Tze Chuen’s Weblog

Recently, a friend asked me if there was a way to access IE-only sites on his Mac. Off the top of my head, there are two options - one is to use IE itself thru virtualization methods and secondly is to spoof your User Agent in Firefox.

Every browser has its own designated user agent that tells the website what browser you’re using. Therefore, you can actually trick the website to think that you’re actually using a different browser such as Internet Explorer.

Enter User Agent Switcher - this Firefox add-on does just that.

This add-on is extremely easy to use. First, download it here

After installing, you will see the option to switch between different user agents in Tools => User Agent Switcher

As you can see, there are 3 different user agents to choose from. The add-on itself is also easy to use.

Here, using IPChicken to check my user agent and indeed the add-on spoofed it to IE7. Neat stuff.

This tip works on any computer that has Firefox. Doesn’t matter if it’s running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD etc.

Hope you found much use with this tip. Cheers ;)

Wanna do a quick Youtube search? How about a quick Google translation for “Good morning” in Spanish? Wanna quickly shrink your subway-long url’s with TinyURL? These are just a few of 600+ search engine functions that can be done with Quicksilver.

All you need to do is go Quicksilver => Catalog => Modules

Make sure “Web Searches (from docs.blacktree.com)” is ticked.

Enjoy the power of the web in your hands. As you can see you can even quickly track your UPS package with Quicksilver. What? That’s amazing.

What’s your favourite Quicksilver trick?

If you would like to know what Quicksilver is all about, check out my Quicksilver introduction here.

Safari, Mac OS X’s default web browser. While Firefox is awesome in its own ways, Safari is not that bad at all. Safari is in fact the fastest browser when it comes to Javascript load times (As of 28 March 2008). It even scored 100/100 in Acid3 test, even Firefox didn’t come close to that.

Ok, I’m not here to explain how good Safari is. I am here to introduce you two addons that can make your Safari more enjoyable.

First off, I’m pretty sure most people hate ads. In fact, I’m pretty annoyed when it comes to ads. Most ads are bogus, just like the ads on The Pirate Bay where random hot girl pictures are shown and the ads tell you that they actually live in your neighborhood.

BEFORE:

AFTER (Notice the Subway ad just disappeared!):

Introducing SafariBlock, say goodbye to ads forever. You won’t miss a single ad when every website that you visit look clean and tidy, free of ads. SafariBlock works on both normal ads and Flash ads.

Download SafariBlock here

The next addon is actually a pretty cool one, and a time saver. This addon will change your perspective on search engines forever.

Introducing Inquisitor, this addon allows you to type your search queries in your usual search box, and BAM! Search results come out just right after, in a cool black dialog on the bottom of the search box. You can navigate to the search results with the arrow keys, or with your mouse.

This addon is one of the main reasons why I made Safari my main browser on my Mac. It’s plain awesome. I can do multiple searches and find what I want quickly. Heck, it even suggests different search queries, on the bottom of your search results. On the other hand, you can customize it to show a list of other search engines so you can quickly make searches of the same query on other search engines (On the screenshot it’s only showing Flickr and Amazon, but the list can be customized for more than that).

This addon is a definite must-have for keyboard warriors. By far the best addon made for Safari. Highly customizable and useful.

Download Inquisitor here

With these addons, Safari will be a better browser ;)

Hope you enjoyed this tech tip, any questions or comments are welcome.

iTunes has been my #1 music player on both Windows and Mac platforms for years. Don’t get me wrong, I love iTunes. However, your music collection is often stored in a way that you can’t easily retrieve your music and share it with your friends. So, I am here to introduce several apps that can help you put your music in control.

First off, let me introduce iTunesFS. This app requires MacFUSE installed to be functional. iTunesFS lets you browse your iTunes and iPod music collection as if the playlists were folders with music as files in them. This way, you can copy out some music quick and easy and then share them with your friends. Simple to use. Nice and clean.

