Bowtie, iTunes Controller On Your Desktop

Bowtie is a free application that allows you to control iTunes with shortcuts, submits your songs to Last.fm, and sports a very simple, yet very powerful, xhtml + css + javascript based theming system

Alright then ! Bowtie is basically an iTunes controller that sits neatly on your desktop, allowing you to not open iTunes to play/switch tracks. It has some beautiful themes to begin with ! As it says above, the app has Last.fm integration. Last.fm is a online service which tracks the songs you're playing, provided you're using a media player that supports Last.fm feed, Bowtie in this case.

The theming system in Bowtie is the ultimate level for a developer as well as the end user. There are endless possibilities with the kind of coding you can do with xhtml + css + javascript.

You can also search for music that you have on iTunes using this simple search box:

As is with every other OS X app, you have a bunch of preferences too !

Here's what it will look like when using the MinimalMod theme by Jerome Verzier !

There are a bunch of lovely themes around, all of which you can find archived at one single location: iconpaper. If you're a fan of "iDecorateMyDesk" and "iListenToMusicAllTheTime" then, this one's definitely for you !

Have fun trying this out ! Any queries/suggestions, leave a comment and I'll get back to you or hit me up at ashrith at a5hr1th dot com

PS: Bluetech

Organize Your Movies/TV Shows With Ease

If you're the kinda guy who collects DVDs or TV Shows, rips them onto your Mac and you like things to be organized, here's just the thing for you ! Here's what you can achieve with some basic tools:

What You Need:
-DVDs ripped onto your Mac
-SlipCover
-img2icns or CandyBar
-Google Image Search

This is how you need to proceed:

• Google for the cover of the Movie/TV Show you want
• Save it to your Mac
• Open SlipCover
• Drag the cover of the movie onto the SlipCover window
  

Now for the folder part ! Here's how:

• Open img2icns
• Drag the cover you just saved from SlipCover to the img2icns window
• Click on "Folder" and save the folder where you want to

Copy the movie to the folder you just made, and voila !

BONUS !

Google unveils Chrome OS

Today, Google shocks/stuns/keeps-in-awe everyone by introducing Chrome OS ! This was long rumored, but now the giants have themselves given us a sneek peek on it. Its poised to release somewhere around mid 2010. The OS is based on Linux and incorporates the Chrome interface, which was quite evident in the browser Google released last year.

Here's an official screenshot of the OS:

Its set to rock x86 and ARM CPUs for now. Its a netbook solution for now, which is quite evident. As is with other Google products, Chrome OS itself is an open source project, which basically means anyone can do anything with it, like HTC customized the open source Android OS with Sense UI.

The content of the OS is wholly web-based, which means you'll just need a Google account (of course everyone has one) to sign in, which also means, you're gonna be connected through the interwebs if you're using a Google account capable device, which further means all your info is stored on one account, so that you don't have to backup and restore any of your settings/files/preferences everytime you change your computer ! Simple ain't it ?

Automator - Snow Leopard

Automation as you know in Leopard was pretty much efficient. Its been tweaked further to satisfy users in Snow Leopard. Its now called Services. Its only active when you select relevant files in Finder. First you'll have to create a Service, for it to be displayed in relevant context menus. I'm gonna create a Scale Images Service. Here's how to do it:

Open Automator
Select Service when choosing a template
Add to it the following items from Library in the same order mentioned below:

• Get Specified Finder Items
• Ask For Text (Optional)
• Scale Images

Save the template as Scale Images

If you successfully create that Service, you should see it in context menus when you alternate click on a bunch of images as below:

You should also see these service here, when you have already selected some images:

The above context menu is dependent on the type of file you've selected. An example of what that menu will bring up if you select text in TextEdit:

Well, that's it for today. Hit me up with Automations/Workflows/Services of your own at ashrith@a5hr1th.com !

Visit http://macosxautomation.com/ for more on Automator, Services and AppleScript !
Bonus ! Third Party Photoshop CS1/CS2/CS3 Automator actions
You can buy other third party Automations here

Harmolymn - An Experiment

I've really had bouts of experimentation running all over the track, thus the name ! A lot of effort has gone into this one, making it a personal favorite ! Listen in, leave feedback/comments/critique, either here or on SoundCloud !

