Macgasm

With all of this AppStore growth speculation being reported today, I’ve been spending some time trying to figure out how the heck are we going to separate the crap from the awesome applications in the AppStore. Sifting through 15,000 applications back in January of 2009 wasn’t all that difficult, but if the projected numbers for December 2010 are correctly estimated at 300,000, we’re going to need to rethink the application discovery process.

I’ve spent the better part of my day thinking about how we might be able to transform the application store to something a little more discovery friendly, but I couldn’t come up with one solution that would highlight both up and coming applications, and the most popular applications.

The only thing that came to mind was adopting a Digg like system, but instead of users voting for applications, it would be based on rewarding the applications that are presently active on iPhone and Touch devices, and punishing applications that get installed and then removed within the course of a week.

What if Apple Inc weighted the home screen, through to the 15th page of the application menu, and then somehow created an algorithm that would then calculate what applications are actually the most popular, and the most used.

The key problem with the current set up is that the focus is on how many times an application is currently being downloaded, instead of focusing on the utility of an application, and its frequency of use.

You want to know how many applications I’ve downloaded based on hype and then subsequently deleted after a day or two? I’d say about 80 percent. If we could figure out what 20 percent are staying on the devices, and which of those are being accessed most frequently, we can start to put together an effective recommendation system.

Failing to address this is going to be catastrophic, the time for over night success might be long gone, but, people are using iPhones more and more, and if we can’t find out what applications are the best, we’ll eventually get fatigue and give up. Apple Inc. has been adopting social media services at a snails pace, but it’s starting to look like the power of the people is the only way that this AppStore mess will get sorted out. If Apple Inc. finally decides to put their mobile users to work, it would solve a lot of the problems we’re facing. But that would mean Apple would be relinquishing some control of their recommendation engine, and historically speaking, that’s not something that the folks in Cupertino do, is it?

Graph Via The Apple Blog

Ho ho ho! As Christmas draws closer, I start looking for more ways to deck my halls with boughs of holly. As I spend a large portion of my day working on my Mac, it only makes sense that I would want to expand my decorations to my desktop too. Well, I looked around, and I found two really great apps that’ll spruce up my Mac.

The first app that I’d like to point out is called X-MasTree. As the name suggests, it offers up a very nice little Christmas tree that sits on your desktop. I dig this app a lot because it offers a surprising amount of customization. You can change everything from the size of the tree to what decorations are on the tree to how fast the lights blink. On top of providing 120% of your daily evergreen requirements, it also offers an optional countdown badge that sits next to your tree and reminds you how many days until Santa visits. All of this and so much more for the low, low price of free.

The other application that I’d like to showcase in this post is called MacLampsX. Not to be outdone, this great application puts Christmas lights all around the sides of your screen. Again, I was blown away at the customization capabilities in this rather small application. Layering, transparency, blinking rate, and style of lights/trimming are all user customizable. A fantastic application for fans of shiny blinking lights. If you like free, you’ll love this app.

For more holiday tips involving your Mac, iPod, or iPhone, check out Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V of this series of articles here at Macgasm.

Photo Credit: theogeo

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In this episode, we talk about the perfect browser. Grant was very tired when this was recorded. Please forgive the lack of enthusiasm. :-/

[01.3 MB] [00:04:10] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

Some of us can’t afford super fancy data robots that let us know when drives are failing. *ahem*Me*ahem*, but it doesn’t mean that their aren’t tools out there to help us keep an eye on the integrity of our drives. Disk utility is a great resource, but what I want to focus on for a moment is an application called SMART Utility. It’s very simple, and very, very handy.

Essentially the application goes out connects to your drives, then uses the SMART technology to see what drives are starting to go bad. As you can see by my attached screen capture, one of my drives is starting to fail on me. The really scary thing is that I had absolutely no idea that the drive had bad sectors, let alone that is was my primary operating system install drive. So guess what, it’s time to drop some coin on a new drive.

I shouldn’t complain, drives are dirty cheap these days.  Excuse me while I go check on my backup scheme.

