Since writing an article on home automations and Shortcuts earlier this year, I have continued to find and make shortcuts and recently passed 800 in my library. I thought this milestone would be a good time to reflect on what I've been doing with these shortcuts and how I managed to gather so many.

First, let me say that many of these shortcuts have really changed my life... for the better, as I'm sure Apple would be glad to hear. I spend more time in my Shortcuts app than I do in any other app on my iPhone at the moment, and having all this information available in one app like this makes it more accessible and rewarding. Sure, I have a lot of shortcuts I don't need, but I'll be focusing in this article on the ones I actually use, any automations associated with them, and what they do for me. You can find the list of folders in the first part of this article.

Quick Links

This folder has a number of shortcuts that act as quick links to actions that would otherwise take more time.

App Launcher: Something I read gave me the idea for this shortcut. It's simply a menu of my most-often-used apps, which I can then launch with a quick selection. I keep this shortcut in my Home Screen folder for ready access. It's much faster than browsing for an app.

Apple Feedback: I keep this shortcut handy because I always have a hard time finding where I can send feedback to Apple. This launches the Feedback Assistant app.

App Store: Arcade: This is simply a quick link to the Arcade section of the App Store.

Shine Light: This handy shortcut toggles on the camera's flash bulb. If you run it again, it turns the flash off.

New! Screenshot: I wrote this simple shortcut because there are times when I'd like to ask Siri to take a screenshot rather than fiddling with the external buttons. It starts by waiting 5 seconds to give you time to get the screenshot set up and then takes a screenshot and saves it to your Recents folder in Photos.

Say Family: This shortcut counts down from 5 to 1, giving people enough time to assemble for a group photo. After it says "Say Cheese," it takes a picture with the back camera and saves it to your photo library. From RoutineHub.

Quick Music

This folder has quite a few shortcuts, all designed to get music playing quickly. I'm only going to describe three of them here.

Automix: This shortcut lets you choose several options for quick music playing. It was originally designed to write a playlist with the selected music, but I've eliminated that part of the shortcut. I'm not sure where I found this, so I'm linking to my copy in iCloud. The choices are "Casual," meaning your whole library, "Artist," letting you select an artist from your library, "Genre", letting you hear music by genre, and "Year," playing songs you added in a certain year. I've modified the shortcut to in all cases play only 5-star songs. By default, the shortcut only returns 50 items, but you can change that behavior in the shortcut.

Latest 5 Stars: This shortcut plays 5-star songs from my library, sorted by the latest additions. This is nice when I sync my library with the iPhone and add a lot of new songs. This lets me hear the new songs first. I have a similar shortcut for 4-star songs.

Fresh Shuffle: This shortcut pulls from my library 5-star songs that I haven't listened to in the last 30 days. I'm not sure where I found this one.

Quick Music Artists

I have a slew of shortcuts set up to play particular artists. To date, I have shortcuts for the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, John Cougar Mellencamp, CCR, the Beatles, James Taylor, the Eagles, and Cat Stevens. I also have one for "Singer-Songwriters," which is a bit different because it plays multiple artists. Most of these have a 5-star version, a 4-star version, and one for both 4 and 5 stars. I'm showing an example using the Rolling Stones shortcuts. These shortcuts are great to use with Siri... a very quick way to start playing your favorite artists.

Rolling Stones: This shortcut gets my 5-star-rated Rolling Stones tunes and starts playing them. I believe this is based on a "Play Artist" shortcut in the Apple Gallery of Shortcuts.

Rolling Stones 4: This shortcut gets my 4-star-rated Rolling Stones tunes and starts playing them.

Rolling Stones All: This shortcut gets my 4- and 5-star-rated Rolling Stones tunes and starts playing them.

Singer Songwriters: This shortcut is a little different from the others in this folder. It searches my library for 5-star singer-songwriters' music and plays it. The artists included in the search are Carole King, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Graham Nash, Michael Nesmith, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson.

Quick Music Genres

This folder has a lot of shortcuts designed to play music by genre. I discovered that making some of these is an extension of the "smart playlist" option in iTunes. Many of these shortcuts are "mash-ups" of genres that I've really enjoyed listening to. I'm giving an example of that with the Techno Funk genre. I'm also including a few other shortcuts that in one way or another conglomerates artists and genres into great playlists.

Techno Funk: This is an example of a "mash-up" of genres from my music library. In this case, the shortcut merges my Techno/Synth Pop and Funk/Hip-Hop/Go-Go genres. It's set to play songs rated 5 stars. Other similar shortcuts I have include "Philly Disco", which merges Philly style Soul with Disco, and Southern Soul, which merges Funky Soul and Deep Soul. The following two shortcuts are the same as this one, but for different star ratings.

Techno Funk 4 Stars: This is the same as the previous shortcut, but set to play only songs rated 4 stars.

Techno Funk All: This shortcut is the same as the previous two, but set to play both 4- and 5-star tunes from my library.

Northern Soul: This shortcut is a mash-up of four genres... Philly-style Soul, Motown-style Soul, Other Northern Soul and Soul Instrumentals. It's set to play only 5-star tunes from my library.

Motown: You'd think this would be covered in the Northern Soul shortcut, but I wanted one that's specific to Motown artists, not merely music based on the Motown sound. So this shortcut fetches the following artists and plays 5-star songs of theirs from my library: Marvin Gaye, Supremes, Miracles, Four Tops, Martha & the Vandellas, Elgins, Isley Brothers, Temptations, Gladys Knight & Pips, Velvelettes, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, Edwin Starr, Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, David Ruffin, Jackson 5, Spinners, Eddie Holland, Brenda Holloway, and Barrett Strong. Because some of these artists recorded outside the Motown fold, the shortcut also specifies that the genre be Motown soul.

World: I've particularly enjoyed listening to this mash-up of my genres Reggae/Ska, Latin and Calypso. It pulls 5-star-rated songs in those genres from my library.

Settings

This folder contains shortcuts that pertain to the iPhone's settings. It also has some shortcuts for the Mac and the Apple Watch. I have automations set up for my battery life, with an automation every 5% of battery life. Some of these shortcuts are used in managing the battery as well as brightness in these automations.

Open Settings:

This shortcut provides a menu that's a window into the various screens in the Settings app. It's a quick way to navigate to a particular Settings screen. I'm not sure where this one came from.

Display Settings: This shortcut links to the display settings screen in Settings, which is one I seem to refer to more often. I believe this shortcut was made by the next shortcut in this list.

Settings Shortcut Generator: This nifty shortcut can be used to create a new shortcut for a specific screen in the Settings app. I include it as much for the innovative approach as for my use of it. From RoutineHub.

Max Brightness: This shortcut makes your iPhone as bright as it can be, toggling several settings as well as maxing out the brightness. Just the thing for a sunny day, but use sparingly as it will use your battery faster. From RoutineHub.

Brightness To Battery: This brilliant shortcut sets the brightness setting to your battery percentage. I use it with Siri all the time, and it's built into many of my shortcuts for breaks and for the battery automations. It dims your display at the same rate that your battery declines, helping to save battery life. I don't know where I got this one, but I couldn't do without it!

Super Low Brightness: This Siri command simply sets the brightness to a very low (15%) level to save battery life. I usually use it when Super Low Battery Mode is turned on.

Super Low Battery On: This and the next shortcut are based on the Super Low Battery Mode shortcut from ShortcutsGallery.com. This one turns off cellular data, turns on low power mode, sets brightness to 15%, and turns down the volume to 15%. I use this in my Breaks and Battery automations and shortcuts. I also use it from Siri. I left Bluetooth and WiFi on, because my iPhone is pretty much useless without those.

Super Low Battery Off: This and the previous shortcut are based on the Super Low Battery Mode shortcut from ShortcutsGallery.com. This one turns on cellular data, turns off low power mode, runs the Brightness to Battery shortcut, and sets the volume at 50%. I use this in my Breaks and Battery automations and shortcuts. I also use it from Siri.

Set Battery Charge Mode: I use this shortcut for automations when my iPhone is connected and disconnected from power. It lets me choose whether to turn Super Low Battery on or off and runs one of the previous two shortcuts.

Battery Charged: I use this shortcut in my automations for battery levels 90 and 100 percent. If the time is between 7 AM and 7 PM, it speaks the battery level; otherwise, it sends a notification.

When Battery Falls Below 5%: I have this shortcut tied to an automation when my battery level reaches 5%. If during the day, it speaks an urgent warning about connecting to power. If at other times, it sends a notification. It also turns on Super Low Battery mode.

iPhone Disconnected: This is another shortcut that's tied to an automation. In this case, it's run when my iPhone is connected or disconnected from power. It plays the "Approved" sound (see folder Sounds) shortcut (because I like the sound and runs the Set Battery Charge Mode shortcut so I can decide whether or not to turn on super low batter mode.

Mac Sleep: This shortcut lets you sleep your Mac remotely. For it to work, you need to populate the shortcut's SSH command information and make sure your Mac's sharing settings allow for remote access. Once I got this set up, I find it very handy.

Wake Mac: This shortcut lets you wake your Mac remotely. For it to work, you need to populate the shortcut's SSH command information and make sure your Mac's sharing settings allow for remote access. Once I got this set up, I find it very handy.

Change Watch Face: I use this shortcut as part of my battery automations. I run it every 10% of battery life to change my watch face. I like so many of the watch faces, it's nice to see a different one as the day goes on.

Water Eject: There are a ton of variations of this shortcut out on the web, and some are among the most popular shortcuts. I haven't had a need to use this one yet, but I tested it, and I'm sure it will do a good job of ejecting fluid from my iPhone should the need arise. From RoutineHub.

Share Sheet Only

This folder has shortcuts that can only be run from the Share Sheet. They only take input when you're in some application (like Safari or Photos) and hit the "share" icon.

Zip and Save Encoded: This shortcut takes files as input, and it first zips them up. Then it converts the files to Base64 format, copies the result to the clipboard, and lets you save the file to iCloud. I have a similar shortcut that skips the Base64 step and simply saves the zip file.

Tweet Web Page Info: This shortcut gets the title and URL from the current web page and pastes them into a Twitter message window. You can edit the message before sending it off.

Get Images: This shortcut pulls all the images from the current web page and displays them for you. You can select which photos you want to save to your photo library, after which the photos get saved to the album you specify. I don't know where I found this one, but it does have a credit comment inside.

Find RSS Feed: This shortcut looks into the code of the current web page and returns any RSS feeds it finds. It shows you the title of the RSS feed if it finds one and copies its URL to the clipboard. I couldn't find the original source for this one.

Change Text Case: This shortcut takes input from the share sheet and lets you choose how to change the text's case. It lets you choose Uppercase, lowercase, initial caps, and more. It copies the result to the clipboard and then shows the result in a Quick Look window. I'm linking to my version in iCloud since I don't know where I got this shortcut.

Translate Input: This handy shortcut will translate into English any language it encounters. It shows you the translation and then copies it to the clipboard. I used this heavily in translating non-English shortcuts. Very reliable.

Apple Notes Clipper: This shortcut gets the title and body of the current web page (Safari Article) and shows it to you in Quick Look. It then opens a Notes compose sheet and lets you save to Notes. I believe this one comes from the Apple Gallery in Shortcuts.

Safari Article to Mail: This is the same as the previous shortcut, but instead of saving to notes, it lets you compose an email with the current web page's article.

Get URL: This shortcut simply returns the URL of the current web page and copies it to the clipboard.

Read Selection: This shortcut will speak whatever text you have selected when run from the share sheet.

Read Article: This shortcut finds the body (Safari Article) of the current web page and reads it aloud.

New! Summarize: This shortcut uses the website smmry.com and their AI summarizing algorithm to summarize a given web page. You invoke it from the share sheet in Safari, and it works most of the time, returning a 7-paragraph summary of the given page. I'm not terribly impressed with the summarizing, but it's still a cool shortcut. From RoutineHub.

New! View Source Code: This shortcut saved my hide recently when for some reason Safari on the Mac wouldn't display the source code for my weekly newsletter. With this shortcut, I could easily view the source code in Safari on my iPhone and then share the code with my Mac through AirDrop. Source unknown.

New! Reverse Image Search: This shortcut does a cool trick: It lets you select an image and then do a Google search based on that image. So the results returned are a lot of images and links to the image you searched for, as well as to similar images. From RoutineHub.

Shortcuts Items

This folder has a number of shortcuts websites and feeds for when you're looking for shortcuts. It has others that help when working with shortcuts.

Newest RH Shortcuts: This shortcut returns a list of about 25 of the latest shortcuts added to RoutineHub. Selecting one opens the RoutineHub page in the Safari view controller. This is a German shortcut from RoutineHub. I'm linking to my translated version.

Latest Update RoutineHub: This shortcut returns the list of recently updated shortcuts on RoutineHub. It's a bit slow.

RoutineHub Search Pro: This shortcut lets you enter a term and search RoutineHub for shortcuts. You can also search for shortcut authors. From RoutineHub.

New! Search RoutineHub: I wrote this simple shortcut because the previous one takes longer to produce results. Instead of showing the results in a menu, it loads RoutineHub in the Safari view controller. When launched, you just enter a search term to start the search.

Share Shortcuts Feed: This shortcut displays the RSS feed for the ShareShortcuts.com website. It's nice because it shows the date of the shortcut in the returned list.

Shortcuts RSS: This shortcut gets three feeds at once... From RoutineHub, ShareShortcuts and ShortcutsGallery. It presents a long list, some of which have information about publishing dates, which you can choose from to open a Safari sheet.

Siri Shortcuts Search: This shortcut lets you search across several shortcuts sites, entering a search term and getting a Safari view with the Google results.

New! Shortcuts Searcher: This shortcut uses a custom Google search engine that indexes about 7 different sites with shortcuts. It's similar to the preceding shortcut, but is more comprehensive. You enter a search term, and get results in the Safari view controller.

Shortcuts Websites: This shortcut presents a lengthy list of shortcuts websites. Great when you're looking for new sources of shortcuts.

Open Shortcuts User Guide: This shortcut is a quick link to the Shortcuts User Guide on Apple's website. Definitely worth perusing if you get serious about shortcuts, either from a user or a creator perspective.

Shortcuts Release Notes: This shortcut links to the release notes for the Shortcuts app on Apple's website. It's interesting to see how the capabilities of Shortcuts evolved in the first few years. I'll be interested to see the notes for iOS 15 when they're released.

Open Discord Channel: This shortcut opens a deep link into the Discord app to locate the shorcuts channel, which is pretty active with new shortcuts. I found this one through Matthew Cassinelli's newsletter.

Sounds

This folder has a lot of shortcuts that are mostly for amusement: They simply play sounds of various kinds.

Apple Sounds: This is one of several shortcuts I've collected that play sounds from Apple and its devices. This one is the most comprehensive, covering iOS, watchOS, MacOS, TVOS, and more. From RoutineHub.

iOS Sound Explorer: This one is a comprehensive shortcut for listening to the various sounds your iPhone makes. It's fun to explore, after which it copies the sound file URL to your clipboard. I'm not sure where I got this one.

Mac Startup Chime: Just as you'd suspect, this one simply plays the sound a Mac makes when it starts up. Having to restart my Mac happens so rarely that it's nice to play this now and then. From RoutineHub.

Approved Sound: I use this one in some of my shortcuts, since I like this particular sound, which happens when an ApplePay transaction is approved. I use the sound in my Meditation shortcuts and in my connecting/disconnecting from power shortcut. I think I got this on RoutineHub.

Star Trek Sounds: This shortcut revives such splendid sounds from the original Star Trek series, such as the communicator, the transporter, the bridge, red alert, and more. I'm not sure where this one came from.

Star Wars Sfx: This shortcut has a few iconic sounds — both music and voice — from the Star Wars universe, including the theme and imperial march music. I'm not sure where I got this one.

Iconic Soundtracks: This shortcut plays part of the theme song from some iconic movies, including The Lion King, Mission Impossible, The Good, Bad and Ugly, and Pirates of the Caribbean. This came from RoutineHub, I think, but the site notes that the shortcut has been "abandoned" by the author, so I'm linking to my copy, which seems to work fine.

NASA Soundboard: This shortcut has an incredible array of sounds from NASA missions, including the iconic "Eagle Has Landed" and "A First Step for Man..." from the first landing on the moon. If you're a NASA fan, you'll be delighted with this one. From RoutineHub.

New! Built-in Sounds: It turns out that the iPhone has several hidden "background sounds", and this shortcut gives you access to them. The sounds are things like Rain, Ocean, and Stream. You can optionally set a timer for 15 minutes or for 1-2 hours. From RoutineHub.

Sitcom Laugh: For those moments when a little levity might help, here's a shortcut that plays a typical sitcom laugh track. Not sure where this one came from.

Halloween Evil Laugh: This is Vincent Price's evil laugh, which I believe was used in "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. From RoutineHub.

iFart+: I know... I'm deteriorating into real banality here. But this may get a laugh if played at the right time and with the right people. I couldn't find the original source for this simple, but effective fart sound.

Test and Sample Shortcuts

This folder has a lot of shortcuts that I've started working on but never finished, as well as old versions of current shortcuts. None of these are worth publishing.

Travel and Events

This folder has shortcuts pertaining to travel and events, mostly using the Maps and Calendar apps.

Directions Home: This useful Siri command maps me home from wherever I happen to be. This comes from the Apple Gallery of shortcuts.

Directions To Next Event: This shortcut, great when run from Siri, finds your next event with location information and maps you to it. If you have more than one upcoming event with a location, it will show you the options and let you choose. Also from the Apple Gallery.

New! Where To?: I wrote this simple shortcut recently because I thought it would be faster and easier to ask Siri to find something in Maps than locating the Maps app and entering a search there. When invoked, the shortcut asks where you want to go, and your reply can be a business name, an address, a neighborhood name, a landmark, or a city. The shortcut then opens Maps and shows the location with a Get Directions link. I'm amazed at how flexible the response can be, and Maps will still find what you're looking for.

GPS Pins: This great shortcut lets you "pin" an event and its location to your calendar. You can choose among different kinds of events and give the event a name. The shortcut also lets you navigate to a saved pin. From RoutineHub.

Directions To Picture: This shortcut lets you choose a photo and launches Maps to show you where the photo was taken. This only works for photos that have location information in them, which is true of all the photos you take yourself. I'm not sure where this shortcut came from.

Garage Park: This shortcut lets you enter detailed information about where you parked in a garage... level, lot number etc... and helps you navigate back to your car. From RoutineHub.

Travel Time To Next Event: This shortcut estimates how long and how far you have to drive to your next calendar event with location information. Original source unknown.

Gary's Storage Unit: I have several shortcuts like this one, which simply open Maps and get directions to a specific location. You can make this kind of shortcut by opening Maps and navigating to a location. Then, open Shortcuts and make a new shortcut using Maps actions, and you'll find an action for the location you just entered. Very handy.

Record Stores: I have several shortcuts like this one, which opens Maps and shows me nearby record stores. Again, you can make this with a custom Maps action in Shortcuts.

New! Record Stores Search: The previous shortcut shows you record stores in your current location, but what if you want to search record stores in a different location? Now you can, with this simple shortcut. It asks for a location and then will open Maps and show you record stores in that location.

New! Antique Store Search: This is the same as the previous shortcut, but it searches for antique stores rather than record stores. As you may have guessed, these are two searches my wife and I do when traveling or planning travel. You can modify these to search whatever flips your lid.

Explore Nearby Landmarks: This shortcut searches for Landmarks near your current location and displays a list of sites. Choosing one opens Maps and gets directions. Source unknown.

Charlotte Trip: I made this shortcut for a vacation and shopping trip we took recently. It presents a menu of all the record stores and antique malls we planned to visit on the way to Charlotte, as well as to our location in Charlotte. I arranged the menu in approximately chronological order, ending with our trip to Sunset Beach, NC. Almost all of the actions were made using custom Maps actions as described for Gary's Storage Unit and the Record Stores shortcuts above. This shortcut really saved us time and let us do away with writing down addresses.

Concert Mute: This shortcut simply lets you silence your iPhone when attending a concert or movie. You can turn off the mute settings when you're done by running the shortcut again. From RoutineHub.

Create Event: This shortcut lets you set up an event in your calendar. It asks for title, location, start and end dates, and any notes about the event. Sometimes easier than using Calendar itself.

Upcoming Events: This shortcut pulls the next 5 events from your calendar and displays them in a menu, showing date, time and location for each. Source unknown.

Past Events: This shortcut looks at the last 30 days of your calendar and displays those events with location information. It shows date, time, title and location for each event. Source unknown.

Today's Events: This shortcut shows all the events recorded for the current day in Calendar. I use this during the day to make sure I've taken all my medications and vitamins, which are logged to my calendar. Source unknown.

Holidays and Events: This shortcut has several functions, but I use it mainly to see upcoming National holidays. From RoutineHub.

Special Day Countdown: This shortcut simply takes a date you select and tells you how many days remain until that date. From the Apple Gallery.

New! How Long To: I wrote this shortcut because I was researching destinations for a winter vacation. Instead of using Maps to look up how long it would take to get to a given city, the shortcut simply asks you for a city and returns the information you need. It tells you the route you'll travel, how long it will take to get there, how far the city is, and when you'll arrive if you leave now. Great when run from Siri.

Search Calendar History: This handy shortcut lets you search your calendar history for an event title. Very useful for checking when you started and/or stopped taking a prescription or for seeing how long it's been since you saw the dentist. Source unknown.

Calendar To Timeline: This shortcut lets you visualize your upcoming calendar events an attractive timeline, which you can save or share. When run, you choose how many months of your calendar to include in the timeline. From RoutineHub.

Utilities

This folder has a variety of shortcuts, most of which involve converting from one thing to another.

Translate: This shortcut lets you enter text or use your clipboard as input. You can convert from English to any other language, and vice versa. At the end, it will pronounce the phrase in the language you choose. The source of this shortcut is unknown, so I'm linking to my iCloud version.

Convert: This shortcut lets you convert between liters and gallons, among other fluid measures. Source unknown.

Convert Length: This shortcut lets you convert between centimeters and inches. We U.S. citizens need all the help with metric measures we can get. Source unknown.

Convert Temperature: This shortcuts lets you convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit. This really helps me at times, because I just can't think in Celsius when it comes to temperature. Source unknown.

Hex To RGB Converter: I've needed this one from time to time. It takes a hex color code and returns the equivalent in RGB values. Source unknown.

Morse Code Converter: This shortcut will convert plain text to dots and dashes and copy the result to your clipboard. It will also convert morse code to plain text. Source unknown.

Utilities Menu: This is an elaborate, all-in-one shortcut that contains a wide variety of utilities for working with text, the web, media, and more. I don't honestly use this one very much, but it's pretty cool. From RoutineHub.

Time Activity: I wrote this shortcut to help me track how long certain activities take. When run, the shortcut will tell you when it started the activity. When run again, it will tell you how long the activity took and ask if you want to start a new activity. The shortcut requires DataJar to store global variables.

New! Currency Converter: It took me forever to find a currency converter app that actually works. This one is the result of merging two shortcuts to get a working product. You simply choose the currency you're converting from, the currency you're converting to, and the amount you want to convert. The shortcut then shows the result and copies it to the clipboard.

Wallpaper

I spend a lot of time working with wallpaper images of various kinds, and I have automations that change my lock screen wallpaper with every 5% change in battery level. This folder has shortcuts that provide images for wallpaper use as well as shortcuts that enhance and modify images for use as wallpaper.

Album Wallpaper: This cool shortcut looks at what I've listened to in the last 14 days, finds the art associated with those songs, and prepares a wallpaper image with the art arrayed in an angled pattern across the screen. I used this for a long time before switching to my current wallpaper "strategy." From RoutineHub

WallCreator Automated: This shortcut generates beautiful gradient images, using two colors and varying direction of the gradient, for use as wallpaper. I've modified it to let me choose whether or not to save the image. If I elect to save, the shortcut will let me apply the wallpaper to my lock or home screen.

Gradient Paper: This shortcut also generates gradient wallpaper images, but it uses 4 different colors and wider variety of angles and origin points. It automatically previews the image for you and then saves the image to the Recents album and offers to set the home screen wallpaper. I couldn't find the original, so I'm linking to my iCloud version.

Gradient Paper ShowDock: This shortcut combines the Gradient Paper shortcut (above) with parts of the ShowDock shortcut (below). When run, it previews the image, saves it to Recents and then offers to let you add one of three ShowDock images (using the three separate ShowDock shortcuts, below) to the bottom. After that, you can set the Home Screen with the new wallpaper. I use this frequently to update my Home Screen wallpaper, so I keep it in my Home Screen folder for quick access.

ShowDock: This cool shortcut has about 20 different enhancements you can add to your wallpaper. The enhancements are designed to highlight the Dock area of your iPhone home screen and range from ones that fade the bottom of the image out to ones that add colorful and interesting dividers above the Dock area. You select an image and then one of the enhancements, and the shortcut previews the enhanced image before offering to set your home or lock screen with the new wallpaper. I couldn't find the original for this, but it does have a credit comment inside.

ShowDock Color Splash: This is one of three shortcuts that pull my favorite enhancements from the ShowDock shortcut. I run it inside the Gradient Paper ShowDock shortcut (above). It takes the latest image saved to Recents and applies an enhancement that looks like a splash of a rainbow of colors. It then lets you save the enhanced image as your Home Screen wallpaper.

ShowDock Rainbow: This is one of three shortcuts that pull my favorite enhancements from the ShowDock shortcut. I run it inside the Gradient Paper ShowDock shortcut (above). It takes the latest image saved to Recents and applies an enhancement that looks like wavy rainbow of colors. It then lets you save the enhanced image as your Home Screen wallpaper.

ShowDock Wavy Chrome: This is one of three shortcuts that pull my favorite enhancements from the ShowDock shortcut. I run it inside the Gradient Paper ShowDock shortcut (above). It takes the latest image saved to Recents and applies an enhancement that looks like a chrome wave, which lets in some of the background color. It then lets you save the enhanced image as your Home Screen wallpaper.

Calendar Homescreen: This useful shortcut takes a photo you select and adds the next 7 events from your calendar to the bottom. You can then set the image as your wallpaper. I use a modified version of this shortcut on my lock screen (Calendar on Lock Screen Auto). I couldn't find the original, so I'm linking to my iCloud version.

Calendar on Lock Screen Auto: I call this shortcut from within the "Add Battery Level and Calendar" shortcut. This is an embeddable version of Calendar Homescreen (above), and it keeps my calendar up to date on my lock screen... Very handy!

Add Battery Level and Calendar: This shortcut is a modification of one I found that modifies a wallpaper image to add the current battery level below the level indicator on your lock screen. I've missed seeing the percentage since Apple did away with it, and this brings it back. I've combined this shortcut with the Calendar Homescreen shortcut so that it adds my calendar to the lock screen as well. The shortcut contains some logic that pulls wallpapers from 5 different "buckets" that I maintain — NASA images, Landscapes, Cats, Fine Art and Google Earth. It uses the seconds of a minute and picks a wallpaper depending on what second of the minute it is. This shortcut requres Toolbox Pro (I think the paid version) to do the battery level function.

GradCircle Wallpaper: This cool shortcut uses the free app Scriptable to generate stark, modern-looking wallpapers with curving lines of different colors... a sort of mid-century modern look. After previewing the wallpaper, it gives you the option of saving it or setting it as wallpaper. I don't know where I found this.

Set Art Wallpaper: This shortcut pulls a fine art image and lets you use it as your wallpaper. I've modified it so that after a preview you can decide whether to save the image or not. If you save it, the shortcut will then let you set it as wallpaper. Source unknown.

Random Cat Wallpaper: This shortcut pulls an image of cats from a seemingly bottomless supply. I've modified the original to let you choose whether or not to save the image, and you can see it previewed as wallpaper. Source unknown.

Wallpaper Engine: This shortcut lets you search for wallpapers on unsplash.com, or you can choose a random image. You can specify how many images you want to see, after which you can elect to save one or more of them or use them as wallpaper. I use the search function a lot. The shortcut returns images in the proper size for your device's lock or home screen. From RoutineHub.

Daily Wallpaper - Landscapes 4K: This shortcut uses a downloadable zip file of 85 beautiful landscape images and picks a random image from the zip file. I've modified it to let you decide whether or not to keep a given image. If you decide to save the image, you can see the landscape previewed on your lock screen. From RoutineHub.

Resize Images To Wallpaper: I use this shortcut to make all the images I pass to it the height of my iPhone screen. This is part of my process for preparing wallpaper-sized images for the various "buckets" I maintain (NASA, Cats, Landscapes, Fine Art).

