So I said to myself: “Self! You can write code, build the damn thing yourslef!”. So I did.

The initial version of the library has been published up on Google Code and is probably full of holes. If you’re interested, have a look and let me know what you think.  I’ll try to publish some more detailed specs for what the library does in the coming weeks.

For now, it can get got at: http://code.google.com/p/epubsharp/ — and yes, the documentation on that page is as sparse as it is here. 

1Password

1Password is a password manager for MacOS X which late last year released a version of their application which works with the iPhone and iPod touch.  Both the desktop and handheld versions of the application are brilliant and provide a great credential management service for those running the appropriate devices.  If you’re a slider like many of us are starting to become, it may not be the solution for you since there’s no version of 1Password available for Windows or any flavour of Linux.

Website | App store | Twitter

Crayon Physics

Again coming from desktop-based roots Crayon Physics is a simplistic looking game for the iPod Touch.  The goal is simple, draw the tools you need to get the ball to the goal.  The trick is you need to be able to anticipate how those tools will react to gravity, friction and impacts with other objects.  Give Crayon Physics a try if you want a game that’s challenging enough to make you think, but easy enough to actually complete.

Note: the desktop version was licensed by Kloonigames to Hudson Soft, so they’re technically not related.

Website | App store

iShoot

iShoot is a great replication of games that were super-popular in the early 1990s like Worms and my favourite Scorched Earth.  Battle it out with the computer or up to three other human players in a tank-on-tank-on-tank-on-tank battle with weird and wonderful weapons of all kinds.  A recent release of the game also includes the ability to define your own rules, terrains and weapons making it a truly personalized experience.

Website | App store | Twitter

SpaceTrader

Modelled after games with the same name on other platforms, and of course loosely based on Wing Commander: Privateer, SpaceTrader allows you to fly from planet to planet as a trader in an effort to make as much money as possible.  This game is the only 3D entry on the list with a fairly rich 3D environment that you can walk around and explore.  I had some memory issues with this game early on, but working with the developer and sending in some crash logs a newer release seems to have licked that problem.  Give this a try as a neat alternative to the 2D side scrollers.

Website | App store

Which applications have you purchased?  Or are you more of a JailBreak type?  Party in the comments…

After the tutorial, I’ve included a list of applications that you can use to make your computing life better.  The list contains free and open-source software from the original developers that you can trust on your newly cleaned system.  I highly recommend reading over the list, and even trying a few of them out on your current system before installing any of your old apps and tools.

Things you’ll need

• Infected (or otherwise underperforming computer)
• OS re-install disks (and product keys!!)
• External hard drive (strongly recommended) -or-
• Backup media (CDs, DVDs)

Step 1: Backup your data

You should already have a backup process in place to keep all of your data secure.  If you do, good for you but that doesn’t mean you can skip this step.  If you have, or have been able to purchase an external hard drive use that to backup the data. It’s much faster, and far more convenient than trying to backup to external media like CDs and DVDs.  Make sure that you take everything you want to have on your new system. Often overlooked folders include your bookmarks (favourites) and desktop.  These won’t be captured in your Documents folder by default.

Step 2: Reinstall your system

This is the part that makes everyone queasy. The “delete everything and re-install” part.  But fear not, it isn’t as daunting as it sounds.  Once all the data has been backed up, put the Windows (or other OS) disk in the drive and reboot the computer.  Once the system comes back up, follow the prompts.

Select the partition to install Windows on.  In most cases, if you want to restore the system the way that it was, you can select the C: drive where the old Windows  install was located.  If you want to get into partitioning strategies that’s for another post.

If you’re in doubt format the drive using the NTFS system. It’s the default for most contemporary Windows systems and will work for 99% of people.  Yes, Mac/Linux fanboys, I realize that it’s a Windows specific file format.  You guys can use HFS+ (Mac) or ext3 (Linux).

Believe it or not that’s the “tricky” part.  Follow the remaining prompts through the text portion, and GUI portion of the setup to choose your username, password, time-zone settings, network settings etc.  These are pretty well all common sense.

Step 3: Patching and Packing

Unless you’ve learned the secrets to Slipstreaming prior to this re-install (in which case you probably don’t need this tutorial) you’ll need to install all the latest updates, patches and service packs for your system.

The majority of these can be installed through the Microsoft Update (Windows Update) site.  The updater can be run from your Start menu, or by pointing a browser at http://update.microsoft.com/.

