I just found a really useful, free tool for use in Mac. It’s called Jumpcut. I’ve spent countless seconds (yes seconds but they add up) copying and pasting commands in Terminal windows. As Mac keeps only 1 line in the clip buffer, I end up going through hoops to copy 1 line of command for 1 task and than another line of command for another task. That means lots of switching between windows and scrolling through command history.
With this really neat tool, Jumpcut, all the text lines I copy get saved into 1 central place and become available for quick copy.
No more using TextEdit for collecting lines of text!
If you decide to code html or something like it on Mac with TextEdit (text editor included in Mac), don’t do it with TextEdit. Get TextWrangler or some other text editor (some free) to do it. I wanted to create a simple text file on my Mac but TextEdit only allowed me to save the file in either RTF or some other format but not as a text file (.txt). You could force TextEdit to save in .txt format by turning off Rich Text mode (Shift + Command + T). But this obviously isn’t a good solution.
So if you want to learn html or do some other task on your Mac that requires editing a real text file (.txt), get TextWrangler or TextMate. I use TextMate which costs about $50. Well worth it. TextWrangler is free.
I’ve struggled with managing thousands of digital photos like everyone else. And no, I’m not a professional photographer but I like taking many photos to get that one I will like. When I first got my digital camera a few years ago I was happy that I could take as many pictures I wanted without worrying about paying for developing them. What I didn’t expect was the ‘cost’ of storing/organizing the many digital photos. I’ve tried different methods to organize them and I basically came to the conclusion that you need to keep the digital photo in a filename that matches the data/time it was taken. Unfortunately digital cameras themselves so far seem to lack that feature, which means the files need to be renamed after they have been downloaded to the Mac. And you obviously need a software to automatically rename the files.
And that software would be, ExifRenamer. It’s a Mac software that’s free and really good at what it does.
And that software would be, ExifRenamer. It’s a Mac software that’s free and really good at what it does.
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When you drag a directory of photos onto the ExifRenamer, it will rename them all in this format: YYYY-MM-DD_hh-mm-ss.jpg. You can change the format if you like. You need to make sure the digital camera was set to correct local time though for this solution to work.
Here’s where you can download the free software.
It can also rename video clips. ExifRenamer correctly renames video clips taken with my small digital camera, Canon SD790 IS.
Don’t download digital photos onto your mac without ExifRenamer.
While holding down Apple Command Key, hit Spacebar and you will see Spotlight search box open up at top right corner of the screen. Just start typing mail and you will see Mail.app highlighted. Hit Enter key and Mail will open. Many times faster than using mouse to open Mail. This Apple Command + Spacebar combination works no matter what app or window you may be in.
Now try doing the same for a any file or document you were working on earlier. Instead of using Recent Items or Finder, simply use Spotlight to open the file.
I used to miss the Start key in Windows. I could open applications pretty quickly just using the keyboard. I thought Mac didn’t offer such shortcuts but I was wrong. You can open Spotlight quickly just with 2 keys and open pretty much any application or file. In fact the Spotlight is even better than the Start key. You can open any file because search is done seamlessly. Brilliant.