Ken's Software Updates

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Ken Ferry — Thu, 9 Aug 2007 14:46:43 -0700

I'm happy to report that I won't be updating Keyword Assistant for iLife '08 for one reason: The native keyword interface in iPhoto 7 is good enough that Keyword Assistant is unnecessary! You can enter keywords by typing, the keywords autocomplete, use of a non-existent keyword will implicitly create it, and you can assign keywords for an entire album without using the mouse.

iPhoto does not cover everything that Keyword Assistant handles. Names from Address Book do not complete, scripting is not improved, and I somewhat prefer Keyword Assistant's interface in full screen mode. However, these are relatively minor issues. iPhoto is as fast as Keyword Assistant for assigning keywords[1], and it does not penalize large sets of keywords nearly so badly.

Still, if you would like to see Keyword Assistant revised for iPhoto 7, let me know.

Thank you to all who used this program over the years, to all who wrote in with nice notes, complaints, and feature requests, and especially to those who helped with testing, localization, and artwork. Later!

[1]: Okay, almost as fast as Keyword Assistant. Someone pointed out that iPhoto doesn't prioritize completions by most recent use. http://bugreport.apple.com

Mail Type Select 2.6

Ken Ferry — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 22:44:00 -0700

http://homepage.mac.com/kenferry/Software/KFTypeSelectTableView/MailPlugin/MailTypeSelect.png

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Mail Type Select adds Finder-like keyboard navigation to the list of messages in Mail. When the list of messages has focus,

Typing a few characters selects a matching message.
^↓ and ^↑ select next and previous match.
ESC and ⌘. cancel.

Release notes:

]]>Version 2.6:

Universal plugin. Works on Intel-based Macs.

Requirements:

]]>Mail.app on Mac OS X 10.4 or later

AddressBookToCSV 1.1

Ken Ferry — Sat, 03 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

]]> AddressBookToCSV is a one trick pony whose purpose in (artificial) life is to export contacts from the Mac OS X Address Book to a form gmail can import. That form is called CSV, a comma separated value format. If you want anything more from it, well, you've got the source (or you can ask me).

Release notes:

]]> Version 1.1:

Handles companies better.
Pays attention to address book name ordering properties.
Changed requirements to reflect gmail supporting all browsers.

Requirements:

]]>Mac OS X 10.3 or later

PadCaster 1.1

Ken Ferry — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0700

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PadCaster is a command line tool that converts MacPAD application description files to RSS 2.0 feeds. A MacPAD file describes one application; it contains the same information as is found in a versiontracker posting. Thus, the feed PadCaster produces provides RSS software update notifications. Fraser Speirs coined the term "Appcast" for such feed.

For developers, this is a convenient way to offer an RSS update feed for your software. For users, this lets you create and subscribe to RSS feeds for applications that support MacPAD. This requires an aggregator that can use scripts as feeds, such as the excellent NetNewsWire 2.

See the readme for details.

Release notes:

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Template tweaks

Requirements:

]]>Mac OS 10.3