For quite some time Mac users where searching for a way to paste the currently playing song from iTunes in chat messages etc. I never thought about it much but recently a friend of mine, who was a former AMIP user on Windows, needed a similar functionality under OS X. Together we constructed a working solution.

So here it is the AMIP alternative for Mac:

    • Open Automator and start a new “Service”
    • Choose “no input” for “Service receives”
    • Drag the “Run AppleScript” Action into the workflow
    • Paste in the following and edit the output in (green) to your hearts desire
on run
 try
 tell application "iTunes"
 set songTitle to the name of the current track
 set songArtist to the artist of the current track
 set songAlbum to the album of the current track
 set songYear to the year of the current track
 set the clipboard to "np:" & the songArtist & " - " & songTitle & " \"" & songAlbum & ", " & songYear & "\""
 end tell
 end try
 try
 set the clipboard to Unicode text of (the clipboard as record)
 on error errMsg
 display dialog errMsg
 end try
 tell application "System Events"
 key code 9 using {command down}
 end tell
end run
  • Save the service. I named mine “music” (creative isn’t it? 🙂 )
  • Now your able to run the service from every application’s menu under “Services”. Be sure to have your cursor in a text field because the service will immediately paste in the constructed string.
  • If you’re in a super nerdy mood today, you can also give your service a keyboard shortcut.
    Go to “System Preferences”, open “Keyboard”, go to “Keyboard Shortcuts” and set your desired Hotkey. (mine’s CMD + SHIFT + M)

I’d be happy to see further improvements, thoughts & ideas about this solutions in the comments!

 

And to all my Austrian friends: Frohen Faschingsdienstag (not that I’d care!)

This is beyond awesome!

Blogger Cthulhuchick constructed an eBook containing all of H. P. Lovecraft‘s short-stories and books. All of his works are now in the public domain so this is indeed legal to download to your computer.

There are multiple formats available and she even made a page that explains the installation for various devices.

I’ve already installed the book on my iPhone (the epub format works perfectly with Apple’s iBooks App) and will now re-read all of those amazing stories.

Get your copy here:
Free Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft for Nook and Kindle

<Pomax> 20 years from now, someone is going to have the radical idea to give users access to the underlying OS, rather than to the browser API, and he will be heralded a revolutionary.
<Pomax> All manner of programming languages will pop up that work outside “the browser”, giving access to “offline” applications, storing files in “user space”, even perhaps running in something called “kernel mode”.
<Pomax> It’ll be a brave new world.
<Mirell> It’s scary that’s believable.

via qdb.us

On that note, I’d like to point you to my new company website, where I do web & mobile app development … 😉

42dev

Boxee

There’s a new version, read about it here!

Finally I’ve accomplished to free myself from TV schedules, advertisments and all the other stuff that’s just not right anymore about commercial TV broadcasting. This post will outline which hard- & software is involved in my perfect TV setup, so you can attempt to rebuild it in your home.

Hardware:

Software:

Transmission

So how did I chain it all together?

Firstly there is the iBook with?Catch pulling my subscribed TV shows from?showRSS. Whenever there is a new Release, Catch will download the torrent file and autostart it in Transmission. Then I have the 1TB drive connected via WiFi over Apple’s Timecapsule router and set up different groups in Transmission for each show (so they all have a defined save location). Whenever a file is finished downloading it will be transferred to the external drive in the show’s corresponding folder.

When I get home in the evening I can switch on the projector and the hacked AppleTV running Boxee and since I have “subscribed” all my shows in Boxee, it will tell me right on the start screen which new und unwatched episodes are available. Now I just have to select the show I want to watch. Ad-free, mostly in their english original language (and not the crappy, synced version in Austrian/German TV) and whenever I want.