I love VMWare Fusion, because it allows me to run Windows applications on my Mac seamlessly. It gets to the point that I want some forms of documents to always open with Windows applications. For instance, I don’t like Mac Office, and would rather use Windows Office to open my Office documents. The problem was that when you go to “Get Info” in Finder, some of the Office applications wouldn’t be listed.

I solved this by searching for where the applications were located, and found them in this path:

~/Documents/Virtual Machines/

Select the machine that you want (it’ll look like .vmwarevm), and then right-click on it, and choose “Show Package Contents”. When you’re inside, go to the Applications folder, and you’ll see all your applications there.

Now that you know where the applications are, you can either create a link and place them where you want (e.g. in your ~/Applications/ folder), or whenever you do a “Get Info” on a document, you can choose to open all files in the future with those applications (by browsing to that location, and selecting the appropriate application).

Sometimes you just need to print out the list of files in a particular folder. While I was on Windows, sometimes I’d just take a screenshot of the folders’ contents, but when I had to print it out or when the folder’s contents were too much, I had to use a third-party software just to accomplish this.

On the Mac, you have Automator! Automator allows you to get the contents of any folder on your Mac. With the contents, you can save it as a text file so you can print, copy, or do whatever with it.

Here’s 5 easy steps to list your folder contents on a Mac:

1. Open Automator
2. Create a new workflow
3. Drag: Ask for Finder Items (Change “Type” to Folder)
4. Drag: Get Folder Contents
5. Drag: New Text File (Choose your filename and location)
6. Hit “Run”

And voila! Your folder contents are saved to a text file, ready to be used.

Tip: You can search for your actions, e.g. search for “folder”, and you should see the “Get Folder Contents” displayed.

I got a pair of Injinji toe socks after reading about them while digging up information about the Vibram FiveFingers. I thought they were just normal toe socks, but after you get them, you realise that the quality that the Injinji’s have is much better than a cheaper pair of toe socks.

First of all, there aren’t any seams that will cause chafing or blistering – that alone is worth the price tag, because finding a pair of socks without seams is near impossible. Secondly, the Injinji socks make use of CoolMax material (although there are other variants, such as the wool-based socks) that wick moisture, and dry faster than conventional cotton.

Originally I thought the extra material in-between your toes will make the fit snugger when I wear my shoes, but I’ve found this difference to be imperceptible. The feel is different too – you’ll definitely have a harder time wearing the socks, but we’re talking about a difference of maybe 10 seconds longer putting on your Injinji’s compared to conventional socks. After that, the first 5 minutes in your shoes will feel strange, but you’ll get used to it and you’ll never notice that you’re wearing toe socks, except for the added comfort and joy you get when you wriggle your toes!

I got the black and the white, and tried these pair of socks with my Vibram FiveFingers, as well as with my Adidas running shoes, and my Converse sneakers. I didn’t like the way they looked with the Vibrams, because the Vibrams ended way lower than the socks, so you could see the socks sticking out, and I didn’t like the look. They felt perfectly fine though, and didn’t seem to add any perceivable bulk so my Vibrams still felt comfortable enough. With my normal shoes though, wearing the Injinji’s looked fine, and felt extremely comfortable. I wouldn’t use them if you want your socks for padding though, because the Injinji’s are a bit thin.

I highly recommend a pair of Injinji’s. If you’re looking for a high-performance sock, this is it. The Injinji toe socks come in various sizes, and I chose the micro-crew, which has the sock end just below my ankle. I got mine from Amazon, and with free shipping (the Amazon listing has free shipping by both Amazon and the 3rd-party retailers).

I use the Apple bluetooth wireless keyboard, but I use it with my Windows computer, not a Mac. I love it though, and I think it’s the best bluetooth keyboard around – the problem is, while most keys generally work fine, certain keys are missing.

For instance, on the Apple keyboard, the command key is the Windows key by default, so that’s convenient. However, I don’t have the Home and End keys, which make text-editing cumbersome. Furthermore, I have no Delete key. That sucks, because you can’t even delete a file in Explorer with the keyboard this way. In addition, the keyboard has the left Alt key and the left Windows key completely opposite from my notebook (a Lenovo Thinkpad T410s).

So I went about looking for a solution, and found it in the form of AutoHotKey. It’s a free, open-source utility for Windows that enables you to create scripts for automating keystrokes and mouse clicks. What’s important though, is that it allows you to remap keys as well.

I chose this solution over SharpKeys (another key re-mapping utility) primarily because AutoHotKey allows for “profiles”, which is useful because sometimes I use my notebook alone without my external keyboard, and I want the default key mappings to be restored. With AutoHotKey, I just run a script that remaps the keys that I want, and whenever I’m outside with just my notebook, I disable the script and I’m back to my default key settings.

I had to use a script that was generously given to the community, and modify it to suit my needs. If you’re interested, here it is: AutoHotKey script for Apple Keyboard.

