When I first got my hands on a copy of Leopard (if I remember correctly I snagged a copy of the beta just before the Golden Master, which was still very buggy) Spaces became my favorite feature (along with Quick Look).

With the recent release of Leopard 10.5.3 Spaces has seen some great enhancements. The most notable one has an excellent write-up by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball. I’m not going to discuss this new feature because I feel that John has done an excellent job at that task.

One feature I would like to discuss is one I discovered today. This feature is much less prominent than the former, however it is still very useful. In 10.5 through 10.5.2 in order to add an application assignment for Spaces, you had to click the plus button and search through your Applications folder to find the application you wanted to add. In 10.5.3 you are now presented with a pop-up list of all of your currently running applications and can quickly add an application assignment. This small enhancement is welcomed with open arms and will save precious seconds while using my Mac.

A cool new feature of Firefox 3 is the ability to add a keyword (or “keyletter”) to a search engine.

To add a keyword to a search engine, click the search engine icon to pull the up the drop-down menu and then click Manage Search Engines... . Select the search engine that you want to add a keyword to and click Edit Keyword and then assign a keyword. I personally like to use a ‘keyletter.’

For example, I have the letter G assigned to Google.

What this assigning of ‘keyletters’ allows you to do is to type the letter g into the address bar and then type what you want to search for.

For example, typing in: g justin allard will be like going to Google.com and searching for justin allard.

This trick can be particularly handy for when you don’t want to change the search engine in the drop-down menu just for one search.

LogicielMac Update is useful app that checks for updates for all of your non-Apple applications. It will automatically check for updates at a set interval anywhere from every hour to every month. The applications with updates will be downloaded and automatically installed.

One of my favorite features is that LogicielMac Update doesn't mind the organization of my Applications folder. It happily replaces the apps in the folder they were in and checks the sub-folders of my Applications folder.

Another cool feature of LogicielMac Update is that it will let you interact with DMG licenses and the finish installing the application. And, if there is an application that you don't want to have updated, just add it to the blacklist and LogicielMac Update won't check for updates.

Overall, LogicielMac Update is a great little application to help keep your applications up to date.

Whenever I try to get some school work done on my MacBook I always seem to get distracted from my task. It just so happens that my favorite web browser (currently Firefox 3 Beta 5) is usually the source of my distraction.

Enter Freedom. A simple little app that conquers a very big problem. Freedom disables your Mac's AirPort and Ethernet for any amount of time between 1 minute to 3 hours. And just to be sure you aren't tempted to quit Freedom to get back your 'internets,' the only way to disable it before it's time is up is to reboot your Mac (or have some Terminal skills).

Needless to say, Freedom can really boost your productivity.

I have been hard at work (well, it wasn't really that hard) creating Marathon packs for Windows and OS X and I am happy to report that I have gotten both Marathon and Marathon Infinity finished and uploaded for both OS X and Windows. All of the packs include the HiRes Texture packs, AlephOne, and their associated data files. So have at it! Go grab yourself a copy of Marathon.

Marathon, developed by Bungie in 1994, is a pretty cool game. I've just now started playing it on my MacBook and it is pretty addicting. The nice thing about Marathon is that it actually runs really well on my MacBook (2Ghz CoreDuo, 2GB RAM, Intel GMA 950). The other great thing about Marathon is that it's open source and is available for OS X, Linux, and Windows. If you have some time to kill and want to get your hands on Marathon, it can be found at source.bungie.org. If you download Marathon, don't forget to grab the HiRes textures to enhance your experience, they are worth the 222mb download.

That pesky little enter key next to the right command key is quite useless. Apple has even come to the realization this wasted key with the latest versions of their MacBook (Pro) keyboard layouts.

Bring in Double Command. With this free preference pane, that useless enter key can now be something useful, such as a second option key, or my personal preference, a second control key for the ease of changing spaces with one hand.

SimpleToDo is a very minimalistic to-do application developed by Julius Eckert. The only functions are to add a task, and to remove finished tasks. To add to the minimalist approach, everything in SimpleToDo can be manipulated with a keyboard if you're that type of person. Julius even offers a Quicksilver plugin for SimpleToDo so you can easily add a to-do via Quicksilver. If you just haven't found that perfect to-do manager, SimpleToDo is definitely one to check out.

SuperDuper!, my favorite backup app has just had it's latest version released. The biggest fix in 2.5 is that it is now fully Leopard compatible. This update makes me very happy.

While SuperDuper! 2.5 was in development I tried out Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. I don't like Time Machine because it wants a hard drive larger than the source and the backups that it makes aren't bootable. What I don't like about CCC is that it can't do incremental backups.

