I don’t know if this is due to the fact that I have tons of photos in the iPhone and in the iPhoto, or that this is the 4th iPhone synchronizing with iPhoto or that we are synchronizing 2 iPhones…

What I know is that I have duplicates and I could not find an easy way to get rid of them…

I use iPhoto on my macbook to sync my iPhones photos. The iPhone camera has become my main camera.

My nikon d300 I sync with a PC (multimedia) running windows 7 and picasa (more than 250Gb of photos).

iPhoto duplicates: Solution

I found and bought this program: Duplicate Annihilator.

Basically what it does is to identify the duplicate photos and add a comment saying that it is a duplicate. They you can search them and bin them. Pretty straight forward. It has many options but the default worked fine for me.

The problem is that the thumbnails can be duplicated too, and even if they have another program for that, if you start iPhoto holding Command Key+Option, then you have the option of rebuilding thumbnails.

The features of the Duplicate Annihilator are:

• Easily find and annihilate duplicates created internally by iPhoto or during import.
• Compare images using different algorithms to detect and understand differences.
• Detect duplicates using effective algorithms using electronic checksums like MD5 and CRC32.
• Detect duplicates by using file specific meta data such as filename, dimensions, filesize, Exif creation date or date of creation.
• Delete duplicates upon detection or mark them with a keyword to make them easily found using iPhoto features like search or smart folders.
• Makes your iPhoto slimmer and faster.
• Only uses standard Apple features and API’s. No hacking nor tampering with iPhoto system files.
• Free updates.

Sparrow is in beta (v6) and it is free. It works with Google and Google apps, and the advantages that has over Mac Mail is that you can archive and see labels, pretty much like you see it in the web, with conversations, etc….

It is beautiful, nicely design and it works fine. Every day there are more Google mail users using mac, and this is the perfect client for them.

I am one of those. I use mail from mac with 3 accounts (all google apps: norai.net, tokao.com and torres.cc).

I also have Outlook 2011 for work (ifrc.org) which is great for exchange and having corporate LDAP and Pushed calendar and email.

I

• Most of the inputs will be on my mobile device: now an iPhone, but in the future probably android.
• That it can be done offline on my phone when I am roaming, it is synchronized.
• Synchronization is done to:
  • Desktop client (Mac mainly, but PC too): so not a stand alone phone program
  • Cloud (using specific service or using Google docs or Evernote) – ideally a free cloud service that would sync mobile with desktop clients
  • Syncs due date tasks with my google calendar and iCal (using busyCal in mac it does not matter as I use google calendar). Most of the solutions offer due dates for the todos but in their own calendars… but I already have a calendar, I don’t want to use theirs.
• It is simple: todos, with a note, due dates, recurring todos and tagging. I don’t need fancy priorities, focus areas and so.
• That can manage projects which are basically an indented todo.

I have tested a wide variaty of iPhone apps, web apps and desktop apps, and believe it or not, I did not find the perfect solution…

Scenario: I use now Google apps: my domain with google. Email, Calendars, Docs and tasks. I have an iPhone connecting with Google apps using Exchange.

I have a Macbook pro (main computer) a windows XP laptop for travel, and a windows 7 computer. At work I have a PC (so I live in a browser, chrome synchronizing bookmarks with xmarks).

In the past when I started (just after reading Getting Things Done from David Allen) I decided to use an custom approach for managing my todos.

Reviews:

Things

From Cultured Code, it was the first GTD program I used. It is available for the Mac (not PC) the iPhone and now the iPad. You can sync all of them with the Mac using bonjour (wifi) which might not be available in your office.

I love the look and the way it works. It has a very clever way of tagging stuff and and filter stuff by tags. You can add due dates, recurring stuff and so. It was perfect except for one key thing… I could not access to my todo’s in my work place. No cloud, no PC no nothing.

This was the reason to leave it, but if they would have a free cloud way to access my tasks, even if they would not have a PC version, I would probably have stayed with them. In principle they are working on it, but I am not willing to pay for a service like this.

Pros: It is beautiful and both the desktop client and iPhone clients are great.

Simple and yet powerful thanks to the tagging, that if done intelligently removes the need of location based todos, and so. I click on shift command and T and I create a todo wherever I am. I am on an email a link is added to the notes part to that email, which is great (see right screenshot).

Also the todos can be synchronized to your iCal/mac tasks.

Cons: Just Mac and iOS. Sync over wifi (not all). No cloud, no PC, no web.

GeeTasks pro

When I moved my domains to Google Apps I though that I would stick to Google Tasks. Well I still do. They are very simple which is good. May be too simple. You can create lists and inside this lists add your tasks. You can indent them, add a due date (but not recurrent) and a note to them.

You can’t add tags and this would be good, so you can be disciplined and create tags for location, responsibility, etc… like I do for Things or Evernote. I will write a post on how I organize my tags sometime this week.

You can create todos from email using the web client and it creates a stupid Tasks calendar that cannot be syncronized with anything and that only shows the due dates task of the list you have opened, so pretty useless.

Pros: As most of the input I do it using my iPhone I found that GeeTasks pro, and after testing the rest of what you have below, I am still using this… I have it offline in my iPhone, and syncs when online, it is simple and very well integrated with my mail client. I can create todos from my mail (see right screenshot) and in a way there is a calendar with my tasks (not ideal though because I cannot see it from my iCal).

Cons: No tags, no recurrent tasks, no desktop client and no good integration with my iCal or even google cal. No API basically. Now I use fluid which is sort of dedicated browser to my tasks, but if I am offline on my mac, that’s it…

I Kept looking for other solutions….

Well I wanted to test the rest of Todo’s to see if there was something better. First I though thought there was different ways to have the sync and web access:

• A product with their own site
• Linking to existing cloud services, in particular Evernote (which I am a heavy user) and Google Docs
• Linking to ToDos services with open APIs such as Toodledo and Remember the Milk.

