Sideblog
Different take on Google IO. He was actually there. I liked the Google Maps changes but didn't mention them. He and others have noted Android not being front and center.
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Apple adds Applescripting of Airplay to iTunes. (HT: John Gordon) I guess Applescript isn't quite dead yet. I immediately thought of this sketch.
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Solving the iCloud CoreData problem. (HT: CocoaManifest) There have been a few projects like this I've seen like TICoreDataSync. It's probably best to wait to see what Apple does at WWDC though.
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I used to do a lot of linguistic and pseudo-AI type code and am now getting back into it. So I found this treatise on metaphor identification in large texts quite fascinating.
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FatUrl. Like link shorteners like Bitly but lets you shorten a list of links and have them appear in pseudo-tabs. I've not yet decided if I like it but it might be useful for Twitter and ADN.
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Sharing data locally between iOS apps using url schemes and the clipboard. (HT: Michael Tsai) Hopefully with iOS7 all these UTI hacks won't be necessary.
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Using EventScripts and Bluetooth proximity to automatically turn lights on as you walk into a room.
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Memtest for testing all your memory. Nice little package. Run from the command line. Also see the allmemory command.
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John reviews Contaqs. The main feature he needed, good search, it doesn't do. Why are most 3rd party iOS contact apps so bad?
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How to put a build number in your Xcode project from git.
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The easy way to get your iOS screenshots. Nice tip using Spotlight.
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ReactiveCoreData Got to admit I really like all these ReactiveCocoa inspired frameworks. I've not used any of them yet - just read about them. But I like the approach. Hope Apple heads in this direction.
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XKCDify. It's an iPython notebook so it really only is helpful if you have iPython and the notebook stuff installed. (See this post of mine and this one) If you do have it installed this lets you easily make xkcd like graphs. (For an other cool iPython Notebook see this one on Bayesian methods)
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Having problems installing something with MacPorts? Check to make sure you agreed to the terms of Xcode's command line tools. Do sudo xcodebuild -license at the command line.
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Grab a high-res icon for any iOS app from iTunes. Nice little script and associated Automator action.
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Velox. Swipe gesture for your app icons in iOS to interact with your apps. Pretty fantastic and useful. Requires jailbreak but worth checking out even if you don't jailbreak. Hope Apple looks at this for iOS7.
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A kinetic charger for your iPhone. Converts movement to power. Were I still doing long distance hiking I'd love this. Bunch more here.
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Testing energy saving techniques. Some of these, like dimming your screen, were obvious. Some actually surprised me. I was surprised the iMac used as much power as it does.
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Using REST API with CoreData.
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Performance issues with Auto Layout on iOS.
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Generated Paper - templates for many kinds of paper like lined, grid, etc. I would have killed for this back in my DayTimer days. Now I can't quite see how I'd use it regularly.
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A nice repository of plugins and tools for OSX's Mail.
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We're the 3rd city to get Google Fiber. We actually had pretty great internet already. The city wired nearly all houses with fiber several years ago. Google's building on top of that. Bigger news is that 5Mbs will be free after $30 install. I'm looking at the Gigabit plan.
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A good overview of the 1Password exploit. If you have a good master password there's really not a huge issue here (IMO.
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Don't save OSX Mail drafts to Gmail server. I've had this problem in the past.
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A custom rss to see only root posts from selected people. Clever. Not sure I'll use it, but some might like this for keeping up on people they find interesting without reading all their conversations. (i.e. like me where I sometimes have long conversations)
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Use Xcode's behaviors to take a snapshot after any successful build. Cool tip. (HT: Kris Markel)
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Free UX/UI PSD kits for download.
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JRErr, a NSError helper which lets you use it with exceptions.
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Helios, a backend service for push, synchronization, in app purchase, and analytics that can be deployed on Heroku. (HT: Clever/You)
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More Sideblog Posts

Shell and Automator

I’ve been doing far too much “punditry” the past few weeks here. So I wanted to give a few tips. To start let me give a great way to keep infrequently used shell scripts. If you are like me you have some shell commands you run only occasionally. For instance when I am trying to [...]

iPad: Second Thoughts

I was pretty negative about the iPad the other day. I’ve been thinking about it more and I do think it would make an ideal second computer for some people. For instance my wife rarely does anything that demands more than what the iPad offers, and she’d love the form factor. I think thought that [...]

Web Apps vs. Desktop Apps

Web apps vs. desktop apps. I fully agree. Native apps are always better. and considerably better if they are scriptable. I really like Salesforce.com but part of me keeps wishing they had a desktop client. I think one difference is with the typical Windows app there isn’t much UI innovation so there isn’t a huge [...]

Underwhelmed

OK, I know everyone will be talking about the iPad. But most people I know are amazingly underwhelmed. This was like the lower baseline all rumors had in common. It’s basically just the iPhone: larger. First, I was very disappointed that the iPhone wasn’t mentioned at all. Although that may just mean iPhone 4.0 isn’t [...]

Voicemail to Google Voice

How to forward your voicemail to Google Voice.

PDF to Word

PDF to Word converter. Works reasonably well surprisingly. It’s an online service. Useful for those times someone wants the data in something other than PDF (for say editing) I wish Pages and Word had this built in.

Tethering App

Tethering app for non-jailbroken iPhones. Unfortunately you need a developer’s account. I use Addition’s iPhone Modem under jailbreak myself. Unlike most of the other tethering apps, this one is free. (I’m skeptical about paying for jailbreak apps given you never know if they’ll continue to work after an OS update)

Sending Data to Windows

For reasons I won’t go into I had to get some data imported into a popular Window app. Sadly the app doesn’t have good import abilities. Were I a com hacker I might have been able to do something on Windows. However I’m primarily a Mac guy and all my data was in an Excel [...]

Wither Dongleware

Wither the dongleware? There are a few pieces of hardware for the iPhone. The credit card readers at CES were in particularly interesting. But there’s far, far fewer than I expected. (Where’s the game pad, for instance?)

Using Python to Cleanup Excel

Often you get a spreadsheet with some data that needs heavily filtered. You could try Applescript but let’s be honest. For text processing Python is so much easier. So here’s a Python script I use a lot with Excel. It’s pretty flexible following my scripting rules. It’s designed to be more a template that I [...]

Salesforce and the Mac

I just started using Salesforce for CRM. I’ll probably have some posts on automating stuff with SalesForce over the next few weeks.. One thing I already found is an open source Mac sync that looks quite useful. It syncs contacts, events and tasks from Address Book and iCal to Salesforce. What I’m not sure about [...]

Bing

There’s some buzz about Apple replacing Google with Bing in the default search for Safari. I’m pretty skeptical about this. But it seemed like a good time to give my thoughts on Bing. I tried switching to Bing full time several times. For casual stuff from popular sites I think it is quite superior to [...]