If you have been putting off using Time Machine to back up your Mac because of the lack of being able to time backups; you have no excuse now. As many of you already know, Time Machine does a complete system backup at first, then hourly backups of system changes. It does this until your Time Machine disk is completely full, then it erases the oldest backups and carries on.

Paperclip is an interesting idea for an application. Basically, it looks like Stickies but the notes are actually "clipped" to specific documents in other applications. For example, you can create a Paperclip note and attach it to a Pages document, then whenever you open that document the relevant Paperclip note will appear pinned to the side of the window. The notes themselves can contain rich text, links, images, etc.

Paperclip does this by running as a menubar application with Universal Access active. In my brief testing I noticed that it will not work correctly with an unsaved document. For instance, if you create a new, untitled Pages document and try to attach a note, it will not work. If you save the document, however, it seems to work fine. I think this is a neat idea, and it could definitely be useful. The Paperclip notes are basically a form of meta-data, so its unfortunate that it doesn't integrate with Spotlight. Nonetheless, I like the concept and it will be interesting to see where it goes.

Paperclip is $9.95 (introductory price) and Leopard only. A demo is available for download from Concentrate Software.

[via Macword]

As we've mentioned recently, one of the conditions for a successful bare-metal restore of a Time Machine backup is a Leopard install DVD; you boot from the DVD, choose your backup as source material, wait some number of hours, and then you're back in business. Wouldn't it be good, wondered a tipster at Macosxhints.com, if you could combine the need for a DVD with all that lovely free space on your Time Machine drive and somehow accelerate this process?

Enter the "you got your peanut butter in my chocolate" solution: before you set up your Time Machine backups, use Disk Copy Utility to clone your Leopard DVD onto the blank hard drive. Once Time Machine is running, it should leave the DVD clone alone and simply use the rest of the drive for data. If you ever need to recover from a catastrophic failure, you've got a bootable Time Machine restore drive that acts just like the Leopard DVD.

My idle question (and one I plan to test when I can) is if you can actually install a lean system, perhaps with some key utilities and tools, alongside your Time Machine data; boot from that when you need to, and do repairs/recovery before moving on to the restore process. It would almost certainly be safer to carve off a small boot partition (20 GB would be ample) and set up a bare-bones boot environment, but it would be fun to try it all on the same volume and see what happens. Of course, when you hear "fun" and "backups" in the same sentence, turn tail and run.

Time Machine is probably the defining feature in Mac OS X Leopard. It provides a nice, clean interface for you to backup and restore your files; but did you know you can also restore your computer from the Time Machine backup?

When you insert the Leopard install disk and boot off of it you will be presented with a semi-Mac OS X desktop. In the menu bar, select Utilities and then "Restore System from Backup..." Select your backup drive, the date you want to backup from, and then click restore.

James Duncan Davidson has a full guide on his website describing how the process went. He mentions that while it restores all the files, the caches and databases are not restored. This means when you launch programs such as Mail the application will need to recreate the database, which may take some time.

Just in case you haven't yet upgraded to Leopard, but still love using Cocktail (that crazy mix of Unix functions for OS X), Maintain has released version 4.0.1 of their Tiger edition. They've fixed some compatibility problems with QuickTime, and added support for clearing font caches in Microsoft Office 2008. The update is now available from their website, and is, they say, "strongly recommended" for all Cocktail (Tiger edition) users.

Cocktail's Leopard edition is at version 4.0.2-- that update fixed these same problems last week, as well as fixing a network optimization bug for DSL (PPPoE) users.

[Via MacMinute]

DiskWarrior, my personal favorite disk repair utility (especially if the problem drive is the startup disk) has just been updated to Version 4.1. The new version is now fully compatible with Leopard (there were some issues with repairing disk permissions on a Leopard startup volume), so if you rely on DiskWarrior as an essential part of your Mac Toolkit arsenal (as I do), you can rest easy.

Alsoft has also introduced some additional Leopard specific repair features in DiskWarrior 4.1. What has me the most excited is the ability to repair directory hard links. Hard-linking is a key part of how Time Machine creates back-ups. How the process works is complicated (although this article does a very good job of trying to explain the whole process), but it is a vital part of Apple's back-up system. The ability to repair directory hard links means that DiskWarrior 4.1 should be able to at least attempt to repair a Time Machine volume. That has actually been my only concern about Time Machine -- what happens if that volume become corrupted or wonky? I hope I don't find out first-hand, but I'm glad some options exist.

