Did you know that you can obtain domain whois information for any web domain using
nothing but OS X Terminal?
For years I’ve used many web services including (and probably my favourite) CentralOps, however, sometimes its handy to be able to do things without leaving the comfort of your current terminal session!
So.. To get some of the information web services can provide, launch Terminal and type:
whois google.co.uk
NOTE: You can replace google.co.uk with the domain name of your choice.
WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase who is) is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system, but is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The WHOIS protocol is documented in RFC 3912.
One of the powerful features of OS X built in spotlight is it’s ability to search the contents of files for your search string.. However, for reasons yet unknown, I have found this functionality to sometimes be a little hit and miss..
Which is where Terminal comes in.. Using a single line terminal command OS X will rapidly return all the files containing the text you are looking for.
First of all, for this example you need to first set your current path in terminal to the folder containing the files you want to query.
Then type/copy & paste the following
grep -l "Search String" File.Extentions
So for example, should you want to find all the text files containing the word AppleScript, you would use the following command:
grep -l AppleScript *.txt
To expand of the example above, should you want to extend that and search subfolders all you need to do is add ‘r’ for recursive:
grep -lr AppleScript *.txt
This will now return all text files in the folder and subfolder containing the term AppleScript.
One of the most used features on my OS X installs is the Quick Look feature, its much easier then launching an app just to check, or to quickly read off its content. However, for as long as I can remember Quick Look has always been known for causing delays in folder navigation, high CPU and high network utilisation. This is generally down to it rendering previews of movie files in the active finder window. Yes – this even includes items on your desktop.
There are a couple of ways to combat this speed delay without loosing functionality of Quick Look on other files.
The easiest is to remove the Quick Look generator from the quick look folder. To do this, click on Go > Go To Folder now type or copy paste /System/Library/QuickLook/ now either delete or if you’d prefer move Movie.qlgenerator to another location.
This will disable the thumbnails for movie files, and speed up finder navigation – especially for media heavy folders.
For months now I’ve used MobileRSS to satisfy my need for RSS feed reading.. Well, I used it to pull in the contents of my Google Reader account anyway. However, of late its been suffering with a very annoying issue in that it would automatically start googling for code errors in the pages you were reading, making it almost impossible to use. So I decided it was time for a fresh start, I hit the AppStore and almost immediately stumbled upon Feedly.
Unlike MobileRSS Feedly serves its RSS content in a kind of newspaper\magazine layout. Making it far more appealing to the eye. Not only that but it pulls in all of the photo’s from the articles too. This makes skimming the news much easier to do when your pushed for time.
Feedly is available from the AppStore for both iPhone and iPad, and packs in some pretty cool features.
Feedly is a fine example of how HTML5 can be used to create a clean and minimalistic interface. Feedly works best (in my opinion) if you’ve already got a Google Reader account. However it does have some built in news feeds to wet your appetite.
Feedly also features the expected sharing abilities, allowing for quick and easy posting to Facebook and Twitter. It’s also got its own web client built in to make reading the RSS feeds full post a breeze.
All in all I really love Feedly and its features, and I’m yet to find anything which comes close to it. What are you waiting for? Get it downloaded!
If you have ever used iMessage on your Mac to send a message to an iPhone the recipient will tell you just how frustrating it is flicking between two message streams.. When you send from your mac, by default it will send from your Apple ID (email address) and not your phone number. Which means the recipient may end up with two separate conversation threads.
Not anymore.. All you need to do is ensure your iPhone is running iOS 6, and your Mac is running OS X 10.8.2.
Launch iMessage on your Mac, navigate to iMessage preferences and then over to the Accounts tab. Now click to add an email address. In the box provided enter your mobile number minus the first 0, now press the tab key on your keyboard. You should see a message pop up suggesting iMessage is going to send an email to the number you have enter. Click to accept the message. Now on your iPhone goto Settings > Messages, and slide iMessage off. Now exit the settings menu. Return to Settings > Messages iPhone and slick iMessage back on. Exit the settings menu and now restart iMessage on your Mac. You should now be greeted with a message explaining your number will now be used to receive iMessages.
Now if you want, you can also set iMessage to also send from your email address, back in preferences under the accounts tab, select your number from the drop down at the bottom of the settings form.
