Saturday, March 10, 2007
App Pick: Growl★
Most Mac users have at least come across growl in one form or another, but if you haven't then you're in for some fun.Growl's simplest function is to alert a user in a non-interfering and discreet manner of what is happening on their system. Its most commonly used for IM apps like Skype or Adium, to alert a user that Person X has just sent them a message on Y account, eg:
Any app that has growl support built in, will automatically register with the growl service and update the user on things like transfer progress, to 'burning complete'.
Growl has an impressive range of customizable preferences, everything from the position, shape, size and design of the notifications, to the option to have a notification read out by the system speech synthesiser.
Changing appearance of notification, on this window you can see the option for speech.
The most annoying thing about Growl, is that it isn't bundled with OS X at all. No, users have to download it (for free) at http://www.growl.info/
What I find to be so, special with Growl is that it is understanding of a user's ability to process information. Growl doesn't shout things out at you, it doesn't wave things in front of your face till you finally throw in the towel and pay attention, it is discreet and quietly provides the user with updates, and then merely fades into the murky land that lives behind the desktop.
Happy Mac'ing!
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Saturday, March 10, 2007 2:17 PM
Friday, March 9, 2007
TV Shows & Movies to roll out over Commonwealth?★
The rumour mill is turning again, this time stirred by a 'clue' found in the Parental Control Pref Pane.
Under the drop-down, there are 6 country choices: Australia, United States, The United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.
What is interesting (and incredibly annoying) is that the TV Show area is grayed out for the UK, but available for all the other countries. It typifies the inefficient bureaucracy of this country.
"Technology? Future? Jolly good, but after tea."
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Friday, March 9, 2007 5:18 PM
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Skype 2.5 For Mac Update★
Skype has released a much anticipated update, bringing it to version 2.5 for OS X.Improved stability and 10 way conference calling features added. Check it out at:
http://www.skype.com/download/
Also consider getting the widget, which has proved useful before!
Labels: news
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Tuesday, March 6, 2007 9:05 PM
iTunes 7.1 & Quicktime 7.1.5 Updates Released★
Apple just rolled out updates for iTunes and Quicktime, bringing both of the apps to versions 7.1 and 7.1.5 respectively.8 major security flaws were fixed for Quicktime, so I'd recommend the update. As for iTunes, a basic round up of perceptible changes are as follows:
Added support for Apple TV which looks exciting:
Added this amazing full-screen coverflow feature ( Pretty sure it wasn' there before ):
Full screen looks like this:
Also added a new 'Sorting' tab under the get info for each media file:
And finally looks like some minor bug fixes all round, the messy text column problem (rhymes nicely) seems to have gone away forever.
Reminder:
To download the update, click the Blue (or grey) Apple at the top left menu, and click Software Update.
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, 7:18 PM
Monday, March 5, 2007
Adium★
Sam Stafford (versuscom.com) is a great friend and colleague of mine, and recently made the switch to a Mac. I've invited him to do a new switcher story and contribute to the MacTake (along with Alasdair Corbett (theworldtodayblog.co.uk).When he made the move to his Mac Sam brought with him a copy of windows messenger for Mac so he could IM to his chatty buddies on his new shiny white box. Upon hearing of this I had to shake my head a little and wonder about the ethical issues of running things like boot camp, msn messenger and ms office on the Mac.
"Bah!" I said, in my polite and tactful way. "Zis is a terrible miztake! You must use Adium".
Adium ( http://www.adiumx.com/ ) is a absolutely brilliant IM (thing). It'll connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo and much more, within its shiny, well designed gui.
The level of control you have with the app is almost disturbing. You can configure everything from the messages layout, to window capacities and growl notifications. There's almost no part of the gui and behavior that you can't customize.
Best of all, Adium doesn't behave like some 'nextbestthing' to your normal IM apps. In most (in my opinion, all) cases its genuinely better and more featured packed, yet it still retains the core functionality for custom emoticons, nudges and whatever else is dreamt up.I can happily say also, that Adium's update cycle leaves none wanting, and each update really (and I mean really) packs a punch. Kudos to the dev team, and well, I love it!
Check it out:
http://www.adiumx.com/
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Monday, March 5, 2007 7:31 PM
Closing Widgets On Dashboard★
We all love to keep widgets everywhere on the dashboard but truth is, if you don't need it, its probably using a tonne of memory for nothing.
Normally to close a widget on the dashboard, we have to click that little plus icon in the bottom left hand corner. The shiny grill slides up, the little close signs on the widgets appear, and all the widgets near it get skewed (nicely) out of the way. Personally I find it a little disconcerting, especially if the widget I want closed is right near the bottom of the screen.
An easy way to close any widget is just to hold the Option (alt) key and move the cursor over the widget. The close button will appear and as long as you hold down option, you can click on it and close the widget easily like so.
Just to remove any doubt, the key for this is highlighted below ( as per MacTake tradition ).
Happy Mac'ing!
Labels: tips
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, 7:03 PM
Flock *updated*★
Yesterday I was furiosly raving about Flock. Today, I'm having one or two second thoughts.
It's still a great browser, it still beats IE (duh) even maybe Camino and it still has some awesome features that trump Safari's set. of almost mundane defaults compared.
Its just that Flock is still pre version 1.0 ( sorry dev's, I know you're working hard! ), and that just lets it slide when day to day use is concerned.
The search preferences pane refuses to work, and I cant seem to edit my favorites ( the prompt or window won't load ).
The great thing however, is to see that Flock is actually windows app as well, and the Mac Version is simply a port of that. The fact that the devs payed so much attention to the Mac version is just great.
So as far as Flock is concerned, I suggest running it side-by-side with Safari and therefore, any issues encountered with Flock can be negated just by switching to a Safari window.
Flock has the makings, I just think we need to give it a little time to prove that on every level for us.
Keep it up devs!
Blogged with Flock
★ 2 Comments. | By Skippy, 6:45 PM
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Flock.★
I was sure that Firefox and Safari were simply the best browsers out there, but I was wrong. Terribly wrong.Today, I met Flock 0.7.11 (catchy, but free). Its a 'sort of' port of Mozilla and retains all of what makes Mozilla shiny, tasty and vaguely web 2.0. I was familiar with this app back in its beta days, but simply lost contact with it after deleting the installer and its been great to rediscover it in its v0.7 glory.
It's really about the features in Flock. User friendly and aesthetic GUI, and a plethora of beautiful little features that make grown men drool, and young babies cry.
Flock is more than web 2.0 ready, its almost web 3.0 ready. It'll automatically detect that you have a blogger account (when u sign in), and after quickly giving it your login details, it'll present you with the option of being able to post to your blog from within the browser gui.
It'll do something similar with photo gallery accounts like flickr, although I haven't looked into to it yet.
Flock also has a bar at the bottom that you can drag snippets of text onto, to store and retrieve later.
Simply put, this app is dead handy, and has become the ultimate browser for me. For something in its pre version 1.0 development stages, this browser is just stunning.
Check it out at http://www.flock.com/
technorati tags:App_Pick
Blogged with Flock
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Sunday, March 4, 2007 5:23 PM
