System Preferences
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These five surprisingly pointless OS X mods may amuse you
I recently went hunting for interesting OS X mods. For every useful item that turned up, I found lots of dead ends. Many items read by the OS X preferences system (through, for example, calls to CFPreferencesCopyAppValue) have little or no application to end-user needs. They're there primarily for the app's internal state or as remnants of Apple's development process. I've curated a bit of a slush pile for items that are interesting enough to take note of, but haven't quite made the grade when it comes to utility. Here are five of my favorite "interesting, but not very handy" tweaks that I've encountered while scanning for defaults or, in the case of the System Preferences one, that I've stumbled over while using an app. 1. Reset the Dock The OS X installer regularly leaves debris in your Dock. OS-promoted apps include such items as Mission Control, Safari, Photo Booth, iLife apps and so forth. Now, with a simple system command, you can restore all those apps in the Dock that you laboriously removed at least once before. Tip to the wise: Make sure you back up com.apple.dock.plist in ~/Library/Preferences before applying this one so you have a reference guide of your prefs to help you move back to. In the Terminal app, enter the following. defaults write com.apple.dock version -int 0 ; killall Dock Once the Dock restarts, it returns itself to its newly installed default glory. Admire the jam-packed contents before spending the next 10 minutes editing it back to the way it's supposed to look. 2. Prevent edits to the Dock If you're in a particularly evil mood and this is not your Dock, you might want to add this little default tweak. It prevents users from further editing the Dock contents. defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool yes ; killall Dock To restore end-user editing, switch off the immutability: defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool no ; killall Dock 3. Reveal desktop background paths This next tweak shows the paths for your desktop backgrounds on each of your screens. Why would you want to do this? One of my testers suggested it might help when you have a regularly rotating desktop background. For most people, it's not very handy at all. defaults write com.apple.dock desktop-picture-show-debug-text -bool yes ; killall Dock and going back: defaults write com.apple.dock desktop-picture-show-debug-text -bool no ; killall Dock 4. Remove pane icons from the main System Preferences window The System Preferences app consists of rows and rows of icons, which you tap to access individual settings panes. Did you know that you could tweak this presentation and remove items? I have no idea why anyone would ever want to use this feature, but it's a standard part of the app. To choose which panes to view, select View > Customize. Uncheck any item to hide it. You can still access all the panes from the View menu. Another option, View > Organize Alphabetically, replaces the category grouping with a large mash of alphabetically presented icons. 5. Add a useless debugging menu to iBooks for OS X This tweak does just what it says on the wrapper. If you've ever dreamed of a special secret app menu, then this is the system mod for you. (Similar mods exist for several other apps, so Google around to find some other exciting suggestions.) At the terminal, enter: defaults write com.apple.iBooksX BKShowDebugMenu -boolean yes And then launch iBooks. The new Debug menu appears to the right of other options. And there you have it. Five obscure and not-very-handy tweaks. Got any more tweaks you've stumbled across and want to share? Drop us a note in our tips line. We may cover your OS X mod in a future write-up.
