Erica Sadun
erica at ericasadun.com
Erica Sadun | 7:45 pm | April 16, 2009 | Macintosh, Update, Utilities
Find the universal binary here. Source code at github.com/erica
Erica Sadun | 2:48 pm | January 16, 2008 | Macintosh, Utilities
I’ve uploaded three new Mac utilities intended to help with touch/iPhone backups.
blist. Run this in any of your ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup folders. It lists what each mdbackup file backs up.
bdump. Extracts the property list portion of an mdbackup file. It does not checking to see whether there’s actually a plist *in* the mdbackup, so use with care.
bload. Inserts a property list into the Data segment of an mdbackup file. Again, use with care and only if you know what you’re doing.
Between bdump and bload, you can extract a property list, edit it by hand and re-insert it into the mdbackup format.
Erica Sadun | 10:56 am | November 25, 2007 | Macintosh, Bug Reports, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
Erica Sadun | 10:00 pm | November 5, 2007 | Update, Macintosh, Applications, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
I just finished a fairly exhaustive SendFile overhaul to version 0.32. The new version allows you to play back audio files that were sent to you via Bonjour sharing. In addition, the file currently being shared now appears in green and when you scan for a file, a progress indicator appears until the file is found, transfered and saved to disk.You can send files from SendFile to your Mac (via share) and catch them with FileCatcher. You can send files from your Mac with ShareFile and catch them in SendFile.Next up, adding bonjour sharing to SendSong and you’ll be able to share your music to SendFile and play it back using the new playback feature.
Erica Sadun | 2:00 pm | November 4, 2007 | Macintosh, Utilities, Software
On Shaun Erickson’s request, I’ve put together plhelper, a Universal binary application for the Mac. Plhelper does much of what plutil does–and is in fact based on my iPhone port of that program–but also allows you to do three things that plutil does not. You can look up a value by key (-v), you can set a value by key (-s -v), and you can create a new plist (-t, to “touch”).
% /usr/local/bin/plhelper
plhelper: [command_option] [other_options] file...
Command options are (-l is the default):
-h show this message and exit
-l output a list of the properties
-t create new property list(s) and exit
-c fmt rewrite the property list in format
fmt is one of xml1 binary1
-v key retrieve the value for key
-s key set the value for key with the option given in -v
(always outputs to xml)
Other options are not yet implemented.
Erica Sadun | 9:59 pm | November 1, 2007 | Macintosh, Applications, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
ShareFile is a Mac sharing utility that throws a file to an iPhone or iPod touch. Right now it only supports single files and it’s still pretty crude. You can download a copy from the Erica Utilities folder. To use, launch and drag a file onto the text field. After the file has been received, the field clears and you’re ready to send a new file.
I do some basic checks that the file exists and is not a folder. If you have trouble using this, make sure your firewall is set up to allow the Bonjour service to work. And, if you are so inclined, you can use ShareFile and FileCatcher between Macs without any iPhones or iPod touches involved at all.
Erica Sadun | 5:03 pm | | Update, Macintosh, Utilities, Applications, iPod touch, Software, iPhone
Several updates today based on my attempt to standardize the way I deal with bonjour file sharing. In Erica Utilities, both catch and throw are updated with the new protocol, as is SendFile. These utilities now all use a common service (_sadun._tcp.) and are using the beginnings of a standard protocol that describes the file being sent and requests made about that file.
In addition, I have updated my Macintosh-based File Catcher. Interaction is no longer needed. Just run it and it will catch files and put them on your desktop. This is very handy when snapping screenshots. I hope to shortly put together another Erica Utility, snapngo, that snaps the screen and throws it to your Macintosh. Watch this space.