FreewareMac - Reviews of Mac Freeware Programs

10 great freeware programs for Mac OS X

2011-04-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

10. DiskWave

With DiskWave you can find what’s eating up your precious space on your hard drive. So, if you don’t have enough space for games or movies and you don’t know what to erase, you could definitely use DiskWave

09. Seashore

Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS. It is a free and open source. Instead of Photoshop you can use this awesome software because it’s much smaller and lighter than Photoshop and of course, more easier to use.

08. Skim PDF Reader

Skim is an awesome PDF reader for Mac. With Skim you can view and read any PDF file, a great way to start working on you book or other projects. at this free software.

07. MPlayer OS X

MPlayerOSX represents the main distribution of MPlayer and comes with its native GUI in MacOSX. MPlayer is the most used multimedia application for Linux and is now one of the most popular application for Mac OS X.

06. SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey is the name of the new open-source Mozilla Suite. SeaMonkey incorporates a browser, mail client, web editor and a chat client. It also includes pop-up block for malicious ads and advanced web features.

05. Sunrise Browser

Sunrise Browser is an incredibly speedy, if somewhat quirky browser for Mac users. Sunrise is a really awesome browser, some say because of the speed with which it launches and the speed of its web-page rendering.

04. IceClean

IceClean is an awesome System Maintenance and Optimization Tool based on UNIX. Some of its features: you can easily repair permissions, cleanup your system, enable or disable firewall, rebuild finder menu icons and it can clean up a bunch of problems with Spotlight.

03. Floola

Floola is a application that lets you organize your music, video, podcasts and photos on your iPod or Motorola phone (any model compatible with iTunes). This is an application that requires no installation and runs on Mac OS X and Linux or Windows.

02. Adium

Adium is an instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to networks like AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo(an important feature), Facebook of course and more.

01. PsyncX

PsyncX is a backup application that can meet the requirements of many Mac users, with advanced functionality and interface extremely easy to use. With this awesome application anyone can make a full bootable copy of a hard drive or to copy the entire hard drive to another computer.

Freewaremac has a new home!

2006-03-14T02:51:00.000-08:00

Yep, now I am posting at freewaremac.net. Please note that the RSS feed has changed the address to http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreewareMac.

Cheers!

Safaricon - pimp your Safari

2006-03-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

Give your Safari 'da look' with Safaricon. The themes do not change the browser's look wildly like Firefox Themes, but they're pretty nice (some of them). And the download is worth alone by the app's replacement of the useless 'Report Bug' button with a very useful 'New Tab' button.

Disable Safari Download Warning

2006-03-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

Hooray! Finally a free way to disable Safari's super annoying Download Warnings (ya know, the dialog you get 'this may contain an application, do you really want to download it?'.

I HATE it. The only way to disable it until now AFAIK was with the (great) shareware program Saft, but now Safari Enhancer does it for free. Safari Enhancer also allows you to adjust various setting in Safari, though mine behaves weirdly if I disable the cache. Since you're gonna download it anyway, check the link for the full app's function list.

iPod Hi-Fi review

2006-03-11T12:51:00.000-08:00

Well although it is very expensive and I criticized its price quite harshly in a previous post, the iPod Hi-fi might just be worth the price for you rich kiddos since it seems potent enough to fill up an entire room with sound (party time!), though it lacks a bit of treble detail, something I value highly, but I know most people love powerful woofers, so check out this comparison review.

FlashMount - mount images in a second.

2006-03-03T23:06:00.000-08:00

With FlashMount, you can mount disk images in a second. It does not verify the image and it automatically accepts user agreements, so you can have any disk image (mainly .DMG files) opening almost instantly.

I used 'Get Info' for a DMG file, changed all DMG file types to open with FlashMount and voilà!

Images opening FAST. Loved this app, only 167K.

Freewaremac needs your help!

2006-03-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's time to get a domain, I guess. I'm not fond of this blogspot thingie, so I need your help!

1) I need a suggestion for a domain name;

2) Donations are accepted - click the button to donate 1 Dollar if you found this site of any use, or if you feel like it, whatever, you know the whole 'please donate' speech:

I'd really love a domain name suggestion... If you leave it in the comments, it will get to my mail.

Cheers!

ImageWell - best freeware simple image editor available

2006-03-02T18:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is da bomb in simple image editing:

- Watermark your images;
- Crop, Resize, Rotate, etc;
- Send it to your .mac account or any other FTP server;
- 467 Kbytes and free;
- and some other stuff, but I pretty much think I've convinced you already.

Ok enough, go download it, man. Don't even argue with me. It's an order.

Unpacking and Creating RAR files on Mac OS X

2006-03-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

RAR files are a files that have been compressed with the RAR engine, a proprietary format (ya know, like .SIT format). Since I've seem in forums around the net that even Windoze users have problems dealing with RAR files, I imagine many Mac users do too.

I've tested all the freeware solutions to unpack .RAR files, and the only one that always works is UnrarX. Don't forget to check if your RAR file is password protected, because the program asks for it in the beginning but if you ignore that, it will try to unpack the file anyway and only give a message error in the end.

