Command Shift Q

New Contextual Menus in OS X Snow Leopard from Jim Gardner on Vimeo.

How to manipulate addresses and text in OS X 10.6

Much has been written about OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard being not so much a revolutionary new Operating System as more of a gradual, natural evolution of the Mac we already know and love.

This might seem like a fancy way of saying, “no new features”. But dig a little deeper and it soon becomes clear that Snow Leopard is more than just a few tweeks here and there which only Developers can gain from.

Under-the-hood improvements to the system architecture, mean that we ordinary users can look forward to much greater stability and more functionality. Chief among these improvements is a much needed overhaul of the Services menu.

In their marketing and promo, Apple have made something of a tradition of downplaying the in-depth, more technical aspects of their products, in favour of presenting a cleaner image of an easy to use system. While this is true, and there are some sound reasons for taking this approach, occasionally this “less is more” approach to marketing has frustrated long-time Mac-heads (like me), who think Apple would do well now and then to simply tell it like it is and compare OS X’s like-for-like features with their Microsoft Windows equivalents.

The latest incarnation of the Services menu, in OS X Snow Leopard, and the way it hooks into Automator, is a perfect example of something we dyed in the wool users would shout about a lot more, were we in charge of Apple’s advertising department–not least because there is no feature-for-feature comparison built-into any version of MS Windows currently shipping which comes close to this level of work-flow customisation.

The unique selling point of Services, is that anyone can add or edit their own task to a contextual menu, available throughout the Operating System, no matter which application is currently active. OK, not the most catchy of billboard slogans, but when you see what you can do with Services, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

History
The Services menu is one of the many revolutionary features of OS X which were inherited from the way ahead of its time Nextstep, an object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer, a company which Apple acquired in 1996, which also lead to NeXT Computer founder Steve Jobs returning as CEO of Apple.

The purpose of Services is to have a set of commonly used system level tasks available to all applications, regardless of which application is currently active. This can be as basic or as advanced a task as the user would like.

So, for example, if you want to add a bullet point to a text selection or alphabetise a list of names, you simply navigate to the Services menu or hit a keyboard short-cut and no matter which application you happen to be using, Services will carry out this task.

Similarly, if you want to view an entire content rich presentation as it would appear on an iPhone and the three main web browsers simultaneously, Services you have either written yourself, or downloaded and customised to suite, are there to help you out.

In practise, however, Services in previous versions of OS X, have been located in cluttered and esoterically labelled nested menus, with keyboard short-cuts that sometimes conflicted with those already assigned to another task in the application currently running. So Services became largely neglected–despite that they clearly showed potential as a time saving asset to workflow.

Action!
In OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the Services menu is now available from within the Action menu in the Finder. It is also contextual, meaning only Services which are relevant to the current selection are shown. This has had a dramatic effect on cleaning up the look of the menu as well as enabling a much tighter integration with Automator Action Scripts.

What’s especially neat about this, is that this replaces the similarly powerful but just as neglected Automator Actions Contextual Menu, when right-clicking a selection. Now, in place of the Actions Menu, you can see only Automator Services which are relevant to the file type, or selection you currently have highlighted.

The original system wide Services menu is still available in the Application Menu, at the top left of the screen, next to the Apple Menu. This is also where you will find the new Services Preferences Pane, which is a sub-category of the revamped Keyboard Preferences.

Video
Sal Saghoain is one of the lead developers at Apple who gave the world Automator and AppleScript.

In this series of demos, with Alex Lindsey, Sal shows us how the much neglected Services menu, in OS X Snow Leopard, has been updated into a slick new way to bring dynamic content into the Finder and other applications we use everyday.

http://www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak235 – Part 1
http://www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak236 – Part 2
http://www.pixelcorps.tv/node/878 – Part 3

I’m reproducing the whole article below so subscribers to the RSS feed can read this, but you should also check out the original article here.

