Looks like I was right about the lack of OPML import/export in iTunes.
Dave says it best, a Roach Motel. WHEN you are fixing it Apple, how about adding support for username/password protected RSS feeds? Its a low hanging fruit, pick it.
iTunes 4.9 has been released with the much talked about Podcasting additions. But as I look at it I can’t find someway of importing (or exporting…) my OPML file. Have I just missed it somewhere or is this a bad oversight ?
Location. Location. Location – its a retailers mantra.
Getting prime shelf space in high street shops is a big deal for a manufacturer. And if we use this a measure of the success, Apple are really on a roll.
Its seems every phone shop and digital Photo shop in Dublin are stocking the Mac-Mini, the iPod (and many accessories and even the full iMac.
Those lovely white machines are pride of place in these stores, not sitting on a back shelve somewhere.
To put this in context; they are not stocking PCs, just the Macs.
So Vodafone are selling linux and non wintel machines to Joe Bloggs.
Now that is a mini-revolution.
Well believe it or not, I’ve never had the time or requirement to get into PHP for a medium/large project.
Recently I’ve had both the time and the requirement.
Firststop was to install PHP on my OSX Powerbook.
Marc Liyanage’s excellent Mac OS packages website made that extremely easy
Just follow the instructions here
http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/
Next thing I needed was a PHP friendly editor. Since I already use Eclipse as an editor for Java, I decided on the PHP plugin.
Download it here, www.phpeclipse.de . Hasn’t got Debugging yet, but good otherwise.
Given my experience in Java web applications, I was keen to find two bits of functionality for my new PHP web application.
First I needed a templating engine, so I can do some presentation/logic separation.
I’ve decided to try smarty,
http://smarty.php.net/
Second I needed some DB abstraction, and the consensess seems to be to use PEAR, http://pear.php.net
Any other suggestions welcome
We will see how we get on!
I came across a couple of a couple of handy preference panels for OS X recently.
“More Internet” is a cool little panel that allows you to configure default applications for various protocols, most commonly mailto: or http:
Down load it here,
http://www.monkeyfood.com/software/MoreInternet/
RCEnvironment, is a little panel that allows you to edit your ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist. Not rocket science, but handy all the same. You can get it here..
http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCEnvironment/
Both freeware, not GPL unfortunatly.
Some tools to help manage your iPhoto collections..
Slim down the size of your iPhoto folder
iphotodiet
Extract your originals, duplicates etc. with
iPhotoExtractor
Split up you libraries
iPhotoLibraryManager
I came across a good explaination of the various quirks of the OS X shell.
Read it here
I just installed YellowDog Linux on my new powerBook. I had partitioned the drive already so, it was very simple (apart from forgetting what video card I had!!) but it all seems to have just worked. YellowDog is RedHat based so if you’ve installed that before, you’ll be on familar ground.
If you have never used linux and you got a PowerPc check yellowdog out!!
I’ve just splashed out on a Nikon digital camera , the D70. I love it. I bought it on a whim, after using a friends and so far I have no regrets. Not bad since it cost about $1400.
I had my PowerBook with me on holidays so I used the Apple iPhoto software to import my photos for my camera. Now iPhoto is very easy to use, like most of the applications on the Apple, it just works. There are lots of nice features, but there are also a few missing features. One I find really annoying is the fact that iPhoto doesn’t autorotate images. It annoys me because it should be so simple to do, using the EXIF info that the camera provides.
So the best why to deal with annoying features to to fix them. Since these applications are not opensource, the hack will have to be more subversive than just fixing it.
So first step, lets see what we can use.
Applescript : there are sample applescript to rotate a image provided by apple.
Perl : there is a perl module that read EXIF info .
Folder actions : you can attach scripts to folder that will run when an item is placed into them.
Seem that we should be able to stitch something together with the above .