MacNative

If you are like me, you have spent many many hours creating database layouts on legal pads, notebooks, and whiteboards, only to have to recreate the layout again to actually create the layout in the database. This process can consume many hours of additional time in a development project. But thanks to Malcom Hardie we can streamline our SQL database creation process with the use of SQLEditor.

SQLEditor provides the best interface that I have seen to create your database layout in a very visual format. It allows you to build your

tables specifying the column types, linking with foreign keys, and dragging the table layouts around the canvas so that you can easily understand what you were building at a glance when you come back to a project after an extended period.

But the best part comes after the database design is complete, you can export it to a PDF for distribution around the office, send it to a plotter to print a large wall size copy for reference.

But then comes the fun part, after you have made all of your changes to the database layout you can either export the contents directly to a txt file in the SQL dialect of your choice (MySQL, Oracle, Postgresql, etc…) or even connect directly to a database using JDBC drivers and propagate your changes directly to the running database server.

SQLEditor has full support for Mac OS X 10.6 and is ready to run on your Mac Development System.

Although this solution is not freeware or open source, it is an essential tool for every developer who designs or develops database integration strategies. I highly recommend this product and it is well worth the expense to purchase it for the time it will save you. But don’t worry like most software applications it comes with a hassle free 30 day free trial period so you can see how effective it will be in your development workflow.

Here is an extended list of features:

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It may have a funny name, but this little app packs a big resourceful punch. Cyberduck is an amazing piece of software, initially setting the stage for superb FTP access and file manipulation, but it doesn’t stop there. Cyberduck has a vast array of different protocols that it supports, allowing you to connect to virtually any location and transfer/manipulate files on the remote location.

Here is a short list of protocols that it supports:

• FTP
• SFTP
• WebDav
• Cloudfiles
• Google Docs
• Amazon s3

to name a few.

It’s interface is sleek and simple, providing for a seamless user experience. With support for such features as “quicklook”, “Growl”, “Spotlight”, and “Bonjour” it finds ways to fit into virtually any situation.

I have been using this app for years and it is a very effective, well rounded tool. I suggest that you never leave home without it. So without further adieu click on the link below to check out the developers website, download the app, and when you are satisfied that it is everything you ever dreamed it could be, send the developer a donation, he’s done some hard work to make sure that our lives are better and easier.

Cyberduck FTP Client Homepage

Every developer knows how important it is to have the right tools. And by having the right tools I mean a text editor. Because ultimately that is all most developers really require to get things done, Developers have been doing it for well over a half century and although the languages and methods for execution have changed, much has remained the same.

For those who are fortunate enough to find themselves doing development on the mac platform, there is an alternative, which although it may not be the newest game on the block, it is one of the best all around. Sissy FauxVelopers need not apply to use this app. It has no build your app with one click buttons. It is designed to take the development experience to the next level for those who like to get their “fingers” dirty and actually do some major textual manipulations.

From the first launch it’s basic simplicity and power are immediately perceptible. It is feature packed enough to quell the pining soul of the most advanced developer, but simple enough to handle basic text document edits. From customizable coloring of the interface (I prefer the “All Hallow’s Eve” scheme) to the elegant line numbering and code folding features in the applications “trough”, this bad boy was built to move mountains and work minor miracles.

With built in support for dozens of predominant document formats, it provides out of the box streamlining of your developer workflow while also allowing you to add your own file format specifications should you happen to be crafty enough to have come up with your own file formats and specifications.

Additionally you can create functions to validate your files layout and formatting right into your file specification. Giving you on the fly access to all the features you want when you are developing.

This great product has seen me through many development projects, and has greatly increased my development capacity through it’s simplistic yet powerful functions.Although this product isn’t free, it is well worth the €39 purchase price, and it comes with a 30 day trial for all parties that may be interested, but not yet committed to the purchase.

Go give it a test spin. All you have to loose is pain and frustration.

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The internet is alive with tweets on Twitter from people of all shapes, sizes and persuasions. This micro-blogging phenomenon seems to be an all consuming past time for some people. Even I find myself hungering for the opportunity to send out a nice little 140 character or less message about what I have gotten myself up to. But then I find myself with a little bit of a conundrum, What is the best way to share all those little bits of wisdom with my friends, and stay up to date with what they are all doing?

If you find yourself with the same problem then look no further! Canary is an impressive little app that does just what you want it to. It can easily carve out a permanent place as a member of your application family. With just a few clicks you are off and going, using the small composition area to compose your own “song” to tweet away.

