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Your Mac has seamless integration between its many applications. For example, you can drag an image from iPhoto to the Mail application in your Dock to attach the image to a new message.
But not everyone uses Mail. If you happen to use Gmail - and iPhoto - you might find the iPhoto2Gmail plug-in quite useful. Once installed the plug-in adds a tab to the Export panel in iPhoto. From there you can specify recipients with the integrated Gmail contacts lookup feature. You can even fill in fields to compose your email message.
The plug-in supports resizing your images to dimensions suitable for email. Murphy knows tons of people who need this! You can also elect to send the original image file if a shrunken jpeg isn’t what your recipient requires.
Of course you could go to Gmail and attach files one by one, browsing to a Finder folder where you exported resized photos. But iPhoto2Gmail lets you select multiple images in iPhoto, where images are meant to be viewed. Then it fires off an email without you having to dig around in Finder. That’s definitely worth something.
A fresh version was just released on Sunday. While the rest of you were doing your taxes Juan was squashing bugs and enhancing funtionality. Actually, Murphy might have more readers in the EU than the states, so maybe we should scratch that.
If you didn’t check Murphy out over the weekend back up a little and see the post about MiniDV tapes. And some other things too. Or click below to see a screencast of iPhoto2Gmail in action.
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My Mac Won’t Start
Unfortunately, Murphy has gone through this with two Macs in the last month. When you’ve still got a working computer you can check the Internet for troubleshooting tips. But what if you’ve only got one computer, like when you’re on the road?
This tiny downloadable pocket guide is perfect for your laptop bag. Or tape one to the back of your 30″ display. While you’re at it, burn a copy of your Tiger install DVD for your Timbuk2 Messenger Bag
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Webcams On Your Mac
If you’ve got an old USB webcam lying around and it never worked with your Mac maybe it’s time to give it another shot. A utility called macam got Murphy’s Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 going. There’s a list of supported cameras but try your camera even if it’s not on the list - unincluded models may still work.
The iSight is great, but it’s not always the most convenient way to capture video. The driver got Murphy’s camera working with Skype and Quicktime Pro - you just drag the macam.component file into your /Library/Quicktime folder. It’s a lot more convenient than hooking up a camcorder.
Turning Off Caps Lock - Permanently
Murphy never, never, ever uses the Caps Lock key. At least not on purpose. If you don’t use it either you can turn it off or reassign it to another key like Command or Option in about twenty seconds.
Just go to your System Preferences and click Keyboard & Mouse. On the Keyboard tab click the Modifier Keys button. The top menu list lets you reassign the Caps Lock key or give it no function at all. Boom. No more shouting.
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The MiniDV tapes are piling up in Murphy’s office. Of course they’re neatly labeled and tucked inside their little boxes. But sometimes Murphy wonders what their shelf life is like. Or how long he’ll have a camera that can play them back.
Instead of loading them onto the G5 and burning disks Murphy opted for a more direct backup. He bought a regular set-top Panasonic DMR-ES15S DVD recorder with a Firewire input. For $120 it was well worth it. When a tape fills up Murphy connects the camera to the recorder which burns a disk in real time. An hour later Murphy has a copy of the tape on DVD. At that point the tape or the DVD can head for the safe deposit box.
Added bonus: Murphy’s Canon Optura 300 records in anamorphic widescreen mode - and the DVD recorder seems to understand. The video doesn’t look warped or stretched during playback.
The benefits are quite apparent:
- The tape has a backup
- Instead of an hour to transfer to hard disk and hours to transfer to DVD the whole thing only takes one hour.
- The computer isn’t tied up with the task.
- Spending twenty cents to backup a five dollar tape seems sensible.
If those five dollar tapes are starting to add up, this is a way to recycle them. Obviously the DVD version has been compressed, but you can decide what your personal quality requirements are.
Here’s one way to look at it: Once you’ve edited the tape and made your iMovie or FCE masterpiece - which is probably stored in multiple places - how important is it to hold onto that tape? If you know you won’t be revisiting that tape maybe it makes sense to recycle it.
