Free Mac Apps & Tips

Dialog Button. The Most Basic Mac Usability

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:16:00 +0200

After several times going further to the tweaking process, often we forgot the very basic usability that we will need in using our Mac, which is well-known yet often ignored, i.e. choosing dialog button with keyboard.

Setting needs to be done are very minor comparing to major advantages and boost in productivity that will be gained. Let's follow the instructions on how to use keyboard to select dialog box button.

Enabling Full Keyboard Access

Full keyboard access is the main role for today. With full keyboard access, we can use our tab key to traverse through dialog buttons, that will give us blue highlight as indicator. Here is how to set it.

Open System Preferences
Go to Keyboard & Mouse and under Keyboard Shortcuts section
Quickly glance at the bottom of the pane and select radio button All controls
For the whole step, actually can be replaced by pressing Control-Fn-F7

Shown Above. Full Keyboard Access Set to All Controls

Now the option to navigate through your dialog buttons has been enabled.

Navigating through Dialog Buttons

Has been said earlier, you can use tab key to move around button's indicator. There are two types of indicators can be seen on dialog box, one button is highlighted and one button is filled with blue color (provided that you use default Leopard theme).

Shown Above. Dialog Box Appeared Upon Quitting Safari

spacebar for highlighted button
enter for filled button
escape for doing nothing and closing dialog box

Note. If you can't see the button in blue highlight, you should try to set full keyboard access again

Word Counter for Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:50:00 +0200

Get Dashboard Widget

If you're having problem with counting words in your Mac, you can use this the Word Counter widget. This widget can be downloaded here.

You can also customize the counter by clicking on the i icon on the right hand corner of the widget.

Take Out from Dashboard

There is a way to take out the widget out of your Dashboard, so you don't need to open your Dashboard every time you want to use the Word Counter. To achieve this, you only need to run these command lines with your Terminal :

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
killall Dock

CleanMyMac from MacPaw

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:43:00 +0200

Upon installation of application, some system files are spread across your Mac without your knowing that. Even after uninstallation, those persistent files are leaved behind, eating up your free space.

Several third party apps are available to clean up these leftovers; CleanMyMac is one of those. And this time, we are giving away 5x CleanMyMac as courtesy of MacPaw.

What's CleanMyMac

CleanMyMac is a system utility that cleans unneeded files. It will help slim universal binaries, clean logs, cache, and leftovers from uninstallation of applications and remove unneeded languages. Basically, it slims down your disk usage.

Some of the reasons you will want to use CleanMyMac:

Easy to use, user-friendly interface with drag and drop nature
Able to removes useless language translations
Quick and secure file eraser
Able to clean up leftover from previously removed applications and widgets

Useful Links

Here are useful links for more information about CleanMyMac:

Blogo Blogging Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:42:00 +0200

If you own a blog or twitter account and you're looking for an easy-to-use interface with complete features, Blogo will be your best choice for blogging editor.

There are several appealing features that make Blogo stand out from other editors and make Blogo recommended blog editor:

Twitter Support - Quickly follow friends or post status
Offline Mode - Live preview even when offline
Drag-and-Drop - Easily edit and add image
Fullscreen Mode - Cut down distractions
Javascript Bookmarklet - Post content from YouTube, Flickr, etc

Keep reading for Screenshots and How to Win.

Screenshots
Click Thumbnail for Larger View

Twitter Support

Fullscreen Mode

To know more about Blogo, watch the screencasts here.

Remarkable Apple Wallpapers

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:42:00 +0200

It's been quite a time since my last Apple wallpapers compilation. And for me, keeping the very same wallpapers sticking on my MacBook display is a great sin, i.e. they could surely degrade my productivity, which has been relatively low before being decayed by continuous distractions.

These Apple wallpapers, coming with gorgeous color, would probably make you feel more energetic and cheerful. At least for me, it avoids me from being suspected as "nerd" by the opposite sex.

Introspection

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

Apple iPhone: iPudge

[Available Size: 1024x768]

MacThemes 2.5

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

Blue Shiny Apple iPhone

[Available Size: 800x600]

MacRise

[Available Size: 2560X1600, 1600X1200]

Rainbow iPhone

[Available Size: 1024x768]

Min-Max-Close

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

Ecletik

[Available Size: 1900x1200]

Purple Smoke Apple iPhone

[Available Size: 1024x768]

Apple Arabesque

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

Molecular iPhone

[Available Size: 1024x768]

Candy Apple

[Available Size: 1920x1200]

Revolutionaries iPhone

[Available Size: 1440x900]

Magic Wapple

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

Apriori

[Available Size: 1900x1200]

Apple iPhone

[Available Size: 1440x900]

Hippy Pod

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

Striker

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

Apple 1976

[Available Size: 2560x1600]

About Us

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:17:00 +0200

About: This Site

FreeMacSoftwares is a site for passionate Mac users and also a blog site which discusses tips and tricks revolving Mac OS X. With daily updates and a great collection of articles, FreeMacSoftwares is getting more visitors to come and stop by. FreeMacSoftwares discusses several sub-categories of Mac OS X, such as Leopard Operating System, Mac hardwares and also hidden tricks and useful tips for Mac users.

Gratitude!

