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Shortcat: Spotlight for your screen
It comes as little surprise that OS X supports many flavors of user interaction, nor that certain users gravitate towards certain input styles. For example, there are trackpad wizards who beckon with careful gestures and there are mouse users who prefer to point with their cursor. And then there are keyboard fiends, those like myself, who live and die by our home position. If you're a keyboard-based user like me, every physical movement that draws your hands away from the keyboard is a loss in efficiency, a break in concentration. We are the arrow movers, the shortcut makers, the Spotlight addicts. And it is us that the Shortcat app targets. Currently in public beta, the app offers a new take on keyboard-based interaction. Instead of launching Spotlight (Command-Space), you launch Shortcat (Command-Shift-Space). Enter a few letters and Shortcat searches the frontmost app for matching text. This solution is brilliant for apps and websites that don't support keyboard shortcuts. I've now used it to prepare TUAW posts in Safari, to navigate between chat rooms in Colloquy and to jump to messages in Mail. This is still a beta and I did encounter beta issues. At times, Shortcat would go into endless-spinny-progress mode, ignoring me until I quit and relaunched the app. Also, I quickly discovered that Shortcat doesn't walk through menus, only windows, although for many purposes that's perfectly sufficient to my needs. Even so, this is a really promising app and one that I'm already seeing could become a big part of my daily work routine.
iPad apps to the rescue
"Whenever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there... I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there." -- John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath The iPad is an overlooked hero. When you need it, the iPad will be there. It will be there to access data or connect back home. It will be there to let others reach out to you, or to let you reach out to others. With the right software, and the right ingenuity, the iPad can metaphorically leap tall buildings and save the day. These are everyday rescues, not life-or-death scenarios. This post isn't about how the iPhone saved one guy's life after the Haiti Earthquakes. Here's how iPad applications can fix your workday with simple, helpful solutions that will free you from the laptop and live "la vida tablet." We've got five real world scenarios, including the iPad apps that will be there for you.
IRC on the iPad: Colloquy and Linkinus
I was originally going to do a "TUAW Smackdown" for iPad Internet Relay Chat (IRC) clients, but after testing both mobile Colloquy and Linkinus, there's not a lot of smacking to do. Both apps are well-written, solid offerings that I can wholeheartedly recommend. They allow you to set up your connections, enter your credentials, and easily hop into and out of chat rooms as needed. Using IRC chat is a big deal for Mac and iPhone developers. It's a great way to find peer-to-peer support. Sites like Freenode and OSX86.hu give you access to hundreds of other developers to consult with in real time. Engineers from a major fruit-named corporation frequent popular chat rooms, offering unparalleled technical access. Having a useful IRC client on the go can be golden, so it was important to me to find a good one for the iPad, and both of these clients are excellent. When it comes to price, Colloquy is the clear winner. The iPad version of Colloquy sells for US $1.99 at the App Store. Linkinus costs about four times more at $7.99 for its iPad version. In terms of bang for your buck, both are good buys, though. I don't think you'll be dissatisfied with either one. %Gallery-93852%
Linkinus 1.3 brings split chats, embedded videos, and a performance boost
Linkinus is the preferred IRC client for a lot of our readers, I know (personally I tend towards Colloquy, but only because I'm a cheapskate and it's donationware), and they kindly dropped us a note to let us know they'd updated to version 1.3. The new build includes the ability to split chat windows (as seen above), in addition to a revamped UI, "major" performance upgrades, plaintext and Spotlight support for logging, and a whole slew of fun things to play around with, including, we're told, a "Whisper" style that will actually embed images, audio files, and YouTube and Google videos right into your chat windows (a la Campfire). Apparently IRC isn't just text anymore.In fact, at $20 for all these features, Linkinus really is a steal for anyone who spends any amount of time in an IRC channel. Colloquy still does everything I need it to when I jump into IRC periodically, but if you want to chat like a pro in there, Linkinus is a great choice.
Colloquy for iPhone Debuts
%Gallery-7199% A new IRC client debuted on the iPhone today and is available for download from Installer.app. Like many other iPhone projects, Mobile Colloquy is still in its early days, taking baby alpha release steps, but it shows excellent promise. It allows you to create server profiles, enter your user information and, of course, connect to those servers and chat. Although Mobile Colloquy uses the same core as Mac OS X Colloquy, the two projects are not affiliated. For any issues with Mobile Colloquy, the developers request that you please file reports at the Mobile Colloquy Google Code site and not at colloquy.info.
IRC on iPhone
Gear Live has a nice tutorial for getting IRC up on the iPhone. You'll need Colloquy, this plugin, and about 10 seconds to spend with Terminal. Once you're done with setup, launch (or relaunch) Colloquy and point your iPhone's browser to http://YourIP:6667. Visual learners may want to check out the walk-through gallery.Enter the password you set up in the previous step and you're all set! The UI is clean and readable. I've tried it and it worked great.
