Dockables: a clever donationware app

[An earlier version of this was accidentally mis-posted to my "world" blog.]

I think TUAW pointed me to Dockables. These are donation ware applescripts with a full installer and excellent icons. I have "sleep", "screen saver", "screen capture", "screen sleep" and "log off" in my Dock now. Since I don't use my Dock for much these are great to have, and of course LaunchBar (love it) can activate any of them easily.

I've always had trouble remembering the key combination for screen captures, and I don't like the TIFF format Grab uses (though I'm sure there's a way to change Grab to use PNG, I don't like those tweaks if I can avoid them). Now I use dockables, open the PNG in Preview, select, copy and then either pastse into a document or "create new from clipboard", then save with a useful name or paste. Ok, so it's not ultra efficient, but it works rather quickly.

Screen sleep is another of my favorites. It simply puts the display to sleep. I didn't think this was possible on an iMac, but it works. I can now quickly rest my screen at night while allowing backups to proceed normally.

These are also handy for the docks of my family members, who really don't know any key shortcuts or hot corner mouse actions.

I'm sending the author a donation.

dotMac needs a refresh: Zip disk?

This is from the readme file displayed with a brand new.Mac iDisk:

Using your iDisk

Your iDisk behaves much like any other removable storage available for Macintosh, such as a ZIP disk. Use the same drag-and-drop techniques to copy documents or folders to or from your iDisk. You can also access your iDisk to upload and download files via a browser by going to www.mac.com and clicking the iDisk icon.

A ZIP disk?! What are the chances that anyone under thirty knows what a zip disk was?

Sheesh.

SkyDrive from MSFT vs xdrive from AOL vs nada from Google

I've had an account for a while with AOL's xdrive. I don't use it all that often, but it's handy every month or so for moving files around. Today I tried setting up a Microsoft SkyDrive from my MacBook. It was a mixed experience. Safari 3.03 (beta) was firmly rejected. Firefox seemed to work, but it hung with a SkyDrive icon after an initial upload. Subsequently I couldn't get SkyDrive to respond from any browser, so maybe I crashed it :-). The Firefox usability was pretty weak in any case, clearly Microsoft intends to bind SkyDrive to IE.

The primary advantage of SkyDrive is that you can share files with anyone on the net and with other SkyDrive users. I don't think xdrive.com allows either option. Press coverage is comparing this to Google's Gmail share, but that's an awkward solution with no public sharing option. Google's only true public file sharing is their feeble Page Creator file file upload option. Apple's .Mac sharing is comparable, but it's fairly expensive (though better than it was).

I guess we'll have to keep waiting for Google to contemplate their next move ...

Matias Tactile Pro 2.0 Keyboard for Mac (and Windows)

I bought a non-Apple Mac keyboard a few months back, replacing the Apple kb I'd grown to loathe. Alas, I'd never head of the Matias Tactile Pro 2.0 Keyboard. I came across it today by way of a review of Apple's new products. That review discussed Apple's latest evil keyboard (ok, so it's slightly less evil than their old evil desktop keyboard) referenced a 3 yo review of an older version of the Tactile Pro 2:

I realize that some may find it odd that I wax rhapsodic about something as mundane as a computer keyboard, but those who've had the pleasure of using Apple's old Apple Extended Keyboard (code named the "Saratoga" for its battleship gray color and size) and have had to put up with lesser keyboards from Apple and others, will be thrilled to know that there's a modern, USB keyboard that's nearly as nice as the Apple input device of old.

That keyboard is Matias' $100 TactilePro. The folks at Matias use the same keyswitches found in the Apple Extended keyboard and it shows. The keyboard is a bit noisier than my old Saratogas (more clack) but it's just as springy and responsive. Like the older Apple keyboards (and unlike the current Apple offerings) the TactilePro includes a Power button for switching on and off compatible Macs (not all Mac models will respond to pressing this button). And like Apple's new keyboards, the TactilePro includes Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute, and Eject keys (F14 and F15 are used by Mac OS X to adjust screen brightness, though the keys aren't marked that way).

The new version of the Matias has dual UBS 2.0 dock (how do they power it?) and Mac key symbols, but the price has gone from $100 to $150 (!!). The web site doesn't discuss device drivers, but most non-Apple kbs have them.

Google apps: feeble.

How feeble are Google's vaunted "Apps"?

So feeble that a new user going to the calendar site doesn't see the group calendar. They see only their own calendar.

