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A few weeks ago the nice guys at Sumo sent me one of their Omni beanbag chairs, and first off, I have to mention that I don’t think I’ve used my desk much since. Being a tech writer, and this a mac-oriented blog, you may ask: Of all random things, why a beanbag?

Well, this really just isn’t your run-of-the-mill beanbag, it’s at the top of it’s class. The first thing I noticed when it showed up on my doorstep was the pure size of it, however, that’s in now way a bad thing. Once I unpacked it all, there really was no other option than to let it catch your fall.

Many Mac users are aware of Bonjour, Apple’s networking technology. Bonjour is a simple utility integrated into OS X which allows for “zero-configuration” networking; very useful for sharing files over a network. Picnic is a utility which simplifies, encapsulates and even enhances this feature into a very polished interface. The app allows you to create shared folders which are then synced between both yourself, and the specified folder on another Mac.

Just a couple weeks ago at WWDC, many of us were expecting Apple to release a full iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) for all the developers to get in on the action. To our surprise, Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone would not support development of native applications. Instead, using its full-fledged Safari browser, iPhone “apps” would essentially be styled web applications. While inherently disappointing, this fact enables developers to quickly jump on the bandwagon with little else needed.

Being a busy webmaster, I constantly have to manage remote files, backups and all else stored away on remote servers using one of the many FTP programs available on the Mac. Here are the top three:

Fetch, Transmit, and CyberDuck.

Fetch (Fetch SoftWorks; Shareware; $25)

Fetch was one of the first FTP clients created for the Macintosh. Similar to the Finder, Fetch operates using a single pane uploading interface. While this allows for more simplicity and fluidity to be present throughout the interface it’s slightly more difficult to compare local files, and some cases an additional finder window is required. In the current version there is no support for spring-loaded folders or column views.

The popular social bookmarking site digg is where the news breaks. This was quite evident just two weeks ago when the encryption key for HD-DVD made its way to their front page, enraging the MPAA, in triumph of many anti-DRM types. While I’m not going to further explain that whole fiasco, it just goes to show how influential digg users really are. But where were you when the news broke? It’s likely you only heard about all of it several hours after its initial submission, days or weeks after the fact, or heaven forbid, not at all.

That’s where DiggUpdate comes in.

It’s night, you’re tired, sitting in a dark room, once again staring at your ultra-bright, white-light emitting computer monitor. This can be an excessively eye-straining experience leading to a lifetime of blurry vision. Fortunately, there’s Nocturne. No Nocturne won’t save your vision, but I found that it really does help when working long hours on bright backgrounds.

OS X’s sleep function is something I couldn’t live without. The Mac’s aggressive form of power management has saved me hours upon hours of working time, where I otherwise would simply be without a functioning MacBook. This is because there is an absence of available power plugs where I roam, and I’m sure I’m not the only Mac user who’s in this situation.

Dave Watanabe has just announced the v40 update to his popular torrent client Xtorrent, including hints at a bundle of features to be released down the road. As of this version, Xtorrent Pro includes support for per-torrent bandwidth limits and the Azureus/utorrent compatible peer exchange - which should apparently help increase some transfer speeds.

Watanabe has also announced a bounty of features to be released in future versions: selective file downloading, encryption, and torrentcast auto-downloading (I’d like to point out Xtorrent can already subscribe to RSS feeds, just not auto-download yet). These featured were announced on the basis of absolutely on track for future releases, so we’ll just have to wait.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is the widely used, XML based system for distributing syndication of many news sites and blogs. In order to use this popular technology, the use of an aggregator is required. There are many popular RSS aggregators available on the mac platform. In this post I will review and compare a few of the newest and most popular: NetNewsWire, Newsfire, Newslife, Vienna, and, OS X’s own built in web browser/RSS reader, Safari.

NetNewsWire Ranchero Software, $25.95

Pros: Free Lite version available, auto-collection, smart folders, search, synchronization with newsgator service, scriptable, built-in efficient web browser.

The selection of default applications can easily become a major annoyance. That’s where RCDefaultApp comes into play. RCDefaultApp is an OS X preference pane that allows a user to set the default application used for various URL schemes, file extensions, file types, and much more. Unlike other default application utilities, it allows for the disabling of file-types or protocols, for example URL schemes that pose specific security risks. All in all RCDefaultApp is a simple and efficient way to manage your default applications from within System Preferences.

RCDefaultApp is freeware and is available as a free download from Rubicode.

Shiira is a browser, that like Safari, is written in Cocoa and is based on the Web-Kit rendering engine. Unlike Safari, Shiira is an open source project. It’s aimed at “creating a browser that is better and more useful than Safari.” While the main characteristics of both are similar (Private Browsing, Search Bar, Tabbed Browsing, etc.), however, Shiira has enhanced many features of Safari, making it very much a browser of it’s own.

It’s interface is very customizable, from the ability to re-order tabs, to the it’s interchangeable search-engine bar. The browser is of comparable stability and speed to Safari, making it among the fastest and most functional browsers available for OS X.

It was made known at last years WWDC that a mere 4% of Mac users backup their data. This preluded the announcement of leopard’s revolutionary feature, Time Machine to address this. Before this feature will be widely available, I have compiled this tutorial for those of us who are unaware of how to accomplish the essential task of backing up your hard drive on Mac OS X.

In this tutorial I will use iBackup, which is free for personal use, and can be downloaded here.

First of all, you should determine where you’d like to save your backup:

MarsEdit is a weblog editor for Mac OS X that makes weblog writing like writing email - with spell-checking, drafts, multiple windows, and even AppleScript support. It works with most blogging services, including Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, Movable Type, and others. Technorati, and the pinging of many popular blog search engines is also built in. MarsEdit’s live preview and templating system let you view your writing just as it will appear when published. Its text filtering system includes built-in support for many emerging technologies, such as Markdown, SmartyPants, and Textile.

ChocoFlop is an image manipulation program based entirely on Apple’s CoreImage technology which takes advantages of the processing power in your GPU (graphics card). It’s a very lightweight program and has the ability to apply filters in real time, with no long term damaging effect to your respective image. Chocoflop takes advantage of CoreImage’s built in support for many file formats, as well as layers, masks, selections and paint tools. It even features the ability to filter high-resolution HDR images at 128 bits per pixel. It is built to have no learning curve for Photoshop users and features many of the more obscure abilities of CoreImage, such as rich text layers.

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for the venerable “BOMArchiveHelper.app”, the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than OS X by default, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with foreign language versions of other operating systems.