Archive for May, 2008

Default Folder X screencast at MacBeginners.net

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

David over at http://www.macbeginners.net/ has posted a screencast showing off some of Default Folder X’s features. You can view the HD version directly at vimeo if you like, too, but give David’s site a look, especially if you’re new to the Mac.

Adding Default Folder X to Contextual Menus

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

If you want to include one of Default Folder X’s menus (Favorites, Recent Folders, etc) in a Finder contextual menu, it’s easy to do with Abracode’s free OnMyCommand contextual menu plugin.

To add a DFX Favorite menu, follow these steps:

  1. Download OnMyCommand.
  2. You’ll get a disk image that looks like this. Run the “Install OnMyCommandCM” script and let it relaunch the Finder after it installs the CM plugin.
  3. Open the “OMCEdit” folder and launch OMCEdit. You’ll get a message that it needs to create a new preference file. Tell it to do so.
  4. From the “Command” menu, choose “New”.
  5. Fill in the command fields like this:
  6. Once you save the command, it should appear in your contextual menus like so. Clicking on it will bring up the full Default Folder X hierarchical Favorites menu.

You can do this same thing for other DFX menus by substituting a different name for “Favorite” in the AppleScript command you use in OMCEdit. Valid options are “Disk”, “Favorite”, “Recent”, and “Finder”. Leaving off the ‘named “Favorite”‘ entirely will pop up the entire DFX menu hierarchy as it appears in the menubar.

iPhone contest winner

Monday, May 5th, 2008


Congrats to Michael Mistretta, who’s going to be getting a brand new iPod Touch for his winning entry in the iPhone Application Idea contest! I apologize for taking so long to judge the entries – as I said in an earlier comment, I got sidetracked a lot as I explored the feasibility of some of the entries and discovered details about the workings of the iPhone OS.

While I’m not going to talk up Michael’s idea until its development is a bit further along, I’ll share some of the other entries we liked:

  • Location logging that can be used to tag photos after you upload them to iPhoto
  • Consultant’s client billing / project timer / mileage / expense tracker
  • Podcast downloader that updates over WiFi so you don’t need iTunes
  • Enable the iPhone as a touch sensitive input device to replace or augment the mouse
  • A visual bookmark viewer that uses CoverFlow
  • A diet / health blogging app to feed something like Body Lapse

There were a ton of other great entries, many of which I’d love to implement if it weren’t for technical or distribution issues. There are a couple in particular that deserve special mention:

  • A Mojo client
  • A “spaces” capability where apps are activated by turning the iPhone to particular orientations (how sweet would that be?)
  • Download song lyrics for the currently playing song (obvious, but still not there)

Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas! Oh, and if you submitted one that didn’t win but we end up using it later on to build a successful product, you’ll definitely get a “thank you” iPod or some other present 🙂