Creating a .RAR file is usually reserved to shareware applications, even on Windows. The only app that does it for free is Gumby, as far as I know (and after a lot of researching). Gumby is a great utility that does so many things you'll have to download the manual (it's a PDF in the main page - there's a link) to learn all about it. To create a .RAR file, just go to the 'RAR' tab and press Alt (Option), and the button will change from 'Process' (for unpacking files) to 'Create'.

Keeping Gmail open all the time / Sunrise Browser

2006-03-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

Since I love Gmail and I keep it open all the time, I use the lightest browser I can to keep a window opened with it so it won't affect my CPU's performance.

My browser of choice for that is Sunrise Browser (I've posted about it in this link). It uses Safari's Webkit engine. So Gmail's built-in chat won't work too, but for me, that's less annoyance.

Just make sure you access your Gmail using the URL http://mail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser - or Gmail will be loaded in HTML mode (for theoretically unsupported browsers), which sucks big time.

Update: I was just going to complain that it's a pity Sunrise Browser seemed dead, but it has been recently updated. Go take a look!

New Apple Products

2006-03-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

Well, of course you already know about this if you're a hardcore Mac user, but it's news worth mentioning:

1) New Mac Mini: w00t! Now with Intel Core Solo and Duo processors! Don't ever buy a G-something Mac now, who knows when support for them will be dropped. I am worried (I have an olde iMac G3 DV SE 400 MHz - well here in Brazil, Macs are imported so they cost a *lot*, and I can't stand Windows anymore. I'm not a PC or Microsoft hater, I just hate using it).

2) iPod Hi-Fi - a steal (literally, Apple is putting its hand in your pocket) at USD 349. Just go look for similar solutions from good manufacturers (I'll post a link when I find one, have seem so much, but nothing comes to mind right now).

3) iPod Leather Cases - at USD 99, you'd better order one from the most luxurious casemaker, Vajacases. Top notch Argentina leather and fully customizable. And your girlfriend will love their new iPod Nano Crystal Case.

So, in the opinion of this humble Blogger who cannot afford even a Mac Mini (because they cost more than a 3.0 GHz Pentium IV here, and I cannot live without OS X), it's the only new product worth shelling cash out for (the new Mac Mini).

Quicksilver Short Tutorial

2006-02-26T00:28:00.000-08:00

Quicksilver is one of the apps I cannot live without (along with PTHPasteboard and Textpander). So, let's go, fellas:

1) Install Quicksilver;

2) Wait 10 minutes or so for it to scan your catalog;

3) Open it using the keyboard shortcut (I use CTRL-Space);

4) Think of the first window as a noun, and the second as a verb. for example, if you type FF and Firefox appears (or if you want Firefox to appear when you type FF, just scroll down the results list and Quicksilver will learn it after you do it one or two times);

5) So, for an app, the second window (verb/action) will show what you can do with it. Naturally the default action will be 'Open' for an application, but you can right click on the second (Action) window and there will be things like 'Show in Finder' and whatnot;

6) If you've allowed QS to scan your address book, the actions will be different, like send mail, show in address book... You can even click the actions window and type 'email' for example, and it will show you some 'hidden' actions (not on the menu) like 'send mail directly' - then a third window will appear, and if you press the dot key you can write what you want and send it without opening your mail program;

7) The dot key is very useful in any window. If you press dot on the first window and type any e-mail address, you can send a mail via the same procedures described in item #6. Or type a URL, you can copy it, open in the browser, well, you get the idea.

This is the type of Application you learn something every day. Sometimes I can't find something using QS (because I didn't set it to scan all my folders) and it takes me some seconds to remember that Spotlight exists.

There are many plugins too - for Cyberduck, Terminal, iTerm, Mail, Automator, iPhoto... Too many to list. And the app's appearance is highly customizable.

I've barely scratched the surface of this app with this post. Take a look at 43 folder's Quicksilver category and you will see what I mean (and keep clicking on 'Previous Posts', there are several pages).

SimpsonBot

2006-02-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

I'm on a roll today, can't stop blogging ;)

Well, most of you know this widget, but I'm posting this because everybody should have this <l33t mode>'cos itz da w00test widget evarz!!!!</l33t mode>

How SimpsonBot works:

Click on the character's face and you'll get another quote from him. Click on the Simpsons logo and you change the character to get his/her quotes. It's awesome!

There's a Family Guy version on the site too, but I hate Family Guy. I realize you Americans love it, but that may be exactly the reason that I hate it: I find its humour to be too American (not that I'm against people from USA or any other country, I'm just talking about a cartoon, jeez). I am Brazilian, by the way.

Also, get the DashTunes Widget while you're there too. It's a much-improved built-in iTunes controller, allowing you to search songs and rate 'em.

10 Semi-Obscure Mac Programs You Shouldn't Be Without

2006-02-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

Heading East has this interesting list of 10 apps you shoudn't be without. Some of these are shareware though.

Of this list, I love Textpander (I swear, you'll never unisntall this app), Flip4Mac, Growl, Chax and SBook (see descriptions on the link to the post). Instead of JumpCut, I prefer PTHPasteboard (so wonderful, simple and easy to use for multiple clipboards). In the shareware front, I use Saft (It's a great Safari add-on and nothing free comes close to it yet).

