K’s Weblog

Here we are again, with this week’s reviews from the Mac Lab update on the Global Geek podcast for this week.

Our first review this week is the Google Reader Notifier from Troels Bay.  This is a easy-to-use menubar application that tracks your Google Reader feeds and displays a message when new items show up in your feed.  Once the application is installed and set up, it takes in your Google ID and password and then begins scanning your feeds.  By clicking on the icon in the menubar, it will list out some of the unread items in your reader.

The preference pane provides options for things like

• Adding a “star” to action an item
• Showing the number of unread items in the menubar
• Whether or not to show tooltips
• Whether or not to play sounds when items come in

An application like this could be very useful for some people, particularly if you don’t have a ton of feeds to check, or are subscribed to items which are only updated sporadically.  The usefulness goes down as the number of unread items goes up.  If you’re getting a reminder every time it checks (10 mins by default) that new items have arrived, it could get a tad tiresome.  That said, it’s still easy to use and it is a free application.

http://troelsbay.eu/software/reader

Second this week is COCOApp’s “Dockables”.  This is a small suite of dock icons which perform routine operations on your system with a single mouse click.  Some of the functions covered by this are:

• Launch Screen Saver
• Mute Sound
• Hide Applications
• Eject
• Empty Trash

Since I found this a couple of days ago I’ve made pretty good use of the “Empty Trash” utility.  I realize it’s only about a 10th of a second faster, but it’s one less mouse click, and I’m al for that.

If you tire of multi-click operations for simple things, give Dockables a shot.  It _is_ a free application.

http://cocoaapp.com/products/dockables/

Finally this week, something out of the “if-you-believe-this-I’ve-got-a-bridge-to-sell-ya” file…

A tool called SubliminalMessages which while running can display text or images on the screen for a fraction of a second with the intention of conveying a message to your unconscious mind.  Sample messages like “hungry” “play with the dog” “buy groceries” and “pay the bills” are built in.  The preference pane offers the ability to add& remove messages as well as customize the time that a “flash” lasts, and how long to wait between flashes.

I have no idea if something like this actually works, but for some strange reason I have a burning need to go walk the dog… problem is I don’t think I own a dog… wierd.  As you may have guessed, SubliminalMessages is also a freebie.

http://customsolutionsofmaryland.50megs.com/subliminalmessage.htm/

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