Cheers !
Harmolymn

10.6.2 Update For Snow Leopard On The Prowl

What's included? 

General operating system fixes provided for:

• an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account 
• an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly 
• Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts 
• the reliability of menu extras
• an issue in Dictionary when using Hebrew as the primary language
• shutter-click sound effect when taking a screenshot
• an issue with the four-finger swipe gesture
• an issue adding images to contacts in Address Book
• an issue in Front Row that could cause sluggish or slow frame rates while watching videos
• creation of mobile accounts for Active Directory users
• reliability and duration of VPN connections
• general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
• overall improvements to VoiceOver performance
• this update addresses video playback and performance issues for iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009) and iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) computers that may occur in some situations while AirPort is turned on
  

Font fixes provided for:

• an issue with font spacing 
• an issue in which some Fonts are missing 
• font duplication issues
• an issue with some PostScript Type 1 fonts not working properly 

Graphics fixes provided for:

• an issue when connecting monitors to DVI and Mini DisplayPort adapters
• an issue in which the brightness setting may not be remembered on restart 
• addresses functionality with specific display models
• general reliability and performance improvements when using some applications

Mail fixes provided for:

• a situation in which Mail's unread count may not update properly as messages are read on another computer
• an issue in which deleted RSS feeds may return
• an issue in which Mail cannot preview or Quick Look attachments when composing a new message
• an issue that can cause Address Book and/or Mail to stop responding when opened
• an issue in which email messages received from an Exchange Server are not formatted correctly
• an issue in which Mail reports "Account exceeded bandwidth limits" for some Gmail accounts

MobileMe fixes provided for:

• performance when accessing files from iDisk via the Finder and syncing iDisk files
• an issue in which syncing iDisk files does not proceed beyond "checking items"
• reliability and performance when syncing contacts, calendars, and bookmarks with MobileMe (syncing with iTunes and iSync are also improved)
• an issue that prevents some users from logging into MobileMe via the MobileMe System Preference pane

Network file systems fixes provided for:

• compatibility with third-party AFP servers
• file synchronization for portable home directories

Printing and faxing fixes provided for:

• automatic printer updates improvements
• Print dialog allowing you to enter and send to more than one fax recipient

Safari fixes provided for:

• a graphics distortion issue in Safari Top Sites
• Safari plug-in reliability

Apart from the list above, Apple has thrown a rock at the Intel Atom Hackintosh community. Intel Atom processors are no longer supported in this update, so, peeps with an Atom Hackintosh, don't try your luck with this one, although #Netkas has promised support for the Atom, when Apple lets out the kernel sources for Snow Leopard ! All other Hackintosh users can safely upgrade without any worries, either by running Software Update or by downloading and installing the Combo Update

Snow Leopard 10.6.2 Combo Update
Netkas' Promise Post

Time Machine, Backup App Built Into OS X

The Time Machine app on OS X lets you travel back in time, literally ! Today I'm gonna be showing you how to configure the same on your Mac ! No love for Windows users on this one, this is exclusively Apple !

What You'll Need:
A Mac, with Leopard or Snow Leopard
External Hard Drive ~ 500 GB

What You'll Achieve:
Backup from the past few months, depending on the size of the HDD you're using
Restoration from a crash to perfectly normal state

In order to set up Time Machine for the first time, you need to go to System Preferences, then click on the Time Machine icon

This is what it will look like after you configure Time Machine properly:

You've deleted a file by accident, and if you wanna restore that file from one of your backups, here's what you'll need to do:

Run the Time Machine app from Applications >> Time Machine

You'll get to see something like this depending on the Mac you're using:

You can go back in time depending on since when you've configured Time Machine on your Mac !
Just select whatever files you wanna restore from back in time, and hit that Restore button on the bottom right, voila ! Time Machine brings those files from back in time to the present !

There are a few letdowns though ! You can't take backups of any hard disks that are formatted in formats other than the Mac OS Journaled format. Other than that everything else if just fine !