Warning: I was going to install AppleJack, listed there, but when reading at the Readme that some Tiger users lost their entire disk because of the app, I gave up.

Deactivate your Dashboard

2006-02-25T23:34:00.000-08:00

Hate the Dashboard? Prefer Yahoo! Widgets (excellent app by the way, now with a 'Dashboard mode' - press F8 and only your widgets appear onscreen).

So, deactivate it so it won't consume any CPU cycles or memory (it does consume them, even when youdon't open it).

Open Terminal or iTerm and type:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

and then:

killall Dock (this reinitilizes your Dock)

To enable the Dashboard back:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

killall Dock

Add a Quit Menu to the Finder

2006-02-25T23:29:00.000-08:00

Unlike some of you new Mac users might think, the Finder is just another application, it's not like Windoze Explorer.

So, to add a Quit Menu to the Finder (which helps CPU and cleans your Desktop), open Terminal.app (I prefer iTerm - Terminal tab goodness, besides background images, customizable colors and other cool stuff) and then type the following command:

defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem 1

You can relaunch the Finder at any time clicking the Dock icon, and quitting Finder doesn't do anything harmful to your system.

WinOSX Transformation pack

2006-02-25T20:45:00.000-08:00

PS: This is for WINDOWS.

WinOSX Transformation Pack makes your Windoze looks just like OS X.

I haven't been able to find any decent screenshot of it, but user feedback (on a Brazilian website I found the proggie) is very positive.

Please submit me a screenshot (800x600 minimum) if you install it.

It requires Windows XP or 2003 and is 30 megabytes in size.

Link for download: WinOSX Transformation Pack

TapDex - 1-click Adress Book search

2006-02-25T20:26:00.000-08:00

TapDex allows you to hit a shortcut (say, F7 in my case) and instantly open a window to search and e-mail your contacts. Nice app.

Check out other Yellowmug's freeware here.

Suggestions, anyone?

2006-02-25T20:19:00.000-08:00

I know I am getting some visits in this blog, so it would be great if you could suggest more freeware in the comments. I receive 'em all in my Mail so no comment will be overlooked.

Thanks ;)

ClamXav - free virus scanner

2006-02-25T16:37:00.000-08:00

ClamXav is a free virus scanner for Mac OS X. It uses the very popular ClamAV open source antivirus engine as a back end.

Why get an antivirus for Mac OS X? Well, viruses for Mac OS X are appearing now, but they shoudn't even concern us Mac users. But you can be still infected if you use a Pc Emulator such as Virtual PC.

And not being infected does not stop you from spreading virus to other Windoze users. I did a scan on my Home directory and found 6 Windows viruses, which of course won't affect me but I may have helped spread it.

The good thing about this app is that it takes little CPU cycles, so you can scan and do other things (even on my olde iMac G3 it does not get in the way). The bad thing is that it's slow as hell to scan files.

Flock Web Browser

2006-02-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Flock has been improving in each version, and it is way more Mac-like than Firefox (better design and windows open faster, for example), it has integration with the del.icio.us and Shadows services for bookmarks (if you do not know Shadows, check out my Shadows page (with bookmarks imported from delicious), besides a Flickr viewer and uploader built-in and blogging support from the browser.

It's no Speed Freak like Camino, but it supports various Firefox extensions (including the most popular)

It's currently at version 0.5.12, and I still can't use this as my default browser because it locks up frequently (even locks up my OS X!), but it is definitely a browser for us to watch for.

Links:
- Flock official extensions page
- AdminID's collection of Flock extensions
- The ultimate Flock extension list

GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program

2006-02-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

If you are thinking of shelling out cash for Photoshop, I beg you: at least, try GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, first. It's free and has lots of Photoshop resources. It requires Apple's free X11.app to run.

There's even a hacked version, GIMPShop, that changes some of the functions' names and some more things I don't know (see the link) so that it resembles Photoshop even more. Really, give it a try.

Both are free, anyway ;)

Star for iTunes

2006-02-24T13:07:00.000-08:00

Check out this nifty little app at this post in TUAW. Sorry, I've been too tired to write a review.

Technorati Tags: itunes, apple, macfreeware, freewaremac, macintosh

Ok, better day today. It's a menubar app that allows you to rank your currently playing iTune song.

New Google Dashboard Widgets

2006-02-24T04:40:00.000-08:00

Google has just released three Mac Dashboard widgets: Blogger (using it right now BTW), Gmail and Search History.

Get 'em here.

Update: I did not like the Gmail widget, way too big and no collapsing. Same for Search History, but at least this one can be resized considerably.

SurfRabbit - customize sites you visit

2006-02-24T00:17:00.000-08:00

SurfRabbit is an awesome plug-in that works with the Safari and Shiira browsers. With this great lil' app, you can customize the web pages you visit by removing elements you don't want, like ads, columns, et cetera.

A picture is the best way to illustrate that, so click below to enlarge a picture of a 'before and after' webpage by SR:

Lovely app, isn't it?

