utilities
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Freeware Find: IceClean 3.0b
Most of us know that we should perform regular maintenance on our Macs, usually simple things such as doing backups and shaking pizza crumbs out of the keyboard. But did you know that there are a number of UNIX System Tasks that are available for keeping your Mac running at peak performance?A lot of Mac users don't want to pull up Terminal and type arcane text into the command line, so MacDentro has a GUI front end that you can use to run those commands and keep your Mac cruisin'. IceClean, now at version 3.0.6 has menus for OS X Maintenance, Cleanup, Security and Network, and Utilities, all of which are packed with menu choices or keyboard shortcut equivalents that make mundane maintenance chores simple to perform.There are other apps available -- Maintenance and MacJanitor come to mind -- that perform similar tasks, but neither of those programs comes close to the depth of capability of IceClean.The price is right, too - it's free, although you might want to send the MacDentro folks a donation if you find yourself using IceClean regularly. Download IceClean here.Tip of the hat to our very own Victor Agreda for this find!
Keyboard Maestro 3.1 Orchestrates Macros
Macros can save you a lot of time performing repetitive functions on your Mac. While Automator and AppleScript provide a lot of power, some Mac users want an easier way to capture their keystrokes, mouse clicks and other actions. That's where Keyboard Maestro comes in. This $36 gem from Stairways Software has just been updated to version 3.1, and adds a profusion of new features. While there's not enough space here to list them all, some of the highlights include: A clipboard history switcher An action to save a clipboard to a Named Clipboard Clipboard Filters Centering windows on the current screen Fractional second (i.e., .75) pauses Can add BBEdit Text Factories to the current clipboard Stairways also fixed some known glitches from the 3.0 release. A 30-day free trial is available for download and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or better.
iPod Reset Utility 1.0.3 for iPod shuffle is available
Even iPods get the blues.Earlier today, Apple released iPod Reset Utility 1.03 for the iPod shuffle. It's meant to be used with both a 1st and 2nd generation iPod shuffle when iTunes is unable to restore it to factory settings. Note that this sucker wipes your iPod clean -- all music, photos, etc. will be cleared away, so make sure you've got backups in place. You can read all the details here.
PodWorks updated to 2.9.3
PodWorks is a great utility that nearly every iPod owner (and iPhone owner) will want to have around. In a nutshell, it lets you copy songs and videos from any iPod or iPhone to any Mac running OS 10.4x. It works wonderfully.Version 2.9.3 brings some very nice changes, including Applescript improvements (not support for Applescript, but the script the app runs has been re-written) New method of reporting errors Duplication prevention improvements There's more, of course, and you can read the (highly detailed) change log here. PodWorks will cost you $8US. Version 2.9.3 is a free upgrade for existing users. It works with every model of iPod (even the original 5GB!) and the iPhone.
A color toolbox
There are quite a few OS X applications and plugins available to make life easier for Mac-loving designers of any ilk. I'd like to highlight a few that have earned a place my heart (or my color picker). Most of these tools apply to any 2D designer, whether you make websites, interfaces or spend your time in the world of hardcopy. The price to value ratio varies, so I leave it up to you to determine whether any particular tool is of enough value to add to your arsenal. And don't worry, there are some freebies.
Jolt keeps pixels shining
If you've ever made a presentation (or shown a friend that hilarious YouTube clip you found) on your laptop, you've probably played the fun little game of trying to give the trackpad a nudge just often enough to keep the screen from dimming in the middle of it. You can edit your Energy Saver preferences before you start ... or you can use a new program called Jolt (no relation to the cola) to temporarily disable the Energy Saver settings. Jolt places a small lightning bolt icon in your menubar. When you click it, it lights up to let you know you're safe from the mildly embarrassing mid-presentation screen dim. The full version of Jolt allows for variable timer settings ranging from 3 minutes to forever. The full version will set you back a whole $5, half of which is donated to charity (visit the Jolt page for a list of charities and a free trial). [via MacUser] Update: For clarification, only the full version of Jolt costs $5, Jolt Lite is available for free (but only offers one timer setting). Caffeine, which we've mentioned before, is also available for free.