Thanks for your interest in reading our blog site. We hope that we can come out with better and more quality articles to help Mac users learn and master Mac.

Our Mac Armies

Intel iMac

G5 Mac Pro

Mac Book White

Mac Book Black

Our Book Shelves

iAntivirus-Protect your Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:08:00 +0200

Introduction

With PC Tools iAntiVirus™ you are protected against the most nefarious cyber-threats attempting to gain access to your Mac and personal information.

Once your computer has been infected, a virus or worm will usually attempt to spread itself to your friends, family and associates by accessing your email contacts and networked PCs. The infection may also allow hackers to access files on your Mac, use it to launch attacks against other computers and websites or to send mass SPAM email.

PC Tools iAntiVirus™ provides real-time protection and comprehensive system scanning to ensure your Mac remains safe and virus free.

Protection against Mac specific threats

The iAntiVirus™ database has been designed from the ground up to detect and remove Mac specific threats. This enables a high level of protection whilst keeping memory footprint and resource usage at a minimum. The iAntiVirus™ database is not cluttered with signatures for Windows specific threats which your Mac is immune against.

Simple to use

iAntiVirus™ has been designed with the user in mind. The user interface is purely functional, making it simple to scan for, remove and manage infections.

Features

A variety of scan options

You may perform a variety of scan types using iAntiVirus™, this allows you to strike a balance between the time taken to complete a scan, and its thoroughness.

Real-time protection

IntelliGuard protects your Mac against infections in real time. Whenever an infection is detected and blocked, an alert is displayed below the system menu bar. IntelliGuard automatically places detected infections in quarantine, works silently in the background and uses minimal system resources.

Quarantine

iAntiVirus™ quarantines all detected infections, allowing you to easily view and restore items in the case of a false positive (for example: when scanning with engine heuristics set to high).

Automatic Smart Updates

Frequent updates to detect and guard computers against new threats and viruses as well as provide enhancements to iAntiVirus™ are automatically installed and downloaded through the Smart Update function. Threat signatures are updated within hours of a high risk malware outbreak to protect you from the latest online threats.

Low resource usage

When in monitoring mode iAntiVirus™ has been designed to work silently in the background, threats are blocked and removed without any system impact, while only a small alert window is displayed to advise you that your Mac has been protected against an attack.

Flip4Mac WMV

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:05:00 +0200

Flip4Mac® WMV Components for QuickTime™

Flip4Mac WMV Components allow you to import, export and play Windows Media video and audio files on your Mac. Flip4Mac WMV plug-ins can be used with most QuickTime based applications, including QuickTime Player, iMovie '06**, Final Cut Pro and more.

Feature Overview	Player	Player Pro	Studio	Studio Pro	Studio Pro HD

	FREE	$29	$49	$99	$179

Play Windows Media using QuickTime

Import WMV for conversion to QuickTime formats

Export WMV using fixed preset encoding profiles

Create custom encoding profiles

Export High Definition and 2-pass encoding

WMV Player

FREE | Get Now

Play Windows Media files on your Mac using QuickTime Player or Safari Web Browser

NeoOffice

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:58:00 +0200

NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.

NeoOffice is one of the most stable office suites for Mac OS X. We have created an office suite that is adapted to the unique needs of Mac users by taking the features in Sun Microsystems' OpenOffice.org office suite and adding improvements such as:

Extremely stable Mac OS X code that has been in daily use by hundreds of thousands of NeoOffice users since 2003
Significant speed improvements to the OpenOffice.org code
Dozens of features requested by our users designed specifically for the Mac

Downloads	Is my Mac an Intel or PowerPC machine?	Size
NeoOffice 3.0	Download for Mac Intel machines	167536744 bytes
	Download for Mac PowerPC machines	169492597 bytes

NeoOffice 3.0 via BitTorrent	Download for Mac Intel machines	167536744 bytes
	Download for Mac PowerPC machines	169492597 bytes

*Important*: After installing, get the latest bug fixes by downloading and installing the latest NeoOffice patch installer.

By default, the installer only installs English but language packs are available for 58 other languages here.

Skim-PDF reader and note-taker for OS X

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:55:00 +0200

Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file.

Stop printing and start skimming.

Explore the links to the left to investigate Skim and consider helping out with the project.

Features:

Viewing PDFs
Adding and editing notes
Highlighting important text, including one-swipe highlight modes
Making "snapshots" for easy reference
Navigation using table of contents or thumbnails, with visual history
View all your notes and highlights
Convenient reading in full screen
Giving powerful presentations, with built-in transitions
Handy preview of internal links
Focus using a reading bar
Magnification tool
Smart cropping tools
Extensive AppleScript support
Bookmarks
Saving passwords in Keychain
Export notes as text
Automatic download of remote PDFs
Support for Apple Remote Control
Interaction with LaTeX, SyncTeX, and PDFSync
Integration with BibDesk and other third party applications
Spotlight support
Highly customizable
And much more...

Current Version: 1.2.4

Download

Release Notes

Mac OSX 10.4 or higher

Previous Versions

Choose

SkimNotes framework 1.1.7

Download

Release Notes

VideoLAN - VLC media player

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:48:00 +0200

About VideoLAN

VideoLAN is a software project, run by volunteers, backed-up by a non-profit organisation, which produces free and open source software for multimedia, released under the GNU General Public License.
Learn more about the VideoLAN project.