Remember the Milk

Remember the milk might be one of the most well know online todo managers. It is very good and powerful and free. You can pay $25 a year if you wish to have an add free version.

The iPhone app is also free. It is full of features: priorities, due dates, repeat, estimate times, tags, location, URL… You can sort by Today, Tomorrow, This week, or lists (Inbox, personal, work1, etc…)

It is a very good product. In the web you can share, have your list of contacts and subscribe to iCal, which is great.

Pros: free, great web interface, rich of features, iPhone app. I love the fact that I can subscribe in my calendar, that they have add ons for firefox and chrome and google to see the task within your gmail.

Cons: design is not like Things, not simple and very ugly. Again, there is no desktop (sure you can do it with fluid). Too complete for me. I don’t need location, sharing, and so many things. I want something simple.

Toodledo

Toodledo is similar to Remeber the milk, but other apps use it as a back end thanks to their API.

They have a free version (that does not allow you to have subtasks…) and two paid ones for $15 ad $30 which allow you to add subtasks, have collaboration, stats, location (more than 5), history (you loose if you are on the free one)… they compare themselves with other products here.

Other apps use it in a very smart (but dirty way) so you can have (in the App) projects, and subtasks, by inserting a header in the notes, that surely you cannot do if you go the other way around (using the web as input).

The web interface is crowded with tons of features with an ugly UI. It is very powerful, even more than Remember the Milk, but I don’t need HOT lists Location and so many other things… It is not GTD friendly.

The iPhone app is free and it is also complicated, full of features. Take a look:

Pros: Rich on features. There are other iPhone apps using it as a backend, like Todo iPhone app. It is the best and most powerful backbone for managing apps with more elaborated iphone and ipad apps (theirs are very ugly). A great feature is that you can create a webcal feed that you can import in your ical or google calendar and another one the fact that you can have a secret email address so you send emails directly to feed toodledo, or to have a gmail gadget to see your toodledo in your gmail, something you can only do with an online service like this…

Cons: The free version has a lot of limitations. Again no desktop client. I did not see a link to subscribe in my calendar. The web design is really ugly and cluttered.

TouchTodo

Well, while looking for the perfect todo, I found ToucTodo, and I tested it too. Why? They have the best sync with google calendar out there.

This one could have been a winner for me. I had 2 parts: todos and projects. You can sync with google calendars (you select with which calendar) you can back it up to google apps as an excel sheet, and restore from an excel sheet, so I could have used Google apps to enter data at work.

Then I realized that the projects are not backed up and that the todos that have not a due date are not in the calendar (sure!) so they are not online, unless you export it to this xls in google docs, and that it is not a project…

So it looked great, but…

Pros: Great synchronization with google calendar and google docs. Great back up and restore option to your Google account. Simple: todos, and projects. Today, tomorrow, next and someday. You can add a note, reminders, due dates, repeat and level of importance (focus they call it).

Cons: If I want to input stuff from my PC, there is no desktop app, and via web I could do it in the excel thing in google docs, but it is not great. For the events that have no due date, they are not in the calendar or todos, which is understandable but not acceptable to me.

Awesome Note

The idea of using Evernote as the back end for my todos and notes was very appealing. I am a heavy user of Evernote, and I love it.

Then I found out that Evernote it is not ready for that. I had to test two products to get to this conclusion.

The first one was awesome note or aNote as they call themselves.

I have to say that is one of the most awesome todos I have tested, and I loved it. Again there are reasons why I chose not to go on with them. Let’s see:

It can back up your notes to Evernote and or Google Docs, and it does it great. You have to select a default to do so and not do it by default to both which is a petty. The iPhone GUI is awesome. Really.

aNote has both, notes and Todos. By default you create notes, then you can click on the todo button and you create this note as a todo. So far so good. You can add a due date, but you can not add a recurrent one. This is not good for a task manager… You can select different backgrounds, and ways to filter your views. All nice. Also sort by dates, etc… I really like it. I would say that visually is the one I like the most. You can add photos and even maps (maps are not sync to evernote or google docs).

Now, how it syncs with Evernote? It creates a set of notebooks like [aNote] name of your list, like [aNote] Inobox or [aNote].No Folder for those that are Notes not linked to any folder.

The folders you can create: inbox, next, someday… and they will all be folders in your Evernote.

Each note/todo will be an entry in your evernote. You will not distinguish what is what, and here the problem with evernote, you will see if it has a due date, priority (that the program can manage) or whatever. Here was when I realized that both Evernote and Google Docs are not good enough for backing up your todos. They simply cannot back up your due dates, recurrent appointments priorities and so.

How does it sync with Google Docs? It creates a folder called Awesome Notes, and inside this folder subfolders with the different folders (inbox,etc…) and inside each of these folder a document for every single todo/note. Again, nothing for dates, priorities and so. Not the fault of aNotes, but the backend.

Pros: Beautiful design. Easy and very very flexible. Notes can be converted into todos, add due time, add photos, maps, create a journal if you wish. It has quick note entry. It syncs with evernote and google docs.

Cons: Not a problem of aNotes but a problem of the support for backing up. If I want to add stuff from my office laptop, I can use google docs or evernote, but I will not be able to add a due date. You cannot, in any case, add recurrent appointments. No desktop client, sure, apart from Evernote with the limitations I mentioned. Personally I don’t like that I have to have specific notebooks in Evernote (that I can’t rename).

Egretlist

Continuing with Evernote sync, the one to try was Egretlist. Like Awesome note, a beautifully designed app.

Egretlist is more elegant in the way it syncs with Evernote. It does not create a set of new notebooks, it is more clever and if you get use to it, because it is not an easy app, it can work like charm. The learning curve is steep though.

The way it works is that is it scans all your entries in Evernote and those which have a checkbox in it, it is added to the iPhone app. Smart eh?