Murphy made the mistake of buying a refurb DVD recorder from Tiger Direct the first time out. It was his first and last purchase from that outfit. Maybe others have had good experiences - but the inconvenient return process isn’t worth the discount. For Murphy.
That machine (Samsung DVD-R120) had more Firewire features than the one Murphy has now, but it doesn’t have good feedback on Amazon. Could be a lemon. For backing up entire tapes the extra features don’t really make a difference.
Murphy is partial to the Samsung and Panasonic recorders that use DVD-RAM disks. For regular television recording the RAM disks are great - they can be recorded and written to over a hundred thousand times according to the specification. The disks cost more, but they last. They’re a great way to free up some room on your TiVo too.
The DVD-RAM disks can even play back and record at the same time, like a TiVo. So you don’t have to wait for a show to stop recording before you can watch it. The RAM disks allow you to edit shows, delete commercials, and split recordings in half so you can delete the part you’ve watched.
There is no guarantee that one DVD-RAM recorder’s disk will play on another machine. But Murphy has found them compatible between two different Samsung models and the Panasonic mentioned above. Samsung and Panasonic are among the few vendors that offer DVD-RAM.
For archiving your tapes Murphy recommends regular DVD-r or DVD+r disks.
If you’re serious about your MiniDV tapes, make sure you lay down time code on them before recording the actual subject matter. That means letting the tape record straight-through without turning the camera off. Then rewind and you’re ready to record proper. If you decide to use your tapes with Final Cut Express some day you won’t get errors about breaks in your time code.
Notes:
Murphy also has a Samsung DVD-R4000 that has never failed in four years of use. But it’s a pretty old model and it doesn’t have a Firewire input. We’re only mentioning it because it seems Samsung and Panasonic know their DVD recorders. The DMR-ES15S mentioned above gets excellent reviews at Amazon.
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Murphy’s Terminal screencasts are the perfect place for beginners and switchers to get their feet wet with the command line. The posts are filed under Advanced, but that’s because seemingly harmless commands, like cp for copying, can delete files without warning.
But a little education goes a long way. Murphy has over a dozen screencasts that utilize the Terminal in one way or another. Start with the oldest one and work your way though.
Today’s screencast shows you how to set up some safety features for the cp and mv commands - so you’ll be warned if you’re about to overwrite files. It also covers noclobber mode, a way to stop the Terminal from overwriting files when you use a “>” sign for redirecting output.
The command line’s power is an incredible asset. If you haven’t dipped your toes in yet this is a great place to get started. Or head back to Murphy’s first post on the Terminal.
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The Google Calendar can send reminders to your mobile phone, but it’s an all-or-nothing deal. There’s no checkbox in an appointment to specify if you want an sms notification. The checkbox is in the Calendar Settings, and it’s universal.
Here’s Murphy’s workaround: The calendar can send an email reminder to your Gmail account for every appointment. You can set up a filter in Gmail to send the reminders to your cell phone, if they meet a preset criteria. Then you can create appointments like “Lunch with Leo mbl” - the mbl will tell gmail to email the message to your phone. This is great for users of the Quick Add feature in Google Calendar.
In the screencast Murphy tells Gmail to forward messages that contain “mbl” to the email address his mobile carrier provides. In the United States many mobile phones can be emailed using 123456@teleflip.com - where 123456 is your ten-digit mobile number. Try it if you don’t know the email address of your mobile phone. 
What does this have to do with Macs you ask? Read on.A London reader asked Murphy about sending sms reminder messages from iCal. The reader indicated that their carrier doesn’t provide an email address for texting. Murphy’s not a big sms user - or an iCal user for that matter - can anyone help the loyal Murphy Mac reader?
Here’s one idea. iCal can run an AppleScript as an alarm. The AppleScript could send the sms via another application, like Skype. If you have information about sms clients that work with iCal or AppleScript please post it in the comments!
Check out Google for more information on getting Calendar information on your phone. You can even query your Calendar with a text sent from your phone.Click for a follow-up to this post.
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