Mac Command-Line Notification Tools

Here’s a collection of useful command-line notification tools for Mac developers. I’ve been using these for long-running build jobs or other tasks which I’m waiting for. The three methods I describe here are voice audio, system notifications, and SMS text messaging. Voice Audio Voice audio is built into Mac OSX and available from the command line with the say utility. To learn the various options, refer to the say man page (or locally just man say). In the simplest case, just give it a text string to read aloud: $ say “hello” Run this at the end of a build…

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Tech Advent Calendars – 2016

It’s that time of the year again and I’m happy to see Advent calendars for many tech communities are still going strong. As in past years (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and for some reason skipped 2015), I’ve gathered a few here that I’ll be following this year: 24 ways (web design & development) – Feed awsadvent (Amazon Web Services) – Feed JVM Advent (Java language and JVM) – Feed Perf Planet (performance) – Feed Perl Advent Calendar 2016 (Perl language) – Feed sysadvent (System admin topics) – Feed UXmas (UX for everyone) – no RSS feed In years past I…

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Posted in: Web

Recommended Tech Podcasts

Here’s what I’m currently listening to when I can. They’ve been piling up a little bit now that my commute is so short, but last week I had a round-trip drive from San Jose to Fresno so really got caught up :) See last year’s updates at Best Technical Podcasts. .NET Rocks! [rss] Hosted by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, this is probably the podcast I’ve listened to the longest. As their site says, the shows “range from introductory information to hardcore geekiness.” In particular I really like their “geek out” episodes, most recently: Supersonic Aircraft Geek Out Startups For…

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Tweetfave Growth Tops 240K Tweets

Ever since I launched Tweetfave in 2013, it’s been quietly working away and slowly growing. (For some more of the background, see Brief History of Tweetfave.) An update on the numbers so far: Over 200 users have tried the service, with over 100 still active Over 240,000 favorite tweets have been marked and emailed Here’s a growth chart which shows the tweet count growing at a steady rate ever since we went live. The rate of new users cooled off after that first year but is still growing by a few each month. The growth has basically been some word-of-mouth…

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