Our main software is the cross-platform VLC media player.

We are also the home of x264 and many other projects, like DVBlast or libDVDcss.

About VLC

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
It doesn't need any external codec or program to work.

Latest Mac OS X package for 10.5 and 10.6 (release 1.0.0)

Universal Binary (29MB)

Mirror	Location	Download
Random mirror	Not too far away	Download
Twente University	Netherlands	Download (HTTP)
IRCAM	France	Download (HTTP)
Université de Strasbourg	France	Download (FTP)
Cr@ns, ENS Cachan	France	Download (FTP)
Providence University	Taiwan	Download (FTP)
Endpoint Corporation	Sweden	Download (HTTP)
Brno University of Technology	Czech Republic	Download (HTTP)
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná	Brazil	Download (FTP)
University of Wisconsin - Madison	USA	Download (HTTP)
Root24	Germany	Download (FTP)
JAIST	Japan	Download (HTTP)
Yandex	Russia	Download (HTTP)
Armenian Datacom Company	Armenia	Download (HTTP)
Free	France	Download (HTTP)
Beyond !nnovation	USA	Download (HTTP)
HEAnet	Ireland	Download (HTTP)
Netmindz.net	United Kingdom	Download (HTTP)
Georgia Tech	USA	Download (HTTP)
Universitaet Mannheim	Germany	Download (HTTP)
LeaseWeb	Netherlands	Download (HTTP)
GigeNET	USA	Download (HTTP)
Secured Servers LLC	USA	Download (HTTP)
AussieHQ Pty Ltd	Australia	Download (HTTP)
Cogeco	Canada	Download (HTTP)
TJE	United Kingdom	Download (HTTP)
NTUA	Greece	Download (HTTP)
University of Idaho	USA	Download (HTTP)
POP Internet	Brazil	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	Netherlands	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	Belgium	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	Sweden	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	USA	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	Canada	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	New-Zealand	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	Australia	Download (HTTP)
CacheBoy	South Africa	Download (HTTP)
Grangefields, Vialtus Solutions	United Kingdom	Download (HTTP)
ITL	Ukraine	Download (HTTP)
Show full mirrors list

How to install

VLC for Mac OS X is distributed as a disk image. Download the .dmg file, open it, and copy VLC to your hard drive (for instance the /Applications folder). Open VLC by double-clicking on it.

Quinn pieces QuinnA Tetromino Game for Mac OS X

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:44:00 +0200

Quinn is an arcade-style tetromino puzzle game written and designed specifically for Mac OS X. It features a clean, elegant user interface, beautiful graphics, and smooth, subtle animations for fluid gameplay. Instead of reinventing the game with yet another variation of the rules, the goal of Quinn is to combine the simplicity of the original idea with the genuine Mac experience for perfect user enjoyment.

download

Quinn 3.5.5

For Mac OS X 10.4.2 or later
July 2009 – 3.2 MB

The Unarchiver v1.6.1

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:42:00 +0200

The Unarchiver v1.6.1

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for "BOMArchiveHelper.app", the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. I personally find it useful for opening Japanese archives, but it should handle many other languages just as well.

It is very simple to use and install - simply copy it into your Applications folder or whereever you prefer, and then set archive filetypes to open using it. This can either be done the usual way, or by double-clicking the icon to show The Unarchiver's preferences.

Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats. Support for so many formats is achieved by using the libxad unarchiving library.

The Unarchiver requires Mac OS X 10.3.9. There is a Google Code page for The Unarchiver, where you can report and track bugs.

New in 1.6.1:

Leopard compatibility fixes.

Google Earth 5.0

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:39:00 +0200

Google Earth | Free

Download Google Earth 5.0

The world's geographic information at your fingertips.

New! Experience the Apollo landing with
Moon in Google Earth.

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others.

Google Earth 5.0 features:

Historical imagery from around the globe
Ocean floor and surface data from marine experts
Simplified touring with audio and voice recording

Carbon Copy Cloner

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:37:00 +0200

Download CCC 3 now! (Tiger and Leopard)

Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it. Try it 'til you trust it.

The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly. When left to a human, the task often gets tacked on to the end of a very long list of other things to do. When you eventually have a catastrophe, the data is simply gone. You know that feeling -- you just lost six years of family photos. Your kids being born, their first birthdays, their first everything. The answer to this is consistent and regular backups, placed on a schedule and handled automatically by your computer.

CCC 3 features an interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure very intuitive. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. CCC's block-level copy offers the absolute best fidelity in the industry!

CCC Features

√	Complete, bootable backups
√	Simple interface for indicating exactly what you want to back up
√	Restore using the same process used for backup
√	Backups are non-proprietary, so you can browse them or use them with Migration Assistant
√	Fast, incremental backups copy only the items that have changed since the last backup
√	Archival backup archives items that have been deleted from the source
√	Support for block-level disk-to-disk clones
√	Support for backing up across the network to another Macintosh
√	Back up to hard drives or to disk images
√	Schedule backup tasks on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or you can indicate that a backup task should run when the backup device is attached (e.g. an iPod). You don't even need to be logged in for your backups to occur!
√	CCC recognizes iPods specifically, allowing time for the iPod:iTunes synchronization to complete
√	Built-in software update feature notifies you when updates are available

See the complete release history here.