If you have any queries or have something to say, just leave a comment or email me at ashrith@a5hr1th.com

TweetGenius, Twitter client for BlackBerry

This particular Twitter client has created a lot of buzz when it was first released, but then withheld for various reasons, which made the app all the more desirable ! BGR/Beejive, the developers of the TweetGenius have officially released the app to the general public. A license is $7.99, which is a steep price to pay, but no regrets ! The UI is amongst the most slickest of all the available Twitter clients for the BlackBerry platform.

To begin with, its compatible with all BlackBerries running 4.2 OS or above, with the exception of the Pearl and the Pearl Flip.

A roundup of the features it has to offer, which I'm sure will improve over time (The price you pay will give you free updates till the app hits 2.0)

• Send tweets
• Automatically fetch new tweets in the background
• Save tweets as favorites
• Delete tweets
• Send your GPS location
• Send photos to numerous online photo services
• Shorten URLs with bit.ly
• View trends in real time
• Search
• Mark messages as read when you’re done reading them
• Customize themes and fonts
• View photos
• View user profiles and timelines
• View users by both username and real name

There are a few bugs here and there, but acceptable right now, that the app has just been released. I'm sure the devs will look into them and fix them over the coming updates.

 

Images are courtesy of BoyGeniusReport, neither do I own them nor have I any licensing on them

Software Updates For The Day

Google Chrome was officially announced today for the Mac, though its available only through the Dev channel. The build number is 4.0.223.11

Windows users might be familiar with the interface, which has been there for quite some time now. Themes are available for installation, straight from the start-up page, some extensions seem to be supported in this build.

Mozilla Raindrop

Here's an extract from the Mozilla Labs blog:

• 22. Oct 2009
• The Raindrop Team

Today we’re introducing Raindrop, an exploration in messaging innovation being led by the team responsible for Thunderbird, to explore new ways to use Open Web technologies to create useful, compelling messaging experiences.

We hope to lead and spur the development of extensible applications that help users easily and enjoyably manage their conversations, notifications, and messages across a variety of online services. A central principle behind Raindrop is that messaging should be personal — we want Raindrop to be people-centric both in how we process messages, and in how we can help give people control over their personal data and experiences.

When a friend’s link from YouTube or flickr arrives, your messaging client should be able to show the video or photos near or as part of the message, rather than rudely kicking you over to a separate browser tab. Notifications from computers and mailing lists should be organized for you, not clutter your Inbox or require tedious manual filter setup. It should be easy to smoothly integrate new web services into your conversation viewer entirely using open web technologies.

Raindrop 0.1: A Prototype

To this end, we’ve started Raindrop, which we hope will become both a customizable product and a platform for a variety of innovative messaging applications on the Web.  We’ve also drafted a set of principles that we believe will help ensure that it is as useful, usable, and compelling as possible. Today, we’re releasing version 0.1, which is very much an iterating prototype, not yet ready for everyday use. Join us and help drive it there!

Design

What does a conversation on today’s web look like? Email used to house the bulk of the conversations that took place on the internet, but that’s no longer the case today. In today’s world people use a combination of Twitter, IM, Skype, Facebook, Google Docs, Email, etc. to communicate. For many of us this means that we have to keep an eye on an ever-growing number of places we might get new messages. As a result, we never know that we’ve actually processed all the important messages, because our email has overwhelmed by noise which obscures the real messages from real people.

Raindrop is an effort that starts by trying to understand today’s web of conversations, and aims to design an interface that helps people get a handle on their digital world. At the same time, it creates a programming interface (API) that helps designers and developers extend our work and create new systems on top of that data. We aren’t trying to invent new protocols or build new messaging systems, rather focusing on building a product that lets users get a handle on the systems we already use.

The Raindrop team has already gone through 2 initial iterations which demonstrate the power of the platform we already have and the possibilities that lay ahead.

The following video discusses some of the fundamental ideas in today’s Raindrop.

Mozilla Raindrop is basically a straight forward all-in-one social manager, coming by from the team which created Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird. Its gonna be supporting Twitter out of the box, and as you can predict, will support extensions, being a Mozilla product ! Its gonna be the centre of attraction as and when it comes out in all its glory !