So feeble that Page Creator has been stuck at the "intern's summer project" level for years.

Feeble.

Update 8/10/07: There are so many bugs and oddities I think I'll just keep adding them to this post ...

1. Start page: click the "even more" link in the google tools hieararchy and get:
   Not Found
   The requested URL /intl/en/options/ was not found on this server.
2. Creating and editing the common start page has very limited control options.
3. In order to allow a user to edit a single web page, you have to give them admin control over the entire domain.
4. You can change a user's name in the user controls, but this doesn't propagate to the calendars. Even if you manually change the name in the calendar, the name shown as "calendar owner" will remain incorrect.
   

iPhoto 7 (iLife 2008): again, no Library merges

[Update: the link won't work because Apple deleted my post within 2 hours of my posting it. I'm not surprised. Maybe their vigilant reaction is a sign they're feeling some heat about this issue. There are very active complaint threads this morning about library merging.]

From my post on Apple's Discussion group (corrected because iLife 2008 is iPhoto 7, not iPhoto 8)

Apple - Support - Discussions - Feature request for iPhoto 8: Import ...:

You're traveling with your MacBook. Organizing photos, adding metadata, creating albums, slideshows, etc. You get home. You want to import your travel library to the main library, preserving ALL the versions and metadata.

You have just married the Mac Geek of your dreams. You need to merge Libraries into the shared folder (which can't be shared over a network, but let's just ignore that). How do you do that?

You created and used separate Libraries back with iPhoto bogged down at 2000 images. Now you want to combine them, preserving version relationships, album relationships, descriptions, titles, keywords, roll information, photo books, slideshows, etc, etc.

Yes, I know about iPhoto Library Manager. I license and use it. It does miracles with Apple's limited merge support, but some metadata is lost. I also had so many issues with earlier version merges that, even though I use it all the time, I'm gun-shy. Sorry, merging Libraries is very complex. It's hard to believe that anyone but Apple can do it safely.

iLife 2008 (iPhoto 7) is the fourth release in a row to disappoint those of us asking for Library management.

Choices? Aperture, which Apple clearly intends us to buy instead, doesn't allow one to edit dates on images (good-bye scans!), is dog slow (appallingly slow - still) by design, and can't handle video. Others? They don't import iPhoto Libraries. I ain't redoing metadata on 14,000 images.

Anyone interested in putting together an online petition to ask Apple to add Libary merge/import/management to iPhoto 2009? Picket Cupertino maybe?

I ordered it, of course. What choice do I have?

VueScan vs. Nikon Scan on OS X

I've published a few posts about VueScan; it's a well regarded cross-platform scan control software package that appears to be a one person show. The author's personal focus and prolonged dedication has produced an idiosyncratic product that, with a few quirks (auto-crop isn't what it could be) performs admirably well. I bought a "pro" license, so I get my updates as long as Hanrick toils away.

I've mostly used VueScan to do print and a few negative scans, but recently I worked on a set of my mother's slides. These range from about 40 to 50 years old, in various states of repair. I used Nikon CoolScan V I bought about 3-4 years ago, it's oddly still about state of the art for slide scanning (though slow now). I started out using Nikon Scan 4.02, downloading the latest OS X version from Nikon's support site (yechy non-Apple installer btw. I installed as admin, but the app works for a non-admin user). It's a quirky mix of various semi-integrated packages that Nikon resells, but it mostly worked. It was slow however, and I wasn't impressed with the results various image adjustment options. I got the best results turning everything off, working with the clumsy levels tool, and using Digital ICE for damaged slides. Performance on a G5 iMac was dog slow and, really, it was clumsy.

I then tried the same images on the G5 using the latest version of VueScan. It worked beautifully. Results were better than what I got with Nikon Scan. I didn't fuss too much with white balance or levels, I went with the very good initial results then dropped the 24bit TIFF into Aperture for finishing. From Aperture I exported high res JPEGs to store in iPhoto (note Aperture doesn't allow date editing, an incomprehensible defect). The processing was a bit slow, but the workflow was great.

Next I tried VueScan, which has full Intel support, on my dual core MacBook. Processing was 2-3x as fast.

If you're using a Nikon Cool Scan (CoolScan) with OS X, don't bother installing the ugly Nikon software. Buy VueScan (cheap at the price) and finish your TIFFs in a secondary image processing package (like iPhoto, Aperture, etc).