Getting Ready for Mountain Lion: Dictation
Mountain Lion is about to debut one of my favorite features ever: Dictation. With built-in support for speech-to-text, OS X Mountain Lion allows you to talk instead of type in nearly every app on the system. You'll be able to access dictation using a simple keyboard shortcut, a double click on the Function (fn) key. And if your keyboard doesn't have one available, or if you prefer another choice, System Preferences allows you to customize that shortcut. Dictation will be integrated with many system features, including Contacts, so it will more accurately recognize your colleagues' names. You don't have to worry that "Victor Agreda" will transform into "Vic tore a gray dar". (Although, truth be told, I'm still struggling to make my iPhone 4S realize that "call Mike Rose's phone" isn't "call microphone", and it uses the same speech-and-contacts integration as Mountain Lion.) If you're using Mountain Lion on a Mac without a built-in microphone (like my 2009 Mac mini), you'll need to hook up one in order to use the dictation features. You can use headsets as well as stand-alone mics. Mountain Lion dictation follows the same rules as Siri. You can dictate punctuation and capitalization as you talk. For example, you can say "hello world exclamation point" and Mountain Lion will type "Hello world!" Other handy meta-items include new line, period, comma, and question mark. Dictation is smart. Say, "Twenty two dollars and 32 cents" and it's automatically transformed into "$22.32." It handles dates, too. Say, "Thursday July Fourth Seventeen Seventy Six at Three P M" and it types "Thursday, July 4, 1776 at 3 PM." You can even say "smiley" and "frowny face" to add emoticons, namely, :-) and :-(, which may or may not please you as the hyphen noses are not exactly standard. Once you start working with dictation, you'll find that it can solve a problem you didn't know you had. Unfortunately, Mountain Lion offers dictation and only dictation. You can't ask a virtual voice assistant to shoot off an email or send a message ... at least not yet! Dictation supports English (U.S., UK, and Australia), French, German, and Japanese. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and Erica Sadun wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Hidden secret apps of CoreServices
Nestled within the bosom of your Mac's system folder lie many powerful and curious applications. Not intended for direct access, the denizens of the CoreServices directory work as clients for other OS apps such as System Preferences or Safari. There are several CoreServices apps we use often at TUAW. Here are some of our favorites. When Safari cannot connect to the Internet, you may be prompted to run Network Diagnostics.app to find the problem. The app lets you choose a network port you wish to work with (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or an external modem), and test it. It is one of many apps found inside your /System/Library/CoreServices folder. It's also one that you may want to stick into your dock for a bit when you're messing around with a new router or have upgraded your cable modem. Screen Sharing.app gives you remote access to any enabled computer on your local network using the VNC protocol. Some of us prefer using Chicken of the VNC, but Screen Sharing.app is a simple alternative already built into your system. You enable this feature in System Preferences > Sharing > Screen Sharing (hint, click Computer Settings and add a password). When launched, just enter the host name or address of a sharable computer (e.g. Banana.local or 192.168.0.15) and start controlling that system remotely. Use the Wi-Fi Diagnostics.app to capture network events and enable debugging logs. It provides a way to collect traffic for analysis. Anyone who regularly works with Apple development may be pleased to realize they can access the Certificate Assistant.app directly instead of always having to launch the Keychain utility. The assistant allows you to create certificate signing requests, which are used in the dev process to request authenticated items like certificates for development provisions. The VoiceOver.app utility enables spoken descriptions of your OS X screen. It provides an audio interface for your computer. Once enabled, you can quickly switch out of VoiceOver mode with Command-F5. (You can turn on VoiceOver via System Preferences/Accessibility, as well. You're probably used to using the Archive Utility.app through the Finder's contextual pop-up, but if you drag it into your dock, you can use it as a drag and drop compression utility. Very handy! Got other favorite secret apps? Tell us about them in the comments!
10.7.2 update adds some Lion interface tweaks
Amid the flurry of software updates Apple released yesterday was OS X Lion 10.7.2. The big feature of the latest delta release of Lion was, of course, iCloud. But the 10.7.2 update also brought other features, such as a speedier Safari web browser and stability improvements. However, there are also some small, very welcome, interface changes I've been noticing as I've been using 10.7.2 over the last 24 hours: Launchpad icons got bigger. The most noticeable UI change is that the size of the icons in Launchpad got much larger. About 60% larger actually. This is a very welcome improvement for those with less than perfect eyesight. It makes finding and launching an app in Launchpad that much easier and faster. Desktop preferences got iPhoto Places country flags. Another small, but useful, tweak is in the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences pane. Since OS X 10.6, you have been able to navigate your iPhoto photos by Places in the Desktop pane, but now under 10.7.2 Apple has added country flags that sort where you photos were taken. You can then navigate down through the hierarchy by State/territory (highway sign icon), city (building icon), and location of interest (globe icon). Before 10.7.2 you had the navigation hierarchy, but it was much harder to distinguish between countries because of the lack of flags. Remove apps from purchase history in the Mac App Store. A final tweak I've noticed is that now you can remove purchases from your Purchased history in the Mac App Store. Click the Purchased button at the top of the store then move your cursor over an app from your purchase list. You'll see a small X appear at the far right. Click it to delete the app from your purchase history. Deleting a currently-installed app from your purchase history won't delete it from your computer. If you've found any other unadvertised interface tweaks in 10.7.2 let us know in the comments!
