Head over to the Keyboard & Mouse Preference Pane, and on the bottom of the Keyboard Shortcuts pane, you should see the option for “Full Keyboard Access.” Simply click on the option for “All Controls” and you should now be able to start tabbing through dialog boxes and windows. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard combination of Ctrl+F7 to enable this feature. When you see a little blue ring around any dialog options, you can tab through them to select a different option. You can use Shift+Tab to go backwards, and the Space bar to replicate the mouse click. This simple option makes it nice and quick to deal with one moderately annoying default “feature” of Mac OS X.

With the introduction of iTunes 8 at Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event, among the new headline features like “Genius” and the cool new method of viewing media, Apple has taken the liberty to add CD-TEXT. No longer do I have to use Toast to burn playlists from my iTunes! Now the burning process is even further consolidated. After searching in the past for solutions to this problem and finding the huge number of people begging for a solution, I’m sure that Apple has many even happier customers now that they’ve added even more usefulness to iTunes.

Update: Oops. As pointed out by many of the comments, this has been around in iTunes since version 7. This was a minor overlook on my part, as I’ve never actually had the burn window come up until this version with the option of adding CD-TEXT. Sorry for the confusion…

When you have a file that you want to drag into another folder, simply click and drag the file over the next folder. You can wait a few seconds for it to automatically pop open, or open it immediately by hitting the spacebar. This makes it incredibly quick and easy to get a file into any folder you would like. This works with Stacks too, so just hover over a stack, hit the spacebar, and it will automatically open up that stack in a new Finder window that you can then drop into. Another really handy feature of this is that the Finder window disappears if you decide it’s not the correct folder, and it minimizes in the same way that it had maximized before.

By heading over to the Security preference pane in the System Preferences app, there’s an option to “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver”. When this is checked, you’ll be prompted to enter your password every time you wake from sleep or try to return to the main screen after the screen saver has been active.

For an even quicker way, you can head over to the Expose & Spaces preference pane and enable a hot corner for the screen saver. I currently have one set up for the upper right hand corner, as I don’t really ever click on the Spotlight icon and instead just use a keyboard shortcut for whenever I need to quick search for something.

An additional layer of security can be easily added. You can choose to disable the Automatic Login feature of OS X that allows you to bypass the main login window and go directly to the selected user’s desktop. While this feature is especially handy when you’re at home and don’t have to worry about anyone messing around on your machine (hopefully), it can be a major vulnerability when you’re away at school. I know that I didn’t want my roommates to be able to get into my computer, and this was a simple little way to ensure that my stuff was secure.

Upon opening, Stacks In Da Place automatically detects your currently set up stacks and shows you the default icon. Adding an icon (such as one of the various “Drawer” icons) is as simple as dragging and dropping. (You can find the “Drawers” here)

After a few seconds, your Dock should restart and your stack should now be enclosed by a new icon. This creates a much cleaner look, and adds a cool visual effect to the whole idea of stacks.

Should you decide that you don’t like your stack icon, removing it is as simple as clicking on the stack from the left panel and choosing “Delete Icon”.

This app is really very simple, but it does its job well. Stacks In Da Place is a free download from MacXeagle.

On most Apple apps, simply command clicking will allow you to take the icon right off the menubar so that you have some more screen real estate available. You’ll see the familiar “poof” effect once it’s gone.

However, in some of the other non-Apple apps, it’s not as simple, but hardly a hassle. By visiting the preferences (command+comma) pane of most applications, there’s a little check mark box to show notifications in the menubar. Simply uncheck this box, and voila, the information up on the top of the screen should be gone.

I hope that this tip makes it a little easier to keep things clean on your Mac and stay organized in the process.

For the people that don’t feel like shelling out for Apple’s push-enabled MobileMe service, Google offers a highly competitive set of services that rival Apple’s. For the low price of $0.00, you can have all of your iCal appointments synced up to the cloud. Additionally, any changes you make to Google Calendar online will be pushed down to your iCal calendar on your Mac. While it doesn’t offer the same instantaneous changes as MobileMe claims to offer, the 15 minute interval default sync time should be more than enough for some.

