Since I’m such a sucker for ‘beauty in one frame‘ I happen to heart a lot of stuff. That’s where the We <3 it bookmarklet comes in handy. I love that thing! It’s probably my most clicked bookmark in the past few days. However, I noticed quickly that this bookmarklet does not come without any bugs… Only part of the images in a page were ‘heartable‘. And what is even more annoying: when I run into a cool picture in one of my RSS feeds I have to open the URL before I can (try to) submit it using the bookmarklet.

So that workflow kinda didn’t suit me… I figured I could create an OSX dashboard widget that fixes this problem… So I did.

It’s simple: If somewhere you run into an image that is served from the web, you just drag the image (from your webbrowser, your RSS feed, your email client, your IM client, etc) into your dashboard, drop it on the widget… Magic happens… and it’s hearted!

It’s simplicity in a box! I love simple! Simple is good!
Anyway: I thought I might share this with you, guys and girls. Some of you might actually have use for this, too.

Download: Click

Notes:

1. Submitting images using this widget results in entry titles taken from the filenames of the images you drop onto the widget.
2. The source (blogpost, article, Flickr set, etc) of the file will never point to the actual page where the image originally resides. It will point straight to the original image location.

Enjoy!

So I’ve read (millions of times), heard (thousands of times) and seen (I don’t even want to think about it) how people keep using the standard shortcut to take screenshots on a Mac. I can’t really remember how long I did it that way but it sure as hell wasn’t long enough to remember the shortcut. Appearently it’s CMD + SHIFT + 4 for a screenshot (I had to Google this).

What I’ll be showing here is how you can remap this action to one (1) keystroke using standard built-in OSX magic.

1. Open System Preferences
   
2. Go to ‘Keyboard & Mouse’
   
3. Hit the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ tab
   
4. Scroll down the the ‘Screen Shots’ group
   
5. I think you’ll be able to handle yourself from here…

I would suggest a screenshot program but apparently the developers in some companies aren’t that bright either…
For example: There’s that TinyGrab thing, which is really making its name ever since Snow Leopard hit the stores and f#cked up GrabUp. They have their own keyboard shortcut and you WOULD think they’d make it easy for you…but they don’t.

I can see how the OSX shortcut is the same as the original ‘short’cut… But what the hell were they thinking for Windows users? Windows users have a ‘Print Screen’ button on their keyboard! What’s wrong with that!? It’s right there! USE IT! (Seriously, it’s stuff like this, that makes me facepalm)(or turn your neighbor into an Oxford-cloth psycho who stalks from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers)

Anyway: I hope you can remap that insane shortcut to something easier (either for your brain or for your fingers) on your Mac and go on and enjoy your new screenshot-button!

However…
Ever since I got myself Snow Leopard GrabUp died on me: Whenever I take a screenshot GrabUp won’t upload it to the server anymore… And I’m not alone. Lot’s of users are experiencing this issue.
The people at GrabUp HQ probably don’t give a damn about their customers because they don’t seem to be working on an updated version.

So…
I’ve been looking for a replacement but nothing really compares to the power and yet the simplicity of GrabUp.
So what does a good developer do? Create his own workflow in Automator… I won’t go into the details of this. If you love GrabUp but Snow Leopard broke yours, this is a simple walkthrough to get a (free) GrabUp-like workflow running on your own FTP server

1. If you don’t already have it: Download and install this Upload To FTP automator action.
2. Download this Automator workflow and open it
3. Edit the FTP details in the ‘Upload to FTP’ action
4. Save this workflow using ‘Save as’ and give it a name.
5. Open Finder and navigate to the folder where screenshots are saved to (mine is -/Ronny/Pictures/screenshots/), right click it and select ‘Folder Actions Setup…’
6. The Folder Actions Setup dialog opens. You will be presented a list with possible actions. Choose the action you just saved in step 4. Click ‘Attach’
7. The window should look like this now (notice all the checked boxes).
8. Now take a screenshot, wait for Growl to tell you the upload is done and enjoy your CMD+V.

The only minor (depending on your sense of patience) downside of this is that Snow Leopard needs a few (5-10) seconds on order to get started executing the workflow whereas GrabUp starts immediatly. But having done some research regarding this last note, I have come to the conclusion that this is not intended behaviour. I’m not an Apple Developer of any kind so if you know how to make this delay go away, feel free to help me out here

In the meanwhile: I’ve found a pref-pane called Hazel. This tool does all kinds of stuff regarding files and folders. One of them is monitoring a folder of your choice and executing an Automator script of your choice… Well ain’t that just perfect? The intresting thing is that Hazel reacts a bit faster to changes in folders than OSX itself does (as in ’3 seconds’). If I got their FAQ explanation for the pricing right, using it for this sole purpose is free…

What is the difference between the evaluation, demo and registered mode?

