I can’t believe I haven’t been using this trick until now!
A quick video of AirPlay in Mountain Lion. There’s also a nice post over at 9to5mac that discusses the new feature.
I love their tip for getting around the campus wifi issue. That’s something I’ve been battling lately as well.
Better yet, using AirPlay Mirroring on 2011 Mac notebooks does not need a local wireless network, because the machine can create an ad hoc wireless network to pair with the Apple TV. This is gold for road warriors and educators who only need a MacBook and an Apple TV to present their portfolio or teaching material on the big screen.
With Google, however, the philosophy is that file creation itself can be migrated to the cloud. An online office suite is “good enough,” if not as good, as a native one. And “good enough” will win due to ease of use. With almost a completely opposing view, Apple’s iCloud is doing the reverse: bringing the capabilities of the cloud to the richer, more robust native apps. This includes not just office apps in iWork, but through the use of developer APIs, it will extend to any apps that need to be iCloud-enabled. Although today, iCloud support is more limited for third-parties, the APIs will improve in time. Eventually, any app running on the Apple platform (desktop or mobile), will have the tools to move data between its different installations.
Apple’s approach makes a lot of sense to me. Their solution plays to each platform’s strengths. Native apps can offer more polished interfaces and increased performance, while the cloud can be used to enhance the user experience by offering functionality such as syncing.
I spend a good portion of my day helping instructors work within my school’s learning management system. It’s surprising how frequently browser issues cause problems for everyone. Many of these problems could be solved if a native client was available to handle the UI, local saving of data, etc. The web portion of the system could essentially be reduced to a set of APIs that would allow customers to better customize and brand the product. Just a thought …
If you haven’t heard of Markdown before, its creator describes it as,
a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Markdown, but have never really seen where such a tool would fit into my workflow. In the past, I’ve typically just created HTML content using a text editor such as Coda or Espresso. Lately, however, I’ve been writing more content and designing less so it doesn’t make as much sense to write all of the HTML code by hand. That’s where Markdown the Mou Markdown Editor comes in handy.
I first read about the Mou editor in this blog post at mac.appstorm.net and was impressed with the app’s preview panel and simple UI. I downloaded a free Beta version of the app and fell in love instantly. I’ve written just about all of my HTML content over the last few days in Mou and have been really happy with the expeience.
In Mou, you write/edit your content using simple Markdown formatting (which can be learned in a few minutes) in the left pane. The right pane provides a real-time preview of the HTML content.
One of my favorite features are the easy export to HTML - Cmd + E to create an HTML document or Actions > Copy HTML to copy the HTML source to your clipboard. When exporting an HTML file, you can choose whether or not to include the CSS.
In some teaser posts on Twitter, the developer notes that future version of the app will include the ability to create custom CSS styes and create lists from the Actions menu.
If you’re a Mac user and spend any significant time writing HTML content, I suggest giving this application a try!
Download Mou
