Dunno is a very curious discovery I made on the Mac App store today. It’s a little hard to describe what it actually is, because it falls in between categories. The best way to describe it would be a todo list that goes away, researches itself and gives you a whole heap of results without you having to lift a finger. The App itself is incredibly simple to use. Once opened, you only have one place to type, right at the top where it says “Note to self…” Type in a word, or a phrase, and then wait. You can close (not quit) the program and just go about your business. In a few seconds, Dunno will return you a heap of results that it has gathered from the web.

As you can see above, I typed in some things into Dunno and just left it alone for a few minutes. When I returned to the program window, I had images, Wikipedia entries as well as web, news and Youtube results waiting for me to check over. So, I asked myself: Why would I use this App rather than just typing the same queries into Google.

A couple of things struck me. Firstly was about location. When I’m sitting in front of my MacBook, I have access to Google, and Wikipedia. When I’m away from my computer, I have my iPhone. I tend not to do extensive research sessions on my iPhone. But thinking about it, I am surprised how often I see, or hear something that I need to note to look up later on the web. This happens during meetings, while talking to people and even while I’m teaching. Most of the time I try to take a mental “post-it” to look it up at a later time. Of course this method relies on my brain actually recalling the information at a later time. That doesn’t happen with as much accuracy as I would like. Luckily, Dunno has an iPhone and iPad app. That means that wherever I find myself, I can note down things that pop into my head (or the conversation) and catchup with them later.

Secondly, there’s something very cool about an app which does “research” for you while you’re off doing other things. The fact that your found links open within the app (rather than open up in a web browser) is a very attractive feature.

Quality wise, the returned links were quite good. Basically Dunno is returning a set of web searches and putting them in one place (rather like Sherlock did back in the old days)

This App has great possibilities. I would love to star or highlight results that I want to mark for later reading. I would like a little more customizing in the websites that are searched. The overall concept is something that I think has huge potential – think about a group collaborating on a project – each being able to add something to the list and all having access to the results. I’m sure the developers have already thought of these things and more, and I’m going to be paying close attention what this delightful App becomes in the future.

‘Tis the season of updates! Macstarter’s favourite offline reader has been updated this week. Since the release of pocket, I have switched to it exclusively. Not only do I read a lot, but I’m finding that as I get older, I have a much lower tolerance for extraneous web “fluff”, such as adverts, flash based banners and everything else fighting for my diminishing concentration span.

Pocket’s update has brought a couple of features that I personally appreciate. Firstly, we now get an ingenious page flipping action. For long articles you can either scroll up and down to view the article, or swipe left or right on your screen to initiate “page flipping mode”. I’m not sure which side of the fence I sit on with scrolling or flipping pages, but I do know that I prefer iBooks over any other reading app simply because it’s page flipping is so beautiful.

The second update is one that really hit the mark for me. I read a lot before I sleep, and my poor wife has to put up with the “UFO” glow of my iPhone or iPad. Enter Pocket’s night / dark theme. Once started, everything is turned black so that it’s less of a strain on your eyes, and will at the same time spare your partner being woken up by your devices light. My only criticism of this feature is that you can only start the dark theme when you are reading an article, rather than from the front page.

If you’re a Pocket user, get the update. If you’re not currently a Pocket user, what are you waiting for?

I try to keep my personal life out of Macstarter. That is, during the day I’m a teacher of design, therefore on my own MacBook I have a plethora of design based apps, but I try my best not to turn Macstarter into a design biased site. Of course I myself use Photoshop occasionally, I use Illustrator a lot and I am simply in love with Blender 3D. Today, I hope you will allow me to indulge my nerdy designer self and talk about an App that just blew my socks off.

As I was browsing the Mac App Store I came across a very curious app called 123D Make. What this program will do is to take a 3D object of some kind, and create a set of cardboard templates that you can then cut out in real life, and put together (again in real life) to end up with a model of that 3D object.

It takes a little time to get used to, and like most design based software, the learning curve can seem steep.

Here you can see a model of a car I grabbed from 123D Makes online gallery.

With the click of a button I can choose to turn the car into slices:

Or with the click of another button you can create a skeleton version:

Once you are done creating your cutouts, you can choose to print out the templates, which you can then use to cutout using thick card or foam board.

You can use this program in conjunction with other 123D apps, such as 123D Sculpt and 123D Catch (an excellent iPad 3D capture app) to create models. You can also use other 3D programs, such as Blender to create 3D objects which can then be imported into 123D Make.

I hope you forgive me my design bias today, but it’s not everyday you come across such a weird and wonderful app!

One of Macstarter’s favourite App / service is Springpad. We talked about them over a year ago, and personally I save everything I need to save in Springpad. Whether it’s a piece of code, a web address, or (much more likely) a recipe, Springpad is either called on my web browser, my iPad or my iPhone. Talking about recipes, what I love is that my recipes folder is shared with my wife, so we have access to all our recipes together.

