Launch Services Database, redux

Awhile back I posted about the Launch Services Database in OS X and how to reset this in Leopard. The problem is that sometimes it gets confused, and certain apps such as parallels do not help this at all. Parallels is a huge offender at whacking this out, regardless of if you have Smart App Select enabled or not.

The command line way is an excellent and free way of doing this, and if you don’t ever use your command line, you should start. It’s never a bad thing to learn a little about unix operating systems. Just don’t blame me if you hose up your system, please. But if you happen to own Cocktail, as I do, you can also use that application to do it. It’s even got an Automator action it installs for doing this. Below i’ll show you both methods of using Cocktail to reset the launch services database.

Note: please read the end of this post for an interesting counterpoint regarding Cocktail.

The automator way. Fire up automator using spotlight to search for automator. Yes, in Leopard spotlight really can be used this way, thanks to its speed and its method of highlighting app matches for you.

Find the action with the cocktail icon and the name “Rebuild Launch Services Database.” (obviously you won’t have it if you don’t have cocktail installed). it’s easiest to find if you’ve first clicked on “Utilities” in the left “Library” pane. Run it.

Really there’s no benefit in this method over the following, except that with an automator action available, you can include this action in some other automator script of your own, if you want. It’s there for the using.

The Cocktail way. Launch Cocktail directly. It comes up with the following window.

Click the “System” icon and then the “Databases” tab to see the following.

Without changing any of the default options, just click “Rebuild” and enjoy.

Ok, now some words about cocktail. When trying to remember where the web site was, I cam across this article by the guys at Rixstep which had some pretty unkind things to say about Cocktail. A couple things to bear in mind: they make a competing product, apparently, called “Clix,” and they start off by disparaging the neighborhood that the developer of Cocktail lives in. Just keep that in mind as you ponder motivation.

Motivation aside, they raise some issues which should be looked at. Some of them are related to security, some of them are related to competency and wasted disk space, and some of them are related to complaints about the way the author of Cocktail overwrote a previous free version with an updated, trial version of a for pay version of the product without informing people first.

Anyway, read the article. I’ve been poking around in the package contents and the command line and so far I haven’t found anything in this article that I can say is wrong, but I haven’t investigated very far yet. It’s worth of note that a lot of prominent Mac magazines/sites seem to recommend Cocktail, but of course that in and of itself doesn’t mean that Cocktail doesn’t have some issues. I’m not sure. I’ll update you if I have time to really poke at this thing some more.

Talk To Me, Goose

Looks like the Mac will finally not be a FAR, far distant second to windows in terms of voice recognition/dictation apps. MacSpeech Dictate is going to replace iListen, and is going to finally use the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine, which is used in the Windows app of that name and is universally recognized as the best consumer speech recognition software available on any platform.

This is going to be great for me, I have a lot of tendonitis issues in my right hand and my hands hurt after using a lot of different keyboard types at work all day. While my new HP laptop at work is a lot better than the old ThinkPad I was using, it’s still far behind my Macbook Pro in ergonomic comfort. So maybe I can give myself a break here and there that will be just enough to ease some of the pain.

I Tell You, iShowU !

Awhile ago, I promised to talk about stuff no one cares about, and I’m gonna fulfill that promise for you, the non-reader. Non-reader? That’s right, i know none of you are reading anyway. But if you are, please don’t tell me. Right now the pressure level here is at zero. I kinda like it that way.

One of the things I really like about the Mac is the amount of ease in making media on this platform. For podcasting, there’s things like Ubercaster and GarageBand, for grabbing any kind of sound like skype conversations, online radio, iTunes music, any other sound on your Mac, there’s Audio Hijack Pro and Wiretap Studio. And for doing video capture, there’s excellent options such as Snapz Pro X and iShowU. Let’s look at iShowU, which has quickly become my favorite video capture app on the mac.

Running iShowU brings up the following application window.

On the left is a “presets” pane, so you can easily select a specific group of settings to use for your video. Anytime you tweak any of the settings in a preset, the new settings are saved automatically, so be aware. You can also add new presets and put your own settings in.

Then in the larger pane, there’s detailed options for the audio, video, and some miscellaneous UI settings. This is where you’ll determine what sound sources to grab, what the video size and quality and capture area will be, as well as encoding method, etc, and then whether or not to show the cursor, show capture guides, follow the mouse (can cause nausea, so be careful), etc.

To set up the record area, you can click “Edit Recording Area” at the bottom of the screen, or do a command-shift-3 instead. You can then resize and position the recording area as shown here.

Even here, there’s some helpful preset shortcuts. Press command-4 to go full screen size, and then command-3 down to command-1 for 1/2 size, 1/4 size, and 1/8 size. Or just use the area select rectangles edge handles and resize it to whatever you want. Move it around as you would any other area selection tool, and hit return when done to save the recording area settings.

