But almost as soon as I started planning our trip around the world, my pleasant day-dreams were disrupted by a recurring image: It was a vision of me lugging my laptop for weeks on end like some sort of modern-day Sisyphus. I had basically resigned myself to that reality… when *it* was announced.

The Plan

The Apple iPad Tablet was the answer I had been looking for — and I had one in my hands the day it was released. Now I could write, email, help clients, run my website, and book my tickets and accommodations on the fly — without adding extra weight and baggage that I would have to carry for weeks on end. (See The Chart At The End Of The Post For Some Details)

Here how I imagined that it would work: At only 1.5 pounds and half-an-inch thick, the iPad would let me stay connected without my having to cart around a bunch of bulky gear. I could slip it into a small bag — the pocket of a jacket if I were so inclined — and use it on the longest of flights with a 10 hour battery life. The iPad Camera Connection Kit would let me upload my JPG or RAW pictures and hi-def MJPEG videos to the iPad and use it as a sort of combination photo wallet, digital picture frame, and web uploader.

For longer writing sessions, I could pair the iPad with a compact and lightweight Apple Wireless Keyboard (which conveniently fit into the pocket of my Cocoon GRID-IT Organizer). Add an Airport Express into the kit for hotels with traditional ethernet connections and a World Travel Adapter Kit and you’ve got yourself one lightweight, powerful setup!

I thought I had it all figured out. Laptop — I’ll see you when I get back, sucka!!!

Oh No.

You may have surmised by that somewhat plodding build-up that there is going to be an “Oh No! I was totally wrong… I can’t leave my laptop after all!” moment at this point in our story. And you’d be right.

So, to spare you the suspense: I ended up taking my Macbook on this trip.

But what may surprise you is that I also took the iPad.

And here’s why I think that, at least for me, I made the right decision….

Why I Brought The MacBook (or “This Sounds Like I Made It Up For A Blog Post… But I Didn’t!”)

I knew I couldn’t totally count on an iPad when I actually woke up in the middle of the night with a sick feeling that all of my many projects would be screwed up if I left the laptop at home. Maybe I was having some sort of deeply shameful nerd nightmare about having to walk through the Akihabara Electronics District in Tokyo naked or something — all I know is that I about five days before leaving the country, some sort of circuit breaker went off in my head and I decided that the extra weight of the MacBook was worth it.

That’s not to say that the “iPad Travel Plan” wouldn’t be fantastic for many other people. It would. But every traveler is different — as is every trip. Some people can go weeks without checking email or using the internet. Other people can’t.

As someone who is going to be on the road for an indefinite length of time and who makes a living online, I would fall into the latter camp. The computer is my office, my travel agent, my guide book, and my connection to family and friends back home. If my setup doesn’t work well, it has an impact in any number of areas of my particular trip. Not a big deal if you’re gone for a few days… maybe even a few weeks.

But what about a few months?

Some Things That I Was Worried About (With Updates From The Road)

In the time that I had been preparing the iPad for the trip, I had developed a few concerns about whether this setup would work for me over an extended period of time:

• No-Fi. The initial release of iPad’s wireless software seemed a little finicky and the trouble that I occasionally had connecting with older, mixed Wi-Fi networks gave me pause. Since I started traveling, I’ve also noticed that the iPad currently struggles with authenticating at *many* Airport Lounge hotspots and that both my iPhone and my Macbook seem to have greater wireless sensitivity. It’s something that I expect will improve as updates roll out but, for now, it’s glitchy.
• There’s Almost An App For That. Frontier days for a platform are both fun and frustrating. I really like many of the first wave of iPad apps that have been released but, more often than not, I’ve found myself frustrated by my inability to do the same things with an iPad as I can do with a MacBook.For example, I was worried about being able to do some website edits from the iPad until I found an app called Gusto — a very full-featured code editor with a built-in FTP client. Awesome!!! One problem — I can’t actually use it yet because my server requires SFTP connections and that feature is currently hung up on Governmental and Apple approval. Well… maybe I’ll just find another app that does all of that. Oh riiiight – there isn’t one yet.

  And in many cases, the only iPad application for a job right now is actually an iPhone application. They work — but they are usually pretty ugly when blown up to iPad screen resolutions (although I expect this to improve as iOS 4.0 rolls out).

  Plus there’s the expense of buying an assemblage of apps that duplicates your OS X toolkit. Not a big deal for people with basic needs… but it sure added up for me.