Kropper: dead simple image editing

2006-02-23T03:13:00.000-08:00

Kropper is a simple utility you can use to crop, resize and save images in jpeg format. It is a handy program particularly useful to people who usually publish webcontent and is not able or do not wish to use complex programs to treat images.

PS: Sorry for copying the text from the dev's site, but this is a cool utility that I wanted to show you and I have not slept in 30 hours (reason: my severe case of Atopic Dermatitis / Eczema.

1001: great desktop flickr client that got me worried.

2006-02-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

1001 is the most fully-featured Flickr application on a Mac Desktop, and of course it's free. (If you haven't got a Flickr account, you don't like pictures!).

Download it because it's really worth it. Of course, when you just wanna upload some pics, you're better off with Flickr's own lightweight Uploadr.

But at the same time, it worried me that the later versions of the app, constantly updated, have been released as two separate files. A PPC app and an Intel app. No, the Intel app is not Universal Binary, it won't run on PPCs.

I am worried about this because this may mean that it might be easier, on some cases, to write another version for Macs with Intel processors. If this is true, how long until PPC arcjitecture is completely abandoned?

Most of you remember how quickly Apple stopped caring for Mac OS 9.x, even though OS X was still very imature.

Technorati Tags: macintosh, mac freeware, macintosh freeware, freewaremac, flickr

UNO and Iridium - unify your Mac's interface

2006-02-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

Do you hate brushed metal and all the variations in application interfaces in Mac OS X?
Fix all those interface inconsistencies with UNO, so that all your apps have a clean interface with integrated toolbars.

The best of all is that it comes with its own installer/uninstaller, so no need to use a third party program to install it.

Another option, also available as a standalone installer or as a Themechanger theme, is Iridium. It looks a lot like UNO but for some reason I prefer the former.

Technorati Tags: macintosh, mac freeware, macintosh freeware, freewaremac, uno, themes, iridium

Shiira Mini

2006-02-08T05:06:00.000-08:00

If you like Dashboard widgets (I don't), the folks responsible for the Shiira Browser have made a widget browser called Shiira Mini. It's kinda cute, a great showoff to your PeeCee friends ;). I would test it if I hadn't disabled my Dashboard.

Vienna - the best RSS newsreader

2006-02-01T00:22:00.001-08:00

Why do I consider Vienna the best RSS reader, though it looks a lot like the popular Netnewswire Lite? For two things:

1) Search Bar (bottom right)

2) Embedded browser so you don't have to open your browser to see those god damned half-assed partial content feeds, you just click 'View Article Page' as shown here (click to enlarge):

And voilà! You get the article on the same window, something that only the paid version of Netnewswire (what a fuggin' complicated name) offers.

Technorati Tags: vienna, mac freeware, macintosh freeware, freewaremac, rss

Galerie - create web photo galleries with ease

2006-01-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

Galerie does what many shareware programs do: it makes web pages with thumbnails of pictures. The difference from most other programs I've tested, including Dreamweaver+Fireworks, is that, besides being free, the templates are absolutely beautiful, the program is very fast and the resulting page is usually much more polished than your usual shareware web gallery creator. And it's fully customizable - too many options to list here. You can even watermark the images.

This is THE real deal for this kind of program. This is an example - adults only, please (you can make the gallery with way more eye candy).

Diablotin

2006-01-26T05:24:00.001-08:00

Diablotin is a Preference Pane that allows you to activate/deactivate and delete all the items shown in the picture below (click to enlarge).

Very, very useful if you don't want to go searching in Spotlight / Finder to find that Contextual Menu Item you want to delete, for example. A true gem.

Oh God, why are these developer sites always down? RapidShare Link, my site's link (please try Rapidshare first).

Technorati Tags: macintosh, mac freeware, macintosh freeware, freewaremac, diablotin

Toyviewer: freeware graphical editor (and alternate download links)

2006-01-26T03:46:00.000-08:00

ToyViewer is a simple, fast and very nice Image Editor for OS X (I just love Japanese Mac programs, they are very small, fast and have features that are usually only available on expensive programs - besides, lots of them are freeware). It's one of the most useful lil' apps I've ever found to crop, resize and adjust most necessary parameters to post an image to the internet.

Since the main site is always up and down, I have put it on Rapidshare (download here - click on the 'Free' Button at the bottom of the page to do it, and you'll have to wait 20 to 40 seconds).

If you really can't download via Rapidshare (some countries/ISP ban it), get it from my personal website. Please be kind and try Rapidshare first to avoid having my host making me pay for extra bandwidth ;)

Technorati Tags: mac freeware, freeware, macintosh, toyviewer, freewaremac

FireAnt: Media Player with Bittorrent support

2006-01-26T01:35:00.000-08:00

FireAnt is a new Bittorrent client which main difference seems in the fact that it is actually a video a media browser that uses BT for downloading porn vide episodes from all around the net. It's available for Mac and Windows. I just ran it once (it's a new program), so comments on this would me more than welcome.

Update: Actually I don't know if it uses BT (that's what I heard from some sources), but it seems to be a great program to browse through specific-content web videos via its built-in directory.

