From iPhone to your blog to Twitter and Facebook in three taps

This is a little trick I showed to my buddy @JamesProps a little while ago that has allowed him to quickly take pictures with his iPhone, have them posted to his blog at JamesProps.com and then out to Twitter and Facebook.

It’s so quick he only has to launch an iPhone app, take a picture and tap send. Then the system takes care of the rest.

It is so easy to set up that I explained the whole process to him over a series of Twitter direct messages and a couple of emails. Here’s how it works:

Set up your custom domain—<yournamehere>.com

First you need to register a domain. You can get a domain rather inexpensively at GoDaddy.com ( Domain Sale! $6.89 .com at GoDaddy ), just be sure you only get the domain—don’t bother with the hosting or anything else.

Sign up for a Tumblr account

Next you’ll want to sign up for a Tumblr account and start a blog there.

While you’re logged into Tumblr.com and click “Customize”. In the Customize window, you can change the theme of your blog really simply and there are a ton of themes to choose from.

When you’re done customizing everything else, click the “Info” tab and tell Tumblr you want your blog at the domain you just registered.

You’ll also want to look under the “Services” tab and add your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This will announce every post your make to your Tumblr blog to your Twitter followers and your Facebook friends.

Point your domain at Tumblr

Now, you’re going to have to tell GoDaddy.com that you want traffic to your domain to go to your Tumblr blog. So, log into GoDaddy.com, go to Domain Management, click on your domain in the list of domains.

Once you arrive at the Domain Manager page for your domain, click “Total DNS Control”

(Almost there!) Click the little paper & pencil icon under A (Host) in the @ row…

Then plug 72.32.231.8 into the “Point To Ip Address:” field and click OK.

Now, give it a minute or two and then go to your domain name …it should now be your Tumblr blog. Free website with your own custom domain.

The app that makes is simple by making it Quickr

There is a free Tumblr app which is pretty great, but there is also a 99¢ app called Quickr from Basil Apps that makes posting pictures to your page a much simpler procedure: Launch, snap, (type a description if you like) and post—DONE!

The thing I love about services like Tumblr is they integrate so well (and evolve to continue to integrate well) with other social networking and web services. A lot of people trying to establish a “personal brand” make an over-the-top “Hollywood” website that they can’t maintain themselves and they’re often too complicated to update often enough to build an audience. A simple, free Tumblr site kicks their ass.

You should also go to Tumblr’s Goodies Page and drag the “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklette into your bookmarks bar on your browser.

Then, any time you’re on a super awesome website reading an article, click the “Share on Tumblr” button in your toolbar and a little window will pop up and help you post a link to that article any way you would like (text, photo, video, quote…whatever!)

I’m really liking Tumblr. Let me know how this process works for you.

What online services do you use to express yourself and reach your friends…your audience? Please tell me about it in the comments.

Build a Window Management App with Apptivate and AppleScript

Once I get going again, you may notice a slightly new direction in the content here at MacMerc. I’d like to get away from reporting and repeating the news and focus more on tutorials and reviews of the awesomeness that can be done and had with our little technological gems from Cupertino.

To that end, I bring you a link to a tutorial I found from AppStorm. With this ingenious little system, you will quickly and easily build your very own window management app using nothing but a cigarette butt, a Starbucks splash stick, AppleScript and an app called Apptivate.¹

What’s a window management app? Good question. Sounds like a big bag of boring, but if you often need to work in several different windows on a single screen and you spend any time at all sizing and positioning windows so you can see them all, you’ll dig this simple method to solve that dilemma.

What productivity hacks and and systems do you use to rock the Mac to save time? I want to know. Please leave a comment.

If you’ve written a tutorial or posted a video about it, I want to post it here. Please leave a link in the comments.

1. I totally lied about the cigarette butt and the splash stick [↩]

The Ultimate DV Editing Station – Part 1– Setting Up

By: Brian Burnham

It is important to start smart when setting up an editing station. Choices made now will avoid frustration later, so follow closely.

For those of you following along at home, here’s what you will need:

1. A 867 MHz G4, fresh from Apple $2499
2. A Matrox RTMac $999
3. Final Cut Pro 2.0 $999

Optional:

1. Contour ShuttlePRO $125
2. Macally 2 button scroll optical mouse (i-optinet) $49

First off, I want to say that this tutorial is a free service. Anything that might happen to you, your Mac or anything you happen to have near it is in no way the fault of MacMerc or me in particular. Just be smart, okay?

