VNC, or Virtual Network Computing, is a remote desktop protocol that many free clients and servers utilize. OSXVNc, the server I use, is available here. When you start the app, you are given a preferences window, in which you can set the server password and more. Now, if you want to access your computer from outside your network, and you are using a router, you will need to forward the port 5900 to the computer on which the server is running. Note that in order to access your computer remotely, your computer must be on and connected to the internet.

On the client side, there are many options available. If you are looking for a Mac VNC client, I have found Chicken of the VNC the best, which is also free. But if you are not on your own Mac, there is a very easy way to connect to your home computer. RealVNC, who makes VNC clients and servers for Linux and Windows, also makes a Java applet VNC client that can run on almost any computer. This Google search will give you many mirrors for this Java applet. All you need to do is enter your IP or domain name, as well as your password. Speaking of IP addresses, if you don’t have a domain for your home network, you will need to remember or write down your IP address. If you plan to use VNC frequently, you may consider getting a free domain name from a service like DynDNS. Also, your IP will most likely change every time you restart your modem, so you may want to grab a updating utility, which are also available at DynDNS.

Remote Desktop may not work well with laptop owners and those who don’t keep their Macs running all the time, but nonetheless, VNC is a great, free solution.

Since Adobe introduced product activation, I’ve been searching for something I can just license and install on any machine I use, the way I can with a lot of indie products (e.g. Silo, Cheetah, and Unity).

Well, my search is over, and if you’re like me, maybe yours is too.

Photoline is a Mac (and Windows) image editing program that is clearly intended to be a complete Photoshop replacement. Its user interface is pretty similar to Photoshop’s (although less polished, to be sure, and prone to the occasional untranslated piece of German).

If you can’t stomach using a program that uses scrollbars as numerical input widgets, you may find Photoline intolerable (some of its dialogs have definitely been whacked with the ugly stick). Oh, and for such an excellent graphics program, it has one of the most lamentable icons I’ve ever seen. That’s about all the bad stuff I have to say about Photoline though.

Here’s what Photoline does that a lot of wannabe apps don’t:

• Pixel accurate drawing and selection tools
• 16-bits per channel
• CMYK and Lab color
• Full masking support
• Fully editable text layers with proper typographic controls (such as kerning and paragraph spacing)
• Shape layers with solid bezier tools
• Layer effects (drop shadows, etc.)
• Noise
• Difference Clouds
• HDR image support (including creating HDRs from multiple source photos)
• Image slicing, image maps, and animation tools for web designers
• Useful web export tools with presets, previews, file size info, etc.
• Recordable Macros

Photoline’s user interface won’t win a beauty contest against, say, Pixelmator, but it’s fast, tidy, extremely functional, and rock solid.

Here’s what Photoline does that even Photoshop can’t match:

• Useful named presets for most filters
• Ability to name and save your own presets for most filters
• Text (paragraph and character) style sheets
• Launches in less than 1s on my MacBook Pro
• Costs about US $90 (59 Euros)
• Doesn’t phone home on launch
• No product activation

Photoline also supports most of the bitmap graphic file formats you’re likely to care about – check the image at right for a full list.

Photoline has excellent file format support. Combined with its fast launch time, you might find yourself using it instead of GraphicConverter and Preview, too.

There are a few annoyances. Photoline’s user interface is neither very Maclike (it has a ton of floating palettes, which it tastefully drapes around the edges of your screen) nor an obvious clone of Photoshop’s. You won’t discover that your knowledge of Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts is very helpful, and some functions have been renamed for no good reason (e.g. “Levels” is called “Histogram Correction”). Often, however, I was surprised when I found things different but better in Photoline.

For example, Photoshop’s noise tool — which is incredibly useful — hasn’t changed much since Photoshop 1.0. You get two kinds of noise, and you can decide whether you want monochromatic or colored noise. (Hint — you almost never want colored noise.) Similarly, Photoshop’s clouds tool — also incredibly useful — hasn’t changed much either.

