Macgasm

One of the things I love about the Mac OS is some of the built-in tools that we get. One that I have talked about before is Spaces. Lately, I have found myself using Exposé more and more. Exposé allows you to have more control over your environment while multitasking. If you are one that has a ton of applications open at one time, then Exposé will let you actually see every window that is currently open so you can pick what you want. No more having to minimize all your apps just to get to what you need. But enough of me writing, check out the screencast for a full walkthrough.

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I hate to admit it but I’m a little (OK, maybe a lot) OCD about my iPhone. One of the things I obsess about is how my apps are organized. I have to organize them by how much I use them, by color and by function. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? (Thank you Apple, I used to be a pretty normal girl before the iPhone. Almost.)

On my first page I have my most used apps: some of Apple’s stock apps plus Tweetie, Birdhouse, Beejive and Omnifocus. I liked the first Tweetie’s blue icon better since this one doesn’t look so good with the rest of my apps. Also I don’t really use Birdhouse much anymore so I’m going crazy trying to find something to replace it.

My second page has the rest of my most used apps. Two “tapbots” (both gray), two camera apps (both mostly dark), shopping and fitness apps (both green), two money apps (both dark), two reading apps, two white and orange apps, two apps with green in it and two music apps (both blue). Starts to get a bit obsessive, doesn’t it?

My third page has my “official apps”: the Apple apps that aren’t in my first page plus some other official ones: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Flickr, Dropbox, WordPress and Skype. I have the darker apps on the first row and the rest is mostly blue.

Ok, I know the Wikipanion app is neither an official app nor blue. I know. And that fact still keeps me up at night.

This page has mostly a few utilities plus some apps that I like to have around but I don’t use that often. I have them organized in pairs by color, as you can see, but also by function in a way that makes sense to me (disclaimer: the fact that it makes sense to me doesn’t necessarily mean it makes sense to anyone else, so don’t feel bad if you don’t get how I organize them).

I have three more screens: one with camera applications (photo editing, filters, etc), one with games and one with apps I’m still testing. That’s where I keep the apps I’m not sure I want to keep and the ones I still haven’t found a place for (you can probably tell by now how thankful I was for the app  organization feature in the new iTunes). This page is usually pretty disorganized so I try not to look at it often. It bothers me a little.

So, how crazy am I?

Leave a comment below explaining how you organize your apps.

We’re living in a mobile world, most people traverse to and from work with the same machine. Different locations require different settings. You might find that the lighting at your office is so dim that you can turn down your monitor and save yourself the headache. You might do the same tasks when you boot up your computer at work (visit macgasm.net ). Instead of doing these things manually, you can use a snazzy application to automate the processes you under go every time you change locations.

Network Location, lets you both manually and automatically switch between your work locations, based on your network connection info.

You can have it auto connect to servers, change screensaver settings, and change default printers, or you can have it open urls, run a script, or start an iTunes playlist. It’s a pretty robust application, and it’s uses are endless.

There’s nothing worse than travelling between houses, between offices, and having to reset a bunch of your settings to meet your needs. We’re big on productivity here, and this application goes a long way to fixing some things in my life that I wish were automated.

We’re at a junction with technology, throughout history we’ve been told that computers have been created to make our lives easier. I’m not really sure that that has been the reality throughout history, but I’m starting to feel like we’ve finally reached a point in our innovation where computer intelligence is finally starting to make our lives easier. Think about things like augmented reality finally starting to get a foothold on our devices, or google’s street view. We have the ability to increase our productivity with assistive technologies that were never present in the past. Network Location is another example of that. Our applications are finally smart enough to understand where we are, and change a bunch of settings based on our network location. It’s far from perfect, but we’re certainly at an exciting time for technology.

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In this episode, we talk about Google Gears.

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Remember that sweet Apple ad that graced the New York Times website where a bunch of ads interacted with each other?  Well it’s back, but this time it’s on YouTube and has a new twist.  Pretty Funny Stuff.

Update: Original Video has bad audio. It’s fixed. My Bad. We’re not sure what’s going on, but it seems like every time the video gets uploaded to youtube, the audio gets mangled. But, who are we kidding, you’re just going to go to youtube.com and start the ad for yourself anyway.

Apple has finally decided Developers needed some more help with the review process. Turns out their answer is status updates. If you’re writing for the iPhone you now get the ability to see if your application is Ready for Sale, In Review, or Waiting for Review. Just the type of information developer needs. I mean, it’s far from in depth discussion about what’s happening to the application, but I guess you could say it’s a tiny step in the right direction. Could the next step be that they’re going to actually participate in an open dialogue with developers who have their applications pulled? One can dream.

I guess it lends some credence to the rumours that Apple was completely unready for the boom that the Apple Store had in the early days. How a review process could be devoid of any developer feedback from the get-go is a little beyond me, but at least they’re addressing it, slowly. Hopefully they make the appropriate changes they need before another major iPhone developer decides it’s time to leave the iPhone behind. Apple’s become its own achilles heal when it comes to App Store developers jumping ship. They’re marginalizing developers who actually care about the platform, and instead making it easy for people whose prime objective is making a dollar instead of making useful applications.

I wrote an article last week about why I write about the Apple community, but if things continue as they are now, there might not be much of a community to write about, and there’s only so many times I can write about fart apps.  I really hope they don’t cut off developer’s interests in a phone that has the capability to really change the way we use phones.  It’d be a real shame if students like this Nicholas Spencer, to the left, never gets to see his creations working on a device that he clearly loves. Look at that smile Apple, we don’t want to turn that to a frown do we?  Let’s make this as easy as possible for guys like Mr. Spencer so that they can focus on creating applications instead of figuring out what hoops they need to jump through to get their applications published.

Photo Credit: Dean Terry

Article Via: Wired

Recently Apple released OS X 10.6.2 which features an extensive list of updates, fixes, and addresses many issues. It appears as if the update, which Apple stated is supposed to enhance the stability, performance, and compatibility of your Mac, has done the opposite for some less than happy users. (more…)

The easiest way to use your Mac to brighten up your holiday season is to change your wallpaper. If you’re a photographer, you can certainly use your own images as your background. In fact, I’d love to see them. Feel free to share them with us in the comments. But what do you do if you don’t have any Christmas-type photos lying around your hard drive? Use the Internet, silly!

Below are search results from Flickr and Google Image Search for Christmas wallpapers in common resolutions. If your specific resolution isn’t listed, just swap out the numbers to best fit your monitor.

Flickr Christmas Wallpapers 1024×768
Google Christmas Wallpapers 1024×768

Flickr Christmas Wallpapers 1440×900
Google Christmas Wallpapers 1440×900

Flickr Christmas Wallpapers 1680×1050
Google Christmas Wallpapers 1680×1050

Flickr Christmas Wallpapers 1600×1200
Google Christmas Wallpapers 1600×1200

Flickr Christmas Wallpapers 1920×1080
Google Christmas Wallpapers 1920×1080

Photo Credit: michelphoto53 en Rénovation