Since yesterday SweetFM is a free, open source application. I the past you had buy a license.
Application enables user to play a categorized in style Internet radio stations. One has to fill the field with the relevant music genre or band’s name. To be able to listen LastFM radio stream one have to log into the service via SweetFM preference panel.

Apart of just listening to the songs app enables recording and adding them to iTunes library. It can be done manually or automatically. Thanks to that there is still possibility to listen to the songs while there is no Internet connection.

Songs of two Gothic metal bands recorded and added to the iTunes library.

SweetFM enables using Apple Remote

Developers gave users an opportunity to adjust the look and feel of its application. however there is no additional themes available out of the box.

User can adjust the frequencies of the sound with a handy equalizer tool

SweetFM supports Growl notifications:

You can get it at: http://code.google.com/p/sweetfm/downloads/list

Advertisement is pretending to be a teaser of a spy action movie (kind of James Bond), in which the main character – the agent – is depressed because of the loss of his partner and friend – Clippy agent (a paper clip – one of the animated MS Office Assistants). The agent’s job is to find a group of malicious hackers and their special font, which introduces readers of the texts in hypnosis. When using it in various official documents, it can be awfully serious tool. He is hunting them and looking for the name of the harmful font. There is even the piece in Polish when he interrogates one of the suspects, asking question in Polish: “Where is the font” she answers “is somewhere between the Arial and Windings”.

Just take a look:

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it seems that Microsoft can afford much better and more creative vendors for its own advertisement campaigns. If the next “Laptop Hunters” adverts are made in the same style like that one, Microsoft will challenge Apple for real.

One of the parts of the latest MacBook Pro series is the new glossy screen. Actually, glossy screens has been widely discussed since the release of the Unibody models. The quality of the screen is very good. While you are working in the shady environment or there is no contrast backgrounds behind you, it is rather fine. The only problematic part of the screen is frame that acts as a mirror. Even if the screen itself is OK, the frame reflects everything, especially windows or light sources. It can be annoying sometimes.

The quality of the picture and colors are fine in my opinion. You can clearly see the difference in their saturation compared  to the white MacBook. The latter looses in the category of the  angle at which you can look at the screen without any distortions . MacBook Pro 13″ allows you to look at an angle of almost 180 degrees.

Wallpapers on all of my Macs are by Stocks Photography (via Desklickr – Flickr client).

Another thing that is worth to mention is light sensor. Depending on the degree of light intensity, the computer dims or brightens the screen. In the case of the white MacBook and iMac the brightness of the screen is on the same level all the time and one need to use  special programs that dim it depending on the time of the day.

For the last couple of days I have been testing my new toy in the typical work conditions and I took it with me  to a couple of conferences I took part in.  What I noticed at one of the conferences, is the higher  temperature of new MacBook Pro 13″ compared to his older white, plastic brother. The difference was clearly perceptible. I have the impression that this is partly related to the aluminum Unibody chassis , which leads to better heat exchange using entire surface of the body. I decided to compare all three computers in terms of temperature. I have tested all of my three Macs for the level of heat they generate. Those tests confirmed my assumptions – 13 Unibody MacBook Pro generates much more heat than two others Macs.  The difference is on average 10 degrees C, compared to the white MacBook and iMac. It is interesting to note that both, the white MacBook and iMac, run the systems that was installed over 1 year ago with rather big number of apps installed and uninstalled during that time.  Need to mention that while MBP13 run iBench test, temperature  jumped up to 88 C degrees, while at the other two computers it rose to 62 – 63 C degrees. Perhaps it is related to some of the hours worked on the battery by limiting the use of the fan – MBP13 is far quieter than other two Macs.

Here is a short film I did to compare the temperatures of my Macs. Both MacBook Pro 13″ and white MacBook had not so many apps running, only the iMac had Firefox, Thunderbird and couple of other apps open. The difference is not as big as I mentioned above. Sometimes, but rather seldom, new MacBook Pro 13″ is the coolest of all of my Macs.

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TO BE CONTINUED….

A subjective review of the new MacBook Pro 13″ – part 1

]]> http://www.mackozer.com/2009/07/09/a-subjective-review-of-the-new-macbook-pro-13%e2%80%b3-%e2%80%93-part-2/feed/ 1 http://www.mackozer.com/2009/07/04/screeni-for-mac-os-x-screensaver-at-your-desk/ http://www.mackozer.com/2009/07/04/screeni-for-mac-os-x-screensaver-at-your-desk/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:53:47 +0000 admin http://www.mackozer.com/?p=630 Desk is a very important element of a computer operating system. Its wallpaper allows us to relax, and sometimes be miles away with our thoughts thanks to the photos presented as a wallpaper. You can also use it to display – as a background – screensaver itself.  Application, which allows use screensaver as a desktop wallpaper is  Screeni, by Soya Software.