Photoline has a single tool that does both jobs, can be configured to do almost anything either of them can do and a lot more besides with continuous adjustments, and has presets. My initial disappointment at not finding an “Add Noise” filter turned into delight at discovering a much better thought out alternative (and it produces “nicer” looking noise, too).

Here is the Clouds tool (it does everything Render Clouds and Noise do in Photoshop, and then some). Note the named presets and the before/after view with slider.

There are obvious interoperability issues. Photoline isn’t written by Adobe, so it doesn’t understand the deep inner workings of PSD and PDF and AI files, which means you won’t be able to seamlessly replace Photoshop in an Adobe-centric workflow. Similarly, when you save to PSD, Photoline doesn’t know how to convert its text layers into Photoshop text layers (so your text will get rasterized).

Photoline does, however, tell you exactly what you will lose when you save in different file formats (something Photoshop is less clear about). But for cases where you’re mainly working with bitmaps (and not trying, for example, to import complex illustrator designs), Photoline is a very solid Photoshop replacement, and a fabulous image editor which you can launch in a fraction of a second. Just its launch time has me hooked.

Did I mention it launches in less than a second?

Photoline offers a 30 day free trial, so don’t take my word for any of this! The only limitation I’ve found is that you need to wait 10s after it launches before you can start working (which prevents you from enjoying its best feature). Try Photoline today.

SUMMARY

• Fast, powerful, stable, easy (for experienced Photoshop users) to use
• It’s not very pretty (prettier than GraphicConverter — what isn’t? — but uglier than Pixelmator or Photoshop)
• More capable in some ways than Photoshop, but limited interoperability with Adobe workflows
• Free 30 day trial with nothing major disabled (just 10s wait after launching)
• Costs 59 Euros ($90 or so at time of writing)
• More expensive than Pixelmator, Acorn, or Iris, but a heck of a lot more useful; more Maclike and considerably more stable than Pixel.

Aiding the decision I also saw that one of the founders of MacApper, Glenn Wolsey, had already gotten involved. With dozens of active staff members at MacApper it made it a bit painful that I was not able to let any of my writers know what was up, but if I had let anyone know I knew the cat would be out of the bag very fast. So the decision was made to keep quiet and nobody was told aside from a couple close friends.

So last Tuesday I followed Phil’s instructions, took MacApper down for a day leaving the prebuilt defaced page, and I felt good knowing that I was part of such a goofball stunt. I figured MacHeistII would be a smash success, developers would sell Mac software, and we would all get a laugh out of it when Phill and the guys revealed the plot.

I never received any money to help out Phil and the MH crew, and I don’t think Glenn did either. I was glad to help out because I know that when we do cross blog promotion (as we have in the past), it’s always great to have support from your peers. I also know that Mac software is what gives MacApper its subject matter, and helping developers sell software has always been a part of our modus operandi here. I wanted MHII to be a success, and helping Phill out was an easy decision.

Alright so the entire story seemed air tight until those crafty Norwegians over at mac1.no (nice!) started to poke some holes in it. This was when I made a really bad and stupid mistake for which I feel awful about. In a blog post I tried to justify the hacking by blaming it on my WordPress install. This was a really stupid thing to say, and it honestly didn’t occur to me at the time, but I inadvertently scared the crap out of thousands of WP users. For this I am genuinely sorry and apologize to WordPress and anyone who I annoyed or scared with my comments. Which was a sh*tload of people.

So in retrospect the other people I ended up hurting are both the readers and writers here. I really hadn’t thought out how angry you people would get if the plot was uncovered early, which is what happened yesterday. I guess I just want to say that none of the writers here at MacApper knew about the stunt. In fact keeping it away from them was not that easy, and a few of them are not happy with me today. The stunt did not go over as we thought it would and I hope you understand that I couldn’t let anyone in on it without risking the entire story unravelling on us. I also wasn’t willing to ‘blow the whistle’ until the Macheist guys spilled the beans as I wanted to honor my commitment to their promotion. So this made it kind of difficult on all of us.

