pf () { open -a "Path Finder.app" $1; }

It’s the equivalent to the open command that will open a Finder window to the current location in the terminal, but this will open that location in PathFinder instead.

Enjoy.

When Apple launched iChat, it was at a time when compatibility was Apple’s friend. Apple didn’t have the market share to make a proprietary platform play in the space.

Now Apple is the 800 pound gorilla and I’m guessing they want the ability to innovate with their communications tools. Since they don’t control the protocols used by iChat, they can’t make changes they might want to in order to enable new features, architecture changes for mobile, etc.

By creating iMessages and FaceTime they now have their own toolset that they can build on, extend, etc. as they desire. The strength of iOS is really what enables them to do this. They don’t need compatibility anymore.

I expect we’ll see iChat go away in the future. Shipping 2 sets of tools that do the same thing is really not the “Apple way”, and it’s a no-brainer they will favor the tools they’ve just developed and can control.

It’s blindingly obvious that this sort of feature should be part of iMessages as an extension of iCloud. I hope it gets here soon.

Here we have two screenshots from the built-in iOS settings screens. In this one, you see a Back button and a Save button in the toolbar. Clicking Save will apply changes, while clicking Back will act as a Cancel button.

In this example you see the same button layout, but a different UI interaction. Here the button in the upper right will clear the field. As there is no Save button, changes are automatically applied by hitting the Back button (there is no Cancel option).

So on one screen we have the Back arrow acting as Save and in the other it acts as Cancel.

That’s exactly the kind of thing that iOS fans make fun of Android about.

The way the Conflict Resolver dialog appears and acts is a nightmare. When it appears, it hangs for a good 30 seconds, spiking the CPU and not allowing itself to be clicked on or dismissed. Then when you do tell it to go away (Resolve Later), it pops up again in the same infuriating state a few minutes later.

With the conflicts failing to resolve and this appearing every few minutes, my machine was completely unusable.

The solution to this (according to my experience and everything I found in my web searches) is to go into MobileMe and reset sync data. Pretty simple, except that feature is no longer available once you migrate to iCloud.

I tried rebooting, etc. to no avail.

Ultimately I dug into my Library/Preferences folder and looked for anything with ‘sync’ in the name. I could see in Activity Monitor that there was an iCalExternalSync process (I didn’t write down the name, it was close to that if not exact) working hard, so I manually trashed the following files:

• iCalExternalSync.plist
• iCalExternalSync.plist.lockfile

That did the trick.

Hopefully of use to the next person who runs into this issue.

If you used to choose the Sleep option with TAB key after hitting the POWER button on your Mac, Lion may have your muscle memory befuddled. Never fear, there is a better way: just hit the “s” key after the POWER button, and that Sleep button will get selected without the TAB key two-step.

Additional tip, if you wish to invoke the POWER button from an Apple Keyboard, use Ctrl+Eject.

When I get 5+ tabs open, picking the right tab is a total crapshoot. Especially since Safari introduced opening tabs adjacent to the current tab (instead of at the end).¹

1. Ironically, I love this feature in Chromium and Firefox, but there I’m not trying to keep the tab stack loaded in my brain to keep it all straight. [back]

That is all.

Stellar.io is the first social web service in a while that I’ve been excited about. Not only does it align up with my usage of Twitter, etc., but it provides me with great content. I’m only following a small group of folks right now (most of whom I’ve actually met), but I’m getting pure gold from them. I’m also getting a few more clever folks to follow directly on Twitter.

I’m primarily consuming my Stellar.io content through my feed reader, and it’s the only feed I have that isn’t inside a folder along with others. It’s quickly become my first stop when I open up my feeds.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Include the byline and “faved by” info in the content of the RSS feed as well.

  

  As you can see (above), that info is fantastic context. I miss it when reading in the feed view (below).

  

• Create a mobile web interface (a recent change to the zoom level made the current site much more mobile friendly, but a more specific mobile CSS would be helpful).
• I’d like the ability to selectively follow some folks (only their Twitter, etc.), however I’m not complaining too loudly about this. Being forced to look at some stuff that isn’t 100% what I want gives more room for accidental discovery.
• Instagram has an API now…

All of my suggestions are easily implemented and exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to be incomplete/missing in a brand new service. In short, Stellar is doing just about everything right already.

I’m a huge fan of MsgFiler and have been using it since 2006. I honestly can’t imagine using Mail without it. It allows you to quickly and easily file emails by typing a few keystrokes instead of using the mouse to drag them to folders. Use it for an hour, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

I think that MsgFiler will be a huge success in the AppStore. Right now it has 42 ratings, 41 of which are 5 stars¹ and is already in the top 35 Top Paid apps! I bought a copy from the App Store even though I already had a copy I’d been beta testing for Adam, just so I could rate and review it.

1. The 1 star rating is actually a support request, put in the wrong place. [back]

I can’t recall the last time I saw the same icon appear twice on the screen, with different actions attached to it. Sure, one action is for the tweet and one is for the webpage URL – I get that. But that is a really subtle distinction that most users won’t be savvy to. Think of the joy of trying to explain that to one of your non-technical friends.

I can only assume this will be different in the next release.

Soulver is a newer and much more powerful tool for this. It works exceedingly well. However, it’s more than I need and it’s something I’d have to maintain and upgrade on each of my machines. That got me thinking about a web-based solution – something I can invoke from LaunchBar with just a keystroke or two.

Last week I took an evening and did some experimenting with a JavaScript implementation. In a few hours I had a working prototype, then I spent a little more time cleaning it up so that it works “well enough” for my needs. You can see the result here and I’ve got the code up on GitHub.¹

Creating this has been in the back of my mind for quite a while; little projects like this make developers happy. Here is a short “feature” list:

• math is done by JavaScript, anything more than basic algebra is an accident
• strips non-numeric garbage when evaluating (you can leave $ and , when pasting in your numbers)
• the ENTER key from expression side takes you to result side and selects the result for easy copying
• hit ENTER again (while in the result field) to get a new row
• CTRL+N at any time will give you a new row
• enter the result of one of the previous 10 rows (numbered) at the cursor position by using CTRL+(1-9)
• numbers reset on every new row so that referencing the previous row is always 1, the second back is always 2, etc. (borrowed from LeanCalc)
• if you get so many rows that they extend off the screen, the window automatically scrolls up like an old-school calculator tape
• delete the current row with CMD+DELETE
• the web page is a single HTTP request with gzipped response (CSS and JS are embedded)²

It works pretty much the way I want/need it to. I think it’s a short list of people that will find this to be a good solution for them; if you’re one of them – enjoy!

1. While it defeats the purpose for me, some folks might want to use SimpleMath as a Fluid App. [back]
2. I threw Google Analytics JS on my copy out of curiosity, obviously that’s not included in the GitHub version. [back]