Some cool things the application does

The program has a number of notification options.  First it’ll send you a growl update to let you know that you need to give your drives some attention.  The second thing it does is change the icon in your Dock.  A green flag means everything’s good, a yellow flag means you’re heading for trouble, and the red flag… well, lets hope that never happens.

So if you’re as paranoid about data loss as I am, then you need to check out the trial of this application at the very least.  25 dollars for the application seems a little bit pricey, but the first time you lose everything to a hard drive failure you’ll wish you weren’t such a cheap ass.

Do you like the music at the Disney Theme Parks?  Can’t wait to go back and listen to the music of Main Street, Star Tours, or Space Mountain?  Well wait no longer.  Thanks to the folks at Subsonic now you can listen to Disney Theme Park music on your iPhone or iPod Touch.  Click here from your iPhone or iPod Touch.  After the page loads, click on the Done button in the top left hand corner.  You will be returned to the Safari page.  From here click on the Plus symbol at the bottom of the page.  Now choose Add to Home Screen, and here is were you can label the Home Screen button.  When you’re done click on the Add button in the top right hand corner.  Now you have Disney Theme Park music streaming through Safari on your preferred device.  The best part is this runs in the background, so you can leave the page to read your email, or text message without the music stopping.

If you don’t own an iPhone or iPod Touch you can still listen to the same streaming Disney music on your computer through iTunes.  Click here and you will download an iTunes playlist file.  Double click on the file and it will automatically load into iTunes.  You’ll find the Subsonic Disney Theme Park Audio and Music under the Soundtrack Disney Kids Genre.  From here you can create a Playlist, for an easier way to find Disney Theme Park Audio and Music in iTunes.

My family and I enjoy going to Disneyland, so this is a great way for us to relive the music of Disneyland.  I originally found out about this streaming service for the iPhone/iPod Touch on Twitter, from @DisneylandLive they posted this a couple of days ago.  If anyone is interested in looking up other Disney Twitters, I created a Disney Twitter list on my account at @glagana/disney.  I can also be found on Twitter at twitter.com/glagana.  We have annual passes, so you’ll find me tweeting while I’m there.

If I don’t start tossing these up now, I’ll never be satisfied with them, and they’ll sit on the shelf forever.  Like many of you know, we’ve been working on putting together a video podcast for months now, and they’re finally at a point where I’m happy with them. They’re far from perfect, but we’re going to be working out these kinks over time.

Macgasm Videocast Episode Numero-Uno

So in this version of the podcast we talk about our newfound love of curling as well as an iPhone app that is a surprisingly decent representation of the sport. Brennan talks about iPhone newbs that can solve all of the world’s problems. Josh takes a moment to to announce our holiday giveaway that’s already in full swing on the site. Hope you enjoy.

We’ve been working on segment transitions, and for some stupid reason I forgot a couple lower thirds, so those will be fixed up next week. :)

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In this episode, we talk about Macgasm’s holiday giveaway!

[01.6 MB] [00:04:40] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

Open the Finder, on the Menu bar, select View, then click “Show Path Bar” to enable a graphical representation of your folder path.  See below for a screenshot of the Path Bar.

Here’s my Path Bar.   I’m in /balrog0/Users/Shared

If you’re used to working in the Terminal…then you know that know which path you’re in is pretty important;  there’s nothing like doing rm -Rf *.* in the wrong directory.  Anyway, if you want to see the UNIX path in the Finder, do the following:

Open Terminal and type or paste the following and hit enter:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Restart the Finder or restart your computer.  To restart the Finder, press the following key combo:

Cmd option Esc.  This will bring up the Application Kill window.  Select the Finder, click restart.

For the UNIX/LInux geeks, just do:

ps aux | grep Finder

find the process ID and…

sudo kill -9 <process id>

The Finder will automatically restart.

After performing either of the aforementioned methods for killing the Finder, open a new Finder window (if one does not open automagically).
Look at the top of the window and you will notice the UNIX path in the title.   /balrog0/Users/Shared is shown in the screenshot below.