Wallz Reborn: This shortcut finishes the job of the "Resize Images To Wallpaper" shortcut, taking images passed to it and cropping them horizontally to wallpaper size. You can also use it to resize to other screen resolutions. From RoutineHub.

Daily NASA Wallpaper: This shortcut contains a downloadable zip file of my NASA wallpapers (about 150 of them). It previews a random image from the zip file and offers to set it as your wallpaper. I use this same basic pattern for the following three shortcuts.

Daily Cats Wallpaper: This shortcut contains a downloadable zip file of my cats wallpapers (about 100 of them). It previews a random image from the zip file and offers to set it as your wallpaper.

Daily Fine Art Wallpaper: This shortcut contains a downloadable zip file of my fine art wallpapers (about 100 of them). It previews a random image from the zip file and offers to set it as your wallpaper.

Daily Landscape Wallpaper: This shortcut contains a downloadable zip file of my landscape wallpapers (about 100 of them). It previews a random image from the zip file and offers to set it as your wallpaper.

New! FStopper PTOD Wallpaper: Always looking for good sources of photos in various categories, this one occasionally has a daily image that grabs me, so I check it daily.

New! Google Earth: I think I discovered this one on RoutineHub, but I made a few changes to it to suit my needs. It turns out that Google Earth satellites take a lot of amazing photos, and you can see some of them through this shortcut. It originally was intended just to make the image your lock screen or home screen wallpaper, with no way of saving the image. I fixed that, so the shortcut now saves a single copy of the image to a specified folder in Photos, in addition to offering to make the photo your wallpaper. I like these images so much I've made them part of my rotation of lock screen papers, as described in the "Add Battery and Calendar" shortcut.

New! LS Weather: This shortcut and the next one are complicated and difficult to set up. They require Scriptable, and you have to find and download a Scriptable script and install it manually in Scriptable. The results are very cool, and I use them both from time to time. Essentially, LS Weather adds weather information in various configurations to your lock screen. It has other functionality as well, but I didn't set it up for that. From RoutineHub.

New! LS Forecast: This shortcut and the previous one are complicated and difficult to set up. They require Scriptable, and you have to find and download a Scriptable script and install it manually in Scriptable. The results are very cool, and I use them both from time to time. Essentially, LS Forecast adds weather forecast information to your lock screen in an attraction manner. From RoutineHub.

New! Wallpaper Mixer: This cool shortcut takes two images from your photo library and crops/combines them horizontally into wallpaper size. You can come up with some interesting effects with the right photos. From RoutineHub.

New! Unsplash Collections: This shortcut pulls images from Unsplash.com's extensive collection. It's organized to find images in certain categories of Unsplash Collections that I collect: Landscapes, Space, Cats, and Fine Art. When run, you select a collection, and the shortcut returns an image, which you can choose to save or not. If you do save, the shortcut will preview your home screen with the photo. If you don't save, the shortcut will ask if you want to search again.

Weather

This folder contains shortcuts that show the weather in various ways.

Total Weather: This is the most comprehensive textual summary of the weather data available for your current location. It also gives a briefer summary of tomorrow's forecast. Useful when run from Siri to have her read the weather for you. From RoutineHub.

New! Feels Like: This handy shortcut (just say, "Hey Siri Feels Like") gets the current temperature and reads it along with the Feels Like temperature and the wind speed. Perfect for when you're heading outside.

My Weather: This simple shortcut opens the Weather app to show weather in your current location.

Weather In City: This shortcut presents a menu of all the cities you've bookmarked in the Weather app and lets you choose which city's weather to view. It then opens the Weather app to the chosen city.

NOAA Multi-Day Forecast: This shortcut lets you choose the length of time in days for the forecast and then pulls up the latest official NOAA forecast for your current location in a Quick Look screen. I often find the NOAA forecast to be more accurate than the source Apple uses, so I like being able to quickly refer to it in this shortcut. From RoutineHub.

Weather Chart: This shortcut uses Charty to present the 12-day forecast as an attractive line chart, showing high, low, and average temperatures expected. Source unknown.

New! Weather Chart With Average High: This is the same as the preceding shortcut, but I've added a data series for Average High, which superimposes on the high/medium/log graph lines. I need to edit the shortcut daily to enter the latest average high temperature data.

New! Log Average High: I decided to start keeping track of the average high temperature, so this shortcut logs the data to my calendar each day.

New! Average High: This shortcut simply reads my calendar and shows me the Average High data for the last 30 days.

New! UV Index: This shortcut gets the UV Index from today's weather and logs it to the Health app.

New! UV Index Chart: This shortcut charts the last 30 days of UV Index data from the health app, using Charty.

Precipitation: This shortcut shows expected precipitation percentages in a bar-type chart. It presents the information for the next 12 days in a menu. Source unknown.

Pollen: This shortcut opens the Pollen.com website in a Safari sheet. It presents the page showing the 5-day allergy forecast for your current location. Source unknown.

Severe Weather: This shortcut was made from a custom Siri action in the News app. It opens News and shows stories about severe weather.

New! U.S. Climate Data: I think I found this shortcut on RoutineHub, but it didn't work when I tried it out. The problem is that the site it pulls data from had changed their chart strategy. The original shortcut was expecting an image to grab, but the new site shows the graph in an interactive manner. So I changed the shortcut to load the final page in the Safari view controller instead. This shortcut lets you choose a State and city and returns a graph showing average, high and low temperatures for the year by month, as well as precipitation amounts.

New! Weather Report For: I modified a shortcut I found that produces a summary of the current weather. Instead of restricting it to finding your current location data, I introduced a search feature that lets you enter any location to find the weather there. I figured out how to make this work for any U.S. city as well as for international cities. You can even enter the name of a neighborhood.

Daily Forecast: This handy shortcut brings up the next 12-day forecast for your location, showing date, temperature and conditions expected. Source unknown.

New! Daily Forecast For: This is the previous shortcut, but it first prompts you to specify a location. The shortcut routes the inputted location through the Maps app to get a location Weather can use. Very handy for getting a daily forecast for some location other than your own.

Hourly Forecast: This shortcut is much like the previous one (same original source, I believe), but it shows the temperature and conditions expected for the next 24 hours.

New! Hourly Forecast For: This is the previous shortcut, but it first prompts you to specify a location. The shortcut routes the inputted location through the Maps app to get a location Weather can use. Very handy for getting an hourly forecast for some location other than your own.

Precipitation Hourly Forecast: I think I made this one based on the previous shortcut. It shows the expected percent chance of precipitation for the next 24 hours.

New! Precipitation Forecast For: This is the same as the preceding shortcut, but it gives you the option to enter a location rather than using your current location by default.

New! U.S. Cities Weather Report: This shortcut runs through about 35 U.S. cities, giving a summary of their weather today and forecast for the next 2 days. It announces the name of the city and state and then presents the information, one city at a time. This substitutes for my long-time habit of perusing the cities weather data in the paper each day.

New! International Weather Report: This is the same as the preceding shortcut, but it fetches data for about 20 international cities instead of for U.S. cities.

Is It Raining: I wrote this shortcut one day when I was sitting in my windowless office and wondering if it was raining outside. It looks at the precipitation chances (in percent) for the current time and tells you whether or not rain is likely. It also gets the chance of rain for the next two hours and reports that as well.

Is It Raining (Conditions): I wrote this shortcut as a different way to answer the question. Instead of looking at percent chance of precipitation, the shortcut uses text matching to see if the current conditions suggest rain. If the conditions match "Thunderstorm," "Rain," or "Showers," it's probably raining. If none of those things match, then the answer is no. I've found this to be a bit more accurate than the previous shortcut.

Web Sites and Feeds

This folder has a number of shortcuts that load web sites or their RSS feeds. I've found "bookmarking" websites by making a shortcut is faster than using Safari.

Mars: This shortcut simply loads this website (Musings from Mars) in a Safari view window. I find shortcuts like this more convenient than going to Safari. An interesting thing about the Safari view window... In the lower right corner is an icon that will load the page in Safari itself if you choose to do that.

Discogs: Here's another website that I load frequently. It's convenient to have it as a shortcut.

Wayback Machine: This shortcut loads the "Wayback Machine" at web.archive.org. This site lets you search the web's past by loading old versions of any website the machine has crawled.

New! White House: This shortcut provides links in a menu to the White House home page, the briefing room, and speeches and remarks pages. I use this with Read Article in the Share Sheet to have the latest releases read to me.

9 To 5 Mac: This shortcut loads the news feed for this Mac-related website.

Mac Stories: This shortcut loads the news feed for this Mac-related website.

C45 Jukebox: This loads the RSS feed for the Classic 45s "Jukebox" podcast. In this version, selecting an item loads the page in the Safari view window.

C45 Jukebox Text: This shortcut also loads the Classic 45s "Jukebox" feed, but instead of taking you to a web page on selecting an item, it pulls the text and image from the feed and presents it in a QuickLook window. I'd like to grab the audio file, too, but haven't figured out how to do that yet.

New! Jukebox: This shortcut finds the latest episodes of the Podcast Classic 45s Jukebox. When you choose an episode, the shortcut starts playing the song and presents the descriptive information included in the Podcast in a preview window.

New! Animal Shelter: I made this simple shortcut when we started looking for a new cat when our much loved Coach died recently. The shortcut simply loads the Arlington, VA, animal shelter's web page, set to screen only male kittens. This is an example of a shortcut that took perhaps a minute to make but saves me time by making it super-quick and easy to load the page, which I check several times a day for new arrivals. You could bookmark the page or save a tab in Safari, but the time required to find and follow the bookmark or find and load the tab in Safari is greater than simply clicking on this shortcut.

New! Google Search for 45s: One of the things I check Google often for is the position of my business in search results listings. So I made a shortcut that does four searches for 45 rpm records, pausing each time to let me view Google results in the Safari view controller, and then proceeding to the next keyword search. It's a very efficient way of quickly seeing whether my business' position has changed.

Since writing an article on home automations and Shortcuts earlier this year, I have continued to find and make shortcuts and recently passed 800 in my library. I thought this milestone would be a good time to reflect on what I've been doing with these shortcuts and how I managed to gather so many.

First, let me say that many of these shortcuts have really changed my life... for the better, as I'm sure Apple would be glad to hear. I spend more time in my Shortcuts app than I do in any other app on my iPhone at the moment, and having all this information available in one app like this makes it more accessible and rewarding. Sure, I have a lot of shortcuts I don't need, but I'll be focusing in this article on the ones I actually use, any automations associated with them, and what they do for me.

A quick note about the shortcuts links in this article: Some of my shortcuts came from German and Chinese sources, and I meticulously translated them to English. In these cases, I'll be linking you to my English translation rather than the original version. Where possible, I will link to the actual sources, but many of the links will be to my own iCloud library. Many of the shortcuts were written by me or adapted from third-party shortcuts. All of these shortcuts work in IOS 14. I have been testing them on IOS 15.3, and most work reasonably well. I still find Shortcuts in IOS 15 to be buggy compared with IOS 14, but IOS 15.3 fixed a bug that was keeping the MediaKit Badges shortcut from working. That's the shortcut I use to create the download images for this article, so I'm relieved that it's working again. One of the most annoying bugs is that you can no longer get an iCloud link by asking for it in a shortcut. Shortcuts says the shortcut isn't stored in iCloud, so no link is available. You can get around this by sharing the shortcut and selecting "Get iCloud Link" in the share sheet. But it was so much easier when I could backup my shortcuts to iCloud using a shortcut.

Finding Shortcuts

The first step to finding shortcuts is to check out the "Gallery" tab in the Shortcuts app, where you will find dozens of useful shortcuts made by Apple. I've used many of these and customized others to my personal situation. In addition, there are a lot of websites out there with "galleries" of shortcuts for the taking. (Any non-Apple shortcut is considered "untrusted," and you have to allow untrusted shortcuts to use them in Settings.) The most popular and largest site is RoutineHub, where you will find more than 300 pages of shortcuts. Rather than list all the sites here, I'm going to mention one more, which is kind of a directory of shortcuts information, including many of the gallery sites: Shortcuts Directory.

As you may imagine, there are also a lot of shortcuts that contain links to shortcuts websites, and I use these daily to check what's new. Here are a few of my favorite shortcuts for shortcuts info:

• Newest RH Shortcuts. Displays the latest 20 or so shortcuts added to RoutineHub.
• Shortcuts Websites. Lists a variety of gallery sites as well as providing links to shortcuts groups on YouTube and Reddit.
• Siri Shortcuts Search. This is a link to Sharecuts.com's shortcut for searching Google for shortcuts.
• RoutineHub Search Pro. I use this a lot when searching, because RoutineHub is the richest vein of shortcuts out there.

Building Shortcuts

I've either built from scratch or heavily customized many of the shortcuts I use. Although I do have a programming background, I feel strongly that making shortcuts should be easy for any reasonably intelligent human with a little study and understanding of what your options are and how to use things like actions, variables, menus, and the like. It's a visual interface, and you just click the + sign to start building your shortcut. Apple provides a user guide for Shortcuts, and I recommend you peruse that if you really want to get serious about building your own. I also highly recommend opening up shortcuts made by others and studying how they're made. You can do this by clicking the "..." (three dots) in the top-right corner of any shortcut.

One of the things I love about shortcuts is not only how easy they are to make and share, but how transparent they are. It's easy to examine a shortcut's actions by clicking on the "..." in the icon. I have one shortcut that lets me copy blocks of code from one shortcut and insert it in another: It's not stealing! It's re-using good code. This is the same model that the web is built on. You can see the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and other source code easily in any browser, so you can learn how things are done.

There are a lot of good tutorials on the web, especially on YouTube, so I won't try to construct one here. Just keep in mind: It's easy! Look inside shortcuts! Reuse code that works!

Third Party Apps Used in My Shortcuts

There are a lot of third-party apps that let you do more with shortcuts than Apple's Shortcuts app alone can. A number of my shortcuts make use of some of these, and I recommend that you download and install them on your iPhone before trying out my shortcuts. All of them are free, though one or two have a for-fee "Pro" option.

• Charty for Shortcuts. Enables charting of data from any source accessible from the Shortcuts app.Some of my shortcuts require the $4.99 "Pro" upgrade for charting.
• Data Jar. A simple database-like app that lets you define Global Variables in shortcuts, among other things.
• Day One. A free journaling app that I've started using since it has rich ties to shortcuts actions.
• Jayson. A free editor for files in the .json format. I use it to edit my "pills" dictionary for one of the shortcuts.
• Scriptable. Enables rich scripting inside shortcuts.
• Toolbox Pro. Adds a host of useful actions for Shortcuts and provides dozens of sample shortcuts demonstrating their use.

My Shortcuts Library

I have 975 shortcuts in my library as I write this today. The number changes daily and always seems to trend upward. Fortunately, Apple lets you organize your shortcuts into folders, and I have made the following folders for my shortcuts (the number beside the folder name is the number of shortcuts in that folder).

1. Breaks and TV (24)
2. Clipboard and Text (22)
3. COVID 19 (9)
4. Daily Shortcuts (32)
5. Day One and Notes (14)
6. Developer Tools (56)
7. Emergency (4)
8. Family (33)
9. Files and iCloud (8)
10. For Fun (31)
11. Health and Fitness (42)
12. Home Screen (8)
13. Images and Pictures (62)
14. Information (22)
15. Mail and Messaging (6)
16. Morning Routine (6)
17. Music (31)
18. News and Stocks (22)
19. Nutrition (59)
20. Playback and HomePod (13)
21. Quick Classical Music (12)
22. Quick Leland Music (31)
23. Quick Links (14)
24. Quick Music (15)
25. Quick Music Artists (25)
26. Quick Music Genres (34)
27. Settings (30)
28. Share Sheet Only (28)
29. Shortcuts Items (34)
30. Sounds (15)
31. Test and sample shortcuts (54)
32. Travel and Events (40)
33. Utilities (26)
34. Wallpaper (38)
35. Weather (33)
36. Web Sites and Feeds (27)

By the way, if you add the numbers up, you won't get to 975, because I have a dozen or so that are unfiled (they aren't in a folder). I think it will be easiest from here to walk you through these folders and let you know what shortcuts I really use and how I use them. I'll be providing links to shortcuts I particularly like or use most often: About 355 shortcuts in all. One big caveat about these shortcuts, especially the ones I'm linking directly from my iCloud library, is that these have only been used on the iPhone with iOS 14 and iOS 15.3.I don't know how they will work on the iPad or on the Mac (Monterey). One big difference I noted right away when I tried a few on my iPad (after upgrading to the latest iPadOS) is that there is no Health app on iPad. This seems like a real miss for Apple, and hopefully they plan to migrate Health to both iPad and the Mac in short order.

Breaks and TV

I use this folder and the various "breaks" shortcuts several times a day as I go through my work routine. Also in here are specific shortcuts for accessing and controlling my Apple TVs.

Morning Break: This shortcut starts my morning break by turning off the Music Room lights, turning on a light in the Great Room, starting some classical music from my library (different for each day of the week), and issuing reminders to take and log some prescriptions. It also sets the brightness on my iPhone and turns off Do Not Disturb, which I have on while I'm working. I built this shortcut pretty much from scratch.

Break Over: I use this shortcut after both my morning and afternoon breaks. It's very simple: Sets the lights on in the Music Room, turns off the Great Room light, turns on Do Not Disturb, and runs my Super-Low Battery On shortcut to enable fast charging while I work.

Afternoon Break Albums: This is a variant of a shortcut I've used for a long time now for my afternoon break. Where earlier, the shortcut relied on the Indie Music shortcut provided by Apple, I've been using the break to listen to one of the 500 Greatest Albums according to Rolling Stone magazine. It incorporates a shortcut you'll meet later in my Music folder, which cycles through the 500 albums. Besides the music, the shortcut turns off Super-Low Battery, sets lighting appropriately, turns off Do Not Disturb, and sets the playback destination to my Kitchen HomePod. It closes by showing me the Apple stock price in the Stocks app.

New! Great Room Break: This is the Afternoon Break Albums shortcut without the call to the 500 Albums shortcut. It lets me start whatever music I like, with playback set to the Kitchen HomePod.

Work Done: I use this shortcut at the end of the work day to turn off lights in the Music Room, turn off Super-Low Battery mode, and turn off Do Not Disturb.

TV Time: I made this simple shortcut to quickly set two groups of lights and turn on the basement Apple TV. It ends by showing the remote for the TV. I use it every day.

Netflix Basement: I have a variety of shortcuts for my two Apple TVs... ones that simply wake and put them to sleep and others that load specific apps on them. This one simply wakes and loads Netflix on the basement TV and is representative of this type of shortcut. I have ones for HBO and for Fitness+ as well, but you can easily adapt this one to your needs.

MovieCuts: This is a great third-party shortcut from RoutineHub that ties in to the OMDb API to get IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes information about any movie you search for. You have to get your own free API key, and the page linked below tells you how. It's definitely worth it!

ShowTime Cuts: This shortcut is by the same author who wrote MovieCuts. It lets you search for movie times at local theaters, using your location. You'll have to get a couple of free API keys to make it work, but it's easy and well worth the effort. The only problem I've had is that the menu with specific theater times doesn't properly load Maps to show you the theater location. Also from RoutineHub.

Clipboard and Text

This folder has shortcuts that let you manipulate, save and retrieve your clipboard information, as well as shortcuts for working with text. The clipboard shortcuts are somewhat redundant of each other, but I like each one for different reasons and end up using them all at this point. These are all third-party shortcuts, and I'll provide links to the source when possible.

Save To Clips: I like this one because it's a Siri command that's easy to use. You can also use it from the Share sheet. I couldn't find the source where I found this originally, so I'm linking to my iCloud library. This shortcut works with the "Get Clips" shortcut, and both by default let you save and retrieve up to 15 items from your clipboard, using a file saved to iCloud.

Get Clips: This is the companion command to "Save To Clips" that lets you retrieve your clipboard history, as saved to iCloud. See my description of "Save" above for more about this shortcut.

Clip: This is a relatively new shortcut from RoutineHub that I like a lot. It lets you save clipboard items and give a name to them. You can use it to save the current clipboard or retrieve a saved clip.

Clipboard: I like this one because it lets you edit your clipboard as well as view and share it. For the times when you need to add something to or change your clipboard, it's just right.

Symbols: I'm not sure where I found this shortcut, but it's a good one for the times when you need a special symbol. Just launch and select the symbol, which is then copied to your clipboard.

Word & Character Count: This handy shortcut takes your clipboard or share sheet input and returns the number of words, number of characters, and number of lines in the text. I don't remember where I found this one, so I'm linking you to my iCloud version.

Upside Down Text: This one is just for fun, but it's so cool I just couldn't resist. It lets you type or paste in some text and returns a version with upside-down letters, saved to your clipboard. I like sending messages like this now and then for laughs.

Vertical Text: Another one just for fun, this shortcut takes your clipbaord and arranges the text vertically, one word on each line. It ends by saving the result to your clipboard. I like to do this sometimes in conjunction with the Upside Down Text shortcut.

New! Font Switcher: This new shortcut from RoutineHub has 31 different font effects you can apply to your chosen text. The most comprehensive font utility I've found, it even includes upside down text! You just enter some text and choose which effect to apply, after which it previews the effect and copies it to your clipboard.

New! Save Text As Audio: This nifty shortcut lets you dictate text and then converts it to an audio file, which you can either save or share. You can choose which voice to use for the audio file.

New! Count By Type: This shortcut takes a file or text and calculates the number of words, characters, sentences or lines. From RoutineHub.

Unicode Font Variants: There are a number of shortcuts out there that let you apply different font effects, but this is the best one I've found. It lets you enter some text and then choose from among 15 different font effects to apply to it. From RoutineHub.

Covid-19

This folder has a few shortcuts that return data and charts about the Coronavirus. Sadly, I still find it useful to refer to these occasionally. (When will it end?)

Covid-19 Charts: This shortcut lets you choose a data type (e.g., "confirmed," "deaths") and the countries you want to see charted. It's a bit slow, but it returns a cool chart (using Charty) comparing the countries you've selected.

Corona Stats By State: This shortcut not only lets you choose the States you want to see data for, but you can save your selection for later reuse. It returns a detailed page with data for each State and then offers to chart the data for you. Very handy, though sometimes not up-to-date with the latest information. Available from RoutineHub.

Coronavirus Stats: This shortcut lets you choose any country or group of countries and returns detailed information about Covid-19 there. You can save your country selections for later reuse. From RoutineHub.

Show Vaccine Card: This handy shortcut lets you store a picture of your vaccine card for quick and easy display when needed. You just take a picture of your card, run the shortcut and browse to the picture you just took. From then on, your card will be one click away with no need to search through your photos. I found this one through Matthew Cassinelli's newsletter.

Corona Update: I like this shortcut because it lets you see data for specific countries and U.S. States, which you can enter into the shortcut itself. It grabs the latest 28 days of data on new cases, new deaths, and totals, and it always seems to have the latest data. From RoutineHub.

New! CDC Guidance: This shortcut simply links to the CDC's February 24, 2022, release of county-level guidance on masks. You can lookup any county in the U.S. or see a map of the U.S. showing risk levels of green, yellow, or orange.

New! Dr. Fauci In The News: This shortcut opens a page on the Government's website that has links to remarks made by Dr. Fauci at different forums.

New! CDC News Voice: This shortcut provides easy access to three news feeds from CDC related to COVID-19. Selecting an item will have the shortcut read the text to you.

Daily Shortcuts

This folder has some shortcuts I use every day. Other than daily usage, the shortcuts have little in common. I keep them in this folder for quick access.

APOD: I don't know where I got this great shortcut... Perhaps from a Chinese site, after which I meticulously translated the shortcut into English. This shortcut shows the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day. There are others that do this, but this one is unique in that it lets you go back and retrieve images from any day you like. I've mined the NASA library back to 2014 now and continue to find amazing images of the universe, in stunning, high-def detail. The shortcut also shows the description that accompanies each image on the APOD website.

Random Obscure Fact: This simple shortcut is a delight! Just for fun, it spits out obscure facts on every subject. I have the shortcut set to let me share the fact after I've read it. I couldn't find the source for this, so feel free to download my version.

Today In History: I'm not sure where I got this originally, but I've made some modifications to it that make it more readable for me. This shortcut gets 20 items from the History.com daily news feed and presents them as a single HTML page for easy reading. I've found this to be an enjoyable daily activity.

Today's Historical Events: I'm not sure where this one came from, but I've made a few changes to make it more readable. It's a comprehensive list of historical events for the current day, starting way back in time and going to the present in chronological order.

New! History of Today: This one duplicates some of the items in the previous two shortcuts, but it has a lot of information not available in the others. It returns just one fact from the history of the current day, but if you load it many times it comes up with many facts. I like the way they're presented better than in "Today's Historical Events," although the latter is much more comprehensive. From RoutineHub.

Time Machine: You can find this shortcut in the Apple Shortcuts Gallery. It simply looks at the photos you took a year ago and presents them in a Quick Look window. The only difference I've made is that it looks at one year ago plus 2 months rather than plus 2 weeks as in the Apple original. Again, I've found this to be a pleasurable daily activity.

Quote of the Day: This shortcut gets the latest quote from BrainyQuote.com and lets you view and/or share it. This was adapted from a shortcut I found on RoutineHub.

New! Daily Fact Reading: This shortcut is based on an older one that never worked quite right. It pulls the latest facts submitted to reddit and sends you to one of the sites cited. Instead of loading a web page or trying to show text, this shortcut runs the "Read Article" shortcut you'll encounter in the "Share Sheet Only" folder of shortcuts. It gets the title and body of the submitted web page through Safari's Reader functionality and reads the resulting text to you.

New! National Geographic Daily Photo: This shortcut grabs images from National Geographic's picture of the day web page and filters to the first large image on the page. It displays the latest image in a Quick Look window, and you can save it if desired from the share sheet. Not sure where I found this, but I had to make a few changes to get it to work the way I wanted it, so I'm linking to my iCloud version.

Horoscope+: I don't know why I saved this one, since I don't really believe in astrology. But it's fun to read from time to time. This shortcut lets you set a default sign for quick work, or you can select a sign from the menu. It uses two different data sources and can provide up to 6 different readings for a single day. Available from RoutineHub.

Daily Summary: I have several of these journaling shortcuts, which ask you a number of questions, such as "What did you learn today?", and sticks the questions and answers in your Day One journal. This is the one I use most frequently. Day One is a great, free journaling app, and shortcuts like this one have really encouraged me to keep a journal. I don't know where I found this shortcut, so I'm linking to mine on iCloud.

Meditate: I have several meditation shortcuts now, but this is the first one I downloaded and I still use it. One of the challenges of meditation shortcuts is that Apple hasn't provided a "slideshow" action for your photos. I like to view images while meditating, but I want to require minimal interaction with my phone while doing so. This shortcut uses one workaround — namely, it pulls a random animated GIF from my photos and plays it in Quick Look. I created the animated GIFs using the "HighRes GIFs" shortcut I'll discuss in the Images and Pictures section. The shortcut turns on Do Not Disturb, starts playing some meditation music, sets a timer for the amount of time you provide each time, turns brightness to 100% and logs the time you set to your Mindfulness data in the Health app. It finishes when the timer goes off and you close the Quick Look screen.

Meditate NASA: This shortcut tries to get around several problems in setting up the meditation session. As mentioned before, ideally I would be able to start a slideshow in Shortcuts itself, but since that's not possible, this one attempts to keep the shortcut running while opening Photos to a specified album, where you can start the slideshow manually. Normally, it's very hard to keep shortcuts running when you switch apps for more than 2-3 minutes, so completing the meditation cycle (turning off Do Not Disturb, and stopping the music) is hard for longer meditation sessions. This one gets around the problem by setting up a loop and playing a sound every 30 seconds (in this case, I use the "approved" sound from Apple Pay). It gets it right most of the time, and the shortcut ends by returning you to the Shortcuts app and completing the meditation session. The big shortcoming to this approach is that this shortcut is hard-wired for a 5-minute session. I have a similar shortcut that extends the session to 10 minutes.

Day One and Notes

This folder has some shortcuts that use my Day One journal, as well as shortcuts that work with the Notes app.

Audio Note: This shortcut uses Toolbox Pro to let you quickly record an audio note, which Toolbox Pro transcribes to text. The text is presented in a Quick Look sheet and then added as an entry to Day One. I use this for many additions to my Day One Journal.

New! Listening To: I wrote this shortcut to save myself a little time over using Audio Note (above) when entering my brief reviews of Rolling Stones' Top 500 Albums. Since all my reviews start with "Listening To," I embedded that text in the shortcut, which also adds a tag to the entry to make searching easier. Once run, you just say the name of the album and the artist, followed by your review. This sends the entry to Day One, where you can edit it further or add a photo, etc.