Getting it Together

Well, we’ve got all the boxes unpacked and the smell of fresh poly carbonate plastics is making us a little woozy but I’m hoping you managed to put together the basic components of your Mac. We’ll pick up at the installation of the RTMac card. Open the side panel of your G4 and pick a PCI slot. Don’t forget to ground yourself by either touching a big piece of metal or putting on a ground strap. Pop it in and connect it to the desktop breakout box (via cable). Don’t worry about plugging it in to the wall, your Mac powers the box.

Software

Now we are ready to start installing the software that will make this sweet, fast new Mac fly. At this point, if you’re anything like me, you spend several minutes poking and pushing the front panel of the SuperDrive, until you snap out of your stupor and read the directions. As noted in the directions that I read AFTER I had figured things out, there is no "eject" button on the tower of the new G4. You have to use the keyboard eject to get the thing open.

Whew! That was a close one, but don’t worry, we won’t be referring to the directions again. Now that we’re rollin’, we’ll install Final Cut Pro (choosing the RTMac version under the "custom install" option). Enter in your serial numbers (they are in the documentation, on a separate sheet of paper). Now, I realize that you love to see your name in print, but you’ll notice that, in the QuickTime registration panel, you must use "QuickTime Pro" as your name, or the code will not work. After running the two installers, stop by the Apple web site for the Final Cut Pro 2.0.2 update

RT and VM

The temptation to restart your Mac and start playing with your new system is almost unbearable, but stay with me. You see, the RTMac doesn’t work with virtual memory on, and by default, your new Mac has it turned on. So, make a quick pit stop by the Memory control panel. Now is also a good time to note that RAM is at an all time low in cost, and you do need more than the default RAM provided by Apple.

Toys

Now, there are a couple of optional gadgets that will make your life as an editor easier. The two we chose are Macally’s two-button, optical wheel mouse — a must for any professional Mac, and Contour’s ShuttlePRO. This second tool will provide us with a more video-like interface, adding shuttle and jog capabilities to your Mac. After installing the drivers for your Macally mouse (provided on the CD), you will need to download your custom Contour drivers configured to work with Final Cut Pro.

This is as far as we will get in this installment. You now have a viable nonlinear editing station, ready to use. In the following tutorials we’ll look at optimizing, troubleshooting and customizing your workstation!

On to Part 2: Optimizing & Troubleshooting

The Ultimate DV Editing Station – Part 2– Troubleshooting and Optimizing

By: Brian Burnham

Alright, last time we set up our system and were ready to begin editing. Now we’ll take a look at a couple potential problems to avoid and some ways to maximize the potential of your new editing system.

Troubleshooting:

We had only one hang-up in our installation. Learn from my mistake!

Pixels, pixels, pixels

Many industry-standard non linear editors work off of the 640×480 pixel depth, using the square pixels your computer generates. However, the RTMac is set to work instead with the 720×480 pixel ratio. This does not mean the video frame is any wider. This new ratio is founded upon 4:3 pixels, rather than the square default on your computer. What does this mean? In short it means that your RTMac will only work on it’s default of 720×480

Update Fever

When working on a Mac used primarily for video editing, there is another caveat: beware of constant upgrading. In many cases you will find that the $1,000 editing system you purchased doesn’t work with the free QuickTime upgrade that shows up in your Software Update. You should exercise extreme caution when upgrading system components to a version newer than your video software. In fact, unless you are updating all of your video software, don’t update anything else that could remotely conflict. In our case here, it has been brought to my attention that you will likely find the 5.0.2 QuickTime update incompatible with the RTMac. Let me summarize this point by saying that, in the interest of stability, you must sacrifice the urge to update your video editor.

Optimizing:

Okay, sorry for the lecture, but I think you’ll find configurations and updates to be the primary causes of problems on your Mac. Now, let’s make your Mac all that it can be.

The Hybrid

If, for some reason, your video editor needs to be used for other purposes, let me suggest you use some of the internal customizing features of your Mac OS. Extensions are the number one cause of grief and conflict on your Mac. If you have to install a bunch of extra something on your computer, use the Extension Manager.

