This is a quick way to unhide ~/Library and make it visible in Finder

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chflags nohidden ~/Library

Anesidora extension for Chrome lets you play cloud music without opening a flash tab in Chrome.

This nifty controller lets you manage Pandora from a small drop-down window while reducing the performance hit that often accompanies Flash-based apps.

Vendor lock-in is the situation in which you are dependent on a single vendor for a product (i.e., a good or a service) and cannot move to another vendor without substantial costs and/or inconvenience. Lock-in is typically a result of standards controlled by the vendor, thereby granting the vendor some degree of monopoly power that usually leads to better profits for such vendor.

Here is a recent example illustrating the lock-in problem:

Few weeks ago, Google announced a significant price increase for use of its Google App Engine Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Google App Engine users knew and expected that Google would increase the price at some point but what shocked most developers was the jump in price which increased the cost of using the Google App Engine runtime environment by 100% or more in specific cases. It is a non trivial exercise to port to another location once an app is deployed on the Google App Engine infrastructure. This led to a big backlash on the App Engine google groups. Google responded with a few adjustments to its pricing but this incidence resurfaced some doubts about the cloud. Hart Singh of flipbook LLC, creators of the flipbook app on Facebook, raised a concern, “My team spent so much time learning app engine but I continue to wonder if we are betting our company on Google…any app we build can only be run on the Google App Engine.” Google App Engine requires custom code to run apps in that environment. Customizing take effort and time and impacts the bottomline.

Most modern computers are capable of Wake on LAN which allows you to turn on a sleeping computer remotely by sending a “magic packet.” Scheduled applications, nighly backup for example, use this feature.

I use this feature to turn on my sleeping iMac when I am away from it but want to log on using ssh (I maintain one Ubuntu machine on the local network that is always running).

The magic packet format is very simple: it must include 6 times hexadecimal FF, followed by 16 times the target machine’s MAC address.

Here is a Python script that will wake up your target machine remotely.

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#!/usr/bin/env python
import socket
s=socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
s.sendto('\xff'*6+'\x01\x23\x45\x67\x89\x0a'*16, ('192.168.2.109', 80))

This script assumes that the target machine MAC address is 01-23-45-67-89-0a and that your local DHCP server issues an IP address of 192.168.2.109 to your target machine.

You can run this script from another machine on your local network, like so.

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$ python wakeup.py

Got better ideas on waking up sleeping machines remotely when needed? Share below via comments.

Tired of having to open system preferences/keyboard to toggle the default behavior of functions keys? Use this AppleScript with Quicksilver or Alfred to easily toggle the function keys between media and standard role.”

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tell application "System Preferences"
  set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
  if UI elements enabled then
    tell application process "System Preferences"
      get properties
      click radio button "Keyboard" of tab group 1 of window "Keyboard"
      click checkbox "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" of tab group 1 of window "Keyboard"
    end tell
  else
    tell application "System Preferences"
      activate
      set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
      display dialog "UI element scripting is not enabled. Check \"Enable access for assistive devices\""
    end tell
  end if
end tell

tell application "System Preferences"
  quit
end tell

Similarly, use this app-toggler AppleScript to toggle between Chrome and TextMate.

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on GetCurrentApp()
  tell application "System Events" to get short name of first process whose frontmost is true
end GetCurrentApp

if GetCurrentApp() is equal to "TextMate" then
    tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
else
    tell application "TextMate" to activate
end if

Now just assign a hotkey to the script file and the hotkey becomes a toggle button.

Got more tips to increase your productivity? Share via comments below.

If you can’t see hidden files in OSX but want to, open up Terminal and type the following 2 lines:

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defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

To hide hidden files again, type:

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defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

Terminal looks monochromatic by default on a Mac like this screenshot below.

Want to get ls colors on terminal on a mac like you may have seen in Ubuntu and some other linux distributions? Just append these two lines to your .bash_profile

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export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxbxegedabagacad

Make sure to restart your SHELL after which the terminal will show ls colors like below.

Got your productivity enhancing tips? Share via comments below.

Enjoy the colors while they last…Soon it will be grey all over :)

1. Use title to grab attention: Make them see what you see. You may think that everyone sees things the way you do. But they don’t. Readers won’t pay attention until they perceive what you perceive. So make your position crystal clear. Use storytelling, personal experiences, or anything that will put the reader in the right position to understand your message.

   Use emotion. Emotion brings clarity to your messages while making them personal. Emotion also comes with the triple bonus of adding clarity, giving readers a reason to talk about you, and triggering action you may want — emotion is much better at that than logic is. Emotional messages get attention. Tell a meaningful and personal story. When you make your writing personal, you make it important. Personally interesting or perceptually meaningful information grabs attention and brings clarity.

2. Offer something - an idea, a new way, a point of view: Offer something to your readers - an idea, a new way of thinking, a new point of view, a new experiment to try… something they can take away from your blog. Keep users engaged. Behavioral economics experts have established that people are generally fond of the 4 letter F-Word - A preference for FREE seems to be a feature hardwired into humans brains. See [Dan Ariely’s experiment](http://danariely.com/2009/08/10/the-nuances-of-the-free-experiment/) “_Free kisses beat bargain truffles.”_ Give them something free so they keep coming back for more…eventually becoming a repeat subscriber.

3. Write content to align with reader scan preferences: People tend to scan web pages like in a pattern different from what they read in print. Eye tracking research indicates the dominant patterns people tend to deploy while reading computer screens. In general, people tend to read blog posts in an F pattern, beginning at the top going through the first few rows, then scan down, scan across a bit again, and then scan down to skim for any thing interesting. The intensity of attention gets weaker (or the ink gets fainter) as readers scan down the post. Keeping this human behavior in mind will help you write better blog posts.

4. Write in bite sized chunks using a structured framework whenever feasible: Write small sized chunks that fits above the fold or above the scroll. Avoid complex/theoretical writing or marketing hyperbole. Use colloquialism. Try limiting a blog post to 450 - 675 words with 2 to 3 sections per post. Limit each section to about 2 or 3 paragraphs each no more than 75 words.

5. Stick to a manageable schedule for posting: Sticking to a schedule that your readers can predit and that you can manage is very useful for your readers. It helps to provide a predictability to your readers on when they would expect to see new posts…lets say:

   • a new learning every Monday
   • a case study every Wednesday
   • a video story every Friday
   • a photograph every Saturday

What worked for you/didn’t work well in your blog? Chime in below with your comments.

via my friend @sterlizzi CEO of http://www.wearephotographers.com