Renaming Files

Let’s start off by saying there are quite a few ways to rename files. We’re going to focus on a script that’s already on your Mac, waiting for you to click it. It has it’s shortcomings though, since it’s based on a find and replace mechanism.

You might use Automator to rename files. That looks like a good way too, but Murphy has had mixed results. And he’s not the only one. Sometimes the files don’t get named in the expected sequence. He hasn’t figured out why and it’s a hassle to check the sequence every time you rename.

Example:

Files named a.txt b.txt c.txt. If you rename them to something like text1, text2, text3 wouldn’t you expect a.txt to become text1? Sometimes that doesn’t happen. If you can shed some light on this by all means do. Let us know in the comments!

You can rename files with a shell script too. Or use an Action in Photoshop. Or with utility applications like renamer4mac (freeware). But what’s the best way? Post a great answer in the comments or send it to murphy at murphymac dot com. If there’s something we really like we’ll make another screencast.

Be careful when renaming files, especially important ones. Test to make sure your metadata, spotlight comments, dates, etc - aren’t altered as a result of your naming tool.

If you want to be extra safe,  Automator can make copies of the originals and rename those. Apple provides detailed instructions in a tutorial.

Note: If you don’t have the script icon used in the screencast, see this post for information on installing it.

PDF File Listing

Your Mac can do it. Windows users have been wanting this for a long time. Maybe Vista has it?

You want to print a list of the files in a folder. It’s easy. Watch the screencast to see how. If you don’t have a printer in your Sidebar you should watch Stupid Sidebar Tricks.

There’s also a MurphyMac screencast about generating a list of files in the Terminal. From there you can simply print the text file.

Click Watch Now to see the screencast on making a pdf.

.Mac Isn’t Your Only Choice

Murphy uses Bluehost. There are tons of hosting services to choose from. But Bluehost has always boasted big numbers: tons of storage space and bandwidth for a reasonable price. They also offer what has become a standard set of features for web hosts. What’s missing? Some of the customization .Mac has built around iLife and OS X. But in general, Murphy hasn’t run into any walls with the feature set. More on that in the screencast.

When a host provides this kind of bandwidth skeptics are quick to question how the servers hold up under intense demand, like when a site gets plugged on Slashdot. Murphy can’t answer that, our site hasn’t been around long enough to get really heavy traffic. Quick - everyone Digg this story and we’ll find out!

The guy at the Apple store worked pretty hard to sign Murphy up for a .Mac account when he bought his first Mac back in the PPC days. The salesman insisted he wasn’t compensated for signing up users - in that weird way that makes you almost certain he was. Murphy said no then and would still say no now.

For the price, Murphy considered .Mac quite limited. A tiny amount of storage space, limited bandwidth for your videos, and an extremely finite feature set. When you crank out a cool video with iMovie you don’t want to worry that too many people will watch it!

Still, there are some cool features in .Mac - like Photocasting and simple iWeb publishing. Photocasting would be great, but to get the full bang you need to know people with a Mac. Murphy has too many friends who haven’t seen the light yet.

For some reason, Apple married .Mac to their backup tool. That doesn’t make any sense. Backup is too important to leave out of an OS as bait for selling add-on web services. No OS should ship without some basic form of backup - it sends the wrong message to new users. Furthermore, you don’t get enough space with a standard .Mac account for backing up much of your stuff online.

Bluehost might not look fancy, but there’s a lot under the hood. You can install online photo galleries, blogs, databases, polls, and shopping carts. Guided installs of new components are very straight-forward.

Using a Linux based server like Bluehost makes you appreciate OS X’s UNIX core too. Murphy uses Terminal to copy files up to the server automatically. A quick SSH session facilitates editing and backing up files.

With 200GB of storage you could probably upload your entire music and photo collection. Storing these files online makes them accessible when you’re away from home and you suddenly need access to a snapshot or a song.

Using a tool like rsync you could back up your entire home folder. Only files that are changed since the last sync get written, so it won’t take too long either. Looking at other hosts? Make sure they allow SSH access if you want to use tools like rsync.

If you prefer a gui interface, Bluehost provides a file manager that facilitates uploading multiple files all at once, creating directories, renaming and deleting files, and making copies. You can even unzip files with a click after uploading archives.

For anyone who wants seamless integration with iLife and OS X, .Mac is the way to go. I can’t emphasize that enough. .Mac makes iWeb publishing a breeze and enables extra features. And it also syncs your Address Book contents, your Favorites, and keychain items.

But if you want full control of your web presence look around. A year of Bluehost costs about the same as a 200GB hard drive. But you get a lot more for the money. And you still get the 200GB of storage space.

If you decide to sign up, please do it from a Murphy Mac link to Bluehost. You’ll be helping support the site as we consider ways to reduce the number of ads on our pages.

Widget Cleanup

Do you have Widget issues? Do you check the Apple site for fresh new Widgets all the time? If you’ve gotten carried away you might want to take a look at just how many Widgets you’ve downloaded.

The Dashboard has a handy utility for managing Widgets. And guess what? It’s a Widget. But if you’ve gone trolling for Widgets on some less-traveled roads, you might have some Widgets that won’t play by the rules. Murphy can help you deal with them too.

Watch the screencast and see how to get your Dash cleaned up.

Quicktime Broadcaster

Murphy’s going to demonstrate how to broadcast live video from your Mac. Quicktime Broadcaster is easy to set up, yet you can use it to serve large numbers of clients simultaneously.

You can keep things simple: Connect a camera to a computer running Quicktime Broadcaster. A client computer can connect and see your live video feed using the Quicktime Player on a Mac or Windows machine.

In multicast mode multiple computers can connect to your live video. Your network must support multicasting for this to work.

If your network doesn’t support multicasting you can use the Quicktime Streaming Server or free Darwin Streaming Server. The streaming server gets the video feed from your computer running Quicktime Broadcaster and redistributes, or reflects, a stream to the clients.

Here’s a scenario:

You need to broadcast a meeting from the conference room. (or the dorm room) A couple hundred clients will be watching with Quicktime Player.

Your Darwin Streaming Server is located in a rack in some back room.  Install Quicktime Broadcaster on a laptop in the conference room. Connect your camera. The Darwin server gets the feed from the laptop. Then the clients all connect to the Darwin server to get the live feed.

Again - it’s possible to have the clients connect directly to the computer running Quicktime Broadcaster, as long as the network supports multicasting.

In the screencast Murphy will show you how to set up the broadcast feed. Set your preferences and export them to a Quicktime file you can distribute to your viewers over the web or in an email. Opening the Quicktime file connects the users to the live broadcast. You can create multiple files for different bit rates. You’ve probably seen web sites with choices like this.
Check back for a screencast on using the Darwin Streaming Server.

Bonus: Darwin Streaming Server and Quicktime Broadcaster are both free. And you don’t need Quicktime Pro.