Mac ReviewCast
Freeware of the month
by Tim Verpoorten
This month was a bundle of activity for us at the MacReviewCast.com and Surfbits.com. It was our one-year anniversary for the podcast and we’ve added several new editors at Surfbits.com, but I found time to bring you a plethora of great Mac Freeware. Of course, you know it’s easy to do when you have an OS with the great developers that the Mac does. So without further delay, let’s look at the freeware I found this month that I wanted to share with you.
DashSaver
http://highearthorbit.com/software/dashsaver
I'm going to tell you the two things I never use on my Mac, a screensaver and Dashboard. Now if Dashboard was a little handier to use and take advantage of, maybe I'd be interested. Screensavers are just for looks since there is no real need for them. But what if a screensaver would utilize the widgets in dashboard? That’s where Dashsaver comes in; DashSaver is a screensaver that resides in the ìDesktop & ScreenSaver preference pane. When DashSaver is selected as a user's screensaver, the dashboard is displayed and the users desktop is hidden. Do you find you are under-utilizing one of the best new features in Mac OS X Tiger, the Dashboard? Then this is a great little app for you. It’s not always convenient to bring up the Dashboard just to see the weather or some RSS feeds. However, imagine your computer showing you that information after you leave and come back? As you sit back down you can quickly glance over a wealth of information and tools before getting back to work. This app may be handy enough to make me start using both screensavers and Dashboard.
Virtue
http://virtuedesktops.sourceforge.net/
I've talked about several virtual desktops in the past, here's another one that has a lot of options you can play with and a great looking GUI. Plus it's based on the DesktopManager application that I think so highly of. Virtue is a virtual desktop manager for Mac OS. It offers features, eye candy and configurable options that no other desktop manager on the mac has added yet, and is under active development. As you may, or may not already know, a virtual desktop creates several screens which each act as a different desktop. In other words you can have a desktop with your email and chat on it, then another with Photoshop, and another with your browser windows, the options are endless.
If you use a lot of applications at a time, or like to keep windows opened and buried 3 apps deep, then a virtual desktop manager is just what you need. As the old saying goes, try it, you'll like it.
Pinki
Pinki is a menu bar item that creates permanent Mac OS X icon thumbnails for image files based on their image content. Just highlight an image file and from the Pinki menu icon, choose create thumbnails, and the selected files will now have permanent icon thumbnails that never have to be re-processed. Pinki can also remove custom thumbnails (restoring icons to their generic state) as well as save thumbnails as separate .icns files. Pinki will make thumbnails for JPG, GIFs, PNGs, TIFs, PDFs, PSD, QuickTime images, Apple icon images, windows bitmaps and more. SO if you want your image icons to be the image themselves rather then generic icons, this app is what you need.
Pic-a-POD
Here's another handy little utility. I love to change my desktop backgrounds. I don't know why, but the backgrounds on a Mac just seem to look so much nicer and I found a few spots to get good backgrounds. With Pic-a-POD I never have to worry about it again. The application downloads the picture of the day from 4 different websites, Natl. Geographic, Astronomy, Earth Science, and Wikipedia. You can schedule the time or day for downloading and even when and where the application will change your desktop background to one of the daily pictures. It comes with a picture previewer and browser to scan through all the downloads and themes allow you to select a color scheme or even design you own. If you like backgrounds, this app is a perfect fit for you.
Easy DMG
http://www.blackbirdblog.it/progetti/easy-dmg
This is a simple drag and drop .dmg creator. Just drag files or folders onto EasyDMG and an image file is created with the same contents. There are several other methods to create dmg files, but this is simple and goof-proof.
PDFLab
http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/pdflab/#intro
PDFLab lets you split and join PDF documents as well as insert images and blank pages. You will also be able to easily create PDF documents out of several images. Its usage is really simple. You add your files in a list, select the pages you wish to include, order them the way you want and create a new PDF document. PDFlab also ships with tools that let you quickly split a document into many documents, (one document per page or one document for odd pages and one for even pages), encrypt or decrypt a document, add a watermark, interleave several documents. If you play around with PDFs, editing them, creating them or even breaking large ones down to smaller sized PD's, this is a great program to have in your arsenal.
