Category: Mac

FlyGesture Now Free

FlyGesture from Flyingmeat has now released their gesture program for free download a use by anyone. This a nice little program that allows you to use your mouse of trackpad to draw a gesture on the screen to launch an application, load a web page or other actions within OSX. Head on over and download you free copy.

Links
FlyGesture Home Page

iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Anyone out there looking to buy me a present well here is cool little item. I have an iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) like many of you out there and like most of you have found it is kinda annoying having your earphones getting all tanged up. I like you also like drinking beer so this cool combination of an iPod case / beer top opener is a great idea.

Links
Bevy iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

Google Desktop for Mac Available

Google Desktop is now available for the Mac. Although in my opinion it is not as good as using my all time favourite program Quicksilver it is still pretty useful for finding files on your computer. Best of all it contains the Google Updater so that you can make sure that all your google applications are installed and up to date on your mac. It is a free download but please be warned when you first install Google Desktop it does a complete scan of your hard disk for indexing purposes which will take quite some time to complete. I therefore recommend doing the install just before you go to bed so that it can index over night.

Links
Google Desktop For Mac
Quicksilver

Lithium Network Monitoring Platform

Lithium is a cross platform network monitoring tool that can monitor your network components, servers and other appliances. It supports both linux, Mac OSX and Windows, with its core server components running on either OSX or Linux. It is possible to access the core server to access the various graphs and monitoring information either through the Windows and OSX console application or through its web-based user interface. There are also incident management capabilities built-in to provide support when one of the components in the network suffers a break in service.

Links
Lithium Corp Home page

OmniGraffle Stencil for FFBD

After looking around the Internet for an OmniGraffle stencil for creating Functional Flow Block Diagrams (FFBD) without any luck I decided to just create my own, which you can download from here. This stencil contains all the major components of a Functional Flow Block Diagram which is used to outline the control of flow between functions within a functional architecture. FFBD are extremely helpful to try and describe the behavior of a system while being solution agnostic.

Links
Download Functional Flow Block Diagram (FFBD) Stencil
OmniGraffle Home Page

Google Calendar and Apple iSync/iCal Synchronisation

A new application is currently in development called SpanningSync, which will allow two-way synchronisation between Google Calendars and Apple's iSync. This means that all you Apple Calendar Synchronisation applications including Microsoft Entourage, Apple iCal, iSync Compatible Mobile Phones and iSync Compatible PDAs can all be synchronised with Google Calendars. There is a video demonstration of the application being used on the application's blog.

Links
SpanningSync Home page

Adobe Labs and Eclipse RCP

Today I found the Adobe Labs site, which is where Adobe releases all of its beta preview software for testing and trials. There are also some developer tools such as the XML Toolkit, which allows for metadata to be stored within files. Currently XMP supports these file formats: JPEG, PSD, TIFF, AVI, WAV, MPEG, MP3, MOV. Also of interest on this site is the new Flex Builder application. What is interesting about this application is not so much that it is a new application for building Flex applications but rather than it has been developed using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) framework. This is following a general trend for more and more applications to utilise the power of the RCP framework. For a list of some of the already developed RCP applications have a look at this page.

Links
Adobe Labs Site
XMP Toolkit
Eclipse Rich Client Platform
Adobe Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh

Midnight Inbox: Getting Things Done (GTD)

Getting Things Done (GTD) is the name of a personal time management book that describes a series of actions around the concept of creating lists to get things done. This has been picked up by the Mac community and there seems to be an almost cult following with GTD. We are now starting to see OSX applications that support the GTD principles. One of the better applications that has almost made the 1.0 version milestone is Midnight Inbox. This has to be one of the nicest designed applications that I have seen for a while, with close attention placed on typography.

Links
Wikipedia Article on Getting Things Done
Midnight Inbox Home Page

Cool OSX Apps Site

I have been subscribed to the RSS feed from the Cool OSX Apps site for quite some time now. It is a great little site that points out all the well developed OSX applications for the mac. In addition the site is well designed and has regular updates. The archive is also something else as it provides a live view of the articles against a timeline.

Links
CoolOSXapps.net

Graffletopia

I love OmniGraffle, which is made by OmniGroup. My work colleagues can attest to my love of this application. One of its features is to install templates that contain widgets that you can use in your diagrams. For example there are templates for UML diagrams, network diagrams, family trees, etc. Well to keep up with the spirit of templates there is website called Graffletopia that contains a collection of templates available for OmniGraffle.

Links
OmniGraffle Home Page
Graffletopia

Skype For Mac WITH VIDEO

YYAAAAAYY, Skype has finally been released for mac with video support. Video has been available on the windows version for ages, but now you can download a BETA version of this popular Voice over IP (VoIP) application that also supports video.

Links
Skype with Video for Mac Preview

Sofa Control: Another Apple Remote Application

Seems like more an more people have been wanting to use Apple's Remote for more than just Front Row. Recently I blogged the Remote Buddy software, which is pretty impressive, well now there is another contender called Sofa Control. I still believe that Remote Buddy is a much cleaner produced application; however, Sofa Control has good AppleScript support allowing it to control other applications easier. Sofa Control also allows the user to add new applications and script up the actions they would like performed. In my mind open applications that allow the users to extend it's functionality is always a winner. The downloadable version allows you to operate for a full 30 minutes before ceasing to work, plenty of time to try it out.

Links
Sofa Control
Remote Buddy

Eclipse on Mac Intel

Ok so I haven't been using Eclipse on my mac for a while, actually since I upgraded to the new intel-based MacBook Pro. To my disappointment the 3.1.2 release of Eclipse that I was using crashes when trying to start it. After digging around I have found out that this is because that version of Eclipse does not support mac intel; however, the 3.2 release candidates after RC5 do. Therefore if you wanting to use Eclipse on one of the new intel-based macs then you are going to have to start using the 3.2 stream of eclipse even though it has not finished production. I hope that this will not screw up any plugins that you rely on.

Links
Eclipse 3.2 Project Plan
Eclipse Home Page

Removing iSight from MacBook Pro

I work for a company that does not allow the use of camera's in mobile phones or laptop computers. Therefore when the Apple MacBook Pro and MacBook were released with in-built cameras I was VERY disappointed. I also use a big mix of both windows and mac applications therefore the intel-based mac laptops would be perfect for my work. I have been trying to chase up through my Australian Apple contacts to find a solution to remove the camera or have a laptop built to order without the camera in the first place. I still have not had a confirming reply to my questions. However today I once again went trawling through the forums and found a tidbit of information from a site called ifixit.com. This site contains a visual manual on how to replace the logic board of a MacBook Pro. One of the steps is to remove the laptop screen and as part of this process you disconnect the built-in iSight camera and there are pictures of this. This means that you can physically disconnect the camera to render it useless. However this does not meet my companies guidelines to the letter because the camera is still present it just does not work, it is a step in the right direction though.