So I guess in closing I will just say again that my intentions were not meant to draw attention to MacApper in a shady attempt to gain readers, or sell out to an advertiser, or to screw over the good people at WordPress in any way. People will draw their own conclusions about the whole thing and if people feel compelled not to visit MacApper anymore, nothing I can say will change that. I guess I would just remind those people that MacApper is the result of dozens of voices, of whom I am just one, and I really hope that one bad apple doesn’t spoil the lot.

Now if you’ll just excuse me while I slip into this asbestos layered suit.

Update: MacApper was not really hacked! None of the following blather about WordPress is true in any way. We love you WordPress!

Anyways I took the liberty of analyzing the hack a bit in the hopes it helps others prevent this from happening to them. Although we had updated our blog to the latest version of WordPress, near as I can tell the hack was accomplished via an XSS (cross site scripting) exploit. By executing some malicious code in the query string the hacker was able to write to our .htaccess file the following:

#this is for rotten mac fanbois - suck it down.
#RewriteRule ^divider.png$ /rotten/divider.png [L]
#RewriteRule ^rotten.jpg$ /rotten/rotten.jpg [L]
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/rotten.*
#RewriteRule !rotten/index.html$ /rotten/index.html [L]

The problem is that the exploit appears to be unknown to WordPress as far as I can see (I will be reporting it to them), so other WordPress blogs may be susceptible. I wish I could offer more help. I’ll try to post more as we pour through the logs. Also if anyone is interested this is the defacing I woke up to this morning if you missed it:

Thanks to Marvin Sum and all of the other kind people attempting to notify me last night, and my apologies for the interruption to our readers.

Quicksilver, for those who don’t know is a powerful and flexible freeware application launcher and more. It’s really pretty hard to describe, so if you haven’t tried it yet definitely give it a go. In this tutorial I’d like to show you how you can configure Quicksilver on your Mac to make controlling iTunes more simple and fun with something called Triggers.

First things first, if you don’t have Quicksilver installed do so by downloading a copy from BlackTree, drag it to your Applications folder and open it up. One thing to keep in mind is that Quicksilver must be running, but not necessarily visible, for your triggers to work. Next you’ll want to ensure the “iTunes Module” plug-in is installed, bring up the Quicksilver window by double clicking on the application icon. Go to the plug-in pane by either selecting “Plug-ins” from Quicksilver’s drop-down menu or pressing Command-Shift-Apostrophe (in other words ⌘”).

Plug-ins are Quicksilver’s way of letting other pieces of software interact with Quicksilver’s seemingly omnipresent resources. Many applications have Quicksilver plug-ins and I highly recommend you look around in the plug-in pane for add-ons that interest you or connect to your favorite apps.

Now that you have opened the plug-in window ensure the “All Plug-in’s” tab is selected in the left pane. Find the “iTunes Module” and toggle it’s check box if it’s not already marked. If this is the first time you are enabling the iTunes Module it will take a moment to download and install.

Next move to the Triggers window by pressing Command-Apostrophe ( ⌘’). You can think of triggers sort of like universal hot-keys, as you may already gathered this is how we will interact with iTunes. Luckily for our purposes the iTunes Module provides us with a number of pre-configured commands to which we only need to attach a key combination.

Personally my favorite iTunes triggers are Next Song, Previous Song, Play / Pause and Search Artists. These triggers really help you control your music without getting distracted from your current task. In the case of the Search Artists trigger you can search for a given artist on the fly – it’s pretty neat.

The only marginally difficult part of setting up these triggers is not selecting key commands that overlap with those of the apps you already use. Having such an overlap is called a collision. Quicksilver won’t let you ‘highjack’ control of a key command so if you have a collision the app you have in focus will react as normal and Quicksilver will act as if nothing has happened. This can be confusing when you’re getting started with triggers so I recommend you choose your keys wisely. I have found “option-command-something” to be fairly free of collisions on my system. The first step to take when you want to set your trigger commands is to open the “Trigger Info” slide out window by pressing the “i” button located in the lower right hand corner of the window.

Next select the trigger you would like to give a key combination to and click on the Hot Key’s “Edit” button. Now simply type in your desired key-command. For example, if I were setting the command for the Pause Song trigger, I would click the Edit button and then type the key-combination option-command-down arrow key (⌥ ⌘↓). After doing so I could pause my iTunes music from any application (which doesn’t collide) simply pressing those keys. Note that these key combination is completely arbitrary, yours can be whatever works for you.

