Iconfactory recently showed of Twitterrific for the iPhone and it’s currently available on the Mac. What if there were the possibility that for $20, you could get both applications ad-free? That would be a hit because you’d essentially get the iPhone app for $5. You could then synchronize the settings on one to be on the other. If you’re on the go and don’t like how your iPhone displays the tweets, change it on the fly and the changes will automatically adapt to your Mac.

Another possibility in my mind would be the marvelous blogging app, MarsEdit. If Red Sweater Software were to release an iPhone application, you could easily write articles on the go. In the car and have a random thought? Just grab your iPhone or iPod touch. If you have connectivity (whether it be GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, or WiFi), you can instantly post to your blog. Perhaps your in a keynote conference and you want to do a live-blog? This could be an excellent way of blogging instead of having to lug around your laptop.

A final idea would be the oh-so-interesting game, Spore. This may very well be planned out, but if you could sync your creatures and worlds between your iPhone and Mac, you could very well have the next Nintendo DS or Tamogachi on your hands. Continuing your virtual evolution with your creature on the go could be very addictive and cause more people to run into streetlights. While it’s not a possibility yet, if the iPhone/iPod touch were able to create an ad-hoc network over WiFi, your characters could roam around to other Spore Mobile users’ worlds and others come into your worlds. The possibility is there, the technology just needs to be put in place.

The App Store is a very cool thing that will definitely be big and something to follow once it’s released. Let’s just hope that developers play their cards right.

The Mac can do almost anything you want it to. And what really sets the Mac apart is how elegantly and simply the Mac does these things. But it can’t always do everything so wonderfully, and when it came time for me to recorded some simple audio, quickly and without hassle, I had a problem. All I wanted was to talk for a few minutes and then have the freedom of a simple .mp3 file that I could do pretty much anything I wanted with. You could use GarageBand, but its a large, somewhat bloated application with poor support for anything other than full-blown podcast and music production. (which it’s great at) This is where TapeDeck comes in. It is your perfect application for quickly recording audio, always never than two clicks and five seconds out of reach.

Tape Deck is incredibly simple, and aim’s to provide an experience similar to a regular analog tape recorder, but on your Mac, and pretty much idiot-proof. To record audio, you click the big red record button and then a new tape is automatically inserted and you can start recording. when your done, you can click stop, and then to review any part of the tape you can toggle the fast-forward and rewind buttons. You can also quickly pause the tape. Tapes pretty much represent any one recording in Tape Deck, just like an old analog tape, and are organized in a shelf/space on the side of the window so that you can easily organize, see and search through your recordings. You can label, give important information like date, time, etc… (which are automatically added) and then any notes you wish to add to a tape. You can even change the quality of the recordings (the demo only allows for low quality recordings), the volume, and change between stereo and mono. After you’re done, you can find your tape(s) in the Finder, which Tape Deck can easily reveal to you or email them as plain MP3s, or open the audio in iTunes. Either way, its easy and convenient.

Overall, I think that Tape Deck is a great application, filling one of the gaps I found in the Mac in a very Apple-like fashion. Its ease of use, vintage feel, and ingenuity certainly help to round-out my over general Macintosh experience. TapeDeck is available at Tapedeckapp.com for only $25.

Like some people, I prefer having the control and flexibility of a desktop RSS aggregator (although some people would say these are reasons to go with an online reader). All of this is opinion of course, but the best general solution I’ve found is to use desktop applications that somehow synchronize with online services for the added convenience. NetNewsWire, one of the most popular desktop RSS readers, uses this as one of its main selling points (even though its free).

But more and more people now are migrating toward their web browser for media consumption. RSS is no exception. For good reason, Google Reader has emerged as one of the leading online RSS readers with its appealing looks, tight integration with other Google Apps that you might/probably use, and simplicity that makes it possible for anyone to use it. The only thing that keeps me from using it (I currently use Vienna) is the lack of a desktop application. There are certain things with desktop applications that I, like most people, find advantages. But with the convenience and accessibility of an online reader, I find myself in an interesting position. This is why i was very happy to come across an Adobe Air application called ReadAir. So far, its just about the closest thing to Google Reader on the desktop that I’ve been able to find. Although it lacks some basic features, such as a badge on the dock icon to tell you the number of unread articles and keyboard support to name a few, there are plenty of advantages. If you are used to using Google Reader from  your browser, you will find things like the ability to star things from ReadAir useful.