So if in your already existing notebook inbox you create a new note with a checkbox it will be a todo in egretlist. In addition to this it will use all your tags seamlessly.

So here in the screenshots you can the categories are just tags. Whenever I tag something with next (I define which ones are the relevant for egretlist), it appears under categories. If a list has a star it will also appear under lists (not seen here). Then a list of the notebooks with checklists in the notes. In this cases I moved the notes to the [aNotes] notebooks (previous app) but it looks like in the third screenshot.

Pros: I really wanted this to be the one. It has a great way of using evernote, great with tags, taking the notes with checkboxes… really smart. Great looking app. You can add images, voice notes, videos, and decide which note to send to a specific task the calendar (ical).

Cons: very hard to understand at the beginning. It does not support recurrent appointments or even sorting the tasks in any way, what make it unusable for some of us… but again, this is Evernote’s fault, due dates and so cannot be seen in Evernote, and therefore not entered if you don’t have the iPhone with you. Petty because this could have been the winner for me as I said.

After testing this I realized that Evernote, as it is now, will not work for me for todos. I need to feed my task from the phone and from the web and if evernote cannot create due dates, etc.. then that’s it.

Todo

This is probably one of the most known and popular iPhone todo apps. I guess the reason why is because the got the TODO name for the app… and this is exacly what you search in the iTunes store.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a very good app from appigo.

It can syncronize with Toodledo but if you are using the free account (from Toodledo) no subtasks…

As a todo app is great, it syncs also with iCal (when I say iCal I also mean Outlook). You can tag stuff and search by tags. In the home screen you clearly see those task due by today, tomorrow, Next week and at the end those with no due date. You can star and prioritize tasks. You can create lists, like shopping list and then subtasks, and add contexts (@home, work, etc…).

Pros: It does the job. You have lists (inbox, work, home), focus, priority, due date, repetition, … everything. It syncs with Toodledo so good if you need a web interface for easy entry. Again toodledo web is not very nice but it is functional. It can sync with your local calendars.

Cons: No desktop. I don’t quite like Toodledo and the free version is very limited compared to Remember the Milk. For me this is just one more ToDo app.

edit 29/9/2010: They have released a web version 15 days trial otherwise $19.99 (i don’t know if for a year). Is pretty beta, but a good step on the right direction.

Producteev

When I discovered Producteev I thought it was Things on the web and I was very excited. So beautiful and simple web client… I loved it and I decided to download the iPhone app (free).

Producteev is a collaborative tool. For free you get two users, but I guess the beauty of this product is for a team to work together in a sort of ticketing system more like a todo way.

I loved the interface and the fact that it is socially integrated. You can add/receive todos via google talk, email, etc… neat.

The problem for me was that it is thought for a group, and not for an individual. In the iPhone app you see who entered the task (me) and who has to do it (me again) which makes no sense when screen space is the iPhone is critical.

As you can see from the iPhone screenshots it is pretty much the same than any other todo, but with this team focus. You have stars, hot (I see this over and over… and I don’t quite understand, I rather order stuff myself and the ones on top of the list are more “hot” than the others…).

Pros: It has one of the best web interfaces out there. Beautiful and useful. A trillion way to input data (email, IM, etc…). Is team oriented.

Cons: the iPhone app is not that good looking. No desktop (offline) client. I did not like the fact of having creator and responsible if I am using this on my own. No recurrent appointments. You use workspaces for projects and labels are not transferred from one to another.

2Do

I tested a few more apps. One of them is 2Do. This one is also fancy and good looking. I has locations, syncs with toodledo, and can export to iCal (it uses its own calendar but using toodledo you can have an ical live). I did not mention but some of this apps, including this, you can back up the tasks, but being in the same wifi network, you go to the ip of your iPhone and download the file with the backup… not something you do everyday. I would rather have this transparent on the back towards and online service, like touchtodo.

Well, here you have locations, like this is where you are and this are the things to do here. Fancy but I am would be happy just by tagging that says home, work, supermarket and when I am in one of these places voila.

You can add audio, attachments, photos, location… very easily and intuitively. Those you can’t sync with Toodledo though.

Pros: Good looking app. Can sync with Toodledo, ical (outlook), has push, and a lot of features (location, attachments, voice…). Toodledo back end is powrful: you can feed it via email, create subtasks (pro account), have calendar sync. It is by far the best app for sync with Toodledo. I will play more with it.

Cons: No desktop but Toodledo has a lot of widgets. What I did not like is that you cannot sync with both, Toodledo and local sync using the program they have for PC and Mac. One or the other, so I choose Toodledo.

eTodo

eTodo is from BitAlpha and the design is awesome and beautiful. Simple. If you don’t need sync then consider this one.

It is very basic, yet it has most for the stuff.

When you add something it goes to your inbox. You collect everything there. Then you go to something in the Inbox and decide if you have to take action or put it into next or someday. Big icons. Nice way to see tasks details. You can back up in the web server way (accessing your iPhone ip). I has due dates, repeat, priorities, you can add notes and tags.

Pros: simple yet it does a lot. Nice icons and clear workflow.

Cons: no sync, no desktop, no projects, no ical.

Put things off

Put things off is again a very very simple app. Even simplier than the previous.

In this app you just add a thing to your inbox and  decide if you do it today or you put it off. Once it is done, it is on done. That’s it.

For some people it would be enough. Not for me.

EasyTask

I found this one by chance. It looks promising:Orion Belt has a nice desktop app for Mac and PC, and iPhone and iPad app… it syncs with ical and… a web based app! So in principle it has most of what I need.

The desktop version is $20 so pretty affordable. You have a trial period.

Here you have projects (home, work 1, etc…) context (@home, @office, @computer, @telephone…) and finally the categories: inbox, today, next, someday… so far so good.