AbiWord
AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for typing papers, letters, reports, memos, and more. AbiWord is rapidly becoming a state of the art Word Processor, with lots of features useful for your daily work, personal needs, or for just some good old typing fun. Enjoy your favorite Word Processor on the operating system you like to use - be it Windows, Linux, QNX, FreeBSD or Solaris, and of course OSX.
AbiWord has been designed to integrate perfectly with the operating system it runs on. It will take advantage of the functionality provided by the system, such as image loading or printing capabilities. What use is a Word Processor when you can't share your documents with your friends? AbiWord is able to read and write all industry standard document types, such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, HTML web pages and many more. Give your document that professional, scientific or fun-to-read look using AbiWord's advanced document layout options. Use tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes and styles to enhance the way your document looks. Since not everyone in the world speaks the same language, AbiWord comes in many different languages. AbiWord is available in most common and many not-so-common languages.
Make sure your document contains none of those nasty spelling errors by using AbiWord's built-in spelling checker. Dictionaries exist for over 30 languages. AbiWord supports right-to-left, left-to-right, and mixed-mode text. This means that in addition to supporting European languages, AbiWord supports languages like Hebrew and Arabic as well. I could on and on about the features in AbiWord, but the best thin g for you to do is download it for yourself, the price is right.
Next we look at another powerhouse freeware application that's really a suite of apps.
SeaMonkey
Web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editing made simple -- all your Internet needs in one application. The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the application formerly known as "Mozilla Application Suite". The main focus of the Mozilla Foundation is on Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, Seamonkey volunteers work to ensure that you can have "everything but the kitchen sink" and have it stable enough for corporate use. The features of Seamonkey are too numerous to mention here, but remember, it's from Mozilla.org, so you know it's a quality suite of applications.
Now we're going to change gears and talk about Tetris. When the original Tetris came out back about 1988, it was an immediate hit. Since that time there has been tons of imitations, but few that made you want to switch from the original. Now there's an alternative.
Quinn
http://www.stud.tu-ilmenau.de/~siha-in/quinn.html
Quinn is an implementation of the popular arcade game Tetris, written specifically for Mac OS X. It features a neat user interface, perfectly integrated with Aqua, and a smooth look and feel for best user enjoyment. The goal was not to reinvent Tetris with yet another modification of the rules, but to stick close to the original implementation. Still there's everything one might expect including a personal high score for each player, configurable keys, and network play with Bonjour support. It's just plain beautiful, it's just plain Mac.
Next let's talk about several freeware utilities that I found, they are small programs that do just one thing, but do it very well.
DVFileDateCM
http://www.trixsoftware.com/DVFileDateCM.html
DVFileDateCM is a contextual menu plugin that allows you to quickly and easily see the recording date and time of a DV file from the Finder. No need to open any other app. Just a click on the menu. In a matter of seconds see the Video's Name, length, time and date created. Control-clicking on multiple DV files brings up one submenu item allowing a copy to clipboard of information for all DV files selected.
Speak To Me
http://iumnevermind.spymac.com/
This is a great little AppleScript application. Just type what you want for your computer to say, and then select the voice for it to say it in, and hit speak. It's simple, free and fun. Saves you from opening larger and slower apps. Just type and your Mac talks.
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 heard 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. Being written in Cocoa, 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.
Picture Switcher
http://homepage.mac.com/darkshadow02/apps.htm#picswitch
Picture Switcher is a background application that will put a menu on the right side of your menu bar to switch desktop pictures. It has most of the options of the Desktop preference Pane, and does not need the Finder to be running to work. Fast and simple to use, that's what makes it so much fun to use.
Whatsize
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/index.php
WhatSize is a simple tool that allows the user to quickly measure the size in bytes of a given folder and all subfolders and files within it. You would be surprised at how many useless files might be laying around on your hard disks. The files and folders are automatically sorted by size, with the biggest sizes first.
While the app is measuring a folder the user can browse the files within that folder and immediately see the size in bytes. Hidden files, cache files, directories will all show up with their corresponding size. This application is similar to NeXTSTEP, DarkForest.
Once the measuring of a folder has ended the user can also view the information by filtering for particular file sizes or types. The user can also move unwanted files and folder in the corresponding Trash bin similar to the Finder's Delete button.