Here's a preview video, in which the team will discuss some ideas about the project:

X-Ray Folders on OS X

This is a feature I came across very recently, on Lifehacker ! You can actually make folders display content on Quick Look in 'X-Ray' fashion ! Here's get those X-Ray folders:

1. Open Terminal
2. Copy and paste this command into the Terminal window
defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1

3. Log out and log in or type one more command if you don't feel like logging out:  
killall Finder

4. See the magic happen, when you Quick Look a folder with documents or pictures

After you do all that successfully, here's what Quick Look will look like:

To revert back to the default Quick Look view, copy and paste this into a Terminal window

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 0

Apple Updates All !

The highlight of this update, the mouse ! Mighty no longer, the mouse is now Magic ! Yes, you read it right, the Magic Mouse ! Its the world's first mouse with multi touch capabilities, and touted to be the best mouse ever made by Apple in years ! Well, take a look at the Magic already :D You obviously can't tell one side from the other :S

There has been a multitude of updates on the Apple website, here's a summary to make it easy for you guys !

Magic Mouse
Mouse with multi touch abilities !

• Connects over Bluetooth
• Compatible only with the iMacs it ships with, for now
• Gets its own Preference Pane

This one can be yours for $69, pricey for a mouse, but that's what Apple thinks you need to pay to do some 'Magic' !

Polycarbonate 13" MacBook
Now unibody, just like its aluminum cousins 

• LED Backlit Display
• Unibody enclosure, non user-serviceable battery
• Upto 7 hours of battery life
• 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• DDR3 RAM (Upto 4GB)
• Unified audio in/out jack
  

Still priced at $999, this one's a steal dea, but there's a small catch, the Apple Remote doesn't work with this baby now !

Mac Mini
Now, there's an option for making it a server, with an additional hard disk

• Choice between a 2.26/2.53/2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB shared memory
• DDR3 RAM (Upto 4GB)

Starting at $599, this is the cheapest legit Mac you can buy, too bad Apple says BYODKM

 

iMac
New options of either a 21.5" or a 27" iMac
The only Mac that ships with the Magic Mouse out-of-the-box

• 21.5" & 27" Models: 3.06/3.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• 27" Model: 2.66 GHz Core i5 or 2.8 GHz Core i7 Processor
• DDR3 RAM (Upto 16GB)
  
• 16:9 Full HD LED Backlit screen
• Choice of NVIDIA or ATI graphics

Starts at $1199, goes all the way upto a whopping $4000 for a fully pimped out version of the 27" iMac ! Outrageous right ? That's Apple for you guys :)

Images courtesy: Apple website

Make Good Use of Your Spaces

Space: a continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied

I'd say Spaces is probably THE most underrated and underused feature of OS X ! Some of you don't even know about it :( Some of the mainstream Macs come with screens, that have comparatively low resolutions, viz. 1280x800 px of screen estate is all you get on a 13" MacBook !

With "so much" screen space, you can probably have a Firefox window occupying all of the screen. If for some random reason, you wanna have one or two more windows/apps open, and be able to switch between them seamlessly, Spaces is the way to go !

You can have a maximum of 16 virtual desktops, all running at the same time, but each one different from the other. Now, that's Spaces for you !

If you're using Spaces for the first time now, you'd have to enable it from System Preferences.

• Open System Preferences
• Click on the Expose & Spaces icon
  
• Click on the Spaces tab
• Click "Enable Spaces"

You can choose to customize the shortcut key for activating Spaces. Press that key and see the magic happen!

Psst, try hitting the Expose shortcut when you're using Spaces

SSH Into Your iPhone/iPod touch

SFTP/SSH as its called, is a set of protocols that lets you access the contents of you iPhone/iPod touch, provided its jailbroken and you've set up SSH on it. Today, I'm gonna teach you guys just that !