It’s really important to get these updates in as quickly as possible because typically the CD you’re using to install the system is a couple of years old (particularly with Windows XP disks) and will be missing a ton of important security updates.  You may need to run this process a number of times before it catches everything.  Just continue the process until the update program tells you that there are no further updates available for your system.

Step 4: Re-install your applications

Here we go. Putting back all that was lost.  The first step is to install your heavy hitters installed.  Office, Visual Studio, Adobe Creative Suite — the things that take up Gigabytes of space on the disk.  After that, the smaller things, utilities, tools, games.  Check out the software list at the bottom of this post.

Once everything else is done, install your anti-virus or security software. This may be a controversial decision for most but I base the logic on the following: AV programs make software installation painfully slow.  The chances you’ll be infected while you’re doing the updates are minimal, so save yourself a bunch of time and do this last.

Step 5: Restore your data

Copy back all of the data you backed up in step 1.  This includes your bookmarks (you did back those up, right?), and anything you wanted to keep on your desktop.  Putting these pieces back is the last step to making the system your own again.

Realistically you’re looking at killing a full day with the whole process, depending how much data you have the backup/restore can take a few hours, but the process is pretty straightforward if you stay organized. 

Free software to help you out

Once you’re in the application re-install stage, there are lots of free tools that you can use to get your system working the same, or better than it was before.  The other reason is that these applications are great alternatives to trying to find pirated applications off the Internet.  Here they are, in no particular order:

• 7Zip – an archiving / compression utility supporting a wide range of formats
• ISO Recorder – Write ISO images directly from Windows explorer
• Avast – Free anti-virus application with regular updates
• Paint.NET – Photoshop-like image & graphic editing program
• Firefox – Alternative (?) web browser
• Thuderbird – Email client
• Feed Demon – Powerful full-featured RSS reader & aggregator
• FileZilla – FTP/SFTP/SCP client
• Open Office – Alternative word processor, spreadsheet, presentation & database
• VLC – Media player that supports nearly every format known to mankind
• Evernote – Note taking/keeping application that sync’s with the web
• Notepad++ – Tabbed notepad application
• Visual Studio Express – Free versions of the Microsoft development tools

I hope this guide has proven informative, and will help you to move forward with your computing life.  Bring back that computer that has lost its lustre and make it uber-useful again.

Photo credits: wysz, S Baker on Flickr.

Sourced from: FREE Software :: CrossOver Free Today Only!

In setting up this new environment, I needed to decide how to cope with my Windows XP disc being an original, pre SP1 disc.  The solution: Slipstream.

Slipstreaming allows you to create a Windows XP CD that has updates like the most current Service Packs.  In this case, I’ll be adding Service Pack 3.

There are lots of guides on how to do the Slipstream process, including these two on HowToHeaven and Invisibill.  These are great step-by-step tutorials that show you everything involved in the process.  But they’re also very manual.

The tool I’ve chosen to go with is nLite.  This slick little application provides the ability to not only Service Pack your XP installation, but apply lots of other custom features as well.  Here are the steps I went through for my Slipstreaming adventure.  (There is also a step-by-step guide on the nLite Website)

Step 1: When running nLite is to show it where the Windows installation is located.  After that, you’ll need to specify a location for nLite to perform it’s magic.  I chose C:slipstream.

Step 2: The next phase is to select the options for your installation.  I’m a whole-hog kinda guy, so I elected to go with every option if for no other reason than to browse the options and screens.

Step 3: Pick your Service Pack.  Once you’ve selected a service pack and applied it, nLite will perform the Slipstream operation and integrate the service pack.

Step 4: Updates & Hotfixes.  The more that you can download and apply here, the fewer there will be to apply once the windows installation is completed.

Step 5: Select components to remove.  nLite gives you the opportunity to eliminate components from the final installation.  This can lighten not only the ISO, but also the final installation.  Beware removing too many options.  By eliminating support for hardware or drivers the usage of the installation will become more limited.  However, if you have a specific application in mind it can help to streamline the process.

Step 6: Unattended Install. The next screen provides the ability to streamline the installation for a smooth unattended install.  If you want to use this option, you’ll need your Windows XP CD key at this stage.

Step 7: Installer Options. This screen allows you to customize some of the behaviours of the installation process including boot-time messages and BIOS backup retention.  If you don’t understand an option, take the default.

Step 8: Tweaks. Wow.  This section has dozens upon dozens of options to tweak and adjust virtually every major setting in Windows.  And a whole bunch that aren’t so major.  Take your time with this and make sure to read the little captions for each option.  There are so many possibilities.

