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Precipitate: search Google Docs and Bookmarks from Spotlight
Google's Mac group has released Precipitate, a plugin which allows you to search Google Docs and Google Bookmarks from the same interface that you search you Mac. It works with both Spotlight and Google Desktop for Mac. Basically the developer's idea is to have a one stop search interface for information on your Mac and information in the Google cloud so you don't have to remember where you saved something. Sounds like a good idea to me.Google's Precipitate is a free download from Google Code.
Mac 101: Tag almost anything in Leopard
Here's a very simple and even more useful tip from Dennis Best. He's thought of a clever way to tag almost any document he creates in Leopard with Spotlight and a clever use of keywords.When writing a note, composing an email message, etc., he precedes keywords with the ° bullet character (shift-option 8). Later, he can conduct a Spotlight search for " °Tahoe" and find every tagged email message, sticky note, iCal event, etc. Pretty clever!For added usefulness, save that Spotlight search for a self-updating reference.[Via Micropersuasion]
Comcast Spotlight to pinpoint customer desires with targeted ads
Comcast is rolling out its Spotlight program in Baltimore in Q3 of this year. There's a scary threesome involved in the effort: Comcast, media agency Starcom MediaVest Group and technology partner Invidi. Central to the program is Invidi's Advatar technology (no, not that Advatar) to deliver ads targeted to individual users. Before you get too scared by the "Big Brother" sound of all this, consider that Comcast's initial trial of addressable placements showed 38% less ad-skipping; that's a pretty good indication that people preferred the ad flavor cooked up by Comcast. Let's face it -- in conventional broadcasting (and increasingly online as well), advertising is a proven model. So programming is going to be sprinkled with ads; wouldn't you rather have them be personally interesting? We certainly prefer this to the "run the ads louder" approach. The real tricky issue will be maintenance of anonymity; we'll see how consumers respond as TV increasingly watches them. All companies involved would be wise to keep in mind the cost of winning back violated customer trust.
Leap 1.0: a peek under the hood
Some applications remind me of cars. For example, most Java based applications are Volkswagen Things as they're useful in certain situations, but horrifying (or hilarious) to look at. But once in a while you get a Jaguar XJS: a beautiful exterior that doesn't bely its underlying power. That, and you frequently have to spend some time at the mechanic. Leap by Ironic Software – makers of Yep – just hit 1.0 after a long stint in beta. It's my current Jag. We covered the beta, but here's a quick review. Leap is a Spotlight interface which, once you get used to it, causes a fundamental shift in the current paradigm of file management. Prior to finding Leap, I had already been using a homegrown, Spotlight-based file management system. The strategy – based on a tagging system – requires a far smaller folder hierarchy and allows for much faster location of related files in a project. Leap both complements my system and elegantly replaces a lot of its kludgier functionality. By combining full Spotlight search capabilities with a tagging system (that writes to Spotlight comments), Leap makes file location a breeze and allows for easy association of files within a project. It can function like Finder, showing all files in a single directory, if that's what you need at the moment. The "Go Deep" search can display every file in every sub-folder of a project. The results can be filtered by criteria such as file type, location, date, keywords and other metadata, allowing for quick searching and tagging. It can also display a traditional list format, but the icon view with Loupe function and Quick Look integration makes browsing as elegant as any program I've tried. And, of course, a tag cloud view – and the ability to choose tags from a sidebar to narrow the search – makes all that tagging work worthwhile. All of that being said, Leap still has some bugs despite its 1.0 status. I've been subjected to freezes fairly frequently, but the random crashing that plagued the beta seems to be cured. As far as features go, I wish there were an easy way to exclude parameters from a query. I'm also wishing for the ability to select multiple file types during a search using a ???-click rather than defining custom file type groups. But the interface, as it stands, is friendly and elegant once you get the basic concepts down. And nitpicking aside, it does elegantly accomplish everything I've been doing in a more manual fashion. Leap is now selling for $59. You can buy Leap and Yep as a bundle for $69, and previous owners of Yep can get Leap for $39. That works for people who got Yep in a bundle as well. You can download a trial copy from Ironic Software and take it for a spin.