Instructions:

1. You’ll first need to install AutoHotKey.
2. Then, download my zip archive (AutoHotKey script for Apple Keyboard), and extract it to wherever you want.
3. Now, just run the file “Keyboard Media Keys.ahk”.
4. All set!

Explanation:

What this script does is to remap the eject key on the keyboard to be a Delete key. I’ve also modified some of the Apple keyboard keys to suit me though, and you can change it in the file “Keyboard Media Keys.ahk”. Look for them from line 46-49, and they’ll look like this:

LAlt::LWin
LWin::LAlt
RAlt::End
RWin::Home

So what that means is that I’ve swapped the positions of the left Alt key and the left Windows key. I’ve also set the right Alt key to be End and the right Windows key to be Home.

Hope you find this useful and let me know if you need further help with it!

Regular expressions can be confusing and perplexing, but if you’re a programmer or someone who loves to improve work productivity on the computer, then you’ll be happy to know that once you master regular expressions, a lot of time and effort can be saved (not to mention, you’ll be able to do some very cool things!)

First of all, let’s try to answer what a regular expression is. A regular expression (or regex or regexp, for short) is a way to match certain patterns in a piece of text. For example, you can create a regular expression to find any email address, or any phone number. This is incredibly powerful, because normal text-matching operations would require you to know, for example, the email domain at least, before you’re able to match it. Besides email addresses and numbers, regexs can be created that match characters, patterns, or any other characteristics that text can have.

A great way to test and try out regular expressions is with a regex tool. A free online regex tool is RegExr. I found RegExr while looking for a regex tool, and it’s fantastic because it allows you to instantly test and check your regular expressions, which is a good way to learn regular expressions.

CPanel’s a great software that’s been powering the web hosting industry for years. It has powerful functionality and a straightforward Graphical User Interface (GUI) that can allow a beginner to easily manage a web hosting account. However, some functionality can be tricky, such as the default forwarding function.

If you create an email forwarder in CPanel that forwards email to test@anotherdomain.com, and create a POP email account of the same name – let’s call this test@testdomain.com – then you’ll receive 2 emails. 1 will be at test@anotherdomain.com, and 1 will be at test@testdomain.com. This isn’t ideal though, because sometimes you’ll need a POP account to reply mails with, and so you can’t just use a pure forwarder. Some email service providers such as Gmail has a “forward and delete” functionality, and this is a behavior we can replicate in CPanel. However, we can’t use the normal email forwarders. For this, we’ll need the account-level filtering function.

Go to account-level filtering in Cpanel, and then create a new filter. In the “Rules” section”, choose “Any header”, and put in your email address (e.g. test@testdomain.com). Now for the “Actions” section, choose “Redirect to email”, and put in the email address that you want all these mail to go to (e.g. test@anotherdomain.com).

Viola! You now have a “forward and delete” behavior in CPanel.

I was trying to rotate images on the Mac, and was getting annoyed at the apparent lack of functionality to do so. In Windows, you could rotate images in Explorer and in Windows Preview after you’ve opened up the file. On Mac OSX, the Preview app doesn’t come with the “rotate” buttons visible by default. What you need to do is to right-click on the Preview menubar (like in the screenshot), and select “Customise Toolbar”. There, you’ll find the elusive “rotate” button. Drag it on to your toolbar, and you should see it there. Now, you’ll be able to rotate images in Preview by clicking on that button!

If you’re a keyboard-kinda person, the keyboard shortcuts for rotating images are:

Apple + L or Apple + R

This is something new to me, and something that I know doesn’t work in Windows XP.

I was programming on my Macbook, when all the long, horizontal lines of code started bugging me. I had to click on the horizontal scrollbar and move the focus left and right, and I thought to myself, “Isn’t there a better way to do this? Let’s just see how smart the Apple developers are.”

My first thought was that I should have gotten a mouse that had a 360-degree scroll wheel/ball or at least one that allowed me to scroll horizontally as well as vertically. Then I thought about how scrolling horizontally is just a different way of scrolling – and I wondered if the various modifier keys would affect that.

So I tried with the different modifier keys, and to my surprise, the Shift key actually did work the way I had hoped! If you hold down the Shift key and scroll, you’ll be scrolling horizontally instead of vertically. Now that’s cool.

A project that I’m exploring requires an affiliate management system, and I set off looking for one suitable for the task. It had to be stand-alone and must not have an on-going subscription. I found the top 3 affiliate scripts after looking around, and they were iDevAffiliate 6, PostAffiliate Pro 4 and JEM. All programs seem to have the same basic features – for e.g. all 3 affiliate programs offer pay-per-sale(%), pay-per-sale (flat rate payout), pay-per-click (unique visitors) and pay-per-lead tracking. All 3 programs generate link codes automatically, and allows for unlimited text links and banners ads.

iDevAffiliate 6 Review

iDevAffiliate 6 is one of the best affiliate scripts in terms of value when you compare features versus price. One advanced feature that iDevAffiliate offers is a security feature that does triple redundancy tracking for you, with IP/Cookie/Session checks.

