Pukka

Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire fame mentions a holiday sale going on right now for his and NewsGator's other products. If you don't have NetNewsWire or MarsEdit, go check them out!

Pukka has had NetNewsWire integration from the start and Brent was kind enough to add support for Pukka way back when.

Apps working together in harmony... it's enough to warm the cockles of your heart.

I just wanted to say thanks to all of the folks who purchased Pukka yesterday to support Child's Play Day. I definitely saw a boost in sales and I've passed on the proceeds to the charity. I can't wait to see the grand total from all of the developers!

I'm happy to announce that tomorrow, Code Sorcery Workshop will be participating in a charity day for Child's Play. The short version is that all (yes, that's 100%) of the proceeds that I gather from Pukka for tomorrow, December 7, will go towards Child's Play. If you've been thinking about registering, now is a great time to do so!

Child's Play is a Seattle-based charity that provides games for kids in children's hospitals over the holidays. Here's a quote from The Seattle Times:

"Child’s Play is putting the media’s negative portrayals of video games to shame, and showing the world that gamers are good people, too."

For me, gaming was a big part of my childhood that influences me to this day. Problem solving, teamwork, and just general escapism (in moderation) are great things, and I think that it's wonderful that I can put my programming skills to use towards helping brighten the days of children who are hospital-bound over the holidays.

So again, if you are on the verge of registering Pukka, what are you waiting for? And while you're at it, check out the other great software developers who are participating as well. Thanks to Mike Zornek of Clickable Bliss for coming up with and organizing the idea.

Just wanted to post a note that I went to Steve Wozniak's local iWoz book signing tonight here in DC. It was mentioned as the first time a book has sold out in advance of the author arriving. Congrats Woz! While it was a little too crowded to 'meet' him in any meaningful way, I hope I left a mark when he signed my MacBook Pro! He was generous enough to also sign my copy of iWoz.

I'd also like to note that though I've been a little quiet lately, work is happening behind the scenes. I've recently moved to freelancing and have freed up some more time to work on Pukka and other forthcoming projects. I'll try to live by the adage of "under promise, over deliver" so that's all I'll say about that for now ;-)

Keep the feedback coming in and I look forward to releasing some new goodies in the near future!

From splee.blog:

The following AppleScript takes the current page in safari and uses Pukka to send the link to del.icio.us. If there is any text selected it gets added as the description, as does the referrer. The slight twist is that it uses some javascript to ask what tags to assign to the page. [...] That is as near as it gets to Safari integration with del.icio.us from what I can find.

Thanks for the work on this, Lee. I was hoping someone would figure out how to get it to ask for tags. ;-)

I thought I'd point out some of the usefulness of the new AppleScript features in Pukka in a little more detail. With an application launcher like LaunchBar or Quicksilver that can launch AppleScripts, you can bookmark things to del.icio.us in only a few keystrokes.

Case in point: I find myself frequently needing to bookmark things to read later. So my workflow is this: I browse them in Safari, hit Command-Space to bring up LaunchBar, and type B to bring up my entry for the Bookmark current Safari page to read later script.

I hit enter and a few seconds later see a Growl notification that the page has been bookmarked. Pukka doesn't even come to the foreground and I have posted a link complete with URL, title, referrer (if any), and any selected text in the description. The link is also tagged @toread and is marked as private. I didn't have to even see Pukka nor wait for any delays with del.icio.us for all of this to happen.

Thanks, AppleScript!

If you use the above script, be sure to edit it in Script Editor first to change it to your desired username, tag(s), and privacy settings.

I'd love to see what scripts you can come up with, so feel free to post in the comments if you have any scripts or any ideas for scripts. Also check out this TUAW post on enabling the AppleScript menu if you don't normally use a launcher.

I forgot to mention last week that Josh Teague Studios and I have been working together on user interface ideas for Pukka. He provided the original inspiration for the design of the private bookmarking in the last release and we've been talking about other directions things could go in. Have a look at his ideas here and be sure to check out the rest of his portfolio!

Well, it's finally out! After a chaotic July, we've put the finishing touches on Pukka 1.3 and it's available immediately. This version brings AppleScript support, private posting, and a small convenience feature -- now you can prevent Pukka from resetting after a post by holding down the Option key. That way, you can quickly post a link to two or more accounts without having to retype everything each time.

As for private posting, just turn it on the preferences and you're ready to go. We realize that del.icio.us is about social bookmarking, but as they have implemented private posting and you have asked for it, we wanted to provide the option.

Lastly, on the AppleScript front, you can now script many parts of Pukka's behavior. Here are two scripts to get you started, but check the AppleScript dictionary for the full details.

• Bookmark current Safari page to read later: Takes the title, URL and any selected text for the frontmost Safari window and posts it tagged as "@toread", privately, with a mention of the referrer, to the account of your choice
• Bookmark Google Maps for contacts: Takes the selected contact(s) in Address Book and posts a link to a Google Map of their home address to your del.icio.us account, privately, as well as opens the map in Safari

These are only demo scripts, and we're not really AppleScript junkies, so we'll leave it to you to come up with more great ideas on how to integrate Pukka into your workflow. Feel free to get in touch or leave a comment here with what you've got!

As I mentioned previously, the next version of Pukka will have AppleScript support, among other new features. I'm looking for a couple people to test it out, specifically the AppleScript functionality. So, if you're interested and feel you know how AppleScript should be done, either leave a comment or send me an email and I'll hook you up.

Thanks in advance!

A new release of Pukka is in the works and should be out very soon. Unfortunately, Code Sorcery Workshop experienced some damaging flooding in the past week during all of the severe weather and everything has been turned upside down for the time being. But the gnomes have been bailing water for a while now and although we are relocating, we will continue to bring updates once we get back into the swing of things. In the meantime, remember to give Pukka a spin and check out the screencast if you haven't already to see what you might be missing.

Stay dry!