As an addendum to my previous ” How to create a Quicksilver Web Search Trigger”, I came across this very useful tip in one of the comments. In Quicksilver, enable advanced features; now bring up “Current selection” in the first pane, and ” Search with Google” -  a service of Safari.app in the second pane and save it as a trigger by assigning it a shortcut key. Now one can highlight a piece of text and then search using Google by invoking the shortcut. Cool; thank you “hmelman”

AOL Radio — I know, I know, but little known fact: AOL Radio gives you a good selection of commercial-free XM satellite ratio stations with high quality sound, and you don’t need an XM subscription. Including the essential XM channel 40, Deep Tracks. Try their mac client and see for yourselves.

There has been a lot of viral marketing lately about the disc burning app ” Disco “  and I frankly fail to see what it’s all about. I purchased the app after it came out of public beta a short while ago. For 14$ I am almost starting to regret buying the app for it really has a long way to go before it has Toast for breakfast !

Here is a list of things that are whacky and is by no mean exhaustive.

- The custom UI distracts the user from figuring out what is where. I had a hell of a time figuring out how to name a disc.

- The UI asks you to insert a disc or drop files, but when you insert a non session disc it does not tell you that you cannot burn any more session to that disc, something that a disc burning app should do.

- There is no such thing as a primer or an explanation for what session are all about and what the three options when selected or unselected do to the disc that you burn. An absolute must as I would be annoyed by coasters.

- My first disc was burnt and the final message that came up on the app window was ” A coaster has been burnt “, no kidding. I was annoyed as hell. There was absolutely no detailed error message that told me what went wrong. I was burning this on a 20″ iMac and was not testing its sudden motion sensor.

- Imaging “DMG in ~ Desktop” - what the hell does that mean, and what are the other two options. What am I supposed to set them at?

- Disc types, what are they all about. I want to burn discs, audio, video and the like, not decide on what file formats to burn them in. I want Disco to figure it out, aka Toast.

- Can I choose an external drive?

- The whole smoke thing actually adds to the problem. Reading through the comments on the Disco blog, one gets the feeling that the beta users have been wanting a smoke machine rather than a disc burning app. It is nice that it can produce smoke but the disc burning issues have to be set right first.

- I would like a ” Test smoke ” button, so that I dont have to burn something just to see the cool smoke or fire or goo.

- Whats with the fixed burn speeds.

- Why does Disco not burn avi files to DVD format aka Toast?

- No progress indicator?

- Spandex, has a lot of things wrong with it. To cut a long story short, it doesnt seem to be working. I am unable to span large files. An explanation or an assessment of the files when dropped on Disco to tell me whether or not they can be spanned would be nice.

- Discography. Oh boy I love this. Its a great tool. Shame that it doesnt work. I have burnt 6 discs, but cannot look through the files. I tried typing  in the names of the files but nothing shows up. The developers have to fix this soon.

Way to go befor having Toast for breakfast.

Technorati Tags: Disco, OS X, burn, app

I have a full unregistered copy of Disco to give away. The serial number is unregistered. Kindly send me an email and pay the money into my paypal account to get the registration number. My email id can be found in the contact page of this blog.

Piclens for Safari is an awesome plugin. You have to use it to see how good it is. Once installed, it shows up as a small rectangle at the bottom left of the photo when browsing a page of photos such as on Flickr. Click the PicLens icon and then the magic begins. The photo is displayed full screen with some floating controls at the top and the bottom that displays what the next photo in the slideshow is and one can change the images with the arrow keys. It is truly great to browse through photo sites. One can get it here.

I recently bought an iMac core 2 Duo with a gig of Ram and a 256MB video card and I must say that computing has become an awful lot more pleasant. Not only does the speed increase help but the aesthetics are simply miles ahead of my previous machine.

The Zune has been uncovered, and many a pundit are playing up some of the oddest features ever seen in a media player and that is the Wifi sharing capability.

It is supposedly brings the mp3 player out of the pocket and into the realm of the social networking group, wherein people would Zune each other and discover new tracks and photos.

What I really dont get is the social networking part of it. On a social networking site the anonymity of the internet lets people live a double life and emboldens them to come out with their likes and dislikes, that they probably would not reveal to those sitting next to them. The Zune will let people discover others’ music and photos?? I am not sure how many people would willingly share their photos and music with a total stranger who in reality has to be within wifi distance, say on a train or a bus or even a park. Zuning does not assure the user the anonymity of the internet where such exchanges probably still hide your identity. And if the person you want to share the photos and music are that close then why dont they just lend them their iPod to have a look at!!

I updated the QS app today and discovered a new interface element that introduces a much wanted introduction to the app’s amazing features into the application interface itself. It also has a small inbuilt browser interface that takes you to the Blacktree.com website and takes you through stuff like tips and tricks in using QS. Screenshot below.

Technorati Tags: Apple, quicksilver, interface, tips, tutorial

Another iTunes competitior falls flat on the face when competiting with Apple’s store cum music player combo. Read the review here. It supposedly does a worse job than the other players in the field such as Yahoo and Napster!

Technorati Tags: MTV, Urge, music, Apple, iTunes

videolan has put out an excellent update to the opensource cross platform media player VLC. It has macintel compatibility and many other nice usability improvements, not to mention the ability to play anything you throw at it. Easily my favourite media player. Get it here.

Technorati Tags: videolan, vlc, opensource, release, media, player