How to enable the FTP server (ftpd) in Lion
Apple decided to remove the GUI for enabling and disabling FTP from Mac OS X Lion. Generally speaking, that's not a bad move, because most times SFTP is available anywhere FTP is, and SFTP is far superior in terms of security. No one should be using FTP over the Internet. However, there are some cases when using FTP is perfectly fine. For instance, transferring large files over your own LAN. I do this all the time when transferring DVD rips from one machine to another. Others have mentioned that they have some devices which only support FTP so SFTP isn't an option. Personally, I prefer FTP on my LAN because, since it is unencrypted, there's no extra processing time needed to encrypt and decrypt the transfer. I'm also willing to admit that there may not be much practical difference in most cases -- that is, I don't know that SFTP is much slower than FTP, but when you're talking about "8 GB at a time" transfers, every little bit matters. Enabling FTP on Lion The good news is that Apple did not remove the FTP server (/usr/libexec/ftpd) from Lion, they only removed the GUI to enable or disable it. The even better news is that there are (at least) two GUI tools for re-enabling it: Lion Tweaks (which also lets you toggle other Lion settings) FTPD Enable App which is an AppleScript app to launch ftpd For those of us who prefer the command line, there are even instructions on how to enable ftpd using launchd. ftpd.sh I wrote a small shell script called ftpd which will let you turn ftpd on or off, or check its current status. Usage is very simple: ftpd.sh --on ftpd.sh --off ftpd.sh #1 will turn it on, #2 will turn it off, #3 will show you whether it is currently on or off. My script is based on Daniel Smith's launchd commands mentioned above. The script must be run as root, but if it isn't, it will automatically re-launch itself using 'sudo' rather than failing ungracefully. It is also smart enough not to try to turn it on when it is already on, or off when it is already off. To use the script, download ftpd.sh and then put it somewhere in your $PATH such as /usr/local/bin and make sure it is executable chmod 755 /path/to/ftpd.sh. (If any part of that previous sentence didn't make sense to you, I recommend using one of the GUI programs listed above. Using the Terminal is one option, but it's not the only option.) Once again I repeat: if you are trying to connect to another machine over the Internet in an otherwise unencrypted manner, use SFTP. The only time FTP should be used is when there is no chance of the password being 'sniffed' by a nefarious third party. You can enable SFTP and SSH in Lion (and previous versions of OS X) by going to System Preferences » Sharing and making sure that "Remote Login" is enabled. When in doubt, use SFTP. But if you need FTP and are aware of the risks, now you have the option of enabling it when needed. ftpd just one time If you want to enable ftpd immediately without downloading or installing any scripts or apps, simply enter: sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist into Terminal.app. If you want to turn it off afterwards, enter the command sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist All ftpd all the time If you use any of the above solutions, ftpd will be disabled again when you reboot the computer. If you want to enable ftpd automatically after every reboot, you will need to edit /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist by looking for the lines Disabled and changing them to Enabled which will tell Lion to enable ftpd on reboot. Use the launchctl load command shown above to enable it without rebooting. Note: I recommend that you do not edit ftp.plist unless you absolutely cannot avoid it. I am firmly against tinkering with anything in /System/ but at the end of the day, it's your computer, and if if your situation requires ftpd to be available at all times, editing the plist is the best way to make sure it is always on.
Mac 101: Don't forget about Hot Corners
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. After reading fellow TUAW blogger Dave Caolo's post on Mac OS Lion and Mission Control, and then TUAW blogger Chris Rawson's Additional Tips for OS X Lion's Mission Control, I thought it pertinent to mention a few further words on Hot Corners. With the advent of advanced multi-touch gestures in new Macs, it's easier than ever to get around Mac OS X, and even more so in OS X Lion with Mission Control. But since I don't have a newer Mac with advanced multi-touch gestures, I find Hot Corners invaluable in Lion, as I did in Snow Leopard and previous versions of Mac OS X before it. Even if I did have access to advanced multi-touch gestures, I'm certain I'd still make full use of Hot Corners. Hot Corners are the assignment of certain features to the four corners of your desktop. A Hot Corner is activated by shoving your mouse pointer in the respective corner of your desktop screen. A Hot Corner can be assigned to turn your screen saver on, put your display to sleep, display all open windows or, as Dave mentioned in his post, open Mission Control -- which is useful if you're like me and don't have a newer multi-touch trackpad like me. Personally, I've assigned my bottom right Hot Corner to open Launch Pad, it's a quick and easy way to access all my applications. I find using a Hot Corner much quicker than opening Launch Pad from the dock and then opening an application. My bottom left Hot Corner is assigned to show my desktop. Activating this Hot Corner shoves every open window on my desktop to the left, leaving me free to peruse files and documents on my desktop, and then by activating the Hot Corner again, all my open windows return to exactly the way they were before. My top right Hot Corner opens Mission Control and my top left Hot Corner puts my display to sleep. It couldn't be simpler! To assign a Hot Corner in OS X Lion, go to System Preferences and click on Mission Control. You'll find the Hot Corners button at the bottom left of that window. For previous versions of OS X, go to System Preferences and click on Dashboard and Expose.
