Want a more exciting UI? Turn your desktop into a screen saver with the simple steps below.

1. Goto Spotlight (magnifying glass top right of your screen).

2. Type ‘Terminal’ in the line and hit enter.

3.  From your new terminal window type the following:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/
ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

4. Hit and enter and look at your desktop.

Sadly this isn’t a lasting change and on every restart you would have to re-enter the code to keep the screen saver back there. You probably don’t want it running constantly anyway – it can tend to eat a lot of memory.

Web Hosting for Designers

Web hosting for designers, sounds good right? It’s exactly that. I made the transition from GoDaddy to Site5 and couldn’t be happier. GoDaddy’s interface was sluggish, confusing, and at most times… completely pointless. A friend recommended that I try out Site5 for my hosting. The prices were higher then GoDaddy (price is the only thing that kept me there) and I couldn’t find a whole lot of user reviews on it. But after spending a few minutes poking around the interface, easily finding my way, I saw no problem in paying a little extra for reliable web hosting.

The biggest catalyst to the move was the simple migration that they will do for you. I had a lot of trouble switching over my DNS on GoDaddy and even more trouble migrating my information once the site is down. Site5 handles all that for you (for absolutely free) and takes the worry about out of moving your stuff.

Site5 offers packages that make it easy to install WordPress or other popular CMSs, get direct SSH or cPanel access and even IMAP and POP3 email options. All said and done it was a lean $40 to get my site off of garbage GoDaddy and to a web provider that was worth the money. Check them out here.

A virus is any kind of malicious code written to benefit another third party, or sometimes even disrupt your computing experience. Most people assume that a virus can damage their computer physically and permanently, but this is not the case. Even in a worst case scenario a computer infected with a virus can be returned to its original state one way or another. What a virus is most likely to do, is run in the background, so that you can’t detect it, and benefit some other 3rd party in some way. Sometimes this is financial. Imagine a virus that pops up an advertisement every hour on your computer, you can’t stop it, you don’t know why it’s happening, and every once in a while you accidentally click it. This means the person who wrote the virus to show those ads, is making money off of you. An even worst virus could secretly connect you to a chat room with the creator of the virus and anything you type will be sent to them. Meaning any credit card conversations, chats, or documents you may have had open could be vulnerable.

Now a lot of people will be surprised as to how one actually gets a virus. Thanks to movies a common interpretation of a virus is a digital worm flying through cyber space that magically infects your computer. This is wrong. Most often people infect themselves. Whether by downloading another application from an illegitimate source such as p2p networks that has been turned into a virus, or sharing files with friends that are infected or have downloaded such files. Also installing various toolbars, and games that may have such functionality built in. More often then not you will not even know you have a virus.

Now Mac’s are inherently more secure than Windows machines do to the way they are designed, but this does not leave you 100% protected. You are still vulnerable to downloading an infected file or receiving one from someone you know.

Below is a list of the top options to protect yourself while on your Mac:

1. Norton Internet Security MAC Edition – The most trusted brand in online protection. Symantec’s Norton Antivirus is an all in one solution to keeping yourself and your information safe online.

2. Norton Antivirus MAC Edition. A more light weight and affordable version of the above, perfectly acceptable slightly slimmer version of the above. My personal choice in protection for my Mac.

3. ClamXav. A free and open source antivirus. Doesn’t have the advanced protection features of Norton, nor the active monitoring. But decent enough to use if it’s the only option you have.

4. iAntiVirus. A new shareware antivirus program for Mac which offers competitive protection compared to ClamXav.

Though some would say you could get away without using an Antivirus program on your Mac, it is often better to be safe then sorry. If anyone has any other recommendations feel free to leave them in the comments and i will add them to this list.

The great thing about open source software is the large community backing it, meaning any problem you run into you can almost assure yourself someone has dealt with it and likely found a solution. If you head on over to the Darwine Google Code Page, you will find the download section with the latest releases and a wiki that will provide support if needed.

To setup Darwine browse over to the Download section and download the latest or “Featured” build. Drag the red Darwine folder to your Applications folder and you’re set. Now browse over to the Darwine folder in your Applications directory, and run WineHelper. Once WineHelper is loaded, go to Application -> Open… Browse to the .exe or whatever Windows file you may want to run, and select it. Chances are your Windows App is now running.

Keep in mind Darwine requires that you have X11 installed, if you don’t just Google “X11 Mac Download”, it’s not hard to find.

Enjoy!

SecondBar is as easy to install as it is download. Just head over to their website grab yourself a copy and you’ll have more menu bars then you’ll know what to do with. Enjoy!

You can download gfxCardStatus here. Once installed you will find an icon in your menu bar with 2 options, ‘i’ for the Intel card and ‘n’ for the nVidia card. Have fun!

Check out the NTFS Mounter website and just download the app from the downloads section. The app is beautifully Airport inspired and will fit in great with your current desktop look. Plus the convenience of its functionality makes it a great tool to keep on your jump drive so that you can share it with friends.

Enjoy!

Check out the Ignite Realtime Openfire webpage and download the server. Once you install the app you will have an additional control panel in the “System Preferences” pane for Openfire. There you will be able to administrate your Openfire server.

A common issue that people have while installing Openfire, is that once installed the administration panel wont let you login. The fix to this is simple, just restart the Openfire service, and then restart the system. Once you’re back in you should be able to login without any issues.

Good luck and let me know what you think of this service in the comments.

How do i get this? Easy! Download the app for free on the Sequel Pro website. Enjoy. Let me know of any other good alternatives in the comments.

Last.fm is an online radio/”scrobbling” app. Basically in addition to providing great internet radio, it also keeps stats on everything you listen to. First lets look at the online radio portion of the service. Last.fm has made available an app that will sit in your dock and allow you to play music just like in iTunes. Create a customized personal radio station for yourself by first defining a “tag” or an “artist” or maybe even just based off of your current listening preferences. Last.fm will go out and retrieve a small playlist of playable songs. The best part though, you can skip unlimited amounts of times, and even replay songs that you’ve already listened to (to a certain extent). The sound quality? …it’s good! No worse then Pandora or any of the other big competitors. The scrobbling aspect of Last.fm is also pretty convenient. Since it tracks everything you listen to, eventually it will generate weekly charts with your current favorite artists and suggestions. In my opinion, the AI for “recommended music” based off of your statistics is pretty good.

Lets be friends.