Apple – Page 15

Visualize Your Hard Drive to Free Space

August 3, 2010 / Apple, Software, Windows

It’s sometimes difficult to find out what’s taking up all your computer hard drive space. That’s why I like these free programs which visually display the contents of your hard drive by file size. These programs make it easy to find and delete large files and directories that you no longer need.

For Windows – Disk Space Fan

Disk Space Fan shows you a beautiful fan of your hard drive space. Here’s a video of how it works. When you install the free version, it allows you to use the Pro version for free for 15 days, then it reverts to the free version automatically. All the basic tools are included in the free version though.

UPDATE: Daniel in the comments alerted me to the fact that Disk Space Fan is a ripoff of the Mac app DaisyDisk available at http://daisydiskapp.com.

For Mac – GrandPerspective

GrandPerspective for Mac OS X is similar to Disk Space Fan but chooses the box metaphor to visually display your files. The first segment of this video explains how it works.

For more ideas on saving hard disk space, look at the Lifehacker article How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive.

iTunes Scripts for Mac

July 5, 2010 / Apple, Software

iTunes has some quirks. One is that if you add artwork using its Get Album Artwork function, the images are not embedded in the music files but are kept elsewhere in the iTunes database. This is normally fine. But if you want to send someone an mp3 you have, the artwork won’t travel with it. So I was looking for software to fix this and came upon the resource of Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes (for Mac only).

Doug has software and scripts to help you with many common issues such as dealing with duplicate files and multiple iTunes libraries.

My problem was solved with the script Embed Artwork. Once you install the files, you get a script option in the iTunes menu as shown here, allowing you to embed the artwork into the MP3 file so that it is portable. This also helps people who want to use iTunes and other non-Apple media players such as Android devices.

iPhone 4 at Clarendon Virginia Apple Store

June 24, 2010 / Apple, Shopping

The line this morning was over 4 hours long at the Apple store in Clarendon, Virginia. Apple gave us water and a guy from Whole Foods came around with carts of food. The Whole Foods guy would hand out food, then a napkin saying, “There’s a nap for that.”

Find Sustainable Seafood

May 12, 2010 / Apple, Internet, Local DC area, Mobile

On today’s Kojo Namdi show on WAMU, the topic was Local Seafood Markets & the Gulf Oil Spill.

Sheila Bowman of the Monteray Bay Aquarium said that they created a Seafood Watch iPhone app for people to easily find what seafoods are considered good and bad from a fish sustainability perspective. It’s a simple program for looking up fish when you are at the restaurant or grocery.

Spirit – New Jailbreak for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad

May 2, 2010 / Apple, Software

The new Spirit jailbreak is out. Wow, this takes about 20 seconds to do. It’s far easier than earlier jailbreaks and now it works on iPads, both WiFi and 3G.

What is jailbreaking and why should you do it, you ask? Then you probably shouldn’t. It can easily destroy everything. But one thing that it offers is background apps, a feature that will arrive in a few months in iPhone OS 4.

Note to iPad users: many apps do NOT work and will make your iPad’s desktop look like a giant iPhone. Backgrounder seems to work. Kirikae does not. See this spreadsheet of working/non-working jailbroken apps for the iPad.