Keynote 2 Keynote

I’m always on the lookout for new applications that keep my desktop clean and help me focus on the task at hand. SpiritedAway is one such application. Infact, since I found it it’s been one of my favorite behind the scenes utilities. In a nutshell, SpiritedAway automatically hides (Apple+H) inactive applications. I usually end up with a dozen applications/windows open after a half hour or so (ADD?) and I can’t hardly think, let alone focus on my current project. If this sounds familiar then you need to install SpiritedAway!

SpiritedAway is a lightweight application that resides in your menu bar. It’s usage is pretty strait forward, and the application pretty much dose everything for you. There are a few things that you can configure though. By clicking on the SpiritedAway menu bar icon you’ll be prompted with the following menu.

With this menu you can choose whether SpiritedAway is active or inactive. While inactive it won’t hide any unused applications for you. You can also choose which applications you don’t want SpiritedAway to ever hide. Configuring the preferences is just as simple.

The only change I made to the default preferences was to check the add LoginItem button so that SpiritedAway launches when I reboot OS X (which rarely happens). But, if you’d like you can change the amount of time an application must be inactive before SpiritedAway hides it.

At first it might be a little weird seeing background windows disappearing, but I assure you that you’ll appreciate it! Having a clean desktop always helps me work better. One thing that might be important to note is that the foremost application will never auto hide even if you don’t use. Oh, and best of all SpiritedAway is a free download! I also give it bonus points since the icon reminds me of the ghosts in PacMan :)

If you’re a true geek you’ll love this piece of software. GeekTool allows you to display almost any information about your Mac right on your desktop. You can monitor shell script output, images, and even entire files without lifting a finger. Some may argue that they can never see their desktop or that GeekTool provides unneeded info. I say, hire a maid to keep your desktop clean and get your geek on!

I’ve decided to break this article into two pieces as it would be way to long if it wasn’t. The first part will be a review of GeekTool itself and my impressions of it. The second part will be based on customizing GeekTool, mainly focusing on the scripts/commands that I use to pimp out my desktop.

GeekTool is a Preference Pane. This means that after you install it, you can find it by looking in the System Preferences at the bottom in the ‘Other’ category. GeekTool has a fairly simple interface. Everything is accessed through one window, with more in depth settings tucked away in drop down menus and button tabs. Everything is very intuitive and within a few seconds you’ll feel pretty comfortable with it.

As I said earlier, GeekTool can handle shell scripts, text files, and images. The most powerful of the three is most definitely shell scripts. While displaying a current weather radar map might be fun and monitoring logs might be useful, you’ll be amazed at what you can do with shell scripts and GeekTool. Shell scripts allow you to monitor iTunes, ip addresses, and system usage. Anyone who may have switched to Macs from Linux or is a Terminal junkies you will love GeekTool.

Anything that GeekTool displays can be customized. From font/color/size of text to window frames there should be a little bit for everyone. I prefer to run all my GeekTool entries with high contrast colors and transparent backgrounds, but this is just my preference. If you want a boring bordered window with black text on a white background thats cool as well and GeekTool will allow it. Each entry can be moved anywhere on your desktop and can even be displayed on top of all other windows if you’d like. This gives you all the control. Align you r entries along the edge of the screen, top, bottom, or even smack dab in the center. Whatever floats your boat. I’ve chosen to align everything on the left since I’ve got my dock on the bottom of the screen and icons loaded on the right.

There is at least one application that does the same thing as GeekTool on Linux, but I’ve never seen one for Windows. I don’t know what I like more, having lots of useful information at my fingertips or the incredibly geeky feeling I get when I notice someone staring at my computer screen :) If you want to be the envy of all your friends you NEED GeekTool :)

GeekTool can be downloaded here.

Oh, and just to whet your appetite a bit for tomorrows article, here’s a screenshot of what I’ve done with GeekTool! What you see from top to bottom is iTunes album art, iTunes currently playing info, a calendar, ip address info, current Airport connection, uptime, and processes/cpu/ram info!

I should have the second part of this review up sometime tomorrow. If you want to make sure you catch part two of the review so you can find out about all the cool scripts I’m running with GeekTool, subscribe to my RSS feed.

I’ve amassed quite a large list of RSS feeds and Google Reader just isn’t cutting it anymore. It just takes to long to read my news everyday. A few of the readers here at Keynote 2 Keynote have recommended NetNewsWire so I decided to give it a shot. I don’t know how I ever lived without NetNewsWire before… Its the best damn RSS Reader for Mac OS X hands down. Here’s a list of its features. Do yourself a favor and go download it now before you even finish reading this article! There is a 30 day trial of the full version or a stripped down free version.

OK, now that you’ve got NetNewsWire downloaded and installed you’ll appreciate this review a bit more :)

If you’ve been using an online RSS reader, like BlogLines or Google Reader, you’ll immediately notice a HUGE performance boost. This is because NetNewsWire downloads the latest headlines/descriptions on the fly. As long as you have the application open it will keep all your feeds up to date. When you sit down at your computer to read the latest and greatest you won’t have to wait for page after page to load. This is a huge time saver.

The NetNewsWire interface is similar to your typical desktop email client. All the feeds that you are subscribed to are displayed in the left column. Beside each feed is a counter that denotes how many new/unread articles there are in that feed. Select a feed to display list of all the articles. If one of those articles sounds interesting and you want to read more about it just select it and you’ll be shown a description. At this point if you’d like to read the rest of that article just click on the headline. A new tab will pop up and load the full article. Thats right… A tabbed RSS Reader! You can thank Apple’s WebKit for that feature :)

I was happy with Google Reader, but I’m VERY happy with NetNewWire. The only feature that I miss from Google Reader is having access to my subscriptions at any computer. But, I think that there is a solution to that! NetNewsWire is owned by NewsGator, which offers an online feed reader. The best part is that you can sync NetNewsWire and NewsGator :) That way you have a speedy RSS reader while at your computer AND access to your feeds while on a different machine.  that will have to be the topic of another article though.

If you’re like me and like to skim through lots and lots of articles and read only a select few, then I’ve got a great time saver for you. Read the NetNewsWire Efficiency Tips article over at MacTips.org . It’ll make navigating lots of feeds and articles quick through the use of keystrokes.

Now use your awesome new RSS feed reader to subscribe to the Keynote 2 Keynote feed! I’ll give you a dollar… err wait… how about a brownie? LOL