1. Things vs The Hit List

    May 23rd, 2009
    things-vs-thl-2.png

    I had been craving for a decent app for managing and scheduling my tasks forever. As soon as I got my new mac, I was constantly searching for one. Until one day I found what I need - Things by Cultured Code. Things really does give, what all of us have been whining for. As they say, it simply just makes you forget your tasks giving you the piece of mind that it will remind you of them at the right time. Also, having bought the Things for iPhone, it was very easy to create or strike off tasks on-the-go. Now, I feel I’m more organized. Kudos to GTD.

    Recently while checking out the new task management app for the mac The Hit List, I found more ways to make use of it. It looked pretty sleek and the main advantage of it over Things is that it makes it more easier to manage your task - with easier and better usage of tags and contexts. Also I think the way Hit List segregates tasks into sub tasks is a better implementation of GTD. Of course you can do this with projects in Things but THL makes it more lucid. The keyboard shortcuts in THL makes it more deserving. Now I’m confused which one to use. The lack of an iPhone counterpart sure does make a difference but the developers have promised to deliver one very soon - however, there is not one right now. So I think I should just stick with Things at the moment.

    Something that annoys me about ‘Things for iPhone’ is that it does not sync automatically with the desktop. It syncs every time you start up the app on your iPhone and the irony that it does not sync back again after you quit the app - leaving un-synced tasks on the iPhone - fail !! Hopefully, with the much anticipated Push notification service on iPhone OS 3.0, this should be possible.

  2. Pic.im - better image sharing service for Twitter

    May 23rd, 2009
    100480802449E1E509A0324_m.png

    Just wondering why many people don’t use Pic.im. IMO it is a better image sharing service for Twitter than Twitpic. Some of its cool features include:

    • Detailed visitor statistics
    • Shorter URL’s
    • Integration with Flickr (automatically posts your images to your Flickr account if you want to)
    • Has an iPhone app [iTunes link]

    It is a sister service to Tr.im - so if you have an account with Tr.im, you can use the same login. Now, Tr.im is another cool URL shortening service I like much because of the cool visitor statistics. Also, I just came to know that they belong to the Nambu network - creators of the Mac twitter client - Nambu.

    BTW you can follow me @hackedunit on Twitter.

  3. TwitNews - Post to Twitter from NetNewsWire

    February 26th, 2009

    Just mashed up a quick applescript to post the currently selected news item in NetNewsWire to Twitter. The code is highly influenced from TwiTunes, (which posts the current track on iTunes to Twitter) and the Shorten URL script from iconmaster. So all credits goes to them.

    By default, the contents of the tweet is set to the title of the news item and the URL is shortened using is.gd and you can easily customize it.

    The script needs you to save your Twitter login credentials in your keychain or else you will get an error. To do this, tell Safari to save your login details to Keychain while you login to Twitter or you can do it manually in the keychain app by selecting ‘New password item’ and set Keychain item name as http://twitter.com and fill in your Twitter username and password in the following fields.

    Installation

    Download the script TwitNews, uncompress and drop it into ~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/Scripts. Now you can access the script from the scripts menu on NetNewsWire.

    Code

    If you want to have a look at the code:

    tell application "NetNewsWire"
        if index of selected tab = 0 then
            -- We're looking at headlines, so just get the headline URL
            set feed_url to URL of selectedHeadline
            set feed_title to title of selectedHeadline
        else
            -- We're looking at a web view tab, so we need to know which tab
            set i to index of selected tab
            set i to i + 1
            -- Get the tab's URL
            set URL_list to URLs of tabs
            set title_list to titles of tabs
            set feed_url to item i of URL_list
            set feed_title to item i of title_list
        end if
        -- Build the GET request for the is.gd API
        set feed_url to "http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=" & feed_url
        -- Submit the GET request and copy the results to clipboard
        set cmd to "curl " & feed_url
        set feed_url to (do shell script cmd)
    end tell

    -- change the status message to your liking here:
    set tweet to feed_title & " " & feed_url

    -- let the user edit
    display dialog "Edit your Twitter status" with title "TwitNews" default answer tweet cancel button 1 default button 2 buttons {"Cancel", "Send"}
    set tweet to (text returned of result)

    -- get login from keychain
    tell application "Keychain Scripting"
        set twitter_key to first Internet key of current keychain whose server is "twitter.com"
        set twitter_login to quoted form of (account of twitter_key & ":" & password of twitter_key)
    end tell

    -- post to twitter
    set twitter_status to quoted form of ("status=" & tweet)
    set results to do shell script "curl --user " & twitter_login & " --data-binary " & twitter_status & " http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"

    Hope you find this useful and feel free to make any changes as you need.

  4. iPhone on Rails

    February 6th, 2009

    Just stumbled upon this awsome new framework called ObjectiveResource which helps you to make your native iPhone application talk to Rails based web services very easily.


    Getting Started with Objective Resource from Josh Vickery on Vimeo.

    Visit iPhoneonRails for more information.

  5. Tweaking terminal to enhance productivity

    February 3rd, 2009

    Most of you who are familiar with UNIX systems are aware of this but for those who just migrated from Windows, you can create aliases in your bash profile to create shortcuts for commands you type into the Terminal every now and then. I have created a few of which I use often. Add these to your ~/.bash_profile or /etc/profile and restart your Terminal to bring them to effect.

    # System
    alias ll='ls -alh'

    # TextMate
    alias e='mate'

    # Subversion
    alias sup='svn update'
    alias sci='svn commit'
    alias sst='svn status'

    # Ruby on Rails
    alias ss='script/server'
    alias sgen='script/generate'

    Likewise you can create the same for the ones you use often.

« Older Entries