Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW
Ask TUAW: Quicksilver worries, remote iTunes control, cross-platform sharing keyboard and mouse, and more
This time in Ask TUAW we'll be considering the future of Quicksilver, cross-platform keyboard and mouse sharing, controlling iTunes on a remote Mac, fixing messed up Album metadata in iTunes, cross-platform password storage and more.As always, your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!
jason asks
I've used Quicksilver forever, but according to the developer it's reached it's end of life. I'm sort of expecting it to up and die after some patch or another from Apple in the next year or so, and so I want to have a backup plan for the office in place. Our first thought of course is spotlight, but there are two things it doesn't appear to be able to do. Do you know of ways to do the following in Spotlight? - Trigger a new email from address book - Open folders on remote servers. Currently I have aliases of servers in my "favorites" folder, and I have instructed Quicksilver to scan them
Actually, that's not quite right. The developer has made Quicksilver open source and it is being slowly developed at its Google Code site. There are a lot of folks out there (myself included) who are Quicksilver fans, and I seriously doubt that it will disappear altogether. There's even been some suggestion that Alcor, the original developer, "is working on a complete re-write of the frameworks of Quicksilver and should hopefully release it soon."
All of that said, if you want to move I think you'd probably be best moving to one of the Quicksilver alternatives rather than trying to use Spotlight. So you should check out LaunchBar ($19.95 Home / $39 business) and Butler (donationware at the moment, but the next version 5 will be shareware).
jespes asks
I have an iPhone 3g. The company I work for doesnt support using iPhone for corporate email, so I'd like to set up a thing where I forward my corporate email to another account (say gmail or yahoo or another), which i can then read using the iPhone mail app. That's easy enough. But here's the big question: Is there a way to set up a "reply to" address in the iPhone so emails sent from the iPhone appear to be coming from my work email address? Gmail offers this in its regular interface but not in its mobile interface. Nor does this Gmail feature work in the iPhone mail app. And the mail app itself doesn't allow for the setting of a different "reply to" address, near as I can tell.
No, it appears that the iPhone mail application does not have a separate "reply to" setting. However, if you have access to a regular IMAP server based mail account you can use whatever email address you want in the standard iPhone mail setup. In other words, just set your email address in the iPhone settings as your business address, but set your username as appropriate for that server. Then any email you send from the iPhone will simply have your business email address in the from field.
Edge asks
I currently have a MBP running 10.5.4. I have a pretty large iTunes library that slows down my computer to a crawl when it is open (it is a couple hundred GBs). If I store my iTunes library on an external hard drive and have it open, it still slows it down a bit. Is there a way I can get a mac mini and use it only for my itunes library, but still control my library through the MBP? Basically I want to use the mac mini for its processor.
Yes, it's certainly possible to do this. The classic application for controlling iTunes on anther Mac was netTunes from Shirt Pocket. Unfortunately, however, it does not seem to work with Leopard. I did run across another similar application called TuneConnect 2 which does claim Leopard compatibility.
Your other option, however, is to use a web based control scheme (i.e. you control the remote iTunes with a web-browser). The easiest way to do this is probably with Remote Buddy (€19.99), but there are others out there as well.
Mark asks
I have a mac and a pc on my desk each with their own screen. I'd like to share a wireless mac keyboard and mouse between the two. What is the best way to do this and end up with only one keyboard/mouse on the desk?
There are two ways to do this: 1) in hardware with a KVM switch (just don't use the Monitor part), which will be challenging with a wireless setup or 2) in software with Synergy. I would recommend the second way as long as one machine will always be on anytime you're at your desk. Basically, Synergy is composed of two parts: a server and client. You need to physically connect the keyboard and mouse to the server machine (whichever one you can guarantee is going to be on) and run the client software on the other machine. For the Mac you should probably use the GUI version called SynergyKM. I don't really know that much about the PC side, but you can find the software at the main Synergy site.
ddebor asks
I was looking at my iTunes library earlier and I noticed that I have a bunch of songs from a CD that are listed as multiple albums in Cover Flow because different artists sing them. Is there a way that I can compile them into one album so that when I use Cover Flow there is only one album artwork for them all?
