Category Archives: Apple

most things Mac, Apple and or software dealing with Apple Macintosh

The Special Board App

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Its past midnight and I should be in bed but am stalking the App Store for new apps :) and suddenly I run into this semi-gorgeous (in my opinion the user-interface can be a little nicer) little app thats uses your Phone GPS to display promotions and vouchers for restaurants, bars, Cafes near you. Yay! Great idea! The app is called The Special Board and its free. You can of course browse offers by category and bookmark them and view venues right on the map in relation to your current co-ordinates. How clever is that? If you are an iPhone user and in Sydney I suggest you give it a whirl.

Imagine being able to see up to the minute special offers from restaurants, bars and cafes near you, simply by looking at your mobile phone? The Special Board app is currently available for iPhone users but will soon be available on inferior technologies like Android, Blackberry and other smart phones. :)

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OzTV app for iPhone

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Even though our trusted TiVo records all things we like to watch — it is still nice to have an option to be able to see whats currently being aired or about to come on… and wouldn’t it just be nice if you could set a little reminder when it came on so your iPhone would buzz letting you know its time to kick up your heels and drown yourself in all that idiot box glory. Ah-ha you say! Well OzTV lets you do just that!! :) How nice is that? And that too in a cool suave stye.

Pastebot 2010-09-06 23.34.36 PM 3.png
Click on the images above for a larger view.

In that one little screen you get information about the current show, the elapsed time (the orange progress bar). It also has the official ratings so you know how unfriendly or socially embarrassing its going to be, a little reminder buttons to add to your ‘alarm’ just in case you were about to miss that ‘heart-racing’ episode of Amazing race! Voila! Sounds good so far? Wait there is more… you can SMS or email the show details at the touch of a button and look up the cast and history of the show and its relevant details on the web all in that one same window without flicking through anything else!

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iEmoji for iPhone

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Have you heard of an App called iEmoji? Well, if you haven’t I suggest you head on over to their site and have a look. Its a great little app if you like putting emoticons(emotional icons) when using SMS, MMS or Emails when using your iPhone. In some ways its a must have App on your iPhone and I agree :) — iEmoji is compatible with iPhone and iPod touch & requires iPhone OS 2.2 or later. Thats all you really need.

Have a read of what Apptism has to say.

Web pages built with iPhone specific emoji are displayed properly only when viewed with the Safari browser on an iPhone (or iPod Touch) with iPhone OS 2.2 or higher.

iPhone OS 3.0 software update

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The iPhone OS 3.0 software update is here. While I must admit I havent played around to check every little update feature yet, the Spotlight search in itself is a big time saver. Cut, Copy & Paste alone save a lot of retyping and mulling over dreaded typos. That is a mega saver, add to that the fact you can type in Landscape which implies lesser typos. Voice Memos – brilliant idea, Internet Tethering will be another hidden gem when you want to get connected easily.

Updating the new software for iPhone was absolutely pain-free and it was over in a couple of minutes. Apps seem a lot more responsive and start and close quicker. The only downside some apps in the App store are still not OS 3.0 ready but thats just a matter of time. :) Go get your update, its worth it.

My only concern was if Flight Control didn’t work — but it DOES just fine! Just between you, me and the gatepost my score last night was 87! 8-)

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Amazing iPhone

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iPhone App store picAt long last I’m a proud iPhone owner and like the rest who has tapped into the power of iPhone I am in sheer, awe, delight and joy of this marvel of technology!

Think I’ve done well to fight the temptation for a whole year since they were available in Australia around July 2008. Over the years I’ve had quite a range of mobile handsets but nothing has ever come close to the goodness of what apple brings in an iPhone. Really nothing comes close or is comparable to the iPhone! It is a masterpiece. A marriage of technology and superb interface. It is a love story of epic proportions if such a phrase could be used to describe a ‘gadget’. it just is! I’m truly floored by the design, the finish, the response, the crazy addictive App Store where thousands of people across the globe write jaw dropping Apps. It has considerably cut down my time in front of the computer! And dare I say I’m loving every bit of iPhone juice I can have.

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Safari 4 beta and refresh button

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safari_4_beta_screengrab

For a good few months, probably a year or more I had been using Firefox as my main browser. But since the update of Safari 4 Beta I turned by head back to Safari. i dont dislike Safari 4, its just that Firefox’s add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts are a huge timesaver. While most things remain just as excellent with Safari the one that really annoys me is not having the stop/refresh button. Grrrrrr! It is now right next to the RSS icon. God forbid you want stop loading a page and you click the RSS icon instead of the Stop/Refresh icon.

