Archive for the 'Geekery' Category

• 02.25.08 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin posted in Web Design, Geekery

  Michael Erlewine has improved on the Wordpress Related Posts Plugin with Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. An improvement to the full-text search that allows limiting by a relevance threshold allows the most relevant posts to show up at the top of the list, so if you only display 5 results, they’re more likely to be of interest. It also allows control over retrieving both posts and pages. And for those less code-oriented, it can function without modification to your theme and has an improved options screen. Wordpress users should check it out!

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• 02.02.08 Giving Flock some love posted in Geekery

  Okay, it’s time for a little more in depth post on why I’m loving Flock. The easy part of that answer is that it uses the Mozilla rendering engine while adding some very useful (to me) functionality (Twitter sidebar, blog tools, media stream…) and provides compatibility with most Firefox plugins. The more complex answer is that with a little effort, Flock can be customized to do way more than advertised…

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• 01.22.08 Multi-bookmarks in Flock (or Firefox) posted in Geekery

  I’ve switched to Flock as my primary browser. Yes, I still load Safari when I miss the speed and beauty, but there are a few plugins I’ve come to depend on that happen to be compatible with Flock. Like Zotero, for example. It’s amazingly well developed for a beta. And having all of my TUAW compatriots displayed in a twitter sidebar prevents me from getting the overload that comes every time I load Twitterific. But I’ve had to find solutions for a couple of issues, one of which I thought I’d share. Safari allows you to set “auto-click” on folders of bookmarks, so that when you click the folder in your toolbar, it loads all of the contained items in tabs. I wanted similar functionality in Flock/Firefox…

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• 12.20.07 MoodBlast 3.0 posted in Geekery

  It’s here. The ultra-fast, slimmed down, sexier MoodBlast. And it’s still donationware. It’s a long story, but if you want to pretend that there’s a 21 day time limit and some crippled features that will be enabled when you send me money, that’s fine. The (almost complete) changelog is below. You can download the new version using your auto-update or head to the download page.

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• 12.12.07 On Mindmeister, XMIND and Mind Mapping posted in Design, Geekery

  It’s my personal opinion that mind mapping doesn’t get enough attention. Of course, I spend a lot of time in the “real world” blabbing on about mind mapping. Evangelizing, even. So I’m going to expound (again) on thoughts and tools for few bytes…

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• 12.12.07 A Few Quick Finds posted in Design, Geekery

  The “market” for Quick Look plugins is heating up, and there are some really handy additions coming out. These are not hot off the press, I held on to them for a little too long, but they bear mentioning nonetheless…

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• 12.08.07 C6 Top Mac Apps 2007: Hardware Break posted in Geekery

  Well, we’ve gone through about half the software we want to mention. I’m going to take a little break and talk about my favorite (Mac compatible) hardware purchases this year. I didn’t get an iPhone. I live in what can only be referred to as a cellularly-challenged part of Minnesota. I can drive half an hour and buy an iPhone, but if I take it home with me it magically becomes an iPod Touch. Cool trick, but expensive. So, once my 5th Gen iPod gets good and scratched up I’ll just get a Touch… but for now, there are better ways to blow what money I have:

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• 11.28.07 C6 Top Mac Apps 2007: Presentation posted in Geekery

  Whether you’re a designer or a software engineer or in some area between the hemispheres of the brain, there are multitudes of reasons why you would want to make a clear and professional presentation, be it a screencast, a software manual, or a quick mockup for a client. These are a few of my favorite tools for making presentations that impress without breaking too much of a sweat. I’m saving online tools until a later part of this series, so the cool online slideshow and PowerPoint replacements are going to wait a bit…

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• 11.28.07 Archive Previews in Together posted in Geekery

  I just had to take a moment to mention that the zip Quick Look plugin works inside of Together. The plugin (the .mac download is crashed and I couldn’t find a mirror, sorry) lets you peek inside zip files using Quick Look. Inside of Together, that gives you an instant preview of the contents of archived files within your library or project. Absolutely awesome.

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• 11.27.07 A Square Meal for your Mac posted in Geekery

  In the midst of working on the next installment of our “Top Mac Apps” series, I just spent my allowance and my lunch money at “Give Good Food To Your Mac”, a mac software promo that I think I got an early invitation to yesterday. It appears to be open to the public now. The beauty of this one is that you get to choose which apps go in your bundle with full knowledge of what you’re getting (and a chance to try before you buy), and get volume discounts up to 70% off. And the selection is excellent, in my opinion. With a base including apps like CSSEdit and Boinx iStopMotion Home, the list is topped off by a few newcomers and some video apps that I’m excited to put to work. Take a gander, spend some hard earned cash. You’re worth it.

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