• Browser Blues. HTML5 is The World of Tomorrow… But Flash is The World of Today. As crazy as it seems to me and to Steve Jobs, some websites are just flat-out unusable without Flash.The other night, Lauren and I heard some good things about a hotel and so we tried to book a stay there from the iPad. Once we realized that the site was unnavigable without Flash, it was back to the laptop. Same with a flight on a certain Southeast Asian airline.

  Here’s another one: Yesterday, I heard Lauren muttering to herself while trying to edit an online photo album. “It instructs you to either hold down the Control key for multiple item selections or to draw a rectangle around the area with your mouse. What am I supposed to do here?”, she asked.

  Use the laptop — that’s what.

  I have no doubt that Flash will eventually be replaced by HTML5 or something like it, but I think it’ll hang on for a few more years like some kind of a vampire or, even more frighteningly, like the tradition of websites being designed for IE6 Compatibility. In other words, you’d better be able to deal with it until a new standard drives a wooden stake through its heart.

• Keeping A Low Profile. You can pull out a Macbook in almost any part of the world without attracting too much attention… not so much with The iPad. Until it becomes more globally available, you’re going to get looks. For people who like to travel with a low profile, it’s a bit of a challenge to use discreetly.

So Why Am I Happy That I Brought It?

While the iPad might not be ready to completely replace a laptop for someone like me, it does an excellent job in the following ways:

• Quick Emails and Web Browsing. Fast to turn on and type a note or get a quick bit of info. Immediate Gratification!
• Elbow Room. Let me tell you — the iPad is also much easier to use while sitting in an Economy airline seat or on a train.
• Reading E-Books. Instead of carrying a bunch of guide books along, I have them stored digitally in the Amazon Kindle app and in Evernote in some cases. Very handy!
• Evernote. Much of my travel information and research is stored in Evernote (there will be a post on this soon!). While I feel that the iPhone is the most useful platform to get your information into Evernote — I think the iPad is the clear winner when it comes to consuming that information. When a border guard wants to see a printed copy of my itinerary or a hotel clerk needs a copy of my confirmation, I just open up the iPad and show it to them. ¹
• Bento. I am also using some custom-designed Bento templates to organize and collect hotel and expense information on this trip (another upcoming post) — and the iPad app makes updating my data incredibly easy.

The bottom line is this — If you’re a long-term traveler who works with computer code, images, or large amounts of text — I think you’re going to be packing a laptop for the near future. But it’s safe to say that, in the near future, your bag is going to be a whole lot lighter.

And if you’re a person whose needs are a little less demanding, I think that day may have already arrived.

Items Used In the iPad for Travelers Kit

Item Image	Item	Purpose	Dimensions	Weight (lbs. / kg.)
	The Apple iPad Tablet	Laptop Replacement	9.56 x 7.47 x 0.5 inches (242.8 x 189.7 x 13.4 mm)	1.5 / .68
	Apple iPad Case	Protection / Stand for easier typing and viewing	10.2 x 8.1 x 0.4 inches	.45 /.20
	iPad Camera Connection Kit	Photo Wallet, Digital Picture Frame, And Web Uploader. Also Can Use To Connect Skype Headset And Selected USB Devices.	N/A	N/A
	Apple Wireless Keyboard	Typing Longer Documents And Ease of Use	12.8 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches	1.5 / .68
	Cocoon GRID-IT Organizer	Store Keyboard, Power Adapters, Cables, Airport Express, Etc.	15 x 9.5 X .3 inches	1.1 / .5
	Airport Express	Create Your Own Wi-Fi Network, Extend Existing Wi-FI, Plug into TV/Stereo for Streaming Music from iTunes	3 x 1.1 x 3.7 inches	.42 / .19
	World Travel Adapter Kit	Charge your iPad / Power Your Airport Express.	N/A	.44 / .20
	BELKIN Retractable CAT5e Networking Cable	36" Retractable Cable to Connect Your Airport Express to a Network If The Cable Is Not Provided	8.8 x 5.5 x 1 inches	.12 / .05
	the pocket of a jacket if I were so inclined	Jacket With iPad Pocket For Sneaky Carriage.	Depends On Size	N/A

1. Seriously — they love it!

Click Here To Read Part One of “Learn To Speak AppleScript”

To recap the end of Part One, your goal will be to build a script that will save your emails as text files. The actual programming will be covered in Part Three and, when we get there, I’ll try to stay more “conceptual”.