Links
ifixit.com Remove Display Page
Apple Support Forum Thread on Removing Camera

Remote Buddy: Enhanced Front Row Remote Functionality

Remote Buddy is a great little mac application that extends the capabilities of the Apple remote that comes with the new Front Row enabled macs. Remote Buddy provides features to control more applications with the remote and even to control the mouse. It uses a very clean and easy to use interface to lead users through the use of the additional functionality creating a pleasant experience for the user. The site has a good video of it being used so for all those who do not have a remote can dream about that new mac they want to buy :) .

Links
Remote Buddy

Apple Mail in Widescreen

I have a widescreen Apple Macbook Pro which is sweet and I also use Apple's Mail program for my home email. Well when I found the Letterbox plugin for Apple Mail I did not even hesitate to install it and what do you know, it works without any pain whatsoever. If you too have a high resolution widescreen monitor then and use Apple Mail then don't think just click on the link below to get your own version of Letterbox running.

Links
Letterbox

MacTF-EPG Currently Not Working

As I am a Topfield PVR and Mac owner I really like the software produced by Nathan Oates to support both platforms. My favourite program of his is the MacTF-EPG program that allows you to easily download an electronic program guide from the Internet and upload it to the EPG. The program works great (although intel version is buggy) except in the last couple of days it has stopped working. I have contacted Nathan and it seems that there is some problem with the EPG feed that is being downloaded, and hopefully it will be fixed in the next couple of days. Lets all hope because I really miss the complete EPG on my Topfield.

Keep up the great work Nathan.

Links
MacTF-EPG Home

Topfield Australia

BEEP Networking

I was looking at the Mac application SubEthaEdit today due to an article about MacZot.com and noticed that SubEthaEdit was using something called BEEP to collaborate with other users using SubEthaEdit. This reference to BEEP peaked my interest as it was a technology/software/gadget/thing that I did not know about and therefore I had to know about it (I am bad with things like this).

After a quick search on my good friend Google I found the BEEP home page and after reading about it have found out that BEEP is a low level library for making it easier to create your own networking protocol. BEEP provides all the common functionality that most applications have to recreate whenever they need to implement their own communication protocol. BEEP makes this easier and even provides a number of predefine profiles for common protocols like TCP or even SOAP. The best way to understand BEEP is to read the article in the links section below as the Beep home pages is a little thin on information.

Links
Beep Home Page
Article describing Beep

EasyEclipse: The easy way to develop using eclipse

Are you interested in developing using Eclipse but have found there are too many different plugins and you are not sure what you need? Well the folks at EasyEclipse are trying to make your life that one little bit easier by including all the plugins in an easy to install version of eclipse or readily packaged plugin bundles. Although you can actually do this all yourself I am all for making things a little easier and quicker to use so go and check it out.

Links
EasyEclipse Home Page

Boot Camp Resource Centre

Versiontracker has created a resource page for all those mac users who have recently installed WinXP on their macs using the Apple Boot Camp program. This is a good start page for all the shareware and free software for windows that you will need to work in windows land. Of vital importance are the virus and spyware programs to keep your windows operating system free from malicious software.

Links
Boot Camp Resource Centre

I love Firefox

Ok so I am a complete convert and am using firefox for everything (home and work) and have also converted both my wife and mum (sort of). Well this is a great little video that summarises the browsers war for me.

Links
Wheee! Video

Mac Mini (intel): My First Experience

My work has just purchased a Mac Mini (intel). One of the reasons for the purchase is to test out all out software so that we can test it will run fine on an intel based mac prior to purchasing more expensive machines. We bought a 1.6Ghz Core Duo Mac mini with 512Mb RAM. The first think that I noticed was that running programs took longer to start up. I put this down to the fact that all of my other systems are running a minimum of 1Gig of RAM and the Mac Mini only has 512Mb. With a quick review of the RAM utilization I did notice that there was absolutely no spare RAM. Therefore the first thing that I would recommend is putting in at least 1Gig of RAM (preferably as a single module so that you can expand later if required). The other potential slow down was because many of the applications that I was trying are not yet universal binaries and therefore there is a hit as Rosetta automatically compiles up the code to the Intel native instructions set. However, once the programs were running they responded quickly.

The next item for me to play with was Front Row, as this is the first computer that I have had a chance to play with. On first inspection I really liked the remote. It was very small without being too small, which meant that I could put it in my pocket and not notice it there but still not lose it. One thing that disappointed me was the level of responsiveness when using the remote. When starting up Front Row by clicking on the menu button there are numerous occasions when it seems to take forever to Front Row to start. Also when entering a slide show in the pictures section it would take quite some time. Some occasions it was long enough for me to start wondering if the mac had crashed so i would start hitting more buttons (always a bad thing to do). The end result is that my Front Row experience is mixed, when it does respond I absolutely love it but the occasions when it does not respond and seems to hang really taints my opinion of the software.

Next to test was the new Apple Bootcamp. This has got to be one of the easiest things to do. Simply install the Bootcamp assistant like any other program and then just follow the prompts, there really was not much to do. One thing though is do make sure you have an Windows XP install CD that contains Service Pack 2 as it is an absolute pain to try and install it at a later stage. Without SP2 windows still loads and works but you do not get any network and the display drivers do not work. In addition the drivers CD from apple that is created by the Bootcamp Assistant does not work as it requires some SP2 files. Other than the Service Pack 2 issue, which is my fault, Bootcamp works with no problems at all.

After seeing the speed of running windows straight on the mac hardware I was very keen to try the beta of Parallels. The software installed with no problems and run straight out of the box. Installing windows was a breeze and once I had installed the VM addition tools into the WIndows VM the mouse worked more smoothly and could move between the VM window and the OSX desktop. The beta version does not support full screen but I still found it extremely useful. The speed of windows in the VM environment was extremely good and without doing any benchmarks I would say that it was almost as fast as running windows straight on hardware through Bootcamp; although much less memory was available.

So the end result is that both Bootcamp and Parallels ran windows extremely well with very little fuss to setup. Front Row worked but seemed a little sluggish. Running programs in generally seemed to take a little longer to startup. My final comment is get as much RAM as you can afford as with using Rosetta, VMs and everything else you will really really need it.

