I think things such as Applescript and Automator scare a lot of people. While it’s an easy language, the Average Joe does not want to learn how to program. Personally I stayed away from those things for a long time, but have recently adopted them into my workflow once I made up my mind to just do it. Still, it took a weekend of reading and a week of just messing around to get comfortable going pro so to speak. Sikuli takes the idea of Automated workflows and makes it available for regular people. While it’s a simple screenshot app in it’s most basic form, more advanced users can add a ton of functionality.
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Automate Your Workflow with Sikuli
It Could Be a Mac App: LiveStats 2, A Real-Time Look at Your Visitors
Once upon a time, there was a group of guys somewhere near London that believed website analytics could have been so much more. They could have been different, focused on users. Then, it came the day that belief took shape and they crafted LiveStats, the one and only live traffic monitoring web application. And I mean “one and only”, because anything else was just nothing compared to LiveStats. The guys were called GoSquared, and maybe they didn’t realize they created a “king” back then.
LiveStats was a great tool, I’ve been using it since it first release, and it provided a great way to monitor your incoming traffic in real time. But hey, why am I talking like this? “Was”, “provided”? Because the GoSquared team has just released the 2.0 version of LiveStats, and many things have changed. LiveStats has just got a lot better.
Lunettes, the New Face of VLC for Mac
During this past week I’ve been talking a lot about alternatives for VLC. I’ve covered MPlayer and Movist so far, and both these apps are very stable, good looking and overall promising. But what about the actual VLC? You should have heard not so long ago that the development of VLC for Mac was going under some trouble, and that the devs were talking about ceasing it.It’s not like that, fortunately.
VLC is getting a new face. Its codename is Lunettes, it’s got a brand new user interface, it’s fully 64-bit enabled. It’s basically a new application. From what we can read on the official Lunettes’ wiki page:
“VLC for Mac must attract designers.We have decided to offer to designer the possibility to edit via a simple text file the look of VLC.
VLC for Mac needs a good interface to be the best Video Player.We want to make sure you’ll get the best experience ever when watching your favorites TV shows or Movies using VLC.For instance, if I am watching a TV show, and then quit Lunettes. At next launch Lunettes will offer you to go back to where you were.
Then the famous playlist fades out: It is not visible by default, and you don’t have to use it anymore.
Also in fullscreen you can now scroll through your playlists or TV channels.
And finally Lunettes is 64 bits.”
And I’ll tell you what, it works. It’s fast, it’s nice, it’s smart enough to remember where I was before I quit the app. The cool thing is, you can already head over the Github page of the project and download an early working build of Lunettes.The future of VLC has been that promising, I believe.
It Could Be A Mac App: Nirvana, Web Based GTD Management. With Style.
When it comes to getting things done on a Mac, Things from CulturedCode is the way to go. I wrote an in-depth review of Things (both for Mac and iPhone actually) some weeks ago, and let’s face it: Things is just great. It’ one of the finest examples of a simple app that provides a stunning feature set, enabling the user to go through both easy and more complex and structured tasks.
There’s only one major drawback about Things, sync. CulturedCode hasn’t managed yet to come up with an over the air solution for syncing Things for Mac and iPhone, so everything still happens locally - in a local network. As we’re approaching to a cloud based web, forcing the users to sync their stuff locally will soon become outdated and unacceptable. At least for data, everything should move to the cloud now. This is the future, and it’s already happening in many ways.
Back to the GTD thing, what’s the deal of pushing everything to the cloud? It’s a big deal actually. In this post I’ll talk about Nirvana, a very promising web application which already comes packed in a very Mac OS-like interface and aims at revolutionize the way you organize and complete tasks. Both on your Mac and your iPhone.
Rucksack: A Better Way to Handle Archives on Mac OS X
I don’t know why, but there’s something wrong about Mac OS X and archives. As you may know Mac OS comes with an application called Archive Utility installed by default, and it’s pretty good when it comes to opening simple .zip archives. Problem is, Archive Utility totally sucks when the file isn’t encoded in zip or it’s a password protected archive. And if you consider that most of the files I download are encrypted .zip’s and .rar archives, you realize that I have a problem. So I decided to try something else. I installed the popular Unarchiver, good for .rar files, but unable to join split archives. I was about to give up.
Fast forward to this morning, my friend Dietmar from Green & Slimy sends a tweet about an app he’s been working on and that’s in beta: it’s called Rucksack. I open the link, I see a sexy website saying “the new iArchiver” and “…the new way to handle archives”. I download the .zip file. I unarchive it with Archive Utility. For the last time.
Movist: The Real Alternative to VLC for Mac
Yesterday I wrote this post about MPlayer OS X Extended and many people in the comments and on Twitter told me I was wrong, that there was another alternative to VLC, and it wasn’t the app I talked about. It’s always a great thing when you guys suggest me new apps to try and write about.
The app is called Movist, is hosted (again) on Google Code and it’s media player for Mac OS X based on Quicktime and FFMpeg.
Snagit Beta, Your One Stop Shop for Snapshot Fun
Mac users are lucky. We get all kinds of toys to play with if we ever want to take screenshots, with Littlesnapper and Skitch coming to mind as the two most prominent apps available. Techsmith, the same guys who make Camtasia Studio, felt that there was room for one more. And I must admit it’s really pretty (I’m a sucker for eye-candy).
MPlayer OS X Extended: The Best Alternative to VLC So Far?
I use VLC as my media player of choice on my Mac. Although Quicktime is a great app which provides a good dose of eye candy as well, VLC is compatible with almost every format out of the box - without the need of installing any additional plugin.
It’s simple, it’s straightforward and it becomes beautiful if you apply the Blackpearl mod. But today I’d like to talk about the new kid on the block of media players for Mac, MPlayer.
VideoStories: My Living Desktop, Your Virtual Gateway to Zen
While I first passed it off as a gimmick, My Living Desktop is one of those applications that you just have to see for yourself before passing judgement. It’s interesting to note that while it doesn’t promise to increase your productivity (or really anything for that matter), those looking to transport themselves to another world during work or play might find this application of great use.