Monday

Apr 27 2009

Master The Services Menu

By: Jon Gales

If you’d like to submit a topic for a future PowerUser Monday please let
me know.

OS X introduced a lot of new things for Mac users… Most of them good. One
of the biggies that most people still don’t use is the Services menu. You know
that thing off the Application menu that seems to always have what you want
grayed out? That’s it. Hopefully this article will help dymystify it a bit…
Maybe you’ll even learn to love it.

What’s Been Said

Myth
Services are only used by Cocoa Applications.
I subscribed to this, but then had a talk with a Cocoa/Carbon programmer.
It’s insanely easy to use services in Cocoa… It takes some work in Carbon.
They can be used in both. However, you’ll find most Carbon apps don’t use it
(it’s possible though just look at the Finder having services).

Myth
Invariably the option I want isn’t available (it’s grayed out).
I know it seems like that… You just have to learn how to
use the services menu. There’s only one exception I know of… Grab’s menu.
Only seems to work in TextEdit.

Using Services

With those out of the way, let’s get on to the meaty stuff. Here’s what
a typical services menu looks like (perhaps minus the Bluetooth option):

default services Master The Services Menu

Here’s what mine looks like after some apps I have added to it:

my services Master The Services Menu

The one I use most often is Subscribe In NetNewsWire which puts
my selection into my subscription list for one of my favorite apps of all
time…
NetNewsWire. If you
don’t use it but have broadband you’re probably not fit to be a Mac user.
Brent posted a great
video of how to subscribe via the services menu that you should
check out (even if you don’t use NNW, because it will convince you how handy
services are).

Most services use text in some way, for example if you’re at a website that
has a killer joke and you want to send it to a friend, you can just highlight
the text, go to the services menu, hit Mail and then choose send selection.
It will open Mail.app (if needed) create a new message, and make the body
the text you selected. A real time saver!

Try out some of the others now that you know most of them rely on selected
text in an app that supports them (try using Safari or Camino instead of
Internet Explorer).

Getting More

There are tons of third party services that you can snag for free. Just searching
for ‘service’ on MacUpdate yielded tons of results.

If you find a service that’s just too cool to not tell everyone about, send
it to me and if it really is cool, I’ll add it to the list below.

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Apr 27 2009

How To Host Slashdot On a Shared Server

By: Jon Gales

This week’s PowerUser Monday is brought to you by Scott Kelby’s Macintosh

The Naked Truth. Read MacMerc’s review of it here.

If you have a story suggestion, please email it to jon@macmerc.com.

Last week I covered the WWDC Keynote speech live (from the satellite feed

shown at the Tampa

Apple Store). If you missed it and live in a cave, here’s

the archive.

Like all of our live events it was a complete blast–we had tons of people

chatting

in

AIM/iChat

and served

an

amazing

amount

of pages

to enough people to sell out a basketball arena. The most amazing part

of all is that MacMerc is completely housed on a single shared server from

the fine folks at ActaDivina.

spike How To Host Slashdot On a Shared ServerI

could go on and on, but pictures are better than words. Seen at right what Webalizer made

of our traffic spike. The bright blue bar is pages (the main focus of this

article). That spike is pretty impressive… It’s roughly 20 times above our

average. So, what’s the secret to being able to handle the load? Static pages

baby.

Most of the cool features on MacMerc are made possible because of the

cool technology behind it. On any given news article you can comment, moderate

other

comments,

and

sometimes even vote in a poll. On stories like this one you see "blocks"

on the right hand side that give you access to some cool stuff. If you’re a

member (it’s free), you can even see how many people are currently at the site.

On any given page

load, we have server-side code that talks to our database and fetches the

data, formats it, and then exports it off to your browser. It’s all pretty

neat, but

it takes a lot of power to run. I made the decision a long time ago (right

after our server crashed during the iTunes Music Store announcement I believe)

that we would never try live coverage again without going static.

I wrote a

special content management system just for the keynote coverage. It

has a

pretty

slick

interface

and makes a static page as output. It’s also a time saver because it writes

all the time stamps and mark up for me. I just plug and chug. This was the

only scripting going on for the whole site, and only I was using it.

