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Cog grinds its way to .06
Shaun Martin drops a note that Cog, an open source audio player that plays pretty much every format you'd want to play (I don't know if I'd ever need to play anything in Monkey's Audio but sure enough, it's there) has hit version .06. The release features a brand new UI (with two pullout drawers-- one that browses the filesystem for music, and another that pops up to show info on the playing file), plugin support, preferences (including builtin global hotkeys, which I really enjoy), and everything else you'd expect in an audio player-- Growl support, Last.fm support, gapless playback, and more.The only little flaw I can find is that there seems to be two Help menus-- maybe the Cog guys just want to be extra helpful. At any rate, if you're looking for a quick and free little open source audio player as an alternative to Apple's iPhone Activator, Cog will probably turn your gears.
MarsEdit 1.2 lands with Growl, Picasa and Vox support
Making good on his word after purchasing MarsEdit from Brent Simmons, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software has quickly taken up development of the blogging client. Today Daniel released MarsEdit 1.2, a minor update that brings some great features like Growl support (when publishing, refreshing or uploading images and files) and Picasa upload support for Blogger.com images, as well as support for blogging to Vox, the community-focused blogging system from Six Aparts, makers of Live Journal and TypePad. For anyone who needs the power of Mac OS X while blogging, MarsEdit is a great great choice that offers a wealth of other features for a mere $24.95. A demo is of course also available from Red Sweater Software.
Revisiting CoverSutra, now with Last.fm and Growl integration
It's been a while since we first mentioned Sophia Teutschler's CoverSutra, a new iTunes interaction and manipulation app, and it's come quite a ways since its v1.0 debut. From the start it's offered things like global keyboard shortcuts for controlling iTunes (including one for toggling Shuffle), Apple Remote integration and album artwork that can live on your desktop underneath all your other windows (for that nice Exposé peek-a-boo effect), but recent developments have brought two major new features. The first is integration with the increasingly ubiquitous Growl notification system of which we're big fans, but the second big new feature finally made me decide to buy a license: integration with the Last.fm music community. For those who haven't seen it, Last.fm can watch what music you're playing (on both Mac OS X and Windows) and upload what is more or less a history of all the songs you listen to (it doesn't upload the songs themselves; it isn't the next Kazaa/LimeWire). From there you can share your playlists and discover new music through both friends and strangers who also use the site, and even embed your Last.fm playlist in a website or blog. It's a great service for any music enthusiast, and now it's built right into Sophia's excellent iTunes controller app. Consider me sold.A demo of CoverSutra is available from CoverSutra.com, while a license sells for €9.95 or roughly $13 USD.
TUAW Tip: Re-embed iTunes artwork in media files
One of the backend changes that came with the release of iTunes 7 is how the app stores album artwork. The days of embedding album artwork in music files are gone, due in part (I assume) to the purchase and integration of CoverFlow, a flashy new way to browse your albums. Artwork is now stored in a new ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/ folder, but what if you want your album artwork embedded in those files? Users can have any number of reasons for wanting this, such as the Growl notifications that Quicksilver creates when iTunes starts playing something new. Those notifications (as I understand it) are incapable of properly display album artwork unless the image is embedded in the file, so iTunes 7 has created a bit of a conundrum with this new organization feature.Never fear, however, for Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes is yet again to the rescue. Doug has a handy script aptly titled Embed Artwork that can do just what it says: embed the album art back into your files. This should make things easier on Quicksilver + Growl, as well as if you move your media files to a new computer, artwork in tow.As usual, Doug's scripts are provided for free, but donations for all his hard work are strongly encouraged.[via Quicksilver's forums]
GimmieSomeTune 3.6 available
Last year we pointed out GimmeSomeTune by Eternal Storms Software. It's an enhancement application for iTunes that lets you download lyrics and album cover art, displays track info in a floating window (much like Growl) and lyrics in a lyrics window. You can manage all of this (and more) with user-defined hotkeys or the built-in mini controller.Today, Eternal Storms announces the availability of version 3.6. Changes include: Save the album cover art in the song's ID3 tag or in the song's folder, saving disk space. Lyrics-fetching is improved Cover art retreival extended to all Amazon stores (com, co.uk, de, ca, fr, jp). Various other bug fixes and improvements GimmeSomeTune requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher, iTunes 6 or better and is Universal and free.