Current users will soon be able to download an update CD directly from Alsoft's website that will create a new DiskWarrior startup disc (in the event that the drive needing repair is the startup volume and you don't have access to another Mac). However, please note that the update will only startup the same set of Macs as your current CD. So if your current CD will only boot up to June 2007 MacBook Pros, the update CD will not allow that disc to be used with a November 2007 MacBook.

One other caveat, if you want to run DiskWarrior 4.1 from a version of OS X other than Leopard (say, Tiger), two features will not work. You will not be able to repair permissions of a OS X 10.5 startup disk and you will not be able to rebuild a FileVault created under OS X 10.5. So if you need to repair a Leopard volume, it is best to either run the startup CD or access the drive from a computer that is also running Leopard.

[via MacTech]

Spaces, Leopard's virtual desktop feature, is excellent for expanding your desktop by up to 16 workspaces, however, it would be really cool if you could assign specific applications to always open in the same space. Well, you can!

All you have to do is open the Spaces preference pane (Apple Menu > System Preferences > Exposé and Spaces > Spaces tab). Once there, just drag the application you would like to add to the specific space in the overview pane.

Note: This update does NOT fix the conflict between AE and QuickTime 7.4 that we reported here. Adobe's recommendation is still to avoid the 7.4 QuickTime update.

Good news users of Adobe After Effects CS3 (8.0) who are running Leopard -- 8.02 is now available and it fixes many of the compatibility issues between the two programs. It also introduces native support for Panasonic P2 equipment.

The Read Me has all the details, but in addition to fixing issues with preserving underlying transparency and properly supporting PSD files with layer groups, 8.02 adds OpenGL support for supported cards under OS X 10.4.10 and OS X 10.5.x.

This is an inclusive update, so After Effects 8.0 users do not need to worry about downloading 8.01 first. You can download the update directly from Adobe or from within After Effects (choose "Updates" from the Help menu).

[via DAV TechTable]

The Eye-Fi is an interesting concept: it integrates a WiFi radio into an SD memory card, allowing you to upload images directly from your camera to your computer or to a web photo service. In conjunction with Macworld, the company has announced an update that adds Mac compatibility to the card for direct wireless import into iPhoto in Leopard (as well as setup with Safari). It remains compatible with 19 online services including flickr, Picasa and others, but sadly not .Mac yet.

The 2GB Eye-FI card costs $99.99. The Mac update is compatible with existing Eye-Fi cards and is available for download now.

[via MacMinute]

Apple has released Time Capsule, a NAS (network-attached storage, I'll admit I'm so far from an IT guy that I had to look it up) unit that will wirelessly sync with multiple instances of Time Machine, all the while also working as an 802.11n base station (there are three included ethernet ports as well). Time Capsule has wireless backup, wireless networking, and even a USB port for networked printing, a networked hard drive, or both with a USB hub.

And perhaps most amazing is the sheer size available-- it's $399 for a 500gb hard drive, and $499 for a 1 TB hard drive. Sure, that's a little pricey if you've got only one or two computers at home, but $500 for a complete (and completely wireless) backup solution for a house full of computers is a pretty nice setup. This definitely won't cause as much of a stir as the iPhone updates or the MacBook Air today, but for someone who's been seeking a backup solution for a whole house of computers, Time Capsule has to be pretty good news.

It's available for preorder right now, and will release in February.

We covered FlickrBooth a while back, when it was first released. FlickrBooth is a plug-in for Apple's PhotoBooth that allows you to instantly upload your creations to Flickr after taking the snapshot. The best thing about FlickrBooth 1.2 is that it now runs on Leopard. Some of the new features include:

• Automatic photo uploading now strips .jpg from the title
• SIMBL updated to 0.8.2
• Growl updated to 1.1.2

FlickrBooth is available as a free download from the developer's website.

A reader tipped us off to this very cool new interface for Quicksilver called Showcase from Julius Eckert. It's basically pure eye-candy, but what eye-candy it is! Taking its cue from Cover Flow it leverages Leopards Core Animation technologies to, er, showcase Leopard's graphical goodness. While I'm not entirely sure it's practical in the long run, Showcase is definitely a fun addition to Quicksilver in Leopard.

Thanks panpot!