Installation directions:
1) Install MacFUSE
2) Install iTunesFS
3) Launch iTunesFS whenever you want to access your music files

Download iTunesFS here

Download MacFUSE (required for iTunesFS to work) here

MacFUSE (Tiger) direct download

MacFUSE (Leopard) direct download

Ok, so what if you’ve got another friend with a relatively large, filled (no, not that) iPod and both of you would like to sync both music collections together? Misu to the rescue. Misu is a relatively new app and its concept is brilliant. I haven’t got another iPod here to test it but from reading comments about it most people seem to be happy about it. What Misu does is, you plug both your iPods to your computer, and it will do its magic. It will detect which music on one iPod is missing on the other and merge them both.

At time of writing, you can get Misu for $9.95 at MUPromo (original price is $19.00). Offer ends in 10 hours.

You can visit Misu’s website here

Lastly, what if your friend doesn’t have an iPod or he’s somewhere far far away. Mojo is the answer to powerful music sharing over the internet. Mojo is dead simple to use. All you need is to get an account with Mojo’s service, then you can just add your friend’s account and browse his/her music collection just like that! You can even play or download music that you like. However, Mojo doesn’t support accessing music on connected iPods. Hopefully, this feature will be added on future releases.

Mojo is available for both Windows and Mac platforms, free

P/S: Both you and your friend need to have Mojo in order to browse each other’s music collection.

I hope you liked this tech tip. Any questions or comments are welcome.

Ask any experienced Mac user what Quicksilver is, odds are they’ll tell you they can’t live without it. If they don’t know what Quicksilver is, they’re missing out on something really good. It’s like getting laid on your first date, that’s how good it is.

Quicksilver is like a genie on your Mac except that you interact with it thru text. No… It’s not a cybersex machine with AI that responds to your nasty pick up lines. It’s actually an app that allows you to do MANY - and I dare say, more than you can handle. Even myself has not mastered 10% of what Quicksilver has to offer.

Quicksilver is actually an app and when triggered by a keyboard shortcut (CTRL + Space by default), a box pops up and you can type stuff into it. The most basic feature of this app is launching apps. Quicksilver is the main reason why my dock is so clean. I don’t have more than 10 Apps on my Dock while my Applications folder probably has more than 140.

Upon triggering the keyboard shortcut, you start typing the App that you want to launch. For example, if I want to launch Firefox, I start typing… “F” .. BAM! Firefox has already appeared before I even type in the next character. As shown in the picture below, the first character “F” is underlined meaning that I actually typed in only “F”. Hit enter, and voila! That’s how easy to launch apps with Quicksilver. And of course, you can navigate thru other search results with the arrow keys but usually I don’t have to because I’d rather be typing more characters than browsing thru the long list of possibilities - it’s easier that way. It’d be a waste of my 200 wpm (words per minute) skills (OK - I’m just bullshitting cos I don’t really know my wpm).

You can do ALOT with Quicksilver. WARNING: Quicksilver can render many apps redundant. Another feature of Quicksilver that I often use is to quickly move downloaded wallpapers to my Wallpapers folder. What I do is I select the file(s) that I want to move, hit CTRL+Space to bring up Quicksilver, and then Apple+G (to let Quicksilver know you wanna handle the files that are currently being selected in Finder), and Tab, “M” “O”, Tab, “W” “a”. Walla!

That can be a little daunting if you’re not a keyboard warrior, but I rather do that than waste time opening up several windows or clutter up my Desktop - my Desktop only has ONE icon most of the time and sometimes three where two of them belongs to my external storage.

Sometimes, when I get too lazy I even use Quicksilver to quickly Google something. Even Wikipedia is supported.

You’ll be amazed of what Quicksilver can do for you. From time to time, there will be new plugins that you can download for Quicksilver that allows you to do more things.

Heck, I can even scale images with Quicksilver. You can do all these actions on multiple files too. If I were to list out everything Quicksilver can do, you’ll probably go blind reading it (no offense to people that are actually blind).

This is one app I can’t live without. It made me fantasize myself as a samurai - with the keyboard as my weapon. My name is Tze Chuen, and I’m a crack addict keyboard warrior.

Download Quicksilver here

my screenshots of Quicksilver are pictured with BezelHUD theme.

Any questions or comments are welcome.