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BetterZip your files

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Mac OS X has a built in facility to zip your files on the fly and open them on double-clicking. But the only disadvantage with that is the fact that zipped files created this way add hidden files alongside, eg:

  • ._filename
  • .DS_filename

If you’re sending zipped files to someone on a windows machine these hidden files are of no use to them and worst of all these underscore prefixed files are visible to all and confuse users. In short, there are better ways to send zipped files from your mac. Two applications on mac that do this job really well are:

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That beautiful old Queen Victoria Building

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Queen Victoria Building

We went down to the big smoke this morning. Since we didn’t have any particular plans for the morning, we strolled around and walked into the Queen Victoria Building and had lunch (more on that at D’s soon). It’s not often I take my camera along with me these days but if you do have a camera in hand and happen to walk in QVB don’t they all look at you like a tourist? :) Funny that!

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MacLoc your Mac

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a snapshot of th eicon of MacLoc, it shows a locked Mac OS X screenMacLoc is a brilliant little app that does a simple thing in style — it locks your screen. And yes there are a 101 ways of doing this without getting yet another app on your macintosh free or otherwise(e.g.: Butler, DeskShade, Keychain, Scripts…) but I like the look of the icon — clean and crisp and happy to click lock my screen with MacLoc when I walk out for a coffee or a much needed break.

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iPhone launches in Australia but not for 3

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3g Apple iPhone

The long wait in nearly over, in less than a few hours iPhone 3G will be released in Australia. While I’d have been one of the contender to get it in the first release Apple having released iPhone with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone only has left me with little choice other than to wait. Perhaps that is a good thing for all I know.

It would be good to see all bugs ironed out when I get mine. It still annoys me to think 3 missed out on such a huge deal… For those who may not know 3 launched in Australia in April 2003 and was the first 3G network here in Australia not to mention its 1.7 million customer base to this day — not sure what went wrong in Apple not choosing 3 during release of iPhone. Surely 3 has a bigger audience base compared to Vodaphone and Optus. This probably saw 3 gets customers to pester Apple for iPhone (via Harry). And after a huge response from a lot of 3 users Noel Hamill, Director Sales, Marketing and Product, 3 wrote in a message that they are going to take this appeal to Apple. But no release dates were mentioned.

Is this short-sightedness on part of Apple? Not sure. Then again when the 2G iPhones launched in US a year back they released them with AT&T. Not the best carrier in US either. Go figure! Apple does great things and I loved most of what they do but Phone carrier market research for Australia has clearly not been their strong point.

Speed up your Mail with Speedmail

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I like to deal with my mail as it arrives and depending on priority and response deal with the reply or stow away for later or just simple trash it.

a screengrab of my inbox
Screengrab of my Inbox

In other words I’m more or less diligent with keeping my Inbox clean and tidy and therefore one would hope simple and lightweight. It give me sense of achievement and quite literally peace of mind when my Inbox has less than 5 mails. But overtime every mailbox grows and therefore gets sluggish. Well, if you’re on Mac (Tiger or Leopard) there is a free nifty little program that does an amazing little trick of optimising your mail. Its called SpeedMail. It compresses the Mail SQL database and restores Apple Mail to new life and did I say its free! Download Speedmail here and give it a try.

Leopard Mac OS arrives

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So excited about this… Its 7:30am Australian Eastern Standard Time and our copy of Leopard Mac OS 10.5 has arrived… its not even the 26th in the United States yet ;-P (sorry had to throw that in) ha ha :)

The packaging is awesome… and yes I’ll write more about it soon. Stay tuned… and leave your comments

UPDATE: Leopard is rocking my world at the moment. Its truly awesome. Installation + migration took less than 90 minutes and everything seems to work perfectly. Gosh you need to see how meticulously thought out this version of the Operating System is!! That being said it will tak eme a while to start using Finder again as I’m a Path Finder boy.

I want the revolutionary iPhone

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iPhone…real bad :) Better still I could grab one when we’re in the US in a few months time but will it be compatible in Australia? Am guessing the short answer for now is NO. But it will be in the near future. The internets abuzz with iPhone. I’d rather not bore you with my analysis of it as a lot is being said about it even as I type this now…. almost half a day after the announcement was made by Steve Jobs. What a revolutionary idea. Wow another blow to a hundred odd Mobile handset makers out there! Well done Steve.

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