So, how would you set a desired preference setting and apply it wherever you wish?

The best solution so far (without using any third party Add-on or Plugin) is to follow the following steps.

1. In Finder, bring up “View > Show View Options” or just press “Command + j”.
2. Set all the parameters that you would want your “Default” setting to be and click “Use as Defaults”.
3. Go anywhere in the Finder, press “Command + j” and before applying anything, keep your “Option” key pressed. You should now get “Restore to Defaults” instead of your “Use as Default”. Click it to get your desired “Default” settings to your current Finder view.

Notational Velocity is an application that stores and retrieves notes. It is described as a modeless, mouse-less Mac OS X note-taking application.

I’ve tried many notes application starting from Mac OSX’s own Sticky, to the once-paid-but-now-free xPad to the heavy-weight Evernote and few others in between which didn’t really caught on to me. xPad came very close to be being my ultimate note-taking app and I even paid for it. Evernote is an awesome application but I’ll categorized it as a heavy-duty utility rather than just a note-taking app. Its being mentioned here as it can and do take notes. However, its an overkill for just ‘note-taking’. I use Evernote more to collect/archive documents, adding notes on top of them and syncing it across computers and devices for reference from multiple location.

Notational Velocity

NV is an app with a simplistic approach to usage with some kick-ass features. Its primary focus is that you’ll just search, if found, it goes there else creates a new note if required. The content is compressed and encrypted (optional). Once you got used to the few keyboard shortcuts, you’ll feel at ease with your keyboard and mouse interaction is not needed for most of your task. There is no concept of “Save” in NV, its just saves as you type.

How does it work

You just type in the search area. Press return to add a new note with that title. While you type, NV searches for notes whose body or title contain your words. Observe that naming a note and searching always occur simultaneously.

When you select one of the found notes (e.g., using the up/down keys) NV displays its body in the lower text area (what you’re reading now). If you had typed the beginning of a note’s title, NV would have selected that note automatically.

Just try and get used to few of the keyboard shortcuts and you’ll be all set. Most of them are pretty similar to what you do everyday, like going to the search/address bar in your browser (Firefox, Chrome)

Synchronize natively with Simplenote

The latest addition that made NV a super note-taking app is its ability to sync with Simplenote. Simplenote (view it in iTunes) is a simple to use, free note-taking app for the iPhone.

Open Source

Notational Velocity is Open Source and is distributed under a modified BSD license. It is currently hosted on github.

You can get the source;

$ git clone git://github.com/scrod/nv.git

Download/Install

Visit Notational Velocity and Download the NV.

(Via: Digg > Duo Dito)

I’m sure that for most of us, we’re cautious enough to know what we downloaded and that we wanted to execute it without Leopard coming in between us and our prey. If you’re one of those, Hendrik have a solution on how you can Lift the Leopard download quarantine.

Here is how he does it;

1. Download Unquarantine.scpt and drop it in ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts.
2. Go to ~/Downloads or wherever your downloads go
3. Right-click, More > Configure Folder Actions… Check “Enable Folder Actions”
4. Attach the “Unquarantine” action to the folder

Note: As the folder action only applies to that folder (Downloads in our case). If you download a file to a directory without this folder action attached, Leopard is free to nag again. Head over to Hendrik’s site to download the script and learn what the script does.

MacBook Air

I’ve already done details about MacBook Air in my previous article.

Time Capsule

Gone will be the days of the hassle of plugin in a USB/FireWire drive just to get your Time Machine working. At the MacWorld Expo, Apple unveiled Time Capsule, a hardware companion to Time Machine which will automatic backup of your whole drive wirelessly.

Time Capsule combines an 802.11n network access point and a hard disk drive. Time Capsule is a Full Airport Extreme Base Station plus a server-grade hard drive.

With Time Capsule, users will be able to go back through archived backups to find lost files, photos, digital media, and other data. Once the missing file is found, users can restore it wireless from Time Capsule; they can also restore an entire system from a Time Machine backup stored on the device.

The Time Capsule sports some amazing features –

• dual-band antennas for 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequencies
• one USB 2.0
• one Gigabit Ethernet
• three Gigabit LAN ports
• built-in power supply
• can connect to print wirelessly from a USB printer

In addition, Time Machine offers Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA-2), 128-bit WEP encryption, and a built-in NAAT firewall that support NAT-PMP for Leopard’s Back to My Mac feature. Apple will start shipping Time Capsule in February and will initially be available in two capacities — 500GB model for $299, and a 1TB version for $499.

iPhone – powerful maps, multi-person SMS

Apple CEO Steve Jobs also unveiled the latest iPhone features. Apple expanded the iPhone’s capabilities with a free software update that adds a location finder to the Maps feature, customized home screens, multi-person SMS chats, and the ability to add Web sites to the home screen. In addition, video playback on the phone has been enhanced, with support for chapters, subtitles and languages, and lyrics support has been added for music tracks.

