scrambledmindsMixed up thoughts on the web world, photography and life.

I use a lot of the google tools like gmail, google calendar, google analytics etc etc. When I started using Google Gears so that you could use these web tools offline it started creating shortcuts on my mac that could be put straight into the applications folder and used to start them like normal local applications, including putting them in the dock for easy access. I did a bit of digging around and created similar shortcuts for other services as well and thought it might be useful for other people. I’ve included:

• Google Mail – email, the greatest time waster of the 21st century.
• Google Calendar – track where you’re supposed to be right now.
• Google Docs – online document storage, creation and collaboration.
• Google Reader – read news (rss) feeds to your hearts content.
• Google Analytics – get stats about your website.
• Google Webmaster Tools – understand how google is interacting with your website.
• Google Adsense – place adverts on your website and get paid by google.
• Google Adwords – advertise with google.
• Remember the Milk – a great web based todo list manager.

These currently load safari as the browser. You can download the files here.

Technical bit – not an expert, just enough knowledge to cause havoc

To modify the shortcut, just right click or click while holding the control button on the keyboard and select “Show Package Contents”. You need to change the name in the Info.plist file, change the url in the launch.sh file and change the icon file. You can then make any shortcut you want. You’ll need to do this if you use Google Apps for Your Domain.

I assume you can also change the browser in launch.sh by changing the line ‘/Applications/Safari.app’ to ‘/Applications/Firefox.app’ or any browser of your choice that you have installed. I don’t know if you can just set it to start in the default browser. Does anyone know?

If you want to change the icon, you can replace the icons.icns file. BTW, if you want a tool to create the required icon file in a snap, check out img2icns.