Intel releases development tools for Intel-based Macs

Intel has released a number of tools for Mac developers to optimise their code to run on the Intel Core Duo processors. The products available are:

• Fortran Compiler
• C++ Compiler
• Math Kernel Library for Mac OS
• Integrated Performance Primitives
• Supporting documentation

Links
Development Support for Intel-based Macs

Windows Virtualisation on Mac OSX on Intel

I have been wanting to run windows applications within OSX for quite some time. Up until now the only option has been Virtual PC, which runs really slowly. With the introduction of macs using the intel processor the realisation of windows on macs became a little closer as windows only runs on x86 based processors. Then came the dual booting programs that allowed intel macs to boot both windows and OSX but this is not really what you want because it means rebooting to move back and forth between the operating systems and lets face it, windows sucks and OSX is just gorgeous to use. So what we really need is either a virtualisation layer within OSX to install windows into, similar to Virtual PC but for intel. A company called Parallels has created a product called Parallels Workstation which is now available as a beta for 30 day trial. Unfortunately I do not have an intel mac to test this out just yet but watch this space.

Although Parallels Workstation is still not the optimal situation as you still need to run a full copy of windows within the virtualisation environment within OSX. What I would prefer to see is a software abstraction layer that allows windows applications to run from directly within OSX and think that they are running within the windows environment, similar to Wine on the Linux operating system. You never know we may see this also in the near future, until then Parallels Workstation seems like a very promising product.

Links
Parallels Workstation Beta Download Page
Wine Home Page

Apple Releases Dual Boot Application

In a weird twist of events Apple has released a new program called Boot Camp as a Public Beta that allows you to easily install and boot Microsoft Windows on an Intel based Apple Mac. This gets around some of the more painful processes that were required to use the other dual boot procedures and gives an easy to use apple-esque interface into the world of dual booting.

Links
Boot Camp Public Beta

Virtue: Virtual Desktop Manager

I have recently changed my virtual desktop manager to Virtue and I have been very impressed. Virtue is an open source developed program available on Sourceforge, which is also being regularly updated (using Sparkle developer plugin, previous blog article). It is quite complete with the ability to bind applications to different virtual screens, use multiple visualizations for screen changes and even has a popup pager that shows all the desktops in a glance with the different applications running on each. Overall it is a very clean and well put together software package.

Links
Virtue Sourceforge Home page

Broken Hard Disk?

Do you have a hard drive that is broken and no longer wants to mount or you believe that you have lost your files? You have tried Fdisk and it can not see the partitions anymore and now you are at a loss because you really want to get the files back. This is the situation that one of my friends was in but then found a nice program called TestDisk, which allows you to recover data off drives even when they no longer can be read by other programs and operating systems. TestDisk is available for a number of operating systems and can understand lots and lots of different file systems so if you have a broken disk and not sure what to do then give this program a go. The same developers have also created another program called PhotoRec, which has been developed for recovering photos off memory cards that are used in digital cameras. PhotoRec comes with the download of TestDisk so you might as well keep it too.

Please Note: Both TestDisk and PhotoRec are command line applications so they are not meant for the basic user.

Links
TestDisk Home Page
PhotoRec Home Page

Q: Windows on Mac Emulator

Q is an emulator to allow OSX users to run other operating systems on their Mac within a virtual machine environment. Q is a Cocoa port of the QEMU system. The system even allows you to emulate other hardware platforms other than x86 (PCs) such as ARM or even PPC. There is even an intel universal binary version although this is still being developed and is buggy. For those who have previously used Virtual PC then you can import the virtual machine images. Overall it is not too bad but the wonderful price of FREE you can not really go wrong. This project is definitely one to watch as it develops.

Links
Q Home Page
Q Downloads
QEMU Home Page

Cocoa Developer Handbook

If you are interested in developing applications for Apple's OSX operating system but do not know where to start then this is a good place. It is a free handbook to Cocoa development.

Links
Become and Xcoder Book

Dateline: Simple Calendar on your Desktop

Here is a great simple little OSX application that displays the current month's calendar on the desktop in a simple and unobtrusive manner. It is free to download so give it a go and see if you like it.

Links
Dateline Application

Dual Boot (OSX and Windows) on Intel Mac

It looks like we are able to dual boot a new Intel Mac with both Apple OSX and Microsoft Windows. However the solution is involved and does require a great deal of computer background knowledge and another PC. The additional PC is used to create the installation CD ready for installing it onto the intel mac therefore you can always just borrow a PC to complete these steps.

Links
OSX and Windows Dual Boot Article
Dual Booting Wiki on osx86project Site
Download Dual Boot Instructions

Sony DRM Packager and HID Editor

I own a Sony Ericsson K700 mobile phone on the Vodafone network and have wanted to set an MP3 as my ringtone, but it has never worked and I did not know why. Well I have just found out that Vodafone disable the ability for MP3 files to be set as ringtones unless they have DRM information. Vodafone do this to force you purchase ringtones from their Vodafone Live service. Well now sony has released a development kit that allows you to add your own DRM information to MP3 files so they can be uploaded to the phone and actually set as your ringtone. The application is simple to use and on a mac where you can use the bluetooth file browser to upload the DRM'ed MP3 file the whole process is extremely easy.

The other Development tool sony has released for the mac is an HID editor. The HID are definitions for the Bluetooth remote control feature that Sony has on a number of their phones that allows users to connect their mobile phone to a mac and control different applications.

Both the DRM Packager and HID editor are available from the Sony Ericsson Developer site (see below)

Links
Sony Ericsson Developer Site

Apple Address Book contact on Gmail

So you are a mac fan and you want to move all your Address contacts over to Gmail so that you can use it there. Well the wonderful people at google have allowed their web based email to upload files in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. Ben Borofka has create a small little application that downloads all your contacts and creates a singe CSV file to quickly and easily move all your contacts over to Gmail. Give it a go for yourself.

Links
A to G Homepage

Intel Mac Mini Released

I am sure if you are a mac fan you have already read all the rumour sites and the announcements for the new Intel-based mac mini that was released today. If this is news to you then you are in for a treat, because amazingly a new mac mini has been released, YAY. To add to the excitement this new version also supports the Apple Front Row software and comes with the cute little remote making this the perfect addition to any home theatre setup and truly fulfilling Apple's vision of having the Apple computers and iPods as the centre of your home media world. The new computer comes in both a single and dual core and can support up to 2gig of RAM, making this a serious contender for a desktop machine for nearly anyone.

