iDentify file list

So let’s say you have a bunch of movies or TV shows converted for your Apple TV / iPhone / iPad / iPod. It syncs and plays great on your devices–but something is missing! Its the metadata (aka tags).

When you buy media from the iTunes store it comes with epidsode info or a film description, posters, cast info, air dates and more that make it easy to find what you’re looking for or pick something good to watch. Media ripped from discs (or obtained by other means) simply doesn’t come with those goodies.

Enter iDentify

But we can add that metadata after the fact. All you need is a piece of software called iDentify 2, and it will do all [at least most] of the magic for you. It works very well and once all is said and done it looks just like iTunes store content.

To use simply drag all the files you want to tag into iDentify. Let it scan them, check at least a few to make sure it got the right show or film (hint: click edit tags to view) and click “Process Files”. Then import your freshly tagged media to iTunes, and stream or sync to your heart’s desire. That’s it!

iDentify "Edit Tags" page

For the app to work, your files have to be named logically (eg: house.s05e03.mp4, lost.s04e16.m4v). Once and a while iDentify will mess up. If you’re tagging a batch of TV episodes and it can’t find any data, you can select all the files in the app, click “Edit Tags” and manually enter the “Show Name”. Then “Rescan Items” and 9 times out of 10 it’ll work. If you have trouble with movies, first try adding the release year in the filename or the iDentify directly. If that fails find the film on IMDB and paste its code (last number of the film’s URL at IMBD) into the “Edit Tags” page and “Rescan Items”.

Also certain files will crash the app rarely for no apparent reason. Just file an error report when you reopen iDentify (it asks you on launch). The developer is extremely responsive and helpful. If you like the app you might consider making a donation to the developer or registering your copy (this will gets your more features like file renaming).

Using the built-in zoom and screen sharing capabilities (or any VNC) together on OS X can be a real pain in the posterior. If you leave your screen zoomed it becomes virtually unusable via screen sharing or VNC. That’s because there is no way to effectively move the cursor (and therefore the screen position) or turn off zoom (since you can’t easily access System Preferences, and the keyboard shortcut isn’t applied to the remote machine).

As someone who uses zoom quite extensively, I often find myself trudging up flights of stairs to manually zoom out one computer so I can access it from another. Its pretty counter-intuitive. I would have though Apple to make zoom usable remotely, make it easy to shut off or just disable it when the Mac is being controlled remotely.

But no, there was no solution. So I found one myself. I put together a cute little AppleScript and packaged it up as an Application. It executes the keyboard command to zoom all the way out, re-enabling your Mac for remote use.

It can be used in a number of ways.

1. Put in your dock for a painful, yet possible, launch.
2. Executed via SSH in Terminal (I’ll explain in a follow up post)
3. Soon using a companion app on your local Mac (this will do the SSHing for you)

So here’s the app. It is an AppleScript that zooms out your screen. That’s it, it zooms right out and quits. As usual, released under the Creative Commons license (with no warranty).

I know this of limited utility even to a small group of people, but it was irritating enough to me I though I would share. Tell me if this turns out useful for you.

Want to sync to your address book, calendar, and bookmarks? Don’t want to pay $100 a year? Doh.

fruux is a lightweight and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your Address Book, Calendars, Tasks and Bookmarks between different Macs.

All you’ve got to do is download the .prefPane, double click to install, and make you’re account… That’s it. No credit card, no blown budget, no lost contacts, no MobileMess. If you’ve got a desktop and a notebook you can install it on both and start syncing right away. If you’ve got a lab full of Macs you can install on all of them too, because there are no silly limits on how you sync.

This isn’t to say that MobileMe is a bad product, and certainly not that this service is any better. Fruux is all about “Just Sync, No-frills!” so you won’t find disk space, website hosting, email, web-access, or any of the other neat features that MobileMe comes with. There’s really no comparison between the two though, if your looking for free syncing then use Fruux. If you want anything else (think iDisk, email, etc) then you need MobileMe.

Fruux's sync log in System Prefrences

Of course, if you’re crafty you can find free alternatives to those other services too. In conjunction with Dropbox, an IMAP GMail account and a free hosting account for your site you could be setup as well or better than a bona-fide MobileMe account at no cost. Thanks Fruux!!

UPDATE: Updated to N.Design 1.4 (1.1.1). This release contains minor fixes for a few cosmetic issues. This release should fix the problems with 1.1.