Enter the Octagon

Here’s an experimental new feature: The Throwdown. Take a problem that lots of people face and tell us your personal favorite way to deal with it — in as much detail and with as much persuasion as you can muster.

Today, a lot of us are living on two or more Macs -- which is great, except for the challenge of keeping the contents and settings of multiple machines effortlessly in sync.

Now before you pop in, holler "dot mac," and jump back on your Segway®, consider that many folks (including your author) are looking for a lot more than simple document syncing and perfunctory preference sharing. How about if your needs are more nuanced:

Acting without doing SOUNDS good, but... (Ask MetaFilter)

I really liked this AskMe question about Quicksilver, since it's one that comes up a lot for folks who don't get as enthused about the app as I (and many of you) do:

Everywhere I go on the internet, Mac users rave about Quicksilver. I've downloaded it a couple times, and I sort of get that it COULD be really useful, but I am not sure how...

So what am I missing with Quicksilver? I see so many other people who get a lot of use out of it, and I am sure I can fit it in somewhere, too, but I just can't seem to figure it out....

Here's a portion of how I responded in comments:

MacBreak Weekly 58: Repeal the Nerd Tax

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Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Alex Lindsay, and Chris Breen

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Chris reviews the new iPods, screen issues with the Touch, and the trouble with ringtones...

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 58.

Oh, brother, I was totally high on cold medicine when we did this episode. But, not so high that I couldn't recommend Flying Meat's amazing new Acorn, a stripped-down, and very inexpensive graphics app. It's one my favorite Mac programs of the year.

Very fun video by Matt McInerney -- what it would be like if Quicksilver came to life outside your Mac. I sure like it better than living in a YouTube thread.

Quicksilver in Real Life from Matt McInerney on Vimeo.

[via: tumbl.us]

MacBreak Weekly 52: Ten Cents A Dance

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Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, Andy Ihnatko, and Alex Lindsay

We take a look at Apple's new iMacs, and iLife and iWork 08...

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 52.

Of course, when I chose iCal as my anti-pick, I said it with love. Much love.

h a o l i [Saft]

In the latest episode of MacBreak Minute (subscribe), I talked about a Safari plug-in I like a lot called Saft.

 MacBreak (iPod video) - MacBreak 84: Minute: Saft

Although my short demo only covers bookmarking a set of tabs, Saft does way more. To quote the lovely and talented Jon Hicks:

Saft is quite simply the vital extension for Safari. Its started life as a way of getting full screen/kiosk mode, but has grown to include many other features as well. Hao Li, the developer, is regularly adding new features, and updates are always available soon after a main Safari update.

Saft for Tiger is $12.00 and can be ordered online.

rooSwitch - Shuffle Your Settings Around

When you're testing a new version of an application (or just being a little paranoid), it can be a pain to deal with protecting your "real" data from being corrupted or overwritten. While something like SuperDuper is priceless for backing up a drive to a disk image, you want something that's not only lighter in weight, but that is smart enough to deal just with the settings associated with a single program. That's where roobaSoft's rooSwitch comes in.

rooSwitch's smarts come in being able to recognize which Preferences, Application Support folders, and related files belong to an app's settings (but, not -- it should be noted -- its documents), so that you can then backup, switch, and restore a group of settings whenever you need to. This can be quite a lifesaver.

Macworld Feature: Connect with the world

Macworld Magazine asked me to pick out a few of my Mac Gems, and I was happy to respond with four favorites.

Default Folder, for example, is a PreferencePane that I've used and loved since Christ was a corporal:

Default Folder X (****½)

You can tell Default Folder X is a classic because you start missing it the second you sit down at a Mac that doesn’t have it installed. It reduces the tedium of a handful of annoying dialog-box tasks, and it’s worth its price solely for the ability to set a per-program default location.

Faster Printing with Quicksilver

Mark Fisher shares terrific tips on how to use Quicksilver Proxies for faster printing:

Use this method when you want to print files that are on the Desktop or are all in the same folder.

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1. Select the files that you wish to print by Command clicking them.
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2. Invoke Quicksilver (by default, ?–SPACE)
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3. Type the name of your printer until QS displays its name e.g. “Lexmark”
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4. Hit the TAB key to select the next pane.
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5. Type “open” and select “Open File”. >
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   • I recommend making “Open File” the default action for when you type “open”. You can do this by Ctrl clicking “Open File” and selecting ‘Set as Default for “OPEN”.’
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6. Hit TAB to select the next pane.
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7. Type “current” until QS displays ‘Current Selection’.
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8. Hit ENTER.
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9. Your files should start printing.
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Also check out how to use the "comma trick" to print multiple files. Great stuff.

After the jump is the video for the episode of The Merlin Show where I talked about using proxies to access application menus.