Mac Lab Rat – GGP #72: The Gargle

Time for another Mac Lab update, this week for GGP #72.

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.

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #71: Horse Kennel

Wow! This post is super late, but here’s the Mac Lab Update for Global Geek Podcast #71.

ScriptSaver
First up this week is a Screen Saver application called ScriptSaver by Matt Swann. I call this a Screen Saver Application because though it’s launched by your OS X screen saver, it allows you to add an AppleScript to be run at Activation or Deactivation of the screen saver.

This will allow you to perform maintenance tasks, launch applications, automate some job while you’re away or any other myriad activities all by simply doing nothing.

The application will also allow you to select a screen saver to run while Script Saver is active.

Here are a few links to some applescript resources for those of you who aren’t inclined to write your own:

Give ScriptSaver a shot, and make better use of your down time!

Isolator
Isolator is a simple OS X application which helps you to focus on your active window. It works by placing itself one layer below the active window so that it hides everything on your desktop (dock, icons, widgets etc. etc.) and leaves only your working window in focus.

Isolator integrates itself into your menu bar and can be controlled from there, or from an activation/deactivation hotkey that you set yourself.

I’m planning to give this a good test run for my school work over the next couple of months. I’ve got a bit of a tendency to procrastinate (hence why this post is almost a week late!!)

Versatile Unit Converter
Last up this week is the Versatile Unit Converter widget. This was put together by a group at the university of Geneva. This widget will allow you to convert between various units of measure.

VUC will takes in an initial value and allows you to output it into different formats by specifying the mathematical or scientific symbols that make up the different units of measure. Converting things like temperature, energy, mass and distance just got a whole lot easier. Now I can explain more easily that where I come from, 32 degrees is well above freezing.

That’s it for this week. I’ll try and make sure the post for next week is on time… Maybe I’ll use isolator to help me focus!

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #70: Timmy Opts Out

This week, I join the geeks live to record GGP #70. We decided to make use of the segment I prepped up for last week’s show before I found out about the Second Life Special Edition that Dave put together with the guys from

DMGConverter

As the name suggests this tool will allow you to convert all sorts of disk image files between various image formats. These include three ISO formats, CDR, Mac DMG image files, and others.

This application that will also help to create disk image files from folders on your computer. You can use this to create a burnable disk image like an ISO for easy distribution across platforms, or a downloadable DMG file so that your Mac buddies can download and mount the image on their systems.

This application will also support several Mac and PC file systems, including the new Extended file systems and FAT16 & 32. There currently is no support for NTFS.

This is a great tool for anyone who needs to distribute large quantities of information, or needs to make copies of any type of existing disc (legally of course!).

Where I see this for myself is creating image files and using them to archive things like photos, or music and podcasts that I’ve finished listening to.

DMG Converter is a free application.

Secret Notepad Plus

SecretNotePadPlus is a dashboard widget created by Japanese developer N. Wajima that will allow you to make and keep notes on your OS X dashboard the biggest difference between this widget, and many other similar ones is, you guessed it, the secure part.

SNP allows you to password protect the widget so that its secrets can be kept hidden away from the world, and would be particularly useful in one-mac homes where the computer is shared among many different people.

Yes, there are many other ways to do this, and storing the information in this way isn’t the _most_ secure mechanism available. Where this might be useful though, is keeping a list of your frequently used ID’s and Passwords for various websites. It’s easily accessible, and can be quickly hidden once you’re done your session.

Finally, SNP makes use of keychain to store its own password information as well as the notes and text. So this is a fairly secure method of being able to write this information to the disk. While you’d never write your latest novel, or the secrets to cold fusion technology in SNP, it’s great for quick notes.

SecretNotepadPlus is a free application.

AirPort Radar

The folks over at MacWireless.com have put together Airport Radar, a simple wifi scanning tool which shows you the networks in the area as well as the strength of their signals. Airport Radar performs it’s scanning magic from your OS X dashboard. This is a good way to troll for networks in those cases where you just _have_ to download the latest episode of the GGP and can’t make it home to the comfort of your regular broadband connection.

The scans are done at a user-configurable interval; the default is just under two seconds. The widget will display any networks it detects. If a network drops off, or drops below a detectable level it will remain on the screen in a ‘greyed out’ state, and will stay on the screen for a set number of scans (default is 5).

While not the most full-featured wifi scanner around, it’s a pretty good little tool. It should be noted that it only searches for “Infrastructure” networks, or access points. It won’t detect the wifi connection on other wifi ‘client’ devices like laptops, xboxes, ipod touches, psp’s, cell phones… well you get the idea.

Airport Radar is a free application.

XBox 360 Controller Driver

Last up this week is something kinda fun that I just had to share. For any of you who own an XBox 360 and have always wanted to use the controller in your favourite Mac games, I have the solution for you! Developer Colin Munro has created a driver package for the 360 controller to allow it to be used on the Mac.

For me there’s just something deliciously ironic about using a Microsoft controller on an Apple computer. The 360 Controller driver is also a freebie.

While I’m sad to see Tim go, he’s moving on to new challenges and I think we’ll see him around from time to time… I’d like to extend a personal thank you to Tim for his help with my budding podcast career. Looking forward to seeing the next big thing!

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #68: Security Holes and Feature Fixes

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Mac Lab Update for Global Geek #68.

Off the top, I’m going to start with a couple of Mac security items.

Trojan.Mac
The first is a new Trojan affecting Mac OS X. OSX.RSPlug.A is a trojan that buries itself in your OS X installation and redirects you to porn and phishing sites while you’re browsing the net. This is done by forcing your computer to read DNS information from some less than reputable sources.

This is far from the nastiest trojan I’ve ever seen, despite some mac-pundits who seem to feel that “This is really bad. Really.” It doesn’t damage any files, and only messes with some settings that can be relatively easily restored.

The second is the report on the McAfee Avert labs blog stating that several other fake codec sites have been popping up with the Puper family of malware. This fake codec that messes with your system settings has been plaguing Windows since 2005, but is now making it’s way to the Mac Platform.

Now, far be it for me to get up on my soapbox… aw who am I kidding.

<rant>
This is the latest in a series of examples of people who are starting to dabble in the Mac Exploit business. Is it true that only a minuscule percentage of threats against desktop computers can hurt the mac? yes. But lets keep in mind that only a minuscule percentage of all the threats created are _targeted_ at the mac. As the popularity of the mac platform increases, and more vulnerable targets are created, mark my words: We _will_ see more Mac Exploits in 2008.
</rant>

Add to this a story that broke this week with regards to the firewall that ships along with the new package. A review on by Heise Security in the UK pointed out several significant flaws in the setup, configuration and default settings that come with OS X Leopard. The final verdict of this review is that “Mac OS X Leopard firewall failed every test.”

So for those of you who think that the Mac is invulnerable, you may want to reconsider relying on Security by Obscurity.

OpaqueMenuBar
Last week, during our Leopard overview, I mentioned that the Leopard Menu Bar is now semi-transparent resulting in some extreme cases, in readability issues with menubar text. Eternal Storms Software has put out a quick little application called OpaqueMenuBar to take care of this annoying little “feature”. I tried this one out and it did perform as promised… but I removed it in a heartbeat. Why?

1. It’s a TSR. Terminate and Stay Resident. It doesn’t just change the menu bar and terminate, it sits there and runs in the background. Ew. I feel like I’m back in the DOS days.
2. When I double-clicked the program it didn’t appear to do anything… I had to go and change my background for the change to take effect.
3. The solid menubar that it enables isn’t the metallic-grey colour of the rest of OS X… it’s WHITE, with black writing. Welcome back to the B&W version of Mac OS System 7…

DockDoctor
The other issue I discussed with regards to the new Look of Leopard is the new 3-D Glass-Shelf dock. Last week I already wanted to get rid of it, and apparently I wasn’t the only one. I found no less than a half-dozen dashboard widgets and applications to swap your 3D-Dock for a 2D version. I even posted the command-line fix to my own blog last week.

Intermind Media’s DockDoctor is an example of one of these. Pick a dock, and do the restart. This really could have been done as a single button, but maybe that’ll be adjusted in a future version.

Here are some of the other iterations of this idea that I found this week:

Last up this week a non-Leopard item. iVol is a utility that allows you to adjust your system volume by sliding the scroll wheel on your mouse. To adjust the volume up or down on your computer, click the wheel on the mouse, and then scroll it. There’s also an option to Shift-Scroll option as well. To toggle the mute function you can also double-click the wheel. iVol is a free application for both Mac OS X and Windows.

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #67: Leopard’s Portable Battery Sparks

There. That title ought to get some interest.

It’s time again for this week’s edition of the GGP, and with it the latest update from the Mac Lab Rat.

Leopard
This week was of course Leopard launch week. I’ve put up several ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]) posts on the subject over the past week or so, and don’t have a ton more to say about it. It’s quick, solid and works basically like Tiger. It’s got a couple of very nice upgrades (Time Machine for one), that I haven’t been able to use yet.

PortableApps for the Mac
There’s been lots posted about the concept of Portable Applications — software that you can load on a USB key and run without needing to actually install it on the computer. This week I’ve rounded up a site with OS X compatible versions of many popular programs including Firefox and Thunderbird. If you work cross-platform like I do, the portable Firefox will work particularly well with another GGP featured service Quick Bookmarks. If you use a Mac, or particularly if you use more than one, check out Portable Apps for the Mac.

Coconut Battery Monitor
I really like this application. I was running it on my Macbook before the Leopard upgrade and will probably get it back on there this week. Coconut allows you to monitor not only the stock information about your battery (power remaining, charge cycles) but also provides information like the current max charge vs. the max rated charge (ie: is your battery still charging to capacity). It gives some great insights into the true health of your battery. If you’re running a Mac notebook Coconut Battery Monitor is definitely worth a look.

Spark
Last up this week is Spark, an application that will allow you to assign a keyboard shortcut to pretty much any action your Mac can do. Not only can you launch applications and open files, you can also tie a shortcut key to application specific functions and AppleScripts! I’ve already got a few different key combos set up and there will be more to come as my Windows-based keyboard-centric tendencies continue to shine through. Spark will save you time!

Mac Lab Rat – GGP #66: Pres my Dead.Licious Lobster Butan

Another week, another instalment of the GGP, and some more Mac goodness from the GGP Mac Lab.

The first application for the week dead.licious by Malarkey Software. This is an OS X application for validating the bookmarks stored in your delicious account. It provides an interface for reviewing and testing the bookmarks you have in your account, and identifies those that are broken or otherwise invalid. At that point it will allow you to either fix or remove the dead link. Dead.licious provides support for Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia & Simpy.

The application is offered as Freeware, but there is a donation nag box every 5 times you use it. It’s important to note though that this isn’t criple-ware, and won’t stop working if you decide not to contribute.

You can download dead.licious from the Malarkey Software website.

The second application this week is Pres Butan from developer Brian Kendall. This is a little OS X application that will let you open files or applications by pressing the enter or return key. This is a feature that makes OS X behave more like Windows or Linux, and will undoubtedly help many of the folks out there who are switching from one of those platforms. After a quick installation, I tried it out and used it to launch Garage Band when I was recording this week’s segment.

One thing that did bother me is that the application requires the “Assistive Devices” setting to be turned on in the System Preferences panel. So anyone who installs it will have to turn on that setting manually. I’d like to see the system provide a mechanism for turning that feature on all by itself, or with a prompt to the user.

Download Pres Butan from the developer’s website.

Next up this week, I have an update on a product that I covered back on GGP #62. Moodblast is an application that allows you to update your ‘mood’ or status messages on IM applications like iChat or Adium and microblogging services like Twitter and Yappd.

The update is that FaceBook support is back for MoodBlast. The new version integrates with Facebook’s new “remember me” features and allows you to use MoodBlast to update your status message. It does make you log in about three times before it will successfully remember everything, however once that’s done it won’t bug you again.

A nice bit of silliness to end off this week. Have a look at Lobster Petting. I really can’t say much about this. It’s a picture of a lobster. You pet it with your mouse. It squeaks. ’nuff said.

Check out the Lobster homepage to download.
Enjoy!

Mac Lab Rat #10 – Global Geek Podcast

Well here we are, the 10th edition of the Mac Lab Update for Global Geek Podcast #65!

This week’s first tool is a Dashboard Widget called Delivery Status that will allow you to track packages from over a dozen different companies. This quick and dirty widget allows you to quickly hunt down that pesky new Wii, iPhone or eBay package that you’ve been waiting for without having to remember which website you need to find to look it up.

Some of the packages it can track are:
- US Postal Service & CanadaPost
- Posten in Sweeden & Norway
- FEDEX
- Apple
- Nintendo
and several others…

Not all services are are available in all countries, but it’s a really good start. There’s even compatibility with Growl to notify you when a package’s status changes.

Download Delivery Status from Mike Piontek‘s website.

Second on the block this week is a set of scripts for Apple’s Mail and Address Book apps. The scripts were written by Andreas Amann and are a collection of AppleScripts that are used in conjuntion with the standard OS X mail application to add many new features, and enhance some existing ones.

The API available to AppleScript and Cocoa developers for most of the built-in apple applications provides a myriad opportunities for elements of the applications to be scripted, or to combine them together.

Some of the scripts provided by “Mail Scripts” are:

- Add addresses: Not just the sender, but any email address contained in the header of the message (to, from, cc etc…) (Integrates with Address Book to store contact information)

- Create new Mail rules based on the selected message. this saves lots of tedious data-entry

- Schedule Mail Delivery for a later time/date. This allows you to write and pre-send a message, and then let the Mail application deliver it to its target at the appointed time. (integrates with iCal for scheduling)

There are several other scripts as well. If you’re a regular Apple Mail user, and find it lacking any of these capabilities, download Mail Scripts.

Third up this week is SketchBox, developed by Germany’s OMZ:Software. Sketchbox is a desktop-sticky application for the Mac which allows you to either draw or type notes to yourself. The sticky notes have two separate layers, a drawing canvas and a text input box.

The stickies can be deployed on your desktop, and will each occupy a space like a separate window, and can be managed while the main window is closed. The application will also allow the stickies to have alarms set on them, but they’re set in a timer format. You set the number of days, hours & minutes until the alarm goes off, instead of setting a specific time. At the appointed time, a cell-phone like ring will remind you of the task at hand.

Finally, Sketchbox provides support for tablet devices, allowing you to sketch to your heart’s content without even reaching for a keyboard. It’s in this context that the pull-slider interface for the alarms makes the most sense.

I’ve never really been a fan of Stickies type applications, and in some ways there’s quite a bit of polish missing from SketchBox. I’d love to see this type of functionality implemented as a dashboard widget instead. Still, the freehand drawing ability is pretty cool and I recommend at least taking a look at Sketchbox.

Last up this week is some tips for making use of a great built-in OS X feature called Aliases. This is a blog post from MyFirstMac.com which outlines some “killer-app” possibilities for what most consider at first blush to be a pretty innocuous feature of an OS.

The tips range from simple productivity gains for automatically reconnecting Network Drives, to workarounds for FrontRow’s limitation of not finding content outside of your Movies folder.

There’s a discussion started after this post with a few bonus tips as well, definitely worth a look for any Mac-Switcher’s out there, or those who just want to learn all they can about their mac.

Go and check this post out!

Mac Lab Rat #9 – Global Geek Podcast

This week marked my first appearance on the GGP as a full-fledged guest host. We had a great time recording the show despite Tim’s headset being all fubar. Here’s the notes from this week’s edition, it’s a short one, so don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

The first app up this week is an iPhoto plugin that will allow you to send photos via your Gmail account directly from iPhoto. iPhoto2Gmail is a simple plugin which will allow you to send email messages from your iPhoto application and attach up to a 20 MB image to the image. It’s pretty straight forward and offers other features like encrypted storage of your Gmail credentials. If you like to send photos by email, and want to avoid firing up a browser or Thunderbird to do so, give iPhoto2Gmail a shot.

Download the plugin from author Juan Leon’s website.

The second application for review this week has become, for many, the industry standard for backup and data replication on the Macintosh platform. Carbon Copy Cloner will allow you to backup data to and from almost any media including disk drives and disk image files.

It’s a simple to use application which will allow you to schedule your backups and make them completely mindless. Now you don’t have any excuse for not getting those backups done.

Download Mike Bombich’s CCC.

Doing the GGP Almost Live

On this week’s Global Geek Podcast I’m going to be recording the show “live” with Dave and Tim. I’m really looking forward to it, hopefully I won’t stumble all over myself when I lose the opportunity to edit out all my blunders.

It’ll be an early morning for me and a late night for the guys as we try to mesh our schedules and disparate time zones. Wish me luck!

Mac Lab Rat #8 – Global Geek Podcast

Another week, another edition of the Global Geek Podcast. Here’s the detailed notes from this week’s GGP Mac Lab Update.

The first application up this week is MacTracker by Canadian developer Ian Page. This is an application that contains historical data on virtualy every model of Apple computer and their peripherals released since 1983. The current release (v. 4.3.1) also includes the updated iMac models from August 2007.

MacTracker provides detailed hardware specifications for each model, including:

Detailed CPU information
Hard disk and Optical Drive options for that model
Maximum & Shipped RAM configurations
Graphics card & Display details
Expansion ports and more…

There’s also a MyMacs section for you to track specific details on the devices you own, this is particularly useful in case you ever need to call Apple Support. Much quicker than trying to remember where your serial number is stored (or read the microscopic printing from the bottom of the case).

Finally, there’s also an iPod edition which allows you to look up much of this same information directly from your iPod. If you’re in a job where you need to have this type of information at your fingertips, (or like me are just a total geek), this option is a great way to eat up a few more Megs on that 160GB iPod Classic you just bought.

MacTracker is a free download, but it is offered as donationware. If you get some good use out of it, consider making a donation to support the project.

The second application up this week is targeted at those of you, who like me, would rather put tacks through your fingers than rely on the mouse or trackpad for basic tasks on your computer. I give you ABFL “A Better Finder Launcher”. This application lets you bring up on a hotkey a dialogue box that you can use to find and launch applications. For those of you who are Mac Switchers and have just come over from windows, this will work very much like the Windows “Run” menu, only smarter.

As you type characters in, ABFL will search your computer for files which match your search string, applications are prioritized and pushed to the top of the list. Once you’ve typed enough for the program or file you want to appear at the top of the list, hit the enter/return key to launch it.

ABFL will also search for documents on your system. The initial indexing process happened very quickly, so quickly in fact that I didn’t realize it had its own index until I was searching through the preferences dialogues. I thought it must have tapped into the Spotlight index instead. The preferences can be set to allow the application to index on a set interval, or manually. When scanning the default locations, the indexing took approximately 12 seconds on my Macbook.

The only downside to this application is that there’s no way to terminate it and remove it from the Dock & Fast-switch menus) when an application is launched. Other than that, it really does deliver as promised and has become another one of my favourite OS X tools.

Download ABFL from the developer’s website.
Last up this week is a bit of Apple-related tech news. SixApart announced this week that it will be providing an iPhone (and iPod Touch) interface option for users of TypePad and MovableType. This interface will detect the new Apple mobile browsers and reformat the screen to best advantage on the small display. This will allow anyone with the supporting blogs to not only view their blog, but edit & create posts, manage comments and more from their spanky new Apple handheld.

It’s not enough to make me want an iPhone, or switch away from wordpress, but it definitely shows that SixApart is still capable of playing a leadership role in the CMS Space. Of course it won’t be long until support exists for WordPress as well.

Source: TechCrunch

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