When I feel most alive … go ahead, take your shoes off!

Recently I have been taking a lot more pictures since I got my new camera, a Sony DSC-P200. It takes great pictures, but the problem is that I want to be able to show them to people online. There are a lot of programs that will let you EXPORT photos and create web pages from your iPhoto library but this is a time-consuming process that is a one-time thing. That means that you have to manually re-create new pages if your library changes. This isn’t acceptable for someone who takes a lot of pictures.

So I over the last year have found several dynamic page-creating programs that will build a dynamic web site from your iPhoto library and host it on your computer.

WebPhoto
myPhoto
iPhotoWebShare

They each have their advantages and disadvantages. iPhotoWebShare is by far the easiest to set-up, but myPhoto has the most features (and most difficulties as well).

I am using iPhotoWebShare for now, since it is working well and I like it’s ability to let you download the full size image. I like that it’s controlled in a preference pane in the system preferences and not some extra application.

If you would like to see my pictures page, check it http://scottpaulis.webhop.org (If it doesn’t work, I have my laptop away from home somewhere with me, and you’ll have to try again later!)

I have gotten used to using the convenient “Mark All As Read” command in Net News Wire. (pictured here) I like to scan the news items that I’m interested in reading and then mark the rest as “read” (I know, I know - I didn’t actually read them, but I want them marked as read so that I can tell when I have new incoming items)

What I want to know is: Why is there no such command in Apple’s mail.app??? I would use that in a heartbeat. I am stuck with two series of hotkeys. Assuming I’m in the “Unread messages” smart folder that I have created that contains only unread messages, I first have to press Cmd-A to select all and then Cmd-Shift-U to mark the selected messages as read. Not only does it require TWO shortcuts in a row, but the second Cmd-Shift-U requires TWO hands on my Powerbook keyboard. Why can’t there be a single, one-handed shortcut to mark all unread messages in the current folder as read? (Like Cmd-K as in Net News Wire Lite)

After searching for a solution. I tried unsuccessfully to create an Automator workflow or an AppleScript that I could tie to a Quicksilver trigger. I couldn’t figure out how to select all the messages and mark them as read with either method. (Maybe I’m just an Apple Script dummy, or the Automator actions are ridiculously limited in selection - there are no “Select All Messages” or “Mark Selected Messages As Read” actions)

I did find a way to shorten the process a tiny bit by using Mail Act On and by creating a rule to mark all selected messages as read that is tied to a keyboard shortcut Ctrl-X, which only requires one hand instead of two like Cmd-Shift-U.

If anyone knows of a way to create an AppleScript to do this, please let me know!

There are two crucial applications that I’m waiting for Tiger compatibility with, so I can get back to using them.

1. Carbon Copy Cloner - I use this one to clone my Powerbook’s hard drive every night (back-ups are your friend!)

2. Double Command - I use this little app to change up some of the keys on my Powerbook keyboard. For example, my Powerbook doesn’t have a PC-style forward delete key, so I use Double Command to make Shift-Delete do that for me. I find that there are certain times when, depending on where the cursor is, a forward delete is quicker than moving the cursor and using backward delete. I have gotten quite used to using it (that is until I upgraded to Tiger… hopefully I’ll get it back soon)

I was pretty excited when I saw this widget posted on dashboardwidgets.com. So I downloaded it and tried it out and I didn’t like it a whole lot.

I love the idea though, so here are some suggestions for the author:

1. Make it more responsive, less slow. When I tried to scroll the scroll bar it hangs 1 out of every 3 or 4 times I use it.
2. Make it look nicer: The corners are ugly and I’m not a huge fan of the bright blue. How about a little bit of transparency just to have a little more of a dashboard widget feel.
3. Enable the scroll wheel for scrolling.
4. Add some kind of lyrics submission to one of these databases in case it can’t find the lyrics, but I have them already.

Other than that, it’s a great idea! This is the perfect kind of thing for a widget because it makes it easier than loading a web page or having to search multiple lyrics sites. And I probably wouldn’t want to spend a long time at a site reading the lyrics, just remember what that one line I couldn’t pick out of the song was.

Keep up the good work!

SAME DAY UPDATE: Just a few hours after writing the original posting, I found out that a new version of this widget was released! It’s much prettier so I don’t have to have the ugly duckling widget on my dashboard! Keep on comin’ with the good updates to this one!