GimmieSomeTune 4.0 is available
Earlier this week, Eternal Storms Software updated GimmieSomeTune, their iTunes utility (we've looked at GimmieSomeTune before). It grabs lyrics and cover art, plus adds new hotkey options, interacts with last.fm, supports remote control and more. Changes in version 4.0 include: lyricwiki.org and lyricsdownload.com added as lyrics sources last.fm and remote control support Album ratings New comments field Leopard-ready There's more, of course, and you can read the full release notes here. It's really useful, fun and...best of all...free (though it wouldn't kill you do make a donation, right?)! GimmieSomeTune requires Mac OS 10.4 (there is a 10.3.9 version as well) and is universal. Have fun!
Excess wind energy to be stored underground for future use
We've seen some fairly impressive uses of wind power, but a group in Iowa is looking to actually capture and preserve excess wind energy for use when demand peaks. At the Iowa Stored Energy Park, a number of local utilities is "building a system that will steer surplus electricity generated by a nearby wind farm to a big air compressor," which will be held deep below the ground for future use. The project is being backed by the Energy Department, but more than a hundred municipal utilities in surrounding states are shelling out $200 million to construct the 268-megawatt system. As it stands, Iowa's compressed air energy storage (CAES) installation will be the first of its kind when it's completed in 2011, but there's already work being done in Texas to build a similar unit.[Via Ecotality]
Mac 101: Keychain
The Keychain on your Mac is a little application buried in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder. I say buried because I think Keychain is sadly neglected by most users. Here are some things you can do with it: Save web page passwords Save login info (aside from websites, like your IM logins) Save protected notes (secret stuff) This 101 will be a little longer than usual, so I can show you how to use Keychain to store passwords and other secret things. Later, in our Secure Your Mac series, we'll talk about making a good password so all these things stay private. Full details on how to easily use Keychain after the jump.
Play Audio URLs from the iPhone Command Line
You never know when instant karma is gonna getcha. Take my playaudio application. Yesterday, I was chatting with some developer buddies about maybe putting together an Internet radio application and discussing the fact that the Celestial iPhone framework is essentially QuickTime repackaged. While talking, I decided to try using my existing playaudio app with a URL rather than a local audio file. So I typed the following at the iPhone command line: playaudio http://steiner.math.nthu.edu.tw/ne01/tjy/music/06.I%20Just%20Called%20To%20Say%20I%20Love%20You.mp3 And...it worked. Just like that, the instrumental-only cover began to play back through my iPhone speakers. Apparently, Apple has merged the concept of "local file" and "URL" a lot more closely than I'd thought. I haven't had any luck connecting to .pls or any other live radio feed but if you'd like to play back Internet-based files, playaudio works just fine.
Dockables: Control your Mac from your Dock
We have a pretty wide array of choices when it comes to controlling our Mac, but Dockables adds even one more way to do things like shut down, start a screensaver or sleep the display. More of a collection of tiny apps than a full-blown utility, Dockables simply installs a folder in your Applications folder that contains 12 separate one-trick-pony apps (they're actually just packaged AppleScripts with pretty icons) that can perform the following actions: Shut Down, Start Default Screen Saver, Restart, Empty Trash, Eject Media, Sleep, Log Out, Close Applications, Hide Applications, Mute Sound, sleep display, and take a screenshot. The idea is that you drag just the Dockables that you want to your Dock, thus providing one-click access to the actions you use most. A few Dock dividers and alternately themed Dockables are even provided for yet more options for controlling your Mac with style and organizing everything just the way you need it.Dockables is provided as donationware from COCOApps.[via MBW Picks]
CoverSutra iTunes controller 50% off today only
I'm a big fan of CoverSutra, Sophia Teutschler's sexy and incredibly useful iTunes controller. It gives you global keyboard shortcuts to skip and pause songs, display album artwork in a jewel case in popup notifications or permanently on your desktop, and it can even interact with the Last.fm music community to share the list of songs you're listening to.CoverSutra is easily a good deal for its standard $20 price tag, but for today only, software discount outlet MacZOT is selling it for just $9.95. Get it while it's hot.
