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.

The reason this is strange is because if you do not pay attention to what version you are running, 10.5.4 isn’t even out yet. The current version for Mac OS X is 10.5.3. So what exactly does this mean? Well my guess is that before or when Mobile Me is released, you will see 10.5.4 released.

There is no schedule release date, but Mobile Me should be scheduled to be released sometime in early July. So you can expect 10.5.4 to be released sometime during July, or even before. Based off of these pictures however I would not put money on it being any later!

Speaking of 10.5.4, Steve Jobs let developers get a little sneak peak at the new version of Mac OS 10. This will be 10.6 called “Snow Leopard”. Steve Jobs did not really talk about it, but you can bet that by the next MacWorld, this will be the main topic of discussion.

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.

There has been some rumors floating around the past couple of weeks that .Mac will be seeing some major changes. As all of you should know, WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) is coming up next week, and it is going to be huge. We already know that is probably going to focus around the iPhone, but we may also see some attention towards .Mac.

What exactly can we expect however? Well, one of the rumors is that the name will be changed, to “Mobile Me”. This is expected as there has also been rumors going around that iPhone and .Mac will have the ability to sync with each other; hence the term “Mobile”. This will really boost Apple as people can really take advantage of the ability to sync over the iPhone. 

What Will “Mobile Me” Have?

Well, for those that do not know what .Mac is, I will help you better understand. .Mac is to sync your computer, so that wherever you are you will always have your information. For example, let’s say you are at a friends house, and you want to show him a cool new site. Your site is bookmarked at your house, so you log into .Mac, and you can retrieve all your bookmarks. Not only can you do that, but you have email, your calendar, address book, and much more. It is an amazing feature for two computers. 

Now since .Mac is rumored to be changed over to “Mobile Me”, you could expect some more changes right? Well that is the thing, not many people know. Only Apple knows; you can expect to see a lot more though.

If you want to know more, here are some better articles:

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/29/big-changes-coming-to-mac/
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/30/mobile-me-the-new-name-of-mac/
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/06/01/apple-buys-me-com-macs-new-name/
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/05/30/apples-mac-service-to-be-renamed-revamped/

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?

Even the geekest of the Mac geeks done know everything about their Mac. This is what makes things fun. Although its all ways fun to be going through small, little known utilities and things of the like on rainy days, you can’t ever seem to be able to explore all of your Macs folders and menus.

One of the Macintosh’s coolest, least known, and most useful is a little tool called Summarize. Its concept is simple: provide a built in way to summarize pieces of text on the Mac. Just highlight a section of text, may it be a report you typed in Pages, or a blog post from Safari, just highlight it, go to the Application menu, Services, then click Summarize. You can then use the slider and buttons to select how much you want to summarize and if you want sentences or paragraphs (for larger things like Wikipedia articles for instance). Watch as your text is summarized in real time, then when your happy, you can save the file anywhere you want as an RTF (Rich text format) or just copy and paste.

The Summary Service does an amazing job of accurately summarizing your text for easy consumption, or, as I find it most useful, helping me write excerpts for blog posts (what a person sees about your post before they click it to read the full article) For example, it compressed MacFocus Magazines about page down to “MacFocus Magazine began as an idea to fill a need within the teen media community, and within a week from that idea, MacFocus Magazine launched with it’s very first issue ever.”- quick and to the point. I also found a full copy of the Charles Dickens book, “A Tale of Two Cities” and had it summarized down to one sentence: “But, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.” Pretty expressive eh?

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.

The strength iTunes possesses in the digital media market place is growing every day. It seems like almost every time a certain song is featured in a hip new iTunes ad, that song instantly sells thousands of more copies. I don’t know what it is, but that takes a strong user base and high attention to achieve if you ask me. Congratulations to Coldplay for getting their song in this new ad, I hope they are enjoying all the money they made off of this, I know I would be!

Link to “Viva la Vida” iTunes Ad: Click here

First things first - launch Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string suck

Now to stop using the “suck” effect, simply go to the Apple Menu>Dock>Dock Preferences>And change the effect that you minimize with.

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

With all the hype around the iPhone for the past year, there is no doubt in my mind that WWDC this year is going to be full of, to say the least, interesting announcements. The obvious of these announcements being a 3G iPhone along with statement about its SDK and new software are going to be talked about for quite a while. However, my question for you is what else do you think will be announced, if anything at all? Will there be new iPods or Macs? Or maybe even just some larger software updates? Your guess is as good as mine.

If I were to guess what other announcements there are going to be at this event, I would say Leopard 10.5.3. Version 10.5.2 has been around for a while now and there are still some bugs that need fixing with certain applications. Another thing I would presume to be released or talked about would be .Mac. There has been a couple of rumors floating around that this service is going to receive a major update that will make it more competitive with Microsoft Exchange. That would be a great compliment to the iPhone’s Mail.app as well as how it is soon going to support ActiveSync. Either way, it appears like the current version of Mac OS X is going to change for the better.

What do you think about all this? What are you looking forward to about this event?

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.