iTunes Library Updater for Windows using .NET 2.0 via Download Squad:
keeps iTunes’ library updated by automatically adding new tracks from the directories of your choice and removing tracks for which the files no longer exist.
One of the things I like about this time of the year are all these Best of / Worst Of Year lists. Looks like I’m only using 2 of Paul’s 10 apps every new Mac user should download. Cyberduck for FTP and Stuff-It Expander. I’m definitely going to check out TextWrangler2, AdiumX and iBackup, and yeah, sooner or later I’ll finally download Firefox. I’ve been enjoying Safari but I do miss those FF extensions. Not sure about the others, but I may check those out as well.
Just saw this ad (thanks Digg) for Internet Explorer 5.0 for the Mac from back in 2000. Click the picture below to view. 
I got a chuckle out of it. ZipIE?!
Time for the 2005 MacWorld Editor awards, affectionately titled the Eddys. 
Cool, Comic Life made the list. By Brent Simmons count, NetNewsWire creator (which also won a 2005 Eddy): “Seattle counts for three winners this year. (But it could be more: I didn’t look super-closely.)”
Bought the MacCapture (affiliate) program last night and am looking around for reviews today. Macnn has a favorable one. Macreview has a brief overview with one negative reader comment. Haven’t installed it yet, but should be doing so later today and will have more to say after working with it for awhile, I’m sure.
gskinner is playing in the virtual snow via Flash and his G5:
I’m achieving this with a combination of convolution, horizontal blurring, color adjustments, thresholding and pixel sampling. It’s relatively processor intensive with 400 flakes, but it runs at the full 30 fps on my G5.
To get this to work with your iSight, just right click in the snowflakes and choose preferences. Click on the camera and choose the firewire camera.
The following tutorial with screenshots looks handy for setting up how to remotely control your Mac using VNC and a third party program. I downloaded Synergy for the Mac recently too and am interested in configuring that but have noted that:
The Mac OS X port is incomplete. It does not synchronize the screen saver, only text clipboard data works (i.e. HTML and bitmap data do not work), non-US English keyboards are untested and probably don’t work, and there may be problems with mouse pointer and mouse wheel acceleration.
Already use that on a few other computers and it works slick for controlling multiple machines with one keyboard/mouse.
via newlaunches.com, the coconutIdentityCard is a small app that will tell the date and place of birth for your Mac or iPod built on/after 1997. Doesn’t work with the iPod shuffle. I’m going to give this a shot later.
I just went back through all of 2005 at Version Tracker and picked out games that looked interesting. I only downloaded and played two of these.
1. l1neum 1.2 - a Qix clone, nice graphics. Downloaded and played.
2. Rubik - an unofficial Rubik’s Cube game
3. 4-World Planet - Text based adventure
4. Wire Hang Redux
5. Dungeons of Omaz - a curious game based on sound only, no pictures, text or video.
6. A legal good time 1.01 - odd name for a picture scrambling game
7. MacMame
8. Marbol 1.0 - puzzler
9. ishizume 1.1 - Klax clone. Downloaded and played.
10. SuperTux 0.1.3 - platform adventure inspired by Super Mario
11. Argonaut 2149 1.1.1 - Asteroids-like shooter
12. DCSquares 2.0.1
13. Zombies 1.0.1
14. Quinn 3.0 - Tetris clone
15. First Star Online 2 v1.2 - MMORPG
16. Spinvaders 1.0.0 - Space Invaders clone
17. Virus Out 1.0 - satirical game where you search for fake viruses on your system. Not real files are harmed, this is just a game.
18. Chemical Bonds 1.02 - puzzle
19. rRootage 0.23.1 - shooter
20. Christmas Crisis 1.0.1 - it’s seasonal mixing in a holiday game
Have any other cool Mac freeware games to share?
Create and share your own comics with Comic Life which is published by freeverse. It’s as easy as dragging, dropping, selecting and typing. It took me 30 minutes to create the comic shown below with zero prior experience:
I saw Comic Life at the local Megastore and was surprised to see the following testimonial as the top of box blurb: “Runs well, looks amazing, and does something so incredibly unique.” - Chris Pirillo, lockergnome.com. How about that Chris, you are a box star?!