NetworkLocation 2.0 goes official
We first mentioned NetworkLocation back in November '06, and since then this automated location manager and setting switcher has been upgraded to v2.0 with some killer new features. In addition to automatically changing settings like system volume, opening a webpage, playing an iTunes playlist or switching Mail servers all based on the wired or wireless network you connect to, this new version adds a great new feature that users have been dying for: the ability to auto-detect which network you're connecting to and begin changing any settings you prefer with no effort on the user's part. Also on the new actions list are things like disabling bluetooth and locking the keychain, with another great enhancement making it easy to duplicate locations and stets of actions: the ability to drag and drop said actions between locations. NetworkLocation has also received plug-in support, with the first plug-in available for rooSwitch, another utility we love that allows you to switch between multiple profiles and sets of data for an application (i.e. - multiple Yojimbo libraries or different Firefox profiles with their own bookmarks and add-ons). I have to say, after the development crew was kind enough to allow me to test the beta, NetworkLocation 2.0 has become one of my can't-live-without Mac OS X utilities. I move between home networks, multiple coffee shops, wireless on campus and friends' houses, and allowing NetworkLocation to adjust all my settings automatically in the background is easily worth the $25 price tag (though upgrade licenses are free for 1.x owners). Heck, I'd go so far as to say NetworkLocation should be the next Cover Flow, deserving to get bought by Apple as a feature Mac OS X should have had a long time ago.
Getting the most out of synching and backing up with ChronoSync
I picked up a license for Econ Technologies' ChronoSync a little while ago, as I didn't want an app like SuperDuper which simply backs up an entire machine. ChronoSync offers a ton of options for fine-tuning your backup operations and synchronizing a machine with a backup folder or even another Mac, scheduling backups / synchronizations and even backing up to optical media. ChronoSync also has special options for performing operations like syncing Home folders between Macs, and even backing up to an iPod. Long story short: if you're looking for a highly flexible backup solution, I definitely recommend ChronoSync.The one catch with ChronoSync can be summarized with a twist on an old phrase: with great power sometimes comes great confusion. ChronoSync has a slight learning curve due to all its flexibility, but thankfully, 43Folders just pointed out a great ChronoSync Tips page with backup scenarios for a number of different users. Listed on the page are a dozen sets of instructions with screenshots for setting up operations like synchronizing/backing up iPhoto, synchronizing to a disk image or another Mac and even using the Document Scheduler to automate as many different backup and synchronization operations as you can dream up. For anyone trying to wrap their head around what ChronoSync can actually do for their backup and synchronization sanity, this is a great one-stop case study page that should convince any potential customers to take the dive.
Boost your contextual menus with FileUtilsCM
Here's a very useful utility. FileUtilsCM beefs up your Mac's contextual menus with a number of useful features. Our favorite, by far, is the ability to copy a file's path to the clipboard with click.Other functions include touch modification date, lock, make read only and refresh view in the Finder. You can even toggle extension visibility and make use of a full "File Info" submenu.FileUtilsCM is free and requires Mac OS 10.3.9 or higher.
