I do Mac

You probably already heard. Tweetie has been released for the Mac, it is all over the internet.

Tweetie is a Twitter client for the iPhone, that has now been made available for Mac. Personally I do not have a iPhone (yet, stupid phone plan), so I have never used it. But what I hear from the users of Tweetie it is the best client there is for Twitter.

Tweetie is made by Atebits, that also makes Scribbles.

I am not much of a Twitter person, I do not see the point (sorry ). I have been using EventBox before, mainly for the RSS feeds I follow. But, since I was hearing so much about it, I thought I would give Tweetie for Mac a try.

Tweetie costs $19,95 and up until may 4th 2009 $14,95. Next to that, you can use a free version, that will show advertisements from time to time between the tweets. The advertisements are not too bad. They are a bit big but I can live with them.

This is release 1.0.1 (they released an update a few hours after version 1.0 was released) and it still a bit buggy. Or perhaps it is a lack of what I, and other users, expect.

Tweetie looks good. As I said earlier, I am not a Twitter fan, but Tweetie does what it does very well. You can dim the tweets you viewed, I do like this, makes it easy to see what you did or did not read. But, the dimming is so subtle I think. It makes it hard to see. Also, when I close Tweetie completely and restart it, nothing is dimmed anymore. Probably a bug, but still very annoying.

What is very nice about Tweetie, is that you can click on a tweet, and if it is a reply to someone else, you can view the conversation. So a @… tweet will make more sense to you.

Also multiple account support is very nice. You get your avatars on the left, and you can switch between your multiple Twitter accounts. Should you have more than one.

Last things I has tested so far is making smaller url’s IN Tweetie. When you are composing a tweet, you can paste an URL in the message and select the option to make it a smaller url.

And viewing images in Tweetie works very well, very similar to OS X Leopard its preview.

So far Tweetie looks good. I have not had much chance to try it yet, I will use it a bit more and report back to you in part 2!

As you might know, I am a recent switcher. And I still use Microsoft Windows next to a Mac (as I am writing this).

Microsoft Windows has many keyboard shortcuts, and so do its program. Think of ALT+F4 to close something, or CTRL+S to save, and so on. OS X and applications for OS X also have many keyboard shortcuts, perhaps even more.

There are books about keyboard shortcuts, or you can just ram a key and see if it does anything. And if so, what? But using these ways means you either need to constantly have the book near by, look up what you want to do (that can be a pain) and press the buttons. Ramming buttons at random means you need to memorize what you pressed (same is possible when you use a book) or ram at random next time you need it.

But what if you do no want to remember all those keyboard shortcuts (I know I do not), or spend money on books. This is where KeyCue can come in very handy.

KeyCue is a program by Ergonis Software, who also makes the well known Typinator, and many other applications. KeyCue is relatively simple in what it can do.

KeyCue shows you keyboard shortcuts, and makes them clickable, in an overlay on your screen. You can either look at the menu shortcuts of the application you are using, or view system-wide shortcuts. This is easily done by pressing either the command button, option button, control button or the shift button and holding it. As long at you hold the key you set it will show the keyboard shortcuts on your screen.

Alternatively you can tell KeyCue that you want to view the keyboard shortcuts by pressing the button twice and then holding the key. Just depends of what you prefer. Or what you want to show, system-wide or active application.

I was able to purchase it for half price through a fellow MacHeist member, and I must say I am very happy with it. It is a great application. Well worth the 19,99 euro (that is the FULL price).

After hearing a few things about it, I downloaded and installed Xcode. Xcode is more or less the Microsoft Visual Studio for Apple. You can develop applications, widgets, and much more with the Xcode package.

I am no programmer, so I was not sure if I could work with it. After finally finding it on the hard drive, I opened up Xcode. I had no idea what to do or where to start. So I closed it again quickly.

A few days later I saw on Twitter that Jo Oak made a new Mac Tips & Tricks screen cast. I love his shows, very informative. In Mac Tips & Tricks #55 he talks about making your own Dashboard widgets. He did this using Dashcode, which is part of the Xcode package.

It looked fairly simple, and I got the idea to make a Dashboard widget that shows the I do Mac RSS feed. So after some thinking, fidgeting, cussing, redoing… it is here. The first ever “program” I made, and I am very proud of it. The I do Mac RSS Dashboard widget. I even made a DMG file for easy installation, using DMG Canvas.

Feel free to download and install the I do Mac RSS Dashboard widget, so you are always up to date!

Download it here: I do Mac RSS Widget (165)

Well, in 3 days actually.

The MacHeist 3 Bundle sale is almost over. So they added yet another application. This time it is Times.

Times is an RSS reader, that displays the feed as a real life newspaper.

Next to that, BoinxTV is about to unlock. Only $7700 dollar to go as I write this.

Help unlock, and buy a bundle NOW!

http://www.macheist.com/