Widget Watch: Minutes
The best widgets, in my view, do one simple thing and do it well. That description would fit Minutes, a great little countdown timer widget. With Minutes you just grab the little blue triangle and spin it around to choose your interval (in whole minutes). When it reaches zero it gives you a Growl notification reading "The time has come" and can also do one of the following: Put the computer to sleep Beep Stop iTunes Start iTunes playing a playlist open a file repeat the countdown Simple, but effective; I like it, especially since you can open multiple copies. Now if only they'd allow you choose intervals other than whole minutes and edit the Growl notification text, it would be perfect. If the Dashboard is not your thing, we also had a post on setting short interval timers using Quicksilver a while back that of course could do all of this and more. Minutes is a free download from Nitram+Nunca.[Via MacApper]
Quicksilver meets Twitter and Growl
Here is a cool Quicksilver script that lets you post messages to Twitter. Once you've downloaded the script and placed it into your Quicksilver/Actions folder, you can simply call up Quicksilver, invoke text mode (by typing a "."), tab to the action pane, type "tweet" and you're off. Plus, Growl will let you know when you've successfully "tweeted."Not bad for a script that was written from start to finish in the time it takes to play Prince's Purple Rain all the way through (that was the limit the author set for himself).I recently jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon, and while I do admit that it's fun, it isn't especially useful. Do I really need to know that Johnny is looking for AAA batteries? No.
Widget Watch: Twitterlex update brings Growl notifications, more
Brett Taylor has update Twitterlex, his Dashboard widget that is still my favorite UI for using Twitter, to v1.1 with some handy features and one major addition: Growl notifications. Updates from friends are now passed through Growl, letting you stay on top of what's going on with minimal workflow intrusion (tip: if you want to shut off these notifications, you can do it through the Growl System Preferences pane). Other enhancements include the widget updating itself only every 5 minutes while in the background, update notifications for new versions and a warning when your status is near or at Twitter's SMS-friendly character limit. It may not be quite as sexy as the Icon Factory's Twitterrific that we mentioned, but Twitterlex's functionality is light years ahead for this blogger.
Twitter and Quicksilver, two great tastes
I'll be the first to admit that Twitter, which we at TUAW totally heart, isn't for everyone. Quicksilver, another TUAW fav, is also not for everyone. However, when you cross Twitter with Quicksilver and throw in a dash of Growl and you've just made it onto my Christmas card list.First Coda Hale whipped up a QuickSilver action, using AppleScript, enables you to post tweets (that's what messages posted to Twitter are called) using only QuickSilver. Then Ted Leung took the same script, but added Growl notification which lets you know when the tweet has been posted via Growl.I may be in geek nirvana.
OmniGrowl - bring Growl to unsupported apps
Growl is a system-wide and extensible notification utility for everything from your next iTunes song to whether your Mac just lost its internet connection. As handy as a tool this may be, not all apps offer support for Growl, and it's likely many of those apps never will (iCal, and Safari RSS are prime examples here). For those apps, we now have OmniGrowl (scroll down or search the page), and Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings has put it through its paces. Out of the box, OmniGrowl can alert you of iCal events, birthdays from Address Book contacts, S.M.A.R.T. hard drive failures, changes in power sources and more. Hopefully, even more apps are coming to help spread the Growl love over the rest of Mac OS X.