Okay, well that’s all wonderful, but how do you record? Well, you can either use the record button on the iShowU window, or you can hide it and start recording with command-a. Command-p pauses and resumes, command-c lets you set the area again, and command-t stops the recording. The keyboard shortcuts can be found in the iShowU preferences.

iShowU has a menubar icon when running that lets you choose these things also, but more importantly it has a red flashing square when you are recording, and red lines when you are paused, so you always know what state of capture are you in or not in. It’s mildly annoying to get everything set up and record for 20 minutes without actually starting the recording. Ahem.

I like iShowU for its flexibility, the ability to pause, the quick ’save as you go’ method, and other good stuff. This does mean that you can’t change the video or audio settings after the recording – you’re stuck with whatever you chose beforehand – but that’s fine for most uses and the program works very well in all cases.

Here’s a demo clip I made on creating encrypted dmg files (see my earlier blog post) using iShowU. Please note that it looks kind of fuzzy, and that’s partially due to YouTube’s compression, and partially because I should have used less recording area for what I was doing. When YouTube shrinks it down, it gets hard to see stuff.

You can download a demo of the product here, and I recommend doing so. BTW, this works great under leopard.

Same As It Ever Was

That’s what people want, and understand – same as it ever was. They don’t grasp changes or see reasons behind stats that don’t fit their predetermined views. I’m no exception, in a lot of cases. Obviously, individual people don’t have this problem in ALL cases. But as a rule, the majority of people exhibit this tendency often.

Two great cases in point: the claims that the ipod market is shriveling up and dying, and the amazement that Apple didn’t announce a blue-ray product at Macworld.

The iPod is falling. Well, sure. Finally iPod sales slowed to the point where there was less year to year growth in iPod sales than ever. This was alarming to a lot of analysts who predict the iPod market is saturated, and that from now on, there will be negative growth for iPod sales. See the Cult of Mac blog for an example of such a viewpoint.

The problem with this theory is that everyone’s forgetting that the iPhone is an exceptional iPod in addition to a phone, and Apple’s selling a lot of those. So, you could argue that iPod sales aren’t down quite as much as they appear to be. Just that some of the iPhone buyers were in the market for both a new phone AND a new iPod.

Where’s my shiny disc? Ok, a LOT of Mac pundits are confused over this one. No blue-ray product? But then they turn around and praise the improvements to Apple TV, the fact Apple now has movie rentals, and state they wish Apple would release the TV programs as rentals as well. What’s the common denominator with all of those products and all of the music selling in iTunes now? Ummm… That’s right. No disc. Of any kind. You think Apple’s in favor of ANY kind of shiny physical media now? I say they are going to try to kill it off the same way they looked at the floppy drive a number of years ago and said “Why? Get that ancient crap out of our computers!” And frankly, I’m all in favor of it.

Send the shiny objects off to meet bigfoot and elvis, just please rid us of stupid format wars. It’s a carrying device, people. And you’re worried about the format. Blech.

No Such Thing As a Free Read?

In this blog post on the Rogue Amoeba site, Paul posts about the recent move on the part of Newsgator in making NetNewsWire a free product.

Paul’s concern seems to be that this is a bad move for software developers, and that it’s going to make it hard for people to keep charging money for their products. I disagree, and I further assert that Newsgator’s not the competition here, Google Reader is. I’m not one to prefer online apps to offline ones, generally, but when I started using Google Reader, I realized anyone trying to make a living off desktop RSS clients is doomed. Now, I don’t disagree that the desktop RSS client market is doomed, but it’s not going to affect desktop software in general. I’d still far rather use MarsEdit to write blog posts with and use Flickr Uploader to work with getting my pictures to flickr. And forget about ever replacing iMovie or iTunes or TextMate, or any number of other client applications, with web versions. I don’t see it happening.

I think Paul is wrong about how many people use online RSS aggregators, I think it’s far higher than he thinks. And I think Google Reader is one Google App that actually makes sense. RSS Aggregation is one app that does make sense on the web. After all… you’re just reading articles that are generally a series of links or that you have to load the blog entry in a browser to read the full thing anyway. It’s built into the internet – why not the aggregators as well?

What are your thoughts? Do you think making a “probably already doomed but didn’t know it yet” product category like desktop RSS readers have to deal with someone giving theirs away was a bad thing? Or do you think the ability of anyone to keep selling these was in doubt for the future, as I do?

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internet, rss, software

iFail

Ok, I failed miserably to cover the Christmas gift idea thingy in this blog after starting it… so hate me. In the meantime, though, check out this very interesting article on the iPhone on Wired’s web site (nice site redesign, btw, guys).

Also upcoming, I’m going to compare and contrast a couple software products that are good for doing video capture on the Mac, iShowU and Snapz Pro X. Snapz Pro X is also a full featured screen capture program for still captures too.

In the meantime, go listen to some Fresh Ubuntu, and/or some Mac Geek Gab. Happy, happy, joy joy.

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Stock Your Stuffing… err.. Stuff Your Stocking!