My goal will be to give you a feel for how an AppleScript does its job — but still include enough real-life code to keep it interesting for more experienced scripters (or for people who came here from a search engine looking for a bit of code to get their scripts up and running!)

But, if you are a beginner, don’t let those computer code snippets intimidate you! They are included primarily so that you can see what a real-life Script looks like and not with any expectation that you master the intricacies of the AppleScript language.

After all, this is really an exercise in teaching you the fundamentals of thinking and speaking AppleScript. In other words, this is going to be more like an English class in literature where we talk about books and what they mean — and not a grammar lesson.

In fact, that metaphor is actually a pretty good way to get started!

The First Step Is Between Your Ears

As I mentioned in Part One, AppleScript is an “English-like” programming language.

What we are going to do in this lesson is to state our goals as clearly as we can — and do so in plain, everyday language. Once we’ve done that, we’ll set about writing an AppleScript that matches up with that description.

Rule #1:
First, we say it in English…. then we say it in “English-like”.

Writing a good AppleScript is like…. (wait for it) …. writing a good anything!

Most things that are well-written have probably started from a place of being well-thought-out, right? That’s not to say that you won’t discover some fun, unexpected stuff along the way — but actions begin with intentions. My experience is this: The clearer you are about your intentions when you start, the more you’ll make the right choices along the way.¹

And the more likely you’ll end up with a working thing at the end of your journey.

The Goal of the Script (In Plain English)

First, we need to state our overall goal as clearly as we can. For this first sample script, that goal is:

“I want a script that will save emails as text files.”

The Basic Elements We’ll Need In the Script:

Now that we know what we want to do, we’ll flesh out the details more fully:

1. I use the Apple Mail application to read my emails.
2. I want to be able to save emails as text files.
3. I want to be able to save more than one email at a time.
4. I want to be able to control where the text files are saved to.
5. I want the new text files to have distinctive names so that I can tell them apart more easily.
6. I want the script to come up with those names so that I don’t have to do it for each file.

“I Four Years Old!”

You’ll notice how explicit I was in calling out each part of what I wanted to do.

This way of thinking in terms of “baby steps” towards your overall goal is probably the most important thing you can take from this lesson.

Here’s why — AppleScript is great, but teaching it to do what you want it to do can be like trying to teach a child. You really need to try and see things through the eyes of a kid (or, in this case, a computer that knows only what you tell it) in order to know how to communicate.

Rule #2:
AppleScript is like an energetic child. It’s eager to please — but in need of clear, constant direction.

It reminds me a bit of that old Bill Cosby comedy routine about a kid named Jeffery:

If you have any hope of getting off the plane with your sanity intact, you’re going to have to learn how to translate your adult language into something a kid can understand. That is to say, it’s something you’re absolutely going to be able to do — it’s just going to take a brief transition while you take a deep breath and mentally switch gears from your language and into theirs.

Sometimes, Kids Just Don’t Understand

I’ll make one more point using the “Talking To Kids Metaphor” as we end Part Two…

Every kid is different.
Some are barely able to tie their shoes.
Some come up to you and, unprompted, freak you out by asking if you’re an existentialist.

In the world of AppleScript, each of the applications on your Mac — programs like Apple Mail, Firefox, Evernote, iCal, etc. — are like kids at different grade levels. And, although you can sometimes guess, you’ll never really know which type of kid it is until you start talking to them and figure out their vocabulary level.

And this is the point where, thankfully, reality departs from the metaphor: In the computer world, you can actually see which words an application knows ahead of time — sparing you painful, Jeffery-like conversations. When it comes to speaking AppleScript, each program keeps a list of the vocabulary it knows in an AppleScript Dictionary. (Easy to remember, right?)

Ready To Talk?

In Part Three, we’ll open up that dictionary and start having an AppleScript conversation with a fairly “well-spoken” kid on the Application playground — Apple Mail!

1. I’d like to welcome everyone to the Veritrope.com “Den of Zen”…

What Exactly is AppleScript?

AppleScript is an English-like language used to write programs that control applications on your computer. The “English-like” part is important — it means that you don’t need to have a computer science degree to use it.

Simply put, it’s programming for regular people who want to get things done faster.

