mac

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I Still Miss Notify.app

Notify 2.1

I’m a big fan of Inbox Zero and I wish I didn’t have to give e-mail so much of my attention, but since I’m in charge of support for my company it’s a priority for me. That may make me a bit of an “E-Mail Monkey“, but so be it. It’s a point of pride that I, and the rest of our team, respond so quickly to customer feedback.

That’s not to say that I’m not envious of people who can process their e-mail just twice a day. If support wasn’t one of my roles, I would jump at the opportunity to do the same. Since I’ve chosen not to, there are a few steps that I take to minimize the interruptions. One of the techniques I was a big fan of was to use an app called Notify.

Nofity.app would sit in your menu bar and would check my e-mail accounts and notify me when I had mail via Growl. Of course leaving my e-mail client open would obviously do the same thing, but I liked the fact that I could keep it closed. A simple notification would let me know if the e-mail was urgent, but I didn’t have the constant reminder of a badge notification that I had X number of unread messages.

If the message was urgent, then I could launch Mail.app and address it, but if it wasn’t then I could leave well enough alone until I was ready to process my mail. Again, it was a small thing, but I found it very handy to help me stay focused throughout my day.

Unfortunately, the developer abandoned the software on May 11, 2011 and it no longer functions since I upgraded to Mac OS Lion.

The other day I was lamenting the fact that I still miss not having this little utility. I did a few Google searches to see if I could find an alternative, but came up empty. That was certainly a disappointment, but I was happy to find that I wasn’t alone.

29 days ago • internet • Tags: , ,

2

Well, It’s Official – I’m Obsolete

apple logo on a black macbook

Today was the Steve Jobs keynote at the Apple Developer’s Conference and as expected there as a ton of new stuff announced. Unfortunately, now that some of the dust is settling, it looks like a some of my gear is now obsolete. This is a first for me since switching to the Mac back in 1996.

I made the leap almost 5 years ago. I bought a white Macbook in August of 2006 and then later upgraded to the black Macbook in 2007 when my mother came across a great deal on a floor model “Blackbook” at CompUSA, but wanted a white one. I happily swapped out the hard drives and gave her a memory upgrade in exchange for a slight upgrade in hardware and the cool black color. Both laptops have been the best mobile computers I’ve ever owned and I still use the blackbook to this day.

Along the way I have added more memory, replaced hard drives and even added a vinyl sticker to personalize my beloved laptop. Of course I’ve also bought tons of software and upgraded the OS to the latest version every time it comes out. Tiger (10.4) was installed at the time of purchase, but I’ve upgraded to Leopard and Snow Leopard (10.6) with zero issues. Today Lion (10.7) was announced at it looks like my hardware won’t cut the mustard.

I’ve had a good run. 5 years of constant use, with 4 of those years being my primary machine, is quite an achievement! I never thought the Macbook would last as long as it has, so I have no complaints. Also, it’s not as if my laptop will suddenly turn into a pumpkin. I will still get plenty of use out of it I’m sure, but it’s kind of sad knowing that I can’t go any further with Mac OS X. I’ve been wanting a new laptop, but it’s still kind of sad to know that “Mashbook I” has reached the end of the line.

To add insult to injury, my wife’s 17″ White iMac and my mom’s white Macbook also share the same fate. Looks like 2011 is going to be an expensive year for computers! :-P

351 days ago • software • Tags: , , , , , , ,

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Quickbooks Online Crashes Safari

I’ve been a QuickBooks user since I started my first company back in 1997. It’s been a love hate relationship mostly because I don’t enjoy working on the books. Recently though, QuickBooks has kicked things up a notch by drop kicking my browser when it prints more than one time.

When I switched to the Mac back in 2006 I wasn’t happy with the Mac version and so I continued to use the Windows version. In 2009-2010 I switched to Quickbooks Online because it looked like the product had become more stable and relable.

Why didn’t I get QuickBooks for Mac? Well, for starters it’s almost $200 and (from what I’ve heard) lacks many of the features found on it’s Windows counterparts. Of course QuickBooks Online charges me a monthly fee, so I suppose it’s all the same in the end.

I have looked for alternatives, trust me. I bought Cha-Ching, but they were acquired by Intuit. I signed up for Mint and they too were acquired by Intuit, but they’ve at least kept the service running. Even today, I did a search on AlternativeTo.net, but I just don’t see any viable alternatives.

There are some great invoicing products out there, like FreshBooks, but I need the full accounting package, not just invoicing.

Why am I so down on QuickBooks? Because of a new little gem that happens every time I need to print more than one item. I can consistently crash QuickBooks Online meaning that my browser completely shits the bed and crashes. What special magic does it require? Simply print more than once. Don’t use Safari you say? Well, the same thing happen in Firefox and Chrome as well. It’s a pain in the ass, but at least it’s consistent.

Here’s a video that will show you how the crash works happens.

QuickBooks Online Crash Issue When Printing from Michael Ashby on Vimeo.

I posted a question in the Intuit Community [link] and was surprised that I got a response. Unfortunately, the response was to call customer support. I’ll be sure to get right on that when I have an hour to waste.

In the meantime, if anyone has any other suggestions, I’m all ears.

409 days ago • technology • Tags: , , ,

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CalendarBar

I love the design of this app. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really fit into my workflow. I’m currently using GeekTool and iCalBuddy to display my calendar directly on my desktop, so this app is a bit redundant for me.

CalendarBar

I do wish I could figure out a way to style the iCalBuddy display to mimic this though because it’s a fantastic design.

437 days ago • software • Tags: , ,

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Going Flashless

Taking a page from Daring Fireball and going flash free. I like the fact that I can fall back to Chrome when I need to for Flash, but I’m eager to see how much content is out there in HTML 5.

I’ll keep you posted.

565 days ago • internet • Tags: ,

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How To Import A Movie Into Keynote

I had a client ask me to walk them through how to import a movie into Apple’s Keynote presentation software. I took the opportunity to use ScreenFlow and play with the new features, like text overlays.

I encourage you to open the video in a new window and then the pop up to see it at full resolution.

647 days ago • technology • Tags: , , , , ,

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