• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Unix

    Pull iTunes App Categories via Bash

    I love bash one-liners. Here’s one it took me a bit to get just right that will pull the Category of an app based on the URL of the app. curl -s 'https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/self-service-mobile/id718509958?mt=8' | grep -Eo '"applicationCategory":.*?[^\\]",' If you don’t already have the URL for an app, it can be obtained via a lookup using curl https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=718509958 If you’ll be performing these kinds of operations en masse from within server-side scripting, Apple has a number of programs, including the Affiliate Program, which allow you to do so more gracefully. But as a quick and dirty part of a script, this could solve a need. More importantly, hey, parse some json…

  • Mac OS X,  Mass Deployment

    Duplicating Flash Drives

    Ever need to distribute a whole lot of flash drives? Need to copy data to thousands of drives? Daunting. There are a ton of services that can do the dirty work for you for a few dollars per drive, but most include that in a markup to sell you the drive and charge for printing on the drives whether you want to or not. If you have the drives and want to do the dirty work yourself then that 4 port USB hub and that copy of Carbon Copy Cloner is going to get old fast. Lucky you, there are a number of solutions that will do the work for…