Smoked: I wrote this simple shortcut because I wanted to start keeping track of how often I smoke. Saying "Smoked" to Siri adds the phrase "Smoked at [current time]" to my Day One journal, with a tag of "Smoked" to make searching possible.

New! Smoked History: This simple shortcut finds the last 30 entries in Day One with the tag "Smoked" and shows them in Day One. A very convenient way to see my smoking history.

Great Albums: I started this shortcut as part of my project to listen to the Top 500 albums (according to Rolling Stone magazine). It lets me append to a note called "Great albums from Top 500" any album I deem "great" after listening, thus over time compiling a list of "great" albums.

Find in Notes: This shortcut simply lets me search my Notes for a particular word or phrase. It returns a list of notes by title, and I can then open the note I want.

Developer Tools

This folder has a lot of shortcuts, all of them geared to the work of developing shortcuts. Most of them demonstrate some Shortcuts technique or other, and there are several that help you publish your shortcuts to RoutineHub. I'm only providing a link to one of them, which is the shortcut I used to make the graphics for this article.

MediaKit Badges: This shortcut creates an image suitable for publishing your shortcuts and as noted is the one I used to make the download images you see here. It lets you define the type of image you want, gives you some visual choices for the image, lets you enter a category for the shortcut as well as the shortcut's name. After you navigate your shortcuts to find the one you're creating an image for, it uses the shortcut's image in the newly made "badge" and delivers it in Safari for download. This shortcut comes from RoutineHub and is part of a suite of "MediaKit" shortcuts for publishing there.

Emergency

This folder has a few shortcuts I might need in an emergency.

Find Closest ER: For times when you need it, this is a great little shortcut. It gets your location and then shows you the closest hospitals and emergency rooms. It estimates the time required to get there for you and then opens Maps to show you directions. From RoutineHub.

SOS: This shortcut uses the flash on your camera to blink out an SOS signal. You can set it to repeat more than once. From RoutineHub.

911: This full-featured shortcut lets you text to 911 or call 911, while also sending a note to your chosen emergency contact. It includes other features as well, including a link to the "Find Closest ER" shortcut mentioned above. From RoutineHub.

Family

This folder has shortcuts pertaining to my family, either involving communications with family members, information relevant to family events, or family photos.

I'm Home Safe: This shortcut simply sends a quick message to loved ones letting them know that you've arrived safely home after (usually) extended travel.

Wife Love Notes: I use an automation and this shortcut to send a random love note to my wife every weekday at a certain time. You can populate the shortcut with any number of messages customized to your own relationship. My wife really loves this one! From RoutineHub.

New! Love Poems: From RoutineHub, this shortcut contains 52 short love poems. To set it up, you need to enter a "To" address, and the shortcut will send the poems in listed order to your special loved one. I've set up an automation to send one of these to my wife each week (Tuesday, I think).

Text To Jackie: I have shortcuts like this one set up for my immediate family members. It simply saves some time over using the Messages app and lets you quickly send a message to a loved one.

Call Jackie: Again, I have several shortcuts like this one, which are simply speed-dial actions to specific phone numbers.

Face Jackie: This is another example shortcut I have set up for family members. It lets me quickly set up a FaceTime call to a particular phone number. Shortcuts like this do nothing more than save a few words when communicating with Siri.

Where Should We Eat: For those times when you can't decide where to eat, this shortcut may help. Populate it with the restaurants you visit, and it will surprise you with a random choice.

Scott Family: This is an example shortcut that uses Toolbox Pro to preview images from one of my photo albums.

Family Trips: This is one of several shortcuts I have set up to quickly view particular albums from my Photos library. You set these up with a little Siri magic: Simply navigate to a particular album, then open Shortcuts and create a new shortcut. In the actions for the "Photos" app, you'll find an action for linking to the album you just viewed. Similar magic applies to the Maps app, which I'll get to eventually in this article.

Files and iCloud

This folder has some backup utilities and one file utility.

Backup To iCloud: I use this one once a week or so... it simply writes out a file in iCloud with the iCloud URLs of all your shortcuts. Since I have so many, it can take a few minutes to finish, but this is how I got the download links to my shortcuts in iCloud that I'm providing in this article. Since your shortcuts all reside in the cloud, and Apple doesn't allow writing or loading actual shortcut files, this is a good means of backing up your shortcut set.

Automatic Backup: I have an automation that runs this shortcut every Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. It makes me feel good to know I have a physical backup (in addition to a link) of the files in my shortcuts. This one simply zips the files up and writes out a time-stamped archive to iCloud when it runs. As I understand it, I couldn't actually replace files on the iCloud server with these backups, but I like knowing they're there. From RoutineHub.

Backup Shortcuts: I like this one because it lets me save my shortcuts in zip files according to their folders. This way, I could unzip them into their corresponding folders, which would save me so much time over having to recreate and/or re-populate all of my folders. I'm not sure where I got this one, but the anal part of me likes using it from time to time.

New! Text From PDF: I recently had the need to get a text file from a PDF file I exported from Day One. It was a simple matter to write this shortcut, which lets you select a PDF either through the share sheet in Files or by browsing your iCloud files. Once selected, the shortcut extracts the text from the PDF file and starts a new Note with the contents, which you can edit before saving.

Encode to Base64: It turns out that you can include binary files inside a shortcut by converting the file to Base64. This is used a lot in the shortcuts I have, and I used it myself in the Meditate NASA shortcut to include the "approved" sound from ApplePay. This shortcut can be run from the share sheet or on its own, and it ends by copying the converted file to the clipboard.

For Fun

This folder has some games, random facts, jokes, and other amusements.

Games!: This shortcut includes a dozen or so games and amusements, including Hangman, some memory games, and things like rock-paper-scissors. From RoutineHub.

Tic Tac Toe: This is a really cool implementation of this game in a shortcut. It lets you play against the computer or against a friend. From RoutineHub

50 States Plus: My wife and I use this on every road trip... great fun! It lets you record a license plate from a list of those you haven't seen. You can also choose to see the license plates you have seen. It's easy to start over when you finally give up on Alaska or Hawaii. From RoutineHub. There is also a voice add-on that I haven't tried yet, available as a separate shortcut.

Blackjack 2: There are a lot of Blackjack shortcuts out there. I like this one because it shows you images of the cards you and the dealer hold. It lets you bet for money, too, though that's not a feature I plan to use. From RoutineHub.

New! Wordles: This shortcut lets you play the popular Wordles game in Shortcuts. You have to guess a 5-letter word, and the shortcut fills in the blanks as you go, indicating place hits and right letter/wrong space.

New! Number Guessing Game: This fun game lets you choose a minimum number and a maximum number, then select how many attempts you want to have. As you guess, the shortcut tells you if you're high or low, so you can tease out the correct number.

Cat Fact: This fun shortcut simply displays a random fact about cats, which you can then choose to share with others. I'm not sure where I found this and the Dog fact companion shortcut, but I enjoy them a lot!

Dog Fact: This fun shortcut simply displays a random fact about dogs, which you can then choose to share with others. I'm not sure where I found this and the Cat fact companion shortcut, but I enjoy them a lot!

Humorz: This shortcut provides a lot of jokes in various categories from Reddit feeds, including at least one that's naughty. A fun diversion, especially in the car. From RoutineHub.

Twitter Memes: This shortcut lets you use one of a large collection of Twitter text memes to share your message. Some of them, such as person holding a sign, are quite cool, and it's impressive how they've implemented the functionality. You can share your meme at the end, and it gets copied to your clipboard. I couldn't find the original shortcut, but the one I'm linking has full credits inside.

AR Animals: This shortcut, which I got from a Chinese website, uses Augmented Reality (AR) to let you view about a dozen different animals. The animals are in motion and incredibly detailed. You can resize them and move them around the room (or whatever else amuses you).

Rude Siri: I made this shortcut from one I found on the web. It simply contains a list of a dozen or so rude things for Siri to say out loud. Quite amusing from time to time, but not in front of children, please!

Health and Fitness

This folder contains a variety of shortcuts for logging, measuring and viewing health and fitness data such as weight, heart rate, sleep, activity and more. It also includes a medication logger.

Log Weight: This is identical to one in the Apple Gallery called "Log My Weight." I may have modified it from that one. In any case, I use this every day to log my weight into the Health app. Doing this has let me keep a good eye on my weight... much better than relying on memory... as you'll see in some of the following shortcuts.

Weight Chart: I use this every day to check my weight for the last 60 days. (I can change the time period to whatever I want... it's set at 60 days at the moment.) The shortcut uses Charty to make an image, pulling data from the Health app, and show that image in a QuickLook screen. I'm not sure where I got this shortcut, but I have several on the same basic pattern. You can customize it to chart any Health-app data that's recorded daily. It makes a nicer graph than what you get in the Health app, in my opinion.

Weight Analysis: I check this shortcut daily also. It uses the same basic pattern as Weight Chart (above), but presents the data in a scatter graph with a moving average line as well. I find it informative in addition to the basic data presented in Weight Chart.

Monthly Weight Report: I check this simple shortcut daily. It gets your current weight and compares it with your weight a month ago, telling you the difference.

Heart Rate Chart: This shortcut uses Charty to conglomerate and present in chart form a daily snapshot of my heart rate data (collected by Apple Watch) for the period beginning in March 2021. For this period, it shows the maximum for each hour of the day, the average and the minimum, respectively. You can change the shortcut to present data for any time period you want to study. I'm not sure where this one came from, but I find it a handy reference.

Heart Rate Analysis Premium: This shortcut uses Charty to present two interesting data sets on my heart health: Resting Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability. I've found the latter measure to correspond with some health issues I had recently. I couldn't find the source for this one, and there are no credits in the shortcut itself.

Log Nausea: I have some difficulty with morning nausea, so I made this shortcut to help me keep track of it. The shortcut lets me log my nausea on a scale of 1-10, and writes the result to my calendar. It then opens the Health app and lets me add my nausea data there. I do it this way because the Health app only counts "mild", "moderate" and "severe" nausea, or you can mark it present or not present.

Nausea History: This shortcut simply displays my nausea scores by searching my calendar for the last 30 days.

Active Energy Chart: This shortcut pulls data on Active Energy from the Health app and uses Charty to display a bar graph for the last 30 days. It also includes a moving average.

New! Cardio Fitness: This shortcut pulls data collected on your Cardio Fitness and presents it through Charty in a line graph for the last 6 months. The graph includes a moving average. Cardio Fitness data is added to your Health app when you do exercises with an Apple Watch. I decided to start monitoring this measure because the Health app reports that I'm consistently "below average" in Cardio Fitness.

Recent Workouts: This shortcut uses Toolbox Pro to get my latest workout data and present it in a chronological list. It appears to cover about 2 months of data. I believe this is a shortcut that came with Toolbox Pro.

Mindfulness: This shortcut uses Charty to pull data for my Mindful minutes for the last 2 weeks from the Health app and graph them.

Sleep Charts: This is a complex shortcut that spawns half-a-dozen additional shortcuts when you install it. The shortcut analyzes sleep patterns and uses Charty to present data for an overall Sleep Widget, Sleep Progress Rings, Sleep Quality Trend, Sleep Timing Trend, Sleeping Heart Rate Trend and Sleeping Noise Trend. You can have it generate one chart at a time, or you can have it do all 6 at once. It can be a little slow for some of the charts. From RoutineHub.

New! Sleep Widget: This terrific shortcut does a really good job at the hard task of analyzing your sleep data (if you wear your Apple Watch to bed). It presents a comprehensive chart (using Charty) of your sleep data, showing times of restful and light sleep as well as motion and noise. Below the chart is a lengthy textual walk-through of the data. From RoutineHub.

Medication Logger: I use this great shortcut to keep track of my prescriptions. Before you run it, open it and populate the Pills dictionary with the medications you take, entering the amount you have for each. Then, when you use it, the shortcut decrements the amount and logs the medication to your calendar. It includes a reminder for getting refills when you run low. The shortcut uses a file on iCloud called Pills.json, and you will need to use the free utility Jayson to edit the file when you get refills. Again, I don't know where this one came from, and there are no credits in the shortcut itself.

New! Log Sleep: This shortcut works with the next one to log your sleep time. I use an Apple Watch, so I ordinarily don't need this shortcut, but it would be useful if my Watch's battery were low or I otherwise couldn't use my watch. It saves a time to the iCloud drive which is read by the Log Wake Up shortcut.

New! Log Wake Up: When you run this shortcut, it checks the time saved to iCloud by the Log Sleep shortcut and saves the amount of sleep time to the Health App.

New! Record My Workout: This shortcut is useful for recording workouts while not wearing your Apple Watch. It lets you enter the type of activity, the number of active calories burned, and the length of time for the workout. From RoutineHub.

New! Health Report: I found this abandoned shortcut on the web that showed daily Steps data from the Health app. It presents the data in a very nice HTML page. I expanded the shortcut to include other Health data — specifically, Walking distance, Flights climbed, consumption of Sugar, Water, and Fiber, total Calories, Heart Rate, and Weight. For each statistic, the report shows an average for the last 30 days followed by the reading for the current day. I can't take credit for the HTML presentation, which is really nice, but I did build the shortcut out toward what I think the author originally intended.

New! Steps Chart: This shortcut uses Charty to present a chart of the last 30 days of Steps data from the Health app, including a moving average line over the daily bars. It's designed to read data from an Apple Watch, but if you don't use a Watch, you can change that to a different source (e.g., your iPhone) by editing the shortcut.

New! Flights Chart: This shortcut uses Charty to present a bar chart of the last 30 days of your Flights Climbed data from the Health app, including a moving average over the daily bars.

New! Blood Pressure: This shortcut lets you log your systolic and diastolic readings to the Health app. Works great with Siri. I found this one on RoutineHub.

New! Blood Pressure Chart: This shortcut uses Charty to look at the last 30 days of your blood pressure readings in Health and displays a line chart of whatever readings it finds. This may require the upgrade version of Charty.

New! Blood Pressure List: This shortcut presents your blood pressure data in list form. It starts by asking how far back you want to look for data and then displays the results. Same data as shown in the previous shortcut, but in tabular form rather than chart. This comes from RoutineHub.

New! Blood Oxygen Chart: I made this shortcut as a scatter chart using Charty, with a moving average line highlighting significant changes over time. It looks at your last 30 days of your blood Oxygen Saturation data in the Health app. It turns out that if you sleep with your Apple Watch on, as I do, the watch records 4-5 blood oxygen readings during the night. You can also add data by running your watch's Blood Oxygen app.

New! Blood Oxygen Chart Today: This shortcut is much like the previous one, but it only presents your readings for the current day. See note about the Apple Watch in the previous description.

Home Screen

This folder has eight shortcuts that I use frequently and hence are designed to show up in the Shortcuts "widget" on my home screen. I'm describing and linking to the eight in the separate folder sections. They are: App Launcher (Quick Links), Morning Break (Breaks and TV), Afternoon Break Albums (Breaks and TV), Track Hydration (Nutrition), Medication Logger (Health and Fitness), GradientPaper ShowDock (Wallpaper), Admin (Web Sites and Feeds) and Automix (Quick Music).

Images and Pictures

This folder has a lot of shortcuts designed to view, append, or manipulate images as well as to get information about images.

File Images: I wrote this handy shortcut, which I use every day, to keep my photo library straight. If you organize your photos into albums, you will enjoy this one. It looks at my Recent pictures and, after determining which are not in a lengthy list of albums, shows me the "unfiled" images. I have it set to look at the last 30 days, but you can make it a longer time frame if you like. You select one or more images from the viewer and then can file them in one of the many photo albums the shortcut offers. You can also choose to preview an image, or you can elect to delete images using this shortcut. You can customize the shortcut with whatever albums you have set up in the Photos app.

New! Search for Stock Photos: This shortcut uses a paid action from ToolboxPro to search Pexels photo library. It returns a menu of images, which you can then preview and/or save. If you don't like the preview, you can go back, and the shortcut will remember your search term. From RoutineHub.

High Res GIFs: There are a lot of shortcuts out there that convert live photos into animated GIFs, but this is the only one capable of doing it without degrading the original images. I use this also to create an animated GIF of a whole album of images, which I then use in one of my meditation shortcuts (as a workaround to the fact that you can't set up a slide show in shortcuts). The shortcut also lets you convert videos. Available from RoutineHub.

Combine Images: This shortcut simply lets you select a number of images from your photo library and then combine them either horizontally, vertically, or in a grid. The shortcut resizes the photos so they're all the same size. From RoutineHub.

Overlay Text on Image: This shortcut lets you select an image and then enter some text to superimpose on it. The shortcut then shows you the image in an edit window, and you can reposition the text and make other changes to it there. Click Done and you see a preview of your new image, which you can save or share.

Text Above Or Below Image: This shortcut lets you select an image and then add some text to display above or below it. It centers the text in a white banner at the top or bottom of the image, lets you preview the modified image and then offers to save or share it.

MEME Generator: This shortcut does a number of things, but I use it to create image MEMEs. In this mode, you choose an image and then enter the top text and the bottom text. The shortcut then previews the image, which uses large capital letters with a white border for your text, which is overlaid on the image. Quite effective. From RoutineHub.

Mosaic: This cool shortcut uses a template for a mosaic of photos. The template has four "slots" for you to overlay images on, and you can resize the images as you position it over the "slot." Once you have all four "slots" full, you can view the mosaic and then save or share it. I think I found it on a non-U.S. website, and it has credits inside, but I can't find the original.

Photo Framer: This shortcut takes an image and adds an iPhone "frame" around it. It's particularly effective for screenshots, which then look like you shot the physical hardware as well as the image. I like this one because you can choose a color for the iPhone "frame." It's also capable of framing images that are not screenshot-sized. From RoutineHub.

Face Thumbnails: This nifty shortcut lets you choose an image with faces in it, and it will process the image to make thumbnails of the faces. You can resize the thumbnails (wide view, full view, etc.) and choose which ones you want to save. It will even straighten crooked faces if you like. Overall, it does a really good job at making full images of faces from group photos. From RoutineHub.

Cartoon Image: This delightful shortcut does its best to make a cartoon out of whatever photo you throw at it. Sometimes it can't do it, but when it can, the results are really cool. By the way, there's another cartoon shortcut out there called Cartoonify, and this one, from a Chinese source, is much better and far less scary.

New! Change Image Background: This cool shortcut requires an API key to work (it's easy to get one). Once you have it set up, the shortcut does an amazing job of removing the background from images with foreground subjects. You can then save that background-free image or choose to combine it with another photo. By combining it with another image, you can achieve some very cool effects. From RoutineHub.

Get Image Size: This simple shortcut lets you choose an image, either from Photos or from the share sheet, and it will return the height and width in pixels.

EXIF Photo Details: This handy shortcut, which lets you browse to a photo or can take one from the share sheet, presents all the details about a given image you could possibly want. It shows modification and creation dates as well as Album information, Camera information, etc. From RoutineHub.

HighRes Artwork (Apple Music): I use this shortcut to get the album art from whatever is playing on my iPhone at the time. I have tried other similar shortcuts, but none are as reliable as this one, and it really does return a high-res image, which you can save and/or share. I think I found this on Reddit.

NASA Wallpaper: This is an example of several shortcuts I have set up to view specific albums in my Photos library. As described earlier under Family, this type of shortcut can be created with a bit of siri magic: Just browse to the folder you want a shortcut for in Photos. Then go to Shortcuts and create a new shortcut. Search for the photos app actions, and you'll find one just for the album you want!

New! Dance!: This fun shortcut has two animations of a dancing person meme, and you get to select a photo and position someone's head in the animation. The result is you or your friends doing the dancing meme, which you can then save or share.

New! Video Trimmer: This shortcut lets you select a video and then divide it into segments. You can select how many segments you want, and then the shortcut presents you with a video editing interface that lets you select your segments to save. You can share the segments, which are saved to your Recents folder in Photos.

New! Join Videos: This shortcut lets you choose two or more videos from your library and combines them with no quality loss. It requires use of the a-shell mini app (a free download from the app store). From RoutineHub.

New! Change Image Size: This shortcut does just what the title suggests: It lets you change the size of any image in your library either to one of about 20 presets or to a custom size. If you choose custom, you can set just the height or just the width or both. After you select, you get to see a preview of the result, which you can save to your photo library if desired. Origin unknown.

New! Invert Image: This shortcut takes a photo and returns it with colors inverted. From RoutineHub.

New! Image Converter: I recently needed to convert an image I downloaded from Google to jpg, because my shortcuts for resizing images wouldn't work on the format the image was in. A quick search yielded this shortcut, which lets you convert an image from your photo library in any format to a range of other supported types.

Information

This folder contains a variety of shortcuts that provide information of one sort or another. There are search tools and shortcuts that retrieve information such as Tides, US Constitution, Cocktails, etc. A couple of the shortcuts would be helpful to writers.

Infinity Search: This all-in-one search shortcut lets you choose from over a dozen sources, including Google and things like Maps, the App Store, iTunes, YouTube and more. From RoutineHub.

Glyph Search: Have you ever wanted to find a glyph but couldn't? This might help... it lets you search Apple's glyph library by name and lets you know what glyphs apply. I really only use this when choosing glyphs for my shortcuts, but there may be other applications as well. From RoutineHub.

Tides: I used this recently while vacationing at the beach. This terrific little shortcut lets you search for tide markers in a nearby radius and then presents a list of places. Select one and you can tell it how many days of information to provide. It ends with the tide information in a jiffy! I'm not sure where I found this one, but it does have a username credit inside.

US Constitution: Yes, this shortcut contains the entire U.S. Constitution, broken up into bite-sized chunks in .json format for quick reference. It's nice to be able to refer to the actual language in this document now and then. If you invoke from Siri, she will read the articles etc. to you. From RoutineHub.

Cocktails: From the sublime to the banal: This shortcut lets you look up a wide range of cocktails. It shows you a picture of the drink and then displays the recipe. No, I'm not a lush, but I thought this would be useful from time to time, especially when on vacation. I'm not sure where this one came from, but it does have a credit inside.

Rhymes: This shortcut produces an astonishing number of word rhymes for any word you give it. It can even do multi-syllable rhymes and near-rhymes. A great resource if you're feeling poetic. Not sure where this one came from, but I'm glad I've got it!

New! Wikipedia Search: This simple shortcut lets you enter natural language queries (without underscores) to search Wikipedia. It then loads Wikipedia in a Safari view controller.

New! The Shortcut Dictionary: Besides serving as a dictionary, this shortcut offers to help you with pronunciation and spelling. It also has a translate tool built in. From RoutineHub.

New! iOS App Release Notes: I found this on MacStories, I believe, but I couldn't get it to work as written. I changed the shortcut to ask for an app name instead of trying to parse a URL for the app ID (as the original shortcut was doing). It isn't perfect, but you can find the latest release notes for most any iOS app as long as the name isn't so common that it misses the mark in retrieving the data, which is presented in a preview window. The shortcut ends by copying the release notes to the clipboard.

What Would Steve Say: This shortcut contains a huge resource of Steve Jobs quotes on various subjects. When you run it, it picks a random quote and presents it. From RoutineHub.

Mail and Messaging

This folder has a few shortcuts pertaining to Mail and Messages.

Send Later: This shortcut lets you create a new shortcut containing a message to somebody. To "send later," you set up an automation to run this shortcut on a specific day and time. You can then delete the temporary shortcut and remove the automation afterwards. From RoutineHub.

Dictate And Share: This shortcut simply lets you dictate a message and send it to a group or individual. I believe this one comes from the Apple Gallery of shortcuts.

Vertical SMS: This fun shortcut takes your message and sends it either one word at a time or one letter at a time. Goofy, but it gets attention if you don't do it too often. I'm not sure where this one came from, but it does have a credit comment inside.

Personal Contacts: This shortcut simply looks in Contacts for those in the Personal Contacts group and displays them in Quick Look.

Move Contact To Group: I wrote this shortcut because there's no way to move a contact to a group on the iPhone. This shortcut lets you choose a contact and add it to one of your contact groups.

Morning Routine

This folder has some shortcuts that I use in my morning routine, before I start work for the day.

I'm Awake: This shortcut is the first thing I say to Siri in the morning. It turns my reading lamp on, runs the Brightness To Battery shortcut (see folder Settings) and runs the Morning Greeting shortcut (see below). Once the morning greeting is over, the shortcut sets the playback destination to the kitchen HomePod and starts playing some classical music (specific to each day of the week).

Morning Greeting: There are a slew of "good morning" shortcuts out there that have Siri give you a day's summary, but I ended up liking this one best. I don't know where I found it, but I've made a few modifications to it over time. The greeting announces the date, the current weather and forecast for the day, and the next item on my calendar. I use this in my "I'm Awake" shortcut (above).

Paper Finished: This simple shortcut turns off the reading lamp and then hands off playback of the classical music in the kitchen to my bedroom HomePod mini, so it's playing there when I head up to get dressed.

Music

This folder contains a number of shortcuts pertaining to music listening and finding tunes on Apple Music.

Add to New List: This shortcut gets the currently playing song and adds it to a playlist in my library called "New Music." I use this to keep track of new songs I hear that I want to hear again. I believe this one came from Apple's Gallery of shortcuts.

Song Info: This shortcut displays information about the currently playing song, including rating, artist, and any art associated with it. I don't know where I found this one, but it does have a credit included in it.

I Am Genius: I use this shortcut to get lyrics for songs. You can get lyrics for the currently playing song, or you can search for a song. You can copy or share the lyrics. From RoutineHub.

500 Albums: This shortcut contains all 500 of Rolling Stone magazine's top albums. When you run it, it starts playing a random album from the list, displays wikipedia info about the album, and logs the album number to a list in Notes. The shortcut keeps track of the albums you've heard so it doesn't repeat an album. I'm not sure the source for this one, so I'm linking to my iCloud library.

Indie Radio: I got this shortcut from Apple's Gallery. It lets you choose one of the Indie Radio genres in Apple Music and starts playing it.

Open Genre Playlists: This shortcut also comes from Apple. It displays a list of all the curated genres in Apple Music and starts playing the one you select.

Electronic Radio: Also from Apple, this shortcut displays a list of Apple Music stations in the Electronic genre and starts playing the one you select.

Dance Radio: Similar to the previous shortcut, but for Dance genres.

Music By Decade: This Apple shortcut displays a list of decades and lets you choose one to start playing in Apple Music.

Playlist Tool: This is a modification of the shortcut Apple Music Tool, which didn't work for me in several respects. This shortcut lets you find duplicates in your playlists and then offers to make a new playlist containing just the duplicates or all the playlist songs minus the duplicate(s). Very useful for finding duplicates in your library. You can also use the shortcut to sort a playlist, writing out a new playlist with the sort order you define.

Shazam This and Share It: This shortcut is the easiest way to share something playing on Apple Music with a friend. Shazam identifies the song, and you can then choose who you want to share it with. Source unknown.

New! Find Duplicate Songs: This shortcut will find all the duplicate songs in your library by comparing artist name and title. It will then make a new playlist containing the duplicates. My library is so big I found I needed to edit the shortcut to look through segments of my library at a time, but it did work as advertised. From RoutineHub.

New! Song.Link: This amazing shortcut lets you shazam or search for a song and then shows you all the streaming services through which it's available. You can then easily share a link to the song or open the link. It includes dozens of services, including all the big ones (Apple, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Napster, YouTube). From RoutineHub.

News and Stocks

This folder contains links to sources of news as well as some stock information.

Browse Top News: This shortcut displays half-a-dozen sources of general news (e.g., CNN, New York Times, BBC) and lets you browse their news feeds. Selected a story opens the Safari window in the shortcut. I don't know the source of this one.

New! Browse Top News Voice: This is the same shortcut as the previous one, but instead of opening the chosen item in Safari, it reads the item to you. In this case, the shortcut parses the Safari Reader Article from the chosen item and reads the article title and body.

Tech News: This shortcut displays seven sources of Apple Tech news (e.g., Mac Stories, Mac Rumors, Daring Fireball) and lets you browse their news feeds. Selecting a story opens it in the Safari window. I'm not sure where I got this shortcut.

New! Tech News Voice: This shortcut is the same as the preceding one, but instead of presenting your chosen item in Safari, it reads the item to you. In this case, the shortcut gets the URL from the chosen item and parses the Safari Reader Article, reading the article title and body.

Apple News: This shortcut displays the 20 latest items in the official Apple news feed. Selecting one opens the Safari window in the shortcut.

New! Apple News Voice: This shortcut gets the same news feed as the previous shortcut, but instead of presenting it in Safari, it reads the news item to you. It took me awhile to get this right, but I finally found a regular expression that captures the news release while ignoring all the extraneous information on the page. Trying to get the text from the feed itself doesn't work because that yields only the title and summary paragraph.