Ask TUAW Video Edition: Geeking on GeekTool
It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another edition of Ask TUAW video! On the heels of our AppleScript episode, we are going to talk today about GeekTool. GeekTool is a great way to have information displayed on your desktop, without it being too intrusive. First thing, you need to download GeekTool here. I have posted some example GeekTool scripts, which can be downloaded here. As always, the video is in the second half of the post, and please ask questions -- that's what we're here for!
Mac 101: Adjusting your mouse and trackpad speed
More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users. If you've ever used the trackpad on a PC laptop connected to an external monitor and noticed how many times you have to swipe your finger across the pad to get the mouse cursor from one screen to the other, the end result can be quite frustrating and tiresome. Of course, the same thing can easily happen if you hook up an external display to your MacBook or iMac, although it usually is not as obvious thanks to the larger surface area that Apple has designed into recent trackpads. Luckily, this can be easily corrected on any Mac in just a few simple clicks. Before we dive into the settings, though, let's talk about what is causing this to happen in the first place. Although we often take it for granted, one of the most astonishing aspects of using a mouse with a computer is the fact that you only have to move your hand by a couple of inches, while the pointer on the screen moves from one end of the screen to the other -- even if the screen is over 20" wide. This feat is accomplished by a simple mathematical conversion being done in the background that measures the distance the mouse (or your finger, if using a trackpad) moves and multiplies that by a specific factor to determine how far -- and in what direction -- to move the cursor on the screen. Read on to find out how to give your mouse (or trackpad) a speed boost.
Mac 101: Use Archive Utility preferences for control over archives
Most users know that you can easily create .zip files in OS X by selecting a file in Finder and choosing File » Compress "FileNameHere" or by control+clicking the file and choosing the same option from the context menu. You can open .zip (and other archive formats such as gzip, tar, and bzip2) simply by double clicking on them. You may not have known that additional options are available. For example, after you make a .zip file, you could have the original files moved to the trash automatically, or you could have all .zip files that you create automatically saved to the same folder. Similarly, you can have all archive files that you expand open to the same directory as the archive, or have them saved to a specific folder. The feature that I was looking for was this: after I expand an archive, just move the original file to the trash so I don't have to, because I don't want to keep it. If the default settings work for you, great! But if you'd like a bit more control, there are two ways to do it. (Note: these system paths are current for Snow Leopard. Previous versions of Mac OS X may be different. See note at bottom of this message.)
Mac 101: Inserting or typing uncommon characters
As a Mac consultant, I'm often asked some pretty bizarre questions. One that I frequently hear is "How do I type <some special character> on my Mac?" A good example of this is people who want to type fractions that look like this -- ½ -- rather than like 1/2, or plop a character like an umbrella -- ☂ -- or a skull and crossbones -- ☠ -- in the middle of a sentence. It's actually quite easy to do this, although finding these uncommon characters isn't something that's readily apparent, especially to new Mac users. Follow along as I show you how to insert or type characters that won't be found on your keyboard.
Mac 101: taming Safari toolbars with shortcut keys
As you've probably noticed, there are suddenly a lot of Safari Extensions floating around, thanks to the new features in Safari 5. PimpMySafari is ramping back up, and the Safari Extensions Tumblog is doing a great job of keeping track of all of them. I'm going to wait until the dust settles, the cream rises, and several other clichés come to pass before I dig in and start featuring my favorites. I do, however, want to offer a quick tip for dealing with Extensions that add toolbars. Most of the Extensions I've tried that add a toolbar to Safari don't make it easy to show and hide it (and I don't really need every extension I install polling my keyboard, anyway). Aside from my url bar, my bookmarks bar, and my tabs, there's no toolbar in the world that I want to have open all the time. What is this, Firefox? Fortunately, there's a simple way to add shortcuts to show toolbars when they're useful, and hide them when they're irrelevant.