I’m not going to explain to you the ins and outs of the EM. Take a moment to make a separate setting for video. Disable things like File Sharing, printers and other unrelated drivers. Don’t get to crazy, many system components are still necessary. Experiment. Now, leave yourself another set with all these extensions enabled for the other uses of your Mac, printing, etc. When you are ready to do some intensive editing or capturing, change your extension set and restart.

Tearin’ Loose

Okay,now that we have selectively deactivated extensions that are unneeded, lets cut your Mac loose from some other restrictions. First, deactivate AppleTalk, Web Sharing and File Sharing. Background activity on your Mac can interfere with your video work.

Working the Disks

If you ordered your Mac with optional new drives (this is a good idea), go into Final Cut Preferences and click on the "Scratch Disks" tab. Here you can tell Final Cut which disks to use for video capture, etc. On our system, we have 2 extra drives. In order to take the load off the system disk and increase speed, we will set the audio and video capture on a separate disk than the one we are running the OS and final Cut from. Then, to further optimize our system, we will set our Audio and Video Render to still another disk, to increase the speed of our editing. Finally, get a disk defragmenting program, such as Norton SpeedDisk and defragment your disks frequently. This will prevent I/O errors with your video data. A word on stripping (that’s with one "p") Many professionals stripe their hard drives. This increases the read/write speed of their drives. However, this is not a native format that can be read by your system, and requires third party software. Because of the instability that comes with third party drivers, I recommend against this – in our situation here. There are times
to stripe, but this isn’t one of them

Next time we’re going to take a step back and have a look at what we’ve done. In this final installment we’ll asses our equipment and software and decide what’s good, great or fit for the trash heap. For those of you who have experience with these products, send me your opinions! Tune in next time to find out how these video tools rate!

The Ultimate DV Editing Station – Part 3– Evaluation

By: Brian Burnham

Now, with Assembly and Troubleshooting under our belt, lets throw down our votes on what was and what wasn’t what we needed.

Power Macintosh G4 (867 MHz)

Apple Final Cut Pro 2.0

Matrox RTMac

I hope these evaluations will be useful. Remember this is not the final word. Be sure and share your opinions with your fellow Mac Professionals in the MacMerc Forums.

Thank you for tuning in. MacMerc’s highest priority is providing you with the information you need to be successful.

Extreme IE customization – Graphical Favorites

By: Jon Gales

Although very few people will admit to being a fan of Internet Explorer,
most Mac users will come in contact with it quite frequently. Although OmniWeb
and Chimera are good
browsers, IE still has more compatibility. I recently found a way to make Explorer
a little nicer ñ graphical
favorites:

The trick makes your "must have" sites more visible
while giving them a nicer appearance.

The first step is to make the graphic. Go to the site that you want to have
the graphical link to and look for a logo. In my case I went to MacMerc (big
surprise!) and found our logo. To save this to your desktop you can either click
on it and drag it to your desktop or control-click on it and choose "Download
Image To Disk". It’s your call but control clicking might be a little
easier if you’ve never dragged an image to the desktop before.

Once you have it saved to your computer you need to resize it. Although IE will
try to automatically resize it, the result will look like trash. I used Photoshop
[screen
shot] but any basic image editor with resizing capability will work –
even iPhoto! If you
are using Photoshop and the logo is a gif (like it is in MacMerc’s case) the
mode needs to be switched to RGB [screen
shot] Once the image has been resized it needs to be cropped [screen
shot]. I saved off my image as ‘logo.gif’ and put it on my desktop.

Now open up a text editor and type
in the following code. If you are using TextEdit type Command-
shift-T before starting to type anything (switches to text mode). To save some
typing download (control-click and choose Download Link To Disk) this
file and open it in TextEdit (no preference hacking needed). Whichever way you
chose your file should be as follows [screen
shot]:

<a href="http://www.macmerc.com"><img
src="logo.gif" alt="MacMerc"></a>

The image (logo.gif)
will link to http://www.macmerc.com
and it’s title (underneath the image) will be "MacMerc". You
can obviously change these if you are doing another site. If you want to do
several sites at once feel free to keep adding code – you don’t have to
delete the first line before adding a second. Download a transparent gif of
the logo if you can. Otherwise it may look a little funny on your tool bar!
You can always make a logo transparent in Photoshop if need be but most of the
times you should be able to find one. If you can’t make out the logo at the
small size either make up a new one in Photoshop or find a new site! Not all
sites have logos that fit well in the little space.

