OS X is full of little shortcuts that can save you time. Some examples of that include adding folders to your sidebar, revealing the dock and menu bar when using full screen apps, and determining at a glance whether your current document has any unsaved changes. That doesn’t include all of the trackpad gestures that can really speed you up. Now it’s time for another one. How would you like to automatically create a new text note, without doing any copying and pasting?
Talented photographs and photo editors abound. I’m not one of them. I use my trusty point and shoot, and every now and then I can impress myself with a lucky shot. I also can’t work the Photoshop magic that some professionals can weave every day. If I want to tweak an image, I need a simple tool. “Simple” is a word that describes iSplash, a Mac photo app that is a one-trick pony. That trick, though, is pretty cool.
Here’s a quick tip for you Lion users out there. If you’re a fan of full screen apps, you may miss having quick access to the dock and menu bar. They appear to be gone, but they’re really not. Here’s how to use them.
The past couple of days we’ve talked about Markdown, a markup language that helps you easily output HTML without having to learn HTML. Yesterday, we looked at a Windows app, WriteMonkey. Today, it’s the Mac’s turn. One of the earliest apps that I downloaded on my Mac was nvAlt, a note taking app. I was impressed by the unique and efficient way that nvALT operated. Well, technically it isn’t unique, since it is a fork of an open source app, Notational Velocity. But it is different than most note taking apps that I’ve used. What I didn’t know until recently was that it also supports Markdown.
8/20/11 UPDATE: Just a few days after this post went live, the developer of MenuWeather Lite announced that MenuWeather Lite would be discontinued. His web site indicates that it will remain in the App Store for a month or two, but I can no longer find it in the App Store. The paid version, now $1,99, is still there.
If you want to be able to quickly check the weather on a Mac, check out MenuWeather Lite. The app places an icon in your menu bar that displays the temperature and general conditions, such as cloudy or sunny, at a predetermined location. Click on the icon, and a dropdown list appears, showing you more detailed current conditions, and a five day forecast. The drop down also contains a link to a 10 day forecast, hour by hour forecast, radar map, and weekend and monthly forecasts.
