Recently I started using more and more sass in my workflow, but when I jumped on another workstation I had to go through the pain of setting up Ruby and Sass, etc. That is until I found Koala App. http://koala-app.com/
Its a click and drag GUI to all your favourite command line tools in one simple install-able package. Awesome!
So far I haven’t had any issues.
Lifehacker have a great round up several times a year with some great free software to use on every platform. This week Lifehacker released their Apps Pack for Linux.
Some of the apps are even Cross platform such as OpenOffice.org Firefox/Chrome, Thunderbird, Skype, VLC, Handbrake and GIMP
Check out the full article at Lifehacker
Picture: LifehackerSometimes it’s useful to leave a PC running while your not at it. It is sometimes also equally useful to be able to turn it off while not at it. Luckily their are several ways of doing this.
Lifehacker recently reviewed a program called Switch Off. Its a small application that allows you to shut down (or restart, log off, lock, start VPN connections, run custom scripts) your computer based on a variety of factors. Such as on a schedule, on CPU load, or even remotely though a web interface. Which is designed for mobile devices. If you setup the correct port forwarding you can shut down your computer from anywhere in the world. For more information check out the lifehacker page
For a simple or quick one off solution you can do a time based shutdown using a built in command on any Windows XP, vista, 7, Server 2003, Server 2008 with the shutdown command.
Just open a Run window (Start – Run or Windows Key + R) Type in:
shutdown -s -t [number of seconds] -f
(The -s is for shutdown, to restart use -r. The -f is to force all programs to shut down, works 99.9% of the time)
So to turn off your PC in 30 minutes you would use the following command:
shutdown -s -t 1800 -f
Some common Seconds to Minutes conversions are:
15 minutes – 900 seconds
30 minutes – 1800 seconds
45 minutes – 2700 seconds
60 minutes – 3600 seconds
120 minutes – 5400 seconds.
This shutdown command also works if you want to shutdown a computer after using Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). When you go to shutdown after using RDC you’ll notice disconnect rather than shutdown. By using this you can shutdown the remote server (or restart) without having to go the the physical machine.
More information on Switch Off or on LifeHacker
Today I noticed on our iPad here that the iBooks application had a pending update. A quick look at the change log revilved the following:
What’s New in Version 1.1
• In addition to iPad, iBooks is now available on any iPhone or iPod with iOS 4.
• Open and read PDF documents from Mail. PDF documents will be added to your library and appear on the PDF bookshelf. You can even search PDFs for words or phrases and bookmark your favorite pages.
• Take advantage of new ways to bookmark. In addition to highlighting a word or a passage, you can now also add notes or bookmark an entire page with the new page ribbon.
• Keep your bookmarks, notes, and your current page wirelessly in sync between iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with the new automatic bookmark syncing feature.
• See your book pages in a new font, called Georgia.
• Read your books on white or sepia colored pages.
• Choose left or fully justified text layout from Settings.
• Read pages with greater ease by increasing to even larger font sizes.
• Enjoy greater stability and better performance. (Source iBooks in the iTunes Store)
We personally hadn’texpereinced any stability issues with the first version, but then again we didn’t use it all that much, since it didn’t appear to have PDF support (For PDFs we have been using Stanza, which has also been updated with OS4 support).
Let us know in the comments how your find iBooks and if you are trying it out on an OS4 device.
Dying to watch some videos on your shiny new iPad? Well so was I…until I hit the file format wall.
The theory behind watching a video on an iPad is easy right, connect your iPad to your computer with iTunes, grab the video file and drag it into the movies section in iTunes and let it sync…Well apparently I’m wrong, because iTunes returned an error of:
Well now that’s annoying.
I was faced with two options: convert any video files that I wanted on my iPad, then copy them (hard way) or find a better way (easy way).
Well it turns out that the guys over at www.inmethod.com have a huge time saving solution for us: AirVideo (both free and paid versions)
How it works. (Short Version)
1) Install “Air Video Server” on the computer that has the videos that you want to watch, and configure the folder that the files are in.
2) Install the AirVideo app on the iPad (or iPhone)
3) Run the App, locate the server, find the file, press play and Enjoy.
How it works. (Extended version)
The Air Video server is a pretty graphical front end to the FFMpeg software that converts the video files on the fly, then streams it to the client app on the iPad/iPhone. If the file is already in the correct format all it needs to do is stream it. This works similar to how YouTube works.
The benefits:
The benefits of this solution is that you don’t have to waste time converting video files, then coping them onto your iPad before watching them. It’s snappy and it’s fast.
The downside to this method is that it only works within the local network of where the server is. (I’m pretty sure you could port forward your firewall/router to allow external access, but then there is the added cost of bandwidth)
The free version and the paid version are identical with their basic feature set, but the free version does have the limitation of only being able to show 3-5 files/folders from the server at a time. (Which can make finding that particular video hard, on the positive side it means that you can add some random spice into what you watch)
For more information check out the Air Video site: [Air Video] or in the iTunes App Store [Free] or [Paid]