Put the text file, and image in a
folder (you can call it anything you like). Place this folder someplace that
it won’t be moved (/Users/username/Documents is a good place). If it does get
moved your bookmark will bust! Open the text file in Internet Explorer
by dragging in into a blank browser window, dragging it to the Dock icon or
choosing open in IE. Once the file is open you should see the logo you lovingly
prepared. If not go over what you did… If you’re still having trouble email
or IM [AIM: jonknee41] me and I’ll walk you through it. If you want to add MacMerc
I have posted the graphic I used here.

Once you have the logo just
drag it to the top tool bar [screen
shot], the logo should "stick" afterwards. If you need to delete
it or just want to see the text/image control-click in the top menu bar [screen
shot] and choose the appropriate option. [screen
shot of graphics only] [screen
shot of text only]

Most people will want to add Google
(as well as MacMerc…) and I have one more trick that will save you even
MORE time. Instead of linking to http://www.google.com
use this URL:

javascript:void(q=prompt(”,”));if(q)void(location.href=’http://www.google.com/search?q=’+escape(q))

The code for the page will look like
this:

<a
href="javascript:void(q=prompt(”,”));if(q)void(location.href=’http://www.google.com/search?q=’+escape(q))">
<img src="logo.gif" alt="Google!"></a>

What it will do is pop up a box in
IE that you type your query into. Hit return and you’re taken to the results
page of Google! No need to hit the front page! You can easily customize this
javascript to work with a bunch of search sites like dictionaries, and image
search engines. It’s quite a time saver!

If you find any cool tricks that stem from this idea please send
them to me and I’ll let the rest of the world know (and also credit your name
of course). Also, if you go wild with this and want to send me a screen shot of your tool bar go ahead! I’d love to see/post what everyone has done.

MacMerc	The Joy of Tech	After Y2K	Apple	MacDesign
MacUpdate	MacSurfer	O’Grady’s Powerpage	MacMinute	MacAddict
MacFans	Unsantity	IconFactory	Google (Pop-up)	Google
MacMusic	Hollywood Stock Exchange	IMDb	Audible.com	Amazon
	The Screen Savers		TechTV

Teaching SlashDock 2.0 to pick up MacMerc.com headlines

By: Rick Yaeger

The release of Mac OS X brought many changes not the least of which was the Dock. The Dock was designed to help users navigate and organize their system, and give instant access to your most frequently used applications, folders, and minimized windows but it was also given the option for a new type of expandability ó the dockling.

This is where SlashDock comes in… err… well… it used to. You see, back in version 1.0, SlashDock was a dockling but in version 2.0 the developer saw fit to make it a stand alone application. Many devoted SlashDock users are already grieving this decision and I doubt that it will be long before we see SlashDock waddling its butt back into dockling status.

For those of you who haven’t used SlashDock before, it is a free Mac-OS-X-only application that grabs headlines from slashdot-compatible and RSS-compatible sites like MacMerc.com. In version 2.0 you are able to specify how often automatic updates are made and how SlashDock behaves when new headlines are found. To check on the headlines and read articles, simply click on SlashDock in you dock and choose your favorite site from the menu and then pick a headline. Selecting that headline will take you directly to that article in your preferred web browser. Very cool but MacMerc.com is not one of the default sites SlashDock checks. Don’t worry, we’re gonna fix that.

Setting SlashDock to read MacMerc.com

Assuming you have installed and launched SlashDock as described on the developer’s site, select Preferences… under the SlashDock menu. With the Sites tab selected, enter http://www.macmerc.com/backend.php in the field marked URL and click the + button. SlashDock will now automatically grab all of MacMerc.com’s information and add it to your “subscription list.” You will probably want to click on MacMerc.com in the list and drag it to the top where it belongs ó I’ll leave that up to you.

Making SlashDock Launch at Startup

One of the problems with SlashDock no longer being a dockling is that you have to go track it down and launch it if you haven’t got your System Preferences set to do it automatically. That is easy enough to fix.

Select your Apple Menu and choose System Preferences…. From your System Preferences window, click on Login and click the Login Items tab. If you click the Add… button and navigate your way to the SlashDock application and click Open, you will have SlashDock launching and grabbing the latest MacMerc.com headlines at every startup. Life is good.