Next, you all know that I think AdiumX multi-client chat program is a great solution for Mac users chat needs, now you can take it along with you.
Portable Adium
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/adium
Portable Adium is the multiprotocol Adium instant messaging client that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more, packaged as portable application so you can carry around with you on any portable device, USB thumb drive, iPod, portable hard drive, memory card, other portable device (also on your internal hard disk) as long as it has 24 MB of free space and use on any Mac OS X computer, taking your contact list, emoticons, message stiles, plugins, scripts, sound and users with you. No matter where you are, you can get to your chat clients and keep in contact with your friends and business partners.
Snail Mail
http://nixanz.com/products/snailmail/
Snail Mail is an envelope addressing and printing application which interacts directly with the Address Book database in Mac OS X 10.2 or higher. Its primary function is to quickly address and print single or multiple envelopes based on entries in the Mac OS X Address Book database. Batches of envelopes can be based on Address Book groups, or ad-hoc lists of addresses. Snail Mail can print barcodes for more efficient mail handling. Snail Mail can also be used to print address lists which the Address Book cannot do in Mac OS X 10.2.x.
Journler
Sleek, simple and powerful, Journler is a daily notebook designed to help you organize your thoughts. Read more. From AppleScript support to audio and video recording, from smart folders and wikistyle linking to iPhoto, iTunes, email and Address Book integration, Journler is a professional application for creative thinkers and writers.
Journler's extensive support for document and entry linking as well as its ability to import many different kinds of data also makes the program an excellent information manager, especially when you need to add notes and comments to that information. This application is similar to several shareware programs for the Mac, but with one added benefit, it's free.
PocketMac for Blackberry
http://www.pocketmac.net/products/pmblackberry/index.html
Now you can dependably and stably sync your BlackBerry device with your Mac. PocketMac For BlackBerry is the first program to allow Mac users to sync their crucial data between their BlackBerry device and Entourage, Address Book, iCal, Now Contact, Now Up-To-Date, and even Stickies. And it's fully integrated with iSync as well! Best of all, thanks to Research In Motion® (RIM®) (designer and manufacturer of the BlackBerry device) licensing PocketMac for BlackBerry, it's free for all BlackBerry users! If you have a BlackBerry and a Mac, PocketMac For BlackBerry is the perfect tool for you!
Earthview
http://earthview.ione.ch/index.html
EarthView is a small application that displays the current day/night cycle of the earth using OpenGL. It uses textures made from satellite images for the day and the nightside to make it look realistic.
The view location (i.e. the angle from which the earth is seen) can be customized either using a preferences dialog or by command-dragging the earth. The floating window, which displays the earth, can also be made translucent and the brightness of the nightside can be changed.
Couppa
http://www.nathanatos.com/software
Are you a tea drinker? If so, this app may be just what you needed. Cuppa is a small application for Mac OS X to time your cup of tea as it steeps. Tired of leaving your tea too long, to become bitter and cold, or drinking it too soon and not appreciating it’s full potential? Then this utility is for you! Use it from the Dock: just right-click or control-click on Cuppa's icon and select the beverage you are brewing. Or select a beverage from the Beverages menu. Cuppa will begin timing the brew, and you'll see a teabag appear in the cup and gradually darken as the tea steeps. When the tea is done Cuppa will attempt to get your attention by various configurable means. You can also enable a countdown timer that's displayed in the dock icon.
Reel Bean
ReelBean is a media exporter and player, offering many features that are only available in QuickTime Player to users of the Pro version. A key feature of ReelBean is the ability to convert your movies from many different formats to the video iPod format.
ReelBean offers support for exporting your movies to many of the most popular formats. As well as using ReelBean to convert your existing movies for the video iPod, you can export movies to many other common formats including AVI, MPEG-4, high definition MPEG-4 (H.264), 3GPP (for movies on mobile phones), digital video stream, image sequences and QuickTime movies.
ReelBean also allows you to play streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streams could come from a live source (e.g. a webcast, audio feed, video camera or streaming server.)
ReelBean offers other pro-like features such as displaying detailed movie information and properties panels, as well as the ability to select and edit parts of your movies and save them to new files.
