computing platform

Oct 6 2010

VIDEO: Screen Shots to the extreme with Skitch

skitched 84 318x122 VIDEO: Screen Shots to the extreme with Skitch

Last time we looked at taking screen shots on your Mac using just your Mac’s built-in powers of awesomeness. This time we take it up a notch.

Skitch is a free desktop application and web service1 from Plasq that allows you to easily take the same kind of screen shots you can take on your Mac right out of the box, but adds more functions and extremely useful features like intuitive scaling and cropping, iSight snaps, timed screen shots, the ability to sketch and type to annotate your images, a saved history, a variety of file types and sharing options including FTP, Flickr, MobileMe and a My Skitch page that comes with your sign-up—it also allows you to dig into that “Kitteh” gallery in your iPhoto library for quick and simple LOLCat creation!

No Flash? No problem—click here!»


VIDEO: Screen Shots to the extreme with Skitch

As stated in the previous post, a screen shot is basically a digital snapshot of your computer’s screen at the time when the screen shot was taken. They are really handy when you are trying to show someone what’s on your screen when you can’t get them to come over and look for themselves. Common such situations are taking screen shots of error messages or warnings that you’d like to show someone offering tech support, taking screen shots of websites when you’d like to show someone on another browser or computing platform what the site looks like on your end or taking screen shots of a wicked high score on a game you’re playing.

Skitch takes that ability and gives in extra oomph. What if your computer screen is a bit cluttered and it isn’t obvious what you are showing people. In the video below I demo how to take a timed screen shot as I reveal a hidden item in J. J. Abrams‘ Star Trek that proves that even in the distant future, some innovations of the twentieth century simply cannot be replaced or improved upon. Watch the video and see what I’m talking about.

  1. free at the time of this posting, but the app has been in perpetual beta, so that may change if it ever get officially released [↩]

By RickMacMerc • Featured, Graphics News, graphicstips, MacMerc.TV, Mini Video, osx, productivity, RickMacMerc, shareware, tips, tutorial • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oct 4 2010

VIDEO: Capture Screen Shots on your Mac

VIDEO: Capture Screen Shots on your MacThis is a tip I’ve known about for years and I thought it was common knowledge until I was reminded by my friend, @Daynah , that not everyone has been using Macs for as long as us dyed-in-the-wool Mac-heads have. There are a lot of switchers who need to know the basic awesomeness and it’s our job to welcome them in and bring them up to speed.

So, @Daynah , this one is for you.

How to take a screen shot (or how to a “Print Screen”) on a Mac

In case you’re unfamiliar with screen shots, a screen shot is basically a digital snapshot of your computer’s screen at the time when the screen shot was taken. They are really handy when you are trying to show someone what’s on your screen when you can’t get them to come over and look for themselves. Common such situations are taking screen shots of error messages or warnings that you’d like to show someone offering tech support, taking screen shots of websites when you’d like to show someone on another browser or computing platform what the site looks like on your end or taking screen shots of a wicked high score on a game you’re playing.

There are basically 3 ways to take a screen shot on a Mac:

  1. Command-Shift-3 gets you a shot of the entire screen saved as a PNG to your Desktop.
  2. Command-Shift-4 gets you a crosshair cursor you can drag around the area you want captured which is then saved as a PNG to your Desktop.
  3. Command-Shift-4 …and then Space turns your cursor into a camera that you can position over windows to capture them as a PNG to your Desktop with a single click.

The extra added bonus to this is that if you add the Control key to any of those 3 shortcuts (i.e. Command-Control-Shift-4), the screen shot is NOT saved to your Desktop but instead copied to your clipboard from which you can simply Paste it into an email. This gets the screen shot into use without cluttering your Desktop with files you’ll have to sort through later.

No Flash? No problem—click here!»



cb customize 01 318x1731 VIDEO: Capture Screen Shots on your MacIf you watch the video, you’ll see I make reference to CandyBar. This is not needed for taking screen shots, but offered me something super awesome to shoot for the the demonstration. CandyBar is a great application for your Mac that allows you to download icon sets in iContainer format from Iconfactory.com and apply them to individual files or your entire system (including the Trash). You can even use it to change your Dock appearance to match some of the icon sets. The original system icons are always easily restored again should the new look prove too exciting for you. CandyBar sells for $29 US.