Your Brother-in-Lawís Wedding Video– a tutorial

You may not be related to them, but now word has gotten around about your Mac prowess ñ and your SuperDrive.

Anyone whoís spent their afternoon dropping dozens of images one after another, and individually adjusting each transition knows there has to be a better way.

This is where iView Media Pro comes in. iPhoto makes a mean slide show on your Mac, but the finesse goes out the window when you attempt a QuickTime export. iMovieís image resampling is sometimes less than ideal and does not lend itself to any kind of batch handling.

iView Media Pro does much more than creating slide shows. It was created as a media management tool, and does it so well that it is the tool of choice for the tutorial.

So hopefully you have a tech savvy brother in law with a digital camera. If not the good news is that your scanning will be the most time consuming part of making the slide show.

Create a new catalog in iView and drag all your images in. Arrange them in the desired order. If you scanned them in order or strategically named them this can be done with a quick sort.

Take a minute to adjust your slide show settings. Chose Movie Presentation under the Make menu. Select a transition and set your dimensions to 720 x 480 and uncheck the Compression option and click Create.

Now, import the clip into iDVD, or your weapon of choice. You can drop music in with your video editor or in QuickTime Pro.

Easy enough? In three quick steps you can turn your collection of images into a slick video that might be enough to impress you in-laws.

You can download and use a fully functional version for 3 week evaluation. The full registered version is well worth the $45 price tag.

-Brian

XML on OS X

By: Jon Gales

There aren’t many more computer acronyms more popular than XML. Go to the bookstore
and check out the internet section—it’s all XML. What happened to plain
old HTML? It’s old hat! Most people are probably wondering, "What can this
XML thing do for me?". Well basically for most of us, it saves us time.
Lots of time.

Meet NetNewsWire
Lite; it’s a lightweight cocoa application that you will soon fall in love
with. What it does is take in XML feeds (in a flavor known as RSS
or really simple syndication) from the sites you choose and display it in beautiful
aqua. Sound lame? How about reading 30+ sites in under 10 minutes? Most of your
favorite sites are available in RSS (Yes, even MacMerc) which makes scanning
the Mac web a cinch. Want something besides Mac news? Well there are plenty
of choices from all genres that can be added in just a few clicks right from
NNW. Have a site you want to see a feed for, but can’t find one? Well there
probably is one at NewsIsFree.com
or Syndic8.com. Below is
a screen shot of my set up, viewing MacMerc’s feed

 

If you still aren’t convinced consider the fact that Radio,
Manilla, Movable
Type, LiveJournal,
Blogger, pMachine,
Blosxom,
PHPNuke, PostNuke
and many more Content Management Systems all support RSS by default! That comes
out to millions of sites that all support a technology that is almost unknown
to anyone out of the closely knit blogosphere.

I improved the RSS support of MacMerc to
include our story summaries (what you see on the front page) in the feed. That
means right in NetNewsWire you can see if we’ve updated, read what the stories
are about and choose what to read up on further. You can set NNW to update every
30 minutes which lets you keep up to date and still get work done . It’s got
a dock icon that updates like Mail’s (a little red number showing the number
of unread items).

Any site that updates daily and doesn’t support RSS should think about it. The
easiest way to add support for your site is just to use one of the web publishing
tools that support it to make your web site. That way you don’t have to sling
code yourself. However, if you’re feeling lucky here is the format that your
file should follow and a few pointers:

 

<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<rss version="VERSION NUMBER">
<channel>
  <title>MacMerc.com – Start using RSS</title>
  <link>http://www.macmerc.com/rss</link>
  <description>You may already be a MacMerc!</description>

  <language>en-us</language>
<item>
  <title>This is the first story</title>
  <link>http://firstlink.com</link>
  <description>This is a description of the first item!</description>

</item>
</channel>
  </rss>

I added full RSS support to my AIM
Quotes site by following the above format. It was such a simple script it
only took a few minutes to code. I was even able to include the IM’s with their
colors. To include HTML in your feed just convert the HTML to HTML entities.
If you are writing in PHP (like I usually am) there is a function for this,
htmlentities().

This is really basic as far as RSS is concerned but it shows the
premises of what is going on. You’ll notice that it looks like HTML with different
tags. That’s basically what it is, RSS just is a collection of standard tags.
That’s how a reader like NetNewsWire can parse these files. Although this demo
is really simple, you can do more advanced things with it such as including
permanent links, copyright information, last build dates, and a ton of other
information. To get the scoop check out UserLand’s RSS
page. They are busy working on version 2.0 right now!