Read more details of the new iPhone features at MacWorld.

iPod touch – add more apps for a price

Just as iPhone users were getting new capabilities via an iPhone software update announced during Steve Jobs’ Macworld Expo keynote, iPod touch users will get new features for their handheld device, too. But unlike the free iPhone update, iPod users will have to pay for their new capabilities, to the tune of a $19.99 fee.

So, what new features do you get for the upgrade fee?

You’ll get five new mobile apps that match those already on the iPhone. With the update, the iPhone touch adds Mail, Maps, Stocks, Weather, and Notes features—essentially giving the music player the same capabilities as the iPhone, with the notable exception of calling features.

More about iPod Touch features and updates at MacWorld.

Apple TV – price drop and untethers from the Mac

The new and improved Apple TV software will be available in about two weeks as a free update to existing Apple TV devices. The entry-level 40GB model had its price dropped to $229, while the 160GB version now costs $329, a $70 price reduction for both. The Apple TV will sport a completely changed and enhanced interface adding numerous new features — most notably the ability to rent movies and purchase music and TV shows directly via the device.

The upgraded Apple TV operates as a standalone device. While it will still synchronize content with your computer, no computer is required to operate it. Once it’s connected to your television and your computer network, you can rent movies directly on your widescreen TV, using Apple’s new iTunes Movie Rentals feature, navigating using the Apple TV’s remote. iTunes Movie Rentals cost $4.99 for new high-definition releases, $3.99 for older high-definition films and new standard-definition releases, and $2.99 for older standard-definition releases.

Apple TV will be able to play at HD – 720p resolution with many available Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Standard-definition films purchased on the Apple TV are of “DVD quality” and will not play back on Macs, PCs, or iPods. However, the Apple TV is also able to play back rentals purchased on a Mac or PC, albeit at reduced “near-DVD quality.”

The Apple TV can also now be used to directly purchase TV shows and music, which will also automatically sync back to a Mac or PC via iTunes. A new podcast browser allows users to browse Apple’s podcast directory and pick certain podcasts as “favorites” for quick access at a later time.

iTunes Movie Rentals

Apple also introduces iTunes Movie Rentals, a new feature of the iTunes Store that enables users to download movies and watch them for a short time rather than having to buy them.

The new feature is dependent on iTunes 7.6, a new release of Apple’s jukebox, music, TV and movie software that’s available for download from Apple’s Web site. It also requires an update to QuickTime.

Apple is supported by all the major movie studios — Fox, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony, along with Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, New Line and Lions Gate. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the new service will launch shortly, and by the end of February will contain over 1,000 movies. Movies will become available for rental on iTunes 30 days after they are released on DVD.

Movie rentals will be priced at $3.99 for new releases and $2.99 for older films. High Definition (HD) movies will be downloadable only via Apple TV and will cost $4.99 for new releases and $3.99 for older films.

Apple unveils “the thinnest notebook in the world” – the MacBook Air. Apple went and looked at most of the thinnest notebooks – Sony TZ series, for example and tried to distill the best of all of them –

• ~3 lbs
• 0.16 to 0.76 inches thin, 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep
• 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 × 800 pixel resolution
• full sized MacBook-style black keyboard with Ambient light sensor
• built-in iSight
• multi-touch trackpad (Move a window by double-tap and move. Rotate a photo by pivoting your index finger around your thumb)
• 80GB drive as standard, 64GB SSD as an option
• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo as standard chip which operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus (1.8 GHz as an upgrade)
• 45w MagSafe
• 1 USB 2.0 port
• Micro-DVI
• 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1/EDR
• 5 hour battery life
• 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM

The MacBook Air runs from 0.76″ to 0.16″. The thickest part of the MacBook AIr is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony TZ series. So thin it fits in a manila envelope. This crazy thin MacBook is silver, got a camera with more rounded edges.

