It’s that time again, time for this week’s edition of the Global Geek Podcast.
Before I get into the week’s review of Mac Apps, I wanted to mention that Knightwise has produced his first Video Podcast KW-tv. This inaugural episode is a review of the new stack of Apple portable devices. Definitely worth a look. Well done KW!
On this week’s Mac Lab Update we start with a Dashboard Widget from developer Paulo Avila called WallSaver. This widget allows you to take one of your screensavers and use it as your desktop background. The widget is quick and easy to implement, and activates with the click of a single button on the dashboard. If you wish to deactivate it, simply click the button again and it will restore your previous static picture.
The widget will however limit your selection to the currently selected screen saver, so to change it you’ll need to change the screen saver in the System Preferences dialog then re-activate WallSaver. The motion of the screen saver that looks so good with photos for slideshows (the so-called Ken Burns effect) tends to make me a bit queasy when it’s used as a background.
Download Wallsaver from Paulo Avila’s website.
Second on the docket this week is an OS X port of the network utility MacDaddy. This application, MacDaddyX, serves two basic purposes:
- To provide a level of anonymity by hiding your true MAC address and “spoofing” another. (This can be used in conjunction with other services like anonymizing proxies to help conceal your browsing patterns.)
- To provide a means for network administrators to “imitate” other computers on a network for the purposes for troubleshooting, or performing security checks.
MacDaddyX has a couple of very handy features, the first being it’s ability to generate a Random MAC address. It also keeps a list of address prefix codes by vendor which can be used to generate MAC’s that will appear to have originated with a specific company. Finally the all-important “Restore” button to put all the features back the way they were. Though a bit on the technical side MacDaddyX can prove to be a very useful application.
You can download MacDaddyX from their website.
Our final application this week is a tool for interfacing with your IM & microblogging world. Moodblast will allow you to update your “mood” or taglines for IM services like Adium, iChat and Skype as well as online services like Twitter and Jaiku though they recently had to discontinue their support for the Facebook platform citing “legal reasons”. This is a menu-bar application can be brought up using a system-wide hotkey and lets you type in a single message to push out to all your favourite IM and microblogging services simultaneously.
MoodBlast also provides “parameters” that you can input into your message to insert things like iTunes Tracks, weather or date/time. Once the message has been posted to the selected sites the MoodBlast window will hide itself.
I’ve hardly used my twitter account since I set it up, but can see myself actually using it by way of MoodBlast.
I can’t really find any downsides to this one, it’s a simple app that does what it advertises… and it’s free!
2 responses so far ↓
1 knightwise // Sep 12, 2007 at 1:31 am
Thanx for the praise KD ! I must say you bring quality to the GGP like never before.
2 kdmurray // Sep 12, 2007 at 7:54 am
I’m glad you’re enjoying the segment, Knightwise. I’ve had lots of support and encouragement from the GGP crew during my early days in podcasting. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep everyone interested.
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