API

VIDEO: Send a bunch of files everywhere with Courier

Courier 318x221 VIDEO: Send a bunch of files everywhere with Courier

Courier is a cool application for your Mac that makes it really easy to send a bunch of media to a bunch of destinations.

Image you’ve ever come back from a trip somewhere with a whole bunch of pictures you want to share online. You have a dozen pictures and you want to post them to your Facebook account, but you also want to post them to Flickr and TwitPic so that different people in and around your life can see them.

Courier lets you set up “envelopes” that serve as presets for a lot of the most common places you might want to distribute photos, videos, and other files. And, as presets, you can set up one envelope to send video to your YouTube and Vimeo accounts and another to send to YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr.

Courier supports file transfers to Amazon S3, Ember, Facebook, Flickr, FTP, Vimeo and YouTube. RealMac Software has offered an extensible plug-in API so that developers can create their own plug-ins for their services to support Courier users—there are already plug-ins for TwitPic and CloudApp.

The feature I really like, is that Courier adds all your envelopes with their specific gallery and privacy settings to your Services menu so you can just select all the files you want to send in Finder and fire them off—check out the video below to see how it’s done.

Once the files are uploaded, Courier makes it really easy to share the news with the links you need right at your fingertips.

Courier sells for $19.95 US.

No Flash? No problem—click here!»

 VIDEO: Send a bunch of files everywhere with Courier

Better Blogging

Unless you’ve been in a box, you’ve heard of the powerful new web trend, blogging.

This week, the world of blogging got even better. Google, which owns Blogger, turned 5 and turned Blogger into a totally free service. Now all of the previous premium features are free to all. So, make the most of your new-and-improved account with great freeware!

mu Better BloggingKung-Log

Here’s a full-featured desktop editor that allows you to post directly to your blog, be it Movable Type, Blogger or another service using the Blogger API. What makes Kung-Log great is its ability to manage several blogs, even from different services.

mu Better BloggingBlogWorks

Here’s another OS X editor that’s much more streamlined. It works with Blogger and several Blogger-like services. It has a nice brushed metal interface too.

mu Better BloggingArchipelago

Like the others, this app lets you post from your desktop without a browser. Archipelago is a little harder to configure, but is the only free alternative to OS 9 users.

mu Better BloggingiCal2blog X

This is a simple AppleScript you can edit to post iCal entries to your blog.

Just to help out, many of these third party apps will need links. If you’re using Blogger, you API path is http://api.blogger.com/api and your XML-RPC is located at http://plant.blogger.com/api/RPC2

Now get out there and blog! Iíll be back next week, as usual.

Brian

mu Better BloggingDownloads provided by MacUpdate

Ditch Your Browser

The web browser has long been our window to the services of the Internet. But a new crop of applications allows us to circumvent the browser.

mu Ditch Your BrowserAmazonShopper

Get tired of waiting for Amazon.com to load up its 2 million cookies just to check the going price of a new DVD? This app lets you browse Amazon’s vast catalogues complete with pictures and descriptions.

mu Ditch Your BrowserGooglification

Here’s an interesting one. This app, which requires you to get a free Google API key, tracks the number of search results for various queries. Sounds weird huh? Well in so doing you can track search terms, such as your name, and get an idea of who is linking to your site.

mu Ditch Your BrowserjBidWatcher

To tell you the truth, java apps like this bug me because they are slow and usually lacking in interface. However, I haven’t been able to find another eBay bid watcher that’s free. Actually, given the functionality (including the ability to “snipe” bids at the last minute), jBid could be very useful to eBay sharks.

mu Ditch Your BrowserXjournal

I know last time I went over desktop apps that let you post to your blog. Here’s a similar client to access you LiveJournal. If LiveJournal is your blog of choice, you’ll want to check out these features. (if you’re using OS 9 try Phoenix.

I hope you’ll find that some of this week’s picks save you a Safari trip. If not, try back next week for more great free software.

For some after-show fun, stop by my blog. It’s like Oprah minus the diet.

mu Ditch Your BrowserDownloads provided by MacUpdate