And it’s that collaboration that seems to have driven Springpad’s latest upgrade. Firstly, the redesign of the website is something I have fallen in love with. I’m a great fan of simple clean cut design. The website just does it for me. But as well as sharing (or following) other people, you can now “explore” other people’s notebooks. I must admit, when I first saw this feature I was a little apprehensive. I think far too many “social” addons to a site make it less usable, not more. But I gave Springpad’s “Explore” feature a go. Aside from catching interesting links, you can now choose to follow notebooks that other people are currently keeping. I managed to subscribe to a few great notebooks, and rather than using Springpad to collect my own links (which I do religiously now) I’m also now opening Springpad to see what new stuff other people are springing.

Add to this the upgrade in the iOS app, and Springpad’s facelift is complete. If you’ve been a Springpad user, this update is going to be a little bit of a surprise when comparing it to the old version. But on the whole, Springpad’s update has really taken it to a new level.

We talked about Paper a little while ago. I could start a whole new website with the things that I love about this App. As a designer, this App just fits my mindset down to the ground. Whereas other Apps, such as the awesome Procreate or the amazing Alias Sketchbook excel because they are full of features (and justifiably so), Paper’s complete lack of features, such as layers, brush sizes, opacity and so on make it brilliant. Rather than worrying about details, you get straight into expressing the ideas that are in your head.

But this lack of features doesn’t mean you can’t create subtle or create great looking strokes. It just means that you enjoy what you’re doing more, and you don’t worry about minor details that are unimportant.

We at Macstarter don’t normally do recommendations for iPad Apps, but in this case, if you own an iPad, this App has to be on it now. If you own an iPad 3, not only does this App have to be on your iPad, but you also get to gloat to other iPad users at the sheer beauty of Paper on a Retina display.

I’ve been a Mac user (exclusively) for over 10 years now. The one thing I know that set’s my Macs apart from other brands or flavours of computers is that it hardly ever crashed. Heck, I hardly restart my Macs for months at a time. You can though, from time to time come up against a program that just doesn’t want to behave itself, or even worse, refuses to start up at all.

To get a handle on wayward programs, or programs that won’t open is quite simple, and actually quite logical. On a Windows machine, when a program installs, it will place various files in various places on your hard drive. That’s actually an understatement. Some windows programs will throw hundreds of files, in various folders on your C drive.

The vast majority of Mac programs will do the following. Firstly, they will install an “App” file in the Applications folder. When you run that program, a preference file (or a .plist file) is created. The location of this file is in your home folder’s Library folder. Lion hides this folder by default, but you can simply press alt (option) button as you click on Go in Finder’s menubar. Once you get to the Library folder, simply look for a folder called Preferences. In this folder, you will find all the preference files from all the programs you use on your Mac. Deleting a .plist or preference file is the first way of fixing a program that isn’t behaving itself.

Let’s take an example. If I open GarageBand, it begins to open, but when I would normally see the GarageBand window, it simply shuts down and gives me an error report. I restart the computer to see if that helps, but unfortunately GarageBand simply shuts down whenever I try to open it. Now it’s time to delete its preference file. I’ll go to the Preferences folder, and find the GarageBand preference file.

When you go to the Preferences folder, you’ll see a huge number of files. The name of each preference file is normally a reversal of the website where the program came from. GarageBand is made by Apple, and Apple’s website is Apple.com. So you would look for a file called – com.apple.garageband.plist.

It sounds complicated, but in reality it takes a few seconds to find the file you’re looking for. If in doubt, simply use the search bar in your finder window to locate the preference file. Once you’ve found the file, delete it. Now, open up the program that was previously giving you trouble and see what happens. 9 times out of 10 the problem will have sorted itself out. This is a trick I’ve used thousands of times in my day job to sort out a program that’s not behaving itself. Note, sometimes getting rid of a .plist file can result in a program returning to its “default” configuration. That is, any modifications you’ve made to a toolbar, or other changes you might have made can reset back to the way they were when you opened that program for the first time.

I got a call yesterday from my sister-in-law. She’s a photographer and a Mac user. Now, if anyone was getting into photography in a semi – serious / semi professional manner, I would recommend a Mac any day of the week, both to work on at home, and to carry with you to a job. When it comes to working with photos, you have a huge variety of programs to choose from to catalogue, edit, touch up and do whatever you have to do.

The problem my sister-in-law was having was that her iPhoto had decided to start to play silly games. By that I mean it was taking a huge amount of time to open up, and when it did, it would then take forever to navigate from one album / event to another. When I asked about the number of photos in the iPhoto library, I found out that there was somewhere over 10,000 photos. Now 99% of these photos was taken with a professional grade camera, at a very high resolution.

