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First Look: Keymote for iPhone / iPod touch takes control of your Mac
There are some applications out there that never cease to amaze me. We're always looking for shortcuts and ways to make our lives (and our computer use) much easier. Iced Cocoa's new Keymote [iTunes Link] for iPhone and iPod touch is sure to do just that! With Keymote, you'll never again have to remember a shortcut. Keymote creates single buttons out of complicated shortcuts and groups them by application, speeding up your productivity and boosting your workflow. Basically, Keymote acts as a remote for your Mac and can control almost any application. The developer notes that you can "Easily control Front Row from across the room, refresh your Twitter stream wirelessly, or play a song from iTunes without even touching your computer, the possibilities are endless." Some highlights of Keymote include: Simple and intuitive user interface that makes using Keymote easy and fun. Easy to connect and operate over a Wi-Fi connection. Organizes your keystrokes, keeping the ones you use close at hand. Highly customizable with different key colors, the ability to add tactile feedback with vibrations and more. Built-in store for purchasing keystroke sets for almost any Mac application. Don't worry, most of these are free. Customize and share your keystrokes and layouts with other users easily. I found the Keymote interface to be simple to use, and the commands are snappy, happening almost instantly. The in-app store is great too; I was able to download keystroke sets for Tweetie, Coda, iTunes, Safari, Firefox, Photoshop and so much more. I'm also a sucker for a beautiful user interface and Keymote certainly has that. The menus are easy to use and the keystroke pages are downright gorgeous. The application is available in the iTunes App Store for $3.99 and is well worth the price. In addition to the app, you'll need to head over to Iced Cocoa's website, download the free Keymote receiver, and then pair your iPhone or iPod touch with the receiver application on your Mac. Here are a few shots of the application in action: %Gallery-70140%
TUAW Tip: Hiding the cursor when zoomed
RogueAmoeba just linked to Mark Johns' easy little app called Cursorceror. He loves the Ctrl/scroll wheel trick, just as I do (holding Ctrl and using the scroll wheel allows you to zoom in on any part of your desktop-- especially useful for watching Flash movies fullscreen very quickly), and he wanted to get the cursor out of the way quickly, so he wrote Cursorceror to attach hiding the cursor to a hotkey-- make it appear and disappear at will.The only problem is that he didn't have to do all of that. Turns out that when you're zoomed in (in most applications, including the major browsers), hitting any key at all will automatically hide the cursor for you. So if all you want to do is watch Flash videos fullscreen, just zoom in, tap a key, and watch your videos cursor-free.Johns' wittily-named app didn't completely go to waste though-- while hiding the cursor is easy most of the time, the keystrokes you hit will still be received by whatever program has focus, and so handing off the task to Cursorceror will keep you from making any mistakes while keying. Also, not all programs will apparently let the keystrokes through (I couldn't get the cursor to hide in iTunes or GraphicConverter in my quick tests), so Cursorceror will come in handly if you want instant hiding no matter what app has focus. It will also hide the cursor after a set time limit, which, as far as I know, OS X won't normally do.
TUAW Tip: shortcuts for Sleep, Restart and Shut Down
We here at TUAW are suckers for productive shortcuts, and since yesterday's System Preferences tip was such a hit, I thought I'd post a few shortcuts to speed up the Sleep, Restart and Shut Down commands. There's actually quite a few ways to accomplish these tasks, so I'll try to mention all the methods I've heard of. The first: hold the option key while selecting Restart or Shut Down from the Apple Menu to bypass the 'Are You Sure?' dialog, and cut right to the chase. You even get visual feedback in the Apple Menu; click the menu, then press the option key to see the trailing dots disappear from those two commands (as far as I know, this is a typical UI feedback element used throughout the OS; any commands - at least in Cocoa apps - that have keyboard modifiers will change their appearance in the menu if you press the modifier before choosing the option).The second method is my personal favorite: 100% keyboard shortcuts. Here's a list: Sleep = opt + cmd + eject Restart = ctrl + cmd + eject Shut Down = ctrl + opt + cmd + eject The third method, involving the power key, can still be counted as a keyboard shortcut, but since I almost never touch the power key (I Sleep my Macs about 99% of the time via my aforementioned favorite method), I don't really consider it part of my typical keystroke regimen. For you power key lovers out there, you can press your Mac's power key, and at the resulting 'Are you sure?' dialog that contains four buttons (Restart, Sleep, Cancel and Shut Down), you can press the first letters of a couple of these actions. Specifically, 'r' for Restart, 's' for Sleep and Enter for Shut Down. 'C' for Cancel doesn't seem to work, but Esc should get you out of the dialog if you need to keep computing.Here's hoping you don't have a Homer Simpson-like brain, where each new shortcut you learn knocks out an old one. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts on these shortcuts, and enjoy one more trick for working with your Mac just a little bit faster.
Das Keyboard II with blank keys reviewed
Those of us who type for a living are perhaps more attuned to keyboard minutiae than the average computer user, so any 'board that promises to improve our WPM without resorting to a frustrating realignment of the keys naturally piques our interest. The Das Keyboard II includes several "enhancements" that may or may not improve your typing speed by up to 100%, most noticeably the keys themselves, which, while arranged in the traditional QWERTY-configuration, are completely blank. Supposedly the lack of even a single symbol keeps the user from "cheating" and looking down at his/her hands, but Extreme Tech instead found themselves habitually mistyping and wasting time referring to character maps. Ultimately, since the letter-less keyboard only improved the seasoned typists' speed by about 10%, it's the other features of the Das II that may entice consumers, including high-end,"clicky" keys rated to 50 million keystrokes which are differently-weighted to compensate for variable finger strength. Overall, ET gives the blank 'board a seven out of ten, harshing on the rather steep learning curve, but suggesting that first-time typists might benefit from practicing without the traditional "crutch" of illustrated keys.