SuperDuper! just takes the cake as far as backup software goes and it's totally worth the price.

Overall, NetNewsWire is a nice rss reader, but I would rather support the open source community and use the ever improving Vienna. The one feature in NetNewsWire that I would love if I had multiple Macs or was often away from my own MacBook for extended periods of time with web access would be it's syncing feature and being able to log into NewsGator and see my feeds on the web. However, neither of those two scenarios apply to me, therefore syncing isn't a valuable feature that will get me to switch away from the great Vienna.

I guess I could be called loyal, and I am to most of my applications. If there isn't enough to get me to switch, I won't. And I can't ever see how or why anyone would have paid $30 for NetNewsWire, I know I never would have, especially when there was a great open source alternative.

NetNewsWire, probably one of the most popular rss readers for OS X has now gone from a price of $30 to free. Up until now, I have been a hard core Vienna fan which has been free and open source since it's introduction. I've heard that NetNewsWire is a great reader, and I'm willing to give it a try now that it's available for free, so I'm gonna use it exclusively for a week and see how I like it. One feature that I feel I'll enjoy dearly is the ability to sync me feeds to NewsGator's website and view them online when I'm away from my Mac. That may very well be the deal maker for me.

netPong is an awesome little Pong app. But you are probably thinking, "why is 'net' in the name?" Well, with netPong you can automatically link up with a friend on your local network or play alone. However, the coolest feature is how you control your paddle. netPong uses the built in Sudden Motion Sensor in your MacBook or MacBook Pro. Simply tilt your MacBook (Pro) left or right to move the paddle. It takes a little getting used to, but once you get it down, it's awesome. As always, you can always find netPong on the Games page in Macish.

Senuti and VLC are both two great apps and both do totally different things. That's why I've added them to the media section of the Mac Apps. Senuti is a great little app for pulling music off of your iPod (or a friends;) and putting it on your Mac. VLC is one of the best media players available for any platform whether that be OS X, Linux, or even Windows.

I'm also trying out a new little Featured Links section in the sidebar of the blog. Basically it'll have have links to stuff on the site that has been recently updated or links to other sites that I think are pretty cool. Most of the links will stay up for about a week. It's just not going to work out the way I hoped.

I am the proud owner of the MacUpdate bundle that had a bunch of good apps in it worth over $650 for $50. A pretty good deal if you ask me, even if I'm not going to use all of those apps.

I've added a new section in Mac Apps called Deep Tweaking. The apps in the Deep Tweaking section offer extended personalization that would normally not be possible without feeling comfortable in Terminal. These apps can dramatically simplify tasks that would otherwise take some time to do.

The way Stack in Leopard assume the first icon of whatever is in the folder of the Stack pretty much sucks and looks horrible. However, this is a way to make them a little less ugly. Optica Optima has a beautiful solution with their beautiful semi-transparent icons.
Download the icons.
Mirror on Justin Allard dot com.


Getting the icons to stay at the top of the Stack is the real trick, and involves a little a little Terminal hackery. The following Terminal command is an example of what you may have to type.

cd /Applications
touch -mt 202001010101.01 ApplicationsIcon

What the first command does is change the directory of where you are working, so change it to the place you put the icon. If you don't know the path, just drag the folder to the Terminal after typing cd.
The second command uses touch which changes the date modified of the icon to January 1st 2020. Because of the date change, you can sort the folder by date modified and the icon will remain at the top.
Alternatively, you could just name the icon with a 0 as the first character, and sort by name. Use whatever works best for you.

Credit to Optica Optima and XD.

This little how-to can always be found in the Leopard Tricks section, along with some other tricks.

Are you not a big fan of the new login wallpaper in Leopard? I wasn't a huge fan either and luckily, there is a pretty easy way to change it, and I'll tell you, and show you, how. Just a disclaimer, I am NOT responsible if you screw up your Mac in any way, shape or form. This process worked for me and it should work for you. Also, CoreServices contains some important system stuff, so if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

Read the how-to

or

Watch the screencast

SurveillanceSaver is a Quartz screensaver for OS X, but not just any screensaver. SurveillanceSaver pulls live streams for unprotected web cams and displays that as your screen saver. It really is quite neat, and contrary to what I believed, it isn't very processor intensive, which means the fan on my MacBook won't annoyingly spin up.

SurveillanceSaver is currently in alpha 0 (I know, scary isn't it?), but it seems pretty darn stable. Go check it out, it's a free download.

After running a developer build of Leopard for the past week and a half, there is one feature that I have come to hate. Stacks. They can be nice if you just have a folder that you throw a few documents or pictures in here and there, but there really is no use for them, at least the way I used folders in the Dock in Tiger. To me, Stacks have become a nuisance, sure they look pretty, but they don't seem to serve much of a purpose besides looking cool.