0WN3D on Mac OS: my desktop has been part of an IRC botnet for months, I’ve found evidence of a rootkit, neither chkrootkit nor antivirus software finds evidence of it

I am a longtime Mac OS user and defender of Mac OS security. Under a different username, two weeks ago I was doing battle with people suggesting that Mac OS and Safari were anything less than secure. Last week, I discovered that my desktop has been part of an IRC botnet for months.
I am fairly certain it started with a Joomla exploit on our server. From there, c99shell was installed on our machine, and a root kit was deployed. During this period, neither Little Snitch nor ClamXav altered me to the presence of the rootkit or outbound IRC connections. It wasn’t until I happened to notice that /var/log/appfirewall.log was turning over multiple times daily, that I saw a massive number of connections from a process without a name and strange errors coming from mDNSResponder.
I have heard about the recent trojans going around on Mac OS that deployed from porn websites or shared software, however this rootkit, while similar in nature (mDNSResponder), does not have files in their described locations. Further, Norton Antivirus, Intego VirusBarrier X5, ClamXav, and even chkrootkit can find nothing.
The only evidence I have on what type of kit it might be comes from a file that is used to delete evidence of the rookit after installation that was left over in the /tmp directory: exec(“rm -rf *siti* && rm rm.txt”);.
Anyone have any ideas on what this might be, any similar stories, or questions? Tonight I am wiping my hard drive and changing all my passwords.
tl;dr — Mac OS security defender discover his machine has been 0wn3d and humbly seeks advice or commiseration. Author understands (and reminds MS fanbois) that reason for the attack (Joomla and PHP) is not the fault of Apple.

I should also mention that if you want to assuage your fear that you too might be part of the botnet right now, start up Console, scroll down to the /var/log section and look at appfirewall.log for unusual connections that look like this:
Jul 1 20:00:33 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 72.30.78.244:51287 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:38 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 99.178.113.252:4874 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:38 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 72.30.78.244:51811 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:39 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 65.55.106.182:61891 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:41 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 99.178.113.252:4874 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:42 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 65.55.106.182:61891 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:43 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 187.8.53.42:59364 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:44 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 72.30.78.244:53257 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:47 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 66.249.68.148:62853 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:47 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 99.178.113.252:4874 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:47 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 72.30.78.244:53257 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:48 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 65.55.106.182:61891 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:49 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 122.165.52.62:44182 uid = 0 proto=6
Jul 1 20:00:50 hostname Firewall[66]: Allow connecting from 72.30.78.244:53856 uid = 0 proto=6
Notice the lack of a process name (between “Allow” and “connecting”) and the random port numbers (after the colon). These connections can be stopped by selecting “System Preferences > Security > Firewall > Allow only essential services”. It doesn’t, of course, solve the problem of the rootkit, which at this point can only be fixed by reinstalling the operating system and all applications.

⌘ – Command ( Key)
⇧ – Shift Key
⌥ – Option Key
CTRL – Control Key

General:

⇧ + ⌘ + U – Open Utilities folder in Finder and Save / Open dialogue
⌘ + ⌥ + T – Opens special text characters float-over box in any Cocoa application
⌥ + ⌘ + T – Hide Toolbar / Show Toolbar in Finder windows
⌘ + T – Add highlighted items to Finder sidebar
⌘ + 4 – View Finder in Cover Flow
⌥ + ⇧ + ⌘ + Delete – Empty Trash without confirmation dialogue
⇧ + Control + ⌘ + 4 – Capture a selection to the Clipboard
⇧ + ⌘ + C – Display the Colours float-over box
CTRL + ⌘ + C – Copy the formatting settings of the selected item and store on the Clipboard
⌥ + ⌘ + F – Move to the search field, i.e., google toolbar in Safari, search field in iTunes or Spotlight in Finder
⌘ + J – Scroll to a selection
⌥ + ⌘ + M – Minimize all windows of the active application to the Dock

iTunes

CTRL + ] (close square bracket) – Go to the next page in the iTunes Store
CTRL + ⌥ + ← or → – Move forward or backward within a song
⇧ + ⌘ + N – Create a new playlist with the selected songs
⌘ + R – Show where a song file is located
⌘ + L – Show the currently playing song in the list

Dock

⇧ + click & drag Dock Separator to move the Dock from the bottom, left and right side of the screen
⌥ + click & drag Dock Separator to ’snap’ between commonly used icon sizes
⌘ + drag & drop an item to the Dock without existing icons ‘dodging’ out of the way. Useful for forcing an application to Open With.

