AirFoil Adds Features

Murphy uses AirFoil to send audio from a web browser to an Airport Express or an Apple TV.   It’s great for listening to Pandora throughout the house, with various speakers all in sync.  There’s an Apple TV connected to the stereo and an Airport Express connected to a Tivoli radio in the kitchen.  AirFoil can also send audio to another Mac, like the G5 upstairs that has decent speakers connected.  Three sets of speakers all playing one stream throughout the house.

Airfoil keeps getting better.  Recently it gained the ability to ‘hijack’ audio from an application that’s already running.  Previously, you had to start AirFoil, and then launch the application from AirFoil to send its audio to another device.  Not anymore - AirFoil can access already-running applications now.  And they’ve added an iPhone app.  So Murphy can bring a portable radio out on the porch - connect an iPod touch - and listen to the same stream that’s playing in the house.  In a nutshell, it turns an iPhone or touch into a battery powered Airport Express in terms of music streaming.

The software is rock solid, no drop-outs.  The interface is simple and unobtrusive.

Using Quicktime Murphy could listen to the aapl quarterly conference call over AirFoil.  Sending the stream into the kitchen beats lugging a laptop in there.  It’s great for Songza, Pandora, YouTube - or whatever audio you want to transmit.  You can even transmit an iTunes stream to your iPhone or touch - enhancing its multi-speaker functionality.

The iPhone / touch application is free.   The desktop software is $25.  AirFoil for Mac / Windows.  There’s a bundle with both for $40.

Find Duplicate Files with Tidy Up

Murphy has built up a ton of duplicate files over the years.  All kinds of stuff, some files with the same file name, some with different file names.  Many of the files are half-baked backups thrown onto external drives in haste.  Some are just the result of poor housekeeping.

I’ve used various tools to get the mess under control.  Later we’ll be looking at a tool called CD Finder that despite its name can be very helpful in cataloging an unruly collection of disks and drives.  We’ll be looking at the diff command too - which is already on your Mac.  But first let’s take a look at Tidy Up, an extremely helpful tool for finding duplicate files and deleting them.

Tidy Up can look beyond the filename to determine if files are duplicates or not.  In the screencast Murphy uses Tidy Up to look at file content and size.  There are many other criteria sets the application can use to evaluate files.

Tidy Up can also dig into iPhoto and iTunes databases in search of duplicates.  Mail mailboxes too.  Information about deleted files is then synced back to the applications.  We’ll look at these features in another screencast.

One feature Murphy really likes:  The ability to keep a single copy from a duplicate grouping.  Tidy Up groups identical files together in its search results.  The application will display all but a single file from each group, allowing you to delete all the extras at once.

Tidy Up can also restore content you’ve deleted to its original location, as long as you haven’t emptied the trash.

You can use Tidy Up to scan multiple drives at once or just a folder that you suspect has duplicates.  It’s probably best to experiment a little before deleting anything - to ensure you’re getting the results you expect.

Preview JPG Rotation

I never noticed that images I rotated in Preview weren’t really rotated. Then I happened to notice a rotated jpg in my Gmail sent items.  It wasn’t rotated.

If you rotate a jpg in Preview and you want it to appear rotated for people you might send it to, clear the checkbox labeled Use Exif Orientation Tag.  The box will appear when you’ve rotated a jpg in Preview.

What’s this all about? Leaving the box checked adds information to the Exif data for the image. That information can be read by some software products that will then display the photo rotated the way you’ve set it.  And your image won’t be altered in the rotation.  If a user opens the image with software that doesn’t read the tag the photo won’t appear rotated correctly.

For example, I saved a rotated jpg with the box checked. Lightroom displays the image rotated. Opening the image directly with Firefox does not rotate it.

The downside of not checking the box is lossy rotation. Pixels are rearranged to create your rotated image, and data is lost in the process. For certain photos you might not be concerned with this, but it’s always good to know how certain software rotates your jpg files. Especially if you don’t have a backup.

More on lossy rotation at Apple Support.

WakeUp for iPhone and iPod touch

Maybe you’ve got an Airport Express hooked up to your stereo - and it pulls from iTunes on your computer upstairs. You want to listen to some music - but you’re comfy on the sofa and you don’t want to go upstairs and wake up the Mac. Or the PC for that matter. If you can muster the strength to retrieve your trusty iPhone from the coffee table you don’t have to get up.

WakeUp is from the same people who make this handy Wake-on-Lan Widget that Murphy posted about long ago. (so long ago that Apple TV was called iTV.)  It’s 99 cents in the App Store.  Link to WakeUp in iTunes.

With WakeUp you can send a magic packet to sleeping computers, as long as they’re wired into your Ethernet network - and have their Wake-On-Lan ability activated.  See this post for more details.

Now your computer is awake, and you can use your iPhone or iPod to remote control iTunes.

Related Posts:

Sleep Your Mac by Email
Twitter While You Sleep
Sleep Your Mac with Terminal

Access Web Sites Directly

A quick look at simple ways to open frequently visited web sites directly, without your mouse.

Hopefully you don’t click in the address bar and forward-delete and backward-delete to erase what’s there.  But some people do.  Here are Murphy’s tips for opening web pages directly with the keyboard.

1.  Add an alias for the site to the Dock. You can access the Dock with Control+F3, even if you’re in another application.  Use the arrow keys to select your site-alias and the Return key to open it.  You can create the alias by dragging the icon from your browser address bar to the Desktop.  Then drag from the Desktop to the right side of the Dock.

2.  Command+L and a Firefox keyword. This is an easy one.  Command+L selects everything in the address bar in Safari and Firefox.  Control+L does it in Internet Explorer.   Now you can start typing - whatever is highlighted  will be deleted.  But don’t type out the url, just type the keyword you’ve assigned to the site, which could be as short as one character.  Keyword?  Read on…

Edit your bookmarks in Firefox and view properties by selecting a bookmark.  There’s a field for keywords.  Go ahead and set a keyword - now you can enter the keyword in the address bar instead of the url.

Safari doesn’t have the bookmark keyword feature - but you can use Command+1 and so forth to access the bookmarks on the bookmark bar.  They’re numbered from left to right automatically.

3.  TextExpander. With TextExpander your Mac is always watching for certain text strings.  When you type a configured string the assigned action is carried out.  The action can be an Applescript.  A simple script can open your browser of choice to your destination site.  The great thing about TextExpander:  Your browser needn’t be active to invoke it.  You could also use TextExpander simple text replacement to replicate the Firefox keyword function in Safari. More about TextExpander. $29.95.

4.  1Password. You might know about or even use 1Password for storing all your log-on credentials in one secure database.  But it also features a bookmark pop-up that lets you jump to a site and auto-populate your username and password.   1Password lets you assign names to your entries, so you can keep them short.  It’s a way to bring keywording to Safari.
1Password licenses start at $39.95. This post has more information and a screencast about 1Password.

5. Terminal. Do you always keep a Terminal window open? Set an alias in Terminal to open your favorite browser and pass along the site to enter.  A command like this will store the alias for you:

alias mm=’open -a Firefox http://murphymac.com’

Then open a terminal Window, type mm and hit return.  Your page will open.  See this post for information about making an alias available when you reboot.

6. Use Quicksilver.

Do you have a favorite way to open favorite sites? Let us know in the comments.

Related Post: Murphy shows how to open a set of tabs in Safari with one click.