Stupidfool.org

My daughter (Penelope) is learning her letters. One of our favorite activities is to use the built-in say command in the OS X terminal: she types in a word, presses [return], and the computer speaks.

To make this easier, I wrote this tiny little script:

It's fun! And it's even more fun to use it to annoy the dog ("Maddy, go to your crate.").

Sam said:

A tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.

Ben pointed me at this one. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to override my defaults for screen timeouts, and now I can!

Everyone needs Caffeine. And they really do, because every time I see someone's screen sleep during a presentation, I think, "everyone needs Caffeine".

QuickCursor

For Mac users who want to use their favorite text editor everywhere. QuickCursor is a menu item that allows you to edit text from any application in your favorite text editor*. Unlike custom “edit in” plugin solutions QuickCursor provides a standard open source solution that uses public API's and doesn’t require input manager hacks to work.

Jesse Grosjean--developer of WriteRoom and TaskPaper, among other products--is making some of the most exciting Mac/iPhone software there is, these days (and even web software: see simpletext.ws, a document-based web service with sync APIs).

One of his latest creations is QuickCursor. I love it: this is $EDITOR for OS X, basically.

1/6/2011: QuickCursor (version 2) is now available on the Mac App Store!

Better with iPhone 3.0

Here's a site I'd really like to see: a showcase for software that takes advantage of new developer features for the Mac OS and iPhone platforms (and maybe others, too).

The recent software updates for both the iPhone and Mac OS are heavy on features for developers, like Core Location & Grand Central Dispatch in Snow Leopard, in-app purchases on the iPhone, &c. (this is a key part of Apple's marketing, even). And when browsing the iPhone app store, applications that've been tested in the 3.0 software are specially flagged as "tested on iPhone 3.0". But what about applications that actually make use of all of the new developer features? That is, applications that are optimized for the new platform?

The promise of an update like Snow Leopard--and, to a lesser extent, the features in the new iPhone 3.0 SDK--is the types of new applications that can be built upon the new platform. Reviews of the new operating systems are heavy on information about the new developer features, but light on actual examples of applications making use of those features. And, as a potential developer for these platforms--but even moreso, as a very interested user--those are the apps that I'd love to see.

My current favorite example of such an app: Clarke, an app for updating your location on Fire Eagle, will soon support the Core Location framework for gathering location data (currently, it uses Skyhook data). That's almost neat enough for me to gather the courage to upgrade!

Does a site like this exist?