Unlike many similar applications Canary does a great job of keeping you focused on what matters most to you, by allowing you to select the list of friends that you most want to pay attention to and ignore your other lists while you are focusing on your favorites. But don’t worry this sweet app has growl built right in  so as you receive updates they are displayed one at a time through the growl interface.

Not only is this app convenient, but it is also light on the memory usage. I have used a bunch of Twitter clients, but never before have I found one that works this well and also doesn’t stomp it’s foot all over the ram that my other “critical” apps are using.

So all other features aside one of the best features in this applications bag is the fact that it is not only FREE, but also completely open source. So if you are a totally insane coding monkey, you can take this already sweet app and add some sugar (if you know what i’m say’n). So click on the link below, give canary a try and you never know, you may find yourself as in love as I am with this sticky sweet app!

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Anxiety is an amazingly small and sophisticated way to track your tasks and keep you from getting too stressed out.

The interface is very simple and unobtrusive, but very powerful. Anxiety takes advantage of the iCal backend that is already available in OSX to track and manage the tasks. The upshot of which is that the assigned tasks are also available in iCal, so that you can reference them when planning your Day/Week/Month.

Anxiety has an amazing ability of getting out of your hair so that you can do your work. But when you want to add a task or check off a completed task, it is available from a simple click of the icon on the task bar.

Anxiety is an amazing little app that solves many of the age old questions that a lot of us have had in dealing with streamlining our task oriented workflow. I have thoroughly enjoyed using the application and highly recommend it. The fact that it’s price tag is listed as FREE isn’t to bad either.

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This is my favourite of the Mac goodies. There are a few ways to capture screen on Mac.

Firstly, you can capture the whole screen. Simply press Cmd-Shift-3 on your keyboard and the screen will be captured in a PNG file and saved on your desktop as something like Picture 1.png

You can also capture a selection, just press Cmd-Shift-4 on your keyboard and you will see a small cross hair selector on your screen.

Simply select the area you want to capture and let go, the file will be saved on your desktop, again something like Picture 1.png

And finally you can capture the active window. Simply follow the steps above and once you see the cross hair, press the space bar and you will get a camera icon. Hover the camera above any window and the window will get the gray overlay indicating it’s in hot-spot. Click on it and the window will be captured.

And again, the file will be safely placed on your desktop as … good guess, Photo 1.png

However, if you’d like to capture the screen (or part of it) to the clipboard rather than to desktop, simply hold the Control key down while capturing, i.e. Shift-Ctrl-Cmd-4.

This is very handy when you need to paste it straight into an email or any other document.

Original Post on silvermac.com

I have been increasingly impressed, over the last couple of years, of the overall utility that WordPress provides for website developers.

When I first started to use it, I only accessed the basic layer of usefulness, and used it as a backend for my blog. But it has proven itself to be robust enough to be easily used as a CMS for individuals and Small/Medium Businesses that want an interactive website but don’t have the time/budget to get something completely custom created for them.

On the other side of the spectrum, as a developer WordPress can also make my job much easier by giving me a framework that already handles all of the basics for a website, and then provides me with the hooks necessary to extend the basic platform and provide specific functionality for my clients.

Along with that extensibility wordpress has a large plugin database where others share their custom creations for anything from publishing a podcast to keeping your visitors up with your tweets. Many of these plugins provide the functionality that my clients are looking for with only a few minor changes to match the clients specifications.

Additionally the power to hook into the wordpress backend and pull out relevent information can help you produce or utilize some existing themes that will make your wordpress install become and amazing dynamic website, not merely a blog.

All that being said, WordPress has become a staple in most of my website development projects. and can greatly enhance your development process, if you are willing to let it.

There are a ton of tools out there that web developers can use to create dynamic and engaging websites. Every once and a while one tool will stand out above the others in it’s usefulness and design.

Fancy Upload is one of those tools. Providing a slick interface and some dynamic classes, Fancy Upload leverages the abilities of the Mootools Javascript library and ties that with some flash integration to create a great solution with an infinate number of uses. Go check it out.

http://digitarald.de/project/fancyupload/

Developers of all kinds that are hunting for a quick and easy way to look up documentation for their coding projects can now be appeased. I just ran across a Development Resource which seems to be a pretty good solution for hunting for development documentation or resources. Go Check it out.

http://www.quickref.org

Just read about this on The Apple Blog.

Pretty useful information especially for someone in the IT field. Here is the POST

To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you need to enter terminal and create a new admin account:

1. Reboot
2. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
   • mount -uw /
   • rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
   • shutdown -h now
4. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and you’re good to go again!