Category archive for ‘Mac’ at bioneural.net

Archive for the 'Mac' category

Air Sharing between iPhone and Mac

Published by Bruce on December 31, 2009 in Mac. 4 responses

Air Sharing is a fab app for iPhone that lets you mount a file store on the device to the desktop as a wireless share. You can browse your files using any decent web browser, and even upload files to the phone—albeit one file at a time. This limitation can be overcome by mounting the iPhone as a network drive (on Mac from the Finder Go > Connect to Server... and enter the server address). Rather than have to visit this menu each time, wouldn't it be nice if there were a one-click way to mount iPhone? There's a app for that.
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PhotoLinker evolves geotagging on Mac

Published by Bruce on July 1, 2009 in Mac. 4 responses

PhotoLinker 2.0 ($US50, 30 day trial) is described by its developer as a 'pro geotagging and annotation tool'. Geotaggers who were familiar with GPSPhotoLinker will recognize the family resemblance, but will also appreciate the magnitude of changes this new app brings. It's no longer dependent upon use of a GPS track logger for a start, as integrated mapping now supports a manual geotagging mode (hence the dropping of 'GPS' from the name). There are improvements to workflow, a map viewer, a facility for track and waypoint management, and the pièce de résistance—EXIF metadata annotation. And yet it retains the incredible flexibility and the same precise control over automatic geotagging parameters that I appreciated in my review of GPSPhotoLonker. This post takes you on a visual walkthrough of the many new and refined features.
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The dark art of AirPort networking

Published by Bruce on April 5, 2009 in Mac. 7 responses

Until recently I was using the dodgy BeBox supplied by my Internet access provider as both a DSL modem and wireless router. The ST585v6 could create a wireless distribution system (WDS) to extend my home LAN to the attic iMac, but only over insecure WEP. So we bought a new dual-band (2.4 and 5GHz, 802.11b/g/n) Apple Time Capsule, thinking it would simplify connecting to an AirPort Express and at the same time provide wireless Time Machine backups with shared network-attached storage (NAS). In the event fully integrating this new device consumed hours, with victory arriving only after the discovery of occult keystroke trickery—not at all the Apple experience I have come to expect.
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An OS X player for More FM Wellington

Published by Bruce on April 4, 2009 in Mac. 0 responses

Good radio stations can be hard to come by. My personal preference is for a mix of older and contemporary tracks, with a healthy dose of variety but nothing too far outside mainstream. One such radio station is Wellington's More FM, to which you can listen live using your web browser. I'm not keen on Internet radio delivered via a browser window because I usually end up closing the tab/ window by mistake! This Saturday morning project produced an OS X app to keep in the Dock for when the urge to listen to More FM strikes; it opens a network stream and commences automatic playback, using either of the VLC or QuickTime players.
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Desktop refits with GeekTool and friends

Published by Bruce on March 1, 2009 in Mac. 9 responses

Further to my previous post on how to get BBC weather feeds on your desktop, this article collects together other scripts for GeekTool I've come across and customized (hat tip to the original sources, which I neglected to record). Who says the command line doesn't have equal status alongside the Mac OS X eye candy? Suggestions for optimization/ improvement or additional useful scripts most welcome.
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Live BBC weather using GeekTool

Published by Bruce on February 24, 2009 in Mac. 9 responses

GeekTool is great fun and seems an ideal means of occupying the mind while avoiding something else you should be doing. This Preference Pane for OS X basically lets you create a "live" desktop, auto-updating with data extracted using shell scripts (which can themselves call AppleScripts), image overlays, or log and other text files. I found many inspiring examples around the web to appropriate for my own desktop (see here; apologies for failing to note sources)—but one thing I had to work out by trial-and-error was bringing BBC Weather into the mix.
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