ReadAir does have some minor bugs, but its still in active development, and you can see the list of things to check off on the app’s Google Code page. But if you are an avid user of Google Reader, I’m sure that this will be a neat and convent way to more easily access your RSS feeds, especially as it develops into a more robust and mature application.

jUploadr is a desktop app. for OS X that allows you to simply drag your photos into the huge drop zone and then one by one, or in groups, add titles, tags, descriptions, and the privacy of the photos. The interface is smooth, snappy, and pleasant. It’s almost like an even more simplified version of Flickr’s Uploadr, without all the bugs and a lot more control over which photos get uploaded and when. One thing that i really like about JUploadr is that it does just what i want, and that it. Its menu’s aren’t cluttered with options and features that i don’t need- its straight to the point and focused on getting what you want done quickly and efficiently.

Overall, if you’re looking for a powerful, simple, and generally efficient way to upload your content to Flickr from your Mac, jUploadr hits the nail on the head.

Vidnik is a relatively simple app allowing you to keep track and make collections of videos you upload to YouTube on your desktop. It does this by letting you save different video collections just like you would save a document with Pages. 

Overall I’m really impressed with Vidnik. You can download it from http://code.google.com/p/vidnik/. The source code is also available if you would like to tweak it to fit your needs. There have been reports about the video and audio feeds being out of sync once uploaded to YouTube. If you have any problems feel free to add them to the issues list on http://code.google.com/p/vidnik/. 

Google also has many other open source Mac apps available on http://code.google.com/mac.

OS X is one nifty little OS, as most of you may very well know. There are many tricks of the trade that make it easy to use, but some may not know about them. One of them may very well be the handy little application, Quicksilver.

Quicksilver is to applications as what Spotlight is to documents. All it is is a lightweight application that lets you launch any application by “searching” for it with a key combination. For example, I customized my installation so that when I type Command-Space, I get the Quicksilver window.

From here you can type whatever application you may want. While some of you may be wondering why you should use this instead of the dock, it’s mainly a thing of looks. I have over 100 applications in my Applications folder alone. Granted I don’t use all of them, but I use a fair amount of them. If I were to put them all in the dock… Well, I’m not sure they would fit in the dock. But now I can only have my primary applications in the dock and have everything else in the folder.

Another nifty feature to Quicksilver is the amount of customization. You can change the color of the bezels, translucency, whether the shadow appears, or even the complete look and feel of the window. For instance, I use the Showcase plugin which gives me something of a Front Row feel.

See? Isn’t that much more pleasing to the eye?

Quicksilver is available from Blacktree Software for free while customizations are spread all over the internet. Download it today. Trust me, you’ll love it.

Monolingual is one of the neatest and most useful utilities for OS X that I have come across yet. Once you download it, it will give you a list of languages and what you want to delete, including architectures, input menus, etc.. After your done selecting everything you want to delete, Monolingual will take a while deleting all the information that you will never need. Once its done, you get a nice little box saying that Monolingual is done, and how much its deleted. Its amazing how much space you can save… the first time I ran it I saved something along the lines of 40 gigs!

There is little reason that you shouldn’t download this right away. I mean, who doesn’t want to save insane amounts of memory that they won’t ever miss?

When enlarged most favicons are rather ugly and pixellated, making them very unsightly and unusable in your dock. Fortunately, this problem can easily be fixed in just a few minutes.

Just open your favorite image editor, and make larger favicon. 100px by 100px should work just fine. Personally, I really like Opacity, because it is very easy to make gorgeous application icons in under 10 minutes. 

If you would prefer not to replace your current favicon you could make a different icon, place it somewhere on your server, and encourage users to download and use it, instead of your favicon in Fluid.

Little things like this will probably make your readers very happy, as it will spruce up their dock. 

If you are a bookmark junkie you may have your entire bookmarks bar filled with so many sites its hard to find your favorites.  Fluid allows you to make site specific browsers for your favorite sites allowing you to easily access them from your Dock. Fluid can either find the favicon for the chosen site or you can specify your own icon.