Technorati Tags: mac freeware, freeware, macintosh, bittorrent, freewaremac

Freeware FTP'ing

2006-01-23T02:10:00.000-08:00

There is only one freeware FTP program that I found to be in the same level of the shareware ones, and it's Cyberduck. If you know another one, please tell me. I like CD, but I'd like a program that shows two panes.

Speaking of two panes, a way to have that is to use the most excellent FireFTP extension for Mozilla Firefox. It's surprisingly good, it's only 90kb, and it's great to navigate on one tab and use an FTP client on another one inside your browser.

iMac Intel review roundup

2006-01-23T01:38:00.000-08:00

Engadget.com has put up a list of reviews of the Intel iMac. Worth reading them all, I can't wait to have my hands on one of these babies. The only thing that bothers me is that Apple dropped Classic support (even on OS X) completely. It bothers me because I have games I love that only run on Classic, but it seems to be a hell of a machine.

Here's a list of the Pros and Cons from one of the reviews I liked:

Pros

* very fast when running Universal Binaries
* much faster graphics with DVI extended desktop and miniature video camera
* Airport Extreme, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR included
* very quiet
* many applications are compatible, even if not optimized

Cons

* "Classic" (Mac OS 7/8/9) applications won't run
* Rosetta doesn't support many peripheral drivers (for scanners, graphics tablets, etc.)
* no fax/modem
* no FireWire 800 or alternative for high-speed storage
* internals completely closed and inaccessible; only RAM is upgradable

What do you think 'bout the new iMac?

(By the way, if you are trying to hack the new iMac to boot Windows XP, see this guy's site!)

Technorati Tags: macintel, imac, apple

Audion: free and resourceful MP3 player

2006-01-23T01:30:00.000-08:00

Ok, that's old news, but for those who don't know, Audion was a shareware MP3 player that is now 'retired' because it couldn't face competition from iTunes. So Panic turned it into freeware.

I use it when too many apps are open in my Mac, and I think you should give it a try. It uses less CPU than iTunes, has lots of resources that iTunes still doesn't have (MP3 encoder, keyboard shortcuts, just to name a few), and runs smoothly. Just open it and create a Linked Playlist that links to your iTunes Music Folder, and you will always have the same playlist you have on iTunes - it self-updates too.

Oh, you still have to add a serial number, which is available here.

Audion is an excellent MP3 player that's worth downloading. BTW, it has a ton of skins too!

Technorati Tags: macintosh, mac freeware, itunes, mp3, audion

First review of the Intel iMac

2006-01-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

Arstechnica posted a review of the 1.8GHz Core Duo iMac, and they seemed to like the new product much better than the iMac G5- it gets close to a PowerMac 2.5GHz Dual G5 in terms of performance.

Do you plan on buying an Intel iMac?

Links: complete review, benchmarks

Technorati Tags: macintel, imac, apple

Camitools: Camino extra preference pane

2006-01-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

If you, like me, love the Camino Browser (my default now), Camitools is a new preference pane with lots of customizations options.

Check out their Camino Bookmarklets page too.

Celestia

2006-01-07T02:43:00.000-08:00

If you are fascinated by stars, planets and space pics, you have to check out Celestia. For a preview of what it does, go to the screenshot gallery.

Just download te program, run it and press the key 'D' to enter demo mode, then you will be graced by a very nice demo of how the program navigates through space. You can get a lot (and I mean A LOT) of addons for Celestia in the Celestia Motherlode site.

Another amazing piece of software for free.

Do not use Firefox on Macs!

2006-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

What? Did I go bananas?

Nope, use one of the optimized builds for Mac. There are G3, G4 and G5 versions and they have a better icon ;)

Advice: don't get the latest one, get Firefox 1.5 because the newer ones are for Firefox 1.6 alpha and most extensions won't work with them.

By the way, I had to reinstall half my extensions after changing to the optimized build because they were disabled for no apparent reason. And had to do it again if I opened the 'traditional' Firefox so now I am only using the optimized build. They open up much faster and do not have that aggravating delay when opening new windows. Worth checking out.

By the way, did you know you can blog directly from Writely? Just put your blog settings and click on the blog button to post it to any blog you have!

Technorati Tags: firefox, macintosh

Adsense Client for Mac OS X

2006-01-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

If you use Google Adsense to try to make some bucks (like me, I'm a professional Adsenser - I get like, 1 cent a day from all the ads in my 5 blogs, maybe someday I can eat a Mcdonalds meal with my Adsense money!), Adsense Client spares you from logging into Google's site and allows you to check your stats.

And don't worry, I have checked with LittleSnitch and the program only connects to the Google secure server.

Technorati Tags: macintoshfreeware, adsense

Two great Firefox extensions from Google

2006-01-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

Just too good to ignore:

- Blogger Web Comments for Firefox - see backlinks from other sites on the blog you are viewing and make a post on your own blog (if it's on blogspot) without getting out of the page.

- Google Safe Browsing for Firefox - alerts against possible phising and spoofing pages while you are surfin' da Web.

PS: The last one is available just for US residents. To install it if you are outside, go to kproxy.com and enter the URL http://dl.google.com/firefox/google-safebrowsing.xpi.

