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Filed under: Software, Video, Productivity

FileBrowse - a media browser companion for Finder


Romain Guy at The Apple Blog has penned a nice walkthrough of an interesting new app called FileBrowse, which acts as more of a streamlined tool for media file browsing and manipulating tasks, as opposed to a full-fledged Finder replacement (cuz we all know how well that's going). FileBrowse makes use of subtle display and 3D elements to provide more information when rooting through folders of images, music and video. As you can see, it draws Windows XP-like thumbnails on folders of images, allowing one to peek at what's inside without actually having to crack it open. It also offers far more information (like metadata) when viewing items individually, and it even renders album artwork on music folders, along with video file previews, a unique visual grouping system, and more.

FileBrowse looks like an interesting app, so check out Romain's walkthrough if you've been feeling the Finder is a bit lacking in these departments lately. At $25 though, it probably won't be for everyone, but it's nice to see some new file browsing tools that focus on a few things, and doing them well.

Filed under: iLife, Software, Productivity, Tips and tricks

Directly access digicam images in iPhoto

The fact that iPhoto, even the latest and shiniest '06 version, doesn't allow access to a camera's storage card to pick and chose which images get imported has irked users across this great planet of ours for years - until now. macosxhints has discovered that striking the return key twice when the import screen is displayed (upon connecting a camera or card) will enter users into a manual browsing mode, allowing them to browse their images directly from the device, the way it was meant to be (at least as an option; I'd bet this is yet another undocumented feature).

The original hint poster stated that they couldn't manually move images over; he/she could only browse them. Rob Griffiths, however, added that he could in fact manually import a custom selection of photos, suggesting that this might work on a per-camera basis. He requests, and I echo, that users who try this out post their camera model and experience over at macosxhints so they can get a good list of working models.

Filed under: Software, Productivity

PicturePopPro - powerful picture viewer Finder plugin


If you need a quick way to browse a few folders of images without starting iPhoto or some other serious photo management software, PicturePopPro just might be the Finder plugin for you. It offers right-click access to a surprisingly powerful yet slim and zippy photo browser and mini-manager. Images and directory structures can be viewed in a number of different ways, and a pop-up menu offers the ability to trash or label the image, as well as open it in its default viewer/editor (like Preview or Photoshop). This killer plugin can even be run in a full screen mode, and there are plenty of other options I haven't even explored yet. Check out its documentation page for visual demos, keyboard shortcuts and screenshots of what this plugin is capable of.

PicturePopPro is a Universal Binary and offered as donationware from setnan.org.

Filed under: Software, iTunes

Enable a slick Constellation menu in Quicksilver ?49

Macintalk has posted a how-to on enabling a really slick Constellation menu plugin for Quicksilver β49. Granted, this menu is quite a bit of eye candy, but if you follow Macintalk's post all the way through and assign this menu to a hotkey, it then becomes a bit of really handy eye candy.

Keep in mind, however, that (as far as I know) you need the latest developer β49 to bring this plugin to fruition, so just like with the last slick Quicksilver Cube eye candy plugin, if you're not interested in the beta side of things, you should probably leave this one alone until it gets ironed out a bit more...

...but on the other hand: look at how cool that is! The entire thing is clickable, and it's also bigger in 'real life' - on my 1440 x 900 display it's 512 x 512 pixels, so it's much more legible than the 225 x 225 screenshot in this post. The small button just to the right of the iTunes icon in the middle of this menu, for example, displays a popup list of your playlists. Clicking on any of the larger slices, such as the albums or artists, pops up a second, similar menu you can browse through by using the down arrow at the bottom of the inner circle. The whole menu system seems pretty zippy too, once it takes a second to load all your iTunes information. Of course, I'm also using a 2.0 Ghz MacBook Pro with 1.5 GB RAM, so YMMV. Check out Macintalk's how-to if you're done drooling and want to get down to business.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, iTunes

iTunes: all about the small touches

The MacDevCenter has a nice post up about some of the often over looked UI niceties of iTunes. I didn't know that you could convert video to an iPod friendly format right in iTunes. Genius!

Additional columns, pop out windows, and that little triangle in the main status window are also covered. One thing that was overlooked (though perhaps it is so obvious that it wasn't worth a mention) is the 'Browse' button. I can't tell you how many people just use iTunes with the default view of the song library. They lament that they can't find any of their music so I point out the Browse view and it is like I am their iTunes superhero.

What features in iTunes do you think deserve more praise? What would you like to see in future versions of iTunes?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Reviews

Get organized: a survey of digital junk drawer apps

A while ago I decided to bring some sanity to the way I do things and organize all my stuff. I'm working on a design thesis in my multimedia undergrad degree, I'm constantly doing research for my blogging work, and I have countless other projects and ideas that were growing in both size and disorganization in my Home folder. When I decided to finally start getting organized, I realized I might not be the only person in this position, and I figured I would turn my research and testing experiences into a post; a sort of survey of what some call 'digital junk drawer' applications.

What follows is a pro and con summary of four of the most popular junk drawer apps I looked at, but read this post with a few of my criteria in mind:
  • I like keyboard shortcuts. I like them a lot. Being able to highlight a chunk of text in a browser or a PDF I'm reading and hitting a couple of keys to send it to a junk drawer app is far more efficient and less workflow-intrusive than having to use a mouse to drag and drop it to some far corner of my display.
  • I decided not to touch apps that employ entirely different paradigms such as the wiki-like VoodooPad; I'm not denying the usefulness of these other ways of working, but adding that entirely new level to this survey would've meant putting this post on the back-burner for longer than I would like.
  • I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.0 Ghz with 1.5 GB RAM, and while I synced my notes library across these apps to gauge performance 'n all that jazz, my library is a mere 500 notes (URLs, PDFs, etc.) strong, so your mileage may vary.
With that said, check out my survey of some Mac OS X apps that could help you bring order to your digital chaos, and feel free to post your thoughts or mention apps that should've made this list, and why.

Continue readingGet organized: a survey of digital junk drawer apps

Filed under: OS, Software

Disk Order - an advanced Finder replacement


Disk Order is another app that takes a stab at replacing the Finder, but doesn't seem to take things quite as overboard as PathFinder. With tabbed file browser windows, built-in FTP client, command line tools and more, Disk Order should have a few things to offer anyone who feels like the Finder is the ugly duckling of Mac OS X.

A full-featured demo of Disk Order is available, while a license costs $22.57.

[via MacMerc]

Filed under: iTS

iTMS does storefront customization for radio websites

Two hip-hop radio stations, Power 106 in LA and HOT 97 in NYC, have signed on the dotted line with the iTMS to offer an integrated, customized version of the store right in their own websites. The radio stations can design the store any way they see fit, and feature any artists, recent releases and playlists they want. From some quick browsing, I was able to find the iTMS integration at HOT 97's site, but not at Power 106's.

hypebot, the blog where we found this, was quick to point out the vast potential this kind of partnership with the iTMS has for any kind of niche markets, businesses and organizations you can think of: "From skateboard sites selling radical tunes to a museum's site selling period music that matches their exhibitions, this could be a very exciting development for niche and indie music marketers". Indeed, this is a great example of that iPod expansion post Scott had yesterday; it sounds like Apple has plenty of tricks up their sleeve for the iPod and iTMS.

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


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