What you need:
iPhone/iPod touch
Mac/PC
Cyberduck
WiFi Connection

What you can do:
Make use of custom themes
Set custom Ringtones
Brick your iPhone/iPod touch

Note that your iPhone/iPod touch needs to be jailbroken and they need to be on the same network as your Mac/PC

Now, here's what you'll need to do to enable SSH on your device, if you haven't:

1. Install OpenSSH & Toggle SSH from the Cydia package manager
2. Open Toggle SSH app and press "Enable" to enable SSH
3. Restart your device

Optional: If you have SBSettings installed, you could simplify your job of turning SSH on/off

That's almost it, now head over to your Mac and open Cyberduck
Click on "Open Connection" and a dialogue box like the one below should pop up. Make sure you use similar settings and fill in the details properly.

The IP Address of your device can be looked up in WiFi, by clicking the right pointing arrow of your WiFi network

After you do that successfully, you should come across a screen like this one:

To use custom themes, you need to have WinterBoard installed on your device.
You should be able to get some really kickass themes from the MacThemes Forum

To install them, you need to place the .theme folder under /Library/themes (Alias)
To use custom ringtones, you need to place the files under /Library/ringtones (Alias)

DO NOT fiddle with any directories, other than those I mentioned
I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOSS to your data/device if you goof up with something

I mentioned something called bricking of your device. If you do something terribly wrong, such as deleting the lib/dev/bin directories, even by mistake, don't get your panties in a bunch yet :P

You'll just need to reset your device OS, by putting it into DFU Mode, and restoring with the firmware of your choice

DFU Mode:
1. Connect your device to your Mac/PC
2. Hold Home and Power buttons at the same time for exactly 10 seconds
3. Let go of the Power button after 10 seconds and continue to hold the Home button until iTunes pops up and detects your device in Recovery Mode

I'm gonna say it again for my own safety, I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING AT ALL, if you goof up

How To: Stream Stuff From Your Mac to a DLNA Device

So that you don't have to keep running around between your Mac and PS3, copying stuff that you wanna watch/listen to ! Just set up a Media Server on you Mac, sit back, and stream all you want ! Here's what you'll need to increase the productivity of this simply awesome device called the Playstation 3 !

What you'll need:
Mac/PC
DLNA Device
WiFi Router
PS3 Media Server

In my case, the DLNA device is a PS3, so I'm gonna be using this freeware called PS3 Media Server to stream Video/Music/Pictures from my Mac to the PS3, of course :)

What you can do:
Stream Movies/TV Shows/Music/iTunes Library/Photos from your Mac to your PS3 within the reach of your WiFi network

Okay, assuming that your Mac/PC and the PS3, are connected to one common network, let's proceed further !

Here's what the application would look like when you run it for the first time, provided the PS3 has been turned on and Media Server detection is enabled:

To enable detection of Media Servers on your PS3, you need to do this: Settings >> Network Settings >>Media Server Connection > Enabled

The application is capable of transcoding unknown video/audio formats into PS3 friendly formats, on-the-fly. You don't have to worry about your Blu Ray rips (MKVs) or FLACs not playing on your PS3 anymore ;)

Alright, if you've managed to get everything right, you should see something like this on the XMB, though the name "HackPro.local" would be replaced by the name that you've given to your Mac/PC:


PS3 Media Server is the only software I've come across that successfully transcodes video at a sustainable speed ! I could easily stream a 720p MKV with absolutely no lags/quality issues at all. I could also stream my whole iTunes library, YES, all of it, including Podcasts and Playlists ! DRM content wouldn't wanna stream, for sure :P

This guide applies for PCs and also for other DLNA certified devices such as Blu Ray players/NAS devices ! Lemme know if you're successful with devices other than the PS3, cos I haven't really tried on anything else at all...

Snow Leopard on a PC !

I've been busy doing something all these days. Busy, trying to get Snow Leopard working on my PC :) And I've succeeded ! I'll be writing a short tutorial on how to get Snow Leopard up and running on a compatible PC with similar hardware as mine.