Links
Apple Intel Mac Mini Page

OSx86 Project

With the release of the new Apple computer running on the Intel processors a number of sites are starting to pop up in order to run operating systems other than OSX on these machines. OSx86 project is a nicely laid out site that is trying to keep tabs on any developments. It is already reporting the progress people are making with getting Knoppix 4 running on the Apple Intel hardware (commonly known as Macintel). What I really keen to see is the ability to run windows programs within OSX without too much of a noticeable speed slowdown. This would allow me to run the IBM software that I use for work within the elegant Apple OSX operating system. There is an opensource project called Darwine, which is trying to achieve just this and there has also been noise from Microsoft that they will update their Virtual PC software to run on Macintel; however, I will not hold my breath for that one as I would most likely go blue in the face (I expect end of 2006 or early 2007 for Virtual PC to be released).

Links
OSx86 Project
Darwine Homepage

Mac Backup Article Updated

My friend Matthew Phillips has updated his great article on backing up your mac using RsyncX that I host on my website for him. The latest version is available via the link below

Links
How To Backup a Mac Using Rsync Article
RsyncX (via VersionTracker)

Ruby on Rails with AJAX support

One of my friends and collegues has started using Ruby on Rails and has now become a complete convert, so much so that everything can be done with Rails (short name). Rails is a complete web development stack for creating dynamic web applications with very little fuss and painful configuration that is synonymous with other web development stacks, such as J2EE. I was also pointed in the direction of script.aculo.us that provides AJAX support to Rails by using the Prototype JavaScript Library. Some of the examples at script.aculo.us are drag and drop shopping carts, auto-completing text boxes and pretty JavaScript animations.

Rails is built around using the Ruby programming language, which is easy to learn and quick to develop with. Doing things quickly is the moral of the story when developing with RAILS. By adding Prototype enabled scripts on the client end greater interactivity is created and by using AJAX pages no longer need to be fully reloaded speeding up the response times as only the data is sent through the AJAX bindings. One issue with adding all this JavaScript to the client web pages is that the HTML code can become littered with <script> tags; however, this can be solved by attaching the JavaScript events by using CSS selectors. For a description and example of this approach have a look at the Behaviour web page.

Rails and supporting scripts can all be downloaded from the links below. If you are developing on a mac you can download pre-compiled binaries from here. For Windows users a quick install can be downloaded from here.

Links
Ruby on Rails Homepage
script.aculo.us Homepage
Prototype JavaScript Library Home Page
Behaviour Page
Agile Web Development with Rails Book
Programming with Ruby Book
Rico Homepage (Addition JavaScript Libraries using Prototype)

New iSight

I was given a nice new Apple iSight for christmas and was wondering how I could use this to chat with people who are not on macs. Well it seems like this is possible and for an in-depth discussion on this have a read of this article. While browsing on the net I also found an interesting piece of software called iGlasses that manipulates the image the iSight camera grabs and enhances it so that less light is required to get a good picture. From the same company that creates iGlasses are the following programs to do with your isight:

PowerBoost: Allows any mac to host multi-party conferences (even if not powerful enough according to Apple specs)
Conference Recorder: Records your iChat video conferences into a quicktime file.
iChatUSBCam: Allows any USB camera to work with iChat so you do not need to have an iSight.

Links
Video Conferencing with Windows users from Apple iChat
iGlasses
ecamm Programs

iRoster: Bonjour services made easy

I have lots of macs running on the office and have recently found this little application called iRoster that allows you to register applescripts as Bonjour services. In addition the application can display other available services and quickly launch them. This allows me to expose an applescript to start a VNC server that I can then launch remotely via Bonjour.

Links
iRoster

Mac OSX GPS Software

I have a Garmin Venture GPS and am I am looking around for OSX software for mapping and uploading of waypoints. While searching around the Internet I found this great site that has a good list of commercial and in development OSX GPS software.

Links
OSX GPS Software List

Mac-Mac Sync Without .Mac

If you are anything like me you will have lots of macs and you want to have the same calendar information and address book on them all. Well if they are all on the same network you can use a little program called MySync. Get it while it is still in Beta as it is Free (yes still my favourite word) but it will become shareware in the future. MySync uses the Apple sync framework to achieve the syncing which means as more programs support this framework then MySync will automatically work with those new programs, wonderful. This is the second program I have seen recently that is using the Apple sync framework as I have just recently installed the MarkSpace Palm Missing Sync Software Version 5 that now uses the sync framework and provides a much enhanced capability to synchronise my Palm organiser.

Links
MySync
MarkSpace Missing Sync for Palm

Apple Front Row for Mac Mini

When Apple released the new iMac G5 with Front Row I was very surprised to not see the software also available in the Mac Mini as this machine would have been the more likely machine to connect to your TV and use this type of software. Well someone has started an online petition for trying to get the Front Row software available for the mac mini as well (see links below). However I still believe that Front Row is lacking one more thing, TV. If Front Row was available on a mac mini and worked with the various Mac Digital TV solutions out there then I would buy it in a snap as that would be the perfect home theatre solution.

Links:
Online Petiition

Monket Calendar

Ok I already know about phpiCalendar which is a great web application that quickly and easily displays calendars, but that is all it does, display. Monket Calendar does the displaying but also allows for calendars to be edited. Monket still uses the ICS (Internet Calendaring System) calendaring format for the storing calendars but provides great client side editing which includes drag and drop capabilities.

Links
Monket Webpage

RoundCube: Web-based IMAP email client

Like my previous post RoundCube is a web application project that is using the AJAX communication model to allow the browser based interface to communicate with the server without having to refresh the whole page. What this application provides ontop of Webnote is also the ability to use drag and drop like a normal desktop application. RoundCube is a web-based IMAP email client probably one of the best I have seen so far.

Links:
RoundCube Website

Webnote - Online Post-it Notes

Here is an cure little web application that allows you to place notes on a web page. The software can be run on your own website or even on you local machine for personal notes. The web-based interface allows you to drag around the notes and even resize the notes right from within the browser. As an added bonus it uses the increasingly common AJAX communication model to save changes back to the web server.

Links
Webnote Site

VideoCasts: The next craze

So we have PodCasts, which has not become mainstream with the introduction of iTunes' inbuilt podcasting feature which makes it extremely easy to subscribe, download and transfer PodCasts to your iPod. The next craze are VideoCasts, which instead of MP3 files the RSS feeds contain videos. This allows people to subscribe to a VideoCast RSS feed and download videos. There are some people out there calling this Internet TV where you are essentially watching video on demand over the Internet, in some ways this is true.

If you are using a Mac, and I know most of the people who read my blog do, then you can download an open source program called DTV. DTV allows you to quickly and easily subscribe to VideoCast feeds, download and play the video files. The software is still Beta and they have warnings all over the application but I have not had any problems using the application. Give it a go and be one of the first in the VideoCast craze.