Step 9: Integrate all the changes.  nLite will begin to create the installation image, merging together all the changes you’ve selected.  This process will take quite a while.  On my machine it took about 10 minutes.

Step 10: Burn the ISO.  Set any last settings you want for the ISO, and click the Create ISO button to start writing the image.  Once the image is written, it can be installed to a VM (VMWare/VirtualServer) or burned to a disk for installation at a later time.

After some searching on Google and the WordPress.org forums, I came across a relatively easy fix.  To restore this button, and add a few others, you can install the TinyMCE Advanced plugin.  TinyMCE is the editor that’s built in to WordPress’ visual editor.

Once the plugin is added, all the functionality you had before will be restored, along with a ton of cool new neato features!

On windows, Firefox’s Bookmarks Toolbar will display the Favicons along with the text for the items in your bookmarks toolbar.  Something I’ve always done to conserve space in that toolbar is to blank-out the titles and rely solely on the icons to identify the bookmark I want.

The trouble?  The Mac version of Firefox doesn’t display the favicons in the toolbar.  Suffice to say that this has been more than a tad annoying, but until tonight I’ve simply put up with it.

Thankfully I found a short & sweet article that Gina wrote over on LifeHacker which led me to both a Firefox Plugin and a website to get me back my icons.

The steps to get the icons back are short and sweet.

1. Download the plugin Stylish
2. Do the obligatory Firefox restart
3. Visit UserStyles.org and download this style for Stylish
4. Done!!

It was really that simple, and now I’ve got my icons on my Mac.  Though they are spaced apart much further than on Windows, it’s a damn sight better than not having them at all.

Go download it!  I’ll wait….

There now… doesn’t that feel better?

Many of the extensions have already been upgraded to work with the new version, and others are sure to follow soon.  I’ll keep an eye on things and try to let you know when PortableApps releases Firefox3.

Also, if you download today (or by 10:00am PT tomorrow), you can be among those participating in Mozilla’s Guinness World-Record attempt.

To help keep the show length reasonable, the Mac Lab report for this show is a quick one.  The inspiration comes from a post by Tim Cox over at MacApper.  This is a collection of Automator scripts which will help to keep your downloads directory clean.

These scripts provide methods for managing your Internet downloads for everything from music files (Tunes to Trash), disk images (Perfect Dismount) and zip archives (The Zipper).

Overall the tools do a decent job of keeping things tidy and are a great example of a practical use for Automator for the everyday user.

Download FF3Rc1 today!

Image Credit: nitot on Flickr

fseventer First off this week is a tool from FernLightning called fseventer.  This app gives you new visibility into just what files on your hard drive are modified by the tools you use every day.  It was quite remarkable to me to start fseventer and just allow it to run while I wasn’t using the computer.  In a matter of seconds my “idle” computer had performed dozens of operations and written to lots of files.

The tool presents the information in a variety of ways not the least of which is the uber-cool tree view.  This app seems to do a pretty good job of finding all of the changed files, but I haven’t tried doing ay specific research with the tool.

Warp Warp is an application that uses mouse gestures to control switching between your OS X Spaces.  I realize that I’ve been on the anti-mouse bandwagon for some time now, but some things are so slow and unproductive that you can fix them with mouse gestures.

The application installs an OS X preference pane to control Warp which is tied to the existing Spaces panel.  When you activate warp it also verifies to ensure that Spaces is active.

Warp is a great shortcut for those who use the mouse alot and don’t want to memorize keyboard shortcut; or for those who simply prefer shudder to use the mouse.

Download Warp by Kent Sutherland.

Teleport If you’ve ever wanted a great way to control multiple macs in your house from one keyboard & mouse the AbysSoft‘s Teleport just might be the solution you’ve been looking for.  This gives you much of the same functionality that you’d get from using a KVM switch, but without the unnecessary hardware.

Teleport provides a single interface for controlling other Macs that have teleport installed.  In some ways it behaves like Spaces, but with each space being a separate physical machine.  I really wish I’d had a chance to try this one, but with only the one Mac in the house, that makes things a bit difficult.

Teleport a great way to make use of existing network infrastructure to reduce your cable load and make your digital life that much easier.

Licensed This next application is one that should be in everyone’s utility toolbox.  Licensed by Amar Sagoo is designed to one things, and one thing only: keep track of your software licesnses.  Licensed has a quick to learn and easy to use UI and takes no time to learn

Licensed falls into the category of tools that most good freeware and open-source applcations are famous for: simple applications that do what they say they will.