Luckily for me, and anyone that reads this that likes how folders in the Dock worked in Tiger, I have found a way to circumvent stacks in Leopard's Dock. What you have to do is create and Alias of the folder you want in the Dock and put that Alias in the Dock. Doing that makes the folder in the dock open up in a Finder window.

I honor of the release of Leopard in just 8 days, I have made a simple countdown widget for Dashboard.

Download it

Leopard is coming. The release date is October 26. Just 10 days from now. I can't wait for the final.

VMware Fusion, my favorite virtualization program for OS X, has it 1.1b. For me, the most important fix is that Air Port will no longer spas out and take up 100% of my CPU. The true test for that will come on Monday when I'm at school. For some odd reason Air Port will only do that at my school and not when I'm at home or at church.

Another new feature that I find pretty cool is that you can now hide the status bar at the bottom of the OS window to gain some screen real-estate.

Keep it up VMware!

Update: I can vouch that the Air Port bug is fixed. It's nice not having to restart it every time I get onto my school's WiFi network.

I now have XBMC running on my old Xbox. It is pretty cool so far. I now need to set it up to stream media from my MacBook.

To get it installed I had to softmod my Xbox using an exploit in Splinter Cell. I also had to get files to the Xbox, so I soldered a USB connector to an old Xbox controller so I could hook it up to my Mac and put the files on it through Action Replay in Windows XP in VMware Fusion. It really was quite quick to do, and I'm glad I have a use for my old Xbox now.

If you want to do this, Lifehacker has a great step by step guide on how to get everything modded and installed. Just follow it step by step and you will be good to go.

I am now the owner of the Legendary edition of Halo 3. Go check out the gallery of unboxing pics.

The new iPod's have been cracked to sync with Amarok once again. One down on my list of complaints and two to go.

Please bear with the site I linked to. It is experiencing the Digg effect.

Seriously Apple, what the heck!?

When you announced the new iPods I was quite happy to see the 160GB Classic, the new Nanos with video and the Touch. I was leaning toward a touch, but 16GB is just not enough space for me. For a device with a gorgeous screen for video I would actually want to put a lot of videos on it, and that's pretty hard to do with only 16GB of storage space. I would be happy with 30GB of space on the Touch, that's what my current 5.5G iPod is and that holds all of my music and videos with about 4GB to spare. The Touch needs a hard drive and at least 2GB of flash memory to store the applications and OS on and to load up videos and music to.

Because of the small amount of disk space on the iPod Touch, I was considering getting the 160GB iPod Classic. My plan was to re-rip my library as FLAC and store the FLAC audio on the Classic and keep 256kbps AAC files on my Mac and sync them to my iPod Classic.

I would love to do this, but unfortunately with the reports of the iPod Classics being extremely slow with their new GUIs, that partially turned me off from getting a Classic.

Another thing that somewhat turned me off from the iPod Classic, or any of the new iPods for that matter, is that users can no longer sync their iPods with anything but iTunes. This upset me because I may switch to Linux when KDE4 is released, and as most people know, there is no iTunes for Linux. The one program that does work, or used to, is Amarok. Now I may not be able to sync my iPod under Linux, and that would really, really suck.

The biggest turn off from the Classic and all of the new iPods for me personally is that I can't use the video out on the new iPods unless I purchase Apples $50 cable that has a special chip in it that allows the video out to work. Now, I don't normally use the video out too often, but when I do want to use it with my new iPod (that I am now probably not going to purchase) I don't want to replace a my video out cable and spend $50!

Apple, you really need to get your act together.

Vienna, the open source rss reader has just had a major update released today. This update features an entire redesign moving away from the brushed metal look.
Also, Vienna now has the ability to search all of the articles in the reader. Vienna's browser has also been improved upon. When you open new tabs, they automatically size themselves with beautiful animations.

Vienna is my favorite rss reader for OS X, and the best thing about it is that it's open source and free, so if you're looking for a free rss reader for OS X you may want to consider Vienna.

I've added a whole new section to Macish for system monitoring apps, and in that section I have added iStat Menus.

Also, in the Miscellaneous Apps I've added the famous system-wide notification app Growl.

Growl, the system-wide notification system for OS X has now been updated to version 1.1. There are many visual and UI improvements along with several resource usage improvements. Get the latest version of this awesome software, and check out the version history.

Since I've had my MacBook I've been looking for something to keep it from going to sleep when I shut the screen. I had searched high and low and couldn't find a thing that was compatible with the 10.4.

Today my friend introduced me to InsomiaX. It's a simple little app that lets you close the screen of your Mac notebook without it going to sleep.