Links
Download DTV

No more Java Apple Applications!

It looks like Apple is dropping the Java-Cocoa bridge that allows developers to use Java to develop OSX applications. I personally am not surprised at this as it is a large effort for Apple to maintain both Java and Cocoa APIs. This is effort better directed to other cool applications and hardware.

Links
Cocoa-Java Integration Guide (with note about ongoing support)

Mac Sudoku

A few of my friends absolutely love trying to work out the sudoku puzzles. If you are unfamiliar with this puzzle it is essentially a grid with 3x3 squares and each of these squares contains another grid of 3x3 squares. in each of the small squares is a number and the puzzle starts with only a few of these completed. The idea is to fill in every square with a number with the following constraints:

• A row or column must contain on one instance of each number from 1 to 9.
• Each of the large 9 squares must have one instance of each number from 1 to 9.

Well now you can play these games on your mac with MacSudoku. I personally can not see the fascination in the game but I know lots of people love it, some are even creating their own programs to solve them automatically.

Links
MacSudoku Home Page

NicePlayer: Good, small, free OSX Video Player

Like always I was trawling through some of the my favourite download sites to see what cool programs developers have been busy created when I came across NicePlayer. With the recent release of Quicktime Player 7.0.1 that no longer accepts my previous Quicktime Pro serial number I now can no longer play Quicktime movies in full screen. With NicePlayer, which is free, you can once again play movies in full screen. This player also has a number of other great features like smooth fading screen controls the ability to support all Quicktime Codecs installed in your system, playlists and borderless display. Go on give it a go, you will love it.

Links
NicePlayer Homepage

Samsung to Create 100Mb Solid State HDD

In a quick article at AppleInsider there is mention that Apple may in the future use Samsung developed solid state (flash memory) hard drives in their laptops. The benefit of using flash based storage devices is that they are lighter, consume less power, less prone to damage from vibration or shocks and are faster to access data. Samsung currently can create 16Gb versions of these drives but hope to have 100Gb drives in the near future.

Links
AppleInsider Article

Modify Apple Tiger Mail Buttons

Do you hate the new buttons in OSX Tiger Mail application? If so then download Mail Stamps that allows you change the image to looks more like the old buttons.

Links
Mail Stamps 1.1

Desktop Manager in Tiger

Well I have a copy of OSX Tiger and I am pretty happy with it. All my programs ran with no problems except Desktop Manager, although I knew prior to updating that this was a problem. There is a fix though, as there is a beta version that works in tiger and can be downloaded here.

Links
Desktop Manager Home Page

Delicious Library 1.5 Announced

Delicious Library 1.5 will be released at the same time as Apple's new operating system OSX Tiger (10.4). This new version will leverage upon some of the new technologies available in OSX Tiger, including Spotlight and Dashboard. For a quick movie of a component in Delicious Library click the links below.

Links
Delicious Library 1.5 Article
Delicious Library Home Page

Sidenote

Here is another great little mac utility that allows you to store and quickly access notes. One the biggest problems that I have with the Apple Sticky notes is that they are all over the place and get in the way. Sidenote is much better as it stores all your notes in a nice drawer that hides itself at the side of the screen. This is one slick application and well work a try. Skip down to the download link and give it a go yourself. If you can not even wait to download the application here is a screenshot.

Links
Download Sidenote

Apple OSX Tiger Release Date Announced

Apple has announced the release date of April 29th for its latest operating system.

Handbrake 0.7.0-beta1 released: DVD encoding made easy

Handbrake 0.7.0-beta1 has been released. If you are unaware of Handbrake it is an excellent program for Mac OSX that allows you to rip and encode DVDs with an easy to user interface. This has got to be one of the easiest to use DVD Ripper/encoding programs available on both PC or Mac. To use simply select the title from the dvd, the encoding type and then click to encode button to start, it is just that simple.

Links
Handbrake Download Page

CenterStage Alpha Released

One of the Mac media projects has finally released an Alpha (actually been a very quick development cycle). This alpha only supports the display of movies in your movies folder of your home directory but does give and indication of where it is going. The menu is built as a 3D set of icons that rotate around. This release is definitely an alpha release as the menu is a little jumpy and there is no text display of what each icon means but does give a good example of what will be possible. Keep up the good work and I can not wait to see the next release.

Links
CenterStage Download
CenterStage Homepage

Multiple Computers – Single Keyboard and Mouse

At work and at home I have the annoying problem of multiple computers and little desk space for multiple keyboards and mice, well no longer. Introducing Synergy. Synergy allows you to run a service on one machine and clients on all other machines. With a little configuration it is then possible to move the mouse from one monitor to another like using multiple displays on a single machine. The software works seamlessly and it also shares your clipboard, all you need is multiple computers and a TCP/IP network connecting them together. But wait there is more, Synergy supports Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. Yes that is right you can seamlessly use one keyboard and mouse between all machine types. The OSX client and server is not as advanced as the windows version but still works very well. All that it is missing are some of the “nice to have” features. This software is up there with usefulness of QuickSilver, one of my other all time favorite programs. Download it now if you are using multiple computers, you will love it.

Links
Synergy Home Page
QuickSilver Home Page

Where Did My CD Go?

Wonder where you CD goes when you insert it into your mac? Well now you can see it with Disctop Pro. Disctop pro listens to you computer as to when CDs are inserted or ejected and accordingly displays an animation of the CD entering and leaving the computer in the correct location on the screen. This obviously works the best for iMacs where the CD drive is behind the screen but is still a good for all other macs too. The best yet, it is FREE, yes my favorite word for software. If you did not think that this was good enough it also downloads the CD image from Amazon and pastes this to the image of the CD. But wait there's more, if it is a audio CD it can also display small play buttons to play the music. Download it now from here.

Links
Disctop Pro

Apple Mail: winmail.dat

I have been receiving a few emails lately that contained an attachment called winmail.dat that could not be opened with any application that I had. After a bit of digging around I have found that these attachments are a wonderful (read idiotic) idea of Microsoft to attach files to emails from Microsoft Outlook/Exchange. In Apple Mail the attachment appears as a winmail.dat file that is of the mime type “application/ms-tnef”. Luckily Josh Jacob has made a program that allows you to extract the files out of this TNEF file. You can download TNEF's Enough from here or here.

