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Don’t try to hide it — we know you brag about your huge Downloads folder to your online buddies every single day. You know exactly how many gigabytes you have, and probably how many actual bits that translates to. But you want to know more, you say? Well, WhatSize can help.

WhatSize is a neat little tool that can tell you exactly what’s taking up so much space on your hard drive. Starting from a screen that looks very similar to the column view in Finder, you can drill down and see how big each folder and file on your disk is. This can actually be quite daunting, but WhatSize uses a color-coding system to indicate the comparative size of the files and also sorts them with the biggest ones at the top.

With the Internet moving more and more towards a full multimedia experience every day, it’s understandable that one of the biggest things people want to spread for the world to see is video. Sure, there are sites like YouTube or MetaCafé that let users easily upload videos, but they don’t offer a lot of control over video size and quality. The real solution for pros is to encode your own video. One great solution for doing this on the Mac is VisualHub.

I remember that moment after I got my first iPod when it suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t have to lug around a huge binder full of CDs in my car anymore. Since that time, every time I buy a CD, it gets ripped to my computer and then put away. That kind of revolution is what made the iPod what it is today, and many people have tried to take that concept and apply it to DVD movies as well. Flip4Mac, the creators of the Windows Media codec for QuickTime, have created the application Drive-in to attempt just that.

I’ve been editing video for a long time in various forms, and more recently I’ve been employed by several family members and acquaintances to make photo slideshows for events such as weddings and birthday parties. While not a particularly difficult task, it can be frustrating if you don’t have the right tools. Way back when I was on a PC, I used Pinnacle Studio video editing software to do the job because it was cheap and relatively easy to use. Now that I’m on a Mac, I’ve found that iPhoto and iMovie have roughly the same level of customizability: very little. That’s where FotoMagico from Boinx Software comes in.

A while ago, we did an exclusive report about the development fork of the DVD ripping/encoding app HandBrake forking back into the original codebase. At the time, this app was known as MediaFork, and we reported that the next version of the app would soon return under the original HandBrake name. That time is now.

The dev team at HandBrake have packed a slew of new features into this beta release, including surround sound and AppleTV support, among many others. Along with these fancy new features come a ton of minor tweaks to make the app just that much better. The devs also report that we should expect to see an updated 0.8.5b2 version shortly with even more features.

Remember the Internet ten years ago? Remember dial-up? Remember when you had to use a download manager to effectively get two files at the same time? Luckily, those days are over. For the most part, we’re all using modern browsers on high-speed internet, so we don’t need download managers anymore… right? Suffice it to say, there are still some out there, including Speed Download from YazSoft.

One of the greatest things about OS X is how fun and easy it is to build applications that can do some amazing things. Apple makes this very accessible with Xcode and their other development tools freely available to anyone who wants them. But even if you’re not a developer, there are some really cool things buried within the Apple Development Tools. Here are a few of those little gems that I found while poking around the in the Developer directory:

Ah, the weather. For many of us, the fascination of what the weather will be like today, tomorrow, or next week can drive our entire day. For this reason, there are dozens of weather websites and a handful of weather widgets out there. But what about those of us that want weather information right on our desktop at all times, even without having to pull up Safari or Dashboard? Today I present for your reading pleasure a showdown of desktop weather applications. Read on…

If you want to record, for example, a podcast or an important phone call over Skype, you’ve probably looked at either WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro. These apps are great and powerful for much more than just Skype, but if you want absolute simplicity and all you really want to do is record both sides of a Skype conversation, Ecamm’s Call Recorder for Skype, just upgraded to version 2.0, may be the best option for you.

Ever since the iPod became “the next big thing,” people have been looking for more and more ways to use them. With more than 70% of cars produced today having iPod capabilities, it’s clear that people are beginning to use the devices more in their cars than they do with headphones—that’s certainly the case with me. But what if your car isn’t iPod–ready? There are four issues to deal with to make it happen: playing your iPod through your car stereo, keeping your iPod somewhere safe and secure, controlling your iPod without taking your eyes off the road, and keeping the juice flowing to keep your tunes playing. Griffin’s new TuneFlex AUX brings a solution to all four of these problems.

One super-powerful area of OS X that users often forget about is the Services menu. Not only does this hidden corner of the OS house some great built-in features to help integrate applications together, it can be customized to include other extensions that greatly enhance the usability of your Mac. Here are five really cool and useful system services for OS X:

1. HumaneText. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber took simple web coding to a new extreme with his cool markup language, Markdown, which has a great balance between human readability and power. HumaneText is a system service that can convert Markdown-formatted text to proper XHTML code and vice-versa. For bloggers like myself who use Markdown on a regular basis, this service should be indispensable.

As a writer, I have to use some special nonstandard characters from time to time. Using this blog as an example, sometimes I’ll want to use the symbols for the Ctrl key (⌃), Option key (⌥), or Command key (⌘) to better illustrate a keyboard shortcut. Coming from a Windows world, I was used to using the built-in Character Map to find and insert special characters. I struggled a bit at first finding an easy way to do this in OS X, but I’ve recently discovered two great ways to use special characters that you may not yet know about.

Some of you, both readers and writers of MacApper, have expressed a few concerns over the past few weeks. I hope to address some of them in this article. Before I begin, I want to clarify that in no way do I speak for the entire MacApper staff when I say all this, but from the discussions we’ve had, I can say that we all see eye-to-eye on many of these issues. I want to take this opporunity to have somewhat of a proxy “fireside chat” with all of you out there. It’s a bit of a long read, but I think it says some very important things that all of you who have been involved in the community will want to be clued in on. So let’s get to it, shall we?

I’ll cut right to the chase: both Macs and PCs have had FireWire for years, but Macs can do some really cool things with FireWire that Windows users have probably never even dreamed of. Many of these features are not widely known among people who have not had to use them in an emergency situation, but they can be quite useful in a pinch. Here’s a quick rundown of just a few of the great things you can do with FireWire on your Mac:

I know many of us who have recently purchased MacBooks went for the black version for fear of the dreaded white MacBook discoloration. Having successfully avoided the yellowing of the white MacBooks (which Apple has since remedied), you can imagine my frustration when I found that the black MacBooks don’t stay pretty very easily either.

The matte finish of the “BlackBook” is notorious for attracting fingerprints and smudges, and the keys get very oily, even when the typist’s hands are seemingly completely clean. Needless to say, I searched high and low for a good way to remedy this problem, trying everything from soap and water to household cleaners. Luckily none of these desperate attempts ruined my MacBook, but I was still at a loss as to how to clean the computer well.