As soon as I get some free time, I'll put it up in the Macish section, this app is just too handy to not tell you about.

Have you ever accidentally added a word to Firefox's dictionary and found no obvious way to remove it? I have, and I found a pretty easy way to remove words you've added to Firefox's dictionary.

Here's how you do it:

1. Quite Firefox. This causes Firefox to save the dictionary
2. Locate your Firefox profile folder. For OS X users that folder is located at ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/. For Windows XP users, that folder is located at C:\Documents and Settings\[Windows login/user name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\. For more information on Firefox's profile folder go to the Firefox Profile Folder page on mozillaZine.
3. Locate the persdict.dat file in your profile folder, and open it with a text editor.
4. Find the words that you want to remove and delete them.
5. When you are done, save the file and start up Firefox. The words you deleted will no longer be in the dictionary.

There you go, that's a realativly simple way to remove added words from Firefox's dictionary. Here's to hoping that Mozilla will make this easier to do with Firefox 3. And I must give credit where credit is due.

iWork '08 along with iLife '08 has been announced today at Apple's press conference. Apple has put up a free 30 day trial of the brand new iWork '08. I really can't wait to try it out.

As you may know, I have been using the very well built Dashcode beta from Apple to create my widgets. Unfortunately, it has expired. It will be back in Leopard, however. I am looking forward to the final release of Dashcode in Leopard this fall.

Apple has just released QuickTime 7.2 which, most notably adds full screen video support for non-Pro users, as I had predicted

Quicklook, in my opinion, is pretty cool and I will definitely be using it in Leopard. The fact that it can play videos in full screen leads me to believe that Apple may be getting rid of Quicktime Pro. I think it is stupid that you have to pay $30 for full screen video playback; although, a working serial for QT Pro isn't too hard to find.

may happen. Turns out I was half right. Apple still has QT Pro, but they added full screen video to the free version of QT. Also the QT update fixes some major security issues, bugs, and updates the H.264 codec.

iTunes 7.3.1 fixes the bug that some people ran into with not being able to access their music libraries.

There are some new applications up in my Macish section.

Taco HTML Edit is a new addition to the Web Apps. Taco HTML Edit is a full on HTML and PHP editor for OS X. Taco HTML Edit has many features including a built in spell checker, live previewing, and syntax checking. It's light-wieght and best of all, it's free! I've used Taco HTML Edit a lot, that's even what I created my email signature in. It's a great little HTML editor.

New to the Miscellaneous Apps is AppTrap. AppTrap is the feature that Apple forgot. It is a simple PrefPane that detects whenever you put an application in the trash. When you do put an app in the trash AppTrap offers to delete associated system files that would normally get left behind if you just put the app in the trash. AppTrap is a quick, easy, and streamlined way to delete all of the files associated with an application.

To go along with the old theme of the site. I changed the GUI of the rss widget back to the old GUI. You can get the widget on the widgets page.

To go along with the new site theme I revised my rss widget's theme. It is available for download on this page.

I have updated the rss widget for my blog here. I changed the title, fixed the feed, and changed the icon. So, go ahead and download the new widget

The site is back up, and should be functioning perfectly.

Also, I added an app to the Macish section of Misc. The app is the Hex Color Picker. In short, the Hex Color Picker lets you view and edit the hexadecimal HTML color codes in the Mac OS X color panel. This can become very handy if you are a web developer or programer in need of a color hex code. The Hex Color picker can recognize short hand and HTML/CSS color keywords, and it has a live preview of the color as you enter the hex code.

VMware Fusion Beta 4 has been released. In it includes the new feature Unity, which I blogged about yesterday evening. It also has better Boot Camp support and improved performance, and some UI tweaks. Currently, I am downloading it. I can't wait to try out the new Unity feature. I plan to give a little review of it after I have played around with it for a while

Also Boot Camp 1.3 has been released today, as well as Parallels Desktop 3. It sure does seem to be the day for Windows virtualization software to be released, granted that Boot Camp doesn't virtualize Windows, jus the BIOS.

VMware Fusion is a free beta, so don't hesitate to download it and try it out on your Intel Mac.

This is Unity demonstrated in VMware's Fusion. It is very similar to Parallels' Coherence view. What I applaud most about Unity is that when you exposé the windows in OS X, the windows in Windows do the same as well. Parallels does not do that; instead, when you exposé it treats the Windows OS as it's own window and not individual windows as their own. Unity also ads some nice drop shadows to Windows windows.

I can't wait until I can use this for myself.

This is a new widget that I made that pulls the rss feed from my blog on this web site. It is based off of my abRANDOMrss widget. All I've really done is change where it pulls the rss feed, and the UI.