Gmail+Growl 2.0
When the Gmail Notifier emerged from its cocoon last August as the Google Notifier, the utility bizarrely introduced its own popup alerts for new messages instead of simply using Growl, which is arguably the standard in Mac OS X notification systems. I don't know how we missed it, but Gmail+Growl stayed right in stride and released a 2.0 version to work with the new Google Notifier (in which case, shouldn't this be called Google+Growl?). As long as you shut off the built-in alert system in Google Notifier, Gmail+Growl works well with the new utility. The one quirk I've found so far is that it doesn't seem to be pulling images from Address Book, and I don't know if this is a problem on my end or an update is in order. Either way, if you prefer Growl for all your system notification needs, Gmail+Growl should fit the bill just fine.
Two neat styles for Growl
I'm a big fan of Growl. If you have never heard of Growl it is a system wide notification framework that allows you to set up a number of different notifications for a variety of things. It is one of those things that sounds lame but is very cool indeed (much like myself).The default styles for the notifications are nice, but somewhat lacking. Daniel Bergey agreed so he whipped up two new styles. One that is very much in the style of OS X and the other that hearkens back to simpler times: OS 9's notification system. Daniel does warn that the styles get a little flakey with long URL's, but TUAW readers are a forgiving lot.
Widget Watch: eBay Watcher 3.0
If your picture is hanging on eBay's 'Favorite Customers of All Time' award wall, this eBay Watcher widget might be just for you. As a powerhouse eBay monitoring tool, this widget has it all: up to three items can be watched at once, audio feedback for price changes and auction ending, Growl notifications, automatic refreshing at user-specified intervals, localized display labels for German, French, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and Italian and even a world clock. Just about the only thing this widget is missing is a kitchen sink, though I'm sure an eBay widget could help you even with that minor setback.One complaint I have about this widget is the explanation as to why you should register it from Hawk Innovations. Discussions about whether one should charge money for a widget aside, check it out: "Our demo version has a 50-50 chance of working. Make sure your widget works 100% of the time by registering now!" Cryptic as that may be, I think it deserves at least a few points for being one of the more... unique demo limitations I've seen.So, a '50-50 chance of working' demo is available, and a license (which includes two machines) will run a mere $5. Hey: nobody said making eBay's 'favorite customers' wall was free.
Hack iCal to present alarms through Growl
If you're a Growl fanatic, or maybe iCal's alarms just aren't cutting it for you, a forum thread at cocoaforge might provide you with some options for getting iCal and Growl to shake hands. Discussion has included various methods of using AppleScript, hacking the innards of iCal and even replacing the GUI option of emailing a reminder with sending it to Growl. Either way, it doesn't sound like any of the methods are for the meek of heart, so if you don't feel like digging around in application bundles and AppleScript, you might want to wait for a prettier solution.[via Hawk Wings]
VLC 0.8.5 released with Intel Mac, Growl support, many improvements
The most excellent jack-of-many-formats VLC media player has just reached version 0.8.5, and boy does it pack a whallop - just check out the release notes. The biggest new additions to write home about are Universal Binary support, Growl notifications, a statistics system, new skin support including skins from Winamp 2 (for those who just can't let go), new video filters, support for downloading updates (possibly due to Sparkle?) and a whole lot more.VLC is a feature-packed media player with support for a boatload of media formats, and is available free for many OSs from VideoLAN.
Gmail-Growl Utility 1.7
The Gmail-Growl Utility that adds some seriously handy features to Google's official Gmail Notifier has been updated with a functionality face-lift and some fixes. It now has an option to toggle on/off Growl notifications for those times when you just need silence, and in Mac OS X Tiger you can now drag and drop notification field elements such as sender, subject and date, to build the actual notification you want to see (Panther users can still copy/paste text blocks to customize this notification).Gmail-Growl Utility has also gone fully universal as long as you're using Google's latest Notifier version (1.8.2). It is also donationware (bonus points: the dev donates 10% to charity) and available from Waffle Software.
