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Domain: wincent.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to wincent.com.

Comments · 11

  1. Re:Haven't upgraded... by qengho · · Score: 1 · on Inside Safari 3.2's Anti-Phishing Feature

    Every time apple upgrades Safari, they disable my brilliant adblocker, Pithhelmet

    Input Managers Are Evil. Try a proxy like Privoxy or GlimmerBlock instead.

  2. Re:My keynote thoughts so far... by mrxak · · Score: 1 · on Mac Pro, Mac OS X Virtual Desktops Announced at WWDC

    You should try out Synergy. You can control iTunes from your menubar or the keyboard, among other things. It's shareware, so you can try before you buy, but it's pretty cheap for something that you'll probably find yourself using literally all the time.

  3. Re:Too much Player! by swissfondue · · Score: 1 · on Windows Vista Build 5231 Review

    Use Synergy for Mac 10.x to give you iTunes play buttons and playlists in the top menu bar. What could take up less space than this and still be functional? Synergy can even show you the song information in a programmable pop-up if so desired.

  4. Re:an obvious flame inducing topic... by Smurf · · Score: 1 · on PC Competition for the Mac mini?
    First, all the Mac users out there seem to praise the user interface, and say that they can not find a single flaw in it, and then proceed to tweak the heck out of it by a gazillion third party programs.

    Hmmm.... let me tell you my story, which is of course anecdotical and may not apply to you, but anyway...

    I used to work rather extensively with Linux boxes in a company I used to work for. When the boxes were powerful enough (some were old boxes that we rescued for simple specific tasks), I used KDE on them. When I got my Powerbook, one of the things that I immediately missed were the virtual desktops that the KDE WM (and many lighter ones) had.

    So, when Desktop Manager was declared "mature enough" I installed it. It rocked! It worked basically just as I expected it to. I was in heaven. The extremely cool transitions were the icing on the cake. Though they are unnecessary eye candy (and can be turned off), they are real eye openers.

    Two or three weeks later I realized that I wasn't really using the virtual desktops. In fact, I was occasionally annoyed by not having a particular window in my current v.d. A couple of days later, I uninstalled Desktop Manager altogether.

    That same has happened with literally dozens of UI utilities: I instal them and some time later (usually less than two days) I throw them away. I even like many of them, but in the end I simply don't find them useful.

    Nowadays, the only 3rd party UI utility I have installed and actually use is WinSwitch, which replaces the name of the user with his "picture" for fast user switching, and that's only because I wanted to save some space in the menu bar.
  5. Re:Mac audio players by wibs · · Score: 2, Informative · on The Real Story of Audion

    I used to have the same complaints about iTunes. Unfortunately, if you want to play AAC-encoded music, you're pretty much stuck. So I finally gave up trying to find an alternative and now just use software such as Synergy to give me system-wide hotkeys, a little transparent info window, and a bunch of other stuff like control buttons in the menubar. It's pretty nifty all by itself, but there's no shortage of cool little shareware and freeware apps to get more bang for your buck with iTunes. Just look around MacUpdate a bit, you'll find something you like.

  6. Re:At least some of these programs are pretty triv by zaren · · Score: 0, Troll · on Independent Developers Fight Piracy & Lose

    Um, I don't know what you're smoking, but Synergy is a helluva lot more than "a single panel with three buttons".

    Sure, it's got those butttons - in the menu bar, so you can have access to iTunes at any time, from any application. It ALSO allows you to control those buttons directly from the keyboard by any key combination of your choosing. It ALSO generates a nice little floating window with info about the song that's playing, including title, artist, artwork... and all this once again is totally customizable by the user. (There's also foofah about dozens of customizable skins, but that's not a concern for me.)

    There is also NOTHING on the Synergy main page stating that he's abandoned the project; in fact, he just released version 1.3 last week. He suggested on a news page that he MIGHT give it up if the jackass pirates keep it up, but I've certainly gotten nothing off of the Synergy mailing list (good way for paying customers like myself to get news about updates and bug fixes) to indicate that Synergy has been abandoned.