A (slightly) simpler command-line Spotlight search
Erica mentioned mdfind a little while ago. It's not a brand new tool, but there hasn't been a great deal of discussion surrounding it. For shell scripters and Terminal junkies, it's a goldmine of search goodness that can make you never want to key out find . -name "letsgogetcoffeewhilewewait.rb" or even locate didcronupdatethedb.yet again. There are two mdfind options mentioned at Mac OS X Hints that are worth a mention, one found only in the man page, and one found only in the usage info. The former being "-interpret", which allows the advanced Spotlight query syntax to be used on the command line as if typed into the Spotlight window, turning mdfind "kMDItemContentType == 'public.jpeg'" into mdfind -interpret "kind:jpeg". Its opposing force would be "-literal", which forces a literal interpretation of the query string. Any qualified Spotlight query should be usable with "-interpret", so go ahead with mdfind -interpret "kind:image flash:1 modified:<=1/1/08 ex-girlfriend" to find those late-night pictures of last year's special someone. That would take a lot of metadata work to pull off without "-interpret". The second option mentioned isn't in the man page, but you'll see it in the usage info if you run mdfind with no parameters. It's the "-s" option that loads saved searches. It will look in ~/Library/Saved Searches unless a path is specified. So you can save a search in Spotlight called "PDFs from yesterday" and run mdfind -s "PDFs from yesterday" to launch the same search at the command line. See, I had to throw a "normal" search in there to keep you on your toes. Terminal jockeys can mix these up with a few pipes, stir in some perl and sprinkle in a little awk to get some really great Spotlight soufflé. Of course, if you don't like the command line and you're still reading this, you're a downright hardy trooper and I commend you. Go have a cup of coffee, you deserve it. [via Mac OS X Hints]
FileSpot 2.1 released: Supercharged Spotlight interface
Synthesis Studios has released version 2.1 of FileSpot (formerly MoRU), their advanced interface for Spotlight. It allows you to make advanced, boolean logic queries and makes accessible some of the more complex aspects of Spotlight. Not to make it sound complicated, though, its iTunes-ish interface is pretty simple to use. It also adds file tagging with support for other 3rd party tagging apps like Spotmeta. This release adds two great features: Quick Look support and search results that display as they're located rather than waiting for the search to complete. Both features definitely make my day.FileSpot has a 30 day trial period and costs $20 to register.
DEVONthink gains Spotlight support
The guys over at DEVONtechnologies have announced updates for a number of their applications. Most importantly the entire line of DEVONthink information managing software (along with DEVONnote) now natively support Spotlight. They note that this allows you to search multiple DEVONthink Pro databases at once from Spotlight. In addition they've updated their line of freeware applications to be compatible with Leopard, including the handy menubar folder utility XMenu.[via MacMinute]
Leopard killed these freeware apps?
Here's an interesting list of applications supposedly killed by Leopard. There's no question that there's a huge amount of functionality in Leopard that was taken care of in Tiger by third-party apps (and this is just a list of freeware-- commenters pointed out last week that Jisho was made almost obsolete by the Japanese dictionary included with Leopard), but I'm not so sure this list is all it promises to be. No amount of tweaking to Spotlight will ever replace Quicksilver, and as good as iChat has gotten, I still like Adium for its easy customization. And apps like CenterStage, who used to have a one goal (an open source Front Row replacement), have now been able to spread out and become more their own program instead of worrying about Apple's missing functionality. As always, the best app for the job depends on both the job and the person doing it, so there are probably more than a few places where Leopard stepped up to fill functionality that users used to trust third-party software for. But it's a stretch at least to say Leopard killed these apps-- replication of one function now built into the OS doesn't mean all the apps other functions are useless. [Via Fake Steve]
TUAW Tip: Power searching in Leopard Mail
Over at Mac OS X Hints, johnga1t has discovered that Leopard's Mail.app has a more powerful search functionality than is apparent on the surface. Basically, it seems that Mail.app's search box can leverage some of the power of the new, more sophisticated Spotlight syntax, which means you can now uses fields to limit your searches. The syntax is: keyword from:some_user subject:some_wordSo for example you can search for all the emails from me with from:Mat Lu in the search box. And these can be combined. To find all the emails from me with 'philosophy' in the subject line it would be: from:Mat Lu subject:philosophy and so on. One thing I've noticed is that you do need to make sure it searches the "Entire Message."Apparently the available fields are: from, subject, and email (which searches the email address rather than the name). As one of the commenters at Mac OS X Hints notes, you actually have more options when searching directly from Spotlight (e.g. Boolean operators), but nonetheless, I think this is handy time saving trick.[via Hawk WIngs]
Spotlight in 10.5 skips over user Library files
Wondering why your Adium chat logs aren't showing up in Spotlight search now that you're running Leopard? Vincent Noel was wondering, and he tracked down the reason: files in your user ~/Library folder are now not reported by Spotlight, unless you enable "Include" to show system files (easiest way: invoke Spotlight with Command-Option-Space to perform a "universal search"). This search hiccup also affects Journler, and presumably any other third-party app which stores files in ~/Library.It seems that files inside your Library folder are considered off-limits for basic Spotlight results... which is kinda funny, because that's where Mail.app keeps your messages, and those are sure searchable. OK, so files Apple applications store there are fine -- everything else is off limits. Hmm.Thanks, Vincent.