Strange app of the day: UnPlugged
I'm still scratching my head on this app, but I figured I'd post it and maybe you guys could help make sense of how an app like this would be useful. UnPlugged is a one-trick pony with the sole purpose of (drum roll please) notifying you when your Mac's power cable is unplugged. It can use Growl to notify you, or a simple alert window in case Growl isn't your cup of tea.Now, how is this useful? To double-check: If a desktop Mac's power cable comes unplugged either from the wall or the Mac itself, it just shuts off, right? As far as I know, Apple hasn't built any whiz-bang UPS technology into their recent desktops. So that leaves iBooks and PowerBooks. Is there some kind of an environment or fairly typical situations people are getting themselves into where they wouldn't know if a power cable became unplugged, given that it attaches right on the side of the machine they're working on? Sound off, if you could, and help make sense of this peculiar little app.UnPlugged is donationware, requires 10.3.9 or higher and is available from brik software.
Transmit 3.5 - where have you been all my life?
Last month Dave Caolo mentioned that Transmit updated to v3.5, went universal and added droplets, amongst other things like Growl support. While I'm sure droplets aren't a new concept by any means, these handy little DnD (drag-n-drop) extras that can perform all sorts of tasks seem to be all the rage lately with applications both old and new. Photoshop does them, DVGuru discovered Compressor does them, and Transmit 3.5's droplets were one of the few key reasons why I purchased a license a few days ago.Transmit's droplets are icons you can effortlessly create that allow a quick DnD operation to send files/folders up to a specific directory in one of your Transmit FTP accounts. What's even nicer is that you can opt to save the relevant password in the droplet, or require it to be input each time you use it to upload something. Creating a droplet is simple: right-click (control-click) on a directory in Transmit and chose the "Save droplet for Folder..." option like I have pictured.The one drawback of these droplets is that they still have to start Transmit in order to actually perform the upload. On the flip side, however, they also automatically quit the app when finished. Ultimately, these droplets are incredibly handy if you have multiple FTP accounts with various directories into which you simply need to dump stuff.Another new feature is Growl support. Since I am a lover of Growl, this is most welcome, but Transmit's implementation is a little quirky as there is no option in Transmit to toggle this feature; it's all done through the Growl System Preferences pane. Heads up to those who are new to the realm of Growl.The last major new feature in 3.5, the one that truly made this love affair flourish, is the "edit any remote file, in any application" feature Dave mentioned. This one almost has to be experienced to believe: you can now double-click remote files in Transmit (such as image or text files) and it will download and open them in an external editor you specify in the preferences. You can then work your magic, simply hit "Save" and Transmit uploads the altered file - seamlessly (try this on an image file with Photoshop for an insta-drool effect). Gone are the days of "download, surf to your local directory, open the file, edit, save, then upload." This alone was worth purchasing a license.Which reminds me: Transmit offers a 15 day trial, while a single license is a bargain at $29.95. Bulk pricing and upgrades are available.
Enhance your iTunes experience with GimmeSomeTune
I've been happily using Menuet and Growl together to make my interaction with iTunes that much more enjoyable: Menuet for the programmable hot keys, and Growl for the popup notifications. But, what if there was one utility that handled both functions, and what if it was free?Check out GimmeSomeTune. There's a opaque popup window that displays information plus album art, and completely user-configurable hot keys let you control nearly all of iTunes' functions. Did I mention it's free? GimmeSomeTune requires Mac OS 10.3 or later and is universal.[Via FreeMacWare]
Chax updated, adds Growl support
Remember Chax, the free, feature-packed iChat plugin we found a couple weeks ago? It's received a couple of minor updates and tweaks since then, and one I thought worth mentioning was Growl support. Previously, the only way I knew of getting iChat to play with Growl was GrowliChat, a separate app that was more or less a one-trick pony.Other new features in Chax's tiny bump to version 1.3.2 include: Automatically set status to away when the screen saver is activated Show animated user icons in the contact list Hide iChat and new message windows when iChat is inactive French localization Check out the version history of changes for the full skinny on what's new, updated and fixed. Chax is a free plugin, but donations are always welcome at the developer's site.