The first thing you have to note about iPhoto ’11, is that it doesn’t store photos the way previous versions of iPhoto did. In the past, you simply had an iPhoto folder in your Pictures folder, and inside that folder, you could navigate to your actual photos directly. Not that it was easy or pleasant to do this. iPhoto stored a number of versions of every photo you downloaded. It stored the original photo file, and then any adjustments or modifications you made, and stored it in different versions of that original file. It also generated a smaller thumbnail version of your photos. All of these thousands of files took up huge amounts of space.

The current version of iPhoto seems to do things differently. Instead of files and folders, you have a single file called “iPhoto Library” sitting in your Pictures folder. What iPhoto has done is to take all those files and folders, and join them altogether into a specialised library file. So what happens when you open up iPhoto?

Well, it has to check all your events, and albums. It has to check for Faces, Places. It has to check all the slideshows that you’ve created and any Photo Books and Calendars that you are currently creating. This all takes time for iPhoto to do. So imagine you’ve got thousands and thousands of photos. It makes sense that iPhoto is going to take longer to start up, and to do anything you ask it to do.

There’s a simple way of organising your iPhoto, and actually use its library system to your own advantage. Start up iPhoto with the alt button pressed, and you should see the following dialog.

Simply click on “Create New…” and you’ll be asked for a name and location for your new Library. You will then be presented with an empty iPhoto library, which you can import photos into.

This is a great way of getting yourself a little more organised, and a little less frustrated with iPhoto. I wouldn’t go so far as to create a separate library every time iPhoto is started up, but you could create different libraries for events that you don’t want to mix up with your own family shots. You could keep a set of photos separate if you’re an amateur photographer, for example.

Of course, backing up your iPhoto library(ies) is of vital importance, regardless of how many you have.

At Macstarter, we are all about efficiency. One of the reasons I fell in love with Macs to start with was the fact that you could work so efficiently from one window to another without having to use a taskbar (as you get on Windows machines), and get around your open programs with ease.

Things have changed recently, and if you think about it, it’s quite common to have a lot of windows open up on your Mac while you’re working. I am always telling colleagues and students to use the cmd + H (hide) shortcut in order to hide a program that you don’t need to be looking at. I find that it’s so much more convenient to hide it rather than minimise it into the dock. But this hiding in itself can become a chore, as you have to cmd + H each program in turn to hide them one by one.

You can though use the cmd + alt (option) + H shortcut. This will hide all OTHER programs apart from the one that you’re currently working on. This is a superb way of concentrating on what you’re doing and get the visual clutter out of the way. Remember to use the cmd + tab shortcut to get back to your programs that are hidden.

Most modern browsers let you extend functionality by adding extensions (or add-ons). Each browser has it’s own versions of extensions, and it’s own way of dealing with them. Firefox practically invented the add-on, and if you’re a Firefox user, you’ll go to Tools > Add-ons:

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can watch an introductory video about add-ons in Firefox. Firefox has a huge list of add-ons.

In Google Chrome, you would go to Window > Extensions. This will show you a window with your current extensions that are installed. You can go to the bottom of this list, and choose “Get More Extensions”. You’ll then be taken to the Google App Store, which is Google’s way of adding extra functionality onto Chrome.

As the Google App Store covers all kinds of things (such as Web Apps), be sure to select “Extensions” in the left hand menu. From here you can pick and choose from hundreds of extensions.

For Safari, you have to go Safari > Preferences and choose the Extensions tab. You can click on the “Get Extensions” button, and be taken to the Safari Extensions page.

Again, you can browse Extensions, and install any that you find useful.

So what’s the point? 

A few of my students miss the point with extensions. With the exuberance of youth, they tend to throw every extension known to the world into their browsers. The idea of extensions is to extend the use of a browser, and we would hope this achieves a little efficiency along the way.

What I love about extensions is how I can do something without having to leave what I’m currently doing. Take Chrome’s Springpad extension. I can click on it, clip a page that I’m looking at, put it into a notebook, and add a note all without leaving the webpage I’m on. Another extension let’s me check the weather with just a click of a mouse – and again without leaving the page I’m on.

It’s

I went to my Applications folder and right clicked on Google Chrome, and chose “Get Info”

As you can see above, my Google Chrome App has ballooned to over a gigabyte in size. No matter how much I love Google Chrome, this is not an acceptable use of my hard drive!

The solution was to again right click on my Google Chrome app, and this time select “Show Package Contents”.

This will open up a folder showing you what the App itself contains. Check inside the Contents folder and you will see something similar to this:

As you can clearly see, in a folder called Versions, there exists all the old versions of Chrome going back to January. Each one is taking over 100MB of disk space, and they are just sitting there taking up space. I simply selected all the versions except the most recent one and moved them to the Trash. The result? See for yourself:

You can of course switch off the updates in Chrome, which wouldn’t do you any favours as Google are quick patch security holes and risks. You can of course just trash the Google Chrome app, and re-download a fresh copy.