Fantastic overview from MacStories of the iCloud music service available to developers right now. There's no guarantee these features will be part of the public launch but it sounds likely.
Only Apple would leave out a little detail like music streaming from their announcement of a new music service. "One more thing…"
I never expected to see GeekTool make it to the Mac AppStore. As the name implies, it is really for serious nerds. It's an awesome tool and I use it on my MacPro to provide system info on the Desktop. Since menu bar and Dock space are a premium on a 13" screen, GeekTool spreads the info out across my Desktop and also provides some nice aesthetics as well.
One disadvantage of running Little Snitch: You finally know all the background activities going on constantly and consuming bandwidth, memory and cpu cycles without your implicit acknowledgement.
I was not running any FileMaker products at the time. Apparently "helpd" wants to talk to their help server anyway.
If you run Little Snitch, you will have a great appreciation for how active an "idle" machine really is.
John Gruber.
If you need access to special Unicode characters, Apple provides a nice support page.
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Brett Terpstra just posted a very nice tool for inserting dates using Natural Language. His post is definitely worth a read.
Given my preference for Python and my previous experience with Natural Language Processing, I decided to implement something similar through a Keyboard Maestro trigger.
I have a macro that pops up a text box and asks for the date language you would like to interpret. Apparently KBM does have a leg up on TextExpander, in that it can accept input to a shell script or applescript.
I tried Paprika (Mac AppStore link) awhile back on the iPad but I did not like their paid syncing solution and there was not a corresponding Mac application. Both of those issues are now gone. Syncing is free and the application is available across iPhone, iPad and Mac. It’s a lovely looking app and has some nice features like meal planning and shopping lists.
On the recent episode of the B&B Podcast, Shawn and Ben had a lengthy discussion about the optimal home computing setup. They got pretty close to what I settled on a couple of years ago. I think this post describes my ideal setup until Thunderbolt is ubiquitous. At that point a MacBook Air could instantly connect to an array of devices through one cable and replace my desktop. I would still keep the MacMini server though.
If you are a proud user of BBEdit, don't forget that it can help with text anywhere in the OS through the services menu.
Using Automator, you can build new services that receive selected text and replace it with some processed text. Here's an example for use with Markdown enthusiasts. I hate when I am working in TextEdit or NVAlt and I forget to prepend a list with bullets. This service fixes that.
If you have not made the rounds over at StackExchange then you are going to kick yourself when you finally do. It’s so crammed full of gems that it’s hard to walk away without learning something new.
Here’s a list of people’s favorite gestures for Lion. Or how about auto-mounting volumes at login? Here are general questions about keyboard shortcuts on Mac OS X and some info about Mission Control usage.