Links
Josh Jacob's TNEF Home Page
MacUpdate Page for TNEF's Enough

Powermac G5 Case Mod

This is not one of your normal case mods; instead of completely changing the the look and shape of the case, this mod just adds an extra feature, a digital clock. The image to the right shows the finished product. Although all the instructions in the article are not english, there are plenty of images to follow what is happening. This article is also appearing all over the Net so I am sure it will not be long before someone creates and english version.

Links
Apple G5 LED Clock Mod

Another example of XUL

Conor Dowling has sent me a link to another application called 325 Factlog implemented using Mozilla's XUL interface definition language. This application uses RDF to store its database of facts and shows us another way of creating applications. The goal of the “325 Project” is to comprehensively document the year 325 when the west became Christian.

Have a play at http://www.the325project.org

If you are interested in the technical background or knowledge of some of the issues that have been encountered creating this XUL application then have a look at the technical blog.

Links
The 325 Project home page
Technical Blog
Direct Link to the XUL Application (requires either Mozilla or Firefox)

Growl 0.6 Released

Growl 0.6 has been released with a whole load of new notification styles. Growl is developer notification system that allows any OSX developer to use a system wide notification rather than having all the developer produce a million crappy notification widgets. By having a single notification system allows for messages to cooperate rather than conflict and potentially overlap and get in the way. There are already quite a few applications that support growl (see growl site for complete list).

Links
Growl Home Page
Application List supporting Growl

Mac Media Projects

Since the release of the Apple Mac Mini there have been a large mac community wanting to use their new Mac Minis as the central hub to their multimedia home centre. Two notable projects are CenterStage and iTheater. Both projects are planning on creating a product that will allow you to connect a mac up to your TV and watch TV, videos, photos, DVDs, etc. all from an easy to use interface. I have subscribed to the RSS feeds from both and will be watching them very closely. Both seem to be developed along the same timelines. iTheatre is hoping to release a first version in a week or so (good luck to them). No downloads available yet ... stay tuned.

Links
CenterStage Home Page
iTheater Home Page

Mac: Two Finger Scrolling

The new powerbooks recently released by Apple have a new feature, trackpad scrolling. This is great but all us who have a powerbook pre 2005 this feature is out of reach... or is it. Here is an article that describes how to apply the same driver to pre 2005 powerbooks. I have applied this to my powerbook that was purchased late 2004 running 10.3.8 with no problems whatsoever. This patch will not work on all laptops, to check enter the following into your terminal application:

    ioreg -l | grep “W Enhanced Trackpad”

The output of this command should be '“W Enhanced Trackpad” = 1'. If you do not get this it means that your trackpad is not compatible or you are running the SideTrack utility.

If you do get the right output then go to this this page and download the altered driver and follow the simple instructions.

To install the driver once downloaded you use the following commands to change the ownership on the driver, unload the existing driver and then load the new driver:

    sudo chown -R root:wheel ./AppleADBMouse.kext
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleADBMouse && \
    sudo kextload ./AppleADBMouse.kext

I must warn you that you are using terminal to modify the state of the mouse driver so please be careful and follow the instructions carefully.

UPDATE - There is an installer now and is called iScroll2

Links
Two Finger Scrolling with pre-2005 Powerbooks and iBooks

Remote Growl

I have already created a small article that showed off a little application called Growl that allowed for a managed notification system for all Mac applications. Andreas Åkre Solberg has extended the Growl application to allow users and developers to send Growl notifications between machines rather than just on the same machine the growl is running on. Andreas' application is called Remote Growl and can be found here. To allow Remote Growl to work you will require the GrowlNotify application and Bindings for Growl, both can be downloaded from the Growl Home page here.

Links

Growl Homepage
Remote Growl Homepage
Previous Growl Article

The Mac Lounge

Are you one of those either using a laptop on a lounge or wishing to be more comfortable while using your computer? Welcome to Bluebroc, the iMac inspired lounge setup that integrates an Apple iMac so that you can use the computer in comfort on your specially designed lounge.

Links
Bluebroc Site

Backing up your Mac using RSync

Matthew Phillips has given me a small HOW TO article on using rsync to backup you mac. I have hosted this article and you can find it here or download it from here.

Links
Goto Backup Your Mac With rsync article
Download Backup Your Mac With rsync article
Rsync Home Page

iPod Mini Time Zone for Eastern Australian States

Short Version: For Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra use the Magadan time zone.

Long Version: I recently have acquired a new iPod Mini. I have already have an ageing iPod 1st generation and I have really noticed how apple have updated the software from the 1st generation to the current 4th generation. There are lots of little things that make the latest iPods really work, items like not having to reboot when disconnecting from the computer or even the ability to show the current time in the title area. It is these little upgrades that have really impressed me with the iPod Mini. The only thing that I do not like about the iPod Mini is its support for Time Zones. Apple has made the iPods contain time zone settings so that when calendar information is transferred to the iPod from iCal all the time zone information is understood and enforced. However, to set the Time Zone you need to know all the other cities in your time zone as it does not use the time difference from UTC but rather the name of cities in the time zone. This works well if you know all the cities but for me, who lives on the east coast of Australia (+10 UTC), none of the Australian cities are listed. After searching on the Internet I finally could confirm that the russian city Magadan has the same time zone as Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. So if you live in an eastern Australian City (except Brisbane that uses different time zone information and is contained in the iPod time zone list) use Magadan as your time zone.

No Aqua Version of OpenOffice

OpenOffice has posted an update about their Mac port of the open source office suite OpenOffice. According to the update no new development has happened since the middle of 2003 so instead of working on an Aqua version (native mac application) they will only continue work on supporting X11. This is a bit of a blow to the mac community as this will most likely mean that OpenOffice will never produce a native mac version of their software.

Links

OpenOffice Mac Port Timeline

Mac Frenzy

Ok there has been a complete frenzy to release new macs and mac-related items. Here is a quick roundup.

iPod Shuffle - Flash based MP3 Player

Mac Mini - Very small Mac with no monitor

iLife'05 - iPhoto 5, iMovie HD, iDVD 5, Garageband 2, iTunes 4.7

iWork'05 - Pages, Keynote 2

And then from Griffin Technology ...

