João's posterous

Just for the lulz...

Filed under: mac

Mac Quick Tip: Adding a signature to PDFs with Preview

Preview is the most underrated piece of software ever. If you spend some time with it you'll find out that you can use it to perform a lot of, sometimes less obvious, functions.

Today I'm going to talk about digital signatures. If you send documents that are (or should) be signed, you probably print them, then sign and then scan them again so they're properly signed. The thing is, it's a lot of trouble and you know that scanned docs don't look as good.

Preview has a tool that allows you to scan a signature, without even needing to have a scanner at hand as long as your Mac has a built-n iSight camera (which it probably has), and add them to your PDFs in a jiffy.

The process is really simple:

1. Write your letter or whatever it is using your favourite text processing app (just make sure you can save the document has PDF) and save it as a FDP file.

2. Make your signature with a black pen on a white paper. Make it pretty and a little bigger than usual (use a black felt pen since it works best).

3. Open it with Preview and click the Annotations icon.

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4. The Annotation Bar will pop down. Click on the Signature icon.

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Here you can see two options (don't mind my other signature - you probably don't have any there). Click "Create Signature from Built-in iSight".

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A new window opens with a kind of scanning window that shows the image captured by your camera. Hold the paper steady and so that the signature rests on the blue line as you see below. Once you're happy with the scanned signature, click Accept (tip: use the Return (Enter) key).

Make sure you have enough light on it and hold it really steady or it won't scan properly.

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Don't mind if you can't get it right on the first attempt. It took me a few trials to get it just right.

5. And that's it. You're signature is saved and you can use it to sign your docs without all the print-sign-scan hassle. All you have to do now is to click the signature icon again

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and choose the signature you want and click in the place you want it in the document (you can resize it there).

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And you're off to impress with your properly signed document.

-João

Séries no iTunes 100% automático - Parte 1

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Ora bem, há já muito tempo que encontrei formas de não me preocupar muito com o download e gestão de séries. Desde o TVShows até ao iTunes, passando pelo Transmission e iFlicks, os meus episódios já levavam pouco trabalho manual. Há uns dias eis que consegui finalmente automatizar este processo a 100% e, agora, os episódios das minhas séries simplesmente aparecem no iTunes, como se viessem da iTunes Store, num processo totalmente automático e quase transparente.

Porquê o iTunes? Simples: torna muito mais fácil gerir as séries. Podemos marcar os episódios como vistos/não vistos, saber onde ficámos, ler uma sinopse de cada episódio (com a ajuda do iFlicks) e usar o Front Row onde as séries aparecem muito mais organizadas do que numa lista de ficheiros de vídeo inestética.

Neste guia venho ensinar-vos a reproduzir este sistema nos vossos Macs (desculpem pessoal dos Windozes, mas não há nada para vocês aqui - move along). Na realidade é bastante simples (embora um pouco trabalhoso) já que tudo o que precisamos vem incluído nas aplicações que vamos instalar.

Read the rest of this post »

Mac Apps: TVShows

Well, TVShows isn't exactly an app anymore, it's just a pref pane that will do wonders if you use to download your TV shows episodes by torrents.

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TVShows 2, developed by embercode, is a little pref pane that allows you to subscribe to your favorite TV shows and automatize the download process for new episodes.

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All you need to do is subscribe to your shows from the list of available ones, tweak the show-specific settings and TVShows will check the web for new episodes on regular intervals and download the torrent files as soon as they become available. In this new version, TVShows allows you to choose where you want to save the torrent files, set the interval for searching for new episodes and set the quality of the torrent to download for each show (on previous versions, this setting had effect in every show) and keep a default configuration.

You can also choose if you want to automatically open the torrent on your default torrent app for it to download immediately. It also features Growl notifications for new episodes.

This new pref pane version is still in beta (as you can see in the screenshot, show covers are not yet available) and, despite of working beautifully for me, many people reported some problems with it. If you prefer the older, standalone version, it is still available on the website. The fact that the older version is a standalone app does not make it less useful. The only drawback is that you can't choose different settings for each show (the HD setting may be the most preponderant).

Currently, TVShows 2 can't import settings from older versions.

The beta version (currently 2.0b4) is available from embercode's blog and the older version (currently 0.4.8r2) from TVShow's website (direct download links).

TVShows is free and open-source!

-João

Mac Quick Tips: App switcher maximize trick & full-screen windows

Hey there. Here's a new tip to boost your window minimize/maximize process.

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If you've been using a Mac for a while, you probably figured out already that Cmd + M minimizes the foreground window. But, whenever you want it back, you've always had to rely on the mouse.

The app switcher on the Mac allows you to maximize (or un-minimize, if you want) without using the mouse, and it's quite simple actually: 

1. hit Cmd + Tab to bring up the app switcher;
2. cycle through the apps with the Tab key and pick the one you want;
3. and then, before releasing the Cmd key, hold Option (Alt) down and the minimized window will come up.