New! Apple Investor: I made this simple shortcut because I always have to spend time in Safari finding the tab (if it still exists) or navigating the Apple website when they release earnings. As an Apple shareholder, I wanted a faster way to get there, and that's precisely what this shortcut does: It loads the Apple Investor page in a Safari view controller window.

HomeKit Stories: I made this simple shortcut with a little help from Siri. Like the Maps and Photos apps, the News app will display actions based on your latest activities in the app. After displaying HomeKit stories in News, I found an action for that in Shortcuts. This simply opens the News app and displays stories about HomeKit. You can make shortcuts like this for whatever topic you like. I have another one for Severe Weather.

Any Stock Report: I use this shortcut as a template for ones I made for individual stocks I own. With this generic shortcut, you enter the symbol for a stock you want to look up as well as the number of shares you own. The shortcut will display the latest price for the stock, and if you enter shares it will tell you how much the holding is worth and how much it changed.

Stock Market Indexes: This shortcut is based on the previous one. It simply gets the information for the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and NASDAQ composite and displays the latest values in separate notification windows.

Nutrition

I use the shortcuts in these folders to log, track and view information about what I eat and drink.

Nutrition: This complex shortcut actually comprises about 8 different shortcuts working together. I use it to log my meals, snacks and certain drinks, the detailed ingredients of which get then logged into my Health app data. The shortcut has a flaw that limits its ability to show meal history, but I implemented a workaround that keeps its basic functionality intact. You log meals etc. either through a "Quick Log", which shows you your recent consumption items, or through a longer logging process. The longer process involves either searching (in this case, the shortcut uses the MyFitnessPal database) or scanning a barcode for a particular item. You can choose to log "right now," or specify a particular time and date. This is handy for logging items in a previous day that you forgot to do. I find the search and scanning mechanisms to be fast and easy. By keeping track of my consumption, I'm populating the Health app with a lot of rich data that I can then use other shortcuts to view. From RoutineHub.

Today's Food: This is part of the Nutrition shortcut. It shows you, in a prettified .json format, the nutrients you've consumed on the current day.

Log Water: I think this came from the Apple Gallery in Shortcuts. It simply presents a menu of choices in fluid ounces, and you select the amount you've consumed. I think I added some choices that weren't in the original shortcut, but you can customize it to your liking. I usually use this with Siri.

Log Daily Vitamin: I made this one to log my daily vitamin to the Health app. I believe it's for One-A-Day for Senior Men, but again you can customize it to whatever vitamin you take. I have another one that simply logs Vitamin D, which I take separately. Again, I usually invoke this one from Siri.

Log Meta-Mucil: This and the next three are shortcuts I made for food I consume every day. It became easier to make the shortcut than use Nutrition or Track Hydration to log the items. This one is for the pill version of Meta-Mucil and assumes you take one serving. I log this twice daily and write the info to my calendar as well as the Health app to keep track of my intake.

New! Log Meta-Mucil Gummies: This shortcut logs the gummy version of Meta-Mucil into the Health app. I take this twice a day and substitute it for the previous item in that case.

Log Muscle Milk: This shortcut logs the sugar-free 11-ounce bottle of Muscle Milk to the Health app.

New! Log Muscle Milk Large: This shortcut logs the sugar-free 14-ounce bottle of Muscle Milk to the Health app.

Log V8 Energy: This shortcut logs an 8-ounce can of V8 Energy drink to the Health app.

New! Log Super Coffee: This shortcut logs an 11-ounce can of Super Coffee, sending all the detailed ingredients to the Health app.

Track Hydration. This is another complex third-party shortcut that lets you log drinks (and your weight, but I don't use it for that) of various kinds to the Health app. I use it to log my tea, coffee and alcoholic drinks, as well as the occasional soft drink or juice. It's easy to use, though I think I customized the Tea list because it didn't originally have a bottle of iced tea on the menu. Besides your fluid intake, the shortcut also logs things like caffeine, alcohol, and carbohydrates. I use this one so often I keep it on my Home Screen. From RoutineHub.

Water Today: I usually invoke this one from Siri. It simply tells me how much water I've consumed so far on the current day.

Water Chart: Using Charty, this shortcut shows me my water consumption for the last 30 days as a bar chart, with a moving average line as well. I'm not sure where I got this, but I have replicated it for several other important (to me) metrics.

Sugar Today: Sugar is another important metric for me to track. By using the Nutrition shortcut, all of my sugar consumption gets logged. This shortcut simply tells me how much sugar (in grams) I've consumed so far on the current day. Besides, sugar and water, I also have shortcuts to show me my daily consumption of protein, fiber and caffeine. They all use the pattern in this shortcut, so you can modify it to measure the things that matter most to you.

Sugar Chart: Using Charty, this shortcut shows me my sugar consumption daily for the last 30 days as a bar chart, including a moving average. I've modified this shortcut to chart other metrics that matter to me — specifically, caffeine, fiber, protein and sodium. You can modify this one to measure the things that matter most to you.

Calories Chart: I forgot to mention calories... I have shortcuts to show me Calories Today as well as this one, which shows me my calories (active energy) consumption for the last 30 days as a bar chart, with a moving average line. The data all comes from using the Nutrition shortcut and is stored in the Health app. Speaking of which, I find all of these shortcuts do a better job of helping me visualize my data than what Apple shows in the Health app. Much quicker to get what you're after as well.

Playback and HomePod

The shortcuts in this folder let me control playback on my iPhone and on my HomePods. I have a number of shortcuts specific to certain HomePods, but I see no reason to include them here.

Play/Pause: This shortcut does what its name implies: It either pauses or starts playing music. If you're playing to one or more HomePods, it also pauses playback on those.

New! Silence Audio: This shortcut turns off any background sounds (ocean, rain, etc.) that may be playing.

Change The Volume: This simple shortcut lets you choose among a number of volume settings, which you can customize to your liking. It applies the volume you choose to the music that's playing.

Play On HomePod: This shortcut has only one action: It lets you choose which AirPlay device (in my case, HomePods) to be the "playback destination" for your music.

Hand Back To iPhone: This shortcut stops any HomePods that are playing and redirects the music to your iPhone's speakers.

All HomePods: This shortcut sets each of my HomePods as the "playback destination", thereby turning them all on with one simple command.

Quick Classical Music

This folder simply has links to 11 classical music albums I have stored on my iPhone. It's much easier getting to them here than browsing my Music library. But there's no point in distributing them here, as they are very simple and redundant of some others I will be including.

Quick Leland Music

In my early adult life, I aspired to be a songwriter and made what I eventually compiled into about 8 albums-worth of material, most of it quite rough from a production values standpoint. My music is available on Apple Music, iTunes, and Spotify, for example. You can read more about it on my MarsTunes website. This folder simply has quick links to my music, which I play either through Apple Music or through my library. I'll provide a couple of examples.

I Am The Passenger: This is simply a link to one of my more popular songs in Apple Music. I believe you have to have an Apple Music subscription for this to work, but I'm not sure. That's true for the following two shortcuts as well.

Play Dancing Any: This is a link to the most recent album of demos in the series of eight. The album is called "Dancing In The Sun." The "Any" in the name refers to the fact that the shortcut ends by offering to let you play the music on an AirPlay device if you have one. (The same is true for the following shortcut.)

Play Darkness Any: This is a link to my personal favorite of the eight albums of demos, titled "The Darkness In Love."

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This article continues here.

Over the past few months, I've had a blast building out my smart home, using Apple's Home app as the foundation. Who knew how much fun it would be making things happen in the house without having to move a finger? I'm still at the beginning stages, but I thought it would be useful to document what I've done and learned so far.

Automating your smart home and life makes use of two apps that come with your iPhone: Home and Shortcuts. (The links to each in the following text take you to Apple's User Guide for for each app, which I would recommend perusing if you get lost.)

The Home app is where you add your smart devices, which must be HomeKit-certified. When you add your first device, you assign it a room, and as you build out your home, you add devices and rooms as you go. Each room can have its own image and settings, and you can easily navigate to each room in the Home app to see the status of your devices. The Home app's home page also displays all your "favorite" devices in one place.

To add a device, you plug it in or otherwise power it and then click the "+" in the Home app and select "Add Accessory." From there, you scan a HomeKit code (with your iPhone camera) that's printed on the device itself as well as on instructions in the box. Once Home establishes a connection to the device, you select a room and, depending on what kind of accessory it is, you might be offered the option to set automations for it.

Note that adding a HomePod to your home is a different process... again, very simple, and more like setting up an Apple watch. But the HomePods still end up in your rooms in the Home app and can be used for automations.

So, what devices have I added to my home so far? Lights, outlets, switches, a camera, and motion sensors. Except for a Wemo 3-way light switch (I'm still trying to get Belkin, which owns Wemo, to fix my problem), all of the devices have been easy to add to the home. Many of the devices have iPhone apps specific for their products, and some of these are useful. For example, Eve (a German company, the successor of Elgato) has an app that lets you customize its devices in ways you can't do in the Home app. The Wemo app is the only way you can update a device's firmware... an approach that has caused me problems, unfortunately. Some of these apps also offer ways to automate their products, but thus far I have stuck to using the Home app and the Shortcuts app for such automations.

A quick word about the devices I've selected... Some HomeKit devices want you to buy a separate "hub" for them to work. An example is the Philips Hue series of light bulbs. I've avoided all such devices, since with Apple Home and an iPhone or HomePod, you don't need a "hub". The HomeKit accessories I've bought and used all work without a dedicated "hub," and I think that's a good approach.

The automations I've set up fall in the following categories:

• Setting schedules for lights going on and off.
• Automatically turning lights on and off using motion sensors.
• Setting music to play to a HomePod at certain times
• Designing Siri Shortcuts to automate activities

Setting schedules for lights going on and off

In the lights category, I have several devices... Smart lights themselves, smart light sockets that take "dumb" bulbs, smart outlets and smart light switches. I started with Home simply by adding some smart bulbs to rooms where I wanted light at certain times of the day. For example, I have a bulb in our "Great Room" that I have coming on at Sunset and going off at 12:30 AM. In my "Music Room," I have a smart outlet that powers my desk lamp, and a bright smart bulb in a different fixture across the room. I have automations set up that turn these lights on at a certain time in the morning (prior to my starting work) and turn them off when my workday is done. To make things even more interesting, I have set up Shortcuts that turn the lamps off when I start a break and back on when the break is over.

Automatically turning lights on and off using motion sensors.

One of my favorite automations is in my Music Room, where I added an Eve motion sensor to a part of the room that would detect motion if I approached my boxes of factory sleeves or my shelves of records. I have an Eve smart switch installed that controls a bank of track lights, as well as a Koogeek bulb that's in an old wall lamp. Now, whenever I approach that part of the room, the lights go on, and I have the timer set (in the Eve app) to turn the lights off after 2 minutes.

I've used motion sensors in other locations with good results. I have one in the kitchen that turns a smart bulb on and off as it detects motion (or the lack thereof). I have one on the patio that turns on a bank of "party" bulbs, made smart by using a Wemo outdoor smart outlet. In this case, I have set the automation to only detect motion starting 30 minutes before Sunset, and I have set the motion sensor to wait 30 minutes before turning off if no motion is detected. Finally, I have one going down to the basement that's supposed to turn on the main lights using a smart Wemo 3-way switch, as well as, at certain times of the day, a bulb installed in a smart socket in another part of the basement. (Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get the Wemo switch to work, and am working with Belkin to resolve the problem. In a nutshell, the problem is that the device wants a firmware upgrade, but the Wemo app can't keep the device "registered" long enough to install the firmware.)

After our recent sojourn in Hilton Head, SC, I realized it would be helpful to have a camera in the kitchen, since no motion should be detected there when we're away. So I added a camera (made by Eufy) that let's me spy on the kitchen remotely.

Setting music to play to a HomePod at certain times

Another of my favorite automations was very simple to set up and brings my wife great joy. You can trigger an action based on when a person arrives or leaves home, so I set one up for Jackie when she gets home: Each time she walks in the door, the kitchen HomePod is playing one of her favorite artists — namely, Bruce Springsteen! I have the HomePod play Bruce's greatest hits, starting with "Born To Run." I can set the volume so it's not overwhelming, too. (Of course, this automation assumes she's carrying her iPhone with her, which is a pretty safe bet.)

We have a HomePod Mini in the bedroom, and I have it set to play music at two different times of the day. At 8:45, the HomePod starts to play "Forest Sounds," some ambient music available through my Apple Music subscription. Then, at 8:05, when my alarm goes off, I have a personal automation that uses a Shortcut to my "Folk/Folk Rock" playlist to start playing it in random order... all set to a reasonably low "going to sleep" and "waking up" volume ambiance.

Finally, I decided I'd like the HomePod Mini pair in my Music Room to be playing music when I start work in the morning, so I set up an automation to have them do just that.

One of the few problems I've had with these automations is that those that control a HomePod sometimes turn "Disabled" for no apparent reason. (You can enable and disable your automations manually in the Home app, but in this case the app disables the automation itself.) Fortunately, it's simple to set them up again, but it's still a nuisance that I hope Apple fixes.

Designing Siri Shortcuts to automate activities

The Shortcuts app presents another opportunity for iPhone users to automate their day. Shortcuts are essentially custom Siri commands that do various things with the apps and data on your iPhone. They can also control devices in your smart Home, since Home is one of the apps on your iPhone. In addition to using voice commands, you can click on the shortcuts in the Shortcuts app to launch them, or you can save them as clickable "apps" on your home screen.

The app comes with a whole "Gallery" of example shortcuts in many different categories, and I encourage you to look at these and try adding a few to see what they do and how shortcuts work. I used a number of example shortcuts as the building blocks for the shortcuts I've set up, though it's quite easy to start from scratch. Essentially, shortcuts string together actions and data to automate commonly performed tasks with your phone.

I've divided my shortcuts into two main groups: Breaks and TV, and Music and Audio.

In the "Breaks and TV" group, I have a shortcut called "Morning Break" that lets me browse my music library for something to play, changes my audio output to the kitchen HomePod, and starts playing the music. The shortcut also turns off the lights in my music room. When my break is over, I have a shortcut called "Break Over," which stops the music and turns the lights on in my music room.

A more complicated shortcut is used for "Afternoon Break," and I've discovered a problem in Apple's implementation at this time that requires me to click the shortcut in the app to get it to work. A voice command to Siri won't cut it, unfortunately. So, I set an automation that launches the Shortcuts app at 3:30 (when my break usually starts), so it'll be there when I'm ready to start my break. The afternoon shortcut does the following things: It turns off the music room lights, turns on the Great Room lamp, runs a shortcut called "Indie Radio" that plays a playlist from Apple Music to my kitchen HomePod, waits 3 seconds and then launches the Stocks app showing the Apple stock price. Again, when I'm ready to go back to work, i say "Break Over," and that sets the lights appropriately and stops the music.

I also have shortcuts to wake and sleep my Apple TVs, which, when they work, will wake the Apple TV, turn on the TV and show the remote for the Apple TV on my iPhone. For some reason, these automations aren't as reliable as the others. I often have to say "Wake Basement TV" more than once to get Siri to do her thing.

In "Music and Audio," I have shortcuts to "Indie Radio," based on an Apple-provided shortcut, one that searches my library for "Beach Boys" and plays what it finds to my bedroom HomePod, one that finds my "Folk/Folk Rock" playlist and plays it, two that play different podcasts, and one that lets me add whatever song is playing to a given playlist.

One of the tabs in the Shortcuts app is for setting up automations with your shortcuts. At the top of the screen are Personal automations that are just for you and your iPhone. At the bottom are Home automations, which are the same as those you set up in the Home app.

In addition to the Shortcuts app, you can also create custom Siri commands in the Home app, where they are called "Scenes." For my home, I have several "Scenes," which essentially are commands that control one or more devices at once. For example, I have "I'm Home," which turns on several lights in the house, and "Good Night," which turns lights off. Just for fun, I set up "Reading The Paper," which turns on the floor lamp in the great room, and "Paper Done," which turns it off. Such scenes merely save a few words off saying, for example, "Turn on the floor lamp."

To sum up, my foray into the smart home has been a lot of fun so far. I keep thinking of new ways to save energy and time, and Apple has provided a secure and private platform to use, so I can feel confident that the devices I add to my home maintain the same standards that Apple does. Since all of these devices are WiFi enabled in some way, they present potential targets for hacking by outsiders. It's important to make sure your privacy and security aren't being compromised as you built out your smart home and life. Other HomeKit devices I'd like to set up eventually include a smart thermostat, a smart doorbell with camera, a smart water faucet for auto-sprinkling, and perhaps a smart deadbolt lock.

Apple's HomePod has been the underdog in the "smart speakers" category since its introduction last year. It's more expensive than the offerings from Google and Amazon, and Siri doesn't seem to be as powerful. I haven't used Alexa or the Google AI assistant, so I can't say what the difference may be. But let me just say that HomePod is a revelation in audio quality, and its "smart" features are more than adequate for my needs. The most surprising aspect of HomePod is that it has finally let me put together an audiophile listening room without taking out a second mortgage!

At its most basic, HomePod is a smart speaker with Siri built in and truly gifted sound quality. It's a breeze to set up... you just use your iPhone to pair and copy settings, which takes about a minute. My first use was to add some smart light bulbs to the house, and with Apple's HomeKit app on the iPhone that's a simple matter too. To activate a new device, you just scan an icon on the packaging and then assign it to a "room" in your house. (In HomeKit, you can set up rooms and "scenes" for your devices.) Once set up, it's a simple matter to say "Hey Siri" and then turn on or off a given bulb. HomeKit also makes automation simple, so you can easily have lights come on and off at different times of the day. With scenes, you can automate multiple devices with a single command. For example, when I go to bed, I say, "Hey Siri, Goodnight," and Siri turns off the basement family room light and the foyer light.

I also subscribed to Apple Music as part of my movement to the HomePod, and I've thoroughly enjoyed being able to listen to any given album by voice command. Of course, HomePods are also AirPlay speakers, so you can easily play music to them from your iPhone, iTunes, or other devices. It's simple to play to multiple HomePods at once, and Siri can move the music from room to room by voice command if you so choose.

But the most surprising aspect of HomePod has been its audiophile sound quality. Even bass response is great, which is amazing given the small size of these speakers.

I got a new HomePod for Christmas (I already had two) and decided to put it in the living room. It sounded so wonderful I decided to buy another one and set them up as a stereo pair. That's when the true value of these little speakers became clear.

With two HomePods now in my living room, I finally have achieved an audiophile listening environment at a truly reasonable price. The two little speakers pump out amazing sound, and they only cost me about $700. To replicate a listening environment with traditional high-fidelity speakers would cost at least $2,000, because you need not only the speakers (minimum: $1,000), but also you would need a receiver/amplifier and some components to get music into the system: A CD player or turntable, for example. On top of that, you would need some place in the living room to house the speakers (much larger than HomePods) as well as the stereo components... and that means another piece of furniture as well as considerably more space than my current setup requires.

With my paired HomePods, I just need to plug them into the wall and put them on a shelf. And voila! Instant audiophile listening without all the other setup headaches and at a much lower cost.

And I love the fact that the speakers have Siri built in, which means I can raise or lower the volume by voice, get information on what's playing, skip a song, or repeat... all by simply asking Siri.

The HomePod's audio quality is more than just a differentiating factor when you compare it to Google and Amazon speakers. It truly is great enough to compete with high-end speakers costing much more, and you can easily set up a listening environment that will tickle the ears of even the pickiest audiophile. A surprising punch for such a tiny device.

Windows 8 UI strategic mistake, argues design guru - Computerworld. Excellent and detailed article about the Windows 8 user interface. The author, Jakob Nielsen, argues that Windows 8 fails the usability test on both tablets and the PC. Some of his points are weak, but overall this is a good read.

Now that I've effectively passed Lion by, I'm thinking again about whether or not to upgrade from Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). As noted in an earlier article explaining why I've avoided Lion, this is the first time since Mac OS X debuted in 2001 that I've hesitated to upgrade. So here it is again: Should I? Why not?

Apple did improve Lion during the course of its life, and Mountain Lion seems like a logical and relatively smooth update. Most of the reasons I had for not liking Lion still stand, but a couple have been remedied. In addition, I've found more things to like. For example:

• Windows resizable from all sides.
• Quick Look feature in Spotlight: You can preview docs right from the Spotlight results list.
• Improved Mail client: Many improvements, including finally providing the option to show previews on the right-hand side.
• Change in default setting for opening new windows on login. Now the default is off, and Apple has provided a system preference option to help control this behavior as well.
• Improved search/replace in TextEdit.
• Improved CharacterPalette app.
• Nicer full screen Quick Look mode.
• Safari improvements: Tabs, downloads, among others.
• Spotlight is searchable while it's building the index.
• Improved Cocoa text tools.
• Mountain Lion: Finder sidebar lets users decide how to organize the sections.

One of the main reasons to upgrade is to take advantage of iCloud, which has become a more serious need now that Apple took MobileMe away from us. I can no longer sync my Safari bookmarks automagically, for example. However, I'm still pissed that Apple hasn't made a version of iCloud available for the many folks still on Snow Leopard.

Speaking of which, what exactly is the breakdown of Mac users in August 2012? It's only been a month since Mountain Lion was released, but clearly upgrading is happening pretty quickly. According to the stats from NetApplications.com, Lion users account for about 35% of the market, Snow Leopard users about 34%, and Mountain Lion users about 20%. There are still about 10% of users hanging on to Leopard. That Snow Leopard figure is pretty damn high considering how long Lion has been out, and is one that Apple should be paying more attention to.

For me, the most daunting task of upgrading to Mountain Lion will be migrating all of my apps, their settings, and their licenses. Because Lion doesn't support Rosetta, I have to abandon any old PowerPC apps hanging around. The most significant of these is Quicken 2007, but I also have to upgrade my license for MaxBulk Mailer and a couple of others. Finding a replacement for Quicken remains a challenge, though I finally did find one that seemed worth buying: iBank. I haven't actually moved from Quicken yet for monthly financial balancing, but I think iBank will do the trick once I do.

To give you (and me) an idea of the application burden I'm looking at, I've compiled the following list, organized by major categories and subcategories. The colored cells on the far right represent how often I use each app — from light green (daily) to orange (quarterly). Apps I don't touch more often than quarterly aren't represented in the table, nor are apps that are part of Mac OS X (including iLife).

Category	Subcategory	App Name	License	Issues	Use
Audio
	Recording & Editing	Amadeus Pro	C
		ClickRepair	C
		DeNoise	C
		Logic Express	C
	iTunes Software	Bowtie	F
		CoverSutra	C
Animation & 3D
	3D Tools	Live Interior 3D	C	Needs reinstall
	Animation	Morph Age	C
Business
	Advertising	GarageSale	C
		MaxBulk Mailer X	C	Rosetta - Upgrade
	Product Delivery	Endicia	S
	Spreadsheets	Numbers	C
	Presentation	Keynote	C
	Office Suites	iWork	C
Customization
	Desktop	Wallsaver	F
		GeekTool	F
	Interface Enhancements	CandyBar	C
		ThemePark 3	F
		ThemePark	F
		Visor	F
	Software Preferences	AppHack	F
		OpenPListCM	F
		PlistEdit Pro	C
		TinkerTool System	C
	System Extensions	CrystalClear Interface	C
		DefaultFolder X	C
		LiteSwitch X	C
		TotalFinder	C
		XtraFinder	F
Design & Graphics
	Color Utilities	iPalette	F
		paintersPicker	C	32bit
	Drawing & Painting	VectorDesigner	C
	Image Editors	Adobe Photoshop CS4	C
		Back In Focus	C
	Image Management	Icon2Image	C	32bit
		Aperture	C
	Screen Capture	LittleSnapper	C
	Web Design	Flux	C
Developer Tools
	AppleScript	Sdef Editor	F
	Cocoa Development	Platypus	F
		Packages	F	Needed install
	Code Editors	Xcode	OS X
	Code Management	Code Collector Pro	C
		svnX	F
	Databases	Querious	C
	Debugging & Testing	Xcode	OS X
	Hacking	F-Script Anywhere	F	Interactivity
		Pacifist	C
		AppHack	F
		SymbolExplorer	F	Contrast problem
	Web Development	Espresso	C
File & Disk Management
	Disk Utilities	Drive Genius	C
	File Browsers & Managers	Path Finder	C
	File Utilities	Springy	C
		Disk Inventory X	F
		File Juicer	C
	Managing Digital Formats	Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper	C
	Software Management	RapidoSerial	F
Home & Learning
	Mail & Print Tools	Endicia	C	Dymo printer needed new driver
	Personal Finance	Quicken	C	Rosetta - Need alt
		iBank	C
		Powersnipe	F
	Photos & Slideshows	PhotoPresenter	C	32bit
	Reference	MacTracker	F
		Google Earth	F
Information Management
	Bookmarking & Tagging	Leap	C
		Fresh	C
	Personal Information Mgmt	DEVONthink Pro	C
		Evernote	F
		Yep	C
	Securing Content	1Password	C
Internet Tools
	File Transfer Tools	MacTubes	F
		Xtorrent	C	Note: Works with CB on Lion.
		Yummy FTP	C
	News & Podcast Readers	Times	C
	Web Browsers	Camino	O
		Firefox	O
		Flock	F
		Chrome	O
		Opera	F
		Safari	F
		WebKit	O
	Browser Add-Ons	Flash Cache Server	F
		SafariStand	F
	Web Research	DevonAgent	C
	Voice & Chat	Adium	O
		Skype	F
Productivity
	Application Services	KavaServices	C
	Clipboard Utilities	ClawMenu	C
	Launchers	Quicksilver	O
		ClawMenu	C
		DragThing	C
		iKey	C
	Quick Access Tools	Fresh	C
		MenuPop	C
		FolderGlance	C
		OMC	F	Required upgrade to beta version
		QuickAccessCM	F
		OpenMenu X	C
	Shortcuts & Automation	Autopilot	C
		Hazel	C
		Shortcuts	F
		Spark	F
		TextExpander	C
		OpenMenu X	C
		A Better Finder Rename	C
System Administration
	Backup & Synchronization	Carbon Copy Cloner	F
		Chronosync	C
	Configuration	Lingon	F
		TinkerTool System	C
		Secrets	F
	System Maintenance	CleanApp	C
		Data Rescue	C
		iFreeMem	C
		VacuumMail	F
		What’s Keeping Me	F
	System Monitors	BackTrack	C	Main App wouldn’t open from statusbar item
		BwanaDik	F
		Growl	F	CB Not Loading
		MemoryStick	F
		Sloth	F
	Terminal & Unix Tools	ManOpen	F
Task Management
	Notes & Reminders	Edgies	C
		Sticky Notes	C
	Outlining & Mind Mapping	MindNode Pro	C
		MyMind	F	Rosetta
	Personal Organizers	MenuCalendarClock iCal	C
		Edgies	C
	Search	Leap	C
		DEVONagent	C
		EasyFind	F
	Time & Schedules	QuartzClocks	F
		MenuCalendarClock iCal	C
Video
	Screen Video	ScreenFlow	C
		Voila	C
	Video Players	MacTubes	F
		VLC	O
Writing & Publishing
	Rich Text Editors	Bean	F
	Screencasting	ScreenFlow	C
	Text Utilities	TextSoap	C
	Other Web Sharing	Twitterrific	C
	Word Processors	Bean	F
		Pages	C

The most compelling argument for upgrading, quite frankly, is my need to stay current with users of my software, CrystalClear Interface and Crystal Black primarily. Since I don't live in Lion or Mountain Lion, it's difficult to quickly test any bugs users report, and I'm not finding any on my own, as I typically do while using Snow Leopard. In addition, the burden of testing and quality assurance is much more difficult when I have to cover three operating systems, though that burden will remain so long as Snow Leopard has such a big market share.

Besides the issues I've already stated, the biggest argument against upgrading is that my software doesn't work as well on Lion or Mountain Lion as it does on Snow Leopard. For me, that's a big pain in the butt, and it doesn't let me enjoy the theming as fully. For reasons why this is an issue, see the recent brief article I wrote on the subject.

So, bottom line: I'm still on the fence. One possible compromise, if I can confirm it will work, is to run Mountain Lion as a virtual OS, as one can do with MIcrosoft Windows or Linux. If I can run Mountain Lion inside Parallels Desktop, for example, I could keep it handy for testing while running Snow Leopard as my primary OS.

Or, I could do the reverse: Upgrade to Mountain Lion and run Snow Leopard in virtual mode. I've read that these things are possible, but haven't gone down the path of actually trying them out yet.