So, you can sync like things using wifi with your iPhone and desktop app. In addition you have a Windows version and … and that is the best, an online version too: http://www.easytaskmanager.net/

Now, it is not perfect… the web version basically sucks. Very simple. With Safari and Chrome I was just able to view not to add new tasks. Not even edit. See the revision log.

Also EasyTask does not support tags which is pretty important for me.

Pros: GTD stile, with desktop apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad. The iPhone app is good, syncs with wifi to your computers and to the cloud. You can access your tasks via web but the web interface is in a very infant state. You cannot add or edit tasks. I guess you have to wait but others will catch up. The local app syncs with ical and it is pretty good.

Cons: No tagging. The web interface is only to view, not to edit or add tasks. You cannot create lists with sub tasks. For that you have to create a project and then add the tasks there.

Simple note

This is the last app I tested. It is not really good for todos, but it is very good for notes. For me there is no use, because now I can sync notes with iPhone and IMAP via google. I also use 1Password with secure notes, and Evernote mainly for everything, but this little app has a web version (very nice and easy to use) and desktop versions for Mac and Windows.

Pros: simple, nice.

Cons: too simple.

Conclusion

Well after an extensive testing no app or service is fulfilling my needs, so for me there is no clear winner.

All have their own strengths and weaknesses, but no clear winner.

I learnt that Evernote and Google apps are not good enough as a back end. That only a couple have desktop versions (Things, EasyTask), that few have a cloud sync (Toodledo, Remember the Milk, EasyTask, Google Task)…

I think EasyTask is promising but I miss tagging and sub tasks and the web interface is not good.

I love Things but there is no Windows version, but if the cloud version is as good as producteev it can be the winner for me.

If you want good integration with iCal (Outlook) it is better to have a desktop app.

If you don’t want to spend money and the iPhone+ web is good enough, the Remember the Milk is very good.

If you need a tool for your team to manage things, then Producteev is good.

In my case, I continue with GeeTask Pro and google Task, until something better comes, or Google decides to do something good about the Tasks… ideally Things if they don’t make me pay for the cloud thing…

In paralel I will play more with Toodledo as it looks like it is the winner and most apps connect to it. Maybe is just a question to get used to it…

I will write another post soon with further testing and to explain which is my solution and how I use it.

Edit 9 Jan 2012:

Finally part 2 of this post: http://tokao.com/2012/01/09/gtd-todos-task-managers-part-2/

This is a small tip that can be helpful for those buying stuff via internet.

When you are done with the transaction and you have the receipt on the screen, what do you normally do? Well in most cases you print it out, then you don’t know if the printer is on, if there is paper… then you don’t know where did you put it once it is printed… or in some cases you just ignore the scree because they will probably send you an email confirmation with the receipt or bill, so you can always go to

your email and look for it… and if you are lucky you find it.

Well, if you are on a mac when you are in the receipt page, you just click command+P, like when printing, and in the PDF button on the bottom left corner you will find an option called: Save PDF to Web Receipt Folder.

If you do click that a PDF will be created with the current screen (not just what you see, all of it!) with the title of the page. This in a Web Receipt folder in your Documents folder. Very very handy.

It is not something I use. I choose Save PDF to Evernote, where it is saved into my Evernote, where it is OCR so it becomes searcheble and it is also stored on the web, but if you don’t use evernote the Save to Web Receipt foder is a very good option.

First make sure that:

• If you have a Jailbroken iPhone 3GS with the OLD BOOTROM and you DID NOT use Spirit to jailbreak then you can create the ipsw with PwnageTool 4.0 and restore with your jailbroken recovery mode.
• If you have an iPhone 3GS with the NEW BOOTROM this is NOT supported by PwnageTool 4.01

This is what you have to do:

1. Download Official iPhone iOS 4 for iPhone 3GS here (official from Apple).
2. Download Pwnage Tool 4.01 from any of this locations:
   • http://www.iphone-storage.de/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
   • http://dl.finalgaming.de/dev-team/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
   • http://www.stimp.nl/mirrorfiles/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
3. Download iTunes 9.2 (you can do that but opening iTunes and look for upgrades)
4. Now run the PwnageTool. If it is in the same directory of the image ipsw image you downloaded in the step 1, then it will see that it the image to use. Just use Simple Mode and this image. This will create a new image that by default will be placed on your desktop. You can then close the PwnageTool.
5. Now before you upgrade your iphone, you could consider installing from Cydia AptBackup (from BigBoss). That will know which Cydia apps you have installed and in a later stage restore them.
6. Now, back up your phone, by connecting it to iTunes
7. Switch off your phone by holding on the top button and sliding to switch it off.
8. Make sure that it is connected it to the mac with the image you created and iTunes is open. Now hold the top and home button to enter into recovery mode.
9. iTuenes will tell you it is in recovery mode. Now you have to hold the Option key and click on restore. That will allow you to select the image on your desktop.
10. That’s it. The restore upgrade will not take a lot of time. What takes time is once you have iOS4 to restore you latest config.

If you have gone to the 10 steps you should have an iPhone 3GS with iOS4 and after more than an hour (in my cases) the same you had before.

Now you go to Cydia and install AptBackup, click on restore and voila, all your Cydia apps.

I had a problem though. My iPhone had a safe mode due to a problem with an app in Cydia. The app in question was MyFi. I had to remove it and now everything is OK.

To fix Growl

Download a pre-patched GrowlMail.bundle and drop it in your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/ directory. If you want it available to multiple users on your system, use /Library/Mail/Bundles/

Download: GrowlMail.mailbundle

To fix Letter Opener

Close the mail application. In finder go to Macintosh HD /Library/Mail/Bundles (Disabled)

Copy OMiC.mailbundle to Bundles

Replace the old info.plist (located inside contents folder) for this one: Info.plist

So imagine that you are at work and you leave your iPhone charging with the USB cable, then this little software will trigger an alarm if someone disconnects your phone.

You can download it here.