Screeni is actually limited to two operations – to turn on the screensaver on the desktop and to turn it off. The program acts as the switcher between two states. Of course, not all of the screensavers will run as smoothly as we can expect. For example, the Red Baron screensaver, presenting 3D animation of the aircraft of the German 1st WW ace, generates errors on a desk, the individual frames changing at a rate of 2 frames per 5 seconds. However, other screensavers from my collection work correctly. An example might be one of the screen savers prepared by the Digg.cm

You can get Screeni at http://www.soyasoftware.com/

Because I am replacing the old white MacBook with a new MacBOok Pro 13″, I will compare those two machines. I presume there will be more such swaps than swaping the lest than one year old unibody MacBooks with new MacBooks Pro.

Let’s start from the beginning – the cardboard box. The new cardboard box is much smaller than the one for white MacBook. While the dimensions of both computers are rather the same, the cardboard box of new MacBook Pro 13″ is visibly smaller. The smaller box saves a lot of paper used to produce the cardboard.

The same inside, the thick cube box with manuals and DVDs are replaced with much slimmer and wider black envelope.

Size of the old white MacBook and new MacBook Pro 13″ is almost the same. New MaBook Pro 13″ likewise Unibody MacBook is a bit thinner than the old white plastic MacBook.

MediaInfo Mac displays detailed information about the selected media file. The information can be saved as a text file.

Details of m4a audio file:

The same information saved as a text file:

You can get it at: http://mediainfo.massanti.com/

Foreing Legion: Buckets of Blood is a Third Person Perspective cartoon 3D shooter, in which the player embodies the Foreign Legion soldier. Only 1 mission is available in demo version, in which player has to defend the villagers from the terrorist and suicide bombers attacking from almost all possible directions.

The game allows to customize the settings for the best performance. In the case of my iMac 20″ with ATI RadeonHD2400 with a 128 MB memory, with the graphics preferences set to the on of the highest options, the game went smoothly, allowing for pleasant entertainment.

System Requirements

• OS: Mac OS X 10.3.9
• Processor: 1.2 GHZ or equivalent
• Memory: 512 MB RAM
• Graphics: integrated
• Hard Drive: 200 Mb free hard drive space

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Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood costs 9,95$ which is OK for that game. You can get it at: http://www.macgamestore.com/detail.php?ProductID=1197

It would seem that with the firmware update that improves the throughput of SATA interface to 3GBps Apple addressed demands of its customers. Unfortunately, users’ victory turned to be a Pyrrhic victory. The new problem appeared with the latest SATA firmware update that affects larger group of people who have decided to replace the drives in their MacBooks Pro with the other disks, which officially Apple does not support. The reference here is not about SSD drives, but with a traditional third-party drives (Intel, Seagate and WD). It turns out that with the SATA firmware update, the new MacBooks Pro have trouble recognizing the new hard drive. Thread on Apple’s support forum is full of examples of people whose computers have become useless after the last firmware. Apple’s technical care doesn’t help, Apple officially informed that doesn’t support 3rd parties’ disk drives. There is also no possibility of a return to an older firmware, the only advice is to mount the original disk with which the computer was sold, and to connect via USB third party’s drive. Maybe Apple will solve the problem, together with further updates, but this is not confirmed, since, in theory, this is not Apple’s fault.

Sources:
Forum Apple Support
Gizmodo

Dragonfly offers a palette of shades of chosen color  so ones choosing one color gets a selection of its most appropriate variations. The program also converts the hex color code to decimal. To choose a color  click on any of the four colors presented by the program on a pallet, which opens up the system color picker.

The program also allows for easy selection of the appropriate color of text to a predefined background.

The price of the application is ridiculously low compared to other shareware programs, which often do not have anything interesting to offer. Application costs 1 Euro. Demo version displays a reminder to register and purchase a license.

You can get it at: http://www.mr-fridge.de/software/dragonfly/index.html

Witty Retort sticker design @ © SplitReason.com

Mr. PC, dressed in the ordinary suit, playing the best game on PC – Solitaire, observing his watch as being the office PC must appreciate his time. I must admit that’s probably the best caricature striking not a PC machines but some of their users – particularly some clerks in the public offices in Poland, spending their times playing solitaire. Mac is in the typical form – easy and cool boy wearing jeans and blouse with an open Mac OS X downloading window of… witty retort.

Stickers are rather cheap, you can get one for 1,5USD. Check this site out: http://www.splitreason.com/productdetail.php?id=802