Archive for Software
contacts phone format fixer
The script will format phone numbers according using international notation:
Local numbers (e.g. 0891234567) will be converted to an international number (e.g. +33 891 23 45 67), by using the country of the contact’s address.- All numbers will get the format that is the preferred format for that country (e.g. 0891234567 in Germany would be +49 89 1234567).
- Phone numbers with a (potential) issue are highlighted so you can take action.
- If there is no address available for the contact and the phone number is in an international format, then the script will add the address (country name), e.g. +49 89 1234567 will add the country Germany to the address field.
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subtitle searcher
A script that helps to automate searching & adding subtitles for movies and TV shows. It uses subliminal for the actual search+download and MP4Box for the actual adding of the subtitles. The script is there to make all of it easier: it gives you a command line interface (CLI) to add subtitles for all video files in a certain folder, for all video files recursively, or for a specific file.
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free website monitor using Google Spreadsheet
If you want to monitor multiple websites and get notified if your site is down, then you can use this solution that I created: a free website monitor which is based on Google spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet consists of a script that monitors your websites at a given interval (e.g. 1, 5 or 30 minutes). You can specify e-mail recipients and you will get an e-mail when the site goes down and also when the site is up again. All changes are stored in a log.
It will check for DNS issues and the most popular http errors, including page not found (404) or site not available (403).
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iTunes Match: remove low bitrate files after upgrade
So you now have iTunes Match. Great, this means that on your other devices you get the uploaded songs in the higher bitrate of 256 kbps. But: on your original computer the files are still in the original (lower) bitrate…
There’s a good article on the Macworld site that explains how to replace them with the higher bitrate.
The Macworld tip is nice because it can also remove the low bitrate files for you. But not if you manually add/manage your music. Or, what if you want to keep them in the original location and move/remove them manually?
This article explains how to do that.
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Calculate distance in Google spreadsheet
Using Mapquest as provider and seeing errors? Most likely monthly quota of requests is used. See background tab for details of limitations.
This post started as a description of how to use Google’s API for distance calculations (with importXML), and there was a template as a proof of concept.
It has evolved into a distance calculator spreadsheet with custom functions using either Google’s or Mapquest’s API, with the ability to add results to a trip log.
Fill out From and To locations and the spreadsheet will calculate the distance and driving time based on the recommended route. You can copy the result to a trip log. Google account required.
Read the background to learn more about the options and the limitations.
For issues or requests, write a comment or contact me directly.
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AppleScript subroutine: is there an updated version of script on server?
While working on my better multi-country support AppleScript plug-in for Address Book, I was thinking of a way to check with a server to see if there was an updated version of the script.
The requirements:
- make it optional: let the user decide if they want to switch it on;
- make it privacy friendly: don’t use it to collect user information;
- do it quick, don’t slow down the script too much.
Read on for the result I came up with.
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Better multi-country support in Contacts
Here is a free plug-in that I have written for Apple’s Contacts (Address Book) that provides better multi-country support:
country names: you no longer have many variations for country names (so: all “United States”, instead of many variations like “USA”, “US”, “United States of America”);- country address formats: it tells Contacts to use the formatting that belongs to that country (e.g. my default format is for the Netherlands, which normally means for US addresses that state is missing and zip and city are switched).
Before (left): non-standard country name and incorrect format (state is missing, zip and city are switched)
After (right): standard country name and correct format
Quite useful for those that have contacts in multiple countries. You can specify in the script what countries to check and what your preferred country names are. Missing/unknown countries are added as a group in Contacts.
Simply download and run, or install as plug-in in /Library/Address Book Plug-Ins ~/Library/Application scripts/com.apple.AddressBook (location appears to have changed in 10.9.2.
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