I laid down the $29.99 (it’s only $24.99 if you buy from their website, I discovered later — doh) and took it home planning to install and check out when I had a few minutes.
After carefully knifing open the contents — the comic makes it look like this is some kind of struggle, but thats all in good fun — I removed the CD and stuck it into the eMac drive. Just had to drag the folder over to the desktop and then click on the CL icon to enter in the Comic Life code (found on the front of the instruction manual.
From there it’s a matter of choosing a comic template, dragging and dropping pictures from iPhoto or elsewhere on your Mac, adding captions and text, modifying the design and voila, you’ll have a comic created. The last step is exporting to a format that can be shared with others. It can be exported as an HTML document, images, directly to a .Mac account or even as a quicktime movie.
Any application as involved as this that lets a complete newcomer create something cool in 30 minutes or less is better than waiting for pizza to arrive.
Macworld gave this 4 1/2 mice. This is a well designed and implemented application, especially for creative types (my mind is whirring with ideas!). Plasq created Comic Life [official plasq RSS feed].
This sounds like a cool future for the Mac Mini if it ever comes to pass …
In an effort to appease media companies wary of the security of digital rights management technology, Apple’s new technology will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user’s hard drive. Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user’s iDisk, which Front Row 2.0 will tap into. When the user wishes to play the content, robust caching technology Apple previously received a patent for will serve it to the users computer as fast as their Internet connection can handle.
My wife was taken by the Mac Mini the first time she saw it: “Ooo, that’s cute.” She wanted one. Then later she changed her mind and said she didn’t want one. When I asked her why, she couldn’t really give me a sensible reason. Maybe I just haven’t figured out the right way to ask the question?
I still feel like I’m a new Mac owner, even though I’ve owned one for a little more than a year n ow. Several lists of 10 useful things are making the rounds and this one looks interesting: 10 things every new Mac owner should know
This is pretty neat, another feature in the System Preferences that I didn’t know about: how to setup stealth mode (thanks Pei). BTW, this is one of the best designed Mac blogspot hosted blogs I’ve seen. Pei has a custom Macnify Dashboard Widget too. I’ll be back.
foo - a template for creating your own Dashboard Widgets:
Features include a fading “i” button, “Done” button, automatic version string, a working random() method, xmlHttpRequest implementation, debugging methods and more!
Distributed free, with no license.
Oh yeah, the OPML Editor (Mac, free) test over at my Wordpress demo blog went well, so time to try it out here.
This will let you blog to any Wordpress blog. As of this writing a small tweak to xmlrpc.php is required for Wordpress.org powered sites.
After a little regular expression voodoo, let’s see what this does 
Just a test using Zoundry! for posting from the desktop. It only works with Windows which is a bit counter to this Mac Mode, but maybe if enough people ask for a Mac version they will supply it. Also, I plan to check out the OPML Editor for the Mac.
Just a test using Zoundry! for posting from the desktop. It only works with Windows which is a bit counter to this Mac Mode, but maybe if enough people ask for a Mac version they will supply it. Also, I plan to check out the OPML Editor for the Mac.
Earlier this week I got an early Christmas present, we bought an iSight
($149.99 via Apple store, affiliate) which the Apple store describes as:
The eyes and ears of iChat AV. iSight is the incredibly easy to use personal video conferencing camera with integrated microphone that will allow you to have face-to-face conversations with your friends, family and co-workers over the Internet.
Hooking this thing up was painless once I figured out what mounting to use.
Love the signature box Apple packaging.
For the $149, accessories are available to hook up to the various Macs out there including G5, iMac, and eMac. A generic stand will work for Mini owners.
Aha! That’s the stand to use for the eMac.
The iSight swivels up and down for different camera angles.
There it is, waiting to capture an iChat setting (which I haven’t yet chatted with anyone through iChat before, BTW) or video or … ???