This week’s techmail is Clear some desk space with cross-platform keyboard and mouse sharing app. The tip is about Synergy+ which is awesome cool. With it, I can share the same keyboard and mouse across as many computers as I want (it’s cross-platform, so I use it with my OS X workstation and my Fedora workstation) — all without requiring a KVM switch. Works absolutely fantastic. One of my new “essential” applications.
Tag Archives: OS X
Mind mapping with MindNode for the Mac
Last week’s mac techmail was Mind mapping with MindNode for the Mac. MindNode is a neat program that lets you do mind mapping, or drawing pictures to represent thoughts or plans or ideas. Mind mapping is quite popular, and with good reason as it gives you a visual representation of what you’re planning or thinking. MindNode comes in two flavours, the free and Pro versions. The Pro version has some good features, but the free version has been good enough for me.
Handy screen locking tips for Mac
Last week’s mac tip was Handy screen locking tips for Mac. Unlike Windows or Linux, which have keyboard shortcuts to quickly lock the screen when you get up to grab a coffee or go to the bathroom, the Mac doesn’t. It has the same functionality, but you need to mouse over in order to do it (which, for people like myself, is a waste of a good keyboard). This tip tells you how to emulate the same (basic!) functionality in OS X.
Safari 5 underwhelming, iPhoto speed-up tips
Falling a little bit behind here… the mac techmail from two weeks ago was Safari 5 boasts speed gains but real improvement is extensions which discusses the new Safari 5. My initial reaction to Safari 5 was “meh…”. Using it now for a few weeks, it’s ok. It’ll be more interesting when there are more extensions to use. Maybe my machine is too powerful to notice the JavaScript improvements. I’m sad there is no sandboxing feature for tabs. Safari 5 has me a bit underwhelmed.
Last week’s mac techmail was Clean up iPhoto to make it faster which looks at a few tips to make iPhoto run a little faster, particularly for people that have a lot of pictures.
Increase download speed with Aria2 utility
Last week’s techmail was Increase download speed with Aria2 utility which looks at an incredibly useful and cool file download client. Aria2 is unique because it can grab the same file from multiple sources: http, ftp, bittorrent. It can do it at the same time and then munge the resulting file back together. Makes downloading big files wicked fast. Multi-platform, so not just Linux.
Simplify Terminal usage on Mac OS X with Visor
This week’s mac techmail is Simplify Terminal usage on Mac OS X with Visor. Visor is a really neat plugin for the OS X Terminal that allows you to hide and re-open the Terminal with a keystroke. For someone like me who has multiple tabs open, uses mutt and irssi, ssh sessions open all over the place, yet with screen real estate at a premium on my macbook, having something like Visor is really slick. Sure, I can have windows overlapping each other and use Witch or the fast window switcher to flip between them all, but I find Visor really nice to have the Terminal completely out of the way until I need it. And then being able to quickly tuck it away… that’s nice too.
