DIY RSS Bit Torrent!!!

I’m sure you know by now that Bit Torrent is the most effective way to download music, movies, and television shows (legal ones of course...) and I’m sure you also know that RSS (really simple syndication) is the best way to keep up with your favorite websites and news without actually visiting the full websites themselves.

Let’s learn how to combine these two concepts into a cool little mash-up! First you’ll need to download two applications: NetNewsWire and Transmission (both free! :)).

Now that you have the two essential components needed to create the best ‘automatic’ RSS downloader let’s start the configuration!

Step One: Open up Transmission and go to the Preferences window and the ‘Transfers’ tab.

Now copy my settings into your prefs window and make sure to check the ‘Auto Add’ box at the bottom and select a folder where you want Transmission to always watch for new torrent files.

Step Two: Navigate on over to tvrss.net and find an rss feed that fits your liking and copy the url. (example, here’s an rss feed for one of my favorite shows: right-click on Dexter and copy link)

Step Three: Open up NetNewsWire and click into the pref pane. / ‘Downloading’ tab / ‘Downloads Folder’ tab

Now, choose the folder you made before to download your files to.

Step Four: Now just hit the subscribe button on the top left and paste in the RSS url! Then select an episode and hit the download button at the bottom left of the window and it will download the torrent file to the folder Transmission is watching which will cause Transmission to start downloading the episode to your desktop. Ta-daaaa!

IMAP Gmail Settings

If you have an iPhone and check your email with it as well as use a desktop mail application you should make sure you’re using IMAP. This lets you keep your mail on the server, and when you read or delete an email from your phone, it will say it’s read or it will also delete on your computer.

The other great thing about IMAP is you can see and edit all your online folders that Gmail provides from your desktop and your mobile device. The downside is these folders really clutter up your inbox... also I don;t want to see my spam email, that’s why I have the spam filter in the first place... so the solution comes with Google Labs!

Scroll halfway down and look for “Advanced IMAP Controls” and click enable. Then go to your settings and the labels tab (or just click here). Now you have complete control over what folders are visible when you access your IMAP email!

Now your iPhone can be much less cluttered, and when you delete emails on the road you won’t have a full inbox when you get home!

Top Draw Viewer

Like to switch your desktops up all the time? Well Google has made it easy for us Mac users to have really cool artsy backdrops randomly generated and replaced on our desktop at a given time interval with their new application Top Draw. Here’s an example of what Top Draw has on my desktop right now...

iTunes 8

Two bits of iTunes awesomeness... first up, iTunes 8 is out, as many of you must know by now. Well there are some nice new changes and one annoying one. First the good: the new Genius feature lets you get a chance to make playlists that are similar to the song you are currently listening to. A lot like Pandora al in itunes with your music. The other great new feature is the new visualizer!

Along with being really cool it can be controlled with some pretty basic key commands that make it even more fun!

Check it out:

• • + and -: Increase or decrease the intensity (brightness) of the particles; multiple presses further increase or decrease the intensity.
• A and S: Add or Subtract particles to the visualizer. You can make the visualizer as complex (or sparse) as you wish.
• R: Reset the intensity and particle count to their default values.
• E: When in nebula mode (press N), this greatly accentuates the nebula clouds, making them very easy to see. (If you’ve used the M key to change modes, you may find that the nebula clouds aren’t visible; it seems they’re only used in certain modes.)

And my one annoyance is that now iTunes has the arrows to the iTunes store on always... not cool. Well throw this line into your terminal and goodbye annoying little arrows!

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

Until next time, enjoy!

Google Chrome

Google seems like they want to get into pretty much anything and everything that touches the internet... until recently they had yet to make a browser; enter Chrome. This browser is still in the workings, but Google has released a working version for XP and Vista so far, and... I really like it.

Chrome is smooth and simple to use. The url bar doubles as a search bar, the tabs are above everything and out of the way, but they don’t feel out of place. Bookmarks are imported from Firefox automatically, including the toolbar bookmarks. My favorite part is that Google thinks of everything... when you open a new tab the window shows you your most visited sites in thumbnail form and has a list on the side of recent sites. How cool is that?

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