If I can make the virtual OS route work, that's probably where I'm going to end up — at least until Apple releases its next big Feline.

iBlog Originally downloaded April 14, 2007. I had tried the first version of iBlog and wasn't terribly impressed... it just wasn't flexible enough to interest me. Unlike tools like Ecto and MarsEdit, iBlog is a blog publishing platform you would use instead of Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, etc. The new version appears to have added a very flexible template builder, which also incorporates a tabbed editing environment for managing your template and style files. It also supports any iLife data types and can publish to any FTP or .Mac site. In this way, it's similar to Apple's iWeb, but is much more flexible. In addition, it apparently incorporates an HTML code editor in addition to the WYSIWYG editing tools you'd expect from a tool like this. All in all, it sounds like a worthy upgrade... but just how much it's worth isn't yet known, since there's no pricing listed (yet). At this point, I've downloaded release candidate 2 for iBlog 2.0.

Version as tested: 2.0 RC2.

Update 8/17/12.

Well, 5 years later I'm finally trying out iBlog which, by the way, is $30 per license. And what a disappointment it's turned out to be! Not only has the software not been updated in 5 years, which makes it almost abandon-ware, but it doesn't do what I expected. The concept is far more ambitious than the result, and iBlog is only suitable for very simple instances where you just want to upload HTML and images. If you're using WordPress or some other data-driven blog, this won't do at all. Its "templates" are very primitive compared with what you can get for free from popular packages like WordPress. Finally, it has no WYSIWYG capability that I could see... you can't format lists, tables, or use layers, without typing them in by hand. You can toggle between code and preview mode, but that's a pretty basic feature in an HTML editor. The interface is also very plain-jane and amateurish, and the app kept crashing on me. If you want to set up a blog, look elsewhere: This is not a worthwhile option.

ISO civility in online comments - The Washington Post. This is a spot-on article pointing out the horrible state of interpersonal communication on the web. Nothing new, really -- it's been this way for years, but it's just getting worse. One big insight is the relationship between the "blinders on" mentality of those who troll the web and the "don't bother me with facts" mentality of the Tea Party and their ilk, like survivalists and members of the Government Paranoid. One group feeds the other, and they never read anything but what they agree with. These folks aren't looking for a conversation -- they're looking for a fight. And the rest of us must try really hard to turn the other cheek and not let the fight begin.

Some variation of these text tools have been included in CrystalClear Interface, as well as Crystal Black, since those applications were first released. However, the tools have nothing to do with the theming of buttons and windows, or with the general appearance of Mac OS X. I added them because they address a real need of mine, which no other software could do.

As a writer, I need ready access to a range of text functions, and I need them in whatever application in which I happen to be writing. In most of the rich text editors I use, those functions are available somewhere in the app’s menus, but typically they're in different places within each app. Some apps don’t include one or two key functions at all.

Mac OS X has a rich text framework that provides just the set of editing tools I require, and it would be extremely handy to be able to access those tools consistently across apps. This is precisely what the MarsThemes Text Tools do: Grant easy access to the key Cocoa text tools that writers and editors need but can’t find.

So, what text tools am I talking about? Here’s a list of the key tools:

• Tables. I often find formatting content into rows and columns an extremely useful way of organizing information, but few RTF applications seem to agree with me. Mac OS X includes a quite functional table-editing tool that I can quickly use when needed without opening a professional word processor such as Pages, or reaching for a spreadsheet app like Numbers.
• Lists. From time immemorial, both humans and Martians have found organizing information as lists to be an essential tool for viewing and encapsulating that information. Again, finding the built-in list feature can be a problem, especially in apps that don’t let you access Mac OS X’s RTF “Ruler” tool (more on that momentarily).
• Links. In the internet age, writers often need to add hyperlinks to their documents, yet finding the built-in hyperlinking tool can be a challenge. The tool either isn’t there, it’s buried in a set of menus, or it’s somewhere that doesn’t make sense.
• The Ruler. If you’ve ever used a Mac OS X RTF editor such as TextEdit or Bean, or some kind of information management application like DevonThink Pro, EagleFiler, or Journler, you’re probably familiar with The Ruler (though didn’t know it had a name). The Ruler is the strip of tools that appears above whatever text document you’re working on. It contains a menu of handy (and customizable) text styles, alignment tools, a customizable menu for setting line and paragraph spacing, a menu for setting and customizing lists, and a group of tools for setting margins, tabs, and indentation. Sometimes The Ruler appears automatically, but other times you must hunt for access to it. Unfortunately, many applications feel the need to replicate these functions in some quirky unique way (such apps include Evernote and MacJournal). In my ideal editing environment, I want to summon The Ruler when needed, and dismiss it when it’s not.
• Strikethrough. Oddly, the only straightforward way of striking through text (a very useful thing to do!) is to open the Mac OS X Font panel, which has a menu that includes strikethrough and underlining functions.
• Copy and Paste text styles. Yes, there are standard keyboard shortcuts for these functions, but I find they don’t work in all applications, and I often forget what they are. Yet I use the functions frequently.

One of my favorite uses of the Text Tools is in applications or text fields that support rich text but provide no access to RTF editing tools. An obvious example of this is Apple’s Stickies application, which apparently assumes that users only want to type paragraphs with no formatting. Using the Text Tools, you can add The Ruler, a table, and all the rest.

Other note-taking apps I use heavily likewise provide no way to toggle The Ruler or add a table are Edgies and Sticky Notes. Both have some of the Text Tools accessible in their menus, but using their menus may be awkward. Since the MarsThemes Tools provide a contextual menu, the tools are always at your fingertips.

Other examples I like to point out are the Comments field in Xcode’s snapshots window and in the application Packages, the Notes field in Interface Builder, any text view you’re formatting in Interface Builder’s edit window, the image description field in Little Snapper, and various others. (For my developer colleagues, I should point out that using the tools in Interface Builder is especially nice, because it lets you enter attributed text without having to format it in an external RTF editor and then copying/pasting it into IB. Note also that I still use Xcode 3.2, so IB is a separate application.)

Then there are applications like Yojimbo, which should provide a way to format text, but don't. Here, the Text Tools let you add The Ruler, a table, etc.

As mentioned, the Text Tools are activated as a contextual menu — using either a right-click or a Ctrl-click — in the field or document you want to edit. The Tools also provide a keyboard shortcut — ^⌥ Y — to pop up the menu. The shortcut is particularly handy in fields (such as those in Interface Builder) that usurp the field’s normal contextual menu.

The MarsThemes Text Tools have only two user options, which you can access from the “Manage tools” item in the Text Tools menu, or from the “Text Tools” item in the application’s menu. The two options are:

• Show more text tools
• Show Manage Tools menu at top.

Selecting the first option adds the following tools to the menu:

• Styles (used for adding a custom style to your personal list)
• A “More Tools” menu, which includes the Capitalize functions, which normally appear in a submenu, as well as access to two handy formatting tools to control inter-letter spacing and baseline setting.
• Access to the Substitutions setting panel.
• A link to open the very handy Special Characters panel.

By default, the Manage Tools menu appears at the bottom of the Text Tools menu,  but you can change that.

The Manage Tools menu also includes functions for checking updates, uninstalling, and getting help.

Finally, the Text Tools application is programmed so that it only loads into software that it detects has some kind of editing functionality. There’s no use loading the Text Tools into System Preferences or the Finder, for example. This keeps its overall footprint on your Mac as small as possible.

Text Tools is freeware, so give it a try! Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

The software will be added as a premanent item on the MarsThemes website, under Software. You can download it here.

★ Technical Notes

The Text Tools run as a plugin to the Mars Theme Loader (MTL) framework. If you do not have MTL installed, the Text Tools installer will do that for you. If you uninstall the Text Tools, the uninstaller will disable the MTL agent at that time.

There are very few components to the Mars Text Tools:

1. The plugin (TTFilter.bundle) located at /Library/Application Support/MarsThemes/plugins, and
2. A folder containing this document (as a PDF file) and the Uninstall program. That folder is at /Library/Application Support/MarsThemes/TextTools

To uninstall the Text Tools, open an application where they're active, open the Text Tools menu (easiest way is from the Application's main menu) and select "Uninstall Text Tools." If you have trouble finding an application that's running the Tools, open the folder referenced above and run the UninstallTextTools application.

That's it... I'm done. Fed up. I've taken Google and shoved it off my system. Don't get me wrong... I like Google, though I like Google far less than I did 6 years ago. Its software has gotten too complicated... it's too ubiquitous... it's too intrusive... and it's too Windows-centric. I really hate Chrome, but don't have time to go into why today. I like Google Earth on my iPad, but hate it on my desktop. On the desktop, it looks just like a Windows app: Butt ugly. But what I really hate is the sneaky and intrusive way Google updates itself on my Mac. Without warning, Finder suddenly jerks me away as it loads the latest Google update and then deletes it when done. I just don't need that. I don't use Google's desktop software, so it's bye bye Keystone agent. Bye bye Google update agent. Bye bye Google Earth plugins and updates. It took me 20 minutes to finish everything, and I hope it doesn't start up again without my knowledge the next time I launch Chrome.

Tips for submitting software to the Mac App Store This looks like a good set of instructions and tips for developers who have used some other selling mechanism previously but would like to begin using the App Store. With Aquatic Prime apparently incompatible with Mac OS X 10.7 ("Lion"), I may need to find an alternative...

Safari HTML5 Audio and Video Guide: About HTML5 Audio and Video. This is a good reference with lots of sample code for using HTML5 audio and video. The samples cover a wide range of possible custom applications. Though it's specific to WebKit/Safari, many of the CSS styles used for custom appearance are now supported by Firebox and, of course, Chrome (which is a WebKit browser like Safari).

How to play sound from a web page - UCL. From a website devoted to speech, hearing & phonetics, this is an excellent rundown of the various ways webmasters can add an audio file to a web page. Great examples and clear code for each of the 10 methods.

In the past few years, Adobe Flash has become more than an annoyance that some of us have kept in check by using "block Flash" plugins for our web browsers. More and more, entire web sites are being built with Flash, and they have no HTML alternative at all! This goes way beyond annoying, into the realm of crippling.

I had noticed the trend building for quite awhile, but it only really hit home when I realized that Google, of all companies, had redesigned its formerly accessible Analytics site to rely heavily on Flash for displaying content. This wouldn't be absolutely horrible except for the fact that Google provides no HTML alternative. I tried to needle the company through its Analytics forums, but only received assurance that yes, indeed, one must have the Flash plugin running to view the site.

Keep in mind that content like that on Google Analytics is not mere marketing information, like the sales pitch on the Analytics home page.

Those of us who are disturbed by the trend need to be a bit more vocal about our opinion. Hence, I'm starting a "Just Say No To Flash!" campaign, with its own web page, graphics for a banner, and the CSS and HTML code to deploy it on your own web pages.

I've mentioned this to some of my family and friends, and they often come back with: "So, Why should I say no to Flash?" I admit that as a power browser and a programmer geek type who, shall we say, makes more efficient use of the web, I'm more keenly aware of the ways that Flash is chipping away at the foundation of web content.

In the beginning, it seemed harmless: Flash was an alternative to animated GIFs, and an easy way to embed movies on web pages. But then advertisers wrapped their meaty mitts around it, and that's when Flash started to be annoying. However, one could block Flash in the browser, as part of a strategy of shutting out obnoxious advertising.

But publishing content via Flash is just wrong, for a number of reasons.

➠

It's A Proprietary Technology

. . . Or, One Company Controls The Standard

I don't think Flash is what Tim Berners-Lee had in mind when he created the first web browser and the markup language called HTML to run the web. Then, as now, the web is meant to be open to all. It is meant to be built using open standards that belong to no individual or company. The main open formats that should be used to build websites are simply:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• Images (open formats)

Open standards for video, audio, vector graphics, virtual 3D graphics, animated graphics, and others are also available to be thrown into the mix.

Adobe PDF is also a common format for distributing final-form documents, and PDF is based on open specifications for both PDF and PostScript that Adobe published back in the 1990s.

➠

It Isn't Backwards-Compatible

. . . Or, How Many Times Do I Have To Upgrade My *!/?#%@! Plugin?

If you install a Flash plugin today, there's no guarantee you'll be able to view Flash content created 2 months from now.

If you have a Flash plugin from 5 years ago, it's probably useless today.

Flash is designed with built-in obsolescence, forcing users to repeatedly visit the Adobe website to get an upgrade. This is not only a bother, it forces one company's advertising into the world's face every time it releases a software update.

➠

It Can't Be Customized

. . . Or, How Do I Increase The Font Size?

From time immemorial (well, at least since the beginning of web time), a web page's text could be customized to suit the user's taste and needs. All web browsers provide the tools to increase/decrease the font size, as well as to specify custom fonts for different page elements (headers, paragraphs, etc).

Flash throws all of that out the window with a terse shrug, "Let 'Em Eat Helvetica 10pt."

➠

Its Content Is Inaccessible

. . . Or, How Do I Drag And Drop Images and Text?

No, you can't drag and drop images or text from Flash content. This most basic method of interacting with a web page—dragging images off the page, or selecting sections of the page to drag onto an email or text processor—is a non-starter if it's part of a Flash file.

Copy and paste? If the Flash programmer has been thoughtful, you should be able to copy and paste text. But don't even try to copy any other page element.

And that includes copying a link's URL. Right-click (Ctrl-click) anywhere in a block of Flash content, and you get the standard Flash popup menu. Not very helpful.

➠

You Can't Save The Page

. . . Or, You Mean, I Can't Save A Copy?

Another common task many web users take for granted is the ability to save a web page as text, as HTML, or as a format like rich-text format. With Flash, this is impossible.

You may be able to save the file as a web archive, but there's no open standard for a "web archive," and getting at the content inside one is almost as hard as getting inside a Flash movie.

➠

Flash Consumes More Of Your Computer

. . . Or, Running Flash Diverts Your Processing Power and Memory

When I'm running Flash — as I am now while shopping at Adobe — my Activity Monitor shows it's consuming a continuous 5-percent of my processing power, and about 130 MB of my RAM.

For What? There's nothing a Flash movie can deliver that can't be delivered using open formats. its heavy resource drain is one reason I keep Flash turned off when browsing the web.

➠

You Can't View Flash on an iPhone or iPad

. . . Or, I thought Apple was the bad guy here?

Apple has very good reasons for not supporting Flash on its tiny devices. As the previous point makes clear, Flash isn't a delicate, lightweight technology that your processor and RAM won't notice.

When trying to build hardware and software for small devices that work well and don't lead to memory problems or application crashes, why wouldn't you ditch unnecessary technologies like Flash?

Obviously, Steve Jobs stepped into a hornets nest here, but I think the hornets were wrong.

Make Your Site Say No To Flash

It's easy! Just follow these two steps:

1. Download the Image(s)

You can copy and save one of the following images, or download the Photoshop source and make your own.

2. Add the CSS

Here are two CSS styles for positioning the Just Say No To Flash banner on your web page. One positions the banner at the top-right, and the other at the bottom-right. To use the styles, just copy and paste the following code into the <HEAD> portion of your HTML.

To place the banner at the top-right corner of your page:

1. <style>
2. a#noFlash {
3. position: fixed;
4. z-index: 500;
5. right: 0;
6. top: 0;
7. display: block;
8. height: 160px;
9. width: 160px;
10. background: url(images/noFlashTR.png) top right no-repeat;
11. text-indent: -999em;
12. text-decoration: none;
13. }
14. </style>

To place the banner at the bottom-right corner of your page:

1. <style>
2. a#noFlash {
3. position: fixed;
4. z-index: 500;
5. right: 0;
6. bottom: 0;
7. display: block;
8. height: 160px;
9. width: 160px;
10. background: url(images/noFlashTR.png) bottom right no-repeat;
11. text-indent: -999em;
12. text-decoration: none;
13. }
14. </style>

3. Add the HTML

Add the following to the beginning of your HTML, just below the <BODY> tag, or at the end, just before the closing </BODY> tag:

1. <a id="noFlash" href="http://www.musingsfrommars.org/notoflash/" title="Just Say No To Flash!"> Just Say No To Flash! </a>

Please always link your image to http://www.musingsfrommars.org/notoflash/ so everyone can find the information associated with the image.

Thanks to the "Too Cool for Internet Explorer" campaign run by w3junkies for the concept behind "Say No To Flash," as well as for the general outline of information that campaign provided.

Dark interface themes are extremely popular with a small, but very passionate, group of Mac users. Sadly, since Apple introduced Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), the old, relatively simple method of creating such themes on the Mac can't be used, and it took the theming community a good year and a half to figure out the current, relatively hobbled tools to theme the few bits of the interface that can be themed.

Given the weakened state of theming on the Mac, it's not surprising that the number of themes available has dwindled to a mere handful. And even those only go part of the way compared with what we used to be able to achieve with ShapeShifter. Still, the yearning for Mac themes remains strong among this community, and black themes are virtually nonexistent now.

Black themes have always been a challenge, because the frameworks used to build applications were designed to assume that text would always be black and the color of windows and buttons always light. Apple introduced a dark-theme paradigm a few years ago with its Heads-Up Display window style, which, with its translucent black background actually assumes that text will be white.

Starting with Leopard, developers using Xcode could tap into the HUD window style and use it whenever they want to, but most application windows aren't well suited to this, and Apple's user interface library still assumes that regular windows will be light, with black text. 

It's not only desktop applications that make this assumption. Web pages with button widgets also assume that the widgets will be light and their text black. On the Mac, it's becoming common for desktop applications to embed the WebKit for parts of their user interface—meaning that the button widgets are HTML- and CSS-based, not AppKit-based.

In addition to this basic problem, there's also the challenge of handling legacy applications based on Apple's earlier Carbon frameworks, as well as apps that are a blend of Cocoa and Carbon. Complicating this issue is that, as it turns out, applications built for the older PowerPC processor platform use a different part of the system graphics than those built for Intel chips.

If you try to design a theme that introduces black interface controls, you run into another challenge that has nothing to do with text. Many interface widgets use images rather than text to convey their purpose, so what if—as is usually the case—the application designer provides only black images for these buttons? Is a themer supposed to provide white images for every application a themee might want to use?

One specialized case of the images problem is the Mac OS X statusbar. Here, applications represent themselves almost exclusively as images, and nine times out of ten, the images assume that the menubar is light, so they should be black. Some enterprising themers have tried to solve this one by providing alternative white images for the most common statusbar applications, but usability can still suffer if someone using a black menubar launches an application that insists on putting a black icon up there.... one for which no white alternative exists.

Given all this, why would anyone undertake an effort to introduce a fully black theme for Snow Leopard?

I suppose it's because we Martians just can't step back from a challenge. Not to mention the fact that we, too, are afflicted with the passion for dark themes that many Earthlings suffer from. I also have a good starting point, having developed some useful techniques for the challenge through building CrystalClear Interface.

That said, the best I can offer still has compromised usability, which I detail below. But for the most part, I think I've succeeded in bringing to life a useable version of the legendary Cathode theme for ShapeShifter, in a redesign appropriate for Snow Leopard. The theme covers window backgrounds, background colors for tables and outline views, interface buttons, menubar, and text colors. It also coerces various types of windows to theme themselves in HUD style.

To acknowledge the theme's heritage, I've dubbed the theme Crystal Black. Crystal Black will be available for download soon, with a 15-day trial period and a purchase price of $6.00

It's important to note that Crystal Black and CrystalClear Interface can not coexist on the same system. You can't install Crystal Black until you uninstall CCI.

For my own documentation of this work, as well as to highlight the theme's strengths and weaknesses, the following list shows the various unique challenges I've faced in building Crystal Black and the solutions, if any, devised. Other challenges have been faced—and largely solved—in developing CrystalClear Interface, so I won't spend time on them here.

In the list, I've used a small graphic to indicate the degree of success in addressing each challenge:

★ Solid solution

☆ Partial solution

∅ No solution

For Cocoa applications:

• Images on buttons and in column headings ★
• Images and icons in the statusbar ★
• Text color of buttons in web pages ★
• Applications that use non-standard buttons and GUI frameworks. ☆
• Text color on Finder items with color labels ∅
• Cocoa applications that can't or won't take theming by Crystal Black ☆ (Problem solved 4/13/11.)
• Cocoa applications that are on the user's "Disabled Applications" list ☆

For Carbon applications:

• Text color for control widgets ☆
• Color of titlebar and toolbar text ∅
• Window and control object background colors ☆

Cocoa applications

★ Images on buttons and in column headings

Challenges

• All images need to be made white, but without making custom button images for every possible application. Somehow, black images must be inverted as windows load.
• Some images are already "templates," easy to invert. However, other images look like "templates," but aren't, and making them templates isn't a reliable technique.
• Images with color (hue > 0) need to be distinguished from black/white ones. Knowing the image's color space doesn't help.
• Some images are "Core Image" images, which don't have a bitmap representation that can be easily analyzed. In this case, Crystal Black must create a bitmap representation in check it out.
• Images in column headings aren't buttons, so they require extra processing. In many cases, they change often so must be analyzed repeatedly. Some have proven inaccessible.

Solution

Each button and column heading in application windows are analyzed as they load to determine whether—and how—they require inverting. If inverting is needed, Crystal Black generates a new image and sets in place of the original.

Still, there are a few cases that haven't yet been addressed. One is the case where a pull-down menu contains an image. I hope to deal with this in a future update.

★ Images and icons in the statusbar

Challenges

• For nearly all applications that have a statusbar item and associated image/icon, the image/icon is black in normal state and white when highlighted. This means the image is unreadable against a black menubar.
• Unfortunately, the solution to the problem of images on buttons can't be applied to images and icons in the statusbar. In a few cases, the technique of inverting "template" images works, but applications with statusbar helpers that have invertable images are in a large minority.

Solution

Most of your applications that have a presence in the statusbar—including all of Apple's—must have custom-built images. In Crystal Black, these images are installed in the application's Resources folder, while maintaining a backup of the original images. Crystal Black also runs an inversion method that works in a few cases, but can't be relied on for most.

★ Text color of buttons in web pages

Challenges

• Requires digging through the page's document object model and checking for buttons. Technique for theming push buttons is quite different from that for pop-up buttons.
• Many pages use nonstandard button styles, themed through CSS, and these are much trickier to coerce into using white text.

Solution

Crystal Black installs a custom CSS style sheet, which can be used with browsers that support custom style sheets. In the case of Safari, Crystal Black enables the style sheet automatically. Although this works, it manages to destroy a lot of custom-designed buttons along the way...

☆ Applications that use non-standard buttons and GUI Frameworks

Challenges

Many newer Mac applications have buttons that are subclassed from the standard Cocoa button class and therefore don't respond to theming. Similarly, various open-source frameworks for building windows and buttons are in use, with similar challenges to theming.

Solution

Unfortunately, since Crystal Black cannot convert such buttons to its dark theme, it must apply a custom modification for each application to ensure buttons are readable. This means that some apps will have buttons with white text, since they aren't accounted for in Crystal Black.

∅ Text color on Finder items with color labels

Challenges

• When the Finder is in column or list view, and these views have the dark background users normally prefer in themes like Crystal Black, the names of files and folders that have colored labels cannot easily be read.
• Despite numerous attempts, I have not discovered any method for changing the colors of these labels to provide ☆suitable contrast for white text.
• In addition, because of the way the Finder's file browser works, it's not possible to coerce a specific file or folder to use black text instead of white, when the item uses a label.

Solution

There is no good solution to this problem. To keep Finder's column and list views readable, Crystal Black prevents the background color for these views from darkening to the point that would trigger the use of white text. In other words, the names of files and folders in the Finder will always display as black.

☆ Cocoa applications that are on the user's "Disabled Applications" list

Challenges

If a user disables Crystal Black for a specific application, the software no longer has a way to transform text or images from black to white.

Without some action, this would be the same as a user downloading the (free) Crystal Black system graphics files and installing them without the software: You wouldn't be able to read a lot of the interface elements.

Solution

The problem can't be totally solved. However, Crystal Black does three things to maintain usability. First, the CB filter module (which is what determines whether to load Crystal Black or not) installs a minimal set of color instructions before declining to load the core software. These colors keep text on buttons readable. Second, the old Extras resources files have a few text-color settings that still have an effect, and these take care of text color on segment tabs. Third, Crystal Black sets some specific defaults for the disabled application that prevent it from using a totally black window frame. These defaults are swapped out if the user re-enables the app for CB.

Carbon applications

Carbon applications are incapable of loading Crystal Black to any meaningful extent. However, some such applications have components built with the Cocoa frameworks, and these components will load Crystal Black (unless the app is in CB's disabled apps list). An example of the latter is Adobe Photoshop CS4, which itself is a Carbon-based lifeform, but may have plugins that are Cocoa-based. In this case, the plugin will load Crystal Black as long as Photoshop itself does not have CB disabled.

At the time of this writing, the Carbon universe is split into two difference species: Those that will only run on PowerPC chips, or under Rosetta on an Intel chip, and those that will run natively on both kinds of chips. The distinction is important, because the different species, it turns out, use different system resources for some of their graphics.

In any case, the challenge for affecting Carbon applications with a dark theme is that it must be done in the "old-fashioned" way—using the graphics files that used to enable theming in the age of ShapeShifter.

☆ Text color for control widgets

Challenges

How to enable white text on black buttons and other interface elements without using software or the post-Leopard system resources.

Solution

To a large extent, this is solved by relying on the pre-Leopard Extras resources files. Carbon applications make more use of these than Cocoa ones do, and Carbon apps that require Rosetta under Leopard make even more use of them.

∅ Color of titlebar and toolbar text

Challenges

How to enable white text on the labels of toolbar buttons and on window titlebars, without using software or post-Leopard system resources.

Solution

No solution found. This is one challenge Crystal Black has been unable to overcome. Since toolbars are an interface element that's uncommon on Carbon applications, the toolbar label problem isn't a huge issue. (The only such app I use is Yummy FTP.) However, nearly all windows have a title, and it remains black against a black background.

☆ Window and control object background colors

Challenges

• The background colors of various objects on a Carbon window are drawn from ancient system resources that aren't straightforward to use and that can mix with unexpected results.
• The elements that must mesh to make a smooth, pleasing, darker-than-white color are nested, and some resources are used for more than one level in the nest.
• One complication that became clear from this exercise is that resources used differ between Universal-binary applications and apps that must run under Rosetta.
• The background color must remain light enough to provide contrast for both white and black text.

Solution

Ultimately, this goal required detailed mapping of resource "PPAT" (pattern) objects in the Extras files to observed results.  Thereafter, a good deal of trial and error was required to get the colors to mesh—for example, the background color of a "group box" nested in a "tab view", and the background color of buttons and other controls nested inside the "group box." 

I couldn't theme some elements to my satisfaction, however. In particular, I wanted the background color of a group box within a tab view to be lighter than that of the tab view. This isn't a problem, but, because the background color of objects within the group box use the same pattern resource as the tab view, the objects have a darker background than that of the group box itself. You can set distinct background colors of control objects that are inside a tab view from those that are outside the tab view, and of those that are in a tab view from those that are nested inside "secondary group boxes" within the tab view. But you can't do the same for objects within the tab view and those within nested group boxes.

    

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One of the many challenges of building a usable black theme for Mac OS X is making it work with web pages. If you use Safari, the buttons, scrollbars, and other interface widgets on web pages get their marching orders from the system's graphics files—the same ones that regular applications use.

So, if a web page has a pushbutton, the button will by default take on the style of the active theme. If you're running Crystal Black, this means that the button inherits the Crystal Black style. We like this.

Color for the button's text, on the other hand, gets its marching orders from the browser's default Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file—which, naturally, makes the text black, and therefore unreadable on top of a black button. We don't like this.

On first glance, the solution seems to merely design a special CSS file for Crystal Black and make Safari use it. And that does work for many web sites and many buttons. However, many folks who design web pages like to fiddle with the CSS style for their pages' buttons, and such fiddling means that there's nothing "mere" about designer a Crystal Black style sheet.

Further, many Mac applications these days have views that are simply embedded web content using Apple's WebKit framework. The practical implication here is that Mac apps don't know how to read a Crystal Black CSS file, so Crystal Black must do some fiddling under the hood to avoid having unreadable buttons in such web views.

Then there's Safari itself. I really wanted to theme the Web Inspector—the incredibly useful built-in website viewer/debugger/designer assistant—with the Crystal Black look and feel, but it wasn't immediately obvious how to do this. I assumed that the tool was just a part of Safari, and therefore built with classes and widgets from the Cocoa AppKit (which is the framework all Cocoa apps are built with). However, when I began to inspect the Inspector, I discovered that everything contained within its borders was simply web content: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images.

In other words, the Web Inspector tool is nothing but an intricate, sophisticated, and extremely well designed web page!