Carbon Copy Cloner is now available as a Universal binary. As with previous versions, Carbon Copy Cloner is released as uncrippled shareware — try the full-featured product until you trust it, then consider a donation to the Bombich Software Tip Jar.

CCC and Data Fidelity

A couple years ago some folks published a pair of fairly extensive reviews of backup software for Mac OS X. Titled "The State of Backup and Cloning Tools under Mac OS X" and "Mac Backup Software Harmful", they concluded that many Mac OS X backup utilities (including CCC) were not up to the task of adequately backing up files on Mac OS X. Metadata, it claimed, was often lost in transit. While this article had the beneficial effect of making many developers pay closer attention to Mac OS X filesystem metadata, it also had the unfortunate side effect of causing unnecessary panic among most end users. Here's why:

Many filetypes include support for metadata. For example, TIFF includes support for hundreds of different kinds of metadata like the location where the picture was taken, author name, camera specifications, etc. These metadata are stored inside the TIFF file, so it's rather difficult to lose these during a backup. Filesystem metadata, on the other hand, include things like permissions, ownership, creation/modification date, and access controls. There are also "extended" attributes -- data associated with a file that is not stored in the file itself. Resource forks fall into this category. All of these filesystem metadata reside within the filesystem directory, separate from the data fork of the file, therefore it is possible to lose this information when transferring files from one volume to another.

Obviously the preservation of both kinds of metadata is important, however there was never cause for concern about the loss of filetype-specific metadata. I'm also not trying to suggest that they intentionally instigated concern about filetype-specific metadata loss, but the difference is lost upon the layman if you don't call out the two types of metadata explicitly.

Due to the concern raised by this article, and because it is not updated on a regular basis to keep track of developer responses, I have decided to post the outcome of CCC's "Backup Bouncer" test here. Backup Bouncer is an automated test suite developed by Nathaniel Gray that determines how well Mac OS X file metadata is conserved. To analyze the accuracy of your backup, you would first use the test suite to create a "source" volume that contained several samples of typical and edge-case metadata. Next you would use your backup utility to backup the data to a "target" volume, and finally you would use Backup Bouncer to compare the two volumes and report how well metadata was preserved.

The following report compares two volumes after Carbon Copy Cloner copied the "CCC_Source" volume to the "CCC_Target" volume. The "Cloning method" in CCC was set to "Backup everything". Tests in blue are tests that I added to the test suite to make it even more thorough.

bash-3.2# ./bbouncer verify -d /Volumes/CCC_Source/ /Volumes/CCC_Target/
Verifying:    basic-permissions ... ok
Verifying:           timestamps ...
  Sub-test:    modification time ... ok
ok
Verifying:             symlinks ... ok
Verifying:    symlink-ownership ... ok
Verifying:            hardlinks ... ok
Verifying:       resource-forks ... ok
Verifying:         finder-flags ... ok
Verifying:         finder-locks ... ok
Verifying:        creation-date ... ok
Verifying:            bsd-flags ... ok
Verifying:       extended-attrs ...
  Sub-test:             on files ... ok
   Sub-test:      on locked files ... ok
  Sub-test:       on directories ... ok
  Sub-test:          on symlinks ... ok
ok
Verifying: access-control-lists ...
  Sub-test:             on files ... ok
   Sub-test:      on locked files ... ok
  Sub-test:              on dirs ... ok
   Sub-test: on non-inherited acls ... ok
   Sub-test:    on inherited acls ... ok
ok
Verifying:                 fifo ... ok
Verifying:              devices ... ok
Verifying:          combo-tests ...
  Sub-test:  xattrs + rsrc forks ... ok
  Sub-test:     lots of metadata ... ok
ok

Flying colors! CCC passed every single test. I repeated this test using several other settings -- "Incremental backup of selected items", remote and local source and target volumes, PowerPC and Intel clients, Leopard and Tiger OSes. In every single case, CCC passed every single test. So there you have it! CCC is accurate *and* safe. Sleep well!

Burn - simple but advanced burning for Mac OS X

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:33:00 +0200

There are a lot of ways to approach burning discs. Burn keeps it simple, but still offers a lot of advanced options.

Keep your files safe and share them.

Burn your files to a disc so you can access them later on. Choose different filesystems so you can share your files with people with different operating systems.

Change advanced settings like, file permissions, the disc icon, file dates and more on the fly in Burns inspector.

Let the music be with you.

Create standard Audio-CD discs with ease. Just drop your audio files in Burns audio list. Want more music on your disc, Burn can create MP3 discs. More and more players support these discs. Higher quality, no problem, Burn can create DVD-Audio discs, which can contain more and higher quality files.

Burn offers advanced options like CD-Text and mp3 tag editing to personalize your disc.

Share your movies.

Made your own movies and want to share them with family and friends? No problem. Burn can create a wide range of video discs. From VideoCD to DVD-Video discs. And DivX discs to fit more of your videos on a disc.

