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Fighting game's 'useless' add-ons help its creators
Steam has a wide range of ways to support game developers, ranging from buying early releases through to countless add-ons. But it doesn't have a way to pay developers out of sheer kindness. How are you supposed to donate short of visiting a website? Pehesse has a way: turn those donations into add-ons. The developer's Honey Rose: Ultimate Fighter Extraordinaire is available for free, but includes eight DLC purchases that do absolutely nothing besides reward the team for its work. The creators of this brawler/visual novel hybrid are very explicit about their pay-what-you-like model, too -- tier labels even offer suggestions, such as "symbolic," "2016 standard" and "above and beyond."
Ten tiny and amazing Mac apps you've never heard of
The following is a guest post from Tod Maffin, one of Canada's most influential web and technology commentators. Thanks, Tod! -Ed. Air Video Server (Mac app is free, iPhone/iPad app is $2.99 or free Lite version) This is a great little app that for people who have lots of videos on their computer, but want to watch them on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and an iPad. Previously what I had to do was to convert the videos to MP4 (often a very slow process), import them into iTunes, and tweak the metadata. Only then could I watch the movies I have on my iDevices. That still wasn't a great solution, since those videos then took up space on those devices. This app is really a tiny file server that runs on the same computer on which your videos are stored. You can point it to any number of directories containing your videos, including attached servers, and it'll stream them live to any of your iDevices. The other great bonus is it'll convert from basically any video format -- on the fly. Brilliant. [You might have heard of this one -- we covered it on TUAW back in April, along with workalike competitor StreamToMe. –Ed.] Appfresh (Free) I've always been an early adopter and, probably to my detriment, I always want to try the latest versions of programs. Appfresh will scan your Applications folder and compare your versions with the latest versions. Within a minute, it'll have a list of programs that need updating. You can always pick and choose which to update - it suggests beta versions, so if you're not up to a pre-release version, you can opt to not update that app. Keep vigilant, though, for big upgrades to paid programs (i.e., from 3.1 to 4.0) -- they may drop a new version that wants you to pay for an upgrade, leaving you to manually find and re-install the old version (if it's still available on the developer's site!). [TUAW post from back in ought-seven.] Click the link below for the rest of the list.
ScreenSharingMenulet fills a gap in Snow Leopard's Screen Sharing.app
Every "point-oh" version of Mac OS X usually brings some small bit of pain, as I find some little utility no longer works. Snow Leopard has been no exception. I had been using the version of Screen Sharing from 10.5.4 because it had some "hidden" features which I liked. Unfortunately those "hidden" features were also "unsupported" features. When 10.5.5 came out, they were gone, but I continued to use the version of Screen Sharing from 10.5.4 which worked until 10.5.8. Sadly for me, it does not work at all in 10.6. The biggest drawback of Screen Sharing was the removal of the Bonjour Browser, which showed a list of computers available for Screen Sharing (both locally and via Back to My Mac). Now I had to type them in manually, which isn't such a big deal when you are trying to connect to a machine on a local network. If you are trying to connect over the Internet, however, you need to use the full hostname, which may look something like this: macbook.yourname.members.mac.com. Plus, it just seems like one of those things that the computer ought to do for me. [Side note, if you are looking for a handy way to see all the Bonjour services on your local network, check out Tildesoft's free Bonjour Browser utility.] While looking through a bunch of old files in my ~/Downloads/ folder, I found a version of ScreenSharingMenulet. I checked its webpage and saw what I was looking for: "ScreenSharingMenulet 1.7.1 and higher is compatible to Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard." ScreenSharingMenulet sits in the menu bar along with your other menu extras. Simply click on its icon (shown above) and choose which computer you wish to connect to via a dropdown list. In my testing it worked very well over a LAN although it did not seem to pre-populate with the machines over the Internet. Given the flakiness of Back To My Mac over ther Internet, I can hardly fault this program for that shortcoming. ScreenSharingMenulet is free (donations accepted) from Stefan Klieme who has several other handy-looking utilities at his website. If you use Screen Sharing a lot, it's definitely a handy tool to have around.
What's Keeping Me? 1.0.5
Have you ever tried to empty the Trash on your Mac only to receive a dreaded message that said the trash couldn't be emptied because a file was in use? Well, "What's Keeping Me" hopes to solve this problem with it's advanced trash-error detection technology (we kid, it's really just magic). If you encounter the message that the trash cannot be emptied, just click on What's Keeping Me to see what application or process is keeping the trash from being emptied. You can have What's Keeping Me quit the application or if need be kill (force-quit) the application. You can download What's Keeping Me from HAMSoft Engineering; this application is freeware, however, donations are accepted.
