Posts with tag mac
Posted Oct 10th 2007 8:00AM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Blogging, Microsoft, Shareware, Freeware
There are two fantastic options for offline blogging (that is, managing a blog without using the web-based browser interface the blogging service provides). The first is
Windows Live Writer Beta, which, as the name would suggest is a Windows app, but one that's so useful it might compel Mac users to invest in
Parallels Desktop just to run it. The second is
Ecto, a Mac-native blog composition tool that many bloggers swear by. (Ecto also runs on Windows.)
We've tried them both recently, so we were able to pit them head to head like the Indians and the Yankees to see which one is better. As was the case with many
shocked Yankees fans, the conclusion of our little challenge was surprising. So which is superior--Live Writer for Windows (pictured above) or Ecto for the Mac? You be the judge after the jump.
Continue reading Head-to-head smackdown: Live Writer versus Ecto
Posted Oct 3rd 2007 11:00AM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Fun, Macintosh
It's now safe to say, we've found a noble use for Dashboard: figuring out when the surf's up.
WindGuru is a widget that offers one-glance reports on wind direction and speed--useful for figuring out when the waves are big and when they're just knee-high. This is particularly true in places where surfing is a
twice-a-year luxury like on
Lake Erie. Sadly, Lake Erie hasn't hit WindGuru's list of "spots" yet.
Designed by a surfer, WindGuru also offers a five-day wind forecast. Not enough? Try iViewSurf, another widget that lets you check out the live webcams of some
surfable beaches (albeit mostly located in France). Oh, and if you can't do Mac widgets, check out
Windguru.cz, where you can track the hot spots in your browser instead.
Posted Sep 28th 2007 6:30PM by Lisa Hoover
Filed under: Fun, Internet, E-mail, Productivity, AOL, Beta
When we heard that AOL (this blog's parent company) was coming out with a new version of
Desktop for Mac, we were pretty excited to see what they'd been up to since the last release
five years ago. Now that we've had a chance to play with it, we like it but think it's still got a ways to go before there's a compelling reason to leave behind whatever browser / IM / email combo you're using now.
Though this new version of Desktop for Mac is still in beta, it seems stable. We tested Desktop on a new generation iMac and a MacBook Pro and it ran just fine on both. System requirements include a PowerPC G4 or greater, OS X 10.4 or higher, and at least 256 MB RAM. Surprisingly, Desktop only needs 60 MB of hard drive space (Firefox alone needs 52 MB).
Continue reading AOL Desktop for Mac resurfaces after five years
Posted Sep 25th 2007 5:30PM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Macintosh, Web services, Open Source, AOL
When AOL introduced 5 GB of online storage--for free--there was much rejoicing. The service is called
XDrive. But that wasn't the extent of it. For a reasonable premium (that's ten bucks a month), you could get 50 GB of online storage. Not a bad way to keep a few backups handy. AOL also jumped in the sack with JSON ("jay-son"), a web API that allows developers to work the XDrive into their own apps.
One such app is the
Open XDrive Usage Meter Widget for the Mac's built-in widget system, Dashboard. The widget includes analog and digital readouts of available storage (in megabytes) and offers configurable thresholds for low space warnings. The background of the widget will change to yellow and then red as you surpass those thresholds. And, as the author of the widget points out--it's already compatible with Leopard, the next release of Mac OS X.
Posted Sep 25th 2007 2:30PM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Macintosh, Shareware
Nintendo's affable Wii gaming console hasn't really been positioned as a home media hub, but it makes a great alternative to Apple TV just the same. But before you can start using your Wii as a media streaming station, you'll need to convert your movies (and pictures) into a format the Wii can deal with.
Enter Riverfold Software with their Mac-based
Wii Transfer utility. This app does the video and audio conversion necessary to experience movies, photos, and music on your Wii, streamed from your Mac. Wii Transfer will also make your Firefox and Safari bookmarks browseable on the Wii, and copy a virtually unlimited number of Wii save-game files to your Mac for backup.
Posted Sep 25th 2007 8:00AM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Macintosh, Commercial, Social Software
Ask anyone what their biggest pet peeve about MySpace is, and they're likely to tell you that MySpace is a mess visually. The way people load their profile pages up with disorganized videos and "glitter" makes it hard to find the stuff you want--sometimes you have to scroll down for eons just to find the link for adding a comment. Some folks apparently don't have a clue about color combinations either--so that comment link might be the same color as the background, rendering it invisible.