Integrating Google Calendar with iCal is as simple as adding an account to your iCal preferences. After you open the preferences in iCal, click on the Accounts tab. Hit the “+” button to get the “Add an Account” dialog box. For the username option, put in your full Gmail address (including the @gmail.com), followed by your password. Additionally, you have to put in the address for the Account URL. This address can be found here: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[YOUR USERNAME]/user (just replace the [YOUR USERNAME] with your own Gmail address). Again, this should include the “@gmail.com” at the end of it.

After following those simple steps, you should be up and running. You can sync manually by clicking Command+R and you can also change the sync interval. With the iPhone Google interface, and Google Sync app for BlackBerry, you can truly have your calendars in sync everywhere. I have a strong feeling that Apple will allow native syncing to the iPhone with a future update. That would make it even easier to make sure that you never have a reason for missing an appointment again.

Weave, a new project out of the Mozilla Labs, is installed as an extension for Firefox 3.0. When you go to install the extension, you are prompted to create a Weave account with Mozilla. After installing the extension and completing the obligatory Firefox restart, you’ll be greeted by the Weave set-up window. Follow through the necessary steps to get your account set up, selecting if it’s a new account or just another location for Weave. (Note: If you were using an earlier version of Weave, you must create a new account in the new 0.2 extension.

After accepting the warnings, choose a username, enter your e-mail address, and insert a password. These will be used to create your own specific Weave account that will then be used on other Firefox installations.

After scrolling through a few other setup menus, you’ll get to the Data configuration page. This is the meat and potatoes of your Weave experience. Choose a name for the computer (or Firefox profile) that you’re using with this particular Weave install. Next, you choose what settings and data you want to synchronize. I chose to sync Bookmarks, Cookies, and Tabs (these were all the options chosen by default).

After you click Continue, you’ll be informed that Weave is going to connect and do an initial sync. After it completes, click “Done”, and you’ll be back at your regular Firefox screen. However, there will be a new icon on the bottom of your Firefox status bar. From there, you’re easily able to mess around with your settings and account info. You’re also able to change the Preferences from the Firefox Preferences pane in the Application Menu.

To set Weave up on any other computers, you simply install the add-on on any other Firefox installation you have, be it at work or somewhere else. After installation, click on the option to set it up as an additional computer, and enter your account information. It’s as easy as that!

Weave is a free download from Mozilla Labs, and is currently in beta, but will certainly be maturing and becoming more stable with time.

iTweak, formerly “iWeb Expander”, allows the end user to make some very handy additions to make his or her site that much more professional and full-featured. When you open iTweak for the first time, you’re greeted by a fairly lengthy Welcome screen that advises you to take advantage of the tutorials available on Guimkie’s site. They offer detailed tutorials for almost every feature of the program, and it makes it that much easier to learn how to make all of the changes you want.

After you get to the main screen, you can start to dig right in and make any of the changes you want. After you use the iWeb option to “Publish to a Folder…”, you can start to work with iTweak. You choose the folder of the site by clicking on the “Choose Published Site” button, and then proceed to tweak whatever you want. The app makes it super easy to add a favicon (the small icon present in your address bar before the ‘http’), integrate Google search, or even install a hit counter. Additionally, when you’re publishing to a non-.mac/MobileMe server that supports PHP, you can add in a Contact form, something that I know I personally miss from using RapidWeaver. Adding the ability for comments, and even adding site-wide security, is only a click away. Finally, you can search and replace any code globally in the entire site, so making changes to small things is really made simple and straightforward as well.

After you’re done making all of your changes, you simply click on the “Process Site” button and can then upload it to your FTP server and allow it for all people to see. After asking a friend to test it with .mac, he reported that it certainly worked as advertised, but that the PHP functions do not work since .mac doesn’t support PHP in iWeb sites. However, for those people who are using iWeb to quickly whip up sites for other locations, the functionality added by iTweak is certainly a welcomed addition.

iTweak is a free application from Guimkie software, but donations are accepted.

The first thing that you want to do is download the latest copy of Fluid. (You can get it from here). After you’ve downloaded, drag the application into your Applications folder. Open it up and click past the security warning (because you’re opening it for the first time). You’ll be greeted by the familiar Fluid interface that has been fairly constant throughout Fluid’s development stages.

For this demo, I’m going to be making a Facebook application, as shown from the information that I’ve provided above. Additionally, I’ve chosen to use one of the Facebook icons that I found in the Flickr Fluid Icon Pool, which is a great resource for finding Fluid SSB icons for almost any website. The icon I chose to use can be found here. Anyways, after entering the URL of the site and the name for your new application, click on the “Create” button and let Fluid work its magic. After a few moments you should get a message saying that your browser has been created successfully.