When you first install Hazel, it is in evaluation mode. In this mode all features except rule exporting are available. This mode lasts for 14 days giving you a chance to put Hazel through its paces.

After the evaluation period is up, Hazel switches to demo mode. In this mode, Hazel is limited to monitoring one folder and for that folder, only two rules can be active at any one time. Also, in demo mode, you cannot import or export rules and trash functions are disabled.

You may purchase a full license at any time to fully enable all features.

I have installed Hazel, configured it to be working with the above workflow* and guess what… Demo mode will do

*When asked for the Automator workflow: Navigate to /Users/YourUsername/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions/. You’ll find the workflow you saved earlier in that folder.

So there you go! A free alternative to GrabUp Pro and the baby’s working on Snow Leopard! What else do you need?

Feel free to report any problems you run into while trying to set this up. Now go and share some screenshots!

PS: To any TinyGrab employee who got here through one of these automated notifiers: I don’t like the aggresive attitude you guys seem to be handling (on getSatisfaction, TUAW, Twitter, anywhere) so don’t even bother commenting here in order to promote your product. I tried it and I didn’t like it anyway. Any comments by one of you will be marked as spam. Long story short: Leamme alone.

Als je zelf niet erg tevreden bent met de huidige clients is het zeker de moeite om even te checken wat je van emesene vind. Er is momenteel nog geen kant en klare installer. Je moet emesene installeren, en dan een aantal libraries downloaden en builden (via Terminal), maar mits wat zoeken en prutsen moet dat gewoon lukken.

Ik ben alvast blij van eindelijk een goede client op OSX te hebben

In die kleine tutorial die ik toen postte gebruikte ik NTFS3G. Daarin moest je heel wat dingen in de commandline doen, en dan werkte het nog niet altijd met zekerheid (ik spreek uit ervaring).

Dit weekend ben ik op een handig stukje software gestoten dat Paragon NTFS For Mac OSX heet:
een klein programma van amper 3MB dat je gewoon moet installeren. Vervolgens rebooten, en inpluggen maar die NTFS schijven. Je moet niets meer mounten, of wat dan ook! Letterlijk ‘plug & play’. Zo hoort dat dus!

Ik gebruik het en het werkt fantastisch. Mijn harde schijf van mijn bootcamp-Windows kan ik zo benaderen, en er data op schrijven. Bestaande gegevens kan je aanpassen, of verwijderen (ideaal om Windows af te breken ).

En vooral: het is veel gebruiksvriendelijker dan de commandline oplossing.
Ik hoop dat ik hiermee een aantal mensen mee kan helpen, want ik kan me inbeelden dat commandline oplossing niet altijd even vlot ging

Een van de problemen waar ik al mee gekampt heb is het volgende:
Ik heb een externe USB schijf van 1TB groot. Deze gebruikte ik vroeger altijd op mijn Windows laptop. Het is dan ook maar normaal dat ik op die schijf een NTFS filesystem heb.

Het probleem is dat ik deze schijf nu wil gebruiken op mijn iMac. OSX kan echter alleen lezen vanop NTFS schijven. Vandaar mijn probleem: ik wil kunnen schrijven.
Op het internet heb ik wel oplossingen gevonden, maar geen van deze was echt volledig beschreven. Dat ga ik nu proberen te verbeteren

Eerst en vooral: Voordat je hieraan begint, maak een backup van de cruciale data. Normaal mag er niets mislopen, maar mijn ervaring leert dat Murphy een heel nuchtere persoon was.

1. Ontkoppel de NTFS USB Schijf van je Windows computer. Maak gebruik van ‘USB Apparaat uitwerpen‘! Als je gewoon de USB kabel eruit trekt zal de schijf nog door Windows gelocked zijn, en OSX zal hem niet kunnen mounten.
2. Download en installeer MacFuse.
3. Download en installeer NTFS-3G.
4. Herstart je computer.
5. Als je aangemeld bent, mag je de USB device pas inpluggen.
6. OSX mount de schijf: als je ‘Toon info’ aanklikt bij de schijf zal je bij de rechten zien staan: Read & Write

Ik ben geen Mac-Expert, dus als je vragen hebt kan ik geen antwoord garanderen. Ik sta zeker open voor suggesties, of opmerkingen.

Ik hoop dat ik jullie hiermee iets kon helpen