Adding and removing icons to and from Finder windows:

Adding and removing icons to and from OS X Finder windows from Jim Gardner on Vimeo.

It could well be the most anticipated tech news in many months; what will Apple reveal at this year’s worldwide developers conference?

We know that there will be a feature complete preview of the new Snow Leopard operating system and the rumour mill is buzzing with talk of everything from a whole new iPhone to an appearance from a recuperating Steve Jobs.

It all kicks off June 8th at 10:00am pacific time, so set your world clock widget to Cupertino and stay tuned to these live blogs:

http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/06/04/wwdc-2009-tipb-live-metablog-monday-1pm-edt10am-pdt/

http://www.macrumorslive.com/

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/06/apple-wwdc-keynote-liveblog-coverage.ars

http://live.gizmodo.com/

http://theappleblog.com/2009/06/05/wwdc-2009-rumor-round-up-ahead-of-the-big-show/

In the course of writing this article I will make some of the most horrendous spelling and grammatical mistakes—because, to be honest, I’m just not that good at typing.

Happily, as you can see from the video linked below, holding the Option key and combining it with the Command key, arrow keys and Shift key, makes whole word selection, deletion and dictionary / thesaurus searching process of doing what they used to call word processing all the quicker and easy to do.

⌘ + CTRL + D with mouse-over – Open floating dictionary / wikipedia / dictionary
⌘ + Arrow keys – Paragraph / line skip
⌥ + Arrow keys – Word / line end skip
⌥ + Shift + Arrow keys – Highlight whole word / line
⌘ + Shift + L – Google current selection

TweetDeck is arguably Adobe AIR’s first killer application.

When I first heard about twitter.com, I dismissed it as the emperors new instant messenger. Indeed I ranted endlessly about it, to people who weren’t really interested—going on and on about how pointless it all was.

Then I found TweetDeck and realised how utterly useful and new and, above all, transformative the whole idea of micro blogging really was.

Here’s how I have my TweetDeck set-up, but you can have yours whichever way you want…

Column A shows all tweets from users I am following. Column B shows all replies to my tweets. Column C shows live search results for all keywords mentioned across the twitter-verse. Column D shows TwitScoop.com’s minute by minute keyword trends.

The bottom panel is where you tweet, post shortened links and TwitPics

The best part about TweetDeck, is that it looks and behaves the same on Mac as it does on PC—so there’s a uniform experience across machines, for those in a multi-cultural environment. It’s also insanely stable. Indeed, I’ve yet to manage to do something which causes TweetDeck to crash—and believe me, I’ve tried.

It can be only a matter of time before Apple patch iPhoto ‘09 to improve performance, but thanks to MacOSXHints.com we don’t have to wait for this particular fix.

Open your iPhoto library in terminal and paste this:

for dbase in *.db; do sqlite3 $dbase "vacuum;"; done

That annoying spinning beach ball hanging bug, when you launch the application with more than a couple of thousand images in your collection, will be gone!

[Via]

[Via]

You can serve web sites from your computer without paying for third party hosting. All you need is a permanent connection to the internet (DSL or better) and a Mac which can be left running 24/7.

Knowing this and knowing how to do this are two very different things. I set out to find out how it’s done and discovered a whole new world of technical in-speak and confusing jargon. This article is an attempt to put things into rather easier to understand language.

WARNING!
It may be against the terms and conditions of your Internet Service Provider’s contract to host high bandwidth websites from your private (residential) internet connection.

If you plan on setting up a permanent web host, with the intention of serving large files to high numbers of visitors, you’re much better off buying a solution from a dedicated third party hosting company.

Read more…