ReelBean runs on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and is available now during the trial period as a full-featured free download, and the full version will be available for $10. SO download it now while it's free.
Gimp
http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net
The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is used to edit and manipulate images. It can load and save a variety of image formats and can be used to convert between formats. GIMP can also be used as a paint program. It features a set of drawing and painting tools such as airbrush, clone, pencil, and paint brush. Painting and drawing tools can be applied to an image with a variety of paint modes. It also offers an extensive array of selection tools like rectangle, ellipse, fuzzy select, Bezier select, intelligent scissors, and select by color. GIMP offers a variety of plugins that perform a variety of image manipulations. Examples include bumpmap, edge detect, Gaussian blur, and many others. In addition, GIMP has several scripting extension, which allow for advanced non-interactive processing and creation of images. To put it in simple terms, Gimp is a freeware Photoshop type program. If you need a free solution to your graphic needs, look no further then Gimp.
I also wanted to remind you of a great backup solution that's free and has been updated last week, I mentioned it before, but it's just so easy to use and handy, I want you all to download it and try it out for yourself, it's called;
BackityMac
http://www.whimsplucky.com/whimsplucky/Software/FCE42CDC-64CD-4A4D-93BD-F5999A31046F.html
Have you ever wanted an easy way to backup all the important files in your home folder? Let's say you just want to backup your Apple Mail database file, now all you have to do is click the "Apple Mail" checkbox and click "Backup". Supported files include:
* Apple Mail Files
* MS Entourage Files
* iCal Calendars
* Address Book database
* Safari, Firefox, Camino bookmarks
* iPhoto and iTunes Libraries
* iWeb website files
* Home Documents folder
* Full home folder backup
This new version added an important feature, CD/DVD burning. This includes burning an image to CD, DVD and Dual-layer DVD. Images that are bigger than the inserted media will be segmented and spanned across multiple discs, images that fit on the inserted media will be burnt straight to disc. Also, Backing up a home folder now requires an administrator password, and they added ability to cancel operations using command+period.
Shadowkiller
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shadowkiller
This is from the great Mac developers at Unsanity. ShadowKiller removes window and menu shadows in Mac OS X. This changes the look of Mac OS X completely, and speeds up its operation for slower Macs (such as G3). ShadowKiller will toggle all shadows when the application is launched, and immediately quit - for smoothest possible integration with Login items and less clicking around! ShadowKiller is now a Universal application, working natively on both PowerPC and Intel based Macintoshes.
ScreenCleaner Pro
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/freebies/
Over time, your LCD or CRT monitor will gradually fade in brightness and contrast. This fading is inevitable, because the backlights for LCD screens eventually fade, and the photo-reactive substrate on CRT monitors eventually degrades.
ScreenCleaner Pro rectifies this situation by altering the gamma of your monitor to compensate for monitor degradation, so it will look as good as new. Don't toss out that old monitor, just run ScreenCleaner Pro on it, and watch your old monitor gain a new life.
Simply let ScreenCleaner Pro run in the background, and it will automatically analyze your monitor's gamma curve and relative luminescence. After enough calibration data has been collected, ScreenCleaner Pro will adjust your monitor to like-new condition.
The analyzation/calibration process can take up to 10 minutes, but you can work normally while ScreenCleaner Pro is analyzing your monitor; simply let it run in the background.
Civil Netizen
Civil Netizen is an innovative file transfer program designed to simplify the way you send and receive your digital content with 100% privacy. No longer will you have to deal with the hassle of setting up FTP servers, shared drives, hosting accounts, large email attachments, or 3rd party websites. Built on the Mozilla Firefox platform and secured with 128-bit AES encryption, Civil Netizen offers you the peace of mind that your personal content will securely arrive at your intended destination. With Civil Netizen, the power to move your large digital parcels is in your hands! Just pack your parcel content by drag and Drop, folders, files, anything. Then send a pickup slip as text or via IM to another Civil Netizen user (Windows or Mac), they can then pickup the parcel by pasting your pickup slip into Civil Netizen. They unpack the parcel content on their end and you can track the parcel to know when it gets picked up.