Having built a Crystal Black CSS file for web pages in general, and with my past expertise in CSS, I attacked this challenge with relish! It reminded me of the time I realized that Dashboard widgets are, at their core, nothing but little web pages (as are simply apps for the iPhone). In tackling this one, the main question was, How should the various elements look? And the hardest part was inspecting the various parts in of the Inspector in great detail to determine which CSS rules governed their default appearance and behavior.

As I discovered, the WebKit has a a sub-framework called "WebCore," which in turn has a folder of resources specifically for the Web Inspector. In the Inspector folder, among other things, is a suite of CSS files that handle different aspects of the Inspector's design and behavior. Of these, the primary one I needed to tweak was called simply "inspector.css."

Besides controlling the usual attributes of a web page—document elements, text elements, image elements, layout elements, form elements, and so on—this style sheet applies various advanced CSS properties that serve the purpose that in years past would have been handled by many individual images. As I've described this CSS 3.0 magic previously, there's no longer a need for using graphics and JavaScript to add box shadows, rounded box corners, borders, gradients, and reflections to your web pages.

Naturally, since the open-source WebKit project was initiated by Apple, and since that project zoomed ahead of all other browser engines in developing new ways to design with CSS, that's how the Web Inspector is built. This approach—using a command syntax rather than images to design a user interface—is one that Apple has been adopting for its desktop applications. In recent years, Apple has been adding new classes and methods to the AppKit that make it a trivial matter to build a window frame, a border, a toolbar, or a button using code rather than individual graphics. 

While this is a logical and efficient approach, it also presents challenges for theming Mac applications, a challenge that Crystal Black is often unable or unwilling to overcome. (The story of all the challenges in building Crystal Black are described in this article.)

Not so with the Web Inspector, fortunately.

The Inspector does use a few images in its design, but most of the toolbar, separators, and section headers are built with CSS gradients. Very cool indeed!

This bit of Crystal Black will eventually be bundled with the whole theme, but for now I offer it as a free download. Admittedly, the audience for such software is small—you have to like Crystal Black, and you have to be a regular user of the Web Inspector—but it might be of interest to others who are curious about how such things are done.

One caveat in viewing the screenshots... The scrollbars that appear, as well as the HUD window style, are part of the overall Crystal Black theme and are not part of the Web Inspector theme itself.

Enjoy!

Update 4/18/11: The full Crystal Black 1.0 theme is now available from the Crystal Black website.

Installing Crystal Black for Web Inspector

The download contains a small application that you can use to install—and to uninstall—the theme. Simply double-click and select "Install" to apply the theme. Or select "Uninstall" to restore the default CSS files and graphics.

After installing or uninstalling the theme, you'll need to quit and restart Safari for the theme to take effect.

Crystal Black for the Web Inspector (Download file is 1.0MB)

MenuAndDockless Originally downloaded September 20, 2007. Cool new freeware from Moapps that appears to do what my old standby Dockless does, and perhaps more. Downloading to give it a try. This freeware is a SIMBL plugin.

Version as tested: 1.0.6

Update 8/12/12 Sadly, I haven't been able to get this to work. Either the SIMBL plugin isn't loading (though others do), or it doesn't work. In any case, I'm going to continue using Dockless for this kind of task.

Cocoa with Love: Drawing gloss gradients in CoreGraphics. This is but one of many tutorials and source code provided by Matt Gallagher on his site, CocoaWithLove.com.

Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software. Several customers have asked me to set up a forum for users of CrystalClear Interface, and I've got it on my to-do list. I ran across a site that uses SMF today, and it looks like it might be the ticket. I'll have to check out some other candidates, too, of course.

White House, citing waste, freezes IT projects - Computerworld. Wow... this was certainly good news, especially given my rabid views on the subject, as often expressed on Mars in the past. Federal IT spending is grossly mismanaged and embarrassingly costly, driven as it is by decisions made by IT "Beltway Bandits" rather than by knowledgeable Federal managers. Virtually all of the IT contractors are in bed with Microsoft, so you find a strong monopoly of Microsoft solutions at Federal agencies. And yes, Microsoft products are the most expensive to maintain over time, and Office is ridiculously expensive and overkill as a tool for every desktop. Worst of all, IT contractors typically sell solutions that further lock Feds into the Microsoft ecosystem, thereby shutting out the feasibility of implementing less expensive solutions based on open standards. A good first step... Now let's see what becomes of it.

The iPad is the future for home computing - Computerworld. My iPad hasn't arrived yet (I opted for the 3G version, since I don't believe in cellphones and their parasitic subscription fees), but from what I know this Computerworld writer is spot-on. Not only am I a cellphone luddite, but a laptop one as well. I bought a MacBook Pro a couple of years back, but just couldn't make myself need or want it. (Ended up giving it to my wife.) But the iPad sounds like the laptop I've been waiting for! And it also means that, as much as I rely on my iPod Touch for eBook reading now, I'm very much looking forward to getting my mitts on the new iBook store. This is a great summary review of the iPad and captures all the salient reasons why Apple has another (and perhaps its biggest yet) hit on its hands.

Or, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Single Application Mode But Didn't Know Who To Ask

I've observed that one of the most intractable problems bedeviling computer users, which makers of operating system software never seem to solve, is that of "Window Clutter." The inability to …

• Stay focused on the window you're working in, while
• Keep auxiliary windows handy and visible when needed,
• Avoid confusing any of these windows with those of other running applications, and
• Maintain some reasonable level of aesthetic quality to your computer desktop.

… is a nettle that keeps on pricking. At least, judging from continued user grumbling about it and the continued, less-than-satisfactory, though often valiant, solutions that user-interface experts keep offering users as the final salvation from this longstanding hindrance to productivity, I conclude that the nettle is alive and well.

That Window Clutter should still be a topic of conversation among engineers at Apple (I don't think Microsoft has any high-level staff who really care about or understand the issues surrounding interface usability, and Linux developers don't have the time to do so) is testament to their failure to stamp out a problem that appears from Mars to have a fairly simple solution, namely:

• Make it so that only one application's windows are visible at any one time.

Affectionately referred to as Single Application Mode, or SAM, this is the default desktop environment on Mars. It's also widespread on Earth, though its human adherents often practice SAM quietly or even in secret because it's not an official, supported Mac OS X desktop environment.

Still, we find SAM the best way of dealing with today's large monitors, huge RAM capacity, and equally huge software options—all of which spell Window Clutter at a scale never before experienced.

SAM does require some adaptation and adoption of new tools and techniques, which I'll go into in more detail later in the article. If you're interested in SAM but afraid it would be too disruptive to your work habits, let me remind you that one of the proudest characteristics of homo sapiens is your ability to quickly adapt to changes in your environment.

On Mars, we learned to love SAM when using DragThing a few of years ago… We noticed that DragThing offered the option to hide other apps when switching to a new one. Further, it allows you to specify certain apps that you don't want to hide when you switch to other particular ones. After adopting Quicksilver, I discovered that it offered the same option, but without any customization. After that, I started noticing the Single Application Mode option offered in a surprising number of applications. (You can find a large list of such apps later in the article.)

So, if you're not satisfied with Apple's previous attempts to diminish Window Clutter on your Mac (Expose, Spaces, and Visual Differentiation), and if you abhor the idea prevalent among Windows users that one should simply zoom every window to the full size of your display, this article intends to share with you Everything You Always Wanted To Know About SAM (But Didn't Know It Was A Topic).

There's a lot to cover here, so I'll give you just a few hints up front that you should remember even if you don't read the whole tome. By the end of the lesson, you should at least know the meaning of the following terms, and how to use the software they refer to on your Mac:

• Single Application Mode, and how it differs from Single Window Mode.
• Application Switcher, referring to the one built in to Mac OS X.
• Running Dockless, meaning an application that runs without a Dock icon and without a main menu, but which is able to spawn its own windows of various types. The term also covers Dockless applications that run inside other apps.
• Tear-Off Menus, a technology that dates back to the NeXTSTEP operating system, the foundation on which Mac OS X was built.

This article is presented in several sections. Here's a list of the sections so you can easily jump around to one of the topics that particularly interests you.

1. How Bad Is Window Clutter, Anyway?
2. "Tradition Myths" About SAM
3. From Apple's Archives: Single Window Mode and the Dock
4. Getting Started With SAM
5. Window Clutter: A Little History
6. Alternatives To SAM For Slaying Window Clutter
7. Glossary of SAM Speak

How Bad Is Window Clutter, Anyway?

The problem of window proliferation today is not so much a factor of the number of windows you have open in a particular app, but rather how many apps you have open. Figure the average user has five or six apps open, each with one or two windows. You can easily end up with 10-15 windows vying for your attention on the screen, and even with monitor resolutions of 1920x1200 or higher, that's a lot of f*cking windows!

By using SAM to limit the number of visible applications to one, you can immediately reduce the number of onscreen windows by a factor of n, where n is the number of running applications that have open windows.

To demonstrate this mathematically (we love algebra on Mars!), consider the Mac OS X computing environment of a typical professional user these days. In this scenario, our user is running the following apps, each with its own set of windows and auxiliary panels (names shown are just typical examples):

Application	Windows	Panels	Persistent Windows
Finder	4 (or more)	0	4
Mail	2	2 (Activity panel, Preferences)	4
iTunes	1	0	1
iChat	1	3 (Video preview, buddy lists, etc)	4
Safari	1	1 (Downloads)	2
Preview	1	1 (Inspector)	1
iPhoto	1	2 (Effects, Adjust)	1
Pages	1	3 (Colors, Fonts, Inspector)	1
Third-Party App One (DevonThink Pro)	2	1 (Inspector)	2
Third-Party App Two (Amadeus Pro)	2	3 (Playback, Markers, Actions)	2
System Preferences	1	0	1

Now, into our equation we must figure that some auxiliary panels hide themselves when the application to which they belong isn't active. For example, color and font panels are only visible when the app that spawned them is active, or "in front." On the other hand, the very useful "Special Characters" panel persists across apps. (However, most folks don't know that if you click its Maximize button, you actually minimize the panel to a tiny square.) Apple is pretty careful about following its own user interface standards and makes sure that all "Inspector" windows (including the Effects, Image Adjust, and Media Browser panels that typically accompany the iLife apps) only show up when their particular application is active.

Even in Apple's apps, however, exceptions do arise. In Safari, the Downloads panel is visible even when Safari isn't active. In Mail, the Activity panel likewise stays visible. And in virtually all apps, any preferences panels you may have opened stay visible even if they have no relevance to the application you're working in.

So, back to our equation.

Let n = Number of open applications
Let v = Average number of visible windows per app

Let w = Number of visible auxiliary windows in active app
Let x = Number of persistent windows
Let y = Number of persistent auxiliary panels
Let z = Total number of visible windows


Given these variables,

z = (x1 … xn) + w
v = z/n

For the hypothetical desktop listed previously, this yields:

z = 23 + w
v = (23 + w) / 11

If we let w = 1, then

v = 24/11 = 2.2

By this calculation, then, in all likelihood there will be 24 visible windows on your desktop under the usual setup. And if you eliminated all but the active application's windows, the total would fall to between 2 and 3 windows.

A dramatic end, indeed, to the problem of Window Clutter… wouldn't you say?

Now, to graphically answer the question posed by this section, let's take a moment to visualize the above scenario. The screenshots below have the same application/window configuration, based on the preceding table: 11 applications running, together generating 24 visible windows. The first image is a default Snow Leopard desktop, without Single Application Mode. The second image has CrystalClear Interface 2.5 running, but with SAM turned off. The last image shows the dramatic difference when SAM is activated.

"Tradition Myths" About SAM

Despite its demonstrable power in dealing with Window Clutter, Single Application Mode is embraced by only a relatively few "power users" and, of course, by Martians everywhere—those of us who live among you as well as those on Mars. However, Martians have no real influence on the way humans interact with their computers, and in fact we have some difficulty articulating our ideas in a way humans refer to as "evangelizing." Therefore, despite its rational foundation, SAM continues to be shunned as a solution by Apple and by influential Mac pundits… Why?

There are several reasons, all of which are based in "tradition myth," and none of which outweigh the true virtues of SAM.

• I need to be able to see windows of other applications so I can drag text from one to the other. No, you don't. Using Apple's Application Switcher (invoked by ⌘-Tab), it's a simple matter to select text in one application and drag it to a given window in another. Simply:
1. Select your text.
2. ⌘-Tab. While holding ⌘-Tab, select the application you want to drop the text in, using either your mouse or moving the cursor with an arrow key.
3. Release -Tab and drop the text where you want it in the other application.
   Alternatively, of course, you can copy and paste rather than drag.
• I need to be able to drag images or files from one application to another. This is a variation of the first myth and has the same solution.
• I need to be able to see values (numbers, text, colors, images) in two applications at the same time. This is not a myth but is a real need that any solution to Window Clutter must address. Fortunately, virtually all SAM implementations make this relatively simple.
• The base solution is to hold the Shift key while selecting a second (or third, etc) application from the Dock. Just hold the Shift key each time you need to switch from one application to the other while working.
• Better solutions let you define which applications you never want to have hidden while using SAM or, better still (but requiring more configuration), define groups of applications that should remain visible together. Several applications that implement SAM offer this functionality.
• Why bother when I can just use the "Hide Others" keyboard shortcut (Option-⌘-H) as needed? Well, my response is that if you want to use the keyboard shortcut each time you switch apps, then you should be using SAM. SAM is mainly a convenience, automating the task hiding other apps rather than adding the task to your regular workload.

Finally, the most insidious deterrent to the use of SAM is one that arises from ignorance or from age-old blinders that keep their wearers from seeing full 360-degree panoramas about the issue. To explain what I mean by this, I need to take a quick detour into some history about a relative of SAM's called "Single Window Mode."

From Apple's Archives:
Single Window Mode and the Dock

One of the Dock's Hidden Tricks

It's strange, but true, that the Mac OS X Dock has a "single application" mode of its own. To try it out, install Secrets, a GUI tool from Blacktree—the company that brought us the incredible open-source workhorse, Quicksilver. Secrets lets you enable the hidden Dock setting for "Single App Mode." You can also activate this Dock setting by typing these two commands in the Terminal (the second command restarts the Dock):

com.apple.dock single-app
killall dock

That the Dock has an implementation of SAM is curious, and it may be useful for some. However, it has several drawbacks from the Martian point of view:

1. You have to use the Dock alone (read: click on Dock icons) to launch and switch apps, in order to make other apps hide when you do.
2. Launching apps from Spotlight doesn't trigger SAM.
3. Launching apps from the Finder—or from any other application launcher—won't trigger SAM.
4. Switching apps using the Application Switcher doesn't do it, either.
5. Curiously, you don't go into SAM mode even if you launch an app from a Dock Stack, such as one showing recently launched apps.

So, the Dock version of SAM is only useful if you use the Dock for all app launching and switching, which obviously isn't practical or efficient.

In the Beginning… Single Window Mode

Another tantalizing remnant of Apple's flirtation with SAM is found in the graphics bundle that's been used by Mac OS X since day one. In addition to the usual red/yellow/green "stoplight" indicators at the top of every window, there's a purple one that's never been seen outside the few developers who worked on the earliest builds of Mac OS X… plus all those who saw Steve Jobs' Keynote presentation at MacWorld in January 2000, when Apple first unveiled its new Aqua interface.

For those of us who are fans of SAM, it's validating to listen to Steve extol the virtues of what was then dubbed "Single Window Mode." In fact, he spoke of it at length in a demo that concluded his entire presentation about the coming greatness of Aqua. During that speech, Jobs describes a solution Apple was building into Aqua in order to conquer the challenge of Window Clutter (see video of this segment below):

Let me go ahead and click a button that's on the right side of the top of the window pane. And this button is pretty cool. What it does is it says, "You know, when we have a lot of windows around on our system, it can get rather confusing for beginners, and even for pros.

If you're working back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop or Photoshop and something else … These things can get very complicated on the screen.

What could we do to make life easier for our pro customers and for beginners? We came up with something pretty neat. You can click it from any window. You can turn it off and on.

And it's called Single Window Mode. So you just click this, and every other window on the screen is miniaturized. And when I click another window… Boom! They switch places.

It's very easy.

Wow… even from Mars we were impressed with Jobs' insight. Here's a guy who really understands user interfaces to software. He understands the needs of computer users, often even before they do. We had observed Steve Jobs and his return in 1997 to the promising company he helped found, and it was clear that this guy knows what he's talking about when he says things like, "Boom!"

Sure enough, our early impressions of Jobs were correct, and he's clearly not only a transplanted Martian, but that extraordinary Martian who is able to mind-meld successfully with humans. Since then, we've been importing Apple products "out the wazoo," as you say here on Earth.

Sadly, however, Apple didn't pursue this initial idea for a Single Window Mode. From the snapshot we were given, it appears that SWM was somewhat flawed, and I'm not referring to its unfortunate acronym. If SWM worked the way Jobs demoed it, it would have minimized all the other windows in the current application, as well as those in other applications. Clearly, that's not going to work, which may be why Jobs was talked out of it.

As one of the major gurus of Mac-Think, John Gruber gave us a clear explanation for the opposition to SWM in those early days of Mac OS X. This excerpt is from an interview by Marcin Wicary, keeper of the marvelous website covering the history of computer GUIs, Guidebook Gallery, in July-August 2005:

Q: Was single-window mode such a bad idea? Moved from the purple button to the confines of System Preferences, wouldn’t it be useful for beginners or refugees from the Windows world?

A: It might be a good idea for some entirely new system, but I think it was incompatible with the existing Mac UI paradigm. The Mac UI was, and is, meant to revolve around multiple windows. If you’re only going to show one window at a time, what’s the use of even calling it a “window”? Just take up the whole screen.

TiVo, for example, effectively is a computer with a single-window UI paradigm. But it’s screen-based, not window-based. In the same way that it didn’t make sense for Apple to add a single-window mode to Mac OS X, it wouldn’t make sense for TiVo to add a new multiple-windows mode.

As for beginners and Windows refugees, I don’t think they need protection or shielding from the true Mac UI. What would – and does – help them is when the regular UI is consistent, obvious, and intuitive.

My current theory is that this antipathy for SWM has swallowed any official support SAM might have had all these years. And yet, SAM is the solution that SWM was not.

• SAM is SWM evolved.

Getting Started With SAM

But perhaps the best reason SAM isn't more widely adopted is that, especially for experienced Mac users, it takes some getting used to. This is why I refer to it in the CrystalClear Interface Preferences as a "new paradigm." The rewards of embracing SAM are great, but embracing SAM also means unlearning certain behaviors, and learning new ones. If SAM were openly incorporated into Mac OS X, its adoption could be more seamless than it is, of course.

So, OK, say I want to try using SAM. Where do I start?

Step One: Select Your SAM Sidekick

Despite its relative obscurity, SAM is implemented as an option in a great many Mac OS X applications that have some application-switching functionality. Here are some of the apps I know of that offer SAM as an option. I've personally used Quicksilver, LiteSwitch, and DragThing for this functionality and ultimately settled on LiteSwitch as the best option.

I chose LiteSwitch not just for its SAM-ability, but for its many other irreplaceable virtues. I now use CrystalClear Interface for SAM, but I cherish LiteSwitch because it improves on the Mac OS X switcher in so many ways. Of particular relevance to SAM is LiteSwitch's inherent app-switching behavior.

Apple's switcher doesn't allow you to repeatedly and quickly toggle two applications with one simple ⌘-Tab shortcut. After you toggle once, it forces you to navigate (with arrow key or mouse) to the other application you want to toggle.

For me, this is key, since without the quick toggle, I end up doubling the toggling effort. LiteSwitch doesn't have this drawback, and I would be hard-pressed to do without it. (By all means take a look at the more in-depth review of LiteSwitch I wrote a few years back.)

I am pleased to see that Proteron, the company that built LiteSwitch, appears to be back in business after a 2-year hiatus. What a relief to know that it'll be available and supported once again!

Here's that list of SAM-capable apps I mentioned earlier:

• Application Wizard
• CrystalClear Interface
• Desktopple Pro
• DragThing
• Flying Windows
• Keyboard Maestro
• LiteSwitch
• MenuStrip
• MultiXFinder (free)
• Quicksilver (free)
• Shoo Apps
• Spirited Away (free)
• TransparentDock
• Window Cleaner (free)

Step Two: Adopt Some New Tactics

1. Make the Mac OS X Application Switcher your best friend. Once this mode of switching apps is second nature, SAM will also seem completely natural (if it doesn't at first), and you'll wonder why you suffered so long with all those windows cluttering up your screen! To invoke the Application Switcher, use the keyboard shortcut ⌘-Tab to show all your running applications. As an alternative to Expose, you might also find it convenient to start using ⌘-Tilde, which toggles through the various open windows in your current application.

2. Hold the Shift key to add windows of other applications to the visible mix. For me, this requirement pops up when I use an application like the delightful color utility iPalette, and want to capture colors from another window and experiment with them while keeping the source window in view.
3. Get used to the idea that drag and drop is just as easy between two windows that can't see each other as it is between two that can (setting aside for a moment the notion that windows can "see"). Think of this technique as an analogue to the Finder's spring-loaded folders, where you drag a file from one visible folder to another that only becomes visible after you've passed through one or more folder "dimensions."
   
   Only, dragging from window to window is easier. To do this, just make your selection and start to drag. Then, switch applications using the Application Switcher (⌘-Tab) and drop the item into your document as you normally would. You can use this technique for dragging text, files, images, etc., just as you would if the two windows were visible at the same time.
   
   One thing that's even nicer about this approach is that you don't have to move windows around to set up the right view for dragging between visible windows. (What a drag that can be! "Oh, Martha, he thinks he's such a wit, don't he?") However, you do have to make sure that the target window is active in the the target application, since you won't be able to switch windows in the target app during the drag.

Step Three: Add Software To Overcome Certain Niggling Problems

As those of you who've tried to get used to Spaces know, many attempts to solve Window Clutter create new problems rather than really solving the old ones. This isn't true of SAM, because it really does solve the problem of Window Clutter. However, it does introduce some problems that need to be solved somehow. Fortunately, we Martians have found free and easy solutions to all of them!

Problem 1.

Many applications let you set a given window as "floating" so that it stays "on top" of your window hierarchy even when you switch to another application. Only problem is, the window's "floatiness" is tied to the visible window hierarchy itself rather than to your workspace as a whole. As a result, the supposedly "floating" window gets hidden along with its application when you switch apps using SAM.

Typically, this problem occurs with respect to user interface elements that you want to remain visible no matter what other apps are active. Apps in this category typically include:

• Launchers
• Sticky notes
• To-Do lists
• Monitoring tools (e.g., clocks, system info)
• Interfaces with inactive apps
• iTunes controllers
• Screen capture tools
• Automation tools (scripts/shortcuts/workflows)
• Desktop customizers

These kinds of apps play a role similar to the one that the Color and Font panels play in an application. If you open them, you want them to stay open—and not to hide behind other windows or apps—while you're working. In the context of SAM, tools of the categories above are ones you want to remain visible even if you switch to another app.

Apple provides many such interfaces to its own applications, including the following:

• The Dock
• Spotlight
• Various statusbar items:
• Airport
• iSync
• Time Machine
• Sound preferences
• Fast user switcher
• Script menu
• Application Switcher
• Dashboard
• Expose
• Time Machine
• Front Row

Solution: Find applications that allow themselves to be removed from the dock and to appear without a Main Menu. Such apps are referred to in the Apple developer documentation as "agent" applications, and many of them make themselves available as a statusbar item. There are quite a few apps that can morph from a regular app to an agent as a user option, and many that are agents from the get-go. Here are some of the apps I've used that I always want to remain visible while open, and which can accommodate that need nicely with SAM without any special effort. (I've organized these according to the category of apps listed above.)

Note: The apps with links in the table are ones that are not linked elsewhere in the article. Other than that, I'm not making any kind of particular statement about them.

Category	Application
Launchers	Quicksilver ClawMenu DragThing Butler Overflow iKey
Sticky notes	Sticky Notes Edgies
Monitoring tools	Growl BackTrack BwanaDik MenuMeters iStat Menus
To-do lists	MenuCalendarClock iCal Pluto Menubar
Persistent interfaces to inactive apps	DevonThink Pro Yojimbo DropCopy Quicksilver Fresh BackTrack Evernote LiteSwitch
iTunes controllers	CoverSutra YouControl Tunes Butler ClawMenu Quicksilver
Screen capture	Little Snapper Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts
Automation tools	Quicksilver AutoPilot iKey OpenMenu TextExpander Hazel Shortcuts Spark
Desktop Customization	Picture Switcher DeskShade Wallsaver QCDesktop

Problem 2.

What about applications that don't offer an option to run outside the Dock and without a menubar? I have several such apps that I run daily or frequently, and SAM really wouldn't be feasible if I hadn't found an easy way to "bend such apps to my will," so to speak. Here are some of my "problem," essential apps:

1. QuartzClocks. A freeware app, this is simply the best desktop clock I've ever seen. Sadly, its developer had abandoned it the last time I looked, but you can still download it from MacUpdate.
MemoryStick. Even though I also use iStat Menus, this freeware app is an even better way to keep on top of your Mac's memory usage.
2. Sticky Notes. There are oodles of sticky-note apps in the Mac universe, but this is one of my favorites. The feature that makes Sticky Notes stand out from the crowd is that you can bind individual notes to particular applications. This is exactly what I want from a notes application… it's like putting a sticky right on the app itself! It's also perfect for SAM, because the notes are always there when the relevant app is open. The only problem arises for notes that aren't tied to a particular app…
3. FlySketch. The very best app for annotating screen captures. Incredibly innovative… there's nothing like it.
4. PixelStick. Great freeware for measuring screen coordinates when doing pixel-based design.
5. iPalette. Terrific freeware for experimenting with colors. For developers, it's a great way to easily get RGB values for NSColor in your apps.

Solution: What you need is an easy way to toggle any app on your system between being a regular Dock/Menubar app and being an "agent" app that doesn't hide when you're using SAM. If you're a programmer or are otherwise technically savvy about the inner workings of Mac OS X, you could do this manually by editing a small file that appears in every Cocoa app's "bundle." But how much fun would that be? Although there aren't many utilities that will perform this feat automatically, there are a couple I know of, both free.

• Dockless does precisely what you want. Dockless is reliable, simple, robust, free, and open-source! (Another cool thing about Dockless is that it also lets you go the other way: Make normally "dockless" (agent) apps appear with a menubar and Dock icon.) (For more words from me about Dockless, refer to my 2006 review.)

• Configure Application Dock Tile has a trés ungainly name, but it can be more useful than Dockless for quick changes. The best way to use this app is to add it to the toolbar of Finder or Path Finder, and then use it as a "droplet." To toggle an app between having a menubar/dock and not having one, just drag the app to the toolbar icon for Configure Application Dock Tile (yuck!), change the checkbox state and save.

Problem 3.

If you use Dockless or Configure App… to eliminate an app's menubar, how do you gain access to the menubar when you need to? After all, most such apps have Preferences to set, or Help to access, or various functions that only appear in their menubar. Apps that offer a built-in Dockless mode take this into consideration and make their menu functions available in other ways, but apps that are coerced into running Dockless don't.

Solution: As with problem #2, there aren't many options that address this. But fortunately, the one I've used for ages still works great on Snow Leopard and, like Dockless, is free and open-source: StepMenus. By default, StepMenus provides a small floating panel that duplicates an app's main menu. You can position this menu panel wherever you like, or you can use the StepMenus System Preferences interface to exclude it from running in a particular application. (If you're a user of CrystalClear Interface, you'll undoubtedly see a similarity between the StepMenus preferences pane and the one for CCI. The similarity isn't accidental: I used some of the StepMenus code for CCI, since it was precisely what I needed for that app.)

Window Clutter: A Brief History

In the beginning, there was the very low resolution monitor for working with graphical operating systems, like the Mac and, eventually, Windows. For a very long time (in computer years), resolution was so low (600x800 pixels or less) that the only sensible way of working was to zoom each window to its maximum extent.

This hardly hindered one's productivity, of course, because it wasn't until the mid-1990s that computers had enough built-in memory to run multiple applications reliably. Still, you quite often needed to have two or more windows open in a given application—for example, in word-processing apps like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. The number of windows you needed to work with doubled or tripled once sophisticated design applications like Photoshop and PageMaker came on the scene. At this point, working with multiple zoomed windows became a real pain, yet squeezing them to smaller sizes seemed to only make things worse.

For the longest time, it seems that a great deal of my time was spent repositioning windows so I could see what I was doing. Working in a word processor was one thing. Working in Aldus PageMaker was another thing entirely.

In a word processor, it's often desirable to see only one window at a time, as a way of reducing distractions. In fact, a few years ago it became de rigeur (at least in the Mac world) for such apps to enable a full-screen mode for composing text. This became a major selling point for rich-text editors like WriteRoom, and it soon became a standard feature of most apps that included a writing function.