Fullsize, 13.3″ widescreen display. LED-backlit display saves power, gives bright display, instant-on the minute you open it. There’s a built-in iSight camera, and a fullsize MacBook-style black keyboard. “Perhaps the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever shipped.” And it’s got a backlit keyboard with an ambient light sensor (previously a MacBook Pro-only feature). Multi-touch gesture support on the trackpad. There’s a preferences pane that lets you turn on a bunch of different gestures and it gives you a video that shows you what things do. Double-tap and then you can drag the cursor around. Pan around a large photo with two fingers. Rotate with a two-finger interface, like turning a dial. Three fingers lets you pan through photos, and of course there’s a real pinch interface for zooming in or out.

Hard drive is a 1.8″ 80GB (with an option of a 64GB solid-state disk). It’s about the length of a pencil. Amazing feat of engineering and there is no compromise on performance. Core 2 Duo chip on the board at 1.6GHz standard with an option to go to 1.8GHz. They asked Intel to consider something: Apple wanted the chip, but needed the same die on a smaller package. So Intel engineered the same chip but made it 60% smaller.

What do we do with optical drive?

Movies, install software, backups, burn music CDs. Here’s why we don’t need to do that: wirelessly rental movies, most of us have iPods instead of CDs, for backups Time Machine and Time Capsule to wirelessly backup.

So what about installing software?

Going to do that wirelessly too. New feature built into MacBook Air OS called Remote Disk, under Devices. It’ll show you all the Macs and PCs in the area with special software (Macs or Windows machines). You can ask to borrow a machine’s optical drive. Once they’ve accepted, you can see what they’re disc is. A PC can even read a Mac disc with this special software. Click on it, and it’s just like having a local optical drive. “That’s how we’re going to install stuff. Wirelessly.” Don’t think users will miss optical drive.

They didn’t want to compromise on battery life. With wireless turned on, they still eked out 5 hours of battery life. So, a 3 lbs., 0.16″-.76″ thickness, 13.3″ fullsize display, fullsize keyboard (backlit), multi-touch gestures, iSight camera, 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory, 80GB hard drive (64GB SSD optional), 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and Magsafe connector — price starts at $1,799.

Apple is taking pre-orders today onwards and will ship them in two weeks.

The MacBook Air has a fully recyclable aluminum case. It also has the first mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free. And the retail packaging is 56 percent less volume than MacBook packaging. Helps with energy for transporting and disposing of materials. MacBook Air joins MacBook and MacBook Pro, “best note books in the industry.”

Visit;

• MacBook Air
• MacBook Guided Tour
• View the MacBook Air Ad
• Image Gallery of MacBook Air at Gizmodo
• MacWorld’s details on MacBook Air

Google, after reviewing lots of meaningful and insightful feedback from iPhone users, have addressed some of them in the current version –

1. Customization of tabs: ow you can customize the tabs you want on Google. Go to the More tab and press “Custom tabs” to select your favorite three Google mobile products.
2. New and improved Gmail: The latest version of Gmail delivers messages to your inbox without the need for you to refresh it. Also, if you need to write an email, we help you complete the address — you only need to type out the first few letters of your contact.
3. New and improved Calendar: A calendar can be one of the most important things on a phone. Now Google Calendar is faster and has a month view.
4. iGoogle for the iPhone: One of the most common requests to date has been to include personalized modules. Google have announced a new iPhone-optimized version of iGoogle that mobilizes all of the modules you know and love.

Here is an excerpt from the Google Mobile Blog;

Some of you have been wondering why we’ve made this only for the iPhone. The entire experience is made possible by the iPhone’s general usability (touch and high-resolution) and the capabilities of its web browser (AJAX, CSS). It’s also pretty cool that the iPhone has an unlimited data plan so you never have to worry about cost when you’re browsing the web. And we’re working on making this version of Google.com available outside the U.S.

A day before Newsgator made their RSS Suite totally FREE, Amit did a review of Newsgator’s FeedDemon (Windows RSS Feed Reader), which got me thinking about NetNewsWire. Let me give you a brief about my RSS Feed Reader usage before suggesting ‘How to squeeze the best out of FREE NetNewsWire’.

I have been using RSS Feed Readers in a way or the other ever since the hay days of the blogging revolution in the early 2000s. While on Windows, I graduated to a full fledged RSS Reader with Nick Bradbury’s FeedDemon ever since its very early days. Bradbury Software, Nick’s company that made FeedDemon was acquired by NewsGator Technologies in May 2005 (I think Nick works with Newsgator at present). My FeedDemon license was alive in all those acquisitions, upgrades and I was a happy user of FeedDemon all along.