After you’ve created your browser, click the option to open it and you will be greeted by your newly created SSB. Up until the latest versions of Fluid, this would be the end of the road for your browser. However, using a few tricks and the new features in this latest version of Fluid, you can take your SSB to the next level.

From this step, there are two main options for what you’d like to do with your new SSB. I’m going to show you both, but I’ll show you the one that I prefer first. After creating your browser, click on the menubar location for the Application menu (where it says the name of the Application on the top left of your menubar) and click on “User Agent”. For this particular site I’m going to select the iPhone User Agent, because I know that Facebook has a really nice iPhone interface and it will work perfectly for what we’re about to do next.

After changing your user agent, restart your browser and you should immediately notice the change in the interface of your browser. Now, instead of seeing the full Facebook desktop interface, you should see the specialized iPhone/iPod touch one. (If it doesn’t work, you can click on the lozenge-shaped button on the top right of the window and enter the iPhone Facebook mobile address on your own: http://iphone.facebook.com/?w2m).

After you’ve changed the user agent to get a different interface, you can choose one of two main options. The first option is to click on the “Facebook” menu (top left of the menubar) and choose “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…” After selecting that option it will give you a notification that you have to relaunch your SSB to see the changes. Afterwards you should see a small version of your icon on the top Menubar, and when you click it you will have a fully functioning SSB available without having to launch any other applications. By changing the interface to the iPhone interface, it’s super compact and super easy to use.

This menubar window is fully resizable and interactive. The movements are just as if they were happening on an iPhone itself, complete with sliding motions and other visual effects. This is really helpful and makes having your most visited sites very easy to access at any time. Additionally, you have the option to turn the SSB into an “Embedded SSB”, which basically overlays it onto your desktop and remains fully interactive and live. This is excellent for Google Reader and other things that are constantly getting refreshed. Also, because it’s still a full Fluid browser, you have the opportunity to add Userscripts to even further customize your browsing experience.

With these new features in Fluid, it’s super easy to have your favorite websites literally a single click away! Fluid is a free download from FluidApp.com.

Dock Library is a free download from Dative Studios. The developer sums up this handy app perfectly: “Dock Library is an application that takes the headache out of managing styles for your Leopard dock.” Once you have Dock Library downloaded and installed, it’s super easy to switch between different Dock themes and to manage them without getting confused or worrying about losing backup system files.

When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll see a fairly empty window, with the original Default Dock present at the top of the list. By visiting sites like LeopardDocks.com or LeopardDocks.net, you can find a virtually endless supply of other docks that you can switch between. After you choose any of the docks that you like, you click the “Import Dock” button on the toolbar of the Dock Library App. After you do so, and select the docks that you want, you can scroll through all of your docks and see them all. This is the primary reason I like this Dock switching app so much more than other ones–it makes it super easy to keep track of everything and preview docks before actually switching to them.

After you have selected the dock you want to use, changing is as simple as clicking on the “Set Dock” button on the upper toolbar. After inputting your password to do the switch, Dock Library will swap out all the necessary files and relaunch the Dock for you.

Dock Library is a free download and is available from Dative Studios.

The first major thing about Cover Stream 2.0 is that it requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as it employs the use of Apple’s new graphics engine CoreAnimation, as well as other Leopard-only technologies. The interface uses the Coverflow interface, which is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in the Mac application space. You can invoke the Coverflow window by using any key-combination that you’d like, which is easily tweaked via the preferences menu of the application. The Coverflow window is chock full of handy buttons to control your music, including Play/Pause, and Forward/Backward buttons.

Another incredibly useful feature of the Coverflow window is that you can actively search through your music simply by typing with the Cover Stream window set as the active window. In a similar fashion to Quicksilver, the app will start to narrow down your music library to try to make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for. One thing I’d really like to see implemented would be the ability to hit Backspace once to have it clear out the entire search, rather than just erasing the last typed character.

The point at which Cover Stream far surpasses all other iTunes controller applications that I’ve reviewed to this point is the multitude of interfaces with which you can see what you’re listening to. In the preferences of the app you have the option to turn Desk Art off and on, which allows you to display the currently playing track on any corner of the desktop. This is really useful, and highly customizable so you’re sure to find a way that you like it. Additionally, the Desk Art feature employs the “wet floor” appearance that is also becoming ubiquitous in some of our favorite apps.