What’s the difference

between static and dynamic? When you accessed us during the keynote

the database

was

completely

still… No server

side programming

happened. Your browser said, "Give me the index page" and our server

said,

"here it is".

To take it a step further, I used mod_rewrite to forward everyone but myself

to the static index page. So if you typed in:

http://www.macmerc.com/ilovedellsomuch

You would see the same exact thing as everyone else. This is so we can assure

that the server is JUST working on shoving out the index page. The only person

that wasn’t seeing this page was me because I was doing the play-by-play.

So how did we do? Well here are some numbers/facts:

  • At our peak we were serving 150,000 pages an hour
  • That peak works out to about 40 pages a second (you should see this fly

    by on the terminal… really something).

  • With almost 500,000 pages served, we only went through about 5 gigs of

    bandwidth (the page was REALLY optimized). Not having any images really helped

    things move smoothly.

  • We still almost got nuked. The highest load average (via top in the terminal)

    I’ve ever seen happened during our peak… Over 100.

  • For a few hours we made Slashdot look

    like a Geocities page. Felt quite good. I felt tempted to try and crash someone’s

    site… Start a tradition of being "Merc’d".

If you’re looking for a host that can handle peaks, check out ActaDivina (nope,

we don’t get anything if you sign up… we just like them). They were superb.

They noticed the peak and streamlined Apache to make things

a little more smooth. Didn’t even have to ask them. If you got any questions

(or suggestions, we are going to be doing this again the

next

time

there is

a similar

event)

please let

me know. If you’re going to be having a similar event and want to find

out more about the content management system that I wrote, feel free to ask.

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Apr 27 2009

What to do before installing Panther

By: Jon Gales

Well this is it. The Monday before the Friday that Panther becomes mainstream. Since this is the last day to write a PowerUser Monday before Panther ships, I figured that I would let you in on some installation tips. It’s a big change, but hopefully these simple tips will help smooth the transition.

Back up
Seems obvious, but with OS X it’s pretty darn easy. Unless you’ve tried to massage OS X into OS 9 by tossing out the theory of a Home folder (yes, I’ve seen it done), you should be able to get by with only backing up the following:

  1. Home Folder – Again, this should be pretty obvious. The Desktop, Documents, Pictures, and Music folders are all stored here. Also, the user Library (~/Library) is kept here. You’ll soon find out that a lot of important stuff is kept here.
  2. Applications – Some people like to start fresh with their Application folder after intsalling a new OS. To each his own, but you’ll never say, “Oh crap, I backed up my Applications.” It’s not that hard. Do it. Depending on what kind of installation for Panther you do, your applications may or may not be copied over. However, anytime you do something major like install an OS, don’t risk it. Back up just in case.
  3. Main Library – Back up /Library to scoop up all the loose ends. This is easy to forget, but important stuff like the WebServer directory live in this folder. Other goodies include all access Fonts, printer drivers, some Application Support items and some application documentation. You may not need any of these things, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Take a quick look at / just to make sure there are no rogue files that you need that aren’t in any of the aforementioned directories. Remember that everything on the Desktop is really in the Home folder (even though it looks like it’s “on top”).

Installation

Once you pop in the disc and click through enough screens that you’re actually ready to install, look for the customize button. Click it and then look for stuff that is checked that you don’t need. A great example of this is all of the language files that Panther tries to install by default. I only know English, so I check off all the extra ones.

Another great example is the load of printer drivers. You know how when you plug in a printer it “just works”? Well that’s not a miracle. Standard installs put on over half a gigabyte of printer drivers. If hard drive space is limited, uncheck the drivers that you don’t need. Epson’s drivers are the biggest by far, so if you don’t have an Epson, you get a lot more disk space.

Register. As long as you bought a legitimate copy (there’s no excuse not to when you look at the family pack), go ahead and register. I know it’s annoying, but every once in a while Apple surprises you with a free gift (normally a year of Macworld). I’ve even heard reports of users getting gifts for registering iSync (a free product!).

Enjoy
Once everything is installed, just sit back and have fun. Panther is great. I’ll be back next week with some killer Panther tips, so stay tuned!

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