Category Archives: OSX

OSX Software: VLC

I most definitely love Quick Time. It’s easy to use, elegant, and it bears Apple’s logo. But it has several limitations. Yeah, you guessed. There are certain video formats that you cannot open with Quick Time.

So… what happens? . You switch to Windows? just to play your favorite show?. No way.

There are few alternatives you may or may not have heard of. VLC, is a great opensource application, that allows you to open, virtually, any file format. Furthermore, it’s available for Mac, Windows… and linux!. I really love VLC, because it has support for Apple’s Remote, and you can lower the volume, pause, or fast forward / rewind, whatever you’re viewing.

The second option is Perian. Perian adds functionality to QuickTime. It’s a plugin, sort of. It extends the number of formats that Quicktime can reproduce. And yes, it’s also a free package.

Both options are pretty cool. So… now.. it’s really your choice!.

OSX Tools: TrueCrypt

OSX Users have enjoyed FileValult for quite a long time. It’s Apple’s standard tool to encrypt a whole volume. And it’s pretty hard to crack!.

But it has few weak points. You cannot encrypt a folder, or a single file. And once you’re logged into your mac, you’ve got access to all the files and folders stored within your user.
Maybe you share the user with someone else. Or maybe you simply wanna backup encrypted data, and you think that PGP isn’t a good alternative.. or you just wanna try something new!.

The TrueCrypt guys have built an incredible tool, which, by the way, is open source and free. It simply allows you to create ‘virtual encrypted drives’, and mount them as if they were external devices. The User Experience is pretty much the same as when you plug in a pen drive.

So… c’me on! check it out!…: http://www.truecrypt.org/

FTP Client for OSX!

I recently had to play with several FTP servers… and truth to be told, working command line can turn into a pain in the neck. You might miss a filename, or maybe you need to type really, relaly long paths. That’s why i began looking for a decent FTP client for OSX.

Well, it turns out, these guys wrote a pretty decent FTP client. And guess what! they offer it for free!.

OSX FTP Client

If you like it, please, hit the donate button. It’s in the AppStore, too, but it’s offered for over 20 dollars, yet, for some unknown reason, you can get it for free straight from the developer’s website.

The good thing about Cyberduck is that it has support for Amazon S3, Google Docs, and almost anything you could possibly need.

I’m sure there are other pretty good FTP clients for OSX. But i think this one deserves our attention.

OSX Terminal: Adding current folder to the title!

If you’re just like me, and have lots of Terminal tabs open, you probably end up typing ‘pwd’ all the time.

Luckily, there is an easy solution:

  1. Create a file named ‘.profile’, in your user’s home.
  2. Type the following string in there!:
    [cc lang=”bash”]export PROMPT_COMMAND=’echo -ne “\033]0;[${PWD/$HOME/~}]\007″‘[/cc]

That’s it!. You’re gonna have, from now on, the current working directory right there in the windows tab!.

 

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