One application for Mac OS X solves all these problems and more. Spyder, a $35 shareware piece, does almost everything you can do on MySpace--browsing profile information, sending and receiving mail messages, adding comments, handling and sending friend requests, and downloading other users' friend lists. It does all of this in a nice, neat desktop environment that looks suspiciously like iTunes.
Last time we looked at Spyder, it had some stability issues, but these have been ironed out handily.
Spyder will even do a couple of things MySpace alone won't--like show you the display name of a user who has left a comment or message but who has since deleted their account. Nifty stuff. And like more expensive tools such as EekAdder, Spyder supports bulk comments and messages. The program will even warn you if you're approaching the MySpace-imposed daily limit of 400 comments and allow you to handle Captcha codes in the Spyder interface. If you use MySpace frequently, we can't think of a better add-on for you to check out. The time saved on logging in alone is worth the thirty-five bucks.
Posted Sep 12th 2007 2:00PM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Macintosh
If it weren't for
Parallels Desktop, the virtualization product for Intel Macs that lets you run Windows alongside Mac OS X, many working Mac professionals would be forced to carry two laptops. So it's good news that the Mac's most popular method of running Windows within OS X (the other, less effective, method is VMWare) recently sprouted a few really useful enhancements:
- Parallels' Coherence feature, which lets you use Windows application windows within OS X instead of in a Windows "box", now supports Expose, OS X's zoomed-out, view-all-windows mode.
- Macintosh folders can now be mapped to Windows/DOS drive letters to cut down on navigating (before you had to create a network place).
- Virtual Machine hard disk images can now be mounted to the Mac OS X desktop.
- Windows windows now have OS X drop shadows in Coherence mode.
- The iPhone can be synchronized with the Windows virtual machine.
Posted Sep 7th 2007 9:00PM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Freeware
Here in the rust belt, we often jump on our PCs to check the weather before a surfing trip (yeah, we surf out on Lake Erie, believe it or not), a barbeque, or a
Tribe game. After all, we only get
66 sunny days per year and we need to make every one of them count. Problem is, surfing to Accuweather.com or Weather.com forces you to sit through page loads and advertising, and hey, if you're in a hurry, that just doesn't work.
Enter Meteorologist. This is a really simple, free user interface for weather.com that circumvents all the advertising and gives you a convenient consolidated weather report, forecast, and radar image all in your OS X menu bar or dock. If you don't like widgets you'll find Meteorologist
indispensable. Only 26 sunny days left this year and we don't plan on wasting them.
Posted Sep 7th 2007 7:00PM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh
Last time we had a peek at
Monolingual, we
talked about how you can use it to remove unnecessary language resource and localization files from the Mac OS X, to make more disk space and (ostensibly) improve system performance. But did you know you can also use it to zap PowerPC resources too? Indeed, if you zap the non-Intel architecture stuff using Mono, your Intel Mac will really scream.
Just be careful when you do it. Remove the wrong resources, and you won't be able to run Microsoft Office, one of the few "big" Mac apps that still requires Rosetta, the PowerPC-emulating subsystem of Mac OS X.
While Monolingual's creators claim the program is smart enough to avoid blowing up important PowerPC resource forks in universal applications and avoid altogether messing with PowerPC-only apps (a la MS Office), at least a few of us would
beg to differ. We've heard from several that have had Entourage quit working because the wrong PowerPC architecture stuff got zapped during a Monolingual session. All boiled down, the point is this--Mono can make your Intel Mac scream, but don't do it on your work computer unless you're really, really careful.
Posted Sep 7th 2007 3:00PM by Chris Gilmer
Filed under: Design, Developer, Internet, Video, Yahoo!, P2P, Beta
If you use Yahoo! Messenger on a Mac, now is the time to upgrade. The team has finally announced a new beta version with a bunch of new features. Don't get overly excited though, a major one is missing.
It's been a little while, but the time has come for the new
Yahoo! Messenger Mac 3.0 Beta. We will mention this little tidbit first and slap Yahoo!'s hand a little as it is the most important feature that has not yet dropped into the application, voice calling. It's important, and Yahoo! knows this, why they released this application without it is anyone's guess. Nevertheless, the new version is out and does give users a much improved user experience.
- Tabbed IM windows now appear as separate tabs so there is less clutter on desktops. If you feel like using separate windows, drag the tab out to create one.
- Chat rooms that were once only opened up to Windows users, can now accept Mac users.
- All instant messages and all chat room conversations can be archived on your computer for searching and reference.
- Stability issues for file transfers and webcams have been fixed up and cleaned out.
- Then there are the emoticons. No user interface is complete without pretty icons, and the new Mac Messenger has them.
Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 runs on Mac OSX 10.4 or later. And please Yahoo! add some voice!
Posted Sep 7th 2007 2:00PM by Chris Gilmer
Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Text, Utilities, Productivity, Apple
If you are a freelancer working on a Mac, there are plenty of application options available for you. No matter what you freelance, whether its design, writing or web development, FreelanceSwitch can help.
Ivan from
FreelanceSwitch has put together a great list of 35 small Mac applications that are even more useful than the standard Mac applications like Aperature and iCal. The list covers everything from text and writing applications, an inactive application hider, tabs, GTD apps, screen capture utilities, file backups, FTP's, and syncing applications. The applications consist of freeware as well as trials.
DLSers, what is one small Mac app that you cant live without?
Posted Sep 4th 2007 4:00PM by Lisa Hoover
Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Shareware
The energy saver and screen saver settings on the Mac are great for powering down the computer when it's not in use. It can be a real annoyance, though, when they kick in unexpectedly and put your computer to sleep -- especially if you're monitoring an IRC channel or burning a CD.
Jiggler is a small freeware application specifically designed to keep your Mac from falling asleep by wiggling your mouse at whatever intervals you choose. You can also set Jiggler to run when certain conditions are met, such as music playing in iTunes or when the computer is in obvious "work mode" (the CPU usage is at least 50%). When it engages, the cursor moves around for a couple of seconds and the app's icon flashes on the screen to let you know it's working.
Jiggler is a small app with a small footprint (around 300 KB), that comes without a lot of unecessary bells and whistles. It performed flawlessly in our trials, though, so if you're looking for a way to keep your Mac awake while your doing other things, give Jiggler a whirl (or a wiggle?).
Posted Aug 29th 2007 3:30PM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Macintosh, Mobile Minute
For those of you who don't regularly keep tabs on your Software Update notifications, Apple released its
WWAN support update 1.0 via software update, offering improved wireless broadband support for AT&T/Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon networks. The update was actually released in February, but it flew under my radar as, being a Macbook user with no PCMCIA slot, I didn't realize there was a Mac-compatible USB WWAN adapter. So if you've been looking to get your Apple laptop onto wireless broadband, now would be the time. No guarantees that the retail clerk won't run in terror when you tote your scary Apple-logo-carrying laptop into the wireless store, though.
So you can successfully convince Mac-wary retailers that their wireless cards will indeed work with your "weird computer", here's the info you need. The update includes drivers for Novatel EVDO and HSDPA cards--which are chief among those being sold at wireless retail. They've also added support for Novatel's
Ovation USB adapter--handy for all us Macbook users who don't have a PCMCIA slot. Just make sure your Mac laptop is an Intel-based one. This update won't work with PowerPC-based Macs.
Posted Aug 29th 2007 9:28AM by Ted Wallingford
Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Shareware
If you work in the Fortune 1000, chances are pretty good that you've dealt with
Salesforce.com, the web-based Customer Relationship Management service that has exploded in popularity over the last year or so. Salesforce.com provides a (very useful) plug-in for synchronizing Outlook contacts, tasks, and e-mails with the web site's database for reporting and federation... Which makes Salesforce.com a dream for Windows Office users.
But if you have a Macbook under your arm, you probably aren't using Outlook. More than likely, you're using the suite of apps Apple provides for personal information management on Mac OS X--Apple Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Fortunately, there are some gnarly tools for synchronizing your Mac-based data with Salesforce.com.
The first of these is a great utility called
SF3 from Pocket Soap. It will synchronize tasks and events from iCal and contacts from Address Book with your Salesforce.com account. Unfortunately, it doesn't yet support limiting the synchronization to certain groups of contacts--important if you mix personal and business contacts within Address Book.
Pocket Soap also makes
Maildrop--a script for Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage that will copy messages to Salesforce.com--very handy. You'll also benefit from
Trapdoor, which allows you to store your Salesforce logins in your Mac OS X keychain, and
SFDCFuse, which will mount your Salesforce document repository as a Mac OS X volume.
Posted Aug 28th 2007 2:30PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Productivity, Apple
Fire up Software Update, Mac OS X users, for
iPhoto 7.0.2 has just been released. This update addresses "
issues associated with publishing to .Mac Web Gallery, rebuilding thumbnails, and editing books. It also addresses a number of other minor issues." Thanks for clearing up those 'other minor issues', Apple.
All we know is: this better fix the renegade Spotlight "mds" process that peaks our CPUs for a few minutes every time we start iPhoto '08. There's nothin' like shiny new software draining our batteries dry to get us out of bed in the morning.
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