your genius app idea

[blackstone]

Maybe this is already easily do-able, but what I would like is something that manages a flash drive's contents loosely in the way iTunes manages the music on an iPod.

What you would do is drag files to the flash drive, and this would create a persistent association between the file on the computer and the one on the flash drive, so that whenever the flash drive mounted, the older copy would be replaced by the newer copy. So that your computer and flash drive's contents would always be synchronized. And perhaps also set it up so that any files that are on there that aren't on the computer at the time of mount get copied into a set "incoming folder."

I don't personally use or own one, but they're becoming more and more common here, and so I was wondering. Can anyone enlighten me as to whether this is already easily doable on Tiger?

Wouldn't it be possible to use a shell script to do the synchronization, now that the Unix copy utilities are metadata-aware?

What I'd love for flash drives is a nice little utility that does the following:
- Synchronization of flash drive with specified folders on hard drive
- Delete files from flash drive without using trash can
- Be able to easily choose whether or not metadata get backed up
- Have a one-button operation to quickly delete all metadata from flash drive, or (even better) make metadata files hidden from Windows users

I use flash drives a lot, and it drives me nuts when I open up my flashdrive on someone else's (Windows) machine and there are a bazillion little dotfiles all over... I'll inevitably end up clicking on the dotfile with only metadata instead of the actual data-containing file.

 

[x86isslow]

Maybe this is already easily do-able, but what I would like is something that manages a flash drive's contents loosely in the way iTunes manages the music on an iPod.

What you would do is drag files to the flash drive, and this would create a persistent association between the file on the computer and the one on the flash drive, so that whenever the flash drive mounted, the older copy would be replaced by the newer copy. So that your computer and flash drive's contents would always be synchronized. And perhaps also set it up so that any files that are on there that aren't on the computer at the time of mount get copied into a set "incoming folder."

I don't personally use or own one, but they're becoming more and more common here, and so I was wondering. Can anyone enlighten me as to whether this is already easily doable on Tiger?

I had a ZIP drive that was like that, so it can definitely be done.

 

[Eidorian]

I don't understand, wouldn't you still have to tag them to make this work? What data were you interested in?

Ok, I've looked more into this. Using them thumbnails you can pick the images you want to tag. Using Shift + Click or Command + Click just like in Finder. Instead of using Get Info for each and put in the comments or even copy & paste them in. The program lets you just mass tag them.

I've been thinking about using Automator plus Smart Folders too and I've worked on it a bit. Once more, a full application would be faster.

 

[bellis1]

iProject (Apple's Entourage Killer)

I would love a program similar to Entourage in which I could better link indiviudal files/folders, email, ical, and addressbook. There are a few out there but nothing spans all of them. It seems like it would be easy to do with spotlight already built into OS X. I also want it with an Applesque GUI, and perhaps it would be able to preview txt, pdf, keynote, iphoto, pages, etc. from within the program. Add my name to the patent and royalties if you beat Apple to it.

 

[prostuff1]

I would love an application to keep track of my fantasy football stats.

I actaully did this in Filemaker when i was a junior in HS (with the help of our tech admin, who i must say is a genious when it comes to filemaker) but i lost all the files and now i would have to start all over. The filemaker database actaully consisted of about 8 files and i had them all linked together, it worked great for its purpose but it was kinda slow.

I would love to see an app that i could put my drafted players names into, keep track of fantasy production for my players, the other teams names, the divisions, scores for each week for each fantasy team, have it compute wins and losesfor the fantasy team, also a section for who people traded, who they dropped and picked up, players average points scored based on my input of how much a TD pass is (and so one), it could show my starting lineups, also how many times i have started that player, etc.

I think the best way to do this would be the somehow link it to the web and let it "pull in" the stats for certain players. i.e. when i open the program it starts its "update" process and fills in the nessecary info for my players (and if i specified the other teams players also.

I know this would be a big task but i would pay good money to have something that would do this. I would love to help but i have no programing skill (yet). I would make a very good ginny pig and test dummy for the application.

There is a lot of stuff i could add but i will stop there.

 

[pknz]

An app called Virtual Skipper 4 and another one called Battlefield 2.

An app that locks programs open, ie you have to enter a password before you can access an open program.

An app to hide an app that is open (hide the icon in the dock with arrow).

iWork to be better than the MS equivalent and a spreadsheet app (from Apple).

 

[snickelfritz]

A replacement "Dock" that functions using Dashboard layer technologies.
For example, I would press a spare mouse button and this dockthingamabob would magically become available, with cool ripple effects for application launches etc...

The OSX Dock was cool as an introduction to Quartz, but it's basically the weakest aspect of the current OSX GUI.

 

[Flying Llama]

Oh, I know, I know!

An app that makes apps with no required knowledge of programming. A WYSIWYG editor but not for HTML, for Objective-C.

Wait, that was your idea!

Sadly, such an app would require either artificial intelligence or an infinite amount of code to work. It would be cool though, maybe for a future time.

Good luck,

 

[prostuff1]

Oh, I know, I know!

An app that makes apps with no required knowledge of programming. A WYSIWYG editor but not for HTML, for Objective-C.

Wait, that was your idea!

Sadly, such an app would require either artificial intelligence or an infinite amount of code to work. It would be cool though, maybe for a future time.

Good luck,

OHHHH, this would be really cool. Unfortunantly it would probably do away with most of the really people that write programs.

Probably in some time this may come true. Hopefully i am still alive when it happens