Random Thoughts

Apple Subtly Change Keyboard Experience in OS X Lion

We’ve all been there,you have the Mac keyboard in front of you and suddenly you hear the beep-beep-beep as it tries to enter a thousand Xs into the Finder as you accidentally press the key. Well not in OS X Lion. Go on try it. Press and hold a key. No auto repeat.

However,what there is now is a fantastic new feature,if you press and hold a letter that has alternatives with various diacritical marks a little popup will open;

To enter a character simply click it. Or as you can see each symbol has a number above it and typing this will enter it. So if I want cafe to be café I type caf press and hold the e and hit 2.

This is a really simple and clever development and is much more usefull than the keyboard autorepeat.

Turn Any Web App Into An OS X App With Fluid

More and more of what we do these days is via the web,from Google Mail to Salesforce there are apps for pretty much any task. Living in the browser is fine but I tend to have a lot of tabs open and sometimes it is nice to just launch an app for a specific task. Now thanks to a small OS X app called Fluid any web page or app can be packaged into an OS X app. Continue reading Turn Any Web App Into An OS X App With Fluid

Photos Roundup

I’ve uploaded several albums to Flickr and didn’t get around to updating the blog to reflect that. So here in one go is a bit of a catch up.

First off,a few photos from a weekend break in Cumbria.

Next up some photos from in and around Runnymede,site of the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. Also from the moving Air Forces Memorial which is a short walk away.

The next batch are from Audley End House which is near Saffron Waldon Essex.

Two properties in Suffolk next,Framlingham Castle and Orford Castle.

Finally some taken at Wimpole Estate and Gardens including the fabulous gardens and orchards.

Phew. Done. Must update as I go in future .

Secure iPad/iPhone Usage on Insecure WiFi

When I opted for an iPad I chose the 3G version so that I could use it when away from WiFi but as useful as this is it is still bound by caps on usage and can be variable in coverage. The other day I was at an event and had these issues so checked for local WiFi. There were dozens of access points in the place some of which were free but of course these were insecure in that a) they didn’t even have WEP let alone a WPA and b) just because an SSID says “Conference WiFI”or similar doesn’t actually make it so. If you think that’s paranoia then yes,it is. But also search for Hak5 pineapple and you’ll see just how easy it is to scam people into giving you all their network traffic in the clear to play with at your leisure.

So this got me thinking. It would be really nice to make use of free WiFi when it is available but to do so more securely. This calls for a VPN so that all the network traffic is sent through a secured tunnel rather than in the clear. Fortunately it’s fairly easy to set this up using both OS X (my OS of choice) and on iOS. There are a couple of other steps to make it workable whenever I’m out and about. Continue reading Secure iPad/iPhone Usage on Insecure WiFi

Aweditorium for iPad is Awesome for music

Aweditorium is a free app for the iPad which is designed to allow you to find indie music. If you are thinking meh then let me tell you that this app does this in an awesome,immersive and gorgeously presented way.

When you download and start it up you are presented with a screen full of artist thumbnails and if you start to drag around you'll realise that there are hundreds to choose from. So,tap one and you'll be taken to a full size high def photo of the artist and the track will start playing. If you do nothing else you will get the lyrics overlaid with the song. However if you tap the screen you'll get pop ups over the picture with information about the artist(s) and at the bottom right there are some options including pause. The other options allow you to do the usual things that you would like such as share the song on Twitter or Facebook or find other songs by the same artist and if you desire,buy the song or album on iTunes. You can of course also get back to the main wall from here.

All the artists are as far as I can see all indie outfits but there is a diverse range of genres although there is a certain random chance element as here doesn't seem to be any personalisation a la Pandora or Last FM,but then that is the best way to find hidden gems that you may not listen to otherwise.

This is an excellent project although it may well cost me a fair amount in iTunes downloads!

Update

After I'd played with this and written the above I Googled to see if I'd missed any features and came across a post by Scoble who made a resonant reference which is that the last time I found a whole raft of new artists was when the SXSW folks opened up the archive of all the music at that festival. This will now allow me to find new music on an ongoing basis.

Who needs iTunes for The Beatles when you can hear them in the medium of Ukulele?

So this week the Beatles finally came to iTunes. Meh. If you want the real Beatles then look no further than The Beatles Complete on Ukulele. Genius.

paper.li –Catch up on your Twitter feed

Twitter is great but I can't watch it all day every day and so I've known for a while that I've been missing things. For much of this it isn't an issue,Twitter is largely transient after all,but there is a lot of content from the people I follow that is of interest and as many of them are in the US the time difference means I miss things. So I was interested when I came across paper.li which is an interesting way to solve the problem.

What paper.li does is allow you to create your own "newspaper"based on your Twitter feed,or indeed on hashtags or a range of other goodies. When you base it on your main feed it does some neat things such as pull out and expand video and photo links and create sections based on the hashtags that it finds. Where the tweet has a link to a web article it shows the start of the article with the title linking to the original website.

It only updates once a day so it is very much a catch up tool and it has helped me find all sorts of things that I would otherwise of missed.

Posterous –The one blog to feed them all

Posterous is a site that has been around for a while but may have passed people by. In simple terms it is a blogging tool but what sets it apart is that it is designed to be as simple to get posts up as possible. With that in mind the default way to post is via email. Once you have set up an account you simply email to post@posterous.com (as I'm doing with this post) and it will be uploaded to the account that is linked to the email address. Simple as that.

Of course that in itself isn't very compelling. So Posterous also acts as a feeder for all the other sites that you may have accounts on. You can set up links to Facebook,Twitter,Flickr,YouTube and just about any other well known site or blogging platform. When you then post to Posterous it will automatically format it and send it onto the other sites,so if there are photos it will go to Flickr and Twitter,video will go to Youtube. All automatically.

If you don't want to blast everything everywhere there's even a simple way to be selective. Emailing post@posterous.com sends to all the appropriate linked sites based on the content,but sending to a selection is equally easy as there are a series of other email addresses such as;

twitter@posterous.com for Twitter
facebook@posterous.com for Facebook
blog@posterous.com for your own hosted blog
twitter+flickr@posterous.com for both Twitter and Flickr but nowhere else

This is extremely powerful and give total control over what goes where if required.

Naturally there are also apps for iPhone and Android to allow posting on the go.

Because the site is based around email accounts it is also really easy to set up a Posterous based on a group of people who may be coming together for a specific reason,for example if there is an event where a group may want to take photo and put them in one place someone can set up a Posterous site,add the email addresses of all the participants and then they can all submit their photos by simply emailing them.

The service is free and very easy to use. You can also set up your own domain link if needed,the service is still hosted on Posterous but will appear via your own domain link.

All in all a very good solution.

Random Thoughts

Tweets

Ask Me Anything

Obligatory Ads