VIDEO: Capture Screen Shots on your Mac

By RickMacMerc • apple, Featured, graphicstips, MacMerc.TV, Mini Video, News, osx, poweruser, productivity, productivity, RickMacMerc, tutorial • 4 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apr 27 2009

How to post a story to MacMerc

Here are just a few strong suggestions on how to submit news to MacMerc.com and get the story published.

WE ARE A MAC SITE!!

The first three letters of MacMerc.com are M A C. This is not because we are Scottish, it is because we are Mac centered as far as or computing platform. The farthest we’ll delve outside of the Mac category is to cover iPod stories. If you are flogging some Windows-only software or non-Mac-compatible hardware, WE DON"T CARE!!!

Choose a punchy headline

We get a lot of our traffic from RSS readers and Mac news headline sites. If
the headline isn’t unique and intriguing, people will assume the story isn’t
either. Furthermore, if every Mac site is following the same story and posting
it with a similar headline to yours, why would anyone choose the story you wrote?
You’ve got to hook the reader.

Blah: WiebeTech introduces FireWire KeyChain

Better: Lose
up to 1GB of files along with your car keys!

Use correct and supported HTML tags

We don’t expect everyone to card carrying code monkeys before they can successfully
post to the site. We do expect you to make sure the story you post looks the
way you want it to when you post it. We shouldn’t have to clean up every story
that gets posted here, but to a large extent, we do. Please do us all a favor
and become familiar with the following HTML tags:

<br><br>

Authentic code monkeys might question this code, but trust me, it works just
fine. Anytime you want to create a paragraph break, punch in a pair of <br> tags instead of hitting “Return” twice. Make this code your friend.

<a href="http://www.macmerc.com">MacMerc</a>

Since every story must have a link, you may as well link properly. Replace
the “http://www.macmerc.com” with the URL you are linking to and replace
the “MacMerc” with the name of the page to which that URL belongs
and soon MacMerc readers will be flocking to your site.

Once you’ve plugged in these tags where they belong, don’t forget to change
the story format selector from “Plain Old Text” to “HTML Formatted”

Choose an appropriate topic heading

We have a large
and growing collection of topics (45 topics at the time that I write this).
Certainly at least one of them pertains to your story in a deep and meaningful
way…if not choose one that pertains to it in a loose and tenuous way, but
choose one. Try to stay away from using the Apple / Mac topic in a generic sense
— we’d like to reserve that topic for stories that are specifically about
Apple.

Use Story Text & Extended Text fields appropriately

On the Submit News page, you will notice that there is a large text submission
field marked “Story Text” and another marked “Extended Text”.
Admittedly, this interface could have been made to be more clear. The Story
Text field is for a short introductory paragraph to introduce your story on
the front page of the site. It’s your opportunity to hook the reader. The Extended
Text field is for the bulk of your story. Readers see this part when they click
the “Read more…” link. Submitting stories this way keeps from having
to scroll down screens and screens of text.

Make sure your story goes somewhere

Like I said while discussing HTML tags, every story should have a link. Okay
maybe if you submit an editorial you may not need a link, but it would probably
be a much stronger piece if you could include links to other stories and sites
that back up your claims. Include a link and include it properly.

View the preview

You cannot submit a story without previewing it first. You can’t! What you
evidently can do is ignore the preview. You can, but you shouldn’t.
If your story looks bad, if it’s poorly formatted, if the links are invalid
and you choose to submit it anyway, then we are likely to just delete it. Study
that preview. Look at it objectively. Ask yourself, “Would a MacMerc visitor
want to read this?” If the story is worth posting, it’s worth posting properly.

For bonus points…

Become a registered user of MacMerc

Avoid having your story credited to “Anonymous Coward” by registering
with MacMerc and logging in before you post.

Support your story

Once you have written your story with a snappy headline, entered in all your
text, checked your tags, corrected your spelling (sorry no spell check on the
site, you’ll have to do that on your own), chosen a topic heading, verified
your links and submitted your masterpiece (with “HTML Formatted” selected),
you may have to wait a little while for one of us here to receive and approve
it for posting. Once we do (and if you have done everything the way I have recommended,
there should be no reason why you shouldn’t get posted) the next step might
be to publicize your story by emailing its Headline, Story Text and Permanent
Link (the URL that the “Read more…” link uses) to other Mac news
sites like MacSurfer.

By admin • Articles, Spotlight • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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