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Ask TUAW: Bluetooth, 5.1 Audio, VNC, Adium with QS, and more
This week's Ask TUAW takes us into questions about Bluetooth File Exchange, 5.1 audio, VNC, getting Adium and Quicksilver working together, EVDO, automated file management based on label color, and more. As always, please leave your own comments, and ask more questions for next week either in the comments to this post or using the tip form. Now let's get to it
Hazel update brings even more productivity to automated file manager
I instantly fell in love with Hazel from Noodlesoft the first time I found it back in September '06, and since then it has received a literal landslide of new features that make it even more indispensable to any heavy file trafficker. For those just tuning in, Hazel is fundamentally a file organization utility; it allows you to set up a series of rules that watch files in directories of your choosing, and then it carries out various actions based on your criteria. For example: I download a lot of videos, particularly motion pieces I find from studios all over the web. I also download a lot of DMGs and ZIPs in the name of TUAW, and as you might guess, after just a busy morning of all this watching and downloading, my desktop is about as messy as the typical freshman dormroom. Enter Hazel, the background file management ninja. For these two scenarios, I have a couple of rules that watch my Desktop for files of type Movie, DMG or ZIP which were added more than 1 day ago. These rules will then move said files into their respective directories (Movies and Software, as one might guess) and apply a blue label to them, just to make sure I know what was moved how.
Hazel - automated file management
Hazel is one of those rare pieces of software (with a strange name) that feels like it's filling a gaping feature void I didn't even know Apple left in Mac OS X: it's a powerful, rule-based file and folder management app that brings a little bit of Automator, AppleScript and Folder Actions to the table in a way that none of those apps and features do well on their own. Hazel installs as a System Preferences Pane and, as you can see, allows you to build a list of folders on the left with a list of toggle-able rules on the right. The on/off switch on these rules is key, as they make it easy to switch between running certain kinds of rules on a folder for different workflows, jobs, times of the day or week.