Here's the hardware I'm using:

• Intel DG31PR Motherboard
• Intel Q8200 Core 2 Quad 2.33 GHz Processor
• nVidia 9500 GT 512 MB DDR3 Graphics Card

Prerequisites:

• A working installation of Leopard
• A dedicated 320 GB + HDD formatted in GPT (GUID Partition Table)

Here's all the files you'll ever need to successfully install Snow Leopard on similar hardware.
There's also a guide in those files. Don't give up till you succeed :D

Screenshots: Flickr Set

Splitting DMG Archives

You have a 4GB+ DMG archive, for example a game or something, which you wanna fit onto your FAT32 partitioned hard drive. Not possible huh ? No, think again. I'm back after a week, and I'm gonna teach you how to split DMG archives. There are number of tools that can do the same. Some of them work, some don’t, but the most bulletproof way is to do it in the Terminal

There’s a tool on a Mac that does pretty much everything concerning the disks. It’s called hdiutil. It can attach, detach (eject), verify, mount, unmount and segment a volume, to name a few. To use this tool you have just got to type in a command. For a start you may want to get a view on hdiutil’s features by typing hdiutil help. Hit Enter to execute a command.

There's more to the list, but I cudn't find a way of fitting in so much content in one screenshot :)
To segment an image, let’s say DMG you could use a command:

hdiutil segment -o mydvd -segmentSize 100M /Users/[YOUR.USERNAME.HERE]/Desktop/dvdimage.dmg

That command would create segments (mydvd.002.dmgpart, mydvd.003.dmgpart, etc.) in your Home folder of an image named dvdimage.dmg on your desktop.

‘-o mydvd’ stands for the prefix that is used to name the segments. Segment size would be 100MB as defined by the segmentSize parameter. If you’d want the segment size to be 500KB you could just use 500k instead of 100M. Alternatively you could also split your image by the number of segments. In that case you should replace ‘-segmentSize 100M’ with ‘-segmentCount 5′ for example. That would split your image into 5 segments.

A good thing about it is that you don’t even have to rejoin these segments later. You can just click the first segment (in above example it would be mydvd.dmg) so Mac will verify the image and attach the DMG as it usually does. Or use Disk Utility to burn it by using the first segment as well.

Automator - Rename Files & Label Them

Today's Automator Action: Rename Files & Label Them

You have a shit load of pictures to be renamed. You wanna label them with colors. What do you do ? Automator, to the rescue !

Follow these simple steps and be able to Rename Files and also Label Them:

• Follow the basic steps from the previous Automator post
• Add Rename Finder Items and Label Finder Items from the Automator Library
• Customize them as you want and voila !

Here's a small example:

I have 100 odd pics here in a folder called Party ! I want them to renamed with Party as suffix and numbers as postfixes, beginning from 1. Here's what I did to achieve that:

As you can see from the above screenshots, you can add more than one Automation at the same time depending upon what you want it to do for you.

That's all for now ! Try tweaking that Record button ;)

Automator - Resize Photos

I'm quite sure you guys would have noticed that robotic icon with a pipe in its hand ! That's AUTOMATOR. Its the most useful software there is on Leopard. Batch Processing, that's Automator's forte.

I'll give you some scenarios where you guys have to sit and do a lot of work to get your work done. You have some pictures which you clicked at last night's party. They're all in your camera's native resolution. They're freakin' huge to upload anywhere on the internet ! What and how will you resize them ? Can't think of anything ? Okay, lets begin !

Today's Automator Action: Resize Photos

• Put the pictures into a folder
• Select all the pictures
• Alternate click on any one photo
• Move the cursor to "More"
• Now, move it to "Automator"
• Click on "Create Workflow"

Now that you've done all that, an Automator window should pop up on your screen. You see too many things and you're dazed and confused ! Here's what you need to do again:

• Look toward the left side of the Automator window
• There should be an open drop down called "Library" with names like "Calendar, Contacts..." and so on
• Since you're working on Photos, you need to select the "Photos" sub menu in the Library menu
• Now you see more options to the right of the Library menu
• Select "Scale Images"
• Double click on "Scale Images" after you select it
• Automator will ask you if you want your original photos to be preserved after you scale them
• Depending on your choice select whatever you want
• One more sub menu which itself is called "Scale Images" opens up to the right side of "Scale Images"
• Select the type of scaling you want
• Now select "Run" in the top right corner of the Automator window
• Sit back and relax while Automator processes your images !

