basis, you'll love this. Select and copy the text you want to search for in any email, web page, Word document, et cetera, then run this script. It'll open a new browser window (or tab) in your default browser and automatically search Wikipedia for whatever text is on the clipboard. For best results, limit your selection to 1 or 2 words. For ease of use, put this in your Scripts folder so you can run it from the menu bar. Editable script released free under the GPL.

published on Monday, the 7. July 2008, scriptbuilders

Sequence 1.0 screen capture tool released for Leopard

App4mac on Friday unveiled Sequence 1.0 for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, its screenshot and video capture tool designed to use multithreaded code and a 64-bit enabled compression system. Sequence allows users to capture screenshots and movies of the entire screen or segments within, and send the resulting media to either the clipboard or into a file. App...

published on Friday, the 4. July 2008, macintosh-news-network

Sequence: Screencasting On A Budget

App4Mac has introduced Sequence 1.0b1 a simple, yet powerful, screen capture/casting application for OS X Leopard. With Sequence, you can very easily capture and save an image or a movie of your screen to your computer’s clipboard or to a file in practically any image format (bmp, pict, gif, jpg, png, tiff & pdf). The welcome [...]

published on Wednesday, the 25. June 2008, apple-blog

Possibly restore older iPhoto themes in iPhoto '08

Upon trying to create a book in iPhoto '08, I noticed a lot of the old themes were not available. Browsing around, I found the theme folder for iPhoto in the top-level Library folder, in Application Support » iPhoto » Themes. Inside that folder were many themes not available through iPhoto itself, but that were available in older versions. As one example, BabyBoy-Hardcover.IPBookTheme isn't available in the list of book themes pop-up menu, but it is in that folder. I can't guarantee how safe/legal the following process is, but I was able to enable the old themes by editing a parameter in that theme's Contents/Resources folder. I opened Contents » Resources » Implementation.plist in a text editor (or Property List Editor) and changed the Hidden parameter from yes to no. After saving my changes and restarting iPhoto, the old theme was available in iPhoto. [robg adds: I used BBEdit and ran a multi-file search to find the hidden th...

published on Friday, the 20. June 2008, macosxhints