24 Hours of Leopard: Spotlight
Feature: Spotlight How it works: Spotlight was another Tiger innovation that just never quite lived up to its billing. It was hobbled by slowdowns and some bad design decisions on Apple's part regarding what sort of searches you could run. While it's a bit too early to say if it's substantially faster at least Leopard Spotlight goes part of the way towards improving things by allowing you to run Boolean searches with the AND, OR, and NOT operators as well as narrow your search results in various ways. In addition, like Google, Spotlight now knows how to add and define words, so you can run simple arithmetical calculations (e.g. "7+5") or look up words in the dictionary, just by typing them into the Spotlight search box. Spotlight can now also search other Macs on the same local network as well.Who will use it: Everyone who needs to find things on their Mac(s).
Leap
Leap is a new Finder replacement from Ironic Software that eschews traditional directory structures in favor of search and tagging. The software is pretty smart, and groups together common file types so you can find what you're looking for in a hurry. It also allows you to add your own tags to files, and creates a 'tag cloud' that outlines what kind of files you're looking at, what folders those files are in, and what user created tags they possess. The larger the label, the more files are tagged with that (as you can see in the screenshot above I have lots of image files on my Desktop).The iPhoto-like UI is easy to use, and really shines when the Loupe is used. The Loupe is a tool that lets you peek at the contents of supported file types without launching any additional apps. Leap is in Beta, and the Loupe's performance makes that clear. It was a little slow, and sometimes lagged when I pointed my mouse from file to file.In addition to all its Finder abilities, you can use Leap as a replacement for Apple's built in Spotlight interface, and yes the tag cloud is right there with your Spotlight results.Take a look at this demo movie to get a better idea of what Leap can do for you.Leap is currently in beta, and pricing has not been announced. You will get a free license, though, if you buy Yep, a PDF organizer that Ironic sells for $34, now.[via factoryjoe]
Leopard screensaver, Help menu video leaked
When I posted the new System Preferences pane in Leopard earlier this week, I was a little disappointed to see that while the desktop had changed (here it is online, if you want to make it your own already-- thanks, Ryan D!), the screensaver had not. I figured this is because Apple wasn't bringing any new screensavers to the fold in Leopard, but that was premature-- here's a "Falling Photos" screensaver sent to us by Christian BS (thanks!). I would be very, very surprised if it didn't automatically pull photos from iPhoto for you, as apparently "you can display any photos this way." Also notice the clock-- we're told that it can be displayed on any screensaver you choose.And he also sent us this video of the new Help system, which has a Spotlightesque bar in it that will actually let you search for clickable options. That's terrific-- no more browsing through a Help system to find a tutorial about how to increase the text size: in Leopard, you'll be able to type "text size" into the bar, and automatically get the commands right within that menu.
Mac OS X tools for real life
This article made me chuckle-- Stuart Frisby of Thirty Six Degrees wrote a short piece about five Mac OS X tools not that he'd like to see on the iPhone, but that he'd like to see in Analog Life (or Analogue Life, in his case).The Finder function is an old favorite-- it really would be great to find your keys via a Spotlight-like interface. But Disk Utility in real life would be a nice bonus as well; a quick Restore right after I'd said something inappropriate to a lady friend would be a lifesaver. But the best would be Uno-- every car could be a Porsche, everyone could be beautiful all the time, and even fast food could taste like steak.Five tools doesn't seem like enough-- if you could put a Mac OS X app to work in your real life, what would you choose?Thanks, James!
Pukka 1.6 brings menubar item, Spotlight support and more
Pukka is one of our favorite utilities for posting to del.icio.us, Yahoo!'s social bookmarking site, and an update today helps an already great utility integrate even better with the way you work. Pukka v1.6, available via its built-in update system, now offers a menubar item with complete access to your bookmarks, organized by tag. Bookmarks are now indexed by Spotlight, and accessing the list of your 'marks via the Dock icon is far snappier. There are also of course a few bug and UI fixes, and those running the latest Leopard beta (as of this writing) can now use Pukka. A demo of Pukka is available, while a single license costs $12.95.
iPhone to gain Spotlight and true widget support?
Like so many others armed with iFuntastic's new iPhone file browser, Jimmie Geddes at iPhoneology has been going iPhone-spelunking. Apparently, Geddes has made some interesting discoveries in the form of images buried in the file system that have suggestive names. First is widget.png, found in: / System / Library / CoresServices / SpringBoard.app/. SpringBoard is the app that actually powers the iPhone's home screen and displays all those pretty little square icons, suggesting that this generic widget icon could be used for widgets that don't provide their own (hint hint, future iPhone widget developers).Next up are pictures named spotlight-full.png and spotlight-keyboard.png, the former pictured in this post. Again, I agree with Geddes that these are very suggestive of Spotlight being included in a future iPhone update. With all the push Apple made with the search paradigm by releasing Spotlight in Tiger in 2005, I'm pretty surprised the iPhone lacks any kind of a search function, let alone at least the abilities to search certain things like contacts that other phones have been able to do for years.As usual, there is no official word on these features or if they'll actually be coming at all. Here's hoping these images weren't simply left there by an engineer playing around with what could be, instead of what will be.