This software reminds me a similar one that I use to have on my mac, so when someone removes the power cable, touches the mouse or keyboard or closes the laptop… o even if it is moved!, the software takes a photo sends it via email and triggers an alarm. This one was called iAlertU and you can download it here.

Both are free.

Here PadLock:

Here iAlertU:

Additionally you can view, track and delete files right from your menubar.

So, any file, you just click on your define shortcut or drag it to the icon and it is uploaded to the cloud. Another shortcut and you have the link to the file that you can send to your friend/family.

Easy, elegant. Give it a try. It is free.

You can have an online dashboard where you see everything you have uploaded.

Forget emailing big files again. Just send the unique URL ;-)

Here a video I found in youtube showing how it works.

I am running my time machine backing up in a Samba server (linux machine).

This new update is deletes your old time machine in order to create a new one probably in a newer and more stable format. I decided to go ahead.

The first part deletes the time machine partition on my samba, then it tries to start a new one but obviously, it can’t. So here some tips to create a new time machine in your samba server:

You will need to do this with the terminal ( Finder>Applications>Utilities.Terminal)

First you need to have the ethernet mac address of the machine that you want to backup:

ifconfig en0 | grep ether

This will give you a number like:  00:23:32:d2:f7:a0  keep it.

Now you create a new file with the sparsebundle that you will have to move to your samba machine:

hdiutil create -size 500g -fs HFS+J -volname “TimeMachine  tokao” tokao_002332d2f7a0.sparsebundle

Where in red what you have to change. In my case tokao will be the name of my machine and the mac address (en0 even if using wifi) 00:23:32:d2:f7:a0 will be 002332d2f7a0 (this is in my case, sure)

Once you have done this in your Users/you you will see this sparsebundle file. You have to move this file to the Samba where you want to back up.

You can copy it by draging it using the finder or by copying it

cp -R tokao_002332d2f7a0.sparsebundle /Volumes/YourSamba/

Then from the time machine preference you select the samba machine and that’s it!

There’s an answer, thanks to the Keyboard & Mouse pane in System Preferences. If you click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, you can assign “Paste Without Formatting” and/or “Paste and Match Style” to Command + V for all applications. Just click the  button under the list, type in the name of the appropriate menu items, and press ⌘-V in the Keyboard Shortcut box.

One note: Panic designer Neven Mrgan found that using this tip means you won’t be able to paste images into iChat using Command + V. Dragging and dropping (or choosing Paste from the Edit menu) still works, though. Update: If you explicitly add ⌘-V in as a shortcut for Paste that’s specific to iChat, you can restore the image paste capability without breaking the global shortcut.

Apps that don’t have either of those menu items will still default to regular old “Paste” for the same key command. Paste away!

(tip from tuaw)

I did posted previously about another one: pollux but looks it does not work anymore….

And best of all, it’s completely free! Give it a try!

I tried everything, from going to the settings of mobileme in my mac and reseting it, to delete everything on my mac in order to have mobileme overwritting…. nothing worked. I got a message saying that there was an inconsistency.

Finally I came up with a solution.

I do keep backups of the contacts of my macbook. The problem was that the ones in the iPhone/mobileme were updated and those in the mac were not.

The solution was:

1.- Export vcards from the mobileme site.
2.- Import them into the mac (here I lost all the profile photos and groups…)
3.- At this stage mac and mobile me and iphone was syncronizing again. Good.
4.- Import the latest backup to my address book in the mac. That overwrites the  everything. No big deal, in the back up, even if it was not updated I had all the photos and groups.
5.- Import the vcards but, do not merge them though. You will be prompted with what to do and you have to select to duplicate contacts, so you will end up with two different entries for each person (plus those unique sure).
6.- Now you go to the address book and click on find duplicates, then merge them.

There you are. Now you have all your contacts, plus the new ones, and you have recover the groups and photos.

The fact that I mention this company here is because traditionally this has been a pretty top end set of products which were accessible only to those with a lot of money.

If you’re looking to do home automation, you’ll spend at least $10,000. Savant’s system is called Protege. It’s a box with a Mac Mini that will control a mid size home for $5,000, and you can control everything from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

I also got a look at the TrueImage Control, which is a visual system to control your lights, TV, etc from a touch panel.

First of all, you’ll be delighted to know that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade installs on Tiger Macs after all, despite Apple’s insistence that it’s strictly for Leopard people. Although Apple said Tiger users should either upgrade to Leopard before moving to Snow Leopard or migrate directly, using the $169 Mac Box Set (containing Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09, and iWork ‘09), WSJ and Wired have discovered that a Tiger system can be upgraded directly to Snow Leopard via a standalone installer provided on the $29 upgrade disc, resulting in a $140 saving over the Mac Box Set.

Snow Leopard lacks Windows’ awkward activation process. In fact, it doesn’t even come with a serial number.

If you’re planning to upgrade household Macs, go with Family Pack versions of Snow Leopard and Mac Box Set, $49 and $229, respectively. Lucky customers who bought a qualifying Mac or Xserve from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller between June 8, 2009 and the end of the program on December 26 can get Snow Leopard through the Up-to-Date program for only $9.95 (free shipping) plus applicable sales tax.

The $499 server version comes with unlimited client licenses, making up for the hardware price difference compared with Windows-based servers sold on a per seat basis.

Some apps don’t play nice with Snow Leopard

The compatibility of your third-party Tiger or Leopard apps is the first thing that needs to be assessed prior to upgrading. Apple re-wrote 90 percent of the 1,000 projects in OS X, a major brain transplant guaranteed to cause problems with a portion of apps and drivers (just ask early Vista adopters).

Despite Apple’s official stance, you can upgrade a Tiger system to Snow Leopard via the $29 upgrade disc.

