[Windows/Mac] For those who don’t know, Spotify is a new music streaming service based out of Sweden currently making waves around the world. It allows for instant access to Spotify’s database of 4.5 million tracks through searching for artists, songs, albums, labels and genres for no cost and completely legally. Of course with something this good, there’s always a hitch. Currently, Spotify only supports access in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, France and Spain – some of which require an invite.

Spotify interface.

Not in a supported country?

Not to fear! Thanks to my super-incredible Google-fu (not really), I found a posting on a forum detailing how to set up an account online and download the program. All that’s needed is a proxy to set up our account and once that’s set up, the proxy is no longer required and you’re home free. Quoted below is the original forum posting found here.

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, THIS DOES NOT WORK IN THE US. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CONFIRM THIS FOR ME, FOLLOW THE STEPS BELOW AND LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS.

“Step 1. Find a good UK proxy. Easiest will be web-based, since you’ll only have to use it to register. I used this one.

Step 2. Through the proxy, visit https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

Step 3. Register. You’re going to need a UK postal code, the one I used is LS18 5AZ, but you might find another one on Google.

Step 4. Download the installer. It should give you a link, otherwise use this one.

Step 5. Install it and enjoy your music. No need for any proxies or anything, you’re just enjoying free music. One extra pro here is that if you listen to it through an unsupported country there are no ads!

Step 6. Set your country to your actual country in the settings.

So, there you go, enjoy.

Oh, and once you have it, you can try it out with this link.”

Happy loophole-ing!

Recently, I launched my new design blog on Tumblr to show off recent designs/sketches along with pictures and other sources of inspiration I come across on the web. It is connected to my portfolio site which is located at PixelRock.ca. Feel free to check it out at jahfer.tumblr.com. Enjoy

Want the latest and greatest Firefox build but find that when you install it, none of you extensions work anymore? WEll here’s the simple solution – although this is not always guaranteed to work, in my case, it helped a lot.

Step 1: Open a new page and type about:config in the address bar

Step 2: Right click on the page and select New > Boolean

Step 3: Enter extensions.checkCompatibility as the name

Step 4: Choose False

All done! Now restart Firefox, and you should be good to go!

One of the major gripes I have with Safari is that when you click a link, it opens the page in a new window. I find this totally throws me off and I end up with a bunch of windows and a cluttered mess. Luckily, there’s a quick workaround.

First, quit Safari by going to Safari>Quit Safari (or ⌘Q). Next, open up the Terminal, which can be found in Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app. Then all you have to do is copy the following text and hit enter.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Once you hit enter, you can quit the Terminal and relaunch Safari. Now you will notice that all licked links open in tabs instead of new windows!

This is my desktop as of current. The window in the center along with the list on the side are just a skinned Adium with some tweaks in the settings; The wallpaper I made; The list on the paper is a combination of GeekTool and iCalBuddy; the date at the top of the “page” is GeekTool as well; The album cover in the bottom left is from CoverSutra. The circle in the bottom right is from DropCopy. Any more questions, feel free to ask.

Things, by the folks at Cultured Code, is a very simple and organized task manager that works with most users’ needs for a task manager. The Things sidebar is broken down into three main sections: Collect, Focus and Organize. Let’s start with Collect.

The Collect section in Things is where new to-dos that haven’t been sorted will be sent to. In short, it’s your dumping ground for to-dos. Once you’ve inputted all of your things that need to be done, it’s times to move into the second section, Focus.

The Focus section of Things is where you’ll be spending most of your time, and is also what makes Things so great to use. It’s divided into four main parts: Today, Next, Scheduled and Someday. Any tasks that you feel you should be able to complete that day, you can place in the Today section. The checkbox to the left of it will turn yellow indicating that it should be completed today. The Next area is where you will place items that you can complete once you’ve finished everything in your Today section. Scheduled is used if you want to repeat to-do items more than once on a regular basis or want a specific to-do to appear on a ceartain date. For example, you have to ask your boss something at work, but you aren’t able to do it because it’s the weekend and your boss is away, so you move it to the scheduled section and set it to appear on Monday in your Today section. Very handy. Finally, the Someday section is used for items that you don’t want to accomplish right now, but will want to eventually – such as re-doing the basement, but you don’t have the money right now so you file it under Someday.