The programs that you write in AppleScript are called “scripts” (you saw that coming, right?). Much like the script for a movie, an AppleScript is really just a list of instructions for your computer to follow. It’s kind of like saying to your Mac, “Okay — when I say this, you need to do X, Y, and Z.” Honestly, that’s all that scripting means… giving your Mac a To-Do list.

Best of all, it’s free! Apple generously includes several tools that you’ll need to get started with automating tasks on your Mac — including the AppleScript Editor, which is used to write and save new AppleScripts for your computer to follow.

What is AppleScript Good For?

If you’ve ever known the soul-sucking drudgery of having to perform the same tasks over-and-over again on your computer, then AppleScript is for you! AppleScript automates repetitive tasks for you. So, instead of wasting time doing everything by hand, your computer does it for you…

(This is, after all, what they are supposed to do in the first place. )

Need to change the names of 100 files? You can either spend the next hour clicking and typing yourself into carpal-tunnel-induced dementia¹ — or spend 2 minutes to write a script, click a button, and it’s done!

Most programs on the Mac have at least some level of support for AppleScript and, if you look around Veritrope.com, you’ll see AppleScripts that I’ve written to work with (and to connect together) many popular Mac applications. There are literally thousands of AppleScripts available to automate your system (most of them free!).

And, if by some chance you can’t find a script that someone else has written to automate a particular task, it really is easy enough to write one for yourself.

How do I learn AppleScript?

People often write me asking “How did you learn AppleScript?”

The simple answer is that I started reading AppleScripts written by people who knew what they were doing. The more that I read, the more I understood what was possible — and also some of the things you needed to make a working script.

In other words — Before I could really speak AppleScript, I started to learn how to **THINK** AppleScript. It’s really not any different than if you were dropped into a place where you didn’t know the language. You’d probably understand what the people around you were getting at — long before you learned enough of the language to make yourself understood.

How To Learn The Language

The quasi-official macosxautomation.com site is probably the best place to get started. It has lots of introductory tutorials and code examples for the beginning AppleScripter — but also some great introductions to other utilities that really set the Mac apart (like Automator and Services).

People like Ben Waldie (a guru of AppleScript and Mac Automation) — as well as any number of people who post on the MacScripter forum — also really helped me get going. I was truly inspired by their projects… and also by the community that they maintained to help new people like me get started.

As I started to really get more into it, I also found some great books about AppleScript (Especially Sal Soghoian’s “AppleScript 1-2-3″)

Learning How To Think

All of the resources that I just mentioned are the places to learn the actual ins-and-outs of programming in AppleScript… Honestly, you really can’t do much better than all of these great, talented teachers! Read what they have to say — and they’ll whip your scripting vocabulary and programming grammar into shape before you know it!

What I’d like to do here is a little different: I want to try and teach you how to think in AppleScript so that, while you’re learning from these great resources, you’ll have an existing framework for understanding what they’re trying to teach you. That way when it comes time to write your own scripts, you’ll hopefully have a stronger sense of what your looking for and, what’s more, the types of scripts you’ll need to put together to make it all work.

In Part Two of this series, we’re going to start to build our first sample script: An AppleScript that will save your emails as text files!

1. This is not a real condition…I hope!

And as always, the Veritrope.com Snow Leopard Services Directory is frequently updated with all the latest, greatest Snow Leopard services that I can find for you….

After a very extended beta period, DEVONthink has finally “come out of its shell” today with the final release of its 2.0 edition. (Congratulations to Eric and the gang at DEVONtechnologies for finally getting rid of those yellow “Beta Stripes”!)

As part of their “virtual launch party”, DEVON is offering a 10% discount on the new edition for both new customers and upgraders — which I think is the least they can do for auto-playing a Rod Stewart song on the page.

Questionable music choices aside — I also noticed that Dan Byler, the author of the NetNewsWire-to-DEVONthink AppleScript, wrote a review of DEVONthink Pro on his blog which won him some swag. Nice work, Dan!

One more bit of good news — the final release seems to have fixed the problem that Beta 8 created with the Evernote-to-DEVONthink AppleScript. Anyone who had trouble with the script recently should download the new version of DEVONthink and try again!