Some of the popular apps that either don’t run at all or cause issues in Snow Leopard include Elgato EyeTV 3.0.0 to 3.1.0, Parallels Desktop 3.0, McAfee VirusScan 8.6, Norton NAV 11.0, some versions of AT&T Laptop Connect Card, Adobe Director MX 2004, Adobe Photoshop Elements, CuteFTP, DiskWarrior 4.1, FruitMenu, TiVo Desktop 1.94, Tinker Tool 3.94, WindowShadeX 4.3, and Google Gears browser extension, to name a few. In addition, Apple’s AirPort Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow Base Stations 4.2.5, Aperture 2.1.1, and Keynote 2.0.2 all exhibit issues in Snow Leopard.

In case you’re wondering, Microsoft Messenger, QuarkXPress, and Microsoft Office 2008 run without glitches. Apple may have also killed the support for legacy Palm devices via Palm OS HotSync conduit in Snow Leopard’s iSync 3.1.0, but there are ways around it in AppleInsider’s handy guide.

When it comes to Adobe’s productivity software, the company confirmed in its Creative Suite FAQ that CS4 is compatible with Snow Leopard and that the Photoshop team “found no significant problems” with Photoshop CS3.

However, you’ll need Acrobat 9.1 or later to produce PDF files in Snow Leopard outside the built-in system-wide PDF exporter. Older Macromedia and Adobe apps may experience a variety of installation, stability, and reliability issues and they won’t be updated for Snow Leopard, Adobe said. Users of a 2.5-year-old CS3 should know that the suite isn’t supported when running on Snow Leopard because Adobe hasn’t done the level of testing that true certification demands, a move that some dubbed a forced $699.99 CS4 upgrade.

Subtle tweaks, under-the-hood refinements, and speed gains are worth $29, the media say.

Due to aforementioned incompatibilities, you’ll need to identify which apps have issues by consulting a collaborative project at snowleopard.wikidot.com, basically a collection of independent compatibility tests posted by ordinary users checking Mac apps against the gold master build of Snow Leopard (version 10A432). The three-category list names tested apps that run with no issues, those that have some issues, and programs that don’t run at all.

Don’t forget to check out incompatible apps listed in Apple’s support document and see if your printer or scanner model is officially supported in Snow Leopard.

If too many of your apps are incompatible, postpone upgrading until vendors post Snow Leopard-specific updates. In fact, everyone but early adopters should postpone upgrading until the first major Snow Leopard update (10.6.1) arrives, ironing out bugs and smoothing out rough edges. If you’re anything like us, though, you’ll upgrade in an instant.

Here’s a sum up of key steps needed to ensure as painless installation as humanly possible:

1. Identify incompatible apps and drivers on your system by checking the wiki page and Apple’s support documents (here, here, and here)
2. Install the latest app updates via vendors’ sites or in-app update mechanisms (i.e. for Adobe software).
3. Decide between performing a clean install or upgrading an existing Tiger or Leopard OS, think about custom installation options, start the installer.

You can perform a clean Snow Leopard install (with or without Tiger/Leopard in place) using the $29 upgrade disc, but make sure you back up your documents, apps, and settings first. Since your boot drive will be completely wiped out, you’ll need to re-install all your apps later. If you’re upgrading a pre-existing Tiger or Leopard OS, the installer will scan existing apps for issues, moving known incompatible items into an “Incompatible Software” folder.

A standalone installer on the $29 upgrade disc also lets you perform a clean install, even if you don’t have pre-existing Leopard or Tiger on your system.

Scanner and printer drivers

A revamped Snow Leopard installer is a smooth sail: You basically mark a couple of check boxes and treat yourself with a coffee while the installer copies the files to your hard drive first, resulting in up to 45 percent faster installation than in Leopard. The installer doesn’t require an annoying immediate reboot and it’ll even start over if a power outage interrupts, without losing any data.

Snow Leopard reclaims about 6GB of space on your drive (less than half the space needed for Leopard) by installing only a subset of the most popular drivers, including those for printers and scanners that you had connected to your Mac in the past, as well as drivers for connected devices found on your network and hooked up to your Mac at install time.

Bear in mind there’s no point in manually selecting driver packs as this will increase Snow Leopard’s space footprint unnecessarily: A new Snow Leopard feature automatically retrieves the latest drivers off the Internet, via the Software Update tool, anytime a new printer or scanner is discovered locally or on a network. In fact, some device models have software available through Software Update only. Even if your Mac is offline, you should still uncheck driver packs because you can always install them from the install disc later, whenever needed.

Rosetta

If you don’t run PowerPC-only apps, you won’t need Rosetta, a software emulator that enabled PowerPC apps to run on Intel Macs. The installer deselects Rosetta by default but you may check it if you run legacy PowerPC apps on your Intel Mac. You can check whether an app is PowerPC-only in the Kind field of the Get Info window invoked by hitting the Command + I combo on an app. Even if you don’t install Rosetta, the Software Update will offer to download and install Rosetta the moment you try running a PowerPC app.

Snow Leopard will retain a QuickTime Pro copy if it finds a Pro license on your system.

QuickTime X and QuickTime 7 Pro

The installer will automatically keep QuickTime 7 if you install Snow Leopard on a Mac with a registration key for Quicktime 7 Pro, moving it to the /Applications/Utilities folder.

You can also add the classic QuickTime 7 player yourself later, by downloading it from Apple’s QuickTime site. In either case, the installer copies the new QuickTime X player by default. Representing a radical departure from the steel-themed QuickTime 7 player, Snow Leopard’s QuickTime X features a borderless playback by fading out movie controls and the window’s title bar during video playback.

It also packs in a YouTube publishing feature, in addition to video trimming, screen recording, iTunes exporting, etc. Those who have a QuickTime 7 Pro registration key will find out that the player boasts a greater number of export options than QuickTime X – good thing both can co-exist on your system.