The Apple Mac and NetNewsWire

During summer, 2006 I got converted and amongst all other important Mac softwares – RSS Feed Reader was also one of my primary App. I did an install-test study of many RSS Feed Readers before taking the final decision. NetNewsWire was my ultimate choice after testing it for almost 3 weeks. It was however not free then but was worth every penny. (Note: I installed and used most the RSS Readers for almost a month to study them.)

With the short story above, I’m pretty sure you must have a vague idea that I’m like one of you – a regular Internet guy – who reads lots of RSS Feeds every day. Thus, I’m pretty confident that I can tell you ‘How to squeeze the best out of FREE NetNewsWire‘.

Tweak, Tweak, Tweak

Tweaking of apps to give you the best result, best output and best usage is a gradual process. Never stop tweaking, never stop experimenting with permutations and combinations of various options and preferences. Here, let me summarize various settings which have worked good for me so far. I urge you to try them, enhance them and change them to suit you best. So, let’s start tweaking – Open up the Preferences.

Internet is still best with small things

However fast your internet connection bandwidth may be, on the Internet it is alway a good idea to have things in their small version (if available) – smaller image size, smaller css files, smaller and quicker downloads. The same applies to anything that interact with the Internet constantly – NetNewsWire is not an exception. Change the Preferences in NetNewsWire to let it do things quicker, with lesser resource and to give you the quickest response possible.

Preferences > General > Reading

• You do not need to read changes to an article, unless you were following the topic and if you were following it then you would have flag it or clipped it. However, highlighting it is good just in case you have free time to laze around and happen to read old feeds again.
• Show only 10 Items per page for the fast view while in Combined View mode.
• You don’t really need to check for software updates. You’ll definitely come to know of updates if there is one sooner than later and you don’t need to be the first top users at all. Not just for NetNewsWire, I apply this rule to all Apps. See, squeeze out every ounce of delay from an App.

Preferences > General > Archiving

• Honestly, I never needed to archive feeds. What is Google for? Search there and if you don’t remember the keywords – it definitely is not that important. Nonetheless, you might just do a monthly HTML archive for keep-sake if you are really inclined to.
• 7 days is enough to keep feeds in NetNewsWire. I suggest changing this to about 30 days for those who are average to moderate users.

Preferences > Browsing >Behavior

• It is quicker to stay at a single location to do multiple actions. So, browsing inside NetNewsWire is a faster way (Open Links in > NetNewsWire) and of course, you can jump out if an article needs more attention or you’ll spend more time analyzing it.
• Oh! yes, do ‘Open Links in Background’ and avoid the wasteful time due to distraction from opened tabs.
• Finally, you’d want to return to the news item when the tab is closed.

The News Items and Web Pages are best left as it is, nothing much going on there.

You can skip the other 3 setting preferences too – Colors, Fonts, Posting. They’ve nothing to do with speed or optimization. However, you might like to see which font suits you best and which size is best for your layout (screen size ).

Preferences > Downloading > Feeds

Yes, the ‘minimum 30 minutes feed refresh’ limitation of NetNewsWire can be a disappointment for some people. However, with my experience I can guarantee that anything frequent than that will drastically reduce your work-productivity. A strong suggestion would be to increase the feed refresh time if you wish to get more work done and less distraction with an ‘info-overload’.

• An hourly refreshment of your subscription should do ‘more than enough justice’ to be on top of the news happening around your topic. Personally, I’ve increased it from my frenzy 30 minutes updates to a nominal ’2 hours’ update frequency.
• Reduce the concurrent downloads to just about ’5′. Of course, I’m on a 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro with just 2GB of RAM. Higher end Macs can increase that to about ’10′.

Well, you don’t really need to download enclosures. But again if you’re an avid podcast listener (I’m not one), you can let it automatically add podcasts to iTunes.

Preferences > Downloading > Feeds

• You DO NOT need to sync (most of the times) if you use a single computer or a laptop. If you want to sync between your office and home, think again – Do you really want to disturb your family life. Sync only if you really need to.

Tips & Tricks

I don’t really like “Sort by Last Update” more because I like things the way I set them. So, if “Sort by Last Update”, the way last feeds are on top, so be it and stick to it. In order to set few priority feeds (Sorted by Name), I setup folder names starting with Numbers (in my case)

1. Smart Folders
2. Hot Feeds
3. My Feeds
4. Statistics
5. Tags

etc.

This way, the feeds that I frequent most will always be on the top and I can read just that when I don’t want to scroll down. The Smart Lists allows me to look for my favorite keywords and other criteria-based results from my feeds even if I don’t really go and read all individual feeds. Clippings and Flags allow me to bookmark feeds which I can get back later.