To personalize your DVD-Video disc, burn can create interactive menus. Choose a theme in Burn or create your own.

1 + 1 makes 2.

Allready have discs you like to reproduce. Don't worry, Burn can help you. Burn can copy discs or use disk images to recreate your discs. With one drive Burn still will be able to copy a disc, by temporary saving the disc.

Converting.

Forget worrying about convertion. Burn will take your video and audio files and turns them in the right format.

In the preferences you can set the options for quality and size.

Still supporting Panther.

The first version of Burn supported Panther. As of Burn version 2.0, almost every feature works on Panther too.

Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher
An PowerPC or Intel Mac

How much does it cost.

Burn is absolutely free and open source. Burn also uses a lot of great free open source utilities to make it tick. Utilities: ffmpeg, lame, liba52, movtoy4m, movtowav, vcdimager, dvdauthor, spumux, mkisofs and dvd-author.

Download Burn
Download G3 version

SMARTReporter 2.3.9 protect your data with failure prediction

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:31:00 +0200

SMARTReporter is an application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen! It does so by periodically polling the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard disk drive. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a technology built into most modern hard disk drives that acts as an "early warning system" for pending hard disk drive problems. SMARTReporter can notify you of impending hard disk drive failures by sending e-mails, displaying a warning dialog or executing an application. The current status of your hard disk drives is always displayed through the customizable menu item.
Because SMARTReporter relies on the S.M.A.R.T. implementation of Mac OS X, it only supports ATA, SATA or eSATA hard disk drives, if you want S.M.A.R.T. support for your SCSI or FireWire hard disk drive, send feedback to Apple.
Please note that a S.M.A.R.T. alert doesn't mean that your HDD will completely fail for sure, nor can S.M.A.R.T. catch all possible HDD errors - it's just a very valuable indicator. Follow this link for more information about S.M.A.R.T. technology.

Requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.3.3 or later
• At least one ATA, SATA or eSATA hard disk drive

License & Cost:
SMARTReporter is completely free of charge and licensed under the Open Source "MIT License".

Documentation:
• Read Me
• FAQ
• History

Screenshots:

Download:

• SMARTReporter 2.3.9 Universal Binary	[1070 KB]
• SMARTReporter 2.3.9 Source Code	[1030 KB]
• Previous Versions

Mactracker- Get info on any Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:28:00 +0200

Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options. Also included is information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, digital cameras, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, Wi-Fi Cards/Base Stations, Newton, and Mac OS versions.

Smart Categories + Smarter Searching

Mactracker gives you the ability create your own categories by selecting a specification item such as processor type, date introduced or your color label. In addition, a search engine searches the entire database (including your comments) in one stroke and allows you to sort the results by model name, date, or specification.

Download

Fluid - Convert Web into Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:24:00 +0200

Everyday in your working days, you probably need to check all the same e-mail, news, website or maybe favorite blog site. You should try using Fluid.

Distinguishable Icons

With Fluid, you can convert all of them into each separate applications, which are easily distinguishable. And you will find that you won't need to cycle all your opened web browser tabs in order to find particular site. The icon is customizable and you can put it on your Dock.

Getting Notifications from Your Mail

You can get the notifications from your e-mail, e.g. Yahoo! Mail, right on the top of your Dock. With those newly created Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail applications, your Mail won't be a loner anymore.

Easy to Hide

The other benefits of being in separate applications is that you can easily hide it; You cannot hide one tab or one window alone if you're using the same web browser, it will hide all of them instead.

Bookmarks in Your Stack

Combining with Leopard's stack feature, creating unique applications along with their fav-icons will be a wise choice.

iMovie'08 - The Quick Shortcuts

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:22:00 +0200

Ever felt that dragging the clips from the Event Library to the Project Library seems to be such a pain?

Add Selection to the Project

Select desired clip in the Events Library
Press E

The clip will be automatically copied down into Project Library from Event Library as it "flies" into it.

The orange line would appear at the bottom of the clip, showing that the clip is being used in the particular project.

Make a Clip as Favorite

Select desired clip
Press F

A green line would appear on top of the clip, showing that the clip has been marked as favorite. I would definitely recommend you to use this function as you could, at anytime, refer back to the best selected clips with minimal effort spent and it saves you from the trouble of renewing the clips again to find a particular clip that you want.

The Tiny Function Buttons

In this particular clip, you will see a tiny function buttons. They're so tiny, aren't they?

Well, you could either increase the size of the thumbnails by adjusting the slider.

From small to big… Pay close attention to the slider on the leftmost part of the toolbar.

Or you could use, again, shortcuts to open the basic functions in a clip.

Open Audio Adjustments

Select desired clip
Press A

Usually, when a piece of music is added to the video and if it has yet to end before the video, there will be a sudden "hiccup" when the video ends and that would seem pretty awkward.

I would recommend the use of Fade Out so that the music blends more appropriately with the ending. Too bad it is not possible to view the waveforms of the audio track and adjust it more accurately in iMovie'08. We could do that with old versions of iMovie though.

However, it's still possible to have the best of the two worlds when we play around with transferring the video between the new and the old.

