Just a few days ago, Marco Armet made some great updates to Instapaper. Included with these updates was a change to the structure of the “Read Later” URL, which makes the URL much shorter and much easier for Marco to update. As a result, my “Read Later in Instapaper” NetNewsWire script needs a bit of an update in order to work properly. You can still follow the steps at http://www.loganrockmore.com/blog/?p=169 , but use this AppleScript file instead of the old one.

In July 2005, I needed a hobby to keep myself occupied during my first summer home from college. I put out an ad on CraigsList for a cheap iMac shell and decided to make an iMacQuarium, using the directions available from imacquarium.cool-mac.com. I even decided to update a blog (using Blogger) with the status of building my own aquarium. (Oddly enough, designing the blog was my first experience with the latest amazing web technology: CSS) After just three posts and about halfway done with the project, work stopped and the empty shell and assembled pieces of plastic were put into the closet.

Just two weeks ago, after moving the pieces around to three different homes, Christine casually mentioned that we should finish up the project and I wholeheartedly agreed. (I now live about 5 blocks from where I first bough the shell, which was 30 minutes away from where I lived at the time.) Fortunately, the tank was already waterproof and it was just the final touches that were needed to finish the product. I finished fitting together the tank and the iMac shell, added a small IKEA lamp and a Whisper brand air pump and filter, added some plants and gravel, and we were in business. The final piece of the puzzle was an aquarium stand, which I quickly threw together with a 2′ square piece of plywood and three IKEA desk legs.

There are now three lovely goldfish swimming around inside of a blueberry iMac in my living room. And it only took four and a half years to complete.

I just went ahead and released an update to the MLB Schedule widget. The largest change is that the widget is now using an alternate data source if the primary source doesn’t have any information. This is crucial for Spring Training information, since the primary source doesn’t have exhibition games. So, you should now be able to see Spring Training games for your favorite team in the widget.

You can download it at the MLB Schedule website.

• Added in an alternate source for information, which includes Spring Training games.
• Updated the look of the team names.
• Fixed issue when there is no game channel for a future game.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve posted a couple separate versions of Assignment Planner to fix some bugs. The first release was to fix a bug in the calendar view, since February of this year only has four calendar weeks in it. This release introduced a couple new issues, due to a new development environment, so 2.3.5 and 2.3.6 have been released to fix these errors. I believe that everything should be taken care of now, but if you still see any problems with the application, please let me know.

Version 2.3.6 can be download at the Assignment Planner website.

I’ve just released version 1.2 of Status Screen Saver. The biggest new feature is the addition of an Adium module, that shows how many new instant messages have been received. There is also the addition of an iCal module and an inbox-only Mail module.

The update can be downloaded from the Status Screen Saver page.

• New Features
  • Added module for Adium .
  • Added module for iCal To Dos.
  • Added module for Mail that only shows the count of the inbox.
  • Modules can now specify an application in the Info.plist, so a different module name can be used.
• Changes
  • Renamed Mail module to “Mail – All Mailboxes”, to separate it from the other Mail module.
• Fixes
  • Fixed an issue with the Battery module showing an incorrect value.
  • Fixed an issue with the Battery module when no battery is connected to the computer.

One thing that I’ve really wanted recently is a way to post an article to Instapaper directly from NetNewsWire. A while ago, the developer of NetNewsWire Brent Simmons linked to this blog post by Bruce Walker, which provides an Applescript solution to this problem. It’s a good start, but I don’t like that it relies on Safari for the functionality.

So, here’s my solution to the problem. It takes a little bit more work to set up, but I think that it provides smoother interaction when rifling through your RSS feeds. Here’s how you do it:

• Download this Read Later in Instapaper AppleScript. Place it in the NetNewsWire scripts folder, which is located at ~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/Scripts/ or can be found by going to the Scripts menu in NetNewsWire and selecting “Open Scripts Folder”.

  

• In your favorite browser, get the URL from your “Read Later” bookmarklet that was provided by Instapaper.

  

  Open the “Read Later in Instapaper” AppleScript via the Finder. Copy the URL from your bookmarklet and paste it between the quotes on the very first line of the script. Also, about half-way through the URL, you’ll need to find (.*\.) and replace it with (.*.), by removing the slash, in order for the script to work. (I apologize for this mess, but I think it’s the easiest way to get the Instapaper key specific to your account.) Save and close the script.

  

• In NetNewsWire, open up a new browser tab by selecting Tab > New Tab or hitting ⌘T. Visit instapaper.com and sign in. Doing so will store your user credentials with Instapaper and does not require signing in again.