The keys and triggers I recommend are as follows:
Play / Pause Option-Command-Up Arrow ⌥⌘↑
Next Song Option-Command-Right Arrow ⌥⌘→
Previous Song Option-Command-Left Arrow ⌥⌘←
Search Artists Option-Command-Down Arrow ⌥⌘↓

There are a couple of other interesting ways you can tweak the performance of your new triggers. Below the Edit Hot-key we discussed earlier you will notice a number of other options. The first four options will effect when exactly in relation to the key-stroke the trigger is activated. “On Press” and “On Release” set the trigger to activate when the key is pressed and when the key is released respectively. “Repeat Every” causes the trigger to repeat every x seconds while the key is held down, this can be very useful for adjusting iTunes’ volume. The “Delay” option effects how long after the key-stroke until the trigger is activated. Finally, the “Show Window” option does exactly what you would expect, it momentarily shows a window representing your trigger upon activation.

There is almost limitless depth to Quicksilver but I hope this tutorial has sheds some light for some people on the mysterious and powerful QS preference panes. As a continuation of what you’ve seen here I recommend that you play around with triggers on your own a bit. Quicksilver’s triggers are a very powerful and generally untapped feature which can really help you to do diverse tasks more quickly and easily.

The Basics of Automator

First, load the Automator editor application located in the Applications folder. On the upper-left hand side of the Automator window you will notice the Library pane which lists the applications on your system that are supported by Automator. If you don’t see your favorite App in this window write the author of the software, only they can add Automator support. Just to the left of the library pane is the Actions pane which lists the available actions for a selected application. These two windows act as your toolbox while making an Automator action. Naturally there is also a search field to quickly find an action without needing to select a specific target application. Below these two panes is the Action Description pane. Here you can find important information about different actions like what sort of “Input” it expects, what “Result” it returns and any other requirements.

This concept may be familiar if you have any experience with the programming concept of “protocol”, if you you are unfamiliar don’t fret! It’s not that hard, I promise. Every Automator action expects a certain “type” of input. For example the iTunes action “Add Songs to Playlist” expects “Songs” as the input, naturally if you sent this action a text file, an email address and a sandwich it would be unable to add them to a playlist. In return for you giving an action what it expects it “promises” to consistently return a certain type of response or “Result”. These Results can often be passed into other actions making a sequence of events that does something useful for you.

To the right side of the Automator window is the Workflow pane. Here you place Actions which will occur one by one from top to bottom. Actions can be placed into the Workflow by either dragging an action to the Workflow pane or by double-clicking on an action.

The toolbar also contains two buttons you’ll be using a lot, the Run (Command R) and Stop (Command .).

Instant Backup Automator Action

This is a handy little Automator action I use all the time on projects or assignments where I’m experimenting with a file (usually code) enough that “Undo” won’t suffice and setting up a version control system feels over-kill. This action when placed in the dock will make a copy of whatever file or folder you have selected in the Finder and conveniently append a date-stamp onto the name of the copy. Please keep in mind that the following example is definitely not the only way and likely not the best way of backing up your files, so while you’re working through the tutorial think of how you would do it better and go ahead and give it a try.

The first step of this workflow involves letting Automator know which file(s) you wish to deal with. For this example we’ll simply tell Automator to make a back up of the file (or folder) that is currently selected in the Finder. To do this you will want to find the “Get Selected Finder Items” action by selecting Finder in the library pane and dragging “Get Selected Finder Items” to the work flow window.

Next we will want to copy the file to your backup destination. I’ve created a “Backup” folder in my home directory (the directory named with your user name) in which to place the backed up files. The Action that will do this for us is called “Copy Finder Items”, lets try using the search to find it this time. Drag the action to the workflow pane and take a look at the action “bubble” you’ve created. You will notice that unlike the “Get Selected Items” action this one contains some further controls. In the “To:” drop-down menu I will select my Backup folder. If you choose to place your files elsewhere please change the “To:” destination directory accordingly. There is another option here to replace existing files in the destination directory if they have the same name. I would not recommend you check this box, it will erase similarly named files without asking. If you leave the replace check box unchecked when there is another file sharing the same name the Finder will rename the new file to prevent a collision.