Open Crop, Rotate and Ken Burns

Select the desired clip
Press C

Open Video Adjustments

Select the desired clip
Press V

Simple adjustments to videos with over exposure or underlighting can be rectified with the use of the above function.

If you find remembering these shortcuts is too much of a toil, you may just opt for clicking on these buttons.

For Greater Kicks

When it comes to creating music videos, a music track would be played throughout the video, with the original sound recording removed. If you haven't turned off your camera's sound recording or perhaps it does not provide the option to turn it off, fret no further because it's pretty easy to do it.

Remove Clip's Audo All at Once

Select a clip
Press A to open
Adjust volume level to 0%. Done or press Enter
Press Command-C to copy adjustments
Select the rest of the clips. Hold Shift and click on the clips
Use shortcut Command-Option-U

Likewise, if you want the audio level to be adjusted to a certain leel and constant throughout, you could do the same.

And if you find remembering the shortcuts too bothersome, after step 5, simply go to menubar Edit - Paste Adjustments.

From the picture above, you can also see other paste adjustments for video and crop.

I would recommend using Paste Adjustments for Video if you want your entire video to have a constant color tone, depending on the kind of mood and expressing you would like to create throughout your video.

Do you notice in some videos such as documentaries or interviews, a person talks and usually after about 5 seconds or before he starts talking from where he has stopped, the video will be cut into other clips that comes together with the audio of him talking simultaneously. Well, the good news is you could do it with iMovie'08 as well.

Remove an Original Audio from the Clip

Select clip in your Project Library
Hold Command-Shift and click on the clip. You will see a "+" sign
Release it under the video clip

A copy of the audio from the clip will be created. You may shift to the audio to the other clips now.

For Cheap Thrills

You could slow down the process of shifting the positions of the Event Library and the Projet Library. Hold Shift while you click on the button Swap Events and Projects. I thought that was pretty interesting.

Mac Image Viewers

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:16:00 +0200

Most Mac users will like to use Preview as their image viewer. Most users will also use iPhoto. But few of us, feeling not satisfied with these built-in applications, seeks for better image viewers.

As a matter of fact, there are many Mac image viewers built by developers, such as Xee, CocoViewX and Sequential, just to name a few. After having fun with some of them, I've come up with this list of Mac image viewers to share with you.

Let's see what are these Mac image viewers.

Xee 2.0

Homepage | Download

Xee, an image viewer for easier image management, is designed to give you extra speed and convenience in viewing images. Not just that, you also have sleek and comfortable interface for you to play with your images. Empowered with auto-detect, by just opening an image, Xee can display the slideshow of collection of images within the same folder.

CocoViewX

Homepage | Download

Image Viewer for Mac OS X that has the capabilities of viewing and manipulating mostly used image formats: BMP, TIFF, PNG, JPG, and many others. The interface is designed to have similarity with your Finder which enables you to easily use it without time wasted on learning stage.

Sequential

Homepage | Download

Sequential is an image viewer for Mac OS X that is designed for digging inside the folder of images and displaying them. Not only limited to displaying local files, but Sequential can also be used to load images from page URL, which distinguishes it from other application of its genre.

FujiyamaSlideShow

Homepage | Download

FujiyawaSlideShow, an image viewer application made by Japanese, helps you view folders of your image files easily. With many selectable layout views, this image viewer will fit nicely to your preference.

PhotoStickies

Homepage | Download

PhotoStickies is a simple image viewer with an uniqueness of viewing your image in form of Stickies. Meaning that you won't further clutter your Desktop with more and more popping up window panes; You got a simple inspector and less distractive Stickikes of the viewer pane.

Xsee

Homepage | Download

Native Mac OS X image browser and viewer beautified by Aqua interface. This image browser supports GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG and other image formats. Slideshow view can be easily triggered and empowered with support to keyboard shortcuts.

JustLooking

Homepage | Download

JustLooking, a universal binary application which can be run on both PowerPC and Inter Macs, has reached its version 3.2 which now supports many more features. But basically, it enhances your experience in viewing pictures and images on your Mac OS X.

ViewIt

Homepage | Download

ViewIt is native, fast and easy to use image viewer which supports image formats: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD, GIF, and many others. With the purchase of US$22.00, you can get advance version of ViewIt. However, there is also a free version available to be downloaded from the site.

Archer

Homepage | Download

Archer is intended for fast, flexible, and easy to use image slideshow browser. The functionality of Archer is not only limited to displaying still images, but you can also use Archer to view video and audio files.

I, as an ordinary person, admit that I can't exhaustively search throughout all the available Mac image viewers. But I've done my best to compile these lists. If you've any additional Mac image viewers that you'd recommend, feel free to put it on the comment box, please?

Google Widgets for Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:13:00 +0200

Dashboard is one of the interesting things you can have in your Mac, and I think I've long forgotten it. However, thanks to James Powell on Mac Tricks and Tips, his discussion on Dashalytics (Dashboard widget for Google Analytics) reminds me that we actually have a lot of useful widgets.

And for today, I will add some more information regarding to Google widgets that are very useful, such as Dashalytics, Blogger Editor, Amazing Google, etc.

Dashalytics

It will be quite wasting time to always go to your Google Analytics page whenever you want to check your site's statistic. Now you should feel really happy, because you can integrate Google Analytics into your Mac Dashboard, thanks to Dashalytics for this.

