andy's nerd blog

Push notifications from Facebook

While waiting for version 3.1 of Facebook’s iPhone app, I’ve tried two methods of receiving push notifications from Facebook. The easiest method is with Boxcar, which is now free thanks to the recent change allowing in-app purchases from free apps. However, Boxcar notifications from Facebook don’t show much detail.. only that so-and-so has commented on so-and-so’s status.

The slightly more involved method that I prefer and am currently using relies on Prowl, the Growl client for iPhone. If you haven’t heard of Growl it’s basically a customizable notification system for Mac OS that will display notifications from any application that supports the protocol. Prowl on your iPhone displays Growl notifications that have been forwarded from your home machine. This means that if you have a server or home theater machine that you always leave running, you can install Growl and the Facebook Desktop Notifications app that I blogged about earlier and receive the complete notifications on your iPhone. With this method the push notification you receive will say “so-and-so has commented on so-and-so’s status: blah blah blah,” saving you the time of having to load the Facebook app just to read the update. The only caveat is that you must have a machine at home that you always leave running. Oh and don’t forget to go into the Growl system pref and set the Facebook Notifications app display style to “Prowl.”

Wifi Touchpad

Discovered this app thanks to a tip from Hoodean. I may be overreacting slightly but to me it’s a quintessential example of the power and utility of the iPhone platform. Here’s a $1.99 app that is good enough to replace a $125 dedicated device. I use it in concert with the Boxee remote to control my home theater PC at home and for on-the-go control of my mobile media center (17″ MacBook Pro.)

Update: Found a better app called Touchpad!

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Watch TV at home quietly with Skype

Saw this on TUAW a few weeks ago and finally got around to setting it up. The basic gist is to establish a Skype call between your home theater machine and your iPhone or iPod Touch so you can watch a movie or TV show using headphones. It works pretty well actually!

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ClickToFlash

Surprised I only just found out about this. Highly recommended plugin for Mac OS that disables flash by default in your browser. Single click to play!

Update: There’s something else extremely cool about ClickToFlash.. it has an option to play YouTube streams using QuickTime. This is huge!! The performance is absolutely incomparable. (see a mention on 9to5mac.)

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Automatic: Easy BitTorrent via RSS in Mac OS

Hulu is great but it doesn’t work perfectly in Boxee and well, it still has commercials. Plus sometimes episodes don’t turn up for days and others are removed without warning. Automatic is a pretty powerful tool that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds of torrents and create custom filters to parse those feeds. It will then automatically download the resulting torrents. Combine with Transmission and you have an excellent alternative DVR! This guide was just what I needed to get this set up.

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Screen Sharing Menulet

Nifty menu bar addon for screen sharing in Leopard and Snow Leopard. Auto discovers local machines via Bonjour and remembers your recently accessed hosts. Great looking icon that blends into the menu bar perfectly.

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Facebook Desktop Notifications

Very cool addon for mac os providing facebook notifications right in the menu bar.

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Google Reader for Mac OS

A desktop client for google reader? worth a look…

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Transmission + Dropbox

Last night I stumbled into a pretty cool remote torrent setup. I have been using Dropbox for a little while to quickly sync small files between my 3 different machines. I installed Transmission on my Boxee machine and set it to run at startup and to auto add torrents from my Dropbox folder. Now, when I’m on my laptop or work pc all I have to do is drop a torrent file in my local dropbox folder and it’ll auto download at home! Surprised that I didn’t start using it earlier, Transmission is a nice, lightweight client. It has a web interface so if you open the port on your router you can monitor it from anywhere, even your iPhone. Incidentally, I just got an email from Dropbox the other day that said they are working on an iPhone app!

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WideMail

3rd column plugin for Mail.app – trying it out..

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