The final major interface that you can use to interact with your music is the Menubar Dropdown interface. By clicking on the menubar icon for Cover Stream you can see what’s playing, change ratings, and things of that sort. It’s very straightforward, and really simple to use.

In addition to the different interfaces, there are a ton of other features that this awesome app employs. The preference pane offers Last.FM integration, which many people use. Also, Cover Stream interacts with Growl notifications, if you have Growl installed on your Mac. It also integrates with the Apple Remote, has an awesome full screen mode, and other customizable hotkeys.

Overall, this application is incredibly useful and really a pleasure to use. Cover Stream is available from SNARB.TK and costs ⚬14.95, which includes free updates for life.

The first thing to note is that Quicksilver’s built-in plug in menu installation tool has a bunch of other appearances that you can easily install and get going with. However, there are more than just those standard ones that you can use and they can really make your Quicksilver installation look that much more appealing, and I’m going to show you a couple of my favorites today.

My number one interface for Quicksilver right now is BezelHUD from Julius Eckert. This incredibly clean and simple interface has a nice gradient and cool animation when you invoke and hide Quicksilver. It’s just nice looking.

Another one from Julius Eckert that I really like is SilverFlow. This one has a larger window, but it has a Cover Flow-like interface to browse your items. I really like this one a lot.

The last interface I’m going to mention today is called Showcase, and it is also available from Julius Eckert. This one has a larger window, and forgoes the familiar 3 tab interface in favor of one large region with two smaller ones for the actions below it. This one is really cool looking too, and it especially looks good on darker wallpapers.

All of the themes in this post are currently freeware, but Julius does accept donations. Enjoy your more attractive Quicksilver instantly!

The first major thing about Mojo is to assert the fact that this is not meant for piracy. Mojo will not allow you to copy DRM-encrypted (most iTunes purchased) music, and is not intended to steal music that is not rightfully yours. However, in my situation for example, there are many songs that multiple family members would like to listen to, but up until now it hasn’t been particularly easy or effortless to get those songs.

Once Mojo is installed on the computers that will be sharing iTunes libraries, any other computers on the local network should show up in the Mojo buddy list. Additionally, you can add buddies by clicking the plus sign at the bottom of the buddy list. Initially, it was semi-confusing about how to set this up, as the settings for the user-created accounts were not set up during my initial installation and configuration. However, once I went into the preferences for the app, I found it easy to set up and create my own personal @deusty.com account name.

A simple double click on a buddy’s name will connect you to his or her iTunes library, as shown in the screenshot below. The look of the window is very simple, and pretty handy, with access included to playlists and searching built right into the window. Downloading songs from the window is as simple as clicking on the song that you want to download, and hitting the download button on the bottom of the window. Additionally, you can preview any of the songs by double clicking. The speed of the download and other information transferring depends upon the internet connection, and obviously transfers on the local network will be faster than those on the broad internet.

Additionally, Mojo will color code the songs in the library being browsed to help you maximize your time. Greyed out songs are the ones that Mojo has already found present in your iTunes library, Red denotes iTunes DRM’ed songs, and Green songs indicate playlists that you have subscribed to (in the paid version only). I found that I was able to download DRMed songs and play them without a problem because I have that iTunes account verified on my own MacBook Pro, but your mileage may vary.

Overally, Mojo is incredibly useful and makes the process of sharing iTunes music easier than it has ever been. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an easy way to share music, and explore new music as well. Mojo is available from Deusty Software, in a free version that limits the buddy list, as well as a paid version with unlimited buddies for $10.95 and up (depending on how many computers you’ll be using the licenses on).

Disclaimer: MacApper does not endorse piracy in any shape or form, and is not liable for any legal issues that may arise from the use of this software.

From launch, it’s very obvious that PDFLab was created with one thing in mind: easy-to-use tools to make the most out of your PDF files. The main window is simple and plain, and the toolbar across the top is super straight-forward and clean. After you add a file, either by dragging it right onto the window, or using the Add File dialog, PDFLab analyzes the document and allows you to rotate, exclude pages, and other things of that sort.