Hide the Spotlight icon in your menubar
If you don't like or don't use the Spotlight icon in your menubar, there are a couple of tips at Mac OS X Hints that describe how to hide or simply get rid of it. This first hint that caught my eye while browsing RSS feeds describes a way to 'paint over' the icon. While that sounds like a good idea and all, you still end up with a blank area in the menubar simply taking up space where the Spotlight icon used to be. Fortunately, Rob Griffiths, Macworld Senior Editor and Mac OS X Hints purveyor extraordinare, linked an older tip in the footnotes of this first one that describes how to properly remove the item from your menubar so others can take its place. It isn't a difficult process - you simply remove Search.bundle from /System/Library/CoreServices and restart the SystemUIServer process in Activity Monitor. Instead of deleting that item, however, I would definitely echo Mac OS X Hints in recommending either backing it up or renaming it just in case you change your mind in the future.Also, this only knocks Spotlight out of the menubar, cutting off your use of the quick 'n easy menu and the more powerful Spotlight window for searching. However, this in no way disables Spotlight across Mac OS X or your applications; you should still be able to run Spotlight searches from the search box in Finder windows and make use of Spotlight in any apps that use it (NetNewsWire, Mail, etc.). I tried this myself and the process went just fine, but I found that I needed to copy the bundle to my Desktop, then delete it from the CoreServices folder. Also, I needed to force quit the SystemUIServer in order for the change to actually take effect. The process restarted itself just fine, and Spotlight disappeared from my menubar. Replacing the bundle (requiring me to authenticate as Administrator) and force quitting the process yet again (oh that poor process) returned Spotlight to its throne in the absolute right of my menubar.
Mii Spotlight: Beam Mii Up edition
Mii Spotlight -- the final column (of the week.) These are the Web voyages of the blog Wii Fanboy. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new fansites. To seek out new Miis and new Mii collections. To boldly post no Mii that has been posted before.
Apple.com has new Spotlight interface for search
While it was hard to miss that Apple.com received a complete redesign with this week's WWDC events, the finer points of the site's new functionality are now coming into the, erm... spotlight. Eagle-eyed TUAW readers have been commenting and reporting on a number of interesting new enhancements to apple.com's abilities, such as the horizontal sub-navigation that Gruber mentioned on some of the product sites (try apple.com/mac to get an idea). A really cool new (and long overdue) feature to searching Apple's site is more or less the web-based equivalent of the Spotlight interface. As you can see, the search box is pinned to the top right of ever page at apple.com now, and running a search produces near-instant results in a drop-down menu style interface. A 'View all search results' option at the bottom of that menu displays the page I snapped for this post, complete with a more robust and categorized list of search results that can be expanded and collapsed, helping you find just what you need far more quickly. The site even appears to be using cookies to store a recent list of your searches, keeping them always accessible at the far right of this search results page.Altogether these are some very, very welcome new tools for searching Apple's exponentially growing product, information and support material. It should be noted, however, that the last update Apple made to their discussion forum still holds true, and that includes its own powerful search tools; this spotlight UI seems to apply only to the rest of apple.com.
Mac Whine: Spotlight's disconnected image results
It's no secret that Spotlight needs a bit of work catch up to 2007. Users far and wide complain that it can grind to a halt all too quickly after firing up a fresh install of Mac OS X, and even though Apple has some good tips for Spotlight power users, it still just isn't quite *there* yet. So, to hop on the 'Mac Whine' train that Leo and his merry band of TWiTs have begun on MacBreak Weekly, I figured the rest of the Mac web could start chiming in with the occasional annoying quirks and problems with Apple's oh-so-shiny products.My first contribution is Spotlight's handling of image search. I've been trying to refresh myself lately on Spotlight and what it's capable of (such as finding text in a Photoshop layer), and I've also been playing around with Aperture as an alternative to iPhoto. One particularly annoying thing is the way Spotlight handles image search results, which you can see in the screenshot. I searched for "quick," and Spotlight found quite a few images that had that word somewhere in their filename or metadata - but it doesn't show me where or what that data is (i.e. - why this photo was relevant to my search). Spotlight *must* have found some metadata relevant to my search since it returned this image (in this case I suspect it was the name I assigned to the image in iPhoto), which Spotlight clearly must have seen - so why didn't it share what that data is? The default result UI doesn't even tell me where those images are or what app they're tied to; I have to click on the (i) to reveal things like whether this pic was in my iPhoto library or simply laying around somewhere else. Add this minor gripe to the (large) pile of things that could use a coat or two of polish from Apple's Spotlight ninjas.
