If I have a bunch of tabs open in Safari that all relate to a specific job or task, Saft adds to my Bookmarks menu a “Bookmark this group of tags” function (as well as other “why didn’t Apple think of that?” functions), which bookmarks all of the tags in that open window, and places them in a bookmarks folder. This already came in handy to me earlier today when a client handed me a list of websites and said “These are my competitors.”
Save and Load Browser Window
Want to read that whole window full of browser tabs, but can’t get to it right now? You can save the window, and reload it later. Saft will even remember the browser size and position.
Shortcuts
You can set your Saft preferences so that just typing “a” into your address bar will take you to Amazon, or so that typing “dict blog” will bring you to Dictionary.com search for the word “blog” (a default Saft preference). Any such searches will also be loaded into your contextual menus, so that if you select a word in your browser and right-click, you can search for that term on any site you have set in your preferences.
Crash Protection
For those times when you have a bunch of tabs open Safari crashes. When you restart Safari, Saft will ask you if you want to restore those windows.
Type-Ahead Searching
Many browsers already have this, but this will highlight text on the page that matches what you type. Great for “clicking” on links without a mouse.
I tried the demo this morning and didn’t even flinch at the $12 price tag. Learning to use this along with Quicksilver, and you’ll wonder how you ever functioned before.
Don’t make me rate all of my songs. Having songs rated is great for enhancing the Party Shuffle, and populating the “My Top Rated” playlist, but rating can be a hassle. Use the power of the Internet, and assign all of my songs an average rating, which takes the average rating of each song from all of the iTunes libraries across the world. Then let me override this rating by making my own rating, which is then sent to the database and calculated back into the average rating for that song.
I’m sure Apple has probably already thought of this and is working on it, but hurry up!
[4:16 PM – One more thought] Imagine the sales potential for the iTunes Music Store to know your ratings of songs, and to know what other songs are enjoyed by people who rate that song highly.
A fellow employee of RDG has joined the blogosphere. Our IT guy, Joe Schmidt, of joeschmidt.com, after starting a few internal company blogs, has written joeschmidt.com’s first post. I’m really looking forward to seeing what his intelligent, yet sick, twisted, and sometimes disgruntled, mind will create.
I know that he will likely be concealing his identity for some time, but since he is such a handsome fellow, I feel I must show you what he looks like.
Right before New Year’s, I noticed a lump inside of my lower lip. Now, being the hypochondriac that I am, I was naturally petrified that I had Oral Cancer. Why? I’m certainly not at risk. I don’t have a family history of Cancer. I’m 25, not a smoker or chewer, and am otherwise healthy. Because any Google search for “lump in mouth” or lump in lip will likely have even a reasonable person convinced that this is a sure sign of Oral Cancer. keep on reading »
I recently got a new laptop, and I have to admit, I have been spending a disturbing portion of my time on the couch. I’m not a big TV watcher, so prior to acquiring my laptop, I spent the majority of my time at my desk, which I guess should be even more disturbing.
Having a laptop is great, though. I got Airport Express, so now I am wireless, and can even play music through my speakers via AirTunes. I can even take it to bed with me, do some blog reading before bed, put it on my nightstand, and then check my e-mail before I even get out of bed (“oh, a computer in bed…the porn jokes I could comment with”…don’t bother). Maybe I’ll slowly devolve from never leaving my desk, to never leaving my couch, to never leaving my bed.
I’m sure I will spend some time on my deck once, if, the weather is ever nice again. It just snowed 14 inches here in Omaha, and every time this happens it makes me wonder why people aren’t nomadic anymore. Oh, that’s right, because we have so much stuff.
AJ Kandy of “West of the Expressway” has made some perceptive observations on The Economics of Urban Sprawl. Not only do the suburbs exterminate culture, they may be an economic drain all-around. It’s great to make the decision to not buy a gas guzzler, but how about designing our lives so we drive less to begin with?
The eventual realization of these economic consequences may result in the End of Suburbia, looks like an interesting documentary, analyzing “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” It probably won’t be coming to a theater near you, but they do encourage public screenings. Anyone up for one in Omaha?
Now that kadavy.net is included in the sites drawer for NetNewsWire 2.0b10 (a great RSS Reader for the Mac), I figured it was time to gain a little edge with my own favorites icon (that little icon that is showing up next to the web address on your address bar on most browsers).
To make one for your site, design a 16×16 pixel gif and upload it to your root directory with the name “favicon.ico”. It’s best if you can stay within the standard 256-color216-color web palette.
Tip: When working at the pixel-level in Photoshop, it’s a good idea to have one window zoomed way in (like 1600%) so you can see each pixel clearly, but also have a second window open for the same document (Window < Arrange < New Window for document name) at 100%, so you can simultaneously see what it will look like at actual size.
Compare, which enables you to use conditionals in your templates, is absolutely essential.
I’ll also have to eventually get Acronym, which automatically attaches an acronym tag to known acronyms…and you can even add your own.
Get XML looks very promising: you can suck data from an XML document to syndicate on your site. This would be good for syndicating my recent posts on Be A Design Group, but I couldn’t get it to work, and I think FatCow may not have the required Perl Modules installed, so I’m waiting to hear back on that.
Notifier also looks nice. It enables users to subscribe to comments on specific entries.
As a typography enthusiast, I have to get Smartypants to automatically generate “smart quotes”.
I also thought I saw one that would automatically generate hyperlinks for certain keywords that you could specify. That would also be a must-have. In exploring these plugins and Movable Type Template Tags, I am really beginning to appreciate how incredibly flexible Movable Type is.