• If you would like a keystroke for the command, open up the System Preferences and go to the Keyboard preferences. Select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab and click the + button in the bottom left corner. Select NetNewsWire from the applications list, enter “Read Later in Instapaper” in the Menu Title field and the keystroke you would like (I use ⌘I).

  

And that’s it! After all of this setup, it should be very easy to save a page to Instapaper directly from NetNewsWire. After selecting the “Read Later in Instapaper” menu item or hitting your custom keystroke, you’ll see the Saved page from Instapaper show up in NetNewsWire’s browser and then disappear, much like the standard Instapaper functionality.

Enjoy!

Today, Apple’s iPhone App Store has launched. Along with that launch comes the 1.0 release of the native SportsTap application, which is great news for all SportsTap users.

There are some great features that the native app provides which make the browsing experience better, with even more to come. Basically, the application is just a highly specialized web browser which only loads SportsTap content. The reason we did this was to allow us to still be able to change and fix content easily, since it remains on our web servers. This way, we can continue to add new features and sports as quickly as we have been able to in the past. However, the index page is completely contained within the application, so you’ll never have to wait for all of the icons to load over the cell phone networks again. Also, there are preferences which help to improve the user experience including the saving of the last viewed page and the ability to stop the iPhone from sleeping. We plan to add many more features here in the future, including the ability to change the refresh rate. Take a look at the screenshots below for more details.

We also hope to utilize some of the Core Location features, which allow the phone to provide information about your exact location. Ideally, you could be presented with all of your local teams in every sport, so you can easily find out about the home town teams you care about most. We will hopefully see more developing features like this in the near future.

So that’s it! Enjoy using the application. You can download it via iTunes on your computer or the App Store on your iPhone by following this link.

I’ve just posted updates to both of the Major League Baseball widgets. They both provide a handful of upgrades, but the biggest new feature is the ability to minimize the MLB Schedule widget. If you want to follow a team, but don’t want to be bothered with details like starting pitchers and TV networks, this will be perfect for you. I’ve found it useful for following other teams in my favorite team’s division, so I can see how they’ve been performing.

You can download the new versions at the MLB Schedule and MLB Standings websites.

MLB Schedule 2.4

• Added the ability to make the widget smaller, which includes less information about each game.
• Added a drop shadow to the widget, so it fits in better with all others.
• Fixed an issue with today’s games which are delayed.

MLB Standings 1.7

• Changed the look of the background image.
• Moved the update notifier to the front of the widget, so that it’s more visible.
• Changed all URLs from burgundylogan.com to loganrockmore.com .
• Fixed the height calculations when viewing the Wild Card standings.
• Fixed spacing when using widget on a Leopard system.

Today, I’ve gone ahead and released the first update to Status Screen Saver. There was a ton of great feedback after the initial release and I hope to have taken care of a few features that people were looking for. Most noticably, there are five brand new modules available. There are a handful of other new changes, as well. Full release notes are below.

You can download it at the Status Screen Saver page.

• New Features
  • Added module for Vienna <http://www.vienna-rss.org>.
  • Added module for Google Notifier <http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html>.
  • Added module that displays the amount of battery left in your laptop.
  • Added module that displays the current time.
  • Added module that displays the computer’s uptime.
  • Modules can now scroll along the bottom of the screen, in order to avoid screen burn-in.
  • Modules can now be re-ordered in the configuration panel.
• Changes
  • Modules now automatically resize to fit their content, so large strings do not get cut off.

I just finished and released a new product that I am excited to present to everyone. For the longest time, I wanted to be able to show the status of some of my applications while my computer was running the screen saver, so that I could tell from across the room wether I had new emails or news items. As a result, I created Status Screen Saver. Basically, it shows the current status of a few applications in the status bar at the bottom of the screen and any other screen saver above it.

The best part about the implementation is that I made it very easy to add what I call modules. If you would like to see some other application in the status bar, it’s extremely easy to add it to Status Screen Saver, as long as that application works with AppleScript. All that is required is a .bundle file that contains an application icon and a AppleScript that returns a numeric value. I added three applications, (Mail, NetNewsWire and Twitterrific) that I use on a regular basis, but I’m hoping that other users will create modules for their favorite apps and Status Screen Saver can eventually come with a ton of bundles installed.

Anyway, you can download the new product at http://www.loganrockmore.com/StatusScreenSaver/. I hope that everyone else finds it as useful as I do.