How to burn .mdf disc images on Macs

2006-01-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

Ok, it's out of this blog's scope, but it is too much of a good hint to pass up:

MDF is a format for disc images used by the popular Windows program Alcohol 120%, just like .toast is used only by our beloved Toast CD/DVD burner program. Alcohol's format is composed by a small .mds file and a big .mdf file.

So, two ways to do it, depending on how you get the disc image. They don't work with all images but I can say I have had 90% of success until now.

1) The MDS file is unnecessary. Just rename the .MDF file to .ISO and burn it.

2) Sometimes the image will come as a .MDS file and then a lot of MDFs, like disc.mdf.001 and disc.mdf.002 and so on, or else just disc.001 or disc.002, you get it. In this case, you have to rename them all to extensions like disc.iso.001 (NEVER forget the .ISO part), disc.iso.002, etc, again ignoring the MDS file. Then, you have to use the freeware utility Split and Concat, drag all the numbered files to the program and it will make a single .ISO file. Then, just burn it!

Hope this helps, I had to research a lot to find this out.

PS: By the way, I once burned a .TOAST DVD image on a Windows PC just by changing the extension to .ISO and it worked flawlessly with Alcohol 120%.

Xfolders - Finder companion / replacement

2006-01-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

Xfolders is the first replacement / companion to the sucky Finder that is freeware as far as I know.

It's not comparable to the wonderful Pathfinder (hey that's shareware, so I can't talk about it here, neither opst a link to it ;), but it's still an early beta and IMO it's worth checking out how its development goes.

And it's only a 640k download.

Popfile - freeware spam protection

2005-12-23T06:57:00.000-08:00

Popfile is a freeware app that gives you very accurate spam protection (like those paid apps), useful f you have those yezrs-old email accounts that get so much spam that Apple Mails's filter is not very useful.

Well, since it's a Perl app, it's a bit complicated to install.

So:
- How to install Popfile in Mac OS X
- User-friendly instructions

Namely - app keyboard launcher

2005-12-21T22:04:00.000-08:00

Namely is a very small (200k) app that works in a very simple manner: you set up a hotkey (in my case, option+space) and its window appears. You type the first letters of any app and it shows a list of results, besides learning your habits, i.e, if you type 'fi' and Firefox appears down the list, just select it and the next time you type it, Firefox will be the first on the list, so you just have to type 'fi' and then Enter.

For app-launching purposes only, it's much faster than the powerhouse app Quicksilver, which still deserves a VERY long post since you can do almost anything imaginable with it.

PDF Viewer and PDF Browser plugin

2005-12-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

PDF Viewer (440k) hasn't been updated since 2003, but it's still my favourite PDF viewing application. Much faster than that crappy Preview thingie or the Adobe Reader bloatware, and it loads large PDF documents into memory, so just open that mammoth pdf you have, wait a little bit and then it's smooth navigation ;)

Another great way to view PDF files (from inside your browser) is by using the PDF Browser plugin, which is free for personal use.

Also worth downloading is the same developer's Word Browser plugin.

PTHPasteboard

2005-12-19T15:02:00.000-08:00

I have been bouncing back and forth among pasteboard apps, but I never found one so easy to use (and small too) as PTHPasteboard. And it's FINALLY been updated for Tiger. It records your last 20 (changeable in prefs) items that you copied to your pasteboard, and to paste any item, you just have to go to the menubar window and click on whatever you wanna paste.

It also has an option of saving your pasteboard clippings so they won't be lost if you restart your Mac or if it crashes.

As always, click on the image to see it bigger (don't worry, you can change the ugly colours I have set up on mine).

Writely - web-based word processor

2005-12-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

Writely is not a Mac app, but it is so innovative I had to post about it. It's a web-based word processor you use from your browser. You can create a document there or upload one - HTML files and plain text (.txt), Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf) and OpenOffice (.odt, .sxw) files smaller than 500K, or Image (.gif, .png, .jpg and .bmp) files smaller than 2Mb. It also exports your docs as PDF.

One of the best features of Writely is that you can send an email invite to someone so that he or she can have access to the documents of your choice and you can both edit it.

PS: Site still does not work in Safari, so use Firefox instead and allow pop ups from the site so it works properly.

Click on the image to see Writely in all its glory:

Textpander - Typing Aid Utility

2005-12-18T18:12:00.000-08:00

Textpander is a real timesaver for those who do a lot of repetitive typing, like me. for example, everytime I post a link, I just type !!li and it turns into <a href="" target=_blank></a> - and with the cursor in the middle of the tags! Or, if I type ddate (one of the shortcuts that comes default with the software) I get Monday; December 19, 2005.

It is very useful and can be used for complicated and simple tasks. Since I am tired of typing my email in sites for registration, etc, I created a shortcut named !!@ and everytime I type it, my mail appears. Just be sure to read the documentation to get a hold of the variables you can use like the one I use to put my cursor between the html tags and stuff.