Moody 1.0 is available
Last year, we wrote about the Moody beta. This week, the folks at Crayon Room made version 1.0 available. The idea is to sort music by mood, rather than artist, album or genre.The first step is to tag your music as sad or happy; calm or intense (fortunately, you can tag many tracks at once). As you do, the Moody track information is stored in the "Composer" field. Once that's done, you can keep the tiny Moody window open and click the color-coded button that represents your current mood. Other goodies include Twitter integration, support for uploading and downloading tags and the color editor for customizing those buttons.It's a great idea; I often listen to music by "mood." Moody is donation ware ($9US is suggested) and requires Mac OS 10.4 or better.
iStat menus 1.2 monitors your Mac's innards
I'm definitely a big fan of iSlayer's iStat Pro widget. Whenever my older Powerbook acts a little weird, I can just pull up the Dashboard and tell at a glance what's going wrong ("Oh my, the CPU is running at 150 degrees again. Time to quit a few apps"). Now they've sent word that iStat menus, an even bigger and better stats program available to sit on the menubar, has hit version 1.2.New to this version is process monitoring, better temperature and fan support in G4 Powerbooks (like mine), and a disk activity graph that let's you monitor disk performance over time. For keeping an eye on what's happening under your Mac's hood, there's almost nothing better, and all the iStat stuff is free.Of course, if you do use one of their apps, make sure to send them some cash to help them keep up the good work. Always support good software, people. Just like NPR, if you don't support it, you'll lose it.
iGTD - yet another powerful, integrated GTD app
I know, I know - we've been blogging so many GTD apps lately that you probably needed to create a new task list just to look through them and make a decision. iGTD, however, packs one heckuva punch, so I thought it would be worth mentioning. While it includes all the typical features one probably expects from a GTD implementation these days, iGTD brings a lot of power to the table with features like Address Book integration, drag and drop task creation from files, URLs and Mail.app messages, task tagging, 'maybe' tasks, flagging, a unique 'wait for' task class, keyboard shortcuts, Quicksilver integration, phone/PDA syncing, a menubar helper, searching... and even more.With all these features, iGTD is amazingly donationware, and I highly recommend showing the developer some love after all this work.
Witch - bring Windows app switching to Mac OS X
The way that applications, windows and our OS behave is a subject of much debate. Toss some life-long switchers into the mix and boy-howdy, you got yourself the nerd version of a bar fight. One of these much debated behaviors between Mac OS X and Windows is how to handle switching between applications and their windows. Mac OS X focuses on applications - when you press cmd + tab, you can switch between all of your open applications, but you have to press cmd + ` in each app to cycle between the windows specific to said app. The Windows switcher, on the other hand, doesn't see applications, only windows. Pressing the switching keystroke equivalent of alt + tab offers a selection of all open windows, including the 20 Word documents and 5 IE sessions you have running. For the sake of this post, I'm not necessarily saying one is better than the other, and the subject of why this difference exists is a usability discussion best left for another day. I simply wanted to lay some context for Witch, a Windows-like application switcher from Peter Maurer (of Butler and the original Textpander/TextExpander fame) that fuses window-centric switching with some of the nice perks of Mac OS X. Not only can you switch between windows, just like on, uh, Windows, but you can also do things like bringing all minimized windows to the front or even close those minimized windows without having to bring them to the front.Witch, like many of Peter's apps, is donationware. However, if you get attached to it and don't want it to go the way of TextExpander (or if you simply want to give a developer his much-due credit), I highly recommend you donate for Peter's fine work.[via Lifehacker]
Ten donationware programs that are worth your money
It's the givingest time of the year, so if you're in the mood to be generous, why not donate to some of the best and most useful Mac software projects. Programs like VLC, Cyberduck, Adium and Handbrake all allow you to donate money to support the continued software development effort. Weblog FairlyUseless lists ten of these applications and suggests you put their developers on your Christmas list: "Now is a good time to thank them with a small donation. Can you imagine how much of a difference it would make to the developers if just 1% of users gave $5? It would only set you back $50 (or more if you can) for these ten applications."Thanks Brian Wente
Widget Watch: iPodage song calculator
Remember that iPod storage calculator iLounge released? It seems Christian Chladek, maker of such other widgets as the Morse Code Translator, was inspired to provide an iPod calculator in widget form. iPodage allows you to pick your iPod model and adjust all the vital settings to do some quick and dirty math on just how many tunes you can cram into your pocket for the road. For bonus points, the widget can even shrink out of your way should you need to reclaim some Dashboard space.iPodage is donationware and available from Christian's site.