One strong point that iDevAffiliate has is SEO Links. What this does is to make the links of your affiliates point to your website in a search engine friendly way, giving you referrals AND link juice. You can get this through an add-on ($99.99) or by buying the Platinum license. If you’re serious about your affiliate program, I highly recommend getting this.

• Standard license: $99.99 one-off
• Gold license: $199.99 one-off
• Platinum license: $299.99 one-off
• Hosted Standard license: $29.99/month
• Hosted Gold license: $39.99/month
• Hosted Platinum license: $49.99/month

Visit: iDevAffiliate 6

PostAffiliate Pro 4 Review

The most comparable to iDevAffiliate in terms of features, PostAffiliate Pro is in it’s 4th version and is owned by Quality Unit, a company based in Slovakia. They claim to offer 24/5 support (phone/live chat/email) but I found that they took quite a while to reply to my emails.

One of the features that PostAffiliate Pro 4 offers that iDevAffiliate does not is what they term as “split commissions”. I’m not sure if I’d ever use this, but what this feature does is split the commission if two or more affiliates are involved in a sale.

PostAffiliate Pro isn’t without it’s quirks though – some things that I found were that when affiliates sign up through PostAffiliate Pro, they would get a thank you message without much else. So the new affiliate would be at the Thank You page, not having his login details nor instructions on what to do next. In the backend, an email would have been sent to them, but there was no reference to this happening.

I’d say that the biggest failing of PostAffiliate Pro 4 is that it offers simply too much features that just add complexity to the system and its configuration. That, plus it’s higher prices, make it less attractive than iDevAffiliate. Here are the PostAffiliate Pro 4 prices:

• Xpress owned license: $199 one-off
• Xpress leased license: $119 one-off
• Professional owned license: $299 one-off
• Professional leased license: $219 one-off
• Ultimate owned license: $999 one-off
• Ultimate leased license: N/A
• Hosted: Multiple plans available

Visit: PostAffiliate Pro 4

JRox.com JEM Review

Extremely expensive and feature-overloaded for someone who just wants an affiliate management system, the new version of JEM isn’t just an affiliate system (nor can you just buy that component), but instead comes as a complete ecommerce system featuring a shopping cart, mailing list manager, affiliate system, content management system and help desk. JEM previously had a stand-alone affiliate script, but it looks like things have recently changed, which is why some people are still talking about JEM as an affiliate script. If you ask me, I think they made a wrong choice in bundling everything together because it immediately alienates them from people who just want specific components.

The JEM prices are:

• Standard license: $497 one-off
• Leased license: $29.95/month
• Hosted license: $44.95/month

Visit: JEM

Conclusion

Since JEM is out of the picture, I’ll just touch on iDevAffiliate 6 and PostAffiliate Pro 4 here. If you have a programmer, or are a very technical person, I’d heartily recommend PostAffiliate Pro 4 because of its feature-set. Otherwise, the average marketer would be happy with iDevAffiliate 6, especially since it has a lower price point as well.

When I first saw the Vibram FiveFingers, it was on someone else’s feet, and I didn’t know what they were called. I remember Googling for “finger shoes”, and viola – the entire page was about the Vibram FiveFingers.

That was in April though, and I was looking at the KSO model. Literally standing for Keeps Stuff Out, it looked like a pair that suited me – until I realised that my size was out of stock everywhere. That wasn’t a bad thing though, because after I poked around, it led me to an announcement of a new FiveFinger model – the Bikila (pronounced like tequila with a “b”).

After a long, lengthy 2 month wait, the Bikilas were finally in stores, and I finally managed to order a pair in my US 41 size. The shoes came today, and I’m glad I ordered quick, because just 1-2 weeks after they were launched, stores seem to only have sizes 46 and 47 left, if they even have any left.

I did manage to try on some KSOs in a nearby REI store though, and the Bikila is easier to put on with a wider opening for your foot. Here’s what the official Vibram description is of the Bikilas:

Built on an entirely new platform, the Fivefingers Bikila encourages a more natural and efficient forefoot strike. This Vibram running shoe features a Dri-Lex covered 3mm polyurethane insole, which is thickest under the ball, to provide excellent plating protection. Below the Bikila, a 4mm anatomical pod outsole helps distribute impact without hindering ground feedback that’s essential to a proper running form. The single hook and loop closure secures your foot within the Bikila as you sprint down your favorite path. A more athletic padded collar and topline finish out the running shoe performance and style. With reflective material on the strap and heel, you stay more visible in low light situations. Hit the road in the Mens Vibram Fivefingers Bikila.

Here are the pictures of the unboxing:

I took them out for a run and they were amazing. It feels so much more lightweight than traditional shoes, and it’s definitely a step in the minimalistic approach that I like about things. I like the flex that it gives me, and the ability to move my toes and “feel” the ground. I’m going to try them out for longer runs, and see how they perform. As of now though, they’re fantastic, and I’m really excited about them