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See Apps Roar

Whenever I get a new machine there are apps that I install for at least occasional use. I always forget some until having to become irritated and peck around at a non-pecking-friendly time. With my fresh clean Lion install I thought I’d make a list so’s I don’t have to repeat this all the time. This will be growing on an ongoing basis … as that’s really the only basis on which to grow. (n.B: “AppS” means I got it from the App Store, but probably available elsewhere, and I’m not going to even get into whether there is a MSFT version or whatever).
Apart from the obvious iApps/Office stuff, they are thus (essentials for me have an “*”): 

*1Password – keep the passwords on all systems

Adium – chat the chat

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Editor – duh

Alfred (AppS) – updated launcher (unlike quicksilver) but giving Spotlight a go for now

CalendarBar – integrate iCal/gCal/Facebook … calendars

*DEVONthink Pro Office – keep the everything to be kept

*Dropbox – put it here … read/edit/share everywhere.

ecto – to write this

 
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Lion – Getting Some Leopard Back

I installed Lion yesterday and found a few annoyances. When you open something like a disk image that has an “accept this legal stuff” type window, it seems that nothing happens. In Snow Leopard this would mean that the dmg is corrupted or something. Apparently in Lion it means that the window popped up somewhere and did not pop to the front. I haven’t found out how to fix that bit. When I open something I want something to visibly happen.

Also, a new feature lets you minimize to an app icon … but, again, there is no visual cue that there is anything open there. There probably should be some icon variation.

Then, this new “natural” scrolling a la iStuff is intuitive if you conceptualize that you’re on an iPad, but for a mouse it’s just weird and it makes me fear looking the moron when on someones MSFT machine and being so obviously incapable of scrolling. For this reason it may not be something I want to get used to. Of course, this can be changed in System Preferences, but the change affects both trackpad and mouse without letting you have a different behavior for each.

I’ll be updating this at least for my own future reference, but thought I may as will stick it up here in case someone finds it useful as well (I would quite welcome any other advice). So …

Show the library:

Show User ~/Library in OS X Lion

Launch Terminal from Spotlight or Launchpad -> Utilities, and enter the following command to show or hide the directory:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Obviously change it back with “hidden”

(osxdaily)

It might be better to just remember you can always press the option key while in the Finder “Go” menu and it will show up there. This seems the best of both worlds.

Get your back/forward swipe back for Chrome (and maybe more):

Three finger swipes still work in Chrome. The issue you’re having is that default swipes in Lion are two fingers. Go into System Prefs, then into trackpad and change the swipes from 2 fingers to 3. You can also make it both 2 and 3 finger swipes to accomplish the same thing, in which case swiping will work in Chrome and you’ll see get the cool two finger swipes in Safari that have special animations. (google forum response)

To me, the best option is to just set it to 2 and 3 finger swipes to maintain constancy.

Get Front Row back:

Front Row Enabler for Lion

posted Jul 17, 2011 1:02 PM by Ralph Perdomo [ updated Jul 21, 2011 10:36 PM ]

Since its introduction in OS X Tiger, I have been using Front Row (along with the Perian plugin) as a media center solutions for my Macs. Once I discovered that Front Row was removed from the betas in Lion I took this as an ominous sign that it would not be making the final cut. Mucking around however, I discovered that there are only a few core files necessary to get Front Row to work in Lion. Those files are:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iPhotoAccess.framework

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist

This little pkg will fix all this automatically as well as stick Front Row back in the Applications folder from whence Lion quietly deleted it: (frontfowenablerforlion)

Manually Enabling Front Row for OS X Lion

This will require access to a Mac OS X 10.6 installation. The following Front Row files from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard must be moved into the exact same locations in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iPhotoAccess.framework

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist

/Applications/Front Row.app

(osxdaily)

 

iKnow!

Some folks are asking what this whole iknow thing is about as I apparently set it up to link with Facebook/Twitter when I created my account, so I thought I’d put a a thingy about it here.
iKnow! (or Smart.FM as they’ve changed their name) is one of the coolest sites I’ve come across of late. If you need to learn something (language, history, science, whatever) you make a list of questions/answers, or use one that someone else has shared, and the site makes a sort of game of it. I’m using it for Japanese and someone has even shared the textbook we are using in class. There are three knowledge acquisition methods on the site: iKnow is multiple choice to/from Japanese (in your choice of Kanji, Kana, or Romanji), as well as text entry of the same. I have not fiddled so much with the other two, but they are dictation/listening practice and a Brainspeed game where you madly try to beat the clock with your answers. All of this is quite amazing, but what really sets the site apart is that it lets you set goals and keeps track of when, for how long, and what progress you’re making in your studies. It’s also not restricted to the strictly serious, but is open to anything which has a question and an answer … say you want to be a wiz at your favourite tv, anime, movie, blah blah blah trivia. It is “smart” because it uses the spaced repetition system (SRS) to not only ask you new questions, but to ensure you remember the old information by intelligently bringing it back in intervals. So, if there’s anything that you wish to know, do check it out! (feel free to contact me – and we can ‘follow’ each other).

Oh, and yes, it’s no-strings attached free. Not an ad or annoyance in sight. Don’t know how they do it. And still better than sites I’ve already paid for by a long shot.