One thing I would suggest is a prompt on the delete button.  Not a big deal, but usually a good practise to avoid accidental loss of data.

Front Row “Remote Control” Last up this week is Bert Ramakers’ software-based Front-Row remote.  This app allows you to control Front-Row over the network on other machines that are Front-Row enabled (Tiger and later).

It’s not clear whether this application will work with other applicances like the Apple TV, but its a creative remoting solution nonetheless.

Thats it for me this week.  Due to the trouble with the TPN servers there will be no show again this weekend, but we’ll have another one out as soon as life and fate permits.

http://bertramakers.com/?page_id=19

1. Lively Logon

This app’s not Vista specific, but Logon Studio will allow you to completely customize the way that your login screen looks.  Make your Windows Vista look like Mac OS X or Fedora Core 6.  The only downside to the Vista version is that it will only allow you to change the background, whereas previous versions provided a finer degree of cotrol.

Logon Studio is maintained by the Stardock folks.  For a bit more detailed review, you can check out GGP #79.

2. Gadgets Galore

Much like some other operating systems that shall remain nameless, Windows Vista has a sidebar to help you pimp-out your desktop with all sorts of fun and useful gadgetry.  Everything from traffic monitors, to CPU monitors, to gadgets that will do a slideshow of your favourite Facebook pics.  You can pretty much do anything with a sidebar gadget because it’s written using HTML and CSS.  Microsoft hosts a site called the Windows Live Gallery which will allow you to download dozens of these great free gadgets.

3. Wicked Wallpaper

Wallpaper is the quintessential customization that nearly everyone seems to know how to do.  As soon as we get our new computers almost the first thing that most people do is change their wallpaper.  Popular choices are the family pet, children, or “that beach” that you’ll get to… someday.

There are tons of sites out there that produce great wallpaper.  But one that most people forget about is good old photo-sharing site Flickr.  A simple query for “Vista Wallpaper” yields thousands of potential wallpaper candidates.  Here are a few of my favourites:

Photo Credit: wvs on Flickr

Photo Credit: janusz on Flickr

Photo Credit: spitfirelas on Flickr

Photo Credit: creativesam on Flickr

4. Spectacular Screen Savers

After the wallpaper, the next most common customization is changing one’s screen saver.  Sure, Windows has a dozen or so “interesting” screen savers, but really how many more times can we watch the starfield, or pour over those same photos again and again.

A great application called InstantStorm will allow you to turn any flash file (.swf) into its own screen saver.  This tool will take the flash file, and compile it into a self-installing screen saver ready to deploy on your computer.  This has the added bonus of being easily distributable and makes for a great screen saver to use at trade shows, or to distribute to clients on one of those funky business card CDs.

Instant storm was also reviewed on GGP #77.

side note: I borrowed the flash file of the pug licking a monitor to do my demo.  Worked out pretty well!

5. Theme Theory

This is the half-tip… I really wanted to include some detailed theme information for Vista but I couldn’t.  Here’s why:

Windows themes have been a topic that for many users lays shrouded in mystery.  How come there are people with better looking versions of Windows than me?  Where can I get that?  Well, I have some answers for you here.  A theme is a way of customizing everything in your Windows UI in one fell swoop.  This includes colours and wallpaper for a start, but often will include new icons, application skins or screen savers as well.

In Windows Vista theming really has a long way to go.  After seven years, there are tons of great theming devices for Windows XP, but for Vista many of the third-party theme options are limited and buggy.

Plug: If you’re still using XP and like high-tech looking themes… go get AlienGUIse.

I only had a couple of resources to review this week partly because of content and partly because of time.  This week Cait’s away recovering from surgery so I’m back again to help Dave hold down the fort… hey, it’s almost like I’m a regular co-host!     On that note, let’s get down to it.

Neon Tango The first up this week is a really cool game I found called Neon Tango.  This is a top-down shoot ‘em up like so many classic games before it (dating all the way back to Asteroids if you wanna go back that far ).  The action is super fast and the soundtrack is amazing!  The graphics are all line/vector based, no fancy skins on the objects, but they’re still really really good line and vector-based graphics.

The catch: the $25 price tag for the full version.  A three-level playable demo is available from the website, give it a try and consider picking up Neon Tango.  ((Even if you don’t want to buy it, download the trial and listen to the soundtrack!))

Switcher Keyboard Shortcut Guide The folks over at My First Mac have put together a keyboard shortcut guide for windows switchers.  This is a great resource to learn how to navigate OS X more effectively without having to take your hands off the keyboard.  This is an excellent resource for anyone who uses both Macs and PCs or has recently switched from one platform to the other.  I learned at least one new shortcut for each platform reading this tutorial.

