How to use Finder in OS X to connect to a server

Just a quick little post. Here's a little known feature in Finder that you may not know about. If you go to Go>Connect to Server... or use the keyboard shortcut Command (⌘) + K...

You'll be presented with a dialog box that allows you to connect to any server.

Not only can you do FTP servers, but you can also connect to SFTP, VNC, and AFP servers.

Dimitri Shostakovich Dance 1

I just wanted to post briefly about a Youtube video I posted last summer. It's a video of the Summer Music at Stanislaus band performing Dimitri Shostakovich's Dance 1. It is now on page one when you do a Google search for "Dimitri Shostakovich Dance 1". I did the video taping and video editing for it. Check it out below and let me know what you think about it by leaving a comment.

Google personal results

I just recently noticed something interesting on Google. When you search, you can turn off personal results.

I have noticed that PHP, Javascript, and other web programming related results have started to show up on searches that aren't really related. I thought it was very interesting that Google has begun to give you personal results based on what links you have clicked on in the past. I hope you've enjoyed this little tidbit of information. Please comment and let me know what you think. Do you think it is a good idea for Google to begin serving personal results and what does this mean for the future of the company?

Ask Different best practices podcasts

As I have mentioned before, I am an active member of Ask Different, a Q and A site for Apple questions. Just recently, the podcast hosts recorded a podcast about the best practices for Ask Different. I would highly recommend listening to this podcast. It is a little long, but for anyone who participates in not only Ask Different, but any of the Stackexchange network sites. You can go listen to the podcast here.

Interesting link building article by Nathan Bunney

Nathan Bunney just recently wrote a very good article on SEO link building. I really liked it because it is a succint and informative post about link building. Go check it out here: How to build great links to your site.

Stackexchange chat bots

As you probably know, I am a member of the Stackexchange Q&A network. There are a couple interesting chat bots in the chat rooms. The first is Eliza. You can find her user profile here. Eliza is actually an old chat bot that was ported to the Stackexchange chat room The Couch. It was one of the first chat bots programmed. She was written by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966. You can also find her in OS X's Terminal. If you type in 'emacs' at the prompt, then Shift + Esc, then x doctor then press Enter, you will be greeted by Eliza.

Another interesting chat bot is Flackbot. Unlike Eliza, Flackbot isn't a port of an existing AI. Flackbot was created as an experimental bot by George Edison. Flackbot is a little more knowledgable as he can draw information from Wikipedia and Twitter. Currently, Flackbot is down for maintenance, but you can normally find him in the Sandbox chat room.

If there are any other chat bots I don't know about, make sure you leave a comment letting me know.

Mozilla Prism

I've posted about Mozilla Prism before in this tutorial, but I wanted to come back and take a closer look at it.

Mozilla Prism allows you to turn any webpage into an application on both Mac and PCs. Let's open it up and take a look. Here's the main window of Prism:

As you can see, I've entered a URL (google.com) and a title (Google). Prism has auto-detected an icon for the application, but since it's so small, it will be really pixelated. Let's fix that first. I'm going to click Settings>Choose image...

And I'm going to select a Google logo that I've downloaded:

Much better...

You'll also notice that you can create shortcuts on the Desktop and in the Applications folder. Just select where you want the shortcut to go.

You'll notice that there are three other checkboxes in the window that we haven't discussed yet. Before we discuss those, let's take a look at what the application looks like right now.

Pretty simple, but no back/forward buttons, etc. Let's take a look at those checkboxes now. If we check the first checkbox: "Show navigation bar", you'll notice that we now have back/forward buttons, a home button, and a reload button.

Pretty nifty, huh? Now that we've seen what the first checkbox can do, let's check out the magic of the other two. The next check box is: "Show status messages and progress" Let's check this one and see what happens. Now we have a bar at the bottom of the window:

This will give us information about the page that is loading. It also adds a nifty settings menu:

The last checkbox is pretty simple: "Enable navigation keys". This enables you to use shortcuts within the web page.

That's all! Prism is a simple and easy way to bring web pages and web applications right to the comfort of your desktop.

You can download Prism from the Mozilla Prism website. More information can be found at the Prism wiki.

Please comment and let me know how you liked this guide.

Matthew