Handy Snow Leopard resources

• Snow Leopard page – Everything you need to know about Apple’s new cat, right from the source, including a detailed list of changes.
• Server Snow Leopard page – Details and full system requirements for Snow Leopard Server.
• Snow Leopard press release – Official information about the terms, pricing, and key features.
• Snow Leopard specs – Snow Leopard requires an Intel Mac and at least 1GB of RAM. Check the link for full system requirements.
• OS X Up-To-Date program – Check to see if you’re eligible for a $9.95 Snow Leopard upgrade.
• Snow Leopard compatibility wiki – A collaborative project collecting results of independent tests pitting Mac apps against Snow Leopard. The page may be slow or inaccessible due to high traffic.
• Incompatible software -  Apple’s list of incompatible apps is divided in two sections: The first contains apps that might cause issues but you’re free to run them, while the other lists programs restricted from opening after upgrading to Snow Leopard.
• Printer and scanner compatibility list- Apple’s list of Snow Leopard software provided for printers and scanners that can be installed using the install disc or the Software Update tool (some models have software available through Software Update only). Apple updates this list as device vendors release Snow Leopard-compatible drivers.
• Gamma 2.2 settings – Snow Leopard defaults to a gamma value of 2.2, rather than a 1.8 gamma setting used in previous OS X versions. This support document is of particular interest to graphic and video professionals.
• Battery menu changes – Info about an improved battery menu bar for portable Macs providing information about the condition of the battery, the amount of time remaining on the current charge, the current active power source, and any current charge status details.
• Wake on Demand – The Wake on Demand feature in Snow Leopard lets you access shared items on an asleep Mac via an AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule with firmware 7.4.2 or later installed, even remotely across the Internet. Apple notes this could be useful to offer full time support for iTunes Sharing, Printer Sharing, Back to My Mac, and more. More at MacWorld.
• BootCamp 3.0 changes – The software which enables a dual-boot OS X and Windows installation on Intel Macs now has the ability to read Mac volumes in Windows, in addition to an improved tap-to-click support, a command line version of the Startup Disk Control Panel, and the support for advanced features on Apple Cinema displays.
• Adobe apps compatibility – The official blog entry with an up-to-date information about the compatibility of Adobe’ products on Snow Leopard.
• Adobe Creative Suite FAQ: Check for the CS4 compatibility with Snow Leopard.
• Photoshop CS3 compatibility – Adobe’s Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard and “found no significant problems.”
• Syncing legacy Palm OS devices – AppleInsider’s handy guide to third-party solutions that let users of Palm OS devices sync their Palm Desktop information via Snow Leopard’s Sync Services.
• Lifehacker’s guide to a clean Snow Leopard install.
• MacRumors’ Snow Leopard support forum – A community-based support for Snow Leopard hosted at the popular Apple rumors site.

Snow Leopard hits the headlines

• WSJ’s Walt Mossberg says Snow Leopard “isn’t a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn’t a typical Apple lust-provoking product.”
• NYT’s David Pogue thinks that even for Leopard-running users “paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer,” citing “the leap forward in speed polish.”
• CNET’s Jason Parker recommends upgrading “for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange,” noting that the publication’s tests indicate that Snow Leopard is “slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes.”
• Chicago-Sun Times’ Andy Ihnatko dubbed Snow Leopard an “impressive and important update that will revitalize your existing Mac.”
• USA Today’s Edward C. Baig is convinced that “Snow Leopard should delight Mac fans, especially those who use Exchange at work,” adding that Snow Leopard “adds bite, especially for business.”
• AP’s Peter Svensson notes that Snow Leopard’s benefits will be most apparent down the road, while Windows 7 promises more of an immediate payoff.”
• Macworld’s Jason Snell says “it’s a collection of feature tweaks and upgrades, as well as under-the-hood modifications that might not pay off for users immediately,” adding that the low upgrade price makes it worthwile for “all but the most casual, low-impact Mac users.”
• Engadget points out that “the sheer amount of little tweaks and added functionality more than justifies skipping that last round of drinks at the bar,” speculating that “Exchange support alone has made the sale for a lot of people.”
• Gizmodo cited “modest changes” and non-existent performance gains in non-optimized third-party apps as key reasons for holding off on Snow Leopard “for at least awhile.”
• Wired singled out six things to know about Snow Leopard, concluding that it “won’t deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away, but the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers.”
• PC Magazine compared Snow Leopard to Windows 7, finding the former “more coherent and consistent, and smoother and faster in most operations,” adding that Microsoft’s OS ups Apple’s with the Device Stage, Libraries, and PlayTo media streaming.
• Geek’s list of some of the more prominent features in Snow Leopard (here and here).

(from geek.com)

Click on the link to see what is new.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/

My first step on the road to fixing the problem was to open the bundle with “Disk Utility” and see if repair disk would work. To do this you need to drag the back image (the .sparsebundle) and drop it on disk utility. Then you can select the image and press “Repair Disk”. Usually if if you have some disk corruption this would fix it, but not for me.

After working for a couple minutes Disk Util would fail at repairing the disk since it found an “Invalid Sibling Link”. It seems the disk was corrupted and the disk repair utility decided it wasn’t going to repair it. Worried that my backups were gone for good I did some Googling and found that this problem isn’t totally uncommon. It seems that Disk Utility is just fairly bad at repairing disks and that using the “real” disk repair utility fsck_hfs might actually fix the problem.

Of course there’s one problem fsck_hfs has to be used directly on a block device not a “sparsebundle” disk image. Not only that but the volume you run the util on cannot be mounted and OS X always tries to mount the image when you click on it. The solution? Use the command line tool hdiutil to “attach” but not “mount” the image. This makes OS X create a /dev/ device for the sparse bundle but doesn’t actually mount the filesystem.

So combining hdiutil and fsck_hfs we might have a way to fix the disk image. Note: Make sure you turn off Time Machine in the System Preferences panel. We don’t want Time Machine trying to mount our image and back up to it until we’re done making all the repairs.