Give the guide a try: Ultimate Switcher Guide: Windows PC to Mac Keyboard Shortcuts.

This week I tried out a solution to my audio problems with a new headset.  Give it a listen and let me know what you think.  I am still evaluating other options.

Handbrake Solutions for <ahem> archiving your DVDs have been covered on occasion on the GGP, and this week I’ve got a great option for those of you running OS X.  Handbrake allows you to rip archive a DVD to a digital format that can be stored (and played back) on devices other than a DVD player.  Handbrake will allow conversion to more than a half-dozen different file formats.

Download Handbrake.

<

p align=”left”>Houdini Houdini is a simple application that allows you to simply manage hidden files and folders.  If you need to hide files or documents from someone else who is not overly technical Houdini can help (though I don’t recommend using hidden files as a security mechanism, but that’s a rant for another post).  Through a simple GUI you can manage your hidden files and folders and change the from hidden to visible on command.

Give Houdini a try for basic hidden folder management.

<

p align=”left”>PTHVolume Finally this week a menu-bar add-on for controlling the volume of your various audio outputs independently.  This application is restricted to OS X 10.5 (Leopard), but does work pretty well.  It provides an extra level of control over a system-level function which is something that Apple doesn’t often provide out of the box.

For a wee bit more control over volume, download PTHVolume.

Join Dave and I again this coming week for the next installment of the GGP.

LiteIcon First up this week is FreeMacSoft’s LiteIcon.  This is a great application for helping you manage the system icons on your Mac.  Apple has a tendency to dumb-down everything for their systems hiding the guts behind nicely designed UIs… most of the time.  Icon management is something that they’ve never gotten right.

LiteIcon will allow you to swap out your  icon set for OS X, and more importantly, swap them back to the originals.  The only thing this doesn’t include is icons for you to use.  You could always get some icons from a site like InterfaceLIFT to pimp out your mac.

LiteIcon is a freebie.

Flash Video Downloader 2 The second app for this week is Tesseract Software’s Flash Video Downloader.  This app will allow you to point any website URL to the tool, and it will scan the source code for the page and find any flash video links and it will automatically download the .flv files.

The app works fairly well and allows you to download batches of files at a time, and has some other “batchy” features like a notification beep, or the ability to shut down the computer afterward.

The only catch with this tool is that it won’t allow you to convert the files from the .flv format.  But for a freebie, not too shabby.

VisualHub It’s been a long time since I did an app that wasn’t a freebie, but in my search for a really good conversion tool I came up empty in the freebie department.

Techspansion’s VisualHub is an app that will take any format in, and push any format out.  There’s support for pretty much every video format on the market including H.264, DV, PSP, AVI, and the ever ellusive FLV.

The only downside is that the app costs about $25… but like the Techspansion dev team says: “justify it by thinking of the cost per frame.”

And that wraps up this weeks Mac updates.  Join us again next time for more mac apps, and more GGP goodness.

iPhoto Batch Image Enhancer
This application gives you the ability to make changes to large batches of your iPhoto images. This is a standalone application and doesn’t integrate into iPhoto, but it is fairly lightweight and runs at a reasonable speed. There are a couple of little quirks that make it so that you really shouldn’t do much else while you run the batch, but it’s a good free option for set-and-forget operations.

Download iPhoto Batch Enhancer from the feroXsoft website.

Oxidizer
Oxidizer provides you the ability to build your own background… but not just any background: A fractal! I’ve always loved fractals, but the majority of the fractal programs out there require you to enter weird commands from the command line, and/or have a masters degree in mathematics. Oxidizer allows slaps on a fairly usable GUI and allows you to build some interesting fractal images.

Oxidizer is offered as an open-source project.

Download Oxidizer.

DockDoctor

DockDoctor is yet another in the series of OS X Leopard “tweaker” apps. This one is geared specifically toward adjusting settings of the Mac OS X dock, and does so from the Dashboard. I’ve covered apps like this in the past, so I won’t spend much time on it. Suffice to say the widget has options for a 2D or 3D dock, and a button to automatically restart the Dock application.

Download DockDoctor from Inner Mind Media.

First, THANK YOU to everyone who has downloaded the widget.  It has been downloaded an astonishing 2300 times since the inaugural release on August 14th of last year.

