Disable Growl pop-up notifications via AppleScript
This happens to my friends and I all the time ... you're giving a presentation, watching a movie, or whatever, and the Growl notifier starts popping up with your gChat messages or messages from GMail. I finally wrote an AppleScript to easily toggle the two notifiers for such circumstances; I hope this is helpful for others! Here's the script: tell application "System Events" set isRunning_Growl to (count of (every process whose name is "GrowlHelperApp")) > 0 set isRunning_Google to (count of (every process whose name is "Google Notifier")) > 0 end tell if isRunning_Google then tell application "GrowlHelperApp" set the allNotificationsList to {"Growl Toggler"} reg...
published today, 3 hours 19 minutes ago, macosxhints
FXhome PhotoKey 2 with masking tools
Developer FXhome says it has released PhotoKey 2, an updated version of its chromakey utility for photographers. Chromakey is the process of shooting against a green or blue background in order to isolate a subject, and post it into a different backdrop; PhotoKey handles both the extraction of a subject and its later insertion. Users can apply a variety of post-processing effects, such as light ...
published yesterday, 21 hours 29 minutes ago, macintosh-news-network
Latest Snow Leopard builds show Apple still has work to do
Apple issued new Snow Leopard test builds to developers this week, but the builds suggest that Apple still has some work to do building key features, not to mention all of the testing and tweaking that comes later in the process.Read More...
published yesterday, 1 day 2 hours 49 minutes ago, ars-technica
Hynix develops first 2Gb mobile RAM
Hynix on Wednesday boosted its Mobile Memory line and said it has developed the world's first two gigabit (256 megabyte) mobile RAM chip. The use of a smaller 54 nanometer manufacturing process has let the company double its previous best capacity while also improving the performance over past chips. Bandwidth for the outside world has been stepped up to 400 megabits per second, while the chip c...
published yesterday, 1 day 5 hours 4 minutes ago, macintosh-news-network
Apple looking into liquid-cooled MacBooks
Apple is looking into the use of liquid coolants to transport heat in its notebook computer designs, a controversial technique it employed briefly on its line of dual processor Power Mac G5s several years ago.
published on Tuesday, the 2. December 2008, appleinsider
Apple deals: iMacs, iPods, displays, more
Currently the Apple store is offering a variety of refurbished products from iMacs and displays to iPod nanos. Two iMac models are currently being offered starting at $1,299 for the 20-inch model with 2.66GHz processor, 2GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive and the 24-inch model with 2.8GHz processor, and the same memory and hard drive specs as the first for $1,549. Two MacBook models are also av...
published on Tuesday, the 2. December 2008, macintosh-news-network
Install some programs without using installers
You may wish that all apps used the simple "drag and drop" installation, instead of Apple's installer. As it turns out, a lot of them use installers when they don't even need to -- see this hint on installing Microsoft's Remote Desktop via drag-and-drop, for instance. There are lots of others that use package installers, and then ask for admin privileges, when they don't really need to. If you're concerned that they could be running daemons or background processes that make your computer slower, or put files where you don't want them to go, here's a manual-install method to try instead: Control-click on the package in Finder and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Navigate into Contents, where you may see more package installers, or you may see an Archive.pax.gz file. If you see the pax.gz file, double-click on it to decompress it and you'll find your .app ...
published on Tuesday, the 2. December 2008, macosxhints
Apple Quietly Recommends Antivirus Software For Macs
Barence writes "After years of boasting about the Mac's near invincibility, Apple is now advising its customers to install security software on their computers. Apple — which has continually played on Windows' vulnerability to viruses in its advertising campaigns — issued the advice in a low-key message on its support forums. 'Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.' It goes on to recommend a handful of products." Reader wild_berry points out the BBC's story on the unexpected recommendation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
published on Tuesday, the 2. December 2008, apple-slashdot
RoverPC intros Pro G7 smartphone
Russia's RoverPC recently introduced a business-oriented smartphone, the Pro G7. The handset includes a 2.8-inch, 640x480 touchscreen complemented by a scroll wheel. Processing power comes from a 624MHz CPU and 128MB of RAM that run Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional particularly smoothly. The quad-band GSM device can connect to the Internet over 3G data networks or hotspots thanks to its built-in Wi...
published on Monday, the 1. December 2008, macintosh-news-network
Retrieve the raw mixdown file from GarageBand
Every time GarageBand exports a song, it first creates an uncompressed mixdown file, called Output.aif. It then compresses this file into the file that you actually see. If you ever want to access the raw, uncompressed file, you can do this: Initiate the export. GarageBand says it's creating the mixdown. Open up Activity Monitor (Applications » Utilities » Activity Monitor) and select the GarageBand process. Press the Inspect button at the top. Select the Open Files and Ports tab. Copy the contents of it into a text editor. Search the text for Output; it's usually on the last line. Copy the path to the clipboard -- it will be something long and ugly like /private/var/ folders/8c/8c6KjuqYGKCLxYlDtiJFJk+++TI/ -Tmp-/GarageBand/Export/Output.aif (robg says: Note that spaces were added to the path shown here to allow line breaks; the real path won't have spaces, of course.). Open up Terminal (App...
published on Monday, the 1. December 2008, macosxhints