Thanks to David Watanabe for his improvements to the NewsFire RSS Quick Pick. A new version has been posted along with three new Quick Picks for ecto, Transmit and Linotype’s FontExplorer X.
Like most people, in practice I don’t end up backing up my system as often as I should. Knock on wood — I haven’t ever really been bit badly by this.
That said, the latest version of Backup included with my .Mac account has inspired a new sense of purpose in making backups and really utilizing all that storage space included with the account. Sure I used it before, but certainly not enough to feel like I was making the most of the service.
So, in the hopes of kicking my own butt and hopefully one day saving my bacon, I’ve put together a few Quick Pick plug-ins for Backup 3 which I’m making freely available to anyone who wants them.
Available Quick Picks
- Neometric Software Catalog Quick Pick
- Apple Dashboard Widgets Quick Pick
- Apple Automator Actions & Workflows Quick Pick
- Textpander Settings Quick Pick
- NewsFire RSS Quick Pick
- Linotype FontExplorer X Quick Pick
- Transmit Quick Pick
- ecto Quick Pick
Download all my Backup 3 QuickPicks
Installation
Ah, the thing I missed yesterday… Right. Easy as pie. Unzip the archive and drop the Quick Pick file(s) into /Library/Application Support/Backup/QuickPicks/. I could build an installer for all this, but I don’t think it’s necessary or worth the effort.
If you can think of something else you’d like a Backup 3 Quick Pick for, drop a note in the comments. I’ve got a few more ideas cooked up, but this is good for now. Enjoy!
So say you…
Hi - great set of plug-ins. Please can you tell me where you found the info needed to create your own? I have searched the web but don’t seem to be having any luck.
Thanks in advance
They’re just simple bundles. Control-click on one and take a look through the source. Nothing to it :)
These would be cool for nearly every app, but Library ( http://www.delicious-monster.com ) and Wallet ( http://www.waterfallsw.com/wallet ) would be useful. Maybe Fonts (Font Book)?
Hi I’d like to be able to save my purchased music using Quick Picks. I put it my ITunes Music on a external FireWire disc and Apple’s Quick Pick for saving purchased music doesn’t scan external discs. Is it possible to write such a Quick Pick that scan external discs or modify the existing one to make it scan my FW disc?
Chris
Thanks for these.
Just in case no one notices: there’s a typo in the link to the TextPander Quick Pick - it should be http://www.scottboms.com/-/downloads/software/textpanderquickpick.zip rather than http://www.scottboms.com/-/downloads/software/textpandequickpick.zip
Copy com.apple.iTunes.PurchasedMusic.quickpick and rename to external.itunes.PurchaseMusic.quickpick
Open the Bundle and delete the non-English folders in the Resources folder.
Open DefinitionPlist.strings with TextEdit
Change the third line to read “Graft Paths” = ({doNotCrossFilesystemBoundaries = 1; pattern = “/Volumes/[your path here]”; });
with [your path here] changed to the path to your iTunes library, starting with the external drive name, i.e. pattern = “/Volumes/LotsaMusic/Music/iTunes”;
Open the English.lproj folder and then open InfoPlist.strings with TextEdit
Change the contents of InfoPlist.strings to something like:
“Description” = “Backs up only the music files purchased from the iTunes Music Store and iTunes playlists in the iTunes folder located on [external drive name here]”; “QuickPick Info Archive Version” = “1”; “Name” = “iTunes External”;
Change [external drive name here] to the name of your external drive, i.e. LotsaMusic
Save everything
Copy the new Quick Pick to the Backup QuickPicks folder in Application Support
All done!
That last post was meant for Chris, to backup iTunes purchased music located on an external hard drive. It took me about 30 minutes to figure out the logic and edit the existing Quick Pick.
That’s great Jeff - thanks for sharing. If it’s alright with you, I may toss that together as a Quick Pick and add it to the list (giving you the appropriate credit too of course!).
Sure, go ahead and use it.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make a universal version of it. You still have to open the package and edit the path to point to the correct drive.
I’m sure someone with more skills can figure it out!
Yeah, I thought about that right after I posted the comment. I’m still recovering from a long night last night so my brain isn’t totally working right yet today…
Thanks Jeff. Great! It works perfectly.
Chris
I’d like to see one for NetNewsWire and Adium (accounts, preferences, xtras, etc). Thanks.
I went ahead and made two Quick Picks for NetNewsWire and Little Snitch, which you can get at my site. Thanks to this site for getting me interested in Quick Picks :-)
Grab them here: http://www.command-tab.com/index.php/backup-3-quickpicks/
Thanks for those Colin. Considering how easy Quick Picks are to make, hopefully we’ll see a lot more developers starting to include them with their apps.
do you have any quickpick for PDF ?
Sanan - I’ve added one now. You can download the full archive or grab the individual Quick Pick from http://www.scottboms.com/lab
This seems like a great thing, but I don’t use .Mac. Is there a way to use these Quick Picks to backup to something else, like a ftp-server or so?
Hans - they’re really only useful if you have a .Mac account. Sure you can try them out during the 60 day trial period for .Mac, but they’re not much use after that unless you sign up.
It’s really too bad because I’m sure Apple could easily sell a pile of Backup licenses for those people that just want the app to back up to CD/DVD or Hard Disk instead of their .Mac server.
Maybe one day…
I have to say that I find .Mac to be a good deal.
Just the ability of NetNewsWire, Omniweb, and others to facilitate my using multiple macs seamlessly is of great value to me. One of my greatest irritations is having my PB and my PM “out of sync” for those apps that don’t leverage the .Mac service.
I don’t use the iDisk for all that much else, its true, although I plan to use it as a cheaper, higher bandwidth option to upgrading my web hosting account. I’ll locate my website elsewhere, but have the images be sourced from my iDisk
-RS
A hint for those who are hesitant about changing their System or don’t have admin rights:
The Quick Picks can not only be placed in the System’s Library folder but also in the user’s library folders, i.e. this path works as well:
~/Library/Application Support/Backup/QuickPicks/
Where do I find the numerica equivalent for type and creator? I’m emulating the MS Excel Quick Pick so that I can find an application’s files in my Home folder. The Excel Quick Pick uses 10 digit numbers for the type and creator. What are these numbers?
Robert - no idea. I searched around on Apple’s Developer Connection and have no idea where those numbers comes from. Perhaps there’s something useful in a plist file somewhere, but I couldn’t find anything useful on the ADC site.