Stocking some stuffing is never a bad idea, but stuffing the stocking is where it’s at. “Yeah, Baby!” So taking a cue from my old podcast buddy Peter Nikolaidis, I’m gonna make a list of stuff you might want to get a Mac-nutty loved one for Christmas, or … screw it, just buy all this stuff for yourself. You know no one else is gonna do it for you.

PS. I’m really tired. I’m gonna start this list and work on it as I have time. It’s not gonna be complete right off, mmmmkay?

1. Leopard

Maybe you haven’t upgraded yet.. probably because you’re a coward, right? No? Oh, well. Whatever the reason, this is a great new version of OS X. It’s not earth-shattering, but all the new features added up make for an enhanced experience over Tiger. Spotlight improvements ALONE make this worth the cost.

2. Big Ass Hard Drive

Find a well-rated external hard drive because you need it for backups, media creation, and whatever else floats your boat. If you start making videos on the ‘puter, you may as well just toss your tiny hard drive out the window. And if you’ve updated to Leopard and are FINALLY doing backups of your hard drive (which you should have been doing anyway) thanks to the bonehead simplicity of Time Machine, you really do need another external hard drive.

3. iPod Touch

Wait just a gosh darn minute, you say. The iPod Touch is really cool but it’s not a Mac accessory! First of all, where’d I say this was Mac accessories only, and secondly, I think it actually is, considering how it can be utilized. The touchscreen interface has its limitations in terms of convenience while driving, etc, but this is the best iPod ever made. Bar none.

Ok.. i just wanted to get this post up there since it’ll be AFTER Christmas when I finish it. So.. uh.. deal with it. Maybe you’re a slacker like I am and it won’t matter.

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computers

Leopard LaunchServices Database – How do I rebuild it?

The LaunchServices database, among other things, associates file types with the apps used to open them. If you right-click on a file and choose “open witih”, this database determines what options show up. Yay! Unfortunately sometimes it gets hosed.. under Tiger i used to get a lot of duplicate entries or whatever.

My problem now is due to Parallels and its SmartSelect feature. it allows you to have OS X show you options for Windows or OS X apps to open files with – something I really didn’t want. I do not WANT visual studio even KNOWN about by the leopard LaunchServices database, for example. Or IE 7. Or notepad. Or whatever. Unfortunately for Parallels (and me), disabling this did not rebuild my launchservices db. But eventually I got to the point of clean up where the following terminal command to rebuild the launchservices db did the trick (note: this needs to be all one online with no returns):

Update: Joe points out in the comments he found my path to the command didn’t work. I checked on the Apple site and also in my own terminal window, and here’s the command with the path I see to lsregister (for Leopard, different for Tiger):

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A
/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support
/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Again, all on one line with no spaces except where obvious in the command above.

I’m really only putting this here so I can easily find it again, but I hope it benefits a lot of you. Hehe.

PS. The Tiger way of doing this is detailed here.

And btw, I’ve now switched to VMWare Fusion.

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how-to, leopard

Lost in Space(s)

I’ve heard a couple people mention they wish you could have a different background set for each “space” in Apple’s spaces feature in OS X 10.5 so that you could tell what space you were in at all times. While this would be great, here’s another way to never be lost in space(s).

Open the Expose & Spaces preference pane in System Preferences and make sure the “Show Spaces in Menu Bar” option is enabled.

Now look at the menu bar – you’ll see a little divided square icon with a number in it. The number is the number of the space you are currently in, and it changes as you switch spaces.

In addition, you can switch spaces directly though the drop down menu when you click this icon, and also launch the expose and spaces preference pane from here.

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computers, how-to, leopard

Easy OS X Encryption

Ok, this is a really basic tip, but, as a switcher in the past couple years, there’s still a lot I haven’t learned, especially things that don’t fall in my personal “need” realm. When my dad asked me about encrypting stuff on his new Macbook Pro, I wasn’t sure how to natively do it in OS X. Well, now I know.

1. Open Disk Utility. Here I’m launching it with Leopard’s hugely improved Spotlight.

2. While in Disk Utility, go to File -> New – > Blank Disk Image to create a dmg.

3. In “Save As”, put the name you want the dmg filename to be. For Example, in this case the filename would be Personal Secrets.dmg.

4. For Volume Name, put what you want the dmg to show when it’s mounted.

5. For encryption, choose 128-bit AES.

6. Leave Volume Format, Partitions, and Image Format at the defaults. Volume Size set according to needs.

Click “Create”.

Enter a password for the dmg file, and do NOT have “remember password in my keychain” enabled. Remember, you are trying to keep people out.

The new dmg file will be mounted. Also it will be wherever you told it to be created.

After the first time, you’ll be prompted for your password to open the dmg. Then just move files in as you want. Since it’s a disk image, your files will be copied in unless you hold the command key while you drag them in. You don’t want to leave originals unencrypted on the hard drive elsewhere – presumably you are encrypting them for a reason. Again, don’t check any boxes that let you save the password into your keychain.

And that’s it – a very basic function but one that I wasn’t aware of how worked the first time my dad asked me to help him figure out how to encrypt some business files. Have fun!

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computers, how-to, security, software