Macgasm

Hey, iTunes 9.0 was a milestone release, bugs are too be expected, right? Well, maybe not. After looking at the list of bugs that they patched the original release reeks of an early release that wasn’t fully tested before going public. Anyway, a patch is better than no patch, so go update your iTunes kids.

• Resolves issues browsing the iTunes Store.
• Addresses a performance issue where iTunes may become unresponsive.
• Fixes a problem where iTunes may unexpectedly quit.
• Fixes a problem syncing Podcasts in playlists to iPod or iPhone.
• Fixes a problem sorting albums with multiple discs.
• Addresses an issue with the Zoom button not switching to Mini Player.
• Improves application syncing for iPod touch and iPhone.
• Genius is now automatically updated to show Genius Mixes.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

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In this episode, we talk about Option + Click getting a boost in Snow Leopard.

[01.2 MB] [0:03:50] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

Updated 12:45 EST: Corrected Podcast File

I use Facebook just like everyone else, but I seriously try to limit the frequency of my visits. It’s hard work creeping other people’s lives all day. I mean, how else am I gonna know Joe’s watching TV, and drinking alone again? Someone has to keep an eye on him, right?

Facebook has made it really, really, really easy to creep all your followers and fans, or whatever they’re called on Facebook. They’ve gone and made desktop notifiers for a bunch of operating systems, and OS X gets the luxury of having a menubar application. You’ll get live updates with Growl when someone adds info to your profile, and that’s pretty handy in and of itself.

So, if you’re looking for another way to distract yourself while at work, you might want to give this a go.

One obvious downside to this application is that it’s constantly redirecting you to the website in order to get your information. While it’s not completely unexpected, I’d be sure to use this a lot more if I could access Facebook from the menubar without getting sucked into Facebook. It makes sense from their standpoint, considering the only thing they’re making money off of is ads, but I’m not completely against the idea of them embedding them into the application.

Image Credit: jdlasica
Recommended by: Brady Valentino

This is the second installment of my week of recommending GTD applications. If you want the other recommendations just click the tag “GTD“.

Mail Act-On has let me get a handle on my email. I was using some of the mail rules for Mail.app already, and Mail Act-On has let me take it to the next step. I’ve been able to filter emails into appropriate folders so I don’t have to manually move them after reading. It’s been really handy, and helps me keep things in order, and more importantly, keep things ready for archiving.

So, for instance, I have all the emails coming inbound going to my “Macgasm” folder. I set up exceptions to send all the emails to tips@macgasm.net to go into “Macgasm Tips”, and then emails notifying me of comments on the site going into a folder named “Macgasm Comments”. It’s been really easy to set up, and it lets me address emails en masse quite easily.

Mail Act-On takes that step a little bit further and lets you assign rules to both ingoing and outgoing emails, as well as set up hot keys to apply certain rules and actions to your inbox.

If you sent a ridiculous amount of email, and really want to cut down on the time you spend organizing it, I recommend Mail Act-On, it’s saved me a ton of time over the last week, and I’ll be continuing to use it for a long time–unless something better comes along.

Image Credit: Martin LaBar

Everyone either loves or hates Friendfeed. It goes either way, and you can’t sit on the fence about it. Some people can’t handle the fire hose that is information on the service, but some of us have managed to get it under control with some groups. It’s pretty fun over there, and there’s a lot of discussion that goes on. But, like every other community on the net, it was in some serious need of mobile attention.

The official mobile version of the application has been by far the best application for a while, but, it’s about to be eclipsed. Stir, an application for your iPhone has a lot of promise. It lets you do everything you can do on the native web application, but while mobile. Heck, it even lets you take photos with your phone and then attach them to your post.  It acts seamlessly with the web application version, and it’ll certainly let you get access to all of your groups, and lolcat pictures pretty quickly.

One thing I would like to see in a future version is the ability to like something or or comment on something by clicking on the icons on the front page.  Having to drill down to get access to those things aren’t the most convenient way to do it currently.  If you’re a light FriendFeed user it’s not too bad having to do it on occasion, but power users might find it a little bit of a pain as it stands right now.

All in all the application is handy, and lets me get my FriendFeed fix on the go, so I’m really happy about that.  It’s nice to have an alternative on the iPhone, so if you’re looking to replace the FFTOGO option, this is a great place to start.

Image Credit: Lisa Brewster

Do you have lots of ideas? Need a simple and graphical way to organize them? Well then Mind Mapping is for you.  A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. (Reference: Wikipedia: mind map)

MindNode, the iPhone companion app to the superb Mac desktop software (Freeware and Pro Version available) makes mind mapping so easy that you can rapidly map your ideas or related items within minutes.

Highlight of features:

• Easily flip between graphical view of nodes to hierarchical list of nodes
• Apply different colours to lines
• Email it directly from iPhone in various file formats (MindNode doc, Free Mind doc, PNG, etc)
• Create multiple mind maps

Students, creative types and entrepreneurs (to name a few) can benefit from this crisp, simple and user-friendly app to document ideas, weigh out decisions or to just visualize related data easily.  Perfect for brainstorming sessions or to whiteboard ideas with colleagues. This time-saving tool can really enhance productivity.

The freeware desktop version is a great taste of what the software can do, however if you want to take advantage of the desktop/iPhone/touch sync and a whole slew of extra features, buy the pro version for a mere $15 US.

The price tag is not cheap ($7.99), however the amount you pay for a well designed app like this is priceless. Definitely the best mind mapping iPhone app on the App Store. Hands down!

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In this episode, we talk about home sharing in iTunes 9.

[01.7 MB] [0:05:00] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

Lately I’ve been getting annoyed with something on Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter, I’m absolutely addicted to it. But I do have a problem with how some people use it.

Twitter has recently emerged as a primary source for breaking news, more so at this point than most traditional mediums. The instantaneous nature of Twitter makes it easy to instantly spread immediate occurrences and events. Unfortunately it also makes it (too) easy to spread rumors and irrelevant information. Some random guy with a computer and an internet connection posts that Jeff Goldblum is dead and it’s instantly all over the web, with users retweeting left and right, without a hint of confirmation from a reputable source. Apparently being the first to break the news is more important than the veracity of it.

Here’s another example of this phenomenon: today I came across an article on Twitter called “10 Reasons IT Should Not Support the Apple iPhone”. I was outraged that an article like this would come out at this point and immediately started reading it. I was expecting some ignorant biased review from a Microsoft fanatic that had never even used an iPhone but still felt threatened by it. Here is what I found: “The iPhone Does Not Natively Support Push Corporate E-mail or Wireless Calendar Syncing” What? “The iPhone Does Not Run Third-Party Applications Without Voiding Its Warranty” Excuse me? Then I noticed that the article is from 2007. At this point it’s completely irrelevant and outdated yet people are retweeting it like it’s something new.

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s anything Twitter can do about it, we’ll just have to trust people’s good sense and hope they’ll learn to exercise some judgement before retweeting something. Yeah, we’re basically doomed.