My Black Mac

Macarena

Dave — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:25:26 +0000

When the song Macarena hit the airwaves back in the ’90s, it spread like a virus. Finally, we had a dance that even the nerds could do! Unfortunately, there were a chosen few who could not even catch on to something as simple as slapping your own thighs and buttocks. These misfits grew up logging lonely night after lonely night on their Apple computers and now, in 2006, have attacked the Mac community with their own version of the Macarena.

Do you need to panic? No, not at all, the Macarena is only a proof of concept virus that has been hyped up in the media, and by Anti-Virus software developers trying to sell you their programs. There has not even been one infection reported that I have seen yet (see Symantec page for details).
Does it do any major damage? No.
Is hard to remove? No.

Do you need anti-virus software on your Mac? Most users don’t use one, but if you feel you have to get an anti-virus app, check out a free one called ClamXav.

anti virus, macarena

Download Free Mac Apps Every Day

Dave — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 17:23:47 +0000

This year, there’s 31 days of Christmas and your true love (aka MacAppADay.com) is giving you a free Mac appplication every day! As long as you are one in the first 5,000 visitors each day, all you have to do is show up and click download to get your free software.
This project, created by TheMacNurse, will begin at midnight PST on Dec 1st and is open to anyone who finds free software appealing. MacAppADay is sponsored by developers in an attempt to drive more awareness to their products. One developer who involved in the project commented on the idea:

The idea of giving away popular Mac OSX applications for free, or with extended trials is great for the end user. It means they don?t need to dig into their pockets and bank accounts to get their hands on some of the great software that has been lined up. It?s also beneficial to the developers who have offered to contribute to this line up. Not only does it give further awareness of the applications, but also will give the users a better taste of the software, and hopefully encourage further sales of the applications in the future. It?s a win-win deal for both the users and developers.

Nobody is sure of which developers are involved, but as of right now, the average cost of the current line up is stated as being $10. That might not sound like much, but hey, if I can get over $300 worth of licenses for free (legally!), I’ll take it!

See you there at midnight, Dec 1st!

Better Tabbed Browsing In Firefox

Dave — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 17:23:20 +0000

Although I occasionally use Camino and Safari, Firefox is my preferred browser and I use it even more of the time now that 2.0 has been released. If you use Firefox too, but don’t think the tabbed browsing feature is Mac enough, you have to install the Pinstripe add on developed by Kevin Gerich at Pretty Widgets.

A few tips using shortcuts for tabs:

Command + Click will open link in new tab

Hold Alt + Command Down while using left/right arrows to flip through open tabs

Command + T opens new tab

Click + Drag an open tab left or right to rearrange the order of them.

Hey, This Apple’s A Pumpkin

Dave — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 04:11:18 +0000

Happy Halloween! With the abundance of festive posts spread throughout the Mac community today, how could you not be in the spirit? I had the urge to download spooky icons, a scary screensaver, and a pumpkin Apple logo image for my Hallow’s Eve desktop.

TUAW had quite a few haunting tidbits to share over the last day or so such as tutorials on making a Mac-O-Lantern, a Pumputer, and an iPumpkin!

Perhaps scarier than anything I’ve seen so far is the unveiling of the iPod Ghost and Frankenstein costumes. No, it’s not a “how to” article, these are products for sale at the low, low price of $39.99. That’s frightening!

halloween, mods

Note Taking With Your Mac

Dave — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:29:36 +0000

It’s obvious that to-do lists and note taking can boost your productivity, but when you end up with a stack of paper on your desk, topped with a sticky yellow square reminding you to organize your notes, it becomes counterproductive. When it became too much to bear, I tried stacking several pocket sized paper notebooks with subjects assigned to each one of them. This idea helped clean up the mess, but it was still too inconvenient for the times I wanted to quickly jot down a passing thought or two.

Finally, after finding the motivation to hunt down a better solution, I discovered an amazing program called NoteBook by Circus Ponies. The features go above and way beyond what you would expect from the simple name. Shortly after installing the easy to use 30 day trial, my productivity soared, and I was hooked. Imagine all of the following features at your fingertips as just a basic starting point, with so much more:

Note-Taking and Organizing - Organize your information using a familiar notebook interface, complete with pages and tabs. Arrange notes hierarchically in each page’s outline, in ways that make sense to you. Collapse or expand hierachies to hide or show detail.

Annotation -Annotate your notes with keywords, stickers and highlighting. Add an action item checkbox, set a due date, or assign a priority.

Clipping - Copy text and other content directly into a Notebook without leaving the application you’re working in. Pre-edit clippingsbefore sending them on to your Notebooks.

Searching - View all of the words in your Notebook and where they appear. Or all of the keywords, stickers, highlighting and other attributes- Index Pages make simple searching as easy as clicking. Use NoteBook’s Super-Find panel to perform complex searches involving multiple words and attributes.

Importing - Transfer photos, images, film clips, and sound files directly into a Notebook from your digital camera, or scans from your scanner. Then use Media Frames to enhance your images with special borders, dropshadows, rotation, and scaling. You can even add in video clops or movies, complete with a standard playback control strip for convenient viewing or replay.

HTML Publishing - Export your Notebooks to the web to share with non-NoteBook users. Use the default export options, or customize the look and structure of the exported pages to fit your project.

Are you wondering what all of that looks like? View the online video tour.

NoteBook is a dream app for me, but if you’re looking for something simple that is a little more powerful than Mac’s Stickies, check out Sidenote for a multi-document drawer that will hide in the corner of your screen (left or right) and allow you to take all your daily notes, include images and easily modify text color and font.