The sidebar/drawer allows you to choose which pages you want to include in the final document, and other settings such as rotation and repetition.

The toolbar can easily be customized to your liking. You can reorganize the order, add/remove buttons, and control flexible space. It’s useful if you know that you need certain buttons but not others.

PDFLab is super-useful if you have multiple PDFs that you need to merge and work with. Even better, it’s free! PDFLab is available from iConus.ch and donations are accepted.

The lightweight (<6mb) app can make itself at home in your menu bar or in your dock. When it's activated, a tiny icon appears as a menu bar item (by default) in the top part of your screen. Two different icons can tell you if Breakaway senses that your headphones are plugged in or not. In addition, if you have Growl notifications installed on your machine, Breakaway will tap into Growl and you will get a little notification about the status of your headphones.

The true power of Breakaway is realized when you tick off one of the options not enabled by default. Breakaway will automatically pause your music when the headphones are pulled out (albeit, with a very slight delay) and will un-pause the music when you plug them back in. The switch is really fairly seamless, and I only heard a tiny delay when I pulled out my headphones a couple of times. The preferences panel is fairly detailed, and allows you to manipulate a lot of the functionality of Breakaway to your liking.

However, Breakaway’s usefulness doesn’t stop with the iTunes pausing. Included with the free download is a slew of additional scripts that you can configure to do things like setting your iChat status, Skype status, or other things of that nature. These scripts are all in the familiar AppleScript format, so they can be edited to your liking, and you can probably create scripts of your own.

There’s actually a lot more functionality to this handy app, and I’m barely scratching the surface. However, one thing I’d really like to see is the ability for Breakaway to fade in the music when you plug the headphones back in, as it would be a nice Mac-like and very Apple-like touch. It would also make it a lot smoother to continue listening to your favorite tunes.

Breakaway is a free app and you can download it from [[Alloc]Init].

MacSpeech Dictate is based on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition engine. As this was probably the most powerful and accurate engine on the Windows platform, it’s not really a surprise that it works very well at many things on the Mac. To start things off, you need to have a “Data Disk” which I presume has all the dictionary material for the speech recognition and typing. The program should ask you for it when it needs it, but I was able to dictate and issue commands without the disk image being mounted. The disk image is about 970mb, and can definitely be stored on an external HD for use when needed.

When you run the program for the first time, it asks you to complete a somewhat lengthy set-up wizard. It took me about 8-10 minutes to get through, and the nice thing about it is that you’re reading instructions for the program and training it to your voice at the same time. You also set up a profile that will be linked to your voice training. It took a surprisingly long time to get it fully set up, but after that the wait wasn’t horrible.

I used the built-in microphone in my MacBook Pro. It says that this isn’t one of the preferred methods, but unless you’re really a heavy user, it should be satisfactory. Once I got all set up and running, I immediately opened up a new Word document (I even launched Word by using the command “Open Microsoft Word”) and then tried to voice away. My first sentence was very simple: “I’m reviewing MacSpeech Dictate for MacApper.com” but from the screenshot below, you can see that my text wasn’t exactly interpreted correctly.

It takes a little getting used to, but I can really see some of this functionality working out to help me in the future. It’s a little odd to start speaking much slower and enunciating more throughout your sentences, not to mention the frequent necessity of saying “PERIOD” to end a sentence or add another punctuation mark. However, you can really get into the hang of it and it does work pretty well.

Another really nice feature of the program is that once a specific program is active, the MacSpeech window on the side of the screen (which can be moved) shifts to include some of the special functions for that particular app. For example, when I had Safari set as my active window, a set of specific Safari commands showed up in the side. I can see this being very useful, especially if it’s possible to set up custom commands or add other applications that aren’t supported out of the box. The first screenshot shows the global panel itself, and then there is a shot of how it changes when Safari is active.

Overall, this program is very solid and I can definitely recommend it. There’s definitely a bit of a learning curve to it, but once you get over the hump it’s a very useful program and I like it a lot. MacSpeech Dictate is available from MacSpeech.com. It costs around $187.99 and can be purchased from MacMall.

The true usefulness of Secrets really shows through when you go to look through the catalogue of possible tweaks and changes. Similar to the way in which Quicksilver downloads plug-ins and other add-ons, Secrets connects to Blacktree’s server and checks to see if there are any new secrets for you to mess around with. It will then download them and automatically add them to the list.