[Source: Dashalytics]

Google Adsense Widget

With the same concept as Dashalytics, this widget can give you the information of your site's earning from Google Adsense, including information of today, yesterday, last week, this month and last month earnings.

[Download: Google Adsense Widget]

Amazing Google Widget

Using this widget, you will have your Dashboard empowered with the ability to key in your Google search keywords. This widget will definitely boost your productivity.

[Download: Amazing Google Widget]

Blogger

If you're currently blogging with Google Blogger, you will find this widget useful. This widget provides you the blog editor for Blogger and helps you to post your new article quickly to your Blogger account.

Gmail

This widget is the shortcut for you when you're going to check your Gmail inbox.

Google PageRank Widget

I remember last time before I installed this widget, I need to launch my Firefox browser, open and load the site in order to see what's the PageRank of the site. But now, I don't to do all those hassles, I only need this widget, type the URL and the site's PageRank will be displayed.

[Download: Google PageRank Widget]

Google News Widget

This widget helps you easily follow the latest news on Google. From this widget, you can also choose from which Google News categories you want to read, i.e. Top Stories, World, United States, Business, Science/Technology, Sports, Entertainment, and Health.

[Download: Google News Widget]

Skype - Get Hidden Emoticons

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:02:00 +0200

laying around with Skype recently drawing out my curiosity to discover more and more of its emoticons.

Visible Emoticons

At first, I think Skype's emoticons are limited only to 72 default emoticons. Who knows that Skype actually has more hidden in depth.

Shown above : 72 Skype default visible emoticons.

Emoticons List

Digging inside your Skype application, you can find 89 emoticons (according to my version). The path is :

Finder ▸ Applications ▸ Skype
Show Contextual Menu ▸ Show Package Contents
Choose Contents ▸ Resources ▸ Emoticons ▸ Emoticons.SkypeEmoticonset
Show Contextual Menu again ▸ Show Package Contents
Now, you're inside

Customizing Shortcut

Search for Emoticons.plist at the bottom of the list (still inside the last pane). Open it with TextEdit and you will see a lot of "alien" words there. Look for Equivalents, match the name inside and give additional line with new shortcut inside, then you'll have new shortcut for that emoticon.

Too complicated, isn't it? Let's go to example. You want to customize shortcut for Smile emoticon, which is by default :)
The emoticon filename is emoticon-0100-smile.png. Search for it and you will find something like Equivalents nearby.

These will be the initial lines :

After adding new shortcut becomes :

Note that you will need administrator's authorization to do this.

Top 10 Mac Screen Savers

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:00:00 +0200

In old times, screen savers are used to prevent your screen from Phospor burn-in. Nowadays, screen savers are used for extra entertainment and eye-candy.

With increasing number of screen savers being coded and produced, it's time consuming for you to choose the best that fits your need. Hopefully, I've filtered down to Ten Mac screen savers that will make you droll (and they're all free).

Enjoy!

MovingPhotos 3D Screen Saver

[Download Here]

An absolutely beautiful screen saver. This screen saver gives you the freedom on choosing your pictures folder and then works on it to create animation of photos flying around, constructing a virtual building. This is a must have screen saver.

Screen Savers for Internet

Time Machine Screen Saver

[Download Here]

This Time Machine screen saver combines the Time Machine space time warp and your trustworthy RSS reader, making it so much of convenience (and awesomeness) for reading your RSS while also running your screen saver.

Flickr Shuffle Screen Saver

[Download Here]

This screen saver can load your favorite photos from Flickr, shuffle them, add customizable transition effects and display them as your screen saver. It's worth a try. Really.

The Digg Labs

[Download Here]

The Arc of Digg as your Mac screen saver. Everyone should have known about this already.

Colorful Screen Savers

Fireflies

[Download Here]

The most colorful Mac screen saver that I've ever seen for now. More colorful than Flurry screen saver.

Solar Winds

[Download Here]

Flurry-like Mac OS X screen saver.

Flux

[Download Here]

Mac OS X Screen Saver that uses the movement of spheres to create a stunning, colorful composition.

Plasma Tunnel

[Download Here]

By watching this screen saver, you will have a feeling of being taken into the depth of the water tunnel. You can customize the color of the tunnel's wall also.

Space Screen Saver

Screensaver X-Galaxy

[Download Here]

Screen saver built with a Leopard's nebula concept.

Miscellaneous Screen Saver

Jack O'Lantern

[Download Here]

In this screen saver, you can turn gloomy pumpkin lantern into your mac screen saver. Interestingly here you can carve your PNG transparent and make your lantern to be displayed on your screen saver.

You can also find Apple logo as one of the default carving templates provided.

150 Awesome Nature Wallpapers

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Việt Nam) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:07:00 +0200

today, I'm going to present you my collection of awesome nature wallpapers. There are more or less hundred and fifty of them.

Anyway, I will display the small version of those wallpapers in ratio 16:10, so you can imagine how they will fit your widescreen display. Enjoy!

