Sam Asks:

I’ve been getting used to iPhoto as I’m used to just browsing for pictures in Windows Explorer. Anyway, I let iPhoto copy my images to the iPhoto library. But unlike the iTunes library function which very logically puts music in Artist – Album folders. But the iPhoto library seems to hide my photos so I can’t access them through Finder. I’m just curious what the “Mac” way would be to for example, open a photo to edit in photoshop.

There’s two ways of approaching this problem, one of which is if you just want to edit photos using an external photo editor. The other way is to access the actual photo files in the Finder. The explanations for each are below.

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I don’t know about you but I have been going through some serious withdrawl ever since Twitter killed the track feature:

While I was out at NME this year, I started playing with an idea to attempt to get at least “some” of my tracking back. The idea isn’t perfect (yet) but it at least gets me one step closer to the track feature. At least until Twitter turns it back on (hint, hint… please guys!!) So here’s what I did:

1. Set up a new Twitter account just for me
2. Created a power search on search.twitter.com
3. Loaded that feed into TwitterFeed
4. Set TwitterFeed to send updates to my “new account”
5. Follow my “new account” and turned on those notifications

Now this (as I said before) isn’t perfect and not nearly as frequent as I would like but not being a coder or Twitter API-ologist, this was the only thing I could think of. So, until someone makes a nifty app for this (or helps me do one), this is my solution. Who knows, maybe you can one-up me? Bring it! I want my tracking back! Post your tips in the comments, I’m all ears!

Have fun & happy tracking!

Welcome back to Exploring Quicksilver! In this segment, we look at creating a simple solution for managing a to-do list, as well as an easy iTunes trigger. If you haven’t already, please be sure to watch Part 1, where I go over the basic setup and overview of quicksilver.

Special thanks to Merlin Mann for the idea related to the To-Do List. You can find Merlin at 43 Folders.

Uninstalling Apps, The Easy Way
By: Wardy Miller

One of the first questions that I get asked by new Mac users is “how do I delete unwanted programs?” The answer can be a little tricky. Most programs can be dragged to the trash can to be removed, because the Mac operating system has nothing like the windows registry to clean up; however, doing an uninstall this way can leave you with orphaned preference files.

So what is the Macintosh equivalent to the Windows Add/Remove Programs solution? The answer is there are quite a few choices. There is App Zapper at $12.95 US with free updates for life. App Zapper works very well and is fairly cheap. The next application that I tried was AppDelete. Even though the site calls it donation ware, after a fixed number of uninstalls it will force you to pay for the application. (That is shareware if you ask me.) Even though the minimum donation is $5.00 US, that is a cheap price to pay for a pretty good application. The last one that I will discuss is AppTrap. AppTrap is a free, open source application, that installs into your System Preferences tool panel, and you start the service, it is easy as that. When you delete an application by dragging it to the trash can, AppTrap checks to see if there are any files associated with it and gives you the opportunity to delete them too.

So there you have it. Three very good (yet inexpensive) applications to remove unwanted programs. 

If you’ve been using the Mac for awhile, you’ve probably heard of Quicksilver, by Blacktree Software. Quicksilver is an amazingly powerful application, yet provides a really intimidating interface, and setup. I’m here to make it a little easier, and introduce you to one program you will instantly integrate into your workflow.

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