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Using Keyboard Maestro for automation

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a solution to a problem I had with a repetitive task that I wanted to speed up or automate. At the time I figured tha Keyboard Maestro from Stairways Software would be worth a trial, and as luck would have it, the app was part of an offer from MacTrast (ends 27/8/14) so I picked it up.

Now as it happens, I wasn’t able to get the app to do what I wanted it in a reasonable timeframe (I’m sure that I ultimately could get it to do what I wanted but it wouldn’t be an efficient use of my time). But while researching how to do things I came up across a really useful thing that I’ve now got Keyboard Maestro doing for me.
Whether visiting clients or in my own office I usually have different apps or documents open, or I’ll have my machine configured slightly differently, based on where I am. For example, when I’m on one particular site I’ll have a Windows 7 virtual machine open so I can work on the clients Sage system.
The way I use Keyboard Maestro to do that is quite simple. The software allows me to set up triggers to carry out actions (and the list of actions possible is amazingly diverse). Triggers can be things like keyboard shortcuts (Cmd-Shift-Option-Z for example), a tyoed string of characters, a particular device being connected to your computer, or in the case of my Sage using client, a particular wireless network being joined. So Keyboard Maestro sits in the background, and as soon as it sees that I’ve joined the client’s wireless network, it starts up my VMWare program and loads the appropriate virtual machine (as well […]

By |August 22nd, 2014|Apple Software News, Help and Advice|0 Comments
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Finding your way to a great podcast app

For the past couple of months I’ve been spending a lot of time in the car traversing what Chris Rea famously called ‘The Road to Hell’ to get to an ongoing client contract two or three days a week.
Lonely car journeys have always provided me with an opportunity to catch up on phone calls, but with the increasing amount of time commuting alone I’ve turned to a multitude of podcasts (typically technology themed) for entertainment and education while I’m driving. I find this time is the best to listen to this kind of information as I have no other distractions around me (barring other road users, weather etc. etc.). If I try to listen to a podcast at my office I invariably get distracted by emails and other work, but the car is a fairly sterile environment for learning new things.
OverCast
Anyway, the point of this blog post was that I wanted to highlight a new podcast app I mentioned a couple of weeks ago on twitter, called OverCast. After using it for a few weeks, I have finally thrown away the previous apps I used as OverCast seems to be way better than anything I’ve tried before.

In particular there’s two things I prefer over its competitors; SmartSpeed and VoiceBoost. Most podcast apps allow you to speed up the audio, but they tend to be fairly large speed jumps in my experience. OverCast allows fairly small incremental changes to the playback speed, and the smallest speed change is about 1.13x, and these have been coded so well they don’t hugely change the playback (sometimes in other apps I find it similar to holding down the play and fast forward buttons on an old tape record – […]

By |August 15th, 2014|Apple Software News, Help and Advice|0 Comments
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Password Security about to get much easier

Morning all

One of the messages I seem to bang on about quite a lot is password security. i.e. Use different, hard-to-guess passwords for every service you use. Now this is fairly easy if you use a password manager (I strongly recommend 1Password) on your Mac or PC, but realistically I can understand why people are inclined to use the same password for some services if their primary “computer” is an iOS device – it’s time-consuming to dip in and out of 1Password to copy and paste passwords!

But that’s all about to change with iOS8.

One of the major changes to iOS8 is what Apple are calling extensibility. This allows app designers to create hooks into other apps, making the use and sharing of data between apps much easier. For example, as it stands right now, to get a password from 1Password into a login prompt in Safari, you have to open 1Password (password required), find the service you are logging in to, copy the password, switch back to Safari and paste the password in (I’m assuming you can remember the login name). In iOS8 however, 1Password have released a beta of their extension which allows you to use the fingerprint scanner to authenticate, via the share button in Safari, making the use of secure, unique passwords so much easier.

I did find a video of someone using this beta software, which you can see below, and I’m sure you will agree this is a much easier way of logging into things on the web.

By |July 1st, 2014|Apple Software News, Help and Advice|1 Comment
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Lightroom Mobile Released

Morning all

I was quite excited to see that Lightroom Mobile was released earlier this morning. I’m pretty sure that Adobe first showed this software off back at Photoshop World last year, and it’s no surprise that they have chosen to release it the day the convention opens again in Atlanta.

LR Mobile is available as part of the Creative Cloud – so if you have a subscription, you should be able to link your catalogue to your iPad and view/edit images on the tablet and synchronise back and forth with your catalogue on your computer. I’m currently having a bit of trouble getting the required update of Lightroom (v5.4) to download (no doubt too many people around the world trying to do the same thing!), but as soon as I do, I’ll be testing the functionality and letting you know my thoughts.

For those lucky enough to be in Atlanta today; I look forward to hearing what’s coming next.

By |April 8th, 2014|Apple Software News|0 Comments
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PFF: Cinch

Friday again, so time for another Product Feature Friday……

This week I wanted to give you a quick demo of a product called Cinch, which is an OS X utility that quickly enables you to snap windows onto the left or right hand side of your screen to allow you to work easier with two windows in view. As I mention during this short demo, it’s a great little tool that I reckon saves me a fair bit of time (and a lot of resizing and repositioning) every day.

Hope you find the video useful and if you’d like to purchase the product its available here.

Hope this week has been a good one for you, and that you’re enjoying the march towards the Christmas break. Whatever you’re doing this weekend, take care, enjoy it, and I’ll be back on Monday with another post for you.

Chris

By |December 13th, 2013|Apple Software News, Help and Advice|0 Comments
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