Not only does Fluid allow you easy access to your favorite sites, but it also sports many useful features other web browsers are missing.

- A full screen option making it easy to focus on that long article.
- A “Site Search” option making it easy to find pretty much anything on your favorite sites.
- Fluid includes a unique “Clipboard Plugin” allowing you to save almost anything without having to download it.

- Easily create a Tiny URL for any link, by just CTRL + Click or Right Clicking a link.
- Fluid allows you to open any photo in its Photo Browser, saving them for later.
- Fluid also includes a Thumbnail viewer allowing you to set up simple CSS tags, to tell Fluid which links to display.

Now, if there are certain companies sending you spam go ahead and add a new “From” condition.

You can create conditions for anything you like. I have mine set to Delete any messages with the subject containing “Free”,”Win”, “Credit”, and “Rebate” seeing how these are the most popular spam subjects in my inbox.

I also find it helpful to search Mail for “Unsubscribe” and “Remove”. Sometimes you can find a link to get yourself off of some mailing lists.

It also never hurts to have spam filtering enabled on your web server to ensure you don’t have much spam in your inbox. 

Although some of you might be thinking that you are fine with your current system, I strongly suggest trying this alternative for at least a week, as you will most likely find that it will integrate better with your life, and things, over time, will  become easier to manage.

I would start by downloading an application called School House. Among all the home work management options, including simply using TextEdit or possibly Stickies, this is the best in my opinion. It is a somewhat simple yet amazingly powerful desktop application that helps you input, organize, track, collaborate on, manage and hopefully complete your school assignments. It has everything that you would ever expect out of an home work program, including organization of different classes, priority labeling, and notes, as well as the ability to attach files to assignments, support for projects with multiple steps or tasks involved, and multiple partners on that project. The list goes on and on, and everyone I show it to is amazed by its features and ease of use.
There is no support for syncing of any kind, so you’re only going to be able to use this from your computer, and basically from just School House itself. Surprisingly there is no support for iCal integration/reminders or anything of the like thus far. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the next update included some of these improvements. Also, speaking of updates, if you’re running Leopard, you should be careful, as an early Leopard update “broke” School House in a way. But there is a way around it: find School House in the Finder and right click then go to “Get Info.” Find and check the box that says to run the application in ‘Rosetta’ mode. This means that OSX will force the app to run in Power PC mode, fixing any problems you may have had due to the Leopard update. The only side effect is that it will take significantly longer for the application to start up, but after that it runs at normal speeds.

There are plenty of other ways to do home work management on your Mac, but I find this to be the best way. Little things like having the number of assignments due the next day displayed on the icon in the dock (similar to when you have unread emails in Mail.app) make it easier for me to remember things and leaves less room for excuses. :)

Picturesque’s new interface is no longer a tiny window, with a bunch of pop out windows; it is now one main window, with most of the tweaking tools within. With that being said, the presentation of all of the tools is amazing with the use of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s new Core Animation technology, but for Tiger users, that means Picturesque 2 is not compatible.

Some of the best new features in Picturesque 2 include its innovative cropping feature, the media browser is now integrated, and it now carries better performance when dealing with batches of images. You can take a look at all of the new features in Picturesque 2 on Acqualia’s website.

Picturesque 2 has been completely rewritten, which is why Picturesque 2 is not a free upgrade to Picturesque 1 customers. However, Picturesque 1 customers get a discounted purchase price for version 2 - $12.95. New customers can purchase Picturesque 2 for $34.95. Finally, Acqualia has offered a free trial, which you can download from their website.

Software Name: Quinn
Created by: Simon Haertel - website
Download here
Screenshots: - 1 - 2

MarsEdit’s Main Windows

MarsEdit is really really easy to use. Type in your site’s address and if you use a common blogging platform/CMS, it will automatically recognize it and all you have to do is input your username and password and you are able to start posting. Simple as that. You have to use straight HTML code, but there is a preview function to see what your post will look like formatted.

MarsEdit’s Post Window

MarsEdit 2 costs $29.95 for a full version license and while it may seem a bit expensive for a blogging client, it’s a huge headache reducer and can save you lots of lost brain cells.