    If this program is so simple, let's see YOU write a clone of it in a Saturday afternoon.

  7. Re:At least some of these programs are pretty triv by zaren · · Score: 0, Troll · on Independent Developers Fight Piracy & Lose

    Um, I don't know what you're smoking, but Synergy is a helluva lot more than "a single panel with three buttons".

    Sure, it's got those butttons - in the menu bar, so you can have access to iTunes at any time, from any application. It ALSO allows you to control those buttons directly from the keyboard by any key combination of your choosing. It ALSO generates a nice little floating window with info about the song that's playing, including title, artist, artwork... and all this once again is totally customizable by the user. (There's also foofah about dozens of customizable skins, but that's not a concern for me.)

    There is also NOTHING on the Synergy main page stating that he's abandoned the project; in fact, he just released version 1.3 last week. He suggested on a news page that he MIGHT give it up if the jackass pirates keep it up, but I've certainly gotten nothing off of the Synergy mailing list (good way for paying customers like myself to get news about updates and bug fixes) to indicate that Synergy has been abandoned.

    If this program is so simple, let's see YOU write a clone of it in a Saturday afternoon.

  8. Re:At least some of these programs are pretty triv by zaren · · Score: 0, Troll · on Independent Developers Fight Piracy & Lose

    Um, I don't know what you're smoking, but Synergy is a helluva lot more than "a single panel with three buttons".

    Sure, it's got those butttons - in the menu bar, so you can have access to iTunes at any time, from any application. It ALSO allows you to control those buttons directly from the keyboard by any key combination of your choosing. It ALSO generates a nice little floating window with info about the song that's playing, including title, artist, artwork... and all this once again is totally customizable by the user. (There's also foofah about dozens of customizable skins, but that's not a concern for me.)

    There is also NOTHING on the Synergy main page stating that he's abandoned the project; in fact, he just released version 1.3 last week. He suggested on a news page that he MIGHT give it up if the jackass pirates keep it up, but I've certainly gotten nothing off of the Synergy mailing list (good way for paying customers like myself to get news about updates and bug fixes) to indicate that Synergy has been abandoned.

    If this program is so simple, let's see YOU write a clone of it in a Saturday afternoon.

  9. At least some of these programs are pretty trivial by Saucepan · · Score: 1 · on Independent Developers Fight Piracy & Lose
    It's always annoyed me that, at least outside the Unix world, it appears to be the cultural norm to do commercial or shareware releases of trivial bits of code I'd think twice about even signing my name to.

    The Synergy developer's plight was moving when I read it: pirates have reverse engineered the license manager he is using and can generate things like 100 seat licenses at will. As a result the developer has abandoned the product.

    But when I clicked through to see what Synergy actually was my sympathy evaporated. The damned thing is a single panel with three buttons on it, which can play/pause/rewind iTunes. The license enforcement code alone has to be more complex than the rest of it put together. And for this Saturday afternoon's worth of work the developer wants 5 Euros per copy.

  10. Re:A nice feature to have by quasipunk+guy · · Score: 3, Informative · on Apple Releases iTunes 4.6

    I recommend Synergy.

    It works very well and is cool looking to boot

  11. Re:How does the metadata get into the database? by chigaze · · Score: 1 · on 'Storage' to Replace Traditional Filesystems?

    Just to be the exception, I use the iTunes rating system extensively. When I have time I rate the songs as they are ripped otherwise I have a smart playlist that return only unrated songs. I also have playlists that return only songs rated 5, only songs rated over 4, only Blues songs over 4, etc.. When I'm listening to a particular mix if I feel the rating of a song needs to be adjusted I adjust it on the spot.

    The key to all this is an app called Synergy that allows me to map hotkeys for rating the currently playing songs, among other things. The ratings are applied as I listen and require no extra time on my part to apply.

    I think this would be the key to any metadata system: it has to be fairly transparent and has to be useful. I like listening to mixes and I've utilized the metadata in iTunes to facilitate that.