Weekend review: this week's software for 8-06-06
I hope you've cleaned out your downloads directory, because we have another roundup of software for the week of 7-30-06 to 8-5-06:Shareware Pukka 1.3 - del.icio.us bookmarking utility gets private 'mark and AppleScript support Packrat 0.87 - killer offline Backpack client (probably the only) receives page link editing and creation TubeSock - Rip, mix, save and convert YouTube videos for your iPod WiLMa - automatically change default network, printer, SMTP servers, desktop wallpaper, system volume and more based on Mac OS X Locations Audio Hijack Pro 2.7 - big podcast recording update to an already killer audio app Freeware Apple Security Update 2006-004 - many bugs and security holes were put to rest kip - iPhoto for your documents (digital or otherwise) Afloat - killer Mac OS X plugin/utility that brings transparency and 'always on top' options to all Cocoa apps Quake 4 demo - Aspyr finally gets a clue, releases demo of $50, hardware-hungry game Picasa Web Album Uploaders - Google releases standalone uploader and iPhoto plugin for their Picasa web photo sharing service Doodim - darken background apps (a la Exposé) for better concentration Open Source Back/Center Stage 0.6 - open source media center project receives Apple Remote support, new UI and Intel-friendliness NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta - major update to the non-X11 OpenOffice client Donationware ShapeOnYou - handy and integrated basic 3D drawing app Photoshop Automator Actions v3 - major update to rocking set of around 50 actions for automation with and without Photoshop Widgets DashMail (formerly QuickMail) - quick email widget, works with addresses from Gmail, AOL, AIM, Yahoo! , .Mac and custom servers. Remembers addresses and subjects, with Address Book support in the works iPick - magic card trick widget Reuters Yahoo! Widget - 10-line Reuters news widget for Yahoo! Widgets (formerly Konfabulator) Telescope - Basecamp widget Universal Camino (Intel-optimized) - Mac OS X-friendly Mozilla browser receives an Intel-only optimized build
ShapeOnYou - a basic 3D tool with lots of integration
ShapeOnYou is a 3D tool for drawing and rendering basic 3D objects that can play nicely with other 3D-friendly applications like Keynote and OmniGraffle 4. It features an iWork-like inspector to give you an intuitive interface right out of the box, and it comes with over 20 shapes, as well as the ability to create your own. ShapeOnYou also supports the LinkBack framework, so if you embed a ShapeOnYou project in other LinkBack-enabled apps (such as Nisus Writer Express, Curio, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner and more), the object will be updated in those apps if you make any changes from within ShapeOnYou (a genius framework, really). Finally, ShapeOnYou can export to a wide variety of formats such as PDF, EPS, SVG, VRML, X3D, TIFF, PNG and JPEG.However, since I'm really not that versed in the realm of 3D, I'll stop pretending and just let you check ShapeOnYou out for yourself. ShapeOnYou is a Universal Binary and is available as donationware here.
SiteSucker pulls web pages onto your drive
Yeah, I have grown accustomed to saving web pages as PDF's. Between Spotlight support (probably the only time I use it really) and just the cool factor of having a mostly-universal format for pages of info to carry around, the Save As PDF feature is terrific. However, the limits are you can't get the actual HTML, CSS, images, or other media files that actually make the site. And if you're like me, completely unafraid to reverse-engineer some poor web designer's brilliant CSS and use it yourself, that PDF save won't get you there. So SiteSucker comes to my rescue.SiteSucker is a very small app (less than 1 MB), and does one thing terrifically well: save all files and pages off a site. I would complain the interface takes some effort, but it doesn't really. The icons are confusing, but no more so than Plucker, which I use to pull pages onto my WristPDA. A few clicks, and SiteSucker will save all the related files for a URL into a folder on your computer. I got all the HTML, CSS, XML, images, SWF's, even the favicon file. It will not follow JavaScripted links, or many other files that coders might obfuscate for protection purposes. But there is a OS 9 version! The few sites I tried did pretty well, but I didn't try more dynamic sites like Amazon. For simple web deconstruction and just fooling around, this seems like a good app. It's donationware.