This works with apps without any windows opened too. In this case, a new window will be opened.

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If you're a switcher, you've probably noticed that Macs don't handle windows like Windows do and that the feature you miss more is that maximize button that resizes the window to match the whole screen (by default, the maximize button on windows [on the Mac] resizes the window to match it's content, and toggles between this size and the original size).

Well, OS X can do it too and, again, is pretty simple: just hold Shift while you click on the green + (plus) button on the top left corner of each window.

Hope this will help to improve your experience with OS X.

-João

Apple holds the event "Back to the Mac", October 20th

 

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Is that a Lion lurking in Apple's invite for a "Back to the Mac" event on October 20? It looks like a brand new version OS X. I hope they call it Simba. But what else?

The surprise could be a revamped MacBook Air. At least, that's what Daring Fireball thinks:

A "sneak preview of the next major version of Mac OS X", and, I'm just guessing here, the brand-new way-cooler MacBook Air.

The other update that is long overdue is iLife. However, it seems unlikely that they will introduce a new Mac OS X (which will take at least one hour to present), a new "way-cooler" computer, and iLife. We'll find out a week from today.

via Gizmodo.com by Matt Buchannan

So, there's a new big cat, judging from the image, a "Lion". I believe they're going to show it, regarding Sir Buchannan's opinion. What can we expect?

Some blogs are talking about Finder improvements, new versions for iWork and iLife and new Macs, especially, laptops. I'd go for that improved Finder, much like these apps that came up as a replacement (such as TotalFinder or PathFinder). Finder is getting old and misses some key features, features that many advanced users are asking for for ages, like tabs and dual panes. I saw somewhere, don't remember where though, that Apple was, earlier this year, looking for a person to implement a "revolutionary feature in the core of MacOS X". I won't guess. In my opinion, MacOS X has achieved such a level os maturity that it's being more and more difficult to guess what Apple will do next.

As for iWork and iLife '11, there is a high probability that they will include new features, as they always do. Like is said for a while now, the inclusion of iDVD's functionality into iMovie (I approve) and a new mysterious app. I couldn't find any clues on this one, though...

New Macs... Well, I've never seen Apple keeping the same design for this long, for the iMac especially... I hope they come up with a new one. Laptops, though, need an update on hardware, and I'm sure they'll do it. MacBook Air, particularly, is almost ancient and badly outdated. Some also say that the iOS devices will get, or may get, syncing without iTunes. I, personally, don't believe that. iTunes has always been Apple's choice for this kind of stuff and, being iTunes 10 relatively new, I don't see why Apple would come up with a new kind of software.

What do you think?

The event will be addressed on wednesday, October 20th, 10:00 a. m. Pacific Time (18:00 in Portugal, GMT).

-João

Mac Quick Tip: Force Spotlight to re-index

Here's another Mac Quick Tip to solve problems with Spotlight. Recently, I came across some things that Spotlight indexed but were no longer on my hard drive and had to find a way to force it to index my entire HDD again. It's quite simple actually.

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Here's what you need to do:

1) Open System Preferences and click the Spotlight option;

2) Choose the Privacy tab where you can add locations you don't want Spotlight to index. Adding a location here, not only prevents results from that location to appear on searches, but it also deletes what was already indexed regarding that location. In my case, I wanted to do that to the entire disk, so I simply dragged my Macintosh HD icon from the desktop into there. You can do this to any folder, or disk;

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3) Close System Preferences and open it again, Spotlight section, Privacy tab;

4) Select the location(s) you want to re-index and click the "minus" sign at the bottom of the list and then close System Preferences.

Wait a few seconds and you'll see the Spotlight icon in the top-right corner of the screen with a little dot in the middle. That means it's indexing. If you click it you can see the progress of the indexing process (it may take a while, depending on how much it has to index).

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-João

Mac Apps: beaTunes 2 - Fix your iTunes Library

If you're like me, an iTunes organization freak, you like to have your songs very well organized, with all the info and cover art and everything.

Eventually you'll get duplicates, different genres between songs from the same album and other situations that are a pain to solve manually. But there's beaTunes.

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beaTunes helps you with this kind of issues. It checks your library for consistency problems (compilations with only one artist, different release years, different genres, ...), general issues (duplicates, missing info, missing files, ...) and spelling issues. By clicks on the options it give you, it solves all this problems easily.

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But it does more! Identifies tracks, import lyrics and creates interesting playlists. Get the full specs here, and get the trial. It's great.

I may admit that there are other, better options when it comes to identify tracks, like SongGenie, but nothing that I could find will get your library in shape this fast and does not have this many features. beaTunes deserves a try and my recommendation.

-João

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo