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:

1. 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.)
2. 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!

Download MoodBlast here.

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/

I realize that this post is quite late, but it has been difficult to get enough time to find an Internet connection to post this week’s notes.  Here’s all the details for the MLR segment on Global Geek #60.

Our first application this week is from “Fluffalope Factory” software called Miyu.  This program allows you to quickly and easily add text to a movie file.  THis can be very useful for home movies, or in subtitling a video in another language.  The simple interface allows you to select the section of video you want the text added to, and simply type it in.  The realtime preview shows precisely where the words will line up in relation to the frame, so it’s easy to make adjustments in timing and wording on the fly.

There does seem to be some issue with file types.  I tried to run through some files using MPG videos that I had gotten from friends, one worked and the other didn’t.  When I ran through a QuickTime trailer I got off the Internet, it worked without a hitch.  Miyu is a free application.

http://www.fluffalopefactory.com/miyu/

Second on the docket this week is another desktop updating application called Desktoptopia.  This application is another automated desktop changer like DeskLickr that I covered a couple of weeks back.

Instead of taking images from Flickr, it can read from any RSS-based photostream including flickr, iPhoto “photocasts” and others

The interface offers options to change the desktop at a set intervals, and will allow you to select from one or more of the RSS feeds that you’ve entered into the system.

Desktoptopia is not a free application, and does cost about $20 USD.  But it works well, integrates directly with the System Preferences panel and is very quick and responsive.  The initial trial of Desktoptopia is a 10-day trial and will give you a good idea whether or not you want to spend the money for this nice aesthetic touch.

http://www.desktoptopia.com/

Third up this week is a Mac-specific browser based on the Mozilla “gecko” platform called Camino.  Camino started life back in 2001 as the “Chimera” project, a mozilla based browser targetted at the OS X platform.  This was the first “browser only” project to breakaway from the old Netscape suite.  just under a year later, a project to fulfill the same need for all platforms.  That project was called Firefox.

Camino is like Firefox’s little brother.  it does most of the same things, some of them more quickly, but it’s always been a step or two behind.

It does do a few things more quickly, page render times have been documented on several websites as being 10-15% faster.  This isn’t a huge difference in most cases, but it is a “feature”.

Many firefox extensions have similar counterparts for Camino, but because of the different codebase, the extensions typically aren’t interchangeable.

If you want a Mac-specific browser, and Safari just doesn’t “do it” for ya, check out Camino.  As for me, I’m sticking with Firefox.

http://www.caminobrowser.org/

This week’s edition of the GGP is up and available, and with it the latest update from the GGP Mac Lab.

First up this week is a quick review of AutoResizer from Optunis. This is a great little image utility which provides an easy method of batch-resizing or re-formatting images. Simply point the tool at a file, or folder and it will process the file(s) into the selected output format. Some of the supported file types include JPEG, PNG and Adobe PSD. It works fairly quickly too. I was able to process a folder of 96 PSD files on my MacBook in about 45 seconds. AutoResizer will resize images to a fixed size, or scale to a preset vertical or horizontal value. It also provides a faciltiy for converting the files to a new format (PSD to JPEG for example).

Download this free application from the Optunis website.

Second on the block is a new Mac take on a UNIX classic. It’s Aquamacs. Acquamacs is an OS X compliant version of the ever popular Emacs text editing program from the UNIX and Linux platforms. Aquamacs sports the regular set of text-editing features that you’d expect from any good OS X tool, including full use of the OS X keyboard shortcuts for operations like copying, pasting etc. However it also supports many of the original Emacs key combinations as well which will make seasoned Emacs veterans very happy. Aquamacs also supports syntax highlighting for 24 different language variants right out of the box. These include PHP, HTML and AppleScript as well as some more obscure formats like matlab and Lisp. One criticism that I had of Aquamacs is already making its way into regular rotation on my Macbook, pushing TextEdit further and further to the outside.

Download Aquamacs from the project website.

Finally this week a maintenance application called OnyX.  It provides a quick one-stop centre for performing some of the tuning and maintenance tasks that we often neglect, as well as a spot to set preferences for some of the more hard-to-find settings in OS X.

Among the tweakable parameters are things like:

• The image format for screen captures
• The number of items in the “recent items” list
• Enabling the “Developer Mode” of Dashboard
• Highlighting the screen corners which have actions like turn on the screen saver
• Enabling the “Debug” menu in several applications

In Maintenance Tasks, OnyX can restore many of the settings and options to their defaults, as well as perform system optimization.  OnyX also provides direct call-outs to many of the UNIX utilities present in OS X.  I really couldn’t find any negatives about OnyX, it’s a utility program that does what it says it will, and does it with a bit of style.

You can download OnyX from Titanium’s website.

That’s the end of this week’s review.  If you’d like more tech news from the past week, as well as links to other downloads, sites and services, check out the Global Geek Podcast.

Another week has come, and with it episode #58 of the Global Geek Podcast was released this morning. Here’s a recap of this week’s Mac Lab Rat segment.

First up this week is another fix for the somewhat troublesome 10.4.10 update for OS X. Users of MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Mac Minis may be experiencing some problems with their AirPort Express network adapters. The problems range from unstable connections, to in some cases, kernel panics.

I was definitely having problems with my WiFi connection which I’d unfairly attributed to my DD-WRT patched Linksys Router. Since the update has gone in, all my network issues have automagically disappeared.

This is starting to bring back memories of some past Windows Service Pack releases…

Link to the patch on Apple.com

Second on the block this week is a Flickr-based desktop changer called DeskLickr. Aaron Wallis‘ the application provides a way to “flickrize” your desktop by allowing you to select from your photos, or anyone elses and pull up images from a set, an entire photoset, or from a “tag” search.

One thing I did notice, is that it doesn’t do any scaling of the images and just chopped off the extremities of the photo. This has the unfortunate consequence of chopping off the extremities of people in the pictures as well. That said, it works very well for images of scenery or scaled backgrounds.

http://desklickr.isnot.tv/

The final download for this week is a couple of Applescripts from Apple itself which allows you to convert text to AIFF files. These scripts are quick and easy to use. One script can be used to arbitrarily convert any text string. This is good for short clips, or words. The other will convert the text in the top-most TextEdit window to audio. This is great for converting eBooks or readme files to an audio format. The next time you just need to get some text converted to an audio file, use one of these scripts and then convert it to MP3 using iTunes!

http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/text2audio.html

If you haven’t done so already, head over to the Global Geek Podcast website and give this week’s show a listen. Better yet use these links to subscribe to the podcast with iTunes, or your preferred PodCatcher [rss].

I’ve recently been given the opportunity to participate in one of the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis. The Global Geek Podcast is currently without a Mac expert, so I’ve volunteered to step in and provide some content on a regular, or irregular basis (depending if they like me!).

My first segment will appear (I think) on episode #56 of the GGP due out next Monday. It’s been fun trying to test out my limited Garage Band knowledge for something useful!

If you’re interested, tune into the GGP this week. Dave & Tim always have lots of great information on the latest sites, services, tools and news from around the ‘net.