iWebsites http://mistergregg.com/cocoadrillosoftware/iWebSites/iWebSites%20Home.html
When Apple introduced its clever iLife web design software, iWeb, they left out one important feature: the ability to load and save multiple web sites. There isn’t even an open menu item under the File Menu! You can create multiple sites that are somewhat independent of each other, but they still exist as one file (îDomains.sites) and cannot be separately uploaded onto different web servers or into different .Mac accounts.
iWebSites rectifies this by manipulating the files in the directory where iWeb keeps its website files, and allows users to have multiple websites that are completely independent of each other. iWebSites creates new sites, duplicates sites you already have, sets the default site for iWeb, and allows you to delete sites. Hopefully, Apple will include this feature in subsequent releases of iWeb, but until then please enjoy this little application, iWebsites.
MultiAlarm
Have you ever left your iBook/PowerBook on your desk at work, or at home on the kitchen table, and walked away and turn around to see someone taking your iBook/PowerBook and using it? Well, this application will annoy those that do and alert you. When activated simply move the iBook/PowerBook away from the axis it was on when it was activated, and your iBook/PowerBook will now sound a alarm and flash your screen. I bet your family or co-workers only do that once.
In the same vein,
Wimp
http://www.greenkeepersoftware.com/wimp/en/index.html
Have you ever planned on accessing a remote computer only to find that the IP address had changed since you last checked it? Let a Wimp rescue you! Wimp is a very simple program, which helps you keep tabs on your computer's IP address. Wimp runs a small program in the background, which sends an e-mail to the address of your choice whenever the IP address changes.
Though not the original intention, Wimp can also act as a very crude theft recovery mechanism. If installed on a computer that is stolen, Wimp will continue to e-mail you with an IP address whenever the thief connects your computer to the internet. Presumably, law enforcement agencies can then use this information to get the precise location of your computer.
Here's an entertaining little program called;
Fish
http://oriol.mine.nu/software/fish/
Fish is an aquarium simulator. It allows you to add fish to an underwater environment and customize them.
Fish show complex behavior. You can feed them, see their evolution as they grow, use different cameras to track them, and save different aquariums for later use. Fish can also be shared with others over the local network using Rendezvous.
Don't worry about your fish; they are saved when you leave the application...
Let's look at a few more free utilities;
Time Out!
It is very easy to fall into bad habits when using a computer for hours on end. You care about what you are doing, so you can sometimes push yourself too far, or burn yourself out. The human body isn't built to sit in one position for endless hours, gripping a mouse or typing on the keyboard. Dejal's Time Out! is here to help. It will gently remind you to take a break on a regular basis.
Time Out! has two kinds of breaks: a "Normal" break, typically for 10 minutes after 50 minutes of work, so you can move about and relax, plus a "Micro" break: a very brief pause of typically 10 seconds every 10 minutes, so you can remember not to tense up over long periods. You can disable either kind of break if desired, and the breaks are automatically paused when you go away from your computer, and can be reset when you come back.
More Internet
http://www.monkeyfood.com/software/moreInternet/
More Internet is a System Preferences pane that uses Internet Config to allow you to choose which applications are set as helpers for internet protocols (i.e. which application will be chosen to handle which URL.)
Apple's own Internet Preference Pane only allows you to set Mail and Web applications - More Internet allows you to change (or add/remove) any of the internet protocols.
iPhoto Batch Enhancer
http://www.feroxsoft.de/ibe/index_en.html
iPhoto Batch Enhancer is a tool to make using iPhoto a little bit simpler. All you do is choose the photos you want to make changes to, then tell iPhoto Batch enhancer what changes you want it to make and all the photos are enhanced at once.
Finally I wanted to mention a utility called
Namely
http://amarsagoo.info/namely/index.shtml
Namely is possibly the fastest way to open applications. And unlike some other launchers, it doesn't require any learning. You simply activate it using your preferred keyboard shortcut, start typing part of an application's name and see a list of matches as you type. Most of the time, one or two letters are enough. In fact, Namely learns your habits and makes your most-used apps even quicker to access over time. It's basically Spotlight for applications, only much faster, and highly addictive. If you feel that Quicksilver or Launchbar is more then you need, give Namely a try.
That’s it for this month.. do you think I’ll find any freeware left to talk about next month? I think so.