Rename your Backup

Although this action is pretty good already, when I’m making many revisions and changes to a file I like to keep track in the file name that it is a backup and the time and date the backup was created. We can do this very simply with Automator.

First I’d like to append onto the file name the suffix “_Backup” to remind me I’m looking at a backed up file. The action we will use to add this suffix, date and time is the “Rename Finder Items” action. As we will use this same action three times in a row go ahead and add three of them to the work flow.

To append the text suffix focus on the first of the three “Rename Finder Items” actions. From the action’s drop-down menu select “Add Text”. In the “Add:” text field type “_Backup”. I preceded the word “Backup” with an underscore, “_”, so the title is easier to read. Set the next drop-down menu to “after name”, this will make the text act as a suffix to the prior name rather than a prefix. Mac OS X recognizes when there is a file extension visible at the end of the file name (.mov, .pdf, etc.) and will append your text between the file name and the file extension.

To add the time of day you created the backup you will edit the second “Rename Finder Items” action that you added. This time you will set the first drop-down menu to “Add Date or Time”. Because I want to see when I made this backup rather than when it was last modified I select “Current” from the “Date/Time:” drop down menu. The “Format:” drop-down menu will be the only difference between adding the time and the date, here we will choose “Hour Minute”. Again the we will want to add the text after the name by selecting “After name”. You can choose whichever “Separator:” drop-down selections you find easiest to read for the next two options, I’ve chosen “Dash” and “Underscore”. You can also enable the use of leading zeroes with the final check box. For example, with leading zeros, eight o’clock and one minute in the morning will read 08-01 rather than 8-1, it’s a matter of personal preference.

Finally to add the date to the third “Rename Finder Items” action, do the same as you did for time in the second “Rename Finder Items” action but select the “Format:” drop-down menu option “Day Month Year” instead of “Hour Minute”.

Finishing Up

Now would be a great time to save your work, this can be done by pressing Command-S or by selecting Save from the File Menu. In the save window you will notice a “File Format:” drop-down, this gives you the choice of saving as a Workflow or an Application. For our example we’ll choose to save an Application. As an Application your Automator action can be double clicked in the Finder and be activated. I would recommend you save your new Automator action “application” to your Applications folder for easy access. A cool little feature of these Automator action applications is that unlike a complied Application built in Xcode you can just drop your creation or one you downloaded that you want to learn from onto Automator to examine and edit its workflow.

We’re on the home stretch now, you’ve got a working Automator action but… what to do with it? If you double click on it now you will likely just end up with a backup of your Automator action application in your backup destination (remember it’s setup to backup Finder’s current selection). I think an excellent solution would be to drag your Automator Application to the dock so you can access it anytime from the Finder. Now select the file you wish to backup, click on the your application in the dock and like magic you’ve got a dated backup!

The Future of Automator

Rest assured, your new little robot friend, Automator, will not be disappearing with the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. In fact Apple is adding many very helpful enhancements to Automator in Leopard that will make the automation process even easier. According to the public WWDC course page, actions will no longer be just scriptable but also recordable in Leopard, that’s really exciting. I can assure you there are other neat things in the works and can’t wait until we can all get our hands on the Leopard version of Automator. Until then, happy Automating!

For those with a sweet tooth, afternoon Cocoa Rush hours extend an all you can eat invitation. If you want more than irresistible treats to take away, sign up for a chocolate making class.