Manage your DNS settings for faster web browsing
In the Network Settings pane of your System Preferences, you may have noticed that you can manually set the DNS servers your connection will use. There are a few reasons for doing this, namely speeding up the time it takes to look up any given website, but also to bypass some annoyances in your ISP's (or IT department's) default name server. Such annoyances could include domain blocking, censorship and other things you may or may not know are even happening. For the most part, though, you'd change your DNS settings to make sure you were using the fastest possible server from your current location. Read on to find out how!
Fluid lets you embed webpages as your desktop or in menu bar
I refer to my calendar a lot during the day, but I don't always have my calendar program running. Most of the time I just want to glance at something to confirm the time/date of an upcoming event, or just double check a date: "What is the last Sunday in May? Oh right, the 30th." It occurred to me today that I could make life a little easier if I could have my calendar embedded in my Desktop. Those of you who remember Microsoft Windows' "Active Desktop" feature may shudder in fear at the idea because, at least in my experience, Active Desktop was a complete and utter disaster. It never worked well, if you could get it to work at all. There are extremely geeky ways of doing this but MacOSXHints.com had a simple solution I didn't even know was possible: Fluid.app. Now I've used Fluid.app for a long time, but I never knew what the "Embedded SSB" or "MenuExtra SSB" actually did. Turns out that either of them are a potential solution, not just for calendars, but for any web page. [Editor's Note: Fluid just recently went open source, and though the blog hasn't been updated yet, we're told the SSB creator is now open source as well.]
Snow Leopard Creator Codes: one more time, with feeling
I recently wrote about Ross Carter's Snow Leopard Creater Code discoveries and his solution, LaunchCodes. It turns out there were a few issues with the initial implementation, such as Apple Events not being passed along. Normally when you find a file in Spotlight, a PDF for example, opening it launches Preview and the query that was used to locate the file shows up in the search field in Preview. This was no longer working in LaunchCodes, though Ross says he's working on that right now. In the meantime, Michel Fortin has produced Magic Launch, and it solves the majority of the issues that have been presented. Magic Launch installs as a System Preferences pane, and you can drag and drop applications to it to register their file type. Then, you can choose a default application, but optionally specify that it should launch in it the application which created it, when possible. Probably the coolest feature, though, is the rule handling. Similar to rules in Mail.app, you can set up a series of criteria to determine when a different app should open the file. You can have multiple rules, and each rule can check things like file location, file name or extension, text contents, hex contents and/or ASCII contents. That's pretty nifty, and goes beyond the default functionality that was available before we even needed apps like this. Magic Launch is free to try out, and costs $14US for a license. If you're still finding documents annoyingly launching the wrong applications, go download it and give it a try.
A pawful of quick Snow Leopard tips
As all of us are starting to get familiar with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, we're starting to find little features that aren't immediately visible and are pretty cool! My first surprise came when one application asked me to make sure that my date and time settings were correct. I dutifully popped into System Preferences, clicked on the Date & Time preferences pane, clicked on the Time Zone tab, and noticed a couple of things that were different: First, the time zone I'm in (Mountain) was highlighted and as I moved my cursor left and right, a "ghost" appeared for whatever time zone I was currently over (see arrow above). That in itself wasn't anything great, but the check box at the top -- Set time zone automatically using current location (see oval above) -- was intriguing so I clicked on it. The map went to shades of gray, and then Snow Leopard used the SkyHook Wireless's Wi-Fi positioning service to figure out where I was.
Getting ready for Snow Leopard: Think about your applications
Ahhhh, there's nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that tomorrow I will be spending much of the day upgrading the Macs in my house to Snow Leopard. I received an email from Apple this morning telling me that Snow Leopard had shipped, so now I just need to be available to sign for the package tomorrow. Regardless of how many Mac OS upgrades I've done over the years, there are always one or two drivers, application enhancers, or full applications that just don't run properly on the newly installed OS. With Snow Leopard, these situations should be rare as many developers have already done compatibility checking and worked out the bugs. Before you slip that Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac tomorrow and start doing the upgrade, there are a few things you may want to consider.