Firewave - Surround Sound for the Mac

BlueTrip - Bluetooth audio for iPod

AirClick - Remote Control for Mac, PC, iPod and iPod Mini

XpressStand - Desktop stand for Apple Airport Express

SmartDeck - Intelligent Cassette Adapter for iPod

UPDATE - More Mac Goodness from Griffin Technology

Label Mic - Multipurpose Microphone

Dock800 - Firewire 800 Cable for iPod

TuneJuice - Battery Backup for iPod and iPod mini

RocketFM - USB TFM Transmitted for Mac and PC

Stuffit Expander Takes a Long Time to Start

I have noticed that over the last couple of days Stuffit Expander takes a VERY long time to start. After a bit of searching on the Internet I found this article on the MacFixIt site. The error occurs because the developer Aladdin has been taken over by Allume and the domain name of the servers has changed. On start up all their applications check for updates but timeout because of the server name change. To fix this you can run the following command from the Terminal application, which will stop version checking:

defaults write com.stuffit.Expander allowVersionChecking -bool NO

Links
MacFixIt Article

iPod Flash Rumor Getting Out of Hand

Ok it seems that the rumor about Apple releasing a new flash based iPod early in 2005 is getting kinda out of hand. I have seen numerous articles on the web with people talking about this so called iPod Micro. iPodLounge even have a gallery of mockup designs created by Apple fans.

I am very interested to know if Apple does bring out something like this as I would along with others be very interested in purchasing such a device. I am especially interested in the mockup designs that use SD cards for memory, which would allow you to expand the memory capacity and create different selections of music on different SD cards.

Links
iPodLounge iPod Micro Photo Gallery

Firefox and Thunderbird Extensions

With the recent 1.0 release of both Firefox and Thunderbird many new extensions are being created for both applications. You can always access these extensions from the Mozilla site but the Extensions Mirror site has the same extensions plus many more in a more user friendly site design. You can even subscribe to their RSS feed to be notified when new extensions are created or existing ones updated.

Links
Extensions Mirror Site
RSS Feed Page
Mozilla Extensions Site

Where is IBM WebSphere for OSX?

I have been using Apple Macs for the past three years since OSX operating system was first released. Since my switch from PC to Mac I have been very happy. My day to day work mainly involves the use of email and office-based applications, however my other part of work is the development of middleware solutions using enterprise-grade application servers. The problem that I have is that many application servers available run on windows, linux or Solaris (plus other mainframe environments) but not OSX which makes it very painful for me to try out ideas, especially while traveling and using an Apple Powerbook.

Currently I am using IBM WebSphere on a windows platform and it made me start to think about IBM and the way it is marketing its products. IBM is the manufacturer of the G5 PowerPC chips as used in G5 PowerMac and in G5 XServes. IBM also develops the WebSphere application server. You would think that if it wants to sell more G5 processors it would allow its premier application server software to also run on their own hardware (namely Apple XServes). I realise that IBM makes its own server class machines (zSeries) and in the latest version of WebSphere 6.0 also contains support for a new processor on the zSeries machines to run WebSphere even faster, but why miss the XServe market. I would love to be able to move my development environment over to OSX so that I could use either Eclipse or IBM's development IDE and run WebSphere all on my Powerbook or on an XServe (for deployment). I have even queried local Apple representatives about this and had no reply.

So why doesn't IBM provide an OSX version of its application server as this will truly boost Apple's profile to create an enterprise grade application server. I hear you say that Apple does support JBoss, but this application server is not really recognised in corporate and government circles. It makes sense to me for this fusion as Apple wins by having a truly enterprise class application server, IBM wins by selling more of their PowerPC processors and application server products and mac developers out there also win by not having to mix their development environment with those evil windows machines.

Advanced Configuration in Firefox

Want to be able to configure everything in Firefox 1.0? Well from reading the Wikipedia page on Firefox I have found that if you go to the page “about:config” a special configuration page is displayed. This page contains all the variables used within firefox and filter text box so you can easily find the variable you need to change.

An example use of this configuration page is to change the Firefox behaviour to display an alert box and display an error page, similar to that used by Microsoft Internet Explorer. First open the “about:config” page by typing the text (without quotes) into the address text box at the top of your browse and type enter. This will display the configuration page. Next type error in the filter text box, this will automatically filter the list to only display the “browser.xul.error_pages.enabled” preference. Double click the value to change it to “true” and that is it. You can test it by opening another window and entering a bogus address, an error page should be displayed rather than the common alert box.

Links
Firefox Wikipedia Page
Firefox Home Page

Modifying OSX Applications using Apple Developer Tools

Ever wanted to add a button or move something in a already built OSX application. Well you can using Interface Builder that comes for free in Apple's OSX Developer tools that are freely downloaded. The best way to understand how to do this is have a read of the article at MacDev Center here.

Links
Modifying Stickies Article

Yellow Dog Linux 4 Torrents Available

Four ISOs of Yellow Dog Linux 4 are available via BitTorrent from http://cvs.terraplex.com/~owen/ydl4_torrents. Yellow Dog Linux is a version of linux built to run on the PowerPC based CPUs as used in all Apple Macs.

Links
Yellow Dog Linux Site
Yellow Dog Torrents

Adding AppleScript to Cocoa Applications

Here is an article documenting the method to enable AppleScript for the Cocoa applications that you may be developing.

Links
MacDevCenter: Making Cocoa-Java Apps Scripting Article

Mac OSX Searching: LaunchBar vs Quicksilver

I have been using Objective Development's LaunchBar software for quite some time to quickly launch applications on my Macs. LaunchBar is a brilliant piece of software, but today one of my friends told me about Quicksilver that provides a very similar capability but for free (really it is donateware). For the price do not think that this is a shoddy piece of software as it is not this at all, in fact it is much better than some software you can pay quite a lot for. Quicksilver also has the concept of plugins that allows for additional modules to be added so as new application are developed and people want to search through files in these applications or connect to the application's internal database these plugins can be used. Already quite a number of plugins are available including ones to connect to iChat, Apple Address Book, Firefox, iPhoto, Sherlock, Entourage and many more. In comparison Quicksilver is much faster to use than LaunchBar and the ability to extend quicksilver means it will be more capable over time and support many more applications than LaunchBar could hope for.

Links
LaunchBar Site
Quicksilver Site
Quicksilver Plugins

External Firewire RAID drive

I use external firewire and USB hard drive solutions all the time to more data around or backup data on my systems. Here is a new Firewire enclosure that provides RAID solution in a very G5 Mac looking case with excellent cooling capabilities. The drive uses Firewire 800 to provide the high speed data access to the drive. The drive is being marketed for video and audio professionals but is also perfect for any geeks out there who want the best hardware money can buy, you know who you are!

Links
G-Raid Site

Scrolling on Mac Trackpads

While browsing through the new software on MacUpdate I found SideTrack, which I have seen before but this is the newest and latest version. SideTrack is a replacement driver for the Mac trackpads on all Apple laptops that provides some of the more advanced features that the PC users take for granted. One of my favourite features is ability to use the side of the trackpad for scrolling. SideTrack also has corner tapping, which allows you to select an action to occur when you tap the trackpads corner area. It is very flexible and allows you to customise the speed of scrolling and even the size of the special areas. If you are using a Apple laptop I would extremely recommend giving this a go.