Generally this is caused by various the various tracks having different album names for some reason. All you have to do is select all the tracks and Get Info. Then just change all of them to one album name and iTunes should group them properly. Just be sure that the checkbox for Album is checked.
Update: Somehow I missed your remark about multiple artists. To correct this, make sure the Album name is exactly the same on all the tracks, as above, and then also make sure that you check the "Part of a compilation" checkbox at the bottom of the Info pane.
If they do have the correct album name, one of our commenters notes that you can also check off the 'This is a Compilation' box for the album in question, which will unify the tracks into one album in Cover Flow.
Foltz asks
Is there a 'good' single solution for password storage for OS X and Windows? I currently use PasswordSafe which has a OS X friendly Java version, but it hasnt been updated since 2006. I dont need any sort of syncing, but being able to manually merge password files would be nice.
I haven't really used it myself but KeePassX seems to be generally well received. It features versions for OS X, Windows, and Linux.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Mike Rapin said 8:23AM on 7-30-2008
Gotta love these Ask TUAW's.. There's always at least 1 thing that sparks my interest and gives me some kind of new information (this week: Quicksilver's Google Code page)
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John Coxon said 8:23AM on 7-30-2008
Mat, the person asking about multiple albums in Cover Flow clearly stipulates in their question that it's because of different artists on the CD. What you should be advising is that they tick the 'This is a Compilation' box, as that will solve the problem.
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CajunLuke said 8:59AM on 7-30-2008
Or put the same name in the "Album Artist" field. (This could be the most-common artist or the composer or whatever.)
Mat Lu said 12:45PM on 7-30-2008
You're right. I just missed that part of the question and you're right about the answer. Post updated.
Don Parr said 8:31AM on 7-30-2008
Long Live Quicksilver! I'd simply be lost without it :(. Alcor returning would be wonderful :).
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Maikel said 8:34AM on 7-30-2008
I have a problem with my 3 year old PowerBook G4. Now, after approx. 10 minutes of use (after it has slept), the dvd-drive makes a very loud sound as if to lock the disc or to look for a disc. It comes every time I come near the PowerBook. It can be typing, and it goes off. It can go off up to 10 times a minute. Obviously this is very disturbing. I have already tried to disable the Sudden Motion Sensor, in case it was related, but it still happens. Is there any way of solving this without taking it to repair? Are there any Terminal commands to disable the dvd-drive? I would rather have that sound be gone, than having an operational dvd-drive.
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Mark Boszko said 8:40AM on 7-30-2008
In my experience, the multi-album dupes are because iTunes stores songs by artist and then album, unless you set 'Compilation' to Yes in the song info, then it will treat them all as one album.
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Even said 8:48AM on 7-30-2008
I’m surprised that 1Password wasn’t mentioned. It’s a great password manager, supports syncing, exporting, etc. It uses very secure encryption, and it has browser plugins, making it extremely simple and fast. In my opinion 1Password is THE password manager for OS X.
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Zander said 9:42AM on 7-30-2008
The person asking the question wanted a solution compatible with Mac AND Windows...
1Password is Mac only.
Alex said 9:17AM on 7-30-2008
@ Edge
You could just turn on "share my library on my local network" then as long as you are on the same network you can play the songs that are on it. If you want to control the Mini then you could use a VNC such as the one built into Leopard, Screen Sharing
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Elizabeth said 9:42AM on 7-30-2008
I recently have moved to a MBP and have been very intentional about developing my software tools and systems to optimize my use. One area that I’m stuck on is iTunes. I messed up in my conversion of my library and so I lost my ratings and play history. As a result, I decided to just import my iTunes purchases (the presence of iTunes on the iPhone was a brilliant marketing idea) to the new library. I’ve ranked these songs, there’s under a thousand, but I need help since this is only the tip of the iceberg.