First Look: iStat menus beta and screenshot gallery
For what seems like forever (or at least since April 29th, 2005), the crew at iSlayer have leveraged their obsession with system performance and statistics and provided us with arguably the best darn donationware iStat widgets on the block. For a little while now, they've been teasing their fellow stat enthusiasts with screenshots on the iSlayer blog of their latest creation, iStat menus, which is currently in a private beta. As you might guess, iStat menus is an app (installed and managed as a System Preferences pane) that will display your vital system stats in the menubar, complete with a thoroughly customizable set of options for displaying just the information you want to know. Thankfully, the iSlayer folks were kind enough to give me a copy of the beta, along with permission to post thoughts and a screenshot gallery for your perusal. While I've been trying iStat menus out, I've also been asking the crew a few questions surrounding how it stacks up against iStat pro and nano, especially in terms of performance. One catch with the way iStat menus runs is that it doesn't create its own separate process that can be monitored in Activity Monitor (or, I assume by relation, the Terminal). Instead, each menu item monitor you activate runs as a Menu Extra which lumps itself into the SystemUIServer thread, so the only way Marc Edwards at iSlayer recommended I could compare iStat menu's performance against my long-time favorite iStat pro is simply to watch that thread before and after enabling iStat menu's items. %Gallery-3291%
FlickrExport Lite for Aperture, new versions all around
First there was FlickrExport for iPhoto, and it was good. Then its developer, Fraser Speirs, asked us whether we wanted him to make a FlickrExport for Aperture, and the answer to that question was also good. Now there is FlickrExport Lite for Aperture, and as a free product, it looks pretty sweet. Previously known at Flickr as the Flickr Plugin for Aperture, Fraser has re-named the plugin and brought it home to be displayed alongside its bigger brothers, complete with a feature-comparison page that breaks down the major features of all three FlickrExport products. If you've been on the fence between using iPhoto or Aperture and want to upload to Flickr, these plugins are where it's at, and I actually learned a few things from this feature comparison page, such as the fact that the Aperture plugin can add geodata before uploading, add tags after uploading and even replace existing photos on Flickr. Looks like this blogger is going to have to give Aperture a more thorough run-through.Oh, almost forgot: all the FlickrExport plugins have been updated with bug fixes and one big new feature: the ability to set the moderation level on the photos you upload.
Terminal Tip: Output man pages as plain text with col
Ever try to open a man page in TextEdit using man | open -f? You end up with the kind of unreadable repeated characters shown here. This all dates back to the days of dot matrix and daisy wheel printing when the only way you could produce bold type was to repeatedly print characters. Fortunately, there's an easy way to convert man pages into simple, non-redundant text. Use the command-line utility col with the -b flag enabled. For example, man col | col -b | open -f will open the col man page in TextEdit without repeated characters. The -b flag tells col to exclude all but the last character written to any column, ignoring any backspaces and repeats.
Free Apple TV utilities
The folks at MacMerc have compiled a list of six free, must-have utilities for the Apple TV. We know how much everyone loves hacking their Apple TVs, and now you can join in fun. Video Flash Downloader will allow you to pull video directly from YouTube (or other flash-based sites). iSquint encodes video for the iPod, which the Apple TV can also use. TiVo Decode Manager will change the files on a Series 2 TiVo into Apple TV-friendly MPEG format. It also preserves metadata. Copernicus is a screen capture application that, we guess, will let you watch yourself work on tv. Because you're that darn good. HandBrake rips DVDs into MPEG 4 format (among others). Lostify is a meta tag editor, which you can use with the files you capture with your TiVo or EyeTV. So get started! While we're on the subject, do you have a favorite that's not on the list?[Via AppleTV Hacker]
Calculating Tips with TipKalc
Oh isn't this clever! A developer put together a series of images with pre-calculated tip calculations and bill splits so you could load it onto your iPhoto-compatible iPod as a quick reference. Each of the images offers a bill amount, a 15% and a 20% tip (plus the grand total), and the way you can split the bill and tip between 2, 3, 4, or 5 people. You just use your scroll wheel to move the price to the nearest amount of your bill and all your information is right there for you. Sure you could build this by yourself, but it would probably take more time and effort than you'd want to put in compared to the reasonable $5 price tag. For those five bucks, you get a lot of nicely designed graphics and all the tip amounts you'll probably ever use. Thanks, Anthony.