Make your display's gamma in Leopard match Snow Leopard
John Gruber mentioned in a recent post about Apple's Snow Leopard list of Enhancements and Refinements that one of the small adjustments to Snow Leopard will be that the default gamma on displays will switch from the typical 1.8 value to 2.2, which is what is used on TVs as well as being the long-standing default gamma value in Windows. Gamma affects the visual contrast you see on your screen, and a higher value indicates a higher level of contrast. The cost of this higher contrast is that you lose some detail on the less luminous parts of your screen. If you're interested in seeing what this is going to look like in Snow Leopard, or switching your gamma setting now so that you're used to it ahead of time, here are the steps to do it using the Display Calibrator Assistant: Head into System Preferences, and click on the Displays icon. Click on the Color tab, and press the Calibrate... button. On the Introduction window that opens, click Continue On the next screen, "Select a target gamma", choose "2.2 Television Gamma" Click Continue leaving your Target White Point set to Native (or whatever yours is set to) Now name the new profile you've created, click Continue and then Done. Lastly, you can now choose to switch between your default color profile, and your newly created profile with the gamma set to 2.2. I realize this might seem terribly obvious to some users, but for others playing with color profiles is not ground they've previously covered. If you're one of those people, this tip is for you.
Mac 101: How to set a default printer
Over time you may wind up with several printers set up for your Mac. This results in a list of available printers every time you go to print. If the default (the first one selected) isn't to your liking you can always change it. To do so, bring up System Preferences and go to Print & Fax. Now right-click (you can hold the Ctrl key down if you don't have a 2-button mouse) on a printer in the list and choose: Set default printer. There you go!Note the plus and minus signs below the list of printers. If you're just getting started, click the plus to add a printer. If you've sold a printer, click the minus to delete one after selecting it. Apple has an excellent 101 of their own about setting up a printer on your Mac.Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.
Apple's System Preference icon goes "Green"
With the introduction of EPEAT Gold rated MacBooks and MacBook Pros last week, Apple has definitely been warming up to the environmental movement lately. So, it was only fitting that they would change a small part of System Preferences to reflect the EPEAT rating. That's right, the Energy Saver icon has changed from an old incandescent bulb to a newer, more energy-efficient fluorescent bulb. Now you will only have to change the energy saver icon every 7 years, but be careful when you dispose of the old icons because they contain mercury (just kidding). This change has only shown up on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Do you think Apple will eventually update their entire line to have this new icon (and, of course, be EPEAT Gold rated)? We definitely hope so! Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
NetworkLocation brings WiFi positioning to the Mac
Since the introduction of the 1st-gen, GPSless iPhone and the iPod touch, the WiFi location awareness of those devices has been a continuous source of delight to me -- with the underlying technology from Skyhook Wireless, that brave band of cross-country wardrivers, these handhelds manage to know where they are remarkably well (at least, most of the time). Having the same capability on your Mac certainly seems like a logical next step... and what would you do with that location data? Maybe you'd like to find your friends or hunt for restaurants with the Loki plugin for Firefox, but the real power of location awareness comes to bear when you can have your Mac automatically act on that information: to optimize your configuration, or change your settings to the appropriate choices for the place you're at.Enter the newest offering from centrix.ca, the Skyhook-enabled version of NetworkLocation 3.0. This $29 settings management utility (we've covered it before) can perform all the necessary changes to your settings: tweaks to network, email, proxy, sound and screen, or even arbitrary modifications via triggered AppleScripts or Automator actions (much like similar apps Location X or WiLMa). With the connection to Skyhook's database, NL3 can now switch profiles when you're in proximity to a known point, along with the previous options to flip over based on network connection or the presence of a specific device. Plugins add support for launching a VPN connection or changing Entourage or Mail's SMTP config. It's a beautiful thing.You can check out the gallery for a peek at some of NL3's options. For anyone who uses a portable machine in a large campus or corporate environment and wants to take the aggravation out of changing settings for each spot you sit in, this tool is definitely worth a look.%Gallery-31712%