Since the main website for the programs has been coming up and down lately, here is another link to download it in some weird language site ;)

Teleport

2005-12-18T17:48:00.000-08:00

A reader suggested this seemingly amazing utility. Teleport allows you to use the same mouse (and even transfer pasteboard contents) to another Mac. Just drag your mouse cursor to the edge of the screen and you will be on you other Mac (or Macs) screen.

I coud not test it because I have only one Mac, but donations are accepted ;)

(click on image to see bigger)

Movie Time

2005-12-15T23:57:00.000-08:00

Movie Time is a small (600k) movie player with subtitle support. It uses the Quicktime engine, so do not expect it to play all your Divx files like these two.

The annoyance is that you have to know the keyboard shortcuts, but for a start, just remember the key 'C' (controls) and 'Apple+,' (preferences) and you will be ok.

I still prefer NicePlayer for QT movies, though.

Osirix: freeware for doctors

2005-12-15T06:51:00.000-08:00

Osirix is a free medical image viewer (DICOM images), besides being able to view JPGs, TIFFs, PDFs, etc.
It's one of these programs that would cost over a thousand bucks if it was commercial.
Anyway, you'd better have at least a G4 Mac with 1GB of RAM to use this baby. Check out the plugins section too.

Click on the image to see bigger:

VLC Media Player and MPlayer OS X

2005-12-14T09:49:00.000-08:00

VideoLAN is a video player that, according to people, play everything you want (it's a bit slow on my Mac so I use MPlayer OS X instead). Both feature grat support for Divx and subtitles, well, I use Mplayer to play any video that doesn't work in any other player, I have a much better experience with it than with VLC.

I haven't tested this, but according to this article in macosxhints, VLC even ignores DVD regions so you can play any DVD on your Mac without the hardware limit of region-changing.

I'll put a post on useful utilities for extracting, removing regions and compressing DVDs soon.

Planeshift - free MMORPG

2005-12-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

For a free game, Planeshift seems to have great visuals (nothing comparable to World of Warcraft, of course) - but if the gameplay is as addicting as most Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, it may be the cheapest way to throw your life away for some weeks, months or years ;)

Click on the thumbnail to see a screenshot:

FFView - Quick Image viewing

2005-12-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Any Windows user (or ex-Windows users like me) misses an image viewer as simple and as fast as the old versions of ACDSee (then it became a bloated package, and the Mac version sucks big time). Enter FFView, a great utility for quick and dirty image viewing via thumbnails, lists, etc. They even say thety were inspired by ACDSee 2.x. FFView also reads CBR and CBZ comic book files, but IMHO, Jomic (see previous post) does that better.

Jomic - for comic book fans

2005-12-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

Jomic is a great Java (Java = CPU hog) Open Source program that allows you to read those .CBR and .CBZ comic book files. It's very well done and works smoothly, albeit a bit slow (Java, again) - but overall it's a good app.

The only feature I miss is having a 'hand' option to drag the comic (like in PDF readers) - my Microsoft Mouse scrolls vertically and horizontally, so it's no biggie for me, but I hope they implement it. If you are a comic book lover, it's a must get.

Bittorrent Clients

2005-12-12T11:03:00.000-08:00

PS: If you do not know what Bittorrent is, go here.

There are lots of Macintosh Bittorrent Clients, and I've tested them all. Here is my lowdown - all are free, of course ;)

Azureus - Simply the best. A CPU hog (it is in Java), but it gets all the torrents the other clients can't. Seems to be the best for speed too, IMO. Highy configurable and a pleasure to use for power users.

Bits on Wheels - This one would be my best overall choice. Very low CPU usage, great user interface, good customization, interesting '3d view' of peers and seeders, and efficient most of the time, except for those torrents that only Azureus manages to start downloading somehow.

Transmission - Some people swear by this program because it is small and simple, but I find the CPU usage of it growing steadily, even more than Azureus when I am downloading 3 or more files, and the speed is inconsistent. Very few options, I don't really like it but lots of people do. Usually gets the job done anyway.

Bittorrent - The official client. Not bad CPU usage, not very good speeds, a so-so client. Not worth getting, if you hate Azureus, get Bits os Wheels instead, though maybe this is the most stable client of all them - not a big issue since we Mac users don't have to go resetting our computers all the time ;)

Tomato Torrent - Seems to have problems with a lot of torrents that should work, so I didn't test this one very much.

Bitpump - Small program, just released, shows big potential (from what I've seem from the Windows version screens, the Mac one is still kinda rough) but now it is still too bugged.

Please warn me if I forgot any client and happy downloading ;)

SnapperHead

2005-11-27T21:03:00.000-08:00

Still on the screenshot topic, SnapperHead is a nifty utility that I've used many times to show a friend how a design was becoming or just how my desktop looked like. The bastards My PC friends can't believe that a 5-year old iMac G3 400 can run a system (Tiger) smoothly and much more good-looking than any Windoze version on a 3Ghz Pentium IV.

Back to the point, the lil' program, when turned on, opens up port 2000 and shows your IP. There's a built in copy function, so you send the address, for example, 160.134.132.104:2000 to a (reliable, non-hacker) friend and if he enters this add in any browser, he will see a snapshot of your desktop! Of course the party is over when you quit the program, and it warns you of every snapshot taken. I heartily recommend it.