Tips for authoring:

• Make sure to send the headers out as text/xml or your feeds will never
  work
• Include new lines (
  ) after each line
• To speed things up author the xml file when things are published, not
  upon request (you’ll save a ton of CPU cycles)
• Include a button on your web page that points to your feed, no one benefits
  from a secret feed
• If you feel the need you can include advertising in the feeds, just add
  it to your code base. Most likely it won’t be effective but you never know.
• If you don’t have a good statistical traffic monitor on your web server,
  build a counter into the file that is used to serve the XML. That way you’ll
  know if people are taking advantage of your feed.
• Convert HTML to HTML Entities to make it work in your feeds.

Tips for using feeds:

• Subscribe to LOTS of sites in the beginning, find out what you like after
  a few days. This is a good way to find new sites (NetNewsWire has a bunch
  of sites built in).
• To add LiveJournals, just add /rss to the journal’s address. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/USERNAME/rss)
• MacMerc is by default in the sites drawer of NetNewsWire but our syndication
  address is: http://www.macmerc.com/backend.php
• MacMinute (our favorite Mac news site) has an unlinked feed: http://www.macminute.com/headlines.xml.
  This isn’t built into NetNewsWire yet so make sure to add this one ASAP!
• MacUpdate (our favorite Mac Download site) has an OS X feed: http://www.macupdate.com/mommy/macsurferx.php.
  This isn’t built into NetNewsWire yet so make sure to add this one ASAP!

 

Optimize Your DeliciousExport

Brought to you by: James

Clearly, the problem with DeliciousExporter is that it exports your images as their original size and uses CSS to resize them in your browser. Why not resize these images before uploading? Why not indeed…. The following are the exact steps that I took to shrink my library from 13.8mb to 2.6mb.

1. Download and purchase EasyBatchPhoto ($18). Why purchase? Because you get a very ugly watermark thrown on every image if you don’t. Why EasyBatchPhoto? Because I’ve tried the rest and they just don’t work. Skip to step 1a, right after step 5, for special instructions on using Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto.

2. Backup Delicious Library. You can do this by copying ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ to an external hard disk or burn a CD with that directory.

3. Now, open ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/ on your hard disk and delete every folder but “Plain Covers”.

4. Open your newly purchased EasyBatchPhoto. Choose whatever destination you want, set the scaling to “Stretch to fit” at 113×155 pixels, choose your desired scaling quality, set the format to “JPEG”, the quality to “80″, and make sure that “Preserve EXIF” is checked. At this point, you may want to add all of this as a preset. Why 113×155 pixels? Because that’s the size of the small, plastic-like image that will be displayed over your images in your newly exported library. Consequently, that is the size that the original images would have been resized to. Your settings should similar to the screenshot below.

5. Find your “Plain Covers” folder at ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/Plain Covers/ and drag it into the small box on the top-left corner of EasyBatchPhoto. Continue through the dialogue box and your photos will begin to convert. Move onward to step 6.

Use Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto

1a. If you have Mac OS X v10.4.x, you can use Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto for steps 1-5.

2a. Duplicate the “Plain Covers” folder in ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ and drag this duplicate folder to your desktop.

3a. Launch Automator, select the contents of the Plain Covers duplicate, and drag them into the Workflow area.

4a. From the action area, select Preview/Scale Images and make sure that it occurs after the retrieval of the image files. Set this action to “To Size (pixels): 155″. Your settings should similar to the screenshot below.

5a. Execute the workflow and save it for later use.

6. Replace ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/Plain Covers/ with your newly created “Plain Covers” folder.

7. Launch Delicious Library. You will be shocked by how pixelated your cover images are, but that’s why you made a backup of your library in step 2. Now, quit Delicious Library.

8. Launch DeliciousExporter. Make sure that “Export images” is checked, enter your desired email address, and export your library.

9. Once your library is exported, open one of the .html files in your browser. Your cover images are no longer pixelated. That’s because they are exactly the size that they would have been resized to via the CSS.

10. Congratulations, your exported library is now as optimized as it could get (unless you lower the image quality any further). You may now upload your library and restore Delicious Library by replacing ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ with your backup copy.

Just for fun, here’s what mine looks like:

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