Now that the dust has settled on the iPad announcement — and that predictable, some might even say kabuki-like conflict has begun between techie pundits who believe that Apple botched the iPad by leaving out a camera and Adobe Flash and traditonal journalists who feel that the iPad emits rainbows and unicorns (and, incidentally, will save print publishing as we know it)…amid the din of all this senseless, seemingly-ceaseless chattering, I am starting to hear an interesting question emerge — one ultimately more important than “Will the iPad succeed or will it fail?”

That question is “What makes any piece of technology succeed or fail?”

I’m certainly not alone in thinking about the bigger picture of what really matters when it comes to the way we use and design our software and hardware.  Daniel Jalkut recently had an interesting post on his blog about the oft-predicted “death of the desktop” and I thought that John Gruber’s analogy comparing the emergence of iPad-like devices to the advent of the automatic transmission was very timely.  It’s truly one of those moments where there is something in the air — and we’re all standing around, trying to figure out what it was exactly that we just got a whiff of.

I find myself agreeing with those who suggest that, if designers focused less on making sure that everyone has exactly the same experience on every device and more on making sure that the right people have an incredible experience with their product, we’d all be better off.

A “Boutique Mentality”

This principle is reflected in the iPad’s design and, more importantly, it’s where new and better things usually come from.

Clearly, one piece of technology can’t be all things to all people and, even in areas with agreed-upon “standards”, sometimes you’ve just got to go your own way.  The iPad is an interesting example because Apple is applying what I would call a “boutique mentality” to a mass-market product.

To me, a “boutique mentality” is really just:

• A desire to make things as you think they ought to be made, not necessarily with mass appeal in mind.
• A belief that different products are “right” for different people.

The MacWorld Expo is running this week and I’m sure that, if you walked the floor of the Moscone Center and talked to a few developers in their booths, you’d quickly get a feel for just how deeply-rooted this tradition is within the Mac community.

But let’s be frank — There are tradeoffs to breaking off from the herd. Wander too far away from where people expect you to be and, after a while, those people will start interviewing your replacement… When you’re talking about products and not people, the difference is that no one will send out a search party to look for you if you’re a company that strays off course.

You’re just lost.

“Wait…What’s My Job Again?”

I love interesting “mash-ups”.  I’m a big fan of The Grey Album and — a little confession here — I’ve always liked my chocolate and peanut butter together.  I also like to “mash-up” technologies by connecting programs together (as you might expect from a guy who writes and publishes AppleScripts on his website).  Sometimes, I do it for money but, just as often, I do it for fun — that Mad Scientist, white lab-coat joy of tinkering around and creating Frankenstein making something cool!

One product that I use daily on my Mac is a note-taking application called Evernote.  I recommend it to almost all of my clients — and I’ve both enjoyed using the growing number of integrations with apps like reQall, Curio, and JotNot and creating my own “mash-ups” with AppleScript. But for as much as I personally love the scope and the “WOW!” factor of Evernote’s incredible array of features, I can’t allow myself to get truly carried away by them.

After all, my job is as a consultant who helps people “digitize their lives” and Evernote’s “job” is to help people collect all their information into one place. So, if you accept the premise that a program can have a job, then Evernote should be trying to do the things most directly related to that job better than anyone else. Things like…

• Having text come out of their program the way that it goes in.
• Or getting it to go in correctly in the first place.
• Or being able to customize a workflow for people to easily use Apple Mail if they want to.

You know —  the sine qua non features of a Note-Taking app on a Mac.

Sadly, these are very things that Evernote has been struggling with recently and, at the same time, the market for Note-Taking software has been growing both more crowded and more competitive. Yojimbo and DEVONthink Pro (two mainstays in the Mac market) have seen substantial upgrades — and other great offerings like SOHO, Instapaper, Simplenote, Notational Velocity are competing for attention as well. Each is a little different than the others, but all are really solid, customizable, Mac-friendly apps that seem to do “the basics” very well, indeed. Granted — none of these companies is attempting what I think is a core strength of Evernote: Building a truly multi-platform architecture for accessing your most important information…everywhere!

But instead, many of them are focusing on ways that refine how they deliver on the “core promise” they are making to their users.  It seems to me that apps like Notational Velocity are asking a different question than “What else can we put in our product?”

It’s “What can we get out of the way so that it’s easier to use?”

Aristotle Had An iPad?