First I ran hdiutil:

hdiutil attach -nomount -readwrite Bhaal_0011247e3338.sparsebundle

After a minute or two of thinking we had success:

/dev/disk1              Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk1s1            Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk1s2            Apple_HFSX

The next step was run fsck_hfs on the main volume.

fsck_hfs -rf /dev/disk1s2

-f is required to force a check since this is a journaled file system. I also used -r to have it rebuild the filesystem catalog for the “invalid sibling link” this is required (thanks Dan). At this point I went out for breakfast since I was running a disk repair utility over my wireless internet to my Linux SAMBA server. After coming back from breakfast we had success!

** /dev/rdisk1s2
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
   Incorrect number of thread records
(4, 13716)
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
   Invalid directory item count
   (It should be 0 instead of 1)
   Invalid directory item count
   (It should be 3 instead of 4)
   Incorrect folder count in a directory (id = 3795486)
   (It should be 0 instead of 1)
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking multi-linked directories.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
   Invalid volume free block count
   (It should be 37267681 instead of 37310834)
   Volume Header needs minor repair
(2, 0)
** Repairing volume.
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking multi-linked directories.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Backup of Bhaal was repaired successfully

(extracted from jthon.com blog)

Here you have a list of the most common shortcuts for your Mac.

MENU COMMANDS

• Shift+Apple+Q
• Log out

• Shift+Option Apple+Q
• Log out immediately

• Shift+Apple+Delete
• Empty Trash

• Apple+H
• Hide Active Application Doesn’t Work With Adobe Applications

• Option+Apple+H
• Hide All But The Active Application

• Control+Eject
• Shut Down, Sleep, or Restart Options

• Apple+Control+Eject
• Quit all applications and Restart

• Apple+ . (period)
• Stop a process

• Apple+ , (comma)
• Open Preferences for Active Application

• Option+Apple+D
• Show/Hide Dock

• Control+Up Arrow
• Move up one page

• Control+Down Arrow
• Move down one page

• Option+Apple+Esc
• Force Quit

FILE MANAGEMENT

• Apple+N
• New Finder window or New Blank Page in Some Applications

• Shift+Apple+N
• New Folder Must Be In Finder Window For It to Work

• Apple+O
• Open Another Existing Document

• Apple+S
• Save

• Shift+Apple+S
• Save as

• Apple+P
• Print

• Apple+W
• Close Window

• Apple+Option+W
• Close all Windows

• Apple+I
• Get Info

• Option+Apple+I
• Show Attributes Inspector Limited use – varies by application.

• Apple+D
• Duplicate

• Apple+Q
• Close Application

• Apple+L
• Make Alias

• Apple+R
• Show Original

• Apple+T
• Add to Favorites Deprecated

• Apple+Delete
• Move Highlighted Items to Trash

• Apple+E
• Eject

• Apple+F
• Find

EDITING

• Apple+Z
• Undo

• Apple+X
• Cut

• Apple+C
• Copy

• Apple+V
• Paste

• Apple+A
• Select All

• Apple+ {
• Align Left Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+ }
• Align Right Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+ | (pipe)
• Align Center Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+ ; (semicolon)
• Check Spelling Only Works in Some Applications

• Shift+Apple+C
• Show Colors palette in application Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+T
• Show Font palette in application Only Works in Some Applications

VIEW MENU

• Apple+1
• View as Icons

• Apple+2
• View as List

• Apple+3
• View as Columns

• Option+Apple+T
• Hide Toolbar

• Apple+J
• Show View Options

MOVING AROUND

• Apple+ [
• Back Must be in Finder Window

• Apple+ ]
• Forward Must be in Finder Window

• Shift+Apple+A
• Applications Must be in Finder Window

• Shift+Apple+F
• Favorites Must be in Finder Window

• Shift+Apple+G
• Goto Folder Must be in Finder Window

• Apple+K
• Connect to Server Must be in Finder Window

• Apple+Tab
• Switch to next Application Hold Apple key to enter App. switcher mode

CONTROLLING WINDOWS

• Apple+N
• New Window

• Apple+T
• New Tab If the Application supports Tabs

• Apple+M
• Minimize Window

• Option+Apple+M
• Minimize All Windows

GETTING HELP

• Apple+ ?
• Open Mac Help

UNIVERSAL ACCESS

• Option+Apple+ * (asterisk)
• Turn on Zoom

• Option+Apple+ =
• Zoom in

• Option+Apple+ -
• Zoom out

• Control+Option+Apple+ *
• Switch to White on Black

COMBINE KEYBOARD WITH MOUSE

• Option+Drag
• Copy to new location

• Option+Apple+Drag
• Make alias in new location

• Apple+Drag
• Move to new location without copying

SCREEN SHOTS

• Apple+Shift+3
• Take a picture of the screen will leave a .png file on desktop

• Apple+Shift+4
• Take a picture of the selection will leave a .png file on desktop

• Apple+Shift+4, Control
• Take a picture of the selection, place in clipboard

• Apple+Shift+4, Spacebar
• Take a picture of the selected window will leave a .png file on desktop

Now you can. Use Letter Opener. Less than $20.

Cool idea. You plug one of this and you have extra juice for your Macbook and iphone. Up to 32 hours!!

Go and visit the company’s web, hyperdrive.

Do you have a different notebook? Check this table to see the limitations when installing macos

Go to the Finder, select Go > Go To Folder and type in ~/.Trash to bring up a Finder window showing the contents of your Trash, but this time around, Mac OS X recognizes it as a searchable window.

Type your search criteria, and then be sure to select .Trash as the location you’re searching (if you choose This Mac, the results you’re looking for won’t be found).

/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources/New Mail.aiff

To

/Library/Sounds/

Then switched off the alert for new email in email preferences and went to growl and selected “new mail” for the new emails as alert.

It works