Paparazzi!

2005-11-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

Paparazzi! is a funny utility, though someone may find a use for it. You enter a URL and it takes a screenshot of the web page. And I mean, the WHOLE web page. I got a screenshot of this site and ended up with an image of 800x25007 pixels. Worth taking a look at.

NicePlayer

2005-11-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

NicePlayer: as the devs say: Quite simply, the nicest media player for Mac.

This 600k or so app has a VERY pleasant interface and plays any Quicktime movie and codec-related (Divx, 3ivx, etc), besides DVDs, in any size you want, including full screen. It only lacks a volume control but since you can access the system volume easily by moving your mouse all the way up, I did not miss it.

And do not forget to install the Xineplayer plugin for better Divx compatibility ;)

Multiple Desktops

2005-11-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

A great way to enhance your productivity is by uncluttering your desktop and taskbar, as there are programs that you do not need to see running all the time, such as your e-mail program or some utility that does backgroud work.

A cheap (or free!) solution to that is by enabling multiple desktops. Just imagine having four desktops. In one of them you keep your word processor and web browser, in another you keep your e-mail program, an antivirus in the third one, etc. And you can exchange between them with 1 click. It may take a while getting used to, but it definitely improves your usage of the computer when you do it.

There are many utilities that can do it on Mac, but I heartly recommend the freeware Desktop Manager. It's very powerful, I just tested it and it allowed me to created 100 desktops! Ok, usually I only use two, but it's a sweet app anyway.

FinderCleaner

2005-11-25T11:59:00.000-08:00

FinderCleaner is a small application that will clean the mess the Finder makes. Useful when you're working in a mixed OS environment. It removes the following items from a folder or volume:

.DS_Store files.
.Trashes
Resource forks
FBC files.

safeThis

2005-11-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

safeThis is a great freeware that allows you to do what only paid applications allowed you to before: create an encrypted disk image so you can store sensitive data. Another one of those 'I can't believe it is free' apps!

WhatSize

2005-11-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

Wonder where all your disk space has gone?
The solution is Whatsize, a great utility to help you see your disks and folders and orders them by size so you can see and delete the files that are eating up your disk.
A great app to delete all thos pron documents that you forgot about a long, long time ago.

Abiword, Openoffice and NeoOffice/J

2005-11-20T13:56:00.000-08:00

Abiword is a fully featured, open source and very Word-compatible Text editor. It also has a beautiful interface (screenshot).

And if you are looking for a replacement to Microsoft's Office, check out OpenOffice (though I find Abiword much better than Openoffice's text editor). It requires X11, but if you don't have it you can try NeoOffice/J instead, which is based on version 1.1.2 of OpenOffice (which is at 2.0 now).

AppStop

2005-11-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

AppStop is an awesome utility and I recommend it to every Mac user. It's a Menu Bar item that allows you to freeze an application, so that it does not consume CPU cycles. And why is that so great? Because if you are like me and do a lot of stuff in the computer, like using Dreamweaver, then Fireworks, then back to Dreamweaver, then BBEdit, and other heavy applications that takes ages to open, you can just freeze them with AppStop and unfreeze when you wanna come back to it. One of the most creative and impressive utilities I've ever seen.

Alternative Web Browsers

2005-10-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

Looking for alternatives to Safari and Firefox? Take a look at these other browsers:

- Opera - now it is free, and worth checking out. Compatibility issues aside, it is very fast and full of resources, besides great keyboard navigation and a pleasant interface.

- Camino - a Mozilla-based browser with a native Cocoa Interface. Faster than Firefox or Mozilla, but has no support for Firefox extensions.

- Shiira - think of it as Safari RSS (uses the same engine) minus the bugs. The big minus here is that there's no Keychain Access support. Has a nifty 'Tab Exposé' feature.

- Sunrise Browser - the smallest browser for Mac (900k), uses Safari rendering engine and bookmarks, has useful resources for developers, such as showing the url to all the items you mouse over, including videos and other media files. Great page source viewer too. No tabbed browser or RSS though.

- Flock is a new web browser based on Gecko (Firefox and Mozilla engine) and was released some time ago. It's still in developer preview stage but it is fairly stable (never crashed on me) and has lots of interesting features, such as integration with blogging on almost any platform, del.icio.us and Flickr. Also support lots of Firefox extensions.

- iCab - I don't really like this browser, but it is small, fast, supports tabbed browsing and is the only one in this list that runs under Mac OS 8.5 and 9.x (Classic).

First Post - Instant Messengers

2005-10-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

Well, for the first posts of this weblog, let's start with the obvious known freeware apps, mainly for the beginning Mac users who are looking for system customization:

Adium - THE BEST instant messenger for the Mac. Period. You can use it for ICQ, MSN, AIM, Jabber, Yahoo Messenger and other protocols. Only features it lacks are audio and webcam support. Preliminary webcam suport for MSN can be found in aMSN 0.95 beta and Mercury Messenger, though they are kind of heavy and CPU consuming apps.

Fire is also a multi protocol instant messenger with (almost) as many resources as Adium but I never really liked the interface.