The first of these applications is a menu bar item called Caffeine. The concept seams simple, click it to prevent your mac from falling asleep, the screen saver from comming on, monitor from dimming etc…, but its one of the best things I’ve come across to date. I find it useful for watching longer videos online, reading RSS feeds, leaving momentarially without being logged out of iChat- the list goes on. There is really no reason to not have this, even if you only use it occasionally.

The second application I want to show to you is Warp. Basically, when you throw your mouse over to the edge of you screen, warp speeds into action, automatically switching to the next Space. At first this can be a bit annoying, but as you get used to it, it becomes essential. No more having to even touch you keyboard to switch spaces, and working on a sometimes under-sized Macbook screen becomes easier with the help of Warp.

My last application, Letter Box, is actually a plug-in for Mail.app. In my opinion, it eliminates any gripes I had about Mail. Basically, among other things, it takes full advantage of your wide screen by moving the email preview to the right of the mailbox instead of below it. You have to check out to see it in action, but if you, like me, and have a dedicated Space for email, having Letter box and Mail.app in full screen is THE way to go.

MarsEdit’s Main Windows

MarsEdit is really really easy to use. Type in your site’s address and if you use a common blogging platform/CMS, it will automatically recognize it and all you have to do is input your username and password and you are able to start posting. Simple as that. You have to use straight HTML code, but there is a preview function to see what your post will look like formatted.

MarsEdit’s Post Window

MarsEdit 2 costs $29.95 for a full version license and while it may seem a bit expensive for a blogging client, it’s a huge headache reducer and can save you lots of lost brain cells.

When Apple released Leopard, one thing that people did not like was the new dock. Apple totally revamped the dock for Leopard. Now, not only do we have a new dock, but people now have the ability to change the dock to match their personality.

The only problem is that all of the programs that do this for you, usually cost money, and you may not like any of the docks that they have to offer. Well here is a solution to your problem: Dock Library gives you the ability to change your dock for free, with a huge selection of docks!

When you first download Dock Library, you see exactly what is in the picture up above, just your default dock. That is because you have no docks imported yet. This is what you do, go to their website, and you visit there selection of docks, and choose which one will best fit your personality.

Once you find the dock that you like, download it to your Mac. Then go to Dock LIbrary, and go to File => Import To Dock Library. This is where you get the ability to import the dock you just downloaded, find the folder and click open. This will install the dock into the dock library, giving you the opportunity to make that your current dock.

Just click the dock you want, and press activate. Then just like that, you changed your dock. One observation that I would like to point out is the background, as you can see the background in the picture is what I have on my desktop. So it gives me the chance to see if the dock will match my background, and this is really helpful.

Times is another Mac RSS reader, but Times is very different from its competitors. Times has the viewing format of a newspaper. Times allows you to select your favorite RSS feeds, and drag them onto a dropbox area on the main interface. From then on, you’ll see your favorite RSS feeds in newspaper format. If you click on a headline, Times will fold down just like a newspaper to show you the full article.

Times takes full advantage of Mac OS X Leopard’s beautiful core animation, allowing it to have a stunning user experience. You’ll notice every little action you perform in Times will have a super cool animation associated with it. Neat!

Times might not be right for everyone, though. For example, I personally subscribe to about 350 feeds, and Times focuses more on a few feeds, not a few hundred. I’m one of those people who will be sticking with their current RSS reader.

Times is available from acrylicapps.com, and there’s a demo available. If you’d like to purchase Times, it will run you $30 Canadian, but if you’re still running on Tiger, you’re going to have to miss out because Times is Leopard-only.

But what if you get distracted while trying to complete tasks other than writing? Try hiding all of those tempting icons on your desktop with Camouflage . Camouflage allows you to hide your messy desktop with a simple keyboard shortcut.

Grand Perspective is an amazingly simple application, with huge headache avoiding benefits. Simply point the program at an entire hard drive or directory, and it produces a visual representation of what is filling up the drive. You can hover your mouse over any of the sections and see what files are represented and how much space they fill up. If you want to clear our some serious hard drive space, then add Grand Perspective to your dock.

Software Name: Grand Perspective
Created by: Erwin Bonsma - Website
Download here
Screenshots: 1 - 2 - 3