German Keyboard wows!

If you are out of luck (like me) and got stuck with a powerbook with a German keyboard layout, then may be this post will be a little help for you.

Powerbooks with German keyboard layouts come with many important characters not visible. That is you won't be able to find them on your keyboard. These characters include important ones like "\" ,"{" and "}". To be able to type them in, you will need to enter a combination of keys. Here is a very short list of common ones you might need...

{ = option + 8
} = option + 9
| = option + 7
] = option + 6
[ = option + 5
\ = option + shift + 7

My personal advice is, if you are into any kind of programming then save yourself from the hassle and stay away from German keyboards ;)

Cool OS X toys!

I have been playing lately with a couple of really slick mac apps. The first one is called Coverflow (see screenshot below). Coverflow allows you to browse through your iTunes library using the albums artwork. Although it needs extra polish, it looks very promising. When you open Coverflow for the first time, it will take a couple of minutes to index your library. After that you can navigate through the albums either with your right and left arrows, using the horizontal scroll bar in the app itself or even using your mighty mouse horizontal scroll wheel.

-Screenshot of my library in Coverflow-

Another app I have been really impressed with is called Quicksilver. Quicksilver is geared toward keyboard-savvy users. You can launch about everything from Quicksilver; websites, system preferences, applications, and even navigate through your iTunes library, all with a few keyboard strokes. Trust me on this one, Quicksilver will let you gain wizard-like speeds when working with your machine. BTW it is orders of magnitude faster than Spotlight. Aaaaand it is FREE!!