Now for the final section: Organize. In here, you can create Projects and Areas. A project is basically a multi-step goal that you have that can be accomplished. An area on the other hand, is http://a5.s3.p.quickshareit.com/files/button5b9fa7.png that can not actually ever be finished. Taking the previous example of building a kitchen, lets say you finally have the money to do it. You would make a project  called “Redo Kitchen” and place all your to-dos for that inside there such as “Pick out backsplash” or “Find nice cupboards” etc. If you were to have a Work folder, you wouldn’t make it a project because it can’t actually be completed. This is what the Areas section is for. You can make a new area called “Work” and place all of your to-dos for it in there.

And that is the gist of how Things works as a to-do list manager. There are some other neat features that Things also has. First of all, you can invoke the Quick Entry panel using the hotkey of your choice (I use F5), which brings up a nice HUD for inputting all the things you need for a new to-do: title, tags, notes, due date and its location inside of Things. They also save your data in an open XML file format which means that third parties are able to communicate with Things and your to-do list is viewable using any modern browser, regardless of operating system. Cultured Code also has built a beautiful iPhone/iPod touch application that’s available through iTunes for $9.99 [ ]. The app syncs over-the-air with your Mac as long as the application is open on both systems. The only issues I have dfound with the app would be the lack of support for Areas or tags for to-dos. To get around the Areas issue, I just use Projects section instead, which I haven’t found any issues with.

Overall, Things is a very solid application – and now with the ability to access it on your iPod/iPhone – quite versatile. My ONE complaint? No web-syncing.

Things is currently available as a free preview until 1.0 is released at the Macworld Expo ’09  on January 6. The price for version 1.0 will be $49, but if you sign up to their newsletter before it’s official release, you’ll gain a 20% discount bringing the cost down to $39.

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The beta of the latest Ubuntu distribution is hot off the presses! There are a number of improvements over the older version (8.04), which I pointed out in my previous post about the alpha. To summarize:

• create a private, encrypted directory within each user’s home directory
• screen notifications for changing resolutions for multiple monitors
• limited-permission guest account
• a new theme
• the log out panel applet has been completely replaced
• new wallpaper
• new pam-auth-update tool
• BBC plug-in for Totem
• Samba 3.2
• a “Last Successful Boot” recovery option

You can download the beta from Ubuntu’s web site or if you aren’t ready to take the plunge, the release candidate will be released October 23 with the final release being unveiled just after that on October 30.

As many people know, the new version of Ubuntu, 8.10, is being released in October. Some have probably tried the Alphas of it, but my guess is that a lot of people haven’t. I tried the 4th alpha of Intrepid Ibex along with the 5th – both which crashed my computer. This is definitly not the case for most people, I’m just…”special”, I guess. This evening I found a nice article showing the updates coming to the oerating system.

The most notable changes being the option to automatically create a private, encrypted directory within each user’s home directory, screen notifications for changing resolutions for multiple monitors, a limited-permission guest account, a new theme, and the logout panel applet has been completely replaced by the new user-switching agent (see picture above). It offers switching to the new, limited-permission guest account. When Pidgin or Empathy are running, you can also use it to change online status.

If you feel compelled to update to the latest and greatest, simply make sure you have Ubuntu 8.04 and press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager -d” (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release ’8.10′ is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

[I' Been to Ubuntu]

Found out a new version of Wine was released? Need to get the updated version? Don’t worry, the process is quite simple.

1. Remove the wine that comes with Ubuntu (if you’ve installed it)(sudo apt-get remove wine)

2. Open a terminal and type:

3. Type:

4. Add one of the following to your sources.list

5. Type the following:

Quote:

6. Type the following:

7. To install wine either type:

Or by using the Synaptic Package Manager under System->Administration.

[Ubuntu Forums]

Here’s a link to 50+ amazing different text effects that can be created in Adobe Photoshop. They’re all quite stunning in their own way. I, personally, have tried a couple of them out han have been pleased with the effects. Check them out here.