Mac ReviewCast
http://www.surfbits.com and http://www.macreviewcast.com Copyright © 2006 Tim Verpoorten
Mac Freeware of the Month - August
By Tim Verpoorten
This month weÕre going to start a new layout of sorts for the freeware of the month. I decided that I was overwhelming a lot of readers with every piece of freeware I discussed on the podcast over the last 30 days. Instead, weÕre going to give you the best 10 freeware programs that I tried during the month of July and see how you feel about sticking with quality over quantity. The list will be numbered, but will be in no specific order, just the top 10. Period.
1. TigerLaunch
http://ranchero.com/tigerlaunch
TigerLaunch is an easy-to-use and easy-to-configure application launcher for OS X. It displays an Apps menu at the top of your screen listing all your applications in alphabetical order no matter what folder they appear in. You can easily configure it to exclude applications you rarely or never launch. This allows you to be more selective about what apps are dock-worthy, so your dock doesn't get so cluttered. It also makes it easier to launch apps that are buried in sub-folders, such as in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. I used this app for a long time as my launcher and it's simple, functional and stays out of the way. A great little utility.
Easter egg feature for developers: If you have a Projects folder in your home folder, a Projects menu will appear next to the Apps menu. It will list Xcode project files, making them easy to find and launch.
2. ClipEdit
http://www.everydaysoftware.net/clipedit/index.html
ClipEdit is a small application that allows you to create and edit text and picture clippings. Yes, you read correctly, edit clippings! ClipEdit also exports any internet address to an internet clipping. Picture clippings can be zoomed and cropped and text clippings can be edited like a normal text file. If you use clippings frequently you'll wonder how you lived without ClipEdit for so long.
ClipEdit allows you to style & edit text with all the features you'd expect in a complete text editor. ClipEdit also allows you to import and export text and image files. ClipEdit is able to print text and picture clippings. It also features graphic import and export features, for easy conversion of any picture clipping you may have. Drag and drop friendly, ClipEdit makes adding text to clippings a snap. ClipEdit also supports: contextual menus, help tips, sheets, and other Mac OS specific technologies
3. CustomHTMLexport
http://mountainmandan.net/code_distributions/CustomHTMLExport
This quick little plug-in goes straight into iPhoto, and allows you to make custom templates that iPhoto will export to. Just like the "HTML Export" tab, except that you can specify your own templates. Allows for the use of CSS or Tables for formatting, and you can fully customize almost every aspect of the webpage. You can even change the script that creates the HTML for even more customizability.
Now comes with some cool new templates based on SimpleViewer. If you use iPhoto to export into a website, this is a great little plug-in you'll love.
4. ToyViewer
http://www.info.kochi-tech.ac.jp/ogihara/software/OSX/toyv-help/English.lproj/index.html
ToyViewer is an image viewer, which also provides various editing functions and image converting filter services to other applications. If ToyViewer is installed in your Mac, you can see image files in PCX, PPM, Sun Raster, etc. on other Cocoa applications.
ToyViewer can read and display image files in following formats: tiff, gif, bmp, png, jpg, pcx, pcd, pict, pnm , xbm, mag, SUN Rasterfile, JPEG2000 and many other formats supported by Mac OS X. Displayed images can be saved in following formats: tiff, pdf, gif, bmp, png, jpg, JPEG2000, pnm, or xbm. ToyViewer can scan (auto-display) image files in a folder. You can also display images in full-screen size. Displayed images can be scaled (enlarge/shrink). You can rotate, flip, or clip images. ToyViewer has ability to fix automatically the balance of colors. You can also adjust brightness, contrast, color tone of images.
ToyViewer has some typical operations to images, such as enhancement, mosaic, embossing, and so on. You can replace specified color with other color or transparent color. Full color images can be reduced into 256, 64, or 8 colors. Also, each color value of images can be cut down to 4, 2, or 1 bit. ToyViewer can make images monochrome (8bit gray, 2bit gray, or bilevel). Images can be printed. An image is automatically shrunk to be printed on a sheet, or divided into some pages.
You can add comments to images (comments are written into only gif, png, jpg, or pnm formats). You can make Aqua-button-like images. ToyViewer provides the function of Drop-Shadow. If you like a displayed image, you can make it the Desktop picture (wallpaper) of your Mac.
This is a big program in function, if you need an image viewer and editor, give Toyviewer a look/see.