Going back to the iPad for a moment, Federico Viticci’s recent post on MacStories (entitled The iPad, Aristotle and the “OS Democracy”) went even further, suggesting that companies like Apple and Evernote have a duty to say “NO!” to things that divert from a product’s core mission and to exert tight control over both the platform and how people can use it. Evernote has a growing team of smart, talented (and, in my experience, nice) people who are working hard at making their product great — and any work to improve a program’s plumbing takes a while to finish when you’ve already got a lot of water flowing through the pipes, as it were.

I hope that they’re being given the resources and tools that they need to work fast because, until that plumbing is fixed, people may be turned off by their initial impressions with Evernote — before they even have a chance to realize what a great, deep product it actually is.

And just as other programs will emerge to replace Evernote should they not deliver on their core promises, the iPad will also rise or fall depending on how it can deliver on what it promises. There is enough competition in the marketplace right now to ensure that people who want, for example, a Flash-ready device can have one. If Apple loses enough market-share over their decision to exclude Flash, I suspect they would reconsider (or knowing them, they would find an “Apple way” to implement it).  Adobe dominated the space with Flash for a while and now, to me, it’s clear that other standards are emerging to take it’s place. If Adobe sees enough people walking away from the Flash platform, I’m sure they’ll build a new platform where everyone is now standing! So, in that Aristotelean sense, perhaps the “Constitution of the Marketplace” is the key — not how Apple or Evernote run their respective fiefdoms.

But maybe there’s one more thing that invoking Aristotle can add to this conversation…. After all, Aristotle had at least — you know — one or two interesting thoughts about the forms that things take.

Finding Freedom In Your Limitations

To me, picking a piece of technology is almost as personal as choosing a guitar, a paintbrush, or a pen. The limitations of the tools and the forms that we work with ultimately give things their distinctive shape. It’s less important to focus on what a particular device does or doesn’t have — so long as it delivers on it’s core promises.  The original 8-bit gaming systems are still being recreated on modern hardware. Some people are still keeping the Amiga OS alive… Why? Maybe it’s nostalgia, but maybe it’s because the limitations of those platforms created something distinctive — and, after all, distinctions are at the heart of aesthetics. When playing back a piece of music, the Commodore 64 isn’t going to sound like “the real thing” — and sometimes that’s pretty cool!

With poetry, every style is a world unto itself. If you’re not a fan of haiku, there may be sonnets that you’d enjoy instead. Both are poems — but a haiku is a haiku and a sonnet is a sonnet. Neither is trying to be all things to all people.

Each has it’s place. A haiku might be perfect for capturing the ineffable aspects of nature but if you are trying to win back someone’s heart, I’d suggest something less like “Old pond . . . a frog leaps in water’s sound” and more like “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

That particular “technology” has been succeeding for many years now because, in poetry as in life, there is a continuing refinement of both the tools we use and an evolution in what we use those tools to create.

Personally, I like what the iPad promises. I think it will easily meet that definition of success.

And so long as a thing can deliver on the poetry that it promises, we will be able to decide the right moments to use it — and whether to like it or not — based upon our personal judgement and tastes.

(Happy Thanksgiving to Veritrope.com’s USA Readers!)

• GrowDeep: Capuring Creative Ideas with EverNote
  “Imperative to the creative process of a communicator, or anyone for that matter, is developing a system that allows you to capture thoughts, ideas, inspirations, and the like. 
All of the world is a canvas and each individual is an interesting story to be read.”
  (Via growdeep.blogspot.com )
• Using Evernote as a Design Scrapbook / journal / hicksdesign
  Another related post from the HICKSDESIGN blog about using Evernote as a collection point for design scraps. I think this is a fantastic use of Evernote and, when coupled with applications like Curio makes creating a “mood board” stupendously easy.
  (Via hicksdesign.co.uk )
• How to Search Evernote « ten mov.es
  A very good primer on Evernote Search techniques!
  (Via tenmov.es )
• Using Evernote to Blog One Step Ahead of Yourself
  Written by Kristen Nicole (a bit of an über-blogger herself), this is a short piece about how to leverage platforms like Evernote into capturing more “bloggable” material. (She’s preaching to the converted here!)
  (Via www.bloggingtips.com )
• How to Use Evernote to Create the Ultimate Post Conference Reference Guide
  Michael Gray on how he uses Evernote to keep track of, organize, find, and use the information that he collects from conferences, trade shows, and seminars.
  (Via www.wolf-howl.com )
• Google Wave Gadget For Evernote
  A Google gadget to connect Evernote with iGoogle, Gmail, Google Wave, etc.
  (Via blog.arpitnext.com )
• Evernote User Forum • View topic – Sign in problems still exist in 1.6.0 beta 5
  A heads up for Evernote/Mac Users who download the latest beta revisions: The 1.6 beta changes the way Evernote handles the Mac keychain (a.k.a., Application Signing) and many users are reporting issues with being forced to log in everytime they start the app. Seeing some Twitter traffic that suggests that the issue continues in 1.6.0 beta 6 as well — FYI!
  (Via forum.evernote.com )