Stay tuned for more Automator 101 !

BlackBerry FTW !

Its called the BlackBerry 8520 Curve, codename "Gemini"

Only one word can describe how good the phone is: EPIC !

Its the most affordable BlackBerry yet ! It retails for INR 16,000, but locked to the Bharti Airtel network. The QWERTY keypad is just wow ! I used to use a full touchscreen phone before this, on which I used to freak out typing out long messages. Since the day I got the phone, I've used up atleast, say, half my free message limit of 300 messages :)

I suddenly feel the urge to type out messages instead of calling up :D

I hate to say this, and I know this is like comparing a penis with a vagina, but I feel the BlackBerry is much better than the epic iPhone itself :)

Apple outs 10.5.8 Update For Leopard

Today, Apple let out 10.5.8 for Leopard. Here's the official changelog from Apple:

• Upgrades Safari to version 4.0.2.
• Improves the accuracy of full history search in Safari 4.
• Resolves an issue in which certain resolutions might not appear in the Display pane in System Preferences.
• Dragging an Aperture image into Automator now invokes an Aperture action instead of incorrectly invoking an iPhoto action.
• Resolves an issue that could prevent importing of large photo and movie files from digital cameras.
• Improves overall Bluetooth reliability with external devices, USB webcams and printers.
• Addresses an issue that could cause extended startup times.
• Improves iCal reliability with MobileMe Sync and CalDav.
• Addresses data reliability issues with iDisk and MobileMe.
• Improves overall reliability with AFP.
• Improves overall reliability with Managed Client.
• Improves compatibility and reliability for joining AirPort networks.
• Improves Sync Service reliability.
• Includes additional RAW image support for several third-party cameras.
• Improves compatibility with some external USB hard drives.
• Includes latest security fixes.

Its a 280 MB download if you're on 10.5.7 right now. If you're on 10.5-10.5.6, the Combo Update is a 800 MB download.

Links:

Combo Update
Standalone Update

Useful, Free Apps For The Mac

Audacity

Do you have the Audacity to edit sound ? If yes, this is the right app for you ! Audacity lets you edit sound in ways you wouldn't have imagined. Its THE MOST powerful sound editor available across all platforms ! Its a nifty tool giving an inclination to the user. You can cut/chop/copy/duplicate/paste/do whatever the f**k you want with your sound clip or for that matter, a whole set of clips ! You can convert any music format to any other music format, its just limitless. Psst, you can also make ringtones with it, don't ask me how ;) Please don't complain about the UI though. I know, its horrible for a Mac app.

Tweetie

Tweetie, as the name suggests is a Twitter client for Mac OS X, developed by atebits. Its a beautifully written program, with some really nice animations to get you going ! You can sign in to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time, if you wish to. The free version comes with ads, but they're not irritating, as they're quite relevant and useful in some cases. You can upgrade to the full version by paying a premium of 20$. By far, of all the Twitter clients I've seen, Tweetie is the best ! The bird won't let you down when it comes to friendliness :)

AppCleaner

Uninstalling an App on a Mac is not as easy as drag-and-drop. The Apps that you install create plist files in System directories. Quite obviously, the new Mac user would not dare to tamper with uncharted territory ! AppCleaner does the job for you n00bs out there.

It makes uninstalling apps as simple as installing applications, drag-and-drop. It will automatically find relevant files for the app you want to uninstall, and delete them all in one go ! Its also capable of uninstalling Widgets, Preference Panes and Menu Plugins ! Its got some kickass animations as well ! So, go ahead, install-uninstall and play around without fear !

HandBrake

HandBrake is a one-stop-app for all your video converting needs. It supports a huge variety of formats. It also rips DVDs to any format you want. It supports various profiles for all kinds of devices. Being quite a powerful tool, you can convert a 2-hour DivX movie to an iPod compatible format in under an hour on a fairly powerful Mac. Think, the new aluminum MacBook Pro.

The UI is a simple one, which even a n00b can understand. You can even choose to queue up a few videos and leave it on.

So, if you wanna watch videos within the comfort of your iPod/Mobile/PS3/Xbox, this is what you're looking for !