I have another 60+ gigs of music that is currently on the NAS and is not included in iTunes in anyway. In the past, I was able to use play counts, skip counts, recency and rankings to make this a manageable part of my iTunes collection just leaving it on the NAS. What I’d like to do is set up a smart playlist that puts together a random selection of songs from this location that have a 0 playcount. Is there a way to make another category is the library so I could exclude these files from my normal playlists for now and set up a playlist that just pulled from here? Or is there a way that I can batch add a tag to all of these items? Or is it possible to set up an entirely different instance of iTunes with a completely segregated library?
Basically, my goal is to maintain the ability to have playlists that do not incorporate any of this additional material, create a playlist consisting only of items coming from this extended library that have a 0 playcount (have no rating) and not have my library just completely run over by the hunk. I intend to leave these songs on the NAS initially, they play fine from there, and only move over my top ranked songs to my hard drive. What’s the best way to do this?
One last general question: how do you refresh a random smart playlist?
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Clifford said 9:39AM on 7-30-2008
Re itunes compilations - I always put Various in the album artists box and tick 'yes' to compilation
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Michael said 9:29AM on 7-30-2008
@Jespes: You know, I stumbled upon something that might help you. If you have your mail going through GMail (and set it up manually IMAP, NOT the GMail option on the iPhone) you get to choose your email address for the from, even thought that's not your GMail login. That is asked in a different part. Just follow the instructions for "Other" on GMail's site to get the server and port info. Also, you need to have GMail setup to be able send mail from that address (really easy). Then everytime you send mail from your iPhone, it will appear to come from the address you specified and not GMail. If you choose the GMail option to setup the account, it doesn't ask you for the From address, it just assumes you want it to be the same as your login info.
If you have questions, you can email me at michael.galindo at the above named mail service. ;)
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Elizabeth said 9:45AM on 7-30-2008
Bonus question: where can I go to change my current user password? (proof I should figure out a password solution that has a thumbdrive-based browser integrated version instead of 1password which is just on my phone and personal computer).
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Shunnabunich said 12:32PM on 8-02-2008
To change your user password, open up System Preferences (dunno if you already have Mac experience or not, but it's the metallic rectangle with gears in the Dock, or the fourth item from the top in the menu), and under the "System" category, click on the "Accounts" icon. Your account should already be highlighted on the left (under where it says "My Account"), and you can click the "Change Password..." button beside your user picture to, well, change the password. :P The key button beside the
"New Password" field opens up a small tool that can generate passwords for you and/or test the strength of your own. Hope that helps!
Brian said 10:10AM on 7-30-2008
@Jesper
Be aware that if you try to "spoof" email as coming from your work email account it may be blocked as spam by other mail servers. This may not be a good practice.
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Michael said 1:50PM on 7-30-2008
Just a clarification. I've been using GMail as my "mail hub" for quite a while now. I have not had a problem with people not getting my emails.I have about 6-7 other addresses defines for my GMail account, and I can send and receive from each just fine.
As for seeing "on behalf of" appended to the email (showing the real address so to speak) it might show in some mail clients, none that I've used, but most people don't read it anyways, they just click Reply and as long as it goes to the right place, that's all that matters...for the most part. I guess if you're in a super restrictive organization you might want to think twice.
Steve Gates said 10:41AM on 7-30-2008
I have two PCs running iTunes. Is it possible to keep their libraries synced?
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welchb said 10:51AM on 7-30-2008
Hi Mat (and @jespes)
That's actually not totally true. If you go to "Settings", and then the "Mail/Contacts/Calendar" section, and then select your account in question.
If you change the "Address" field here to whatever you want, it will change the sender of the email. This will effectively change the reply-to - but even better, as it looks like you sent it from your normal account.
Note: Some email clients (like Outlook) display emails from you like "changed@address.com on behalf of actual@address.com"
Hope this helps..
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J. Chapman said 10:56AM on 7-30-2008
is there any way to differentiate between podcasts that have been fully listened to, and those that have only been partially listened to? I have a number of podcasts that I subscribe to, and am constantly syncing my ipod to my macbook, and deleting listened to podcasts. I run into a problem where sometimes I have only listened to half of a podcast, but when i sync, it shows up as played...I then have to double check each podcast before I delete it to make sure I have listened all the way through it.
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