It’s Black Friday for Apple Owners
Here in the USA, it’s the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and this means the return of the orgy of consumerism and deep discounts that we call “Black Friday”. Already, Amazon.com has a TON of electronics on sale. Cult of Mac’s list of iPhone apps on sale over the holiday weekend is also a good resource to check out, as is Mac|Life’s Black Friday Deals page.
(Via www.cultofmac.com and www.maclife.com )

Mac OS X v10.6: Printer and scanner software
Updated Snow Leopard drivers provided for printers and scanners as of 16 Nov, 2009
(Via support.apple.com )

Snow Leopard Update for ScanSnap : FUJITSU United States
New FineReader / Software updates for ScanSnap users.
(Via www.fujitsu.com )

Griffin Technology: Griffin + Threadless
Griffin + Threadless = one awesome case! (And, by the way, threadless.com is doing a $9 Tee Sale on Friday only….)
(Via www.griffintechnology.com )

Agile Web Solutions releases 1Password 3 | Utilities | MacUser | Macworld
Agile Web Solutions releases 1Password 3 — one of my personal faves!
(Via www.macworld.com )

SneakPeek Pro – Quick Look Plugin for Graphic Design Files
Macworld reviews SneakPeek Pro, a Quick Look plugin that allows you to preview Illustrator, InDesign and EPS documents in the Finder, dialog boxes and other applications. SneakPeek Pro also allows you to see fonts, images and colors used in many CS3 and CS4 documents.
(Via www.code-line.com )

jitouch Extends Your Macbook’s Trackpad
storiesofmac on jitouch and BetterTouchTool: Two utilities that add gestures to your Magic Mouse or MBP trackpad… fun!
(Via www.macstories.net )

]]> http://veritrope.com/tips/black-friday-for-apple-users-printer-and-scanner-updates-threadless-on-the-case-new-quicklook-tool-for-adobe-cs-usersand-1password-and-the-magic-mouse-enhanced/feed/ 0 http://veritrope.com/tips/snow-leopard-services-menu-building-and-building-and-building/ http://veritrope.com/tips/snow-leopard-services-menu-building-and-building-and-building/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:21:14 +0000 Justin http://veritrope.com/?p=2655
Having trouble with your Snow Leopard Services menu telling you that it’s building (but never finishing)? Here are a few things you can try… (UPDATED!)

• Rescan Your Services.
  Rod Knowlton made an excellent contribution in the comment thread below — Using the PBS tool to force a rescan of Snow Leopard’s Services. This seems to be working well for most people, so I wanted to add it to the top of the list.

  To use it, open up Terminal and type or paste the following:

  /System/Library/CoreServices/pbs
• Reboot.
  I just finished talking with someone on Twitter who was trying to fix this problem and, after all of the troubleshooting steps we brainstormed, it was a reboot that got him back in business. Seriously — do this first.

• Repair Your Permissions.
  Yes — it’s our next favorite step of troubleshooting anything on a Mac! If you aren’t sure how to do it, here’s a good guide for beginners using Apple’s own Disk Utility. Utilities like Onyx are also a dead-simple way to do a permission repair on your hard drive!
• Manually Check Your Service List.
  Check both your ~/Library/Services and /System/Library/Services directories for old services. To quickly troubleshoot which Service is causing the hang up, move them out of the directories one by one and check the Services menu again. You’ll know that you’ve found the culprit when “Building…” is replaced by the an actual list of services.
• Reset the LaunchServices database with a Mac Utility.
  At least one user reported fixing the issue by rebuilding the LaunchServices database. Again, utilities like Onyx allow you to do so pretty easily:
  
• Reset the LaunchServices database with a Terminal line command.
  If you’re comfortable with Terminal, you can use the command below to achieve the same thing as a utility like Onyx:
  /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Any Other Techniques Work For You? Share Your Fix In The Comments!