When one is word-processing, having a single window consuming all of your screen real estate is not a bad thing, especially since you can specify margins so the text doesn't spread across the entire area.

As screen resolution rapidly rose through the 1990s, however, the habit of zooming every window to the full size of your monitor began to look pretty silly, and could actually dampen productivity. It's a known fact that humans read less efficiently when a column of text is too wide, because the eye has trouble making its way back to the left-hand margin while keeping each line in sequence. (For examples, see this or this in Google Books.)

When monitor resolution was 640x480, this was not a consideration. But on a 1024x768 monitor, line length in a word processor (or PDF file, web browser, or whatever you may be trying to read) becomes far too great to read efficiently. Still, zooming windows to the max remained the preferred, and expected behavior (especially on Windows)… readability be damned!

It wasn't long before monitors got bigger not only in resolution but also in physical dimensions. Can you imagine working on a 15-inch monitor nowadays? And yet, this was the standard size throughout the 1990s (unless you were very special indeed). With such a small monitor, most people didn't max out their screen resolution because at 1024x768, for example, screen type becomes way too small to read.

Soon enough, though, monitor size zoomed to 17-inch, then 20-inch, and now 24-inch as the expected standard for your basic computer system. Heck, the current model iMacs sport a 27-inch monitor in the top two configurations. (And here I thought my 23-inch Cinema Display of a few years back was so huge. And it is!)

For creative professionals, the problem of dealing with Window Clutter has long been handled by using multiple monitors. That's fine if you can afford it, but using multiple monitors introduces its own set of problems. I won't go into them now, but those of you who work that way know them all too well.

In the meantime, computer memory soared, so that what application developers, users, and hardware makers considered a baseline standard was an ever-shifting target. And no one ever seemed to get it quite right. Technical standards have simply moved far more swiftly than humans could adapt to them. (I wryly note that this deficiency is not shared by your Martian neighbors.)

It's sobering to actually review the timeline of the amount of random-access memory (RAM) that personal computers have relied on. As we all know, in 1984, Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh—the first commercially available personal computer with a graphical operating system. It was also the first computer to boast 128KB of RAM! By the end of the year, for only $10,000, you could buy AT&T's new microcomputer and luxuriate in a full 512KB of RAM.

The race for more memory had begun, but it seemed to remain in Lilliputian dimensions for a very long time. By the end of 1989, Apple's Macintosh was still in the lead, with its top-end system boasting 4MB of RAM. IBM and Compaq PCs maxed out at 2MB. A decade later, top-of-the-line systems still peaked at 512MB or 1GB of RAM, while consumer systems like the iMac were holding 256-512MB.

Since 2000, It was in the last decade that RAM size really took off. The amount of RAM a desktop computer can consume nowadays seems ridiculously huge, a reflection of the transition to 64-bit operating systems. My 2-year-old Mac Pro can hold 32GB, and I've got 16GB installed. To buy a consumer system with less than 4GB these days is to buy a computer that won't run modern operating systems or the latest versions of the most apps. Heck, the $599 Mac mini has 2GB, and the $799 model has 4GB! The standard RAM for Microsoft Windows-based systems is similar, starting at 2GB for entry-level computers and rising from there.

For the purposes of this article, the main impact of exploding system memory has been to increase the number of applications one can keep open at the same time. It has become habitual for a typical user to leave applications open indefinitely, and then to not understand why their system may be slowing down after a few days. (For a followup to this discussion, refer to the earlier section of this article, How Bad Is Window Clutter, Anyway?)

Alternatives For Slaying Window Clutter

Expose

I still think Expose is a visually cool way to view your open windows, but I frankly have never used it much because it just doesn't work for me. Rather than spending many more words explaining Expose, take a look at the preceding link and let Apple do the talking.

Basically, Expose has three modes, with the following default keyboard shortcuts:

1. F9. This displays all the windows of all active applications on your system. Curiously, however, this doesn't show windows of applications that are hidden. Therefore, if you're using SAM, there is no difference between F9 and F10. (Perhaps that's one reason I've never taken to Expose…)
2. F10. This displays all the windows of your current application.
3. F11. This hides all windows and displays your desktop.

A very useful feature of Expose (which may not be widely known) is that whether you start with F9 or F10, you can navigate through your other applications and their windows by hitting the Tab key. Each click of Tab takes you to the next application set. Within an application set, you can navigate using the mouse or the arrow keys.

Still, Expose is at best a useful way of finding windows on your Mac, and is neither a practical application switcher nor a solution to Window Clutter. After all, as soon as you exit Expose, your cluttered Desktop returns, like Cinderella at midnight, to its former unlovely self.

Virtual Desktops (Spaces)

Back in 2006, I opined at great length about why Virtual Desktops as a technique--and why Spaces in particular--are poorly suited as a solution to Window Clutter. Rather than repeat all those arguments and observations here, I invite you to read the article, "Leopard’s Spaces: Virtual Desktops for the Rest of Us?", which I wrote while having access to developer releases of Mac OS X 10.5.

Even after I discovered Hyperspaces, a marvelous enhancement to Spaces that adds all the features I felt were missing in Apple's implementation, the basic problems inherent in Virtual Desktops remain:

• They simply create more confusion than they eliminate,
• They make it harder for you to find your application windows, and
• They aren't really practical since the idea of segregating your different kinds of work into different desktops is impossible if you have even modestly complex kinds of work involving more than one application.

Visual Differentiation

Apple has progressively enhanced the visual distinction between your active window (typically the one you're typing in or whose controls you're manipulating) and the others in your active application. Windows in inactive applications have a slightly different appearance than inactive windows in your active application. (Say that twice fast.) But practically speaking, it's impossible to tell them apart.

This is why those who don't use SAM either must use something like Expose or ⌘-Tilde, or forever find themselves activating the wrong window.

Even when using SAM (either with or without CrystalClear Interface), distinguishing between your top-level window and the others in your window hierarchy is very important. By default, Apple helps differentiate the active window by adding an extra-huge, 3-D shadow (introduced in Leopard), as well as hints in the button widgets (color vs. no color, or faded vs. active appearance, or bright vs. dim, etc.).

In addition to Apple's visual techniques, CrystalClear Interface lets you further distinguish windows by their transparency, which is completely user-customizable. By default, the front window is mostly opaque, and the inactive windows are 50-60 percent transparent. Utility windows (Find panels, Color panels, and the like) retain the opaque appearance of the main window and are distinctively themed as translucent black (HUD) panels. Besides setting default values for all inactive windows, users can also set the transparency of individual windows that have unique titles to some custom value, retained across sessions.

In addition, CCI provides the option of turning shadows off for your inactive windows. This just takes Apple's approach one step further: Rather than minimized shadows in background windows, you can remove shadows from background windows entirely.

The bottom line is that Visual Differentiation as a strategy of solving Window Clutter is absolutely necessary and quite helpful. However, it is not sufficient to eliminate the problem entirely.

And that explains why here on Mars, we use Single Application Mode as the solution to Window Clutter.

Smackdown: Windows 7 takes on Apples Snow Leopard. Now, this is more like it! Whereas the earlier ComputerWorld reviewer basically called the OS's an even match (while exposing a lot of his own ignorance about Mac OS X), this fellow understands completely. In his closing remarks, he concludes:

As an IT professional, I support both operating systems at work. But I have Macs at home; after all, who wants to troubleshoot computer problems on their own time? My final verdict in this smackdown? It's not even close: Snow Leopard is the better OS.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive » Styling Scrollbars. I've been so busy I missed this... it's another in the WebKit team's aggressive expansion of the possibilities for user interface development using the basic stuff: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The brief article on the Surfin' Safari blog has a pointer to an interactive demo.

Mac | I Love Code. This is a terrific collection of tutorials on software development, covering various languages and platforms including Mac OS X (Cocoa), HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and iPhone. Just the things I'm interested in! The tutorials are contributed by some very smart developers from across the world.

Living on Air: A Windows guru spends two weeks with a Mac. In this case, said Guru had avoided trying out a Mac for 25 years and finally took the plunge, only after being assigned to do so. Lucky him, he got to play with the latest model MacBook Air, but his article spends more time explaining why he now understands the appeal of Mac OS X. Though he does get a number of things wrong (heck, he only spent 2 weeks with the OS, but sadly writes as though he's now an expert on it), I think we can count him in the Switcher camp.

280 Slides - Create & Share Presentations Online

OK, this has to be the coolest web app I've yet encountered. So desktop-like you forget it's running in your web browser! Part of that must reflect its software foundation, which isn't javascript or flash or Air, or any of the other possible languages for Web 2.0-style apps. No, it's Cocoa--the same language (a derivative of Objective C) and framework Apple uses for its desktop apps!

The framework used is called Cappucino, a fairly new open source project that "makes it easy to build desktop-caliber applications that run in a web browser."

I'm all over this... definitely!

It's still somewhat difficult to get a handle on exactly what is meant by the "Semantic Web," and whether today's technologies are truly able to realize the vision of Tim Berners-Lee, who first articulated it back in 1999. From what I've read, I think there's general agreement that we aren't even close to being "there" yet, but that many of the ongoing Semantic Web activities, technologies, development platforms, and new applications are a big leap beyond the unstructured web that still dominates today.

There is a huge, seemingly endless amount of work being done by thousands of groups all trying to contribute to making the Semantic Web a reality. In my few weeks of research, I still feel as though I've just stepped my toe into that vast lake of semantic experimentation. Partly as a result of the many disparate projects, however, it does become rather difficult to see the entire forest for all the tiny trees. That said, these thousands of groups do appear to be working more or less together on the basis of consensus-based open standards, and they have set up mechanisms to keep everyone abreast of new ideas, solutions, and projects, under the general leadership of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'s Semantic Web Activity. As a starting point for exploration into this topic, the Wikipedia article that describes the Semantic Web Stack is quite good. Among its good overview and many useful links, the article includes the original conception of the Stack as designed by Berners-Lee. Besides cataloguing the sheer number of different projects all tackling different aspects of building a Semantic Web, it's important to distinguish ongoing projects from those that expired years ago—a distinction that's not always readily apparent to those peering in from the outside. Even excluding these, there are far too many projects to read up on in a few weeks, so this snapshot is necessarily incomplete. But after having the content reviewed by some Semantic Web experts, I'm confident it includes all the most significant threads of this new web, which, as Berners-Lee envisioned it:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

In my tour of the Semantic Web as it exists today, it's interesting to note that most of the projects are geared not toward machine-to-machine interaction, but rather to the traditional human-to-machine. Humans being by nature anthropocentric, the first steps being taken toward Berners-Lee's vision are to build systems that are semantically neutral with respect to human-to-human communication. Once we can reliably discuss topics without drifting off into semantic misunderstandings, then perhaps we can start teaching machines "what we mean by" ... This paper is an attempt to assess the current state of today's steps, while compiling a list of resources that would prove useful to someone thinking about building a Semantic Web application in 2009. Challenges to Building Semantic Web Applications The process of applying concepts from the Semantic Web to build richer, more knowledge-oriented applications presents developers with several, somewhat challenging prerequisites:

• Taxonomies for the content being published,
• Ontologies for the content, based on the developed taxonomies,
• Content tagged using the developed ontologies,
• Database tools for storing and serving RDF and/or OWL ontologies,
• Database tools for connecting ontologies with the content they describe,
• Application server specializing in querying and formatting semantic content,
• User interface tools to present semantic content in optimum, not necessarily traditional, ways.

Each of these requirements present a fairly steep learning curve to developers who have not previously worked with the technologies to build Semantic Web applications. Solutions for aiding with some of the requirements exist, but it's not clear how effective they are at this stage. For example, I have listed some tools that assist in extracting semantics from unstructured documents, and others that do something similar with content stored in relational databases. On the other hand, the process of tagging unstructured content appears to have no good automated solutions. The process of building an ontology can be quite time-consuming, unless there happens to be an existing ontology you can reuse. There are several extensive online libraries of ontologies that can help. One fly in this bibliographical ointment, however, is the difficulty one may face in choosing among different, perhaps conflicting, ontologies on the same topic. It's important to emphasize that one of the first steps in building an ontology is to build a taxonomy. Although ontologies are not taxonomies, they use taxonomies as their jumping-off point. Therefore, one has to be ready and able to build a taxonomy for a subject before one can build an ontology. Many of the tools and projects included here are designed to assist with building and browsing a web of Linked Data, rather than true semantic data. Some of the demo browsers for linked data don't strike me as being particularly relevant to most end-user requirements for knowledge management. However, linked data is quite useful in integrating content from across the web, and projects built around it typically make heavy use of RDF, SPARQL, and other related specifications. Websites that make use of linked data represent the vanguard of the application of Semantic Web concepts, and their number appears to be exploding at the moment. Well-known examples of the use of linked data are websites built as "mashups," such as Google Maps. Use of Microformats and RDF Triples is also a typical component of websites that expose their content as linked data. More powerful tools exist in the form of integrated application server suites, such as the OpenLink Virtuoso server, Cyc Knowledge Server, and Intelligent Topic Manager. The first two have open source versions that can be used by developers to "dip their feet" into the task of building a Semantic Web applications using sample data. Of the two, I was most impressed with the breadth of tools in the OpenLink project, as well as with the range and vibrancy of the Virtuoso developer community. Virtuoso also comes with a rich set of user interface "widgets" that can be of great assistance in presenting semantic information appropriately. A Possible Approach To sum up, the landscape of the Semantic Web is still quite fuzzy and volatile, with many mountains of activity building up rapidly and eroding with nearly equal speed. Which landforms will remain once the evolution is complete is impossible to say here in 2008. However, the landscape is exciting to watch and flush with tantalizing experiments that will undoubtedly inspire more experimentation in the years ahead. Obviously, given all of the preceding caveats, the decision to engage in a Semantic Web experiment cannot be made lightly. One must have a clear idea of the knowledge management/presentation problem that such an experiment is designed to solve, and an understanding of the resources that will need to be devoted to the project. Although the maturity of tools, standards, and processes for such a project is quite young, it would definitely be in the interests of an organization with suitable candidate data and sufficient resources (including time) to begin an experiment of its own as a learning exercise. I would advise against a major expenditure for such an experiment, however. As noted, given the state of the technology, it strikes me as being unwise to invest a large sum in any commercial product to use as an application platform. Most of the tools that exist for building Semantic Web applications have open source licenses, so it makes sense to restrict experimentation to such tools for now. The data store chosen for such an experiment should ideally be one that currently suffers from being both fragmented and unstructured, existing in incompatible file formats and stored in different locations within the organization's Intranet—all factors that make it difficult for users to locate specific information. Given the uncertainties surrounding such an experiment, the data store chosen should also be one that is not so volatile that time pressures can cause discontinuities in content over the course of the project. Whoever undertakes such a Semantic Web experiment needs to be prepared to conclude that the effort required to bring their experiment to fruition is too great to justify the added value. Even if this were to prove true in 2009, I'm confident that the impressive swirl of activity taking place now will coalesce into truly usable techniques and tools within a few years. The standards on which the Semantic Web will be built are still evolving, but they are much more mature than the methods developers have built to turn those standards into working applications. Therefore, having gotten one's feet wet in the state of things this year will undoubtedly provide a solid foundation for building Semantic Web applications in coming years. The bulk of this report consists of a compilation of resources on various aspects of the Semantic Web and developing Semantic Web applications. The resources are divided into the following categories:

• Ontology Development Tools
• Application Development Tools
  • Developer Resources
  • Frameworks
  • Visualization and Query Tools
  • Unstructured Content Mining Tools
  • Transformation Tools
• Database Tools
• Application Servers
• Semantic Application Demos
  • Browsers and Search Portals
  • Ontology viewers and query tools
  • Knowledge/Content management
  • Application Repositories
• Semantic Website Enhancements
• Other Resources
  • Ontology libraries
  • Papers, Projects and Documentation
  • Business resources

Ontology Development Tools

Protege

• Comes in two "flavors": Version 3.4 handles both OWL and RDF ontologies, while 4.0 is geared toward the latest OWL standards only.
• Impressive software for creating OWL ontologies.
• User interface is well organized, given the complexity of the objects and properties you're dealing with. The interface also must handle multiple views of the information, and it does so quite well.
• Numerous plugins for Protege make specific task work easier. There are many more plugins for Protege 3.4 than for 4.0 at this time.
• One plugin enables database connections, with which you can import entire databases or tables, including their contents. Tables typically become OWL objects, and columns become object properties. Impressively, this tool also creates a complete form with which you can enter new instance information. Each form field can also be customized after creation.
• Protege can also export ontologies to "OWL Document" format, which is a browsable HTML representation of the ontology.
• Stanford is developing a web-based version of Protege. The beta URL is at Web Protege.

Protege Plug-Ins

• OntoLT. The OntoLT approach aims at a more direct connection between ontology engineering and linguistic analysis. Used with Protege, OntoLT can automatically extract concepts (Protégé classes) and relations (Protégé slots) from linguistically annotated text collections. It provides mapping rules, defined by use of a precondition language that allow for a mapping between linguistic entities in text and class/slot candidates in Protégé. (This plug-in is only available for Protege 3.2.)
• There are a wide array of plug-ins for Protege 3.2, and a much smaller set for 4.0. This page from the "old" Protege wiki has good links to the full library of Protege plug-ins.

Ontowiki

• Ontowiki is a tool providing support for agile, distributed knowledge engineering scenarios. It facilitates the visual presentation of a knowledge base as an information map, with different views on instance data. It enables intuitive authoring of semantic content, with an inline editing mode for editing RDF content, similar to WYSIWIG for text documents. Ontowiki is built on the Powl platform. I have downloaded and installed an instance of Ontowiki on my home computer; the installation and configuration was quite simple.
  • An online demo of Ontowiki is available.

Application Development Tools

The list in this section is just a small subset of the tools now available for building Semantic Web applications. There are several complete, continuously updated lists on the web, including those at SemWebCentral and the Semantic Web Company. Developer Resources

• SemWebCentral is an Open Source development web site for the Semantic Web. It was established in January, 2004 to support the Semantic Web community by providing a free, centralized place for Open Source developers to manage Semantic Web software and content development. Another purpose is to provide resources for developers or other interested parties to learn about the Semantic Web and how to begin developing Semantic Web content and software. SemWebCentral has the following major portals:
• Web Tools by category, a list of 148 projects organized by topic and a wide variety of other attributes.
• Code snippets, an archive of code snippets, scripts, and functions developers have shared with the open source software community.
• Learn About the Semantic Web, a collection of overviews, tutorials, and papers covering Semantic Web topics.
• Programming With RDF is part of the RDF Schemas website. It has links to repositories of programmer resources by programming language, showing the kind of documentation, code, and tutorials covered by the repository.
• Semantic Web Tools is a comprehensive list of over 700 developer tools now available for semantic-web-related projects. There are several such lists on the web, but this one is particularly good since it breaks the list down by category and language, making it much easier to narrow down the list you're interested in. This site is hosted by the Semantic Web Company.
• Developers Guide to Semantic Web Toolkits collects links to Semantic Web toolkits for different programming languages and gives an overview about the features of each toolkit, the strength of the development effort and the toolkit's user community.

Frameworks Sesame

• • Extensions and Plugins
  • Rio, a set of parsers and writers for RDF that has been designed with speed and standards-compliance as the main concerns. Currently it supports reading and writing of RDF/XML and N-Triples, and writing of N3. Rio is part of Sesame, but can also be downloaded and used separately.
  • Elmo is a toolkit for developing Semantic Web applications using Sesame. Elmo wraps Sesame, providing a dedicated API for a number of well known web ontologies including Dublin Core, RSS and FOAF. The dedicated API makes it easier to work with RDF data for the supported ontologies. Elmo also offers a set of tools related to the supported ontologies, including an RDF crawler, a FOAF smusher and a FOAF validator.
Sesame is an open source Java framework for storing, querying and reasoning with RDF and RDF Schema. It can be used as a database for RDF and RDF Schema, or as a Java library for applications that need to work with RDF internally. Sesame is extremely flexible in how it's used and can work with a variety of data stores, including relational databases and native RDF files. It can be deployed as a server, or as a library incorporated into another application framework. For example, Sesame can be used simply to read a big RDF file, find the relevant information for an application, and use that information. Sesame provides the necessary tools to parse, interpret, query and store all this information, embedded in another application or, if appropriate, in a seperate database or even on a remote server. More generally, Sesame provides application developers a toolbox that contains all the necessary tools for building applications with RDF. Commercial support for Sesame is available from Aduna Software.

Sesame also has a large ecosystem of addons and related toolsets. The following are the main links to these.

Jess

Jess is a rule engine and scripting environment written entirely in Sun's Java language by Ernest Friedman-Hill at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. Using Jess, you can build Java software that has the capacity to "reason" using knowledge you supply in the form of declarative rules. Jess is small, light, and one of the fastest rule engines available. Its powerful scripting language gives you access to all of Java's APIs. Jess includes a full-featured development environment based on the award-winning Eclipse platform.

A Jess Plugin for Protege is available, integrating Jess development with your ontology.

Jena

• • ARQ, which is a query engine for Jena. ARQ supports multiple query languages (SPARQL, RDQL, and ARQ, the engine's own language), and besides Jena it can be used with general purpose engines and remote access engines. ARQ can also rewrite queries to SQL.
  • Joseki, an HTTP server-based system that support SPARQL queries. Joseki features a WebAPI for the remote query and update of RDF models, including both a client component and an RDF server. The Joseki server can run embedded in an application, as a standalone program, or as a web application inside a suitable application server (such as Tomcat). It provides the operations of query and update on models it hosts.
Jena is a Java framework for building Semantic Web applications. It provides a programmatic environment for RDF, RDFS and OWL, SPARQL and includes a rule-based inference engine. Jena is open source and grown out of work with the HP Labs Semantic Web Programme. Important tools related to the Jena framework include:

The Owl API

• • RDF/XML parser and writer
  • OWL/XML parser and writer
  • OWL Functional Syntax parser and writer
  • Turtle parser and writer
  • KRSS parser
  • OBO Flat file format parser
  • Support for integration with reasoners such as Pellet and FaCT++
The OWL API is an open-source Java interface and implementation for OWL, focused towards OWL 2 which encompasses OWL-Lite, OWL-DL and some elements of OWL-Full. The OWL API was used to build Protege 4.0 and was developed by Co-Ode, the company that works with Stanford University on the Protege project. It encompasses tool for the following tasks:

Powl

Powl is a web-based platform for building applications designed to support collaborative building and managing of ontologies. It supports many of the features of mature tools like Protege, but for web applications that can be used for team development of ontologies. Powl is an open source project that uses PHP and various RDBMS systems on the back-end. Ontowiki is an example of a collaborative application built using Powl.

Visualization and Query Tools Jambalaya

The University of Victoria's Computer Human Interaction & Software Engineering Lab (CHISEL) has developed this visualization tool based on their own Shrimp software. Jamabalaya was developed as a plug-in created for Protégé tool, and uses Shrimp to visualize and query ontologies and knowledge bases the user has created. The University of Georgia (referenced in the next section) built their OntoVista tool using Jambalaya.

OntoVista

The University of Georgia, as described in the next section of Semantic Applications, has built a large number of interesting semantic software. OntoVista is a particularly useful ontology visualization, navigation, and query tool based on Jambalaya. OntoVista is adaptable to the needs of different domains, especially in the life sciences. The tool provides a semantically enhanced graph display that gives users a more intuitive way of interpreting nodes and their relationships. Additionally, OntoVista provides comfortable interfaces for searching, semantic edge filtering and quick-browsing of ontologies.

SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language)

SWRL is intended to be the rule language of the Semantic Web and is based on OWL. It allows users to write rules to reason about OWL instances and to infer new knowledge about those instances.

Pellet

Pellet is an open source, OWL DL reasoner in Java that is developed, and commercially supported, by Clark & Parsia LLC. Pellet provides standard and cutting-edge reasoning services. It also incorporates various optimization techniques described in the DL literature and contains several novel optimizations for nominals, conjunctive query answering, and incremental reasoning.

Pronto is an extension of Pellet that enables probabilistic knowledge representation and reasoning in OWL ontologies. Pronto is distributed as a Java library equipped with a command line tool for demonstrating its basic capabilities. It is currently in development stage—more robust and mature than a mere prototype, but less mature than a production-level system like Pellet.

Pronto offers core OWL reasoning services for knowledge bases containing uncertain knowledge; that is, it processes statements like “Bird is a subclass-of Flying Object with probability greater than 90%” or “Tweety is-a Flying Object with probability less than 5%”. The use cases for Pronto include ontology and data alignment, as well as reasoning about uncertain domain knowledge generally; for example, risk factors associated with medical conditions like breast cancer.

OWL Ontology Validator

• • This is an online demo of the Validator.
This online tool, developed as part of the WonderWeb Project, attempts to validate an ontology against the different "species" of OWL. Any constructs found which relate to a particular species will be reported. In addition, if requested, the validator will return a description of the classes, properties and individuals in the ontology in terms of the OWL Abstract Syntax.

Seamark Navigator

Seamark Navigator is part of the commercial Information Access Platform from Siderean. Navigator is the relational navigation server component,which discovers and indexes content, pre-calculates relationships and suggests paths for data exploration. Its primary architectural components include a metadata aggregator, a scalable RDF store, and a relational navigation engine, all within an industry-standard Web services interface.

Unstructured Content Mining Tools Calais

• • This online demo takes a URL as input and returns a set of metadata extracted from the page, which developers can use to help develop taxonomies for their content.
The Calais Web Service automatically creates rich semantic metadata for the content you submit – in well under a second. Using natural language processing, machine learning and other methods, Calais analyzes your document and finds the entities within it. Calais goes beyond classic entity identification and returns facts and events hidden within your text as well.

Cortex Competitiva Platform

• • A small online demo shows sample text and entities and actions extracted from it.
Cortex Competitiva employs collectively both state-of-the-art text mining technologies and consolidated techniques in data mining. The main modules of the platform are Information Collection, Information Organization and Collaboration, and Information Use Analysis.

IdentiFinder Text Suite

IdentiFinder Text Suite, a product of BBN Technologies, lets users quickly sift through documents, web pages, and email to discover relevant information. It helps solve the classic problems of text mining: First, how to identify significant documents and then, how to locate the most important information within them.

DL-Learner

DL-Learner is a tool from AKSW for learning concepts in Description Logics (DLs) from user-provided examples. Equivalently, it can be used to learn classes in OWL ontologies from selected objects. The goal of DL-Learner is to construc knowledge about existing data sets. With DL-Learner, users provide positive and negative examples from a knowledge base for a not yet defined concept. The goal of DL-Learner is to derive a concept definition so that when the definition is added to the background knowledge all positive examples follow and none of the negative examples follow. See also the Wikipedia entry for ILP (Inductive Logic Programming). What DL-Learner considers is the the ILP problem applied to Descriptions Logics / OWL.

Transformation Tools GRDDL

GRDDL is a mechanism for Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages. It is a technique for obtaining RDF data from XML documents and in particular XHTML pages. GRDDL provides an inexpensive set of mechanisms for bootstrapping RDF content from XML and XHTML. GRDDL does this by shifting the burden of formulating RDF away from the author to transformation algorithms written specifically for XML dialects such as XHTML. A repository of transformations is available.

RDFizers

The Simile project has developed a large number of "RDFizers," which convert various file formats into RDF. This page also contains links to the many RDFizers developed by other organizations to handle even more document types.

Database Tools

Query Languages and Tools SPARQL Query Language for RDF

SPARQL is a w3c specification for querying RDF repositories. It can be used to express queries for native RDF files or for RDF generated from stored ontologies via middleware. he results of SPARQL queries can be results sets or RDF graphs.

Owlgres

Owlgres is an open source, scalable reasoner for OWL2. Owlgres combines Description Logic reasoning with the data management and performance properties of an RDBMS. Owlgres is intended to be deployed with the open source PostgreSQL database server. Owlgres’s primary service is conjunctive query answering, using SPARQL-DL.

D2RQ

D2RQ is a declarative language to describe mappings between relational database schema and OWL/RDF ontologies. The D2RQ platform uses these mapping to enables applications to access RDF views on a non-RDF database through the Jena and Sesame APIs, as well as over the Web via the SPARQL Protocol and as Linked Data.

Conversion/Transformation Tools OntoSynt

OntoSynt provides automatic support for extracting from a relational database schema its conceptual view. That is, it extracts semantics "hidden" in the relational sources by wrapping them by means of an ontology. The approach is specifically tailored for semantic information access, enabling queries over an ontology to be answered by using the data residing in its relational sources. Its web interface accepts an XML representation of an RDBMS schema, which can be generated using a tool like SQL Fairy.