Casa do Javali and Casa da Corca Cottages are located in the grounds of a Manor House in Minho North Portugal

Casa do Javali and Casa da Corca are located in a 2 hectare wine producing estate a short drive away from Peneda-Geres National Park, the only National Park in Portugal. These former estate worker’s cottages have recently been converted to a very high standard.They are tastefully furnished and very comfortable offering modern facilities such as central heating for winter use.The accommodation consists of :Casa do JavaliGround floor –  Well equipped kitchen with dishwasher, cooker/oven, fridge/freezer, microwave, kettle and toaster. Living/dining room with television and a traditional charcoal oven which is now used as a fireplace.Dining table for 4 persons. Door leading to a covered balcony with views across the valley.Lower ground floor  –  One double and one twin bedroom.  Separate bathroom. Casa da CorcaGround floor  –  Well equipped kitchen with dishwasher, cooker/oven, fridge/freezer, microwave, kettle and toaster.Living/dining room with television, sofa and fireplace. Dining table for up to 5 persons.Double bedroom with ensuite bathroom. Lower floor  –  The bedroom has 3 single beds with an ensuite bathroom.Both cottages are completely independent however, as they are adjacent, they can be rented together for larger parties.The nearby Romanesque Mosteiro de Bravaes is well worth a visit as it is one of the oldest churches in Portugal.  Simple and rustic in design, it features beautiful, carvings on the doorways and columns.Guests should take the opportunity to visit the National Park, offering unforgettable walks.The property is located approximately 45 kilometres from the beautiful Atlantic beaches and the interesting old sailing town of Viana do Castelo.Other places of interest are Braga, approximately 30 kilometers away, and Ponte de Lima which has a Roman bridge approximately 14 kilometres from the cottages.  Also within travelling distance are Baiona, Vigo and Santiago de Compostela in the Galicia Region of Spain.The swimming pool is not available before May.

Currency Converter

If only there were a way to trick the game into thinking the disk was in the computer. Enter the Disk Utility, a little application that comes in the utilities folder of every Mac. All you have to do is pop your disk in, open Disk Utility, select your disk, and click New Image. Name the disk image and save it somewhere. Now all you have to do is open the disk image, and the disk will appear on your desktop, just like any normal disk. The applications will not know the difference between a virtual disk and the real thing.

Disk images also give you the ability to open multiple disks at once on a one-drive machine. You can even encrypt disk images to easily store your sensitive files. Also, while we here at MacApper do not condone any illegal actions, the disk images are yours and lack any digital rights management. It is also just as easy to burn disk images so you can copy your disks as many times as you want. Disk Utility makes it simple to back up the disks of your favorite games and have them on hand any time you want.

Get to know the elements of design and see the hotel in 360.

Hotel Factsheet

• SO COZYDiscover your own intimate space, furnished to the highest standards and equipped with leading edge technology. Perch window side and lose yourself in the city, or soak away the world in an indulgent bath. SO Cozy comes in…
• SO COMFYImmerse yourself in designer comfort in the City of Angels. When a new day beckons, brew up a boost with your personal illy espresso machine and drink in the park views while you gear up for the action. SO Comfy comes in…
• SO CLUBSO Comfy gets turbocharged with special in-room amenities, plus Club Signature perks, which include complimentary all-day refreshments, afternoon tea, evening cocktails, laundry, late check-out, priority booking, and a whole…
• SO STUDIOBe embraced by the city in the spacious corner studio and enjoy extra space to stretch out and breathe in. Between activities, drop by Club Signature for a quick refuel before hitting the city or retreating back to your…
• SO SUITE SPACheck out of the daily grind and into the most blissful spa hotel in Bangkok. Otherworldly spa treatments, enjoyed in the privacy of en-suite spa rooms inspired by the mystical Himmapan forest, are complemented by a range of…
• SO SUITESO Suite features a generous en-suite bedroom and separate lounge area with creative touches by Monsieur Christian Lacroix. Commanding views offer panoramic pleasure, while exclusive access to the Club Signature pepper your day…
• SO LOFTYSize doesn’t matter, said only the smallest room ever. If space is what you want, SO Lofty suites offer plenty of room to stay and play, brought to life with interior touches by Monsieur Christian Lacroix, plus coveted access…
• SO VIPStay at the top of the room chain and live it up like nobody’s business. A master bedroom takes up the entire upper level, while a separate guest bedroom, lounge, Jacuzzi tub, and dining area on the lower level ensures maximum…