Hills and Mountains

Vixed

Tyroi, Austria

Jess Stryker

Sundance Mountain

Fall River Canyon

Photo Everywhere

Winter Mountains France

Mountain House Slovenia

Kathy Allen

Steve King

Dirt Diver

Durango Builders

Kuranda

Himalaya Heavenly Union

Alvin Fisher

David F. Bacon

A Mountain

Alfredo Jacobo Perez Gomez

Flowers and Plants

If you think your screen need to be colorful, flower and plant wallpapers are the best choice for you. Their lovely colors will surely make you feel comfortable.

Annelie Rosencrantz

Roderick Farrugia

Fabio Visentin

Sunflower

John Simonds

Faye Flower

Colin Joye

Purple Flowers

Sunflower

Rose

Nagarjun

Daswala

Ooty Flower

Marie Iannotti

Balloon Flower

Oriental Poppy

Peony 'Alma Hansen'

Fabio Visentin

Bouganville

Butterfly in Flower

Yellow Gerbera Flower

White Jasmines Flowers

White Wild Rose Flower

Impatiens Flower

Jasmine Flower

Ortensia Flower

Marie Iannotti

Mousie Columbine

Damon Hart-Davis

Orange Pansy

Pixxp

Purple Lotus

Jack

Emsago, Wellington and Robert Mijdendorp

Momentariness

Blue Flower

Nature

Ammero and Junglejack

Erigeron Annuus

Orange Butterfly

Jim Leonardo

Damon Hart-Davis

Martha

Amaryllis Flowers

Filip Vervloesem

Lotus Flower

Ron Paul

Shinto

Rose Charles de Gaulle

Cherry

Mike

Tea Rose

Queen Elizabeth Rose

Hybrid Tea Rose

Blue Girl Rose

Mr. Ristoo, Adriano Antonini and Nathan Lounds

Drops of Rain

Fioro

Lightning

Rivers and Lakes

Elaine

Tom Unger

Wolfgang Staudt

Lake Superior, Michigan

Grand Lake, MN

Pieter A.C.A. van Vliet

Prashar Lake

Mountain Lake Park, MD

Wonder Lake, IL

Crater Lake, Oregon

Athan Koutavas

Tim Rohrer

Joan and Bill

Ted Ritter

Golf Courses

This idea of adding golf courses to my nature wallpapers collection comes out of the blue. I don't dare to say that this is an ingenious idea, but I can say that these golf course wallpapers amazingly fit my widescreen display.

Grapevine, Texas

Colorado

Lake Worth, Florida

Newcomb NY

Golf Course

Muirfieldwoods

Robbie Hayton

Fossil Trace Golf Course, Golden Colorado

Buffalo Peak Golf Course, Union Oregon

High Cliff Golf Course

El Conquistador

Paynesville

Hazen Golf Course

9 Hole Golf Course

Michael Walenius

Clouds and Sky

When I was a little child, I like to gaze at the sky and cloud. Interestingly, there are many forms of clouds decorating our beautiful sky. Some people even said that clouds is the gate to heaven, is it true?

Bright White Cumulus

Deep Cloud Banks

Cumulus Mountains

Burning Clouds

X-Ray Cirrus Clouds

Sea Storm Clouds

Cirrus Tenticles

Radiant Clouds

Free Mac Apps & Tips

Dialog Button. The Most Basic Mac Usability

Enabling Full Keyboard Access

Navigating through Dialog Buttons

Word Counter for Mac

Get Dashboard Widget

Take Out from Dashboard

CleanMyMac from MacPaw

What's CleanMyMac

Useful Links

Blogo Blogging Editor

Screenshots Click Thumbnail for Larger View

Remarkable Apple Wallpapers

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NeoOffice

Skim-PDF reader and note-taker for OS X

Features:

Current Version: 1.2.4

Mac OSX 10.4 or higher

Previous Versions

SkimNotes framework 1.1.7

VideoLAN - VLC media player

About VideoLAN

About VLC

Latest Mac OS X package for 10.5 and 10.6 (release 1.0.0)

How to install

Quinn pieces QuinnA Tetromino Game for Mac OS X

download

The Unarchiver v1.6.1

Google Earth 5.0

Google Earth | Free

Carbon Copy Cloner

Download CCC 3 now! (Tiger and Leopard)

CCC and Data Fidelity

Burn - simple but advanced burning for Mac OS X

Keep your files safe and share them.

Let the music be with you.

Share your movies.

1 + 1 makes 2.

Converting.

Still supporting Panther.

How much does it cost.

SMARTReporter 2.3.9 protect your data with failure prediction

Mactracker- Get info on any Mac

Smart Categories + Smarter Searching

Fluid - Convert Web into Applications

Distinguishable Icons

Getting Notifications from Your Mail

Easy to Hide

Bookmarks in Your Stack

iMovie'08 - The Quick Shortcuts

Add Selection to the Project

Make a Clip as Favorite

The Tiny Function Buttons

Open Audio Adjustments

Open Crop, Rotate and Ken Burns

Open Video Adjustments

For Greater Kicks

Remove Clip's Audo All at Once

Remove an Original Audio from the Clip

For Cheap Thrills

Mac Image Viewers

Xee 2.0

CocoViewX

Sequential

FujiyamaSlideShow

PhotoStickies

Xsee

Screenshots
Click Thumbnail for Larger View