Relational.OWL

Relational.OWL is an open source application that automatically extracts the semantics of virtually any relational database and transforms this information automatically into RDF/OWL ontologies that can be processed by Semantic Web applications.

Triplify

Described elsewhere in this report.

SQL Fairy

SQL Fairy is a group of Perl modules that manipulate structured data definitions (mostly database schemas) in interesting ways, such as converting among different dialects of CREATE syntax (e.g., MySQL-to-Oracle), visualizations of schemas, automatic code generation, converting non-RDBMS files to SQL schemas (xSV text files, Excel spreadsheets), serializing parsed schemas (e.g., via XML), creating documentation (e.g., HTML), and more.

Application Servers

OpenLink Virtuoso Universal Server

• Virtuoso, developed by OpenLink Software, is a complex product that appears to be a total solution for hosting Semantic Web applications, among other uses. In the company's words, from a recent release: "Virtuoso enables end users, systems architects, systems integrators, and developers to interact with data at the conceptual as opposed to the traditional logical level. Data about customers, suppliers, invoices, and orders, stored in existing ODBC- or JDBC-accessible database systems such as Oracle, Informix, Ingres, SQL Server, Sybase, Progress, and MySQL, can be presented in RDF form for use in Semantic Web applications."
• Virtuoso is also available in an Open Source Edition, a very active project that includes a large number of modules for use with various content management systems. The main difference between the open source and commercial editions of Virtuoso is the Virtual Database Engine, which essentially enables an application to incorporate multiple data servers in its queries.

  Also available as open source from OpenLink is its OpenLink Ajax Toolkit (OAT), which comes with a wide range of user interface and data widgets, as well as complete applications for building data queries, designing databases, and designing web forms. The OpenLink Data Explorer is one of these standalone OAT applications. Widgets that are part of OAT include:

  • Charts
  • Tables
  • Pivot Tables
  • Tree controls
  • Docks
  • Sidebars
  • Timelines
  • RDF Visualizer
  • Edit-in-place
  • Buttons and Sliders
  • Windows
  • Tag clouds
  • Mashups (e.g., data with Google Maps)
  • Data modeling
  The standalone applications running on the Open-Source Edition all incorporate widgets from the OAT to create quite robust, desktop-application-like tools (the username/password for all of these is demo/demo):
  • Form Designer
  • Database Designer
  • Interactive SQL Query Builder
  • Interactive SPARQL Query Builder
• OpenLink also provides OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS), which run on the Virtuoso server, either the commercial or open-source editions. ODS enables developers to create a presence in the Semantic Web via Data Spaces derived from Weblogs, Wikis, Feed Aggregators, Photo Galleries, Shared Bookmarks, Discussion Forums and more. Data Spaces thus provide a foundation for the creation, processing and dissemination of knowledge for the emerging Semantic Web. ODS is pre-installed as part of the demonstration database bundled with the Virtuoso Open-Source Edition. Existing ODS modules include:
  • Blogs
  • Wikis
  • Briefcase (file-sharing)
  • Feed Manager
  • Calendar
  • Bookmark Manager
  • Community (small-group spaces)
  • Mail

Cyc Knowledge Server

• The Cyc Knowledge Server is a very large, multi-contextual knowledge base and inference engine developed by Cycorp. The Cyc technology includes the following components:
  • The Cyc Knowledge Base
  • The Cyc Inference Engine
  • The CycL Representation Language
  • The Natural Language Processing Subsystem
  • Cyc Semantic Integration Bus
  • Cyc Developer Toolsets
• Cycorp also offers an open-source version of Cyc called OpenCyc. OpenCyc contains the full set of (non-proprietary) Cyc terms. The portal for the OpenCyc project, where developers can download the software and learn about ongoing projects and documentation is OpenCyc.org.

Intelligent Topic Manager

• Intelligent Topic Manager (ITM) is a commercial semantic software platform that enables a wide range of applications in enterprise information systems. ITM is designed to help organizations leverage, organize and model content and knowledge, to manage business reference models and taxonomies, to categorize and classify content, and to empower search. The platform consists of the following components and functionalities:

• Terminology, Thesaurus, Taxonomy, Metadata dictionary
• e-Catalog
• Knowledge management software
• Semantic Widgets
• Ontology Management
• Semantic indexing of text, video, image and sound content
• Automated updating of a knowledge base/ontology
• Reasoning and Inference
• Management of Publication Taxonomies for faceted search
• Generating Publication indexes and tables
• Topic Maps

Oracle Semantic Technologies

• Oracle Spacial 11g is an open, scalable RDF management platform. Based on a graph data model, RDF triples are persisted, indexed and queried, similar to other object-relational data types. Application developers can use the Oracle server to design and develop a wide range of semantic-enhanced business applications.

Asio Tool Suite Available from BBN, the Asio Tool Suite is focused primarily on building Semantic Web applications by integrating an enterprise's existing databases and systems without the need for complete reengineering. Designed to address the volume, variety, and exponential increase in enterprise data, the Asio Tool Suite supports information discovery via Semantic Web standards and provides for data accessibility via queries posed in a user’s own ontology. The suite further enables integration of systems by building bridges in semantic meaning from one system to another. The suite consists of the following components: Parliament

Asio Parliament, released as open source, implements a high-performance storage engine that is compatible with the RDF and OWL standards. However, it is not a complete data management system. Parliament is typically paired with a query processor, such as Sesame or Jena, to implement a complete data management solution that incorporates SPARQL standards. In addition, Parliament includes a high-performance SWRL-compliant rule engine, which serves as an efficient inference engine. An inference engine examines a directed graph of data and adds data to it based on a set of inference rules. This enables Parliament to fill in gaps in the data automatically and transparently, inferring additional facts and relationships in the data to enrich query results.

Cartographer

Asio Cartographer is a graphical ontology mapper based on SWRL. It utilizes the core functionality of BBN's Snoggle open-source mapping tool to assist in aligning OWL ontologies. It lets users visualize ontologies and then draw mappings between them on an intuitive graphical canvas. Cartographer then transforms those maps into SWRL/RDF or SWRL/XML for use in a knowledge base.

Scout

Asio Scout provides semantic bridges to relational databases and web services that let an organization keep their existing systems in place for as long as necessary to, for example, support ongoing operations. Scout's semantic bridges act like any passive data consumer, but unlike other counterparts, their functionality— in concert with Asio Semantic Query Distribution's high-level perspective—enables consolidated knowledge discovery that wasn't previously conceivable. Scout can be used for web portals, standalone desktop applications, or web-enabled applications.

Semantic Application Demos

Browsers and Search Portals

• Disco - Hyperdata Browser is a simple browser for navigating the Semantic Web as an unbound set of data sources. The browser renders in HTML all information that it can find on the Semantic Web about a specific resource. This resource description contains hyperlinks that allow you to navigate between resources. While you move from one resource to another, the browser dynamically retrieves information by dereferencing HTTP URIs and by following rdfs:seeAlso links.
  • Here is an online demo of Disco's presentation of DBPedia's Semantic Web database on the concept "Sociobiology."
• Umbel Subject Concepts Explorer is a lightweight ontology structure for relating Web content and data to a standard set of subject concepts. Its purpose is to provide a fixed set of reference points in a global knowledge space. These subject concepts have defined relationships between them, and can act as binding or attachment points for any Web content or data.
  • Here is an online demo of Umbel's presentation of the concept "Field of Study."
• Openlink Data Explorer is one product developed from the open-source version of the Virtuoso Universal Server product. This is the platform used by the DBPedia project, including the demos on the DBPedia page. The demo below shows the XHTML view option of a Data Viewer ontology query.
  • Here is an online demo of the OpenLink Data Explorer presentation of the concept "speed of light."
• Zitgist DataViewer lets users browse linked data on the web, starting from an RDF or OWL ontology URL.
  • Here is an online demo of the Zitgist viewer browsing an ontology on the concept of "music genre."
• The Sindice Semantic Web Index monitors, harvests existing web data published as RDF and Microformats and makes them available under a coherent umbrella of functionalities and services. Its index of data is presented as a search portal much like Google. Sindice is created at DERI, the world’s largest institute for Semantic Web research. It is based on DERI’s unique cluster technology which indexes and operates over terascale semantic data sets (trillions of statements) while also providing very high query throughputs per cluster size. Leveraging unique cluster technologies, Sindice performs sophisticated reasoning which dramatically enhances data reusability, search precision, and recall. It obtains data by focused crawling methods which detects and focuses on metadata rich internet sources.
  • Here is an online demo of the Sindice search engine.
• The RKB Explorer is an application built using awards data from the National Science Foundation (NSF). It has used this data to build ontologies around NSF grants, and users can search and browse the data through the Explorer. All URIs on this domain are resolvable, and search results deliver HTML or RDF, depending on the content. The browse interface provides viewing and navigating using RDF triples, and the query interface provides access using SPARQL. I discovered this useful application through a search on "NSF funding" using Sindice.
  • Here is an online demo for searching NSF Awards using RKB Explorer.
• Marbles Linked Data Browser is a server-side application that formats Semantic Web content for XHTML clients using Fresnel lenses and formats. Colored dots are used to correlate the origin of displayed data with a list of data sources, hence the name. Marbles provides display and database capabilities for DBpedia Mobile.
  • Here is an online demo of the Marbles browser viewer displaying linked data for the National Science Foundation.
• The Cyc Foundation Concept Browser lets users search and browse the content of the OpenCyc knowledge base.
• Brownsauce is a Semantic Web browser that lets users browse RDF files on the web. It runs as a local Java client and has a built-in Jetty web server. Brownsauce uses the Jena Semantic Web framework.

Ontology Viewers and Query Tools

• DBpedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated queries against Wikipedia and to link other datasets on the Web to Wikipedia data. DBpedia is one of the projects developed/sponsored by AKSW. A wide variety of articles and publications about DBpedia have been published (see the Resources section of this report).
• jSpace is a WebStart java application that demonstrates how one might search and query a given ontological database. There are several example database available to download for use with jSpace. jSpace's development was apparently inspired by mSpace. (mSpace was an innovative, but now defunct, project that attempted to merge the power of Google with the powerful interface of iTunes. Although the mSpace demo of a classical music explorer is not accessible now, it's well worth checking out the video demos of it.)
• Owlsight is an innovative web application that uses the Google Web Toolkit and the Est JavaScript library to let users navigate OWL ontologies, browsing the relationships between classes, properties, and instances. Owlsight uses the Pellet ontoloty reasoner.
• OpenCyc for the Semantic Web is both a project and an OWL ontology browser. Using this tool, users can access the entire OpenCyc content as downloadable OWL ontologies as well as via Semantic Web endpoints (i.e., permanent URIs). These URIs return RDF representations of each Cyc concept as well as a human-readable version when accessed via a Web Browser.

• Here is an online demo of the the OpenCyc Semantic Web result for "National Science Foundation."

Knowledge/Content Management

• The KiWi wiki project proposes a new approach to knowledge management that combines the wiki philosophy with the intelligence and methods of the Semantic Web. (KiWi stands for "Knowledge in a Wiki.")
• DeepaMehta is a software platform for knowledge management. Knowledge is represented in a semantic network and is handled collaboratively. The DeepaMehta user interface is completely based on Mind Maps / Concept Maps. Instead of handling information through applications, windows and files, with DeepaMehta the user handles all kind of information directly and individually.
  • Here is an online demo of the the DeepaMehta interface on the subject of the computer user interface.
• Semantic MediaWiki and SMW+are extensions to the MediaWiki platform, described elsewhere in this report.

Application Repositories

• MIT's Simile project has been extremely creative and productive in applying concepts of linked data, RDF, and the Semantic Web generally to demonstration applications, all available as open source. (Simile is an acronym for "Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments".) Some of its projects are included elsewhere in this report, but here is a list of some others relevant to the Semantic Web:
  • Longwell, a server application that applies concepts of faceted browsing with visualizing RDF stores.
  • PiggyBank is a Firefox add-on that enables users to develop "mashups" of web data by using "screen scrapers." The software also allows users to tag information found and embed RDF into their content.
  • RDFizers, described elsewhere in this report.
  • Referee, a server application that creates browsable RDF files from web server logs.
  • Welkin, an RDF visualizer built as a client-side java application. (Note: I couldn't get it to run on my Mac, even though MIT makes a Mac OS X disk image available.)
  • Fresnel, a vocabulary for displaying RDF.
  • Banach, a collection of operators that work on RDF graphs to infer, extend, emerge or otherwise transform a graph into another.
  • Data Collecton, a project that aims to develop a collection of RDF data sets that are generally useful for the metadata research and tools community.
• DERI (Digital Enterprise Research Institute) International is the collection of bi-lateral agreements between like minded institutes working on the Semantic Web and Web Science. Its mission is to exploit semantics for people, organizations, and systems to collaborate and interoperate on a global scale. DERI conducts and funds research in Semantic Web technologies, conducts projects that have led to numerous prototype applications, and develops ontologies. The following are a few interesting links from DERI's Irish branch in Galway:
  • Research Clusters covering such topics as eLearning, Semantic Reality, Semantic Web Services, Industrial and Scientific Applications of Semantic Web Services, and Social Software. Each cluster has its own website and projects.
  • Research Projects, a lengthy list of ongoing projects.
  • Tools, a lengthy list of software tools available for download, typically from SourceForge.
• University of Georgia's Large Scale Distributed Information Systems has a wide array of semantic applications available. The online repository has descriptions, downloads, and online demos. The applications cover such functions as visualization, ontology queries, ontology browsing, web services, and more.
• 10 Semantic Apps To Watch From the ReadWriteWeb site, this is an intriguing list of new semantic-web-related applications that are now available out there. The article gives first explains what they mean by a "Semantic Application," and then briefly describes each application's innovative use of this new technology. The ten applications listed are:
  • Freebase
  • Powerset
  • Twine
  • Adaptive Blue
  • Hakia
  • Talis
  • TrueKnowledge
  • Tripit
  • ClearForest
  • Spock
It's also interesting to read the comments at the end of this article, many of which are from readers pointing out other semantic applications they have discovered.

Semantic Website Enhancements

Semantic Web Crawling: A Sitemap Extension

This specification allows website managers to provide an RDF sitemap which would be visible to users browsing the Semantic Web.

Triplify

Triplify is an open-source, light-weight add-on to web applications that can read the content of the application's relational database(s) and expose their inherent semantics. According to the Triplify website, for a typical Web application a configuration for Triplify can be created in less than an hour. Triplify is based on the definition of relational database queries for a specific Web application in order to retrieve valuable information and to convert the results of these queries into RDF, JSON and Linked Data. A "triplified" web application can then provide its data to other applications on the web, enabling use of its information in "mashups."

The Triplify project already has configurations for a variety of widely used content management systems, such as OpenConf, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, osCommerce, and phpBB. (The page that has links to these configurations also has a great list of other Semantic Web resources.) Triplify is one of the applications developed by AKSW. (I plan to download Triplify and integrate it in an instance of WordPress on my home computer.)

Microformats

Microformats are orthogonally related to the Semantic Web through their use of RDF-like attributes in CSS Class elements. Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. They are highly correlated with semantic XHTML, sometimes referred to a "real world semantics", or "lossless XHTML." Microformats are designed to enable more/better structured blogging and web publishing. The Microformats site provides an array of code and tools for use in producing markup in microformats.

RDFa in HTML

RDFa in HTML is a proposed W3C specification that enables markup of RDF-like syntax into XHTML content. RDFa in XHTML provides a set of XHTML attributes to augment human-readable contenta with machine-readable hints. It enables the expression of simple and more complex datasets using RDFa, and in particular turns the existing human-visible text and links into machine-readable data without repeating content. The goals and approach of this specification are similar to that of Microformats, but it extends XHTML by use of and RDF-like syntax rather than using CSS classes.

Exhibit

Exhibit is a three-tier web application framework written in Javascript, which you can use with various kinds of data files, including JSON and RDF, to produce knowledge-enhancing "mashups" like Google Maps. Exhibit creates interactive user interfaces displaying record data sets on maps, timelines, scatter plots, interactive tables, etc. Exhibit is one of the projects in knowledge management developed by MIT, partly with NSF funding.

• There are several online demos of Exhibit presentations starting here.

Semantic MediaWiki

Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) is a free extension of MediaWiki – the wiki system powering Wikipedia – that helps to search, organise, tag, browse, evaluate, and share the wiki's content. While traditional wikis contain only texts that computers can neither understand nor evaluate, SMW adds semantic annotations that bring the power of the Semantic Web to the wiki.

SMW+

SMW+ is Ontoprise's production version of the open source Semantic MediaWiki + Halo Extension software, which was originally developed as part of the 2003-04 Halo project for scientific information discovery. SMW+ makes the process of annotating wiki content much easier by adding a variety of useful interface tools, and it also helps writers research information by using the wiki's built-in ontology browser. SMW+ is designed to enable and enhance knowledge collaboration in organizations. It's available as a free download from Sourceforge, or as a reasonably priced bundled version for Windows. Ontoprise also offers service contracts for the product. The impressive detailed list of features on the Ontoprise website gives a good overview of SMW+ capabilities. These include:

• Semantic Toolbar: Lets users create, inspect and alter semantic annotations in the wiki text without knowing the annotation syntax.
• Advanced Annotation Mode: In this mode, wiki pages are displayed in the same way as they are displayed in the standard view mode. However, users can easily add annotations by simply highlighting the word or passage they want to annotate.
• Ontology Browser: Allows easy navigation through the wiki's ontology without the need to access individual articles. It helps the user to understand the ontology and to keep an overview about it.
• Question Formulation Interface: Normally, making queries against the semantic wiki involve knowing and using a complex syntax. The Question Formulation Interface provides a graphical interface that lets inexperienced users easily compose their own queries.
• Auto completion: This tool greatly simplifies users' ability to generate annotations. With auto completion activated, users don't have to care about correct spelling of an article’s or property's name, because the tool extracts possible completions from the semantic context. For example, it checks what attribute values are possible for a particular attribute and show only these to the user. This tool is used in the wiki text editor, the semantic tool bar, the query interface and the combined search.

ARC

ARC is an API for LAMP-based (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) websites. Its goal is to reach out to the larger Web developer community, to enable the combination of efforts like microformats with the utility of selected RDF solutions such as agile data storage, run-time model changes, standardized query interfaces, and mashup chaining. ARC tries to keep things simple and flexible. All features are backed by practical use cases. One of the underlying premises of ARC is that RDF is a productivity booster that can make website implementation much faster if it's used pragmatically.

ARC includes the following capabilities:

• Parsers for RDF/XML, Turtle, SPARQL + SPOG, Legacy XML, HTML "tag soup," RSS 2.0, and others.
• Serializers for N-Triples, RDF/JSON, RDF/XML, Turtle, SPOG dumps.
• RDF Storage using MySQL with support for SPARQL queries
• SemHTML RDF extractors for Duplin Core, eRDF, microformats, OpenID, RDFa
• Use of remote stores, allowing the website to query remote SPARQL endpoints as if they were local stores (results are returned as native PHP arrays)
• SPARQLScript, a SPARQL-based scripting language combined with output templating
• Light-weight inferencing

ARC applications and websites. Of as much interest as ARC itself are the numerous applications and extensions that have already been built with it, many of which are useful for semantically enhancing websites on their own. The following are a few examples:

• dooit - Simple to-do lists
• irs - (i)nterlinking of (r)esources with (s)emantics
• Life Science Identifier (LSID) Tester
• OpenVocab - Community-maintained RDF vocabulary workspace
• paggr - smart data + personalized portals
• Scregg, an "Online Semantic Community Framework"
• SIOC Importer for WordPress
• SMOB - Semantic Microblogging
• SPARQL Endpoint for Library of Congress Subject Headings (2,441,494 triples)
• SPARQLBot - a tiny software agent that simplifies access to linked data and the general Semantic Web
• SparqlPress - WordPress enhanced through use of linked data. Spoogle is a demo site for SparqlPress.
• Talis Applications:

• Moriarty
• Semantic Web Formats Converter
• Store Wrapper

• Trice - A Semantic Web framework (still in development).

Calais Marmoset

Marmoset, one of several Semantic Web tools from the OpenCalais project, is a simple yet powerful tool that makes it easy for publishers to generate and embed metadata in their content in preparation for Yahoo! Search's new open developer platform, SearchMonkey, as well as other metacrawlers and semantic applications. Marmoset uses the OpenCalais web service, which can provide search engine crawlers with rich semantic data to consider when they index a site's pages. Yahoo!'s search engine can analyze this semantic data, provided in Microformats, and other search engines are likely to follow. As a result, users accessing a Marmoset-enhanced website through search engines will get better targeted results.

Other Resources

Ontology Libraries One of the best features of ontologies is their design for reuse. It's not clear to me what happens when you encounter a dozen ontologies for "person" or "job", etc., in the ontology libraries on the web, but it's certainly useful that you can search for existing ontologies and bring the objects you want to model into your own ontology. There are a few ontologies for commonly used objects that are nearly defacto standards now:

• Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF) for People and Organizations
• Dublin Core for Publications
• Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) for thesauri
• OWL-Time for time intervals
• SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities) is commonly used in conjunction with the FOAF vocabulary for expressing personal profile and social networking information.
• Tags, Places, and other specific topics, a repository of ontologies developed by Richard Newman.

The following is a list of other resources available for finding ontologies on specific topics:

• Protege Ontology Library This library is part of the Protege Wiki.

• Simile Ontologies This library includes those developed by MIT as part of the Simile project as well as a list of others that have been used by the project.

• Swoogle Swoogle is a research project being carried out by the ebiquity research group in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland

• Google Google can restrict its search to files of type "owl", as this sample search shows.

• OntoSelect Ontology Library This library has an ontology search system with several unique and innovative features, including use of Wikipedia topics as the basis for one type of search.

• BioPortal BioPortal is a sophisticated web application for accessing and sharing biomedical ontologies. It features several advanced search and visualization tools, as well as tools for mapping concepts between different ontologies.

• SchemaWeb This is a comprehensive directory of RDF schemas which, in addition to typical browse-and-search interfaces, also provides an extensive set of web services to be used by software agents for processing RDF data.

• Watson This link points to Watson's terrific web interface, which is one of the best for searching out ontologies that match your topics of interest. Watson also has a Protege plugin, but I haven't been able to make it work. The plugin, when working, would let a developer search and add classes to their ontology directly from within Protege.

• TONES Ontology Repository This repository is primarily designed to be a central location for ontologies that might be of use to ontology tools developers for testing purposes.

• Ping the Semantic Web Developed as a free web service by Zitgist, a company "incubated" by OpenLink, PingtheSemanticWeb (PTSW) is an archive of recently created/updated RDF documents on the web. If one of those documents is created or updated, its author can notify PTSW that the document has been created or updated by pinging the service with the URL of the document. PTSW is used by crawlers or other types of software agents to know when and where the latest updated RDF documents can be found. This dynamically updated library displays the 25 most recently updated ontologies, in real time. Using PTSW's data store, you can retrieve data on all RDF files by namespace or by class, with the option to download the files.

Papers, Projects and Documentation

• W3C Semantic Web Activity This portal can be thought of as the Semantic Web's "Home Page." It brings together a vast amount of primary source documentation of the Semantic Web's languages and other standard specifications, including OWL, RDF, RDFa in XHTML, and SPARQL. In addition, this portal gathers all the major ongoing projects involving the Semantic Web and the groups conducting them. The page also lists a large number of publications and presentations on Semantic Web topics.

• Rich Tags This paper describes a proposal/project for developing a system that uses semantic tags for enhancing the searchability of web pages. (The proposal sounds similar to the W3C specification for RDFa in XHTML.)

• Projects That Use Protege This page on the "old" Protege wiki has an extensive list of applications built with Protege.

• Building A Semantic Website This article is a little old (2001), but has a good overview of the steps and components of building a web application using RDF ontologies.

• Ontology Extraction from Text Based on Linguistic Analysis This paper describes the concepts and technical approaches behind the OntoLT Protege plug-in.

• Extracting Ontologies from Relational Databases A detailed, highly technical paper describing the approach adopted and the actual extraction algorithm used by the tool OntoSynt.

• TONES TONES is a European Union research project into the design and use of Thinking ONtologiES. Begun in 2005, it is scheduled to complete its work in 2008. The TONES website has links to all of the outputs of the project, including software tools and research papers. This PDF contains a 2006 presentation overview of the TONES project.

• RapidOWL This methodology for developing OWL ontologies is based on the idea of iterative refinement, annotation and structuring of a knowledge base. A central paradigm for the RapidOWL methodology is the concentration on smallest possible information chunks. The collaborative aspect comes into play, when those information chunks can be selectively added, removed, annotated with comments or ratings. Design rationales for the RapidOWL methodology are to be light-weight, easy-to-implement, and support of spatially distributed and highly collaborative scenarios. This methodology is implemented in the OntoWiki software project.

• Agile Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web (AKSW) AKSW has been very prolific in providing the Semantic Web community with eye-opening research projects, which have led to several complete applications, including: Powl and OntoWiki, DBPedia, Triplify, and R2D2. Their work has also spawned numerous other public interfaces to the Semantic Web. In addition, the AKSW website publishes a large number of presentations and research papers describing the work leading to their various Semantic Web applications.

• DBPedia information This useful page collects blog posts about DBpedia, publications about the project and related websites.

• Linked Data Comes of Age This very useful article clearly explains what is meant by linked data based on RDF and how it fits into the overarching vision of the Semantic Web.

• Zitgist's Papers and Reports This is a useful list of resources on subjects relevant to Semantic Web research. The Zitgist Lab site also has a good page of documents on Best Practices for RDF.

• RDF Schemas This site has a clear explanation of the various "vocabularies" used to develop ontologies: RDF, RDFS, OWL, and Dublic Core. The site also has a terrific list of resources for programmers.

• Nodalities Magazine Sponsored by Talis, this free, bimonthly online magazine (released in PDF format) tries to bridge the divide between those building the Semantic Web and those interested in applying it to their business requirements. The magazine is supported by the Nodalities blog, podcasts, and Semantic Web development work.

• DERI Papers and Reports This site contains a large collection of research papers and technical reports produced by DERI International.

Business Resources This list includes companies I've encountered that appear to have substantial expertise in applying Semantic Web technologies to practical business requirements. BBN Technologies

BBN is a technology company with a broad range of expertise, services, and products—including support for Semantic Web application development. As an indication of the impressive expertise of this company, BBN was the prime contractor for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in development of DAML (DARPA Agent Markup Language), which then led to their development of OWL. BBN also provides the Asio Tool Suite for third-party development and the open source Snoogle and Parliament tools.

Cycorp

Cycorp is a leading provider of semantic technologies that bring intelligence and common sense reasoning to a wide variety of software applications. The Cyc software combines ontologies and knowledge bases with a powerful reasoning engine and natural language interfaces to enable the development of novel knowledge-intensive applications.

Clark & Parsia

Clark & Parsia is a small R&D firm—specializing in Semantic Web and advanced systems—based in Washington, DC. They have expertise in a range of semantic-web technologies, including OWL, RDF, reasoning at scale, and ontology development. They offer commercial support for Pellet, a best-of-breed Open Source OWL DL reasoner in Java, and related systems.

Semantic Arts

This company helps companies (medium/large with 1,000 to 10,000 employees) migrate to semantically-based SOAs (Service Oriented Architectures).

Zitgist

Zitgist has a number of interesting products for viewing and querying the Semantic Web, as well as offering services for ontology development, content conversion, and web services. They also provide several open-source products for both consumer and corporate use in furthering use of the Semantic Web.

Semantic Web Company

The Semantic Web Company (SWC), based in Vienna, Austria, provides companies, institutions and organizations with professional services related to the Semantic Web, semantic technologies and Social Software. They provide services in consulting, education, and project management, among others.

Talis

Talis has developed its own application development platform—the Talis Platform—and also builds Semantic Web applications for other organizations. To date, Talis' applications have been geared to meeting the needs of libraries and academic institutions.

Semsol

Semsol offers a wide range of Semantic Web-related services, from consulting and data modeling to interface design and production. Semsol is a pioneer in bringing Semantic Web technologies to widely deployed server and database environments. Semsol is the company behind development of the open-source tool ARC, as well as for several of the applications built on top of ARC, including Trice, SPARQLBot, and paggr (referenced earlier).

Cortex

Cortex's software platform and consulting business is based on their Competitiva system. Cortex’s technology proposes to mine unstructured data on the Web, using Competitiva's intelligent system to automatically convert pages and documents to a semantic format (i.e. RDF). Cortex has an R&D team working to bridge the Semantic Web gap by automatically enriching text with semantic content for themselves and their customers.