The most significant changes for this version are the addition of two new links that you can add to your site:

1. Edit This Post
2. Edit This Page

These links provide you the opportunity to edit a specific page or post from a link in the sidebar whenever you’re viewing a single page or post (ie not the front-page, or a search result).  This is particularly useful for blogs which don’t have an edit link built into their current theme.

Please take a moment and download the latest version of the plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.  And as always, if you have any feedback, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment on the blog.

I was able to meet up with the geeks to join them for the recording of the 74th edition of the GGP. We covered a ton of stuff in this week’s show, and as promised here’s the details for this week’s Mac Lab Update.

Net News Wire This was huge news this week. With NewsGator releasing all of it’s personal products as free downloads (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and a few others) they have taken a huge step towards monopolizing the RSS agregation client market. As regular listeners of the GGP already know, Dave is a bit of an RSS afficianado and he highly recommended I check out this app as soon as it became available.

So on Thursday I downloaded and installed it, and gave it a run through it’s paces. Though it caused me a few headaches as it imported the sixty or so feeds that I had in my Google Reader OPML file, over the next few hours it became less finicky and seems to be working as advertised now.

Using a client instead of a web interface is often a more visually rewarding experience, and NNW doesn’t disappoint in this department. The UI is clean and easy to use, and there are enough options available to make organizing and browsing the articles in your feed a breeze.

Net News Wire is (now) a free application.

MAMP This item came to us from GGP listener Eric Searle. MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, MySQL & PHP) is the OS X implementation of the classic open-source development stack LAMP (Linux).

MAMP is a one-stop shop that brings the Mac usability experience to open-source development. Though it’s possible to install and configure all of these components from source code as is done on other systems, the MAMP package provides a quick and easy way to get a PHP development environment running on your Mac.

The open-source MAMP stack, are free applications.

gDisk gDisk is an OS X utility that gives you the ability to mount a drive to your system that will save files to your GMail account. This is a great way to move relatively small files between different computers or locations, with a backup copy stored in your GMail account.

It’s a simple utility that does exactly what it claims.

gDisk is a free application.

The video was done by Johnny Lee, now a quasi-famous Internet personality for a series of articles he’s done about Wii-hardware-related topics on YouTube.  The other two being Finger Tracking and the Multi-Touch Whiteboard.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw]

The software for the demos are available from his website.  All of the PC development work has been done in C# using the Direct-X SDK and Visual C# Express (which I’ve blogged about before).

After seeing these videos I want a Wii more than ever.

FolderSplitter The first application this week is FolderSplitter written by Micheal over at QTSync.com.

FolderSplitter allows you to split one large folder into several smaller ones. It’s ideal for backups where you’re going to burn files to CDs/DVDs or media where storage space is limited.

Multiple splitting options:

• Maximum size of dest folder
• Maximum items in dest folder
• Copy or MOVE files
• Include hidden folders?
• Keep files alphabetical, or minimize number of dest folders

It’s a fairly simple application that does what it claims. The only thing I think I’d have changed is size presets for CDs, DVDs and maybe the business-card CDs (I can never remember how big those are).

FolderSplitter is a free application.

SharpShooter Second on the block is my Killer-App pick for this week. It’s by developer Isaac Wankerl and it’s called SharpShooter.

This is an OS X menu-bar application that is automatically launched any time you use the Cmd-Shift-3 / 4 screen capture commands built into OS X.

SharpShooter does three things, and does them very well: - Preview screenshots - Rename Screenshots - Trash crappy screenshots

The application also has multiple monitor support including compositing (stitching) frames together.

I’ve only had this app for about a week and it has already worked it’s way into my regular-use arsenal. Between all the above features, the auto-start feature and direct integration with the OS X desktop Sharpshooter is a killer app and it’s a free application.

Lastly today three programs I’m dubbing the Sudden Motion Sensor Time-waster three-pack

These should work on any mac system with a sudden motion sensor (macbook, macbook pro, and some ibook variants.) There are also some iPhone rumours, but hell I’m in Canada where we’re not allowed to own and operate the toy of the year legally…

Tunnel (download) Tilt from side to side, don’t hit the walls or you die. - low-res graphics - no sounds - saves your high score

LiquidMac (download) Particle generator, behaves like liquid - tons of adjustable physics - full screen mode - does kinda look like digitized liquid.

MacSaber (download) <yoda>Seen this before, we have.</yoda> - Tilt move the macbook around to get light-saber sounds - sharper movements produce different sounds - don’t DROP your mac - Jedi certification not included.

Three MacSaber videos on YouTube.