The long history of the Parallels Server release is moving ever closer to an end: SWsoft (which is changing their name to Parallels) has announced that the product has moved into beta. This thing is the holy grail for Mac server administrators, apparently-- it's supposed to not only be the first virtualization solution to run on Apple hardware, but will also allow admins to run multiple versions of Leopard on one box, and even on Windows or Linux servers. I'm pretty clueless at fine art of administering servers, but even I can see how that would have all the IT guys in a tizzy.

It's still a closed beta at this point, so you've got to sign up if you want to experience the magic for yourself. And apparently the Parallels folks work fast, so odds are we're headed for an open beta within a few weeks. Soon, Mac OS Server will be at the mercy of any IT overseers to bend and use at their will.

Daniel Jalkut put together a little app called "Usable Keychain Scripting" a little while ago that was designed (what else?) to make scripting the Keychain a little more usable -- the interface included in OS X is bad, to say the least. He was apparently hoping that it would be better in Leopard, but no dice -- we're all using the new version, and it's still a pain to access the Keychain with AppleScript.

So he's updated UKS to version 1.0b3. It's still a free download (and I'm guessing he still hasn't added the ability to set values of Keychain items, but only because he was justifiably worried that doing something wrong would have terrible consequences). If you've already been using it, you should be happy to see a new version, and if you haven't tried it yet, but do a lot of Keychain scripting, hopefully it'll make the interface a little less painful.

When Steve first demonstrated Quick Look, I though it looked gimmicky. Interesting, for sure, but nothing I'd use regularly. Much like Star Wars Episode I: Fun when viewed for the first time, but I'll never watch it again.

Three months later, Quick Look is my favorite feature of Leopard. It's convenient, useful and very fast. With a tap of the space bar, I can identify files in the Finder without having to open a separate application.

Of course, it goes beyond that. With a little effort (and in some cases, plug-ins), you can get even more out of Quick Look. Here's how.

1. Identify files on remote machines. I've been using Remote Desktop at my day job for a couple of years now. With a few clicks, I can observe or control a remote Mac. Leopard brings this convenience to home users with Screen Sharing. It's useful, but files appear quite tiny when viewed on this screen-within-a-screen (and titles even smaller). Fortunately, Quick Look makes things much more legible.
2. Preview the contents of Zip files (plug-in required). BetterZip and the Zip Quick Look Plug-in both let you view the contents of a zipped file with Quick Look. In fact, Zip Quick Look's display is dependent on a HTML file which you may alter to your liking. Here's how to install Quick Look plug-ins.
3. Preview the contents of a folder (plug-in required). Much like BetterZip and Zip Quick Look, the Folder List plug-in lets you preview the contents of a folder. You can also customize its HTML-powered display and show or hide hidden files or time stamps.
4. Examine snippets of code with syntax highlighting intact. Here's another tip that requires a plug-in. Qlcolorcode lets you preview your code with all the helpful highlighting you expect.
5. Examine files in the trash. Until Leopard, the Finder's trash would keep its contents to itself. Anything you wanted to examine had to be moved back to the desktop. Fortunately, Quick Look lets you preview trashed items. Now you know precisely which item to yank out of there.
6. Prep your iWork documents for use with Quick Look. When you create a document with Numbers, Pages or Keynote, you can ensure that its preview will display the proper formatting by selecting the Include Preview in Document check box whey you save (or turn this feature on by default in the general preference pane).
7. Enhance TextMate. TextMate is the editor that geeks everywhere love (including the geeks at TUAW). Ciarán Walsh has written two Quick Look plug-ins for TextMate that let you preview items in a project or render Quick Look previews (for certain file types) using the TextMate syntax highlighter, respectively.
8. Preview fonts. Open a Finder window, select Cover Flow view and navigate to the font you're interested in. Click the space bar and presto! Instant preview.
9. Quick Look and Cover Flow. I love the combination of Cover Flow and Quick Look. Open a bulging folder in the Finder and select Cover Flow view. Tap the space bar to preview the 1st file and then use the arrow keys to move the next one and so on. You'll stay in Quick Look mode! Very cool.
10. Send images to iPhoto. When viewing an image with Quick Look - either from the Finder or attached to a Mail message - you'll see a tiny iPhoto icon at the bottom of the window. Click it to send that image to iPhoto.

I hope you found these tips useful. And I still dislike Episode I.