The “Post to Del.icio.us” is another awesome tool to make the best of NetNewsWire. However, take not that if you post directly from the feeds, the feed url will be bookmarked (for instance the feedburner url). So, let the feed open up in a new tab and post it from the tab to bookmarked the actual Web URL.

Did I forgot to tell you to take advantage of the Wide-Screen Layout option if you are on a Wide-Screen computer. It has the best viewing experience.

Keyboard Shortcuts Download

I’ve done a printable Keyboard Shortcuts for NetNewsWire to help you further enhance your RSS Reading habits. Download, Print and Pin it up for about a week or so and you’ll get used to the keys.

• Printable PDF
• iWork’s Numbers
• MS Office Excel (this is the exported version from Numbers)

What about Google Reader users? Google Reader is awesome!

I did flirted with Google Reader and at its current version, I won’t hesitate to say that it is one hell of an awesome Web Application. I’ll be coming up with an article on my experience with Google Reader. I’ll also do a comparison matrix of NetNewsWire and Google Reader that will help you choose which one to use.

elsewhere

• TUAW did a comparison of NetNewsWire and Vienna
• Amit’s view on Why FeedDemon is Better Than Google Reader and Bloglines

Note: I had over 1,000+ feeds but was able to reduce it to 765 at the time of writing this article.

More power with less power
Inside the new Mac Pro is the latest technology from Intel – Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors. These processors run at blazingly fast speeds up to 3.2GHz.

Cache count
A huge amount of L2 cache — 12MB per processor — keeps frequently used data and instructions close to the processor cores and improves overall performance. 6MB of cache is shared between pairs of processor cores, allowing an individual core to use all the available shared cache at any one time.

Built at full tilt With the fastest Xeon architecture available, the new Mac Pro features 1600MHz dual independent frontside buses. These 64-bit buses give each processor a direct connection to the system controller and deliver improved processor bandwidth of up to 25.6GB per second — 20 percent greater than the previous Mac Pro. With a new system architecture, speedier system buses, and fast 800MHz DDR2 fully buffered DIMM memory, Mac Pro memory throughput is up to 1.6 times faster than before. Every Intel Xeon processor features an enhanced SSE4 SIMD engine. Capable of completing 128-bit vector computations in a single cycle, SSE4 is ideal for transforming large sets of data, such as applying a filter to an image or rendering a video effect.

Smarter memory
The Mac Pro incorporates a 256-bit-wide, fully buffered memory architecture with Error Correction Code (ECC), which corrects single-bit errors and detects multiple-bit errors automatically. These features are especially important in mission-critical or compute-intensive environments. Apple designed a more stringent thermal specification for the Mac Pro FB-DIMMs, so the internal fans spin at slower speeds and keep the system quiet.

Prices for the Mac Pro start at $2,799 for a machine running two 2.8-GHz quad-core Xeons with 2GB of memory, the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card and a 320GB SATA drive. At the top of the configuration line, a machine tricked out with two 3.2-GHz processors, 32GB of memory, the Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 graphics card, a RAID card and four 1TB internal drives prices out at a whopping $18,199. The extra RAM alone adds $9,100 to the bottom line of that machine. The Mac Pro comes with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, Apple’s newest client operating system.

Xserve

Along with the new Mac Pro announcement, Apple also refreshed its Xserve server to include the same 45nm Penryn-family Xeon processors, the first time since August 2006 that it has punched up its 1U rack-mounted server. The Xserve, which starts at the same $2,999 as its base-line predecessor, comes with an unlimited client license edition of Leopard Server, boasts three drive bays and can be equipped with up to 32GB of memory. For $2,999, buyers get a server running a single 2.8-GHz quad-core Xeon, 2GB of memory, an 80GB SATA drive and dual Gigabit Ethernet on board.

The new Xserve is actually the more important of the two systems, argued an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., because it “draws attention to the Leopard Server operating system’s capabilities as a small-business or departmental server for organizations with limited IT support.” While both new models significantly improve on characteristics of the machines they replace, the analyst said the Xserve and the Leopard Server operating system make a more compelling case.

muCommander is a Freeware but you can donate if you feel good about it.

Here are some of its cool features;

• Virtual filesystem with local volumes, FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP and Bonjour support.
• Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files.
• Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives.
• ZIP files can be modified on-the-fly, without having to recompress the whole archive.
• Universal bookmarks and credentials manager.
• Multiple windows support.
• Full keyboard access.
• Highly configurable.

muCommander is available in 18 languages – English (US & UK), French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch and Slovak.

Download muCommander (it even has a portable version).