In my first post about metadata in Address Book, I think I forgot to mention that the real benefit in adding tags to your contacts individually is that they can then be indexed using spotlight on those tags. You don’t need to tag your contacts to be able to put them in groups together. You can just use regular Groups and manually drag the contacts you want into them, instead of using smart groups, but if you put tags in the Note section, you might as well use Smart Groups, and then you also get the power of Spotlight knowing about that information as well!

So today I just wanted to add some contacts to my Address Book. I had a list in an excel document with all their contact info that was sent to me, so I figured that I could simply export the Excel spreadsheet to CSV (comma separated values) or a tab delimited text file, and then Address Book’s import text file feature could handle it from there.

So I exported to a CSV and TXT file with no problem from Excel. Then I pulled up the import in Address Book and it really nicely let me match up the fields in Address Book with those in the text file using the headers in the first row and ignore the first record. I could even click forward and backwards through the contacts I was about to import. It seemed nice and dandy until I went to click “OK” and NOTHING HAPPENED! It just sat there like it had no idea I had just clicked “OK”!

Why is there an import feature if it doesn’t work??? How hard can it be to import a text file? I could write a program to do this! In 9th grade!

Apparently I’m not the only one to have some problems with Address Book’s import “feature”. Paul Thurrott experienced similar difficulties and mentioned them in his very thorough and good review of Tiger

Apple, I love Tiger and the Update to the iApps, but please, please give me a reason to stick around and use them instead of running off to software that actually does what it claims to do, and does what I need it to do!

It would be pretty sad if I had to figure out and write an apple script or Automator workflow to simply import some contacts (something that Address should definitely be able to do!)

Anyone else had bad luck importing into Address Book? Let me know about it.

Here is a script I wrote, the Contact Tagger

Contact Tagger.scpt

With such power in Spotlight to search metadata, why wouldn’t Apple not allow easy entry of metadata into contacts? You can easily add a tag like [Family] to the Note section one by one to all your family members contact cards, but why not be able to select them all and do it at once. Since I know that Address Book is scriptable and I wanted to play around with Automator I decided that this was a suitable problem worth attacking.

So I go into Automator and find out that none of the Automator actions for Address Book let you EDIT contact info, only search, filter, and show contacts. SO I had to venture into another world of scripting, one slightly more complicated: AppleScript.

After a little help from someone on the MacScripters forums I got a working piece of code. Here it is; it works just like it should! Feel free to copy this and use it yourself!

–*************************
— Multiple Contact Tagger
— How to use this script: Select multiple contacts in Address Book, then run this script (via the script menu or Quicksilver are the best ways), and it will let you enter the tag (ex: [Family] ) you want and then apply it to the selected contacts by appending it into the Note section of each contact. You may then want to create Smart Groups that search for that tag in its criteria, and then Smart Folders in Mail that use the Smart Groups in its criteria

— Author: Scott Paulis
— Last Modified: May 17, 2005

tell application “Address Book”
set thePeople to selection
display dialog “What tag would you like to apply to the selected contacts?” buttons {”Cancel”, “Apply”} default button “Apply” default answer “[tag]”
set dialogInfo to result

set selectedButton to button returned of dialogInfo
set tagString to text returned of dialogInfo

if selectedButton is “Apply” then
repeat with aPerson in thePeople
set currentNote to the note of aPerson
if currentNote is missing value then set currentNote to “”
set newNote to currentNote & tagString
set note of aPerson to newNote
end repeat
end if
end tell
–**************************

I got my copy of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger this week and I very pleased, overall. But there are a few gripes I have, they mostly have to do with Address Book and Mail.

I decided since I was upgrading to Tiger, I might as well start using the upgraded versions of Apple’s Mail and Address Book applications, especially since they are free and I don’t have to pay to upgrade them (unlike Microsoft’s Entourage)

I was able to easily enough, using Mail’s built-in import functionalities, import my mail from Entourage. I also drag-and-drop imported all my contacts to Address Book fairly painlessly, although I did lose the categories attached to them somehow (and hadn’t backed them up first … idiot!)

My main complaint about Mail/Address Book is it’s lack of categories support. I’ll touch on this in my next post.