It’s a familiar tale: A production company gets the green light to produce a new science fiction television series and pours their hearts into it, then the network destroys it. I’m not talking about Joss Whedon’s masterful Firefly; I’m talking about the 1987 series, Max Headroom. If you’re not familiar with the series, you may be recoiling slightly in post-traumatic 1980’s stress at the thought of Coca Cola’s overexposed pitchman being associated with anything positive. But you really ought to give it a chance. The show is simply amazing.
Personal
Dear Dell: Why Is It So Hard To Buy From You?
This love letter goes out to Dell. I hope they’re listening, because I want them to succeed and thrive and sell millions of computers. But they’re sure making it hard for me to buy just one. Here’s my story.
How To Assign Keyboard Shortcuts To AppleScript and Automator Actions
Last week, I posted a piece about How To Automate “Get/Send Clipboard†in Mac OS X Screen Sharing. In that article, I advocated using the Mac’s Speech Recognition to launch the AppleScript commands from any application (except Screen Sharing itself). But what if you don’t want to talk to your computer? Here’s a method of launching AppleScript or any other Automator action using keyboard shortcuts regardless of what application you are currently in. And it uses no third-party software, a bit plus as far as I’m concerned!
How To Automate “Get/Send Clipboard” in Mac OS X Screen Sharing
I’m a heavy user of Screen Sharing in Mac OS X. When I’m in the office, I sit at a workstation with my trusty IBM Model M keyboard, 27″ iMac, Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical and Apple Magic Trackpad. Off to the side is my mobile environment, the MacBook Pro, open and running, with its display mirrored in a Screen Sharing window on the iMac. At the desk, I do most of my work on the iMac, with the MacBook limited to less-portable applications (Mail, iTunes, and iPhoto) and often displaying a full-screen TweetDeck board. But copying and pasting content between these two environments was a serious multi-click pain until I automated it with AppleScript and Speech. Here’s how I did it.
How Apple Will Get Their Mobile Phone Mojo Back From AT&T
Apple has taken a beating from the “in crowd” lately. In the mind of these technophiles, they’ve gone from hip to evil in just a few years. While Apple is lambasted for turning the iPhone “walled garden” into a jail, Google is applauded as the new bastion of openness and geek friendliness. This criticism focuses on the iPhone, especially with regard to the despised American mobile carrier, AT&T. But Apple is a long way from the evil empire it’s accused of being, and is showing signs that it will soon retake its mojo from the carriers.



