ReadNow[1] is a native application for growing and reading Instapaper and ReadItLater collections on the Mac. It takes a few aesthetic choices from Reeder, which is a good thing. The Instapaper Web site is fine, but nothing beats a native app like ReadNow. That’s one of my biggest roadblocks for catching up with my Instapaper backlog. There’s no good way to browse and organize Instapaper articles on the Mac. At least until now.
Fake[1] is so much fun. I expect to do a lot more with this. It really does make me giddy for some reason. Maybe because I’ve been doing some of this with Python scripts and it’s very difficult to do well.
Fake is like Automator for the web. But it’s better than that. It’s graphical programming for the web. It can automatically find and populate forms. It can submit logins and extract content.
This new bundle looks great. Some of the best Mac apps out there for $40. Seems like a good deal for developer and buyer.
I wanted a handy way to convert a feed url to the redirected url. For example, Reeder puts this url on the clipboard:
“http://feeds.harvardbusiness.org/~r/harvardbusiness/~3/_folqII9-_8/beware-of-the-short-term-opera.html”
But when I make a post, I want this url:
“http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2011/12/beware-of-the-short-term-opera.html”
There are a number of reasonable ways to do this, but I like Python so that’s what I went with.
It’s a Hack! I’m an inquisitive hack. I know just enough of these technologies to be dangerous.
He's not called "Dr." Drang for nothin'.
I think I learned no less than six new things in this post by Dr.Drang, one of which is that I need to follow Dr.Drang on Twitter.
I just started using CodeRunner and Patterns for script writing.[1] They are both available in the MAS.
CodeRunner supports AppleScript, Python, Ruby, Shell and several more. It provides syntax highlighting and code completion. Importantly it also provides a console window to display the output as well as a mode for accepting input. Sure, it’s not BBEdit, but it’s lightweight and single minded. There are not many frills but it works great.
I think it's appropriate to start this series with someone that makes and shares some of my favorite Mac things. I conceived this series with Brett in mind.
Brett Terpstra is the creator of Marked, a partner in the development of NVAlt and the proprietor of brettterpstra.com, where he shares things like TextExpander snippets, Lorem Ipsum generators and super-power AppleScripts.
What are the applications you use for making a post to brettterpstra.
We all have our tools and workflows for creating content. I love some of mine while others feel like sand in my shorts every time I use them. I was inspired by the Mac Power Users workflow shows and became preoccupied with the process by which other Mac nerds research and compose articles on the web.
I wanted to know about their tools and about their process. I wanted to know if I could improve my system by looking to people that geek out with Markdown or Shell scripts or TextExpander.
My previous look at a beer inventory system focused on Bento (see this link for the introduction). In this overview, I’ll explain my experiences while using Apple’s Numbers for the same purpose.
Using the Mac Numbers already stands out as the best general spreadsheet application on any platform. But this is not a Numbers review. How does it work as an inventory application?
Not surprisingly, it works like a spreadsheet. That’s not necessarily bad.
This might make the bash people out there smile a little bit. If you love the push and pop functions on unix, this pair of macros bring both to the OS X Finder.
The core of each macro is an AppleScript, so these could easily be ported to LaunchBar or Alfred.
Macro 1 - Push The Push macro grabs the currently viewed folder path and saves it to a Keyboard Maestro macro.