Links
SideTrack Home Site
MacUpdate Site

Prettier Form Widgets in Firefox on Mac

Firefoxy 1.1 has just been released that allows you to easily change the widgets used on the mac firefox to the a much prettier set. The new widgets look like this:

And are easily applied by dragging your firefox application onto the firefoxy application. To undo you simply follow the same dragging process. I have also noticed that these same new widgets are already installed in the G5 Optimised build that I blogged earlier.

Links
Download Firefoxy
G5 Optimised Build Blog

Kevin Gerich Widgets

Apple Bundle Powerbook with Airport Extreme

Ok I have a interesting tid bit of information from my local Mac Reseller here in Canberra, Australia. Apple seems to have deal on at the moment only available from Apple stores (not online) that allows people to buy a powerbook and get a FREE, yes free Airport Express. This is a great deal as I have been wanting a new Airport Express and as part of a recent acquisition of a new powerbook to replace the one stolen from me recently I also gained a new Airport Express. The promotion only last to very early in December and I am not sure how widespread the offer is, Canberra only, Australia only or all Apple stores. So if you were thinking about buying a new powerbook now would be the time.

Links
Apple Airport Express
Apple Powerbook

Firefox Mac Optimised Builds

Do you have a G4 or G5 mac and use Firefox? If you do then you will like the following links. Neil Lee has created a build of Firefox 1.0 that has been optimised for use on the G5. Users have reported that there is noticable difference to the original version. I will have to wait to monday as my G5 is at work, but my powerbook uses the G4 chipset and there is also a version created by Kai Rune optimised for the G4. Got to love geeks and the pursuit for ever faster processing.

Links
G4 Optimised Firefox Link
G5 Optimised Firefox Link

Delicious Library Released

Ok this has got to be one of the most gorgeous software packages to be released for the mac. Delicious Library by Delicious Monster is a Book/CD/DVD/Games library that allows you to categorise and manage your collections. The key features of this application are:

• Gorgeous user interface
• Connects to Amazon to get the cover images of items and description details
• Can use your iSight or Bluetooth scanner to read the bar codes of items when importing
• Allows you to manage others who borrow items from your library

For a very good (and lengthy) article about Delicious Library head over to Ars Technica and for you visual people out there it has screenshots.

Links
Ars Technical Review
Delicious Library Site
Download Applications

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 RC2 Available

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Full Version has been released. This is the final 1.0 release of firefox ready for primetime.

Links
Download Firefox 1.0
Firefox Home Page

Clipboard Sharing (OSX and Windows)

That have been numerous occasions where I have needed to share small amounts of text or images between multiple computers that are running different operating systems. I have just found a cool little program by Porchdog Software called Spike. Spike allows you to copy anything to share areas so that any other user also running spike on your network can access these shared items. All items are encrypted and are shared automatically. The discovery of other Spike users happens automatically via the use of Zeroconf, otherwise known as Rendezvous. Spike is available for OSX and Windows and can be downloaded here.

Links
Spike Homepage
Spike Download

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 RC2 Available

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available on their FTP server. The developers believe they have fixed the bugs with the software update feature and are requesting users to test heavily the site authentication features and extension installs from update.mozilla.org. Download it today and support Firefox's spread around the Internet and overthrow the badly implemented Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Links
Download Firefox 1.0 RC2
Firefox Home Page

Interested in OSX Tiger's Spotlight Feature?

Apple has released a quick article that descries the new Spotlight feature that will be available in the new OSX Tiger operating system to be released early in 2005. This is not an article for the general user but is intended for all you OSX developers out there who are curious about how spotlight will work and how to develop programs to make use of its capabilities. If you are not a developer but are still a complete mac geek and want to know everything about the mac then it is still a good read.

Links
Apple Spotlight Developer Overview Article

OSX Tiger to have Burnable Folders and Smart Folders

AppleInsider is announcing that the latest beta of OSX Tiger released to developers has one new feature and a revised feature. The revised feature was present in earlier beta releases, this was to create smart folders that are now integrated with OSX Tiger's Spotlight searching capabilities. This allows users to create folders that can automatically fill themselves with the files that meet the smart folders capabilities. The second new feature is a Burnable folders. These allow for files to be dropped in a burnable flagged folder that creates a link to the original file rather than copying (or moving) the original file. By only creating a link to the original means that if the original contents change then when you initiate the burn the updated contents will be used. This feature will allow me to create release CDs for software that I build and then I can just update the original files and whenever I burn the CD I will always get the latest versions.

These are two of the new features in a long list of amazing capabilities to be seen in the future version of Apple's OSX operating system. I do not know about you but I can not wait for this next major release, I am already thinking of the cool ways that I can use some of these features.

Links
AppleInsider Article

Google Desktop for Mac!

Google has announced plans to release it s Google Desktop software for the mac, although no date has currently been set. Google Desktop allows users to search through their emails, files, documents, chat messages on their home computers much like good searches through the Internets content. This is essentially bringing the power of search engines to your desktop. Currently Google Desktop is only available for windows machines as it needs to hook into the operating system to search for the required files and to bring this capability to the Mac will required a complete overhaul to Google Desktop.

It is very curious why Google is going to provide Google Desktop for the mac as Apple's new operating system codenamed Tiger, due early 2005, contains a similar technology called Spotlight. So if the mac is going to already have a powerful searching capability built right into the operating system why is Google going to go ahead and still provide their own tool? Maybe Google has a much bigger plan to bring more and more of their Internet based tools like news, GMail, Image searches to the desktop so that your complete working environment is actually Google Desktop. For now though you can only download Google Desktop for windows but stay tuned for more interesting developments.

Links
REUTERS Article
Google Desktop
Apple's Spotlight

iPod Photo

Well amazingly enough the rumours about an iPod with a colour screen were actually true. Apple has today released the new iPod Photo that contains a colour screen and can display photos. To help get the photos onto the new iPod Apple has also released version 4.7 of iTunes that understands the iPod photo so that you can transfer your photos from iPhoto to you iPod Photo. A new Dock is included and contains cables to connect it up to your TV so that you can display your photos on your TV. When playing music it will display the album art as stored in iTunes. And now you can play the built-in solitaire card game in colour. All this with an amazing 12 hour battery life, way to go Apple.

Links
iPod Photo Page
iTunes 4.7 Page

Gmail Address Import from Apple Address Book

Want to import your App