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Change Case uses OS X Services to expand TextEdit
Mac OS X Services have been around for a while, but not many people use them. Under the title of any Cocoa program in the upper left of the menu bar, you'll find an option for Services. This brings up a pull-down menu of services that are appropriate to the program at hand. They can be a real time saver. I use TextEdit for writing my TUAW posts, and it's always running. Recently, I found a neat service that works wonders for TextEdit and (I'm sure) a bunch of other text editors. It's free for the downloading from Ron Fleckner in Melbourne, Australia. What you'll get is a ZIP file that expands into a little, 86KB application file called Change Case. Once installed, select some words or sentences, go to Services, and you'll get a screen like the one above. It's pretty self explanatory; ALL CAPS, All lowercase, and Toggle Case do just what they say. Word Capitals capitalizes each word in a sentence, and camelCase (which you might know as InterCap) is mostly used for brand names. It turns something like " My Program" into "MyProgram." While it's true that a few of these options are available in TextEdit under the Edit-> Transformations menu (namely: Make Upper Case, Make Lower Case and Capitalize), the Services menu is easier to get to, and Change Case does more.
Digit-Eyes identfies everything for the blind without breaking the bank
The Digit-Eyes Audio Scanner and Labeler (US$29.95) from Digital Miracles is a remarkable Assistive Technology (AT) app for the iPhone and iPod touch geared to the blind and visually impaired community. What it does is fairly straightforward once you get the big idea, but the implications of its uses are fairly mind-boggling. The app does three things. The first and simplest is, using the built in camera, scanning UPC and EAN codes found on most everything. Taking advantage of the VoiceOver accessibility capability built into the iPhone/IPod touch, it searches a database, brings back the results and reads it to you. There is also a button to search Google for more information. That's really no big deal since a variety of barcode scanning apps such as Red Laser can do roughly the same thing. You need an Internet connection for this since you are referencing the Digit-Eyes database. The second thing it does, is more compelling. Once you register for a free account on their site, you can create text labels for printing on over 50 sizes of standard Avery labels. Select a type of label and a template page is displayed full of empty boxes representing labels. In each box, type in up to 100 characters of anything you want the label to say. Once done, all your text is transformed into a .pdf page of QR (quick recognition) codes like the one shown in the upper right corner of this post. Print the page on the Avery label stock, and stick each on whatever you wanted the label to say. For example, if you typed in "Blueberries bought on July 31st", you would stick that corresponding label on a container of blueberries. Then using the Digit-Eyes app, scan the label on the container and the screen will display and a voice will read back "Digit-Eyes label read: Blueberries bought on July 31st". The database of what's behind each label is stored on your iPhone so you won't need an Internet connection to access the information. %Gallery-98575%
The American Museum of Natural History's Explorer app for the iPhone and iPod touch
The American Museum of Natural History on New York City's Upper West Side has released AMNH Explorer (free) for the iPhone and iPod touch. This app, funded by Bloomberg, is a tour guide and personal navigation system that allows you to easily traverse the museum's huge collection. You can search for an exhibit by popularity, exhibit hall, or an alphabetical listing, and the app will use the museum's free Wi-Fi to give you step-by-step directions to your intended destination (using either the stairs or elevators). You can also get directions to the closest restroom or exit as well as information about restaurants and gift shops. %Gallery-98499% If you want to know more about an exhibit, tap its card to see more detail. After you've seen an exhibit, you can mark it as visited, which puts a banner on the exhibit's information card. You can also bookmark exhibits, which will send you an email that details what you've bookmarked as a record of your visit. There is also an option to send exhibit information to Twitter or Facebook.
Found Footage: Darth Vader calls Apple Support
The idea of connecting Darth Vader and the iPhone 4 has become a meme. Videos abound on the topic, like the ones found here, here, here, and even here. The newest one comes from Russell Arch. It has its moments, especially the idea of the Death Star being run on a first generation iMac and OS 9. Take a look and see what you think.
Barnes & Noble's NOOKstudy coming to students in August
Barnes & Noble is diving deeper into the education market with an expected August release of NOOKstudy which will run on Macs and PCs and not require a NOOK or any other mobile device. NOOKstudy will act as a hub for eTextbook, class notes, syllabi, scanned handouts, and even non-educational eBooks. It will allow students to take notes as well as highlight passages in eTextbooks. Users will also be able to tag items for easy retrieval using common terms like: "for the final exam". It will provide full searches of anything, in the eTextbooks or your notes, and link into Google or Dictionary.com to look up terms. Multiple eTextbooks can be opened at the same time, or two pages from different sources can be simultaneously displayed. The program is currently being piloted at Penn State, University of Nevada, Queensborough Community College, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. [via Campus Technology]
My trip through Time Capsule Hell leads to a different backup approach
I bought a one terabyte Time Capsule shortly after it hit the market, along with an external 1.5TB drive. I use the Time Capsule's internal drive to back up two smaller capacity Macs, while the external disk backs up my two larger capacity Macs. Working with Time Machine in Leopard or Snow Leopard, the Time Capsule updates its backups every hour. This makes perfect sense if you're just dealing with one Mac wired into the Time Capsule, since it really doesn't slow anything down. But if you are using it to wirelessly back up multiple Macs, hourly backups slow everything down to a crawl. TimeMachineEditor (a free utility that I highly recommend), allows you to set Time Machine to back up as frequently or infrequently as you like. I created a setup where, with staggered backups starting between 2am and 4am, each Mac gets backed up once a day. Outside of some errant sparse image problems that required a reformat, all was well. I had long beaten the 18 month Time Capsule funerals that were recently reported... but then things turned ugly.