5. i use this
It's a fun new website that has lists of Mac Freeware, shareware and commercial software and you choose which ones of them you use and it will show you how many others use them, and allow you to download the app right from their website. It will recommend applications from the ones you already have and it allows you to see other users applications and compare. If you want to see what I have on my hard drive, just go to http://osx.iusethis.com/users/surfbits .Add yourself as a friend and let me see what you're using for applications on your Mac. You know how much I love Mac software, and this website will be a great resource for finding those hidden apps that others are using.
6. DiskDriver
http://www.visualsteel.net/diskdriver.shtml
This is a webware product that allows you to share High-Quality MP3 file with anyone through your website. You just uplaod the software to your website and then upload your MP3 files, music or podcasts or spoken words, and DiskDriver will create a beautiful website interface for visitors to choose the MP3 they want to hear and play it in High Quality sound. It's like an online jukebox that you get to load and control. Here are some of the features:
- Stream high quality sound files.
- Automatic buffering sensing.
- Live audio scrubbing.
- View stream and song duration status.
- Ability to create custom mixes on the fly.
- Display ID3 soundtrack titles tags or filenames.
- Scroll long soundtrack titles.
- Design album covers for every album.
- Any name for your files and folders.
- Ability to instantly scan through all soundtracks and albums.
- Jump to any soundtrack in any album.
- Multiple master directories from different web pages.
- Specify a particular start soundtrack on each page.
As you can see, the possibilities for this application are endless. Take a look for yourself, they have demos and online jukeboxes set up for you to try. Just use your imagination, this app can be a lot of fun.
7. Gizmo
The Gizmo Project is VOIP (voice over IP) software that competes directly with Skype. I have a username of surfbits on my Gizmo account and you can call me anytime and leave a voicemail message.
This week Gizmo updated and announced a huge new promotion to try to get some of the business away from Skype. If you download the new Gizmo and enter in your cell phone and landline numbers, anyone that does the same will be able to call you on your cell phone or landline for free from Gizmo, and Vice-versa. So get all your friends and relatives to download and install Gizmo, enter their phone numbers and you can call them from Gizmo for no charge. This is good in 60 countries around the world. Check out the website for a list of countries included in the free calls.
Gizmo has many of the same features as Skype, and a few different ones too. Check it out for yourself, the program is free, the calls now can be free, what do you have to lose.
8. Diabetes Logbook X
http://www.nesfield.co.uk/diabeteslogbookx
When you have the type of diabetes that needs insulin shots, you need to track the time of shots, your carbohydrate intake, the amount and type of insulin you're using, and most importantly, your blood sugar readings. This program will take all this information and help you to understand what changes in insulin doses, times and food intake will make to those all important glucose blood readings. You can create charts and grafts, export data to take to the doctor, set up reminders and list contacts data. If you deal with diabetes in your family, this program can help you make sense of those important numbers that control your day-to-day life.
9. Xfolders
http://www.kai-heitkamp.de/cms_en/main.php?content=9&module=0
If you moved over to Mac OSX Tiger from Linux or if you just find that the built in Finder in Tiger leaves a lot to be desire, you should try this freeware file manager called Xfolders. Xfolders supplements the Finder and it is, thanks to its compatibility with Norton Commander, an effective assistant for administrating your files. Xfolders fully integrates with the finder, so it can support drag and drop into and out of the finder, along with all the file operations you'll need. You can bookmark and manager folders and navigate through them with keyboard commands just like Norton Commander. It allows you to have integrated and detailed spotlight searches, zip archive support and the ability to easily change file and folder attributes. It can have a flat or 3D appearance, is a universal binary, compatible with Intel Macs, and is absolutely free.
I use Pathfinder on my Mac and I would have a hard time going back to the Apple Finder again, I think that once you start using Xfolder, you'll have a hard time every surviving with Finder alone.
10. Himmelbar
http://softbend.free.fr/himmelbar/faq.html
I've mentioned this app before, but it's so good that I wanted to talk about it again since it was just updated. HimmelBar provides an icon in the menu bar to quickly access your installed applications by scanning standard locations such as local, user, network and developer applications. You can also add a custom location such as the Classic Applications folder, or any other folder of your hard disk that contains applications. HimmelBar doesn't just add all applications to a menu, it displays separated menus for each locations and allows you to customize menu contents and scanning behavior to best fit your needs. In other words, you set up the menubar to display your apps in any form you need or want them displayed in. ItÕs a great alternative for mouse users that want another option for launching their programs.
See you next month with another list of the top ten freeware applications for your Mac.