Also very handy (and missing from some of the other similar apps I mentioned earlier) is that Secrets will look through your Applications folder and see what other third-party Applications you have downloaded. It will then search for secrets that pertain to those particular apps and tailor the list of secrets to fit the applications on your machine.

nother nice part of Secrets is that you, the regular user, can submit Secrets to be added to the database. Blacktree seems to be very open to suggestions and hints for new secrets and you can also let them know if something isn’t working properly.

Overall, Secrets is very useful and is very close to replacing one of the other apps “tweaks” apps. However, there is one issue with the current iteration of Secrets: to apply the secrets, you have to kill the process (ie “killall Dock” to get Dock changes to appear) or restart. Hopefully in the near future the folks over at Blacktree can work this out so that there is a button that will “Apply All Changes.” Other than this somewhat minor criticism, this Pref Pane seems to be very useful and is very close to being a big success. It should be noted that Secrets is only for OS X Leopard (10.5).

The Secrets Pref Pane is free and available from Blacktree. You can download it here.

Previously only compatible with PC and mobile devices, the folks over at SugarSync announced today an alpha release for Mac. SugarSync allows you to upload your files to their service, and then access those files from anywhere with an internet connection and a browser.

Once downloaded, SugarSync will ask you to log in with the e-mail address you have used previously, or you can make a new e-mail address to use with SugarSync. After picking a cute icon and naming the computer that you’re setting up to use with SugarSync, you are then prompted to choose the folders/documents that you want to sync. As far as I know at the moment, SugarSync provides 1 GB of free space. It’s not clear whether SugarSync will offer options to pay for more storage, but if I had to venture a guess, I’d have to say that it’s a very likely possibility.

After you log in, you are presented with a window to choose what folders you want to upload. For the purposes of this early review, I took a folder that I had with some of my school-related stuff in it, and uploaded it to SugarSync’s servers. The upload went really quickly, even on the crappy internet connection in my hotel in California.

After the initial upload has completed, you’re finally presented with SugarSync’s main window. This is where you can manage everything that gets uploaded, is uploaded, and other options for your sugarsync.com personal file site. The UI is super clean and simple.

The web service is super easy to use and very user-friendly as well. You simply log in to *yourusername*.sugarsync.com and you can then access all of your files and other items that you’ve uploaded with the service. It allows you to download your documents from wherever you are, and upload from other locations as well.

Also really nice is the mobile interface. I gave it a try on my BlackBerry and it worked perfectly. It was a little quirky to get set up at first, and I’m still not sure 100% about how it exactly works, but it seemed pretty nice. SugarSync also seems to have an iPhone/iPod touch version which looks very nice as well.

Overall, I’m super impressed with this new service. It also seems incredibly stable for an alpha release (*crosses fingers*). The SugarSync Mac alpha can be downloaded from SugarSync’s website, and for now is free while in alpha/beta stage. It’s unknown what SugarSync will cost (if anything) when it leaves beta, but you can certainly enjoy it in the meantime.

The highly anticipated (if I may say so myself) update brings one of the largest missing features up to this point: full Leopard compatibility. Now I really have no reason to keep putting off those backups of my hard drive nightly.

Version 2.5 of the award winning software is fully 100% ready for your Leopard-equipped Mac. The combination of bootable backups along with file backups from Time Machine can surely be the end of fear of lost files or computer crashes.

Keep yourself safe by using SuperDuper to make fully bootable copies of your hard drive that can be restored at later dates or just kept on an external drive. It’s one of the easiest ways to keep your data safe, and it’s super easy to do. There’s no reason not to be on the safe side, and with the prices of hard drives as low as they are, it’s really foolish not to stay archived.

SuperDuper! is available from Shirt Pocket software. There is a free version as well as a paid version for $27.95 that includes some extra features like scheduling and other miscellaneous goodies.

We’ve written about Mac backup solutions here quite a bit. How do you guys feel the new SuperDuper compliments Time Machine or other solutions like the free Carbon Copy Cloner?

Yesterday, 2 methods for ‘breaking the iPhone/iTouch were released. iJailbreak, the super user-friendly method that requires the pressing of a single button, and the Dev team’s own personal (and much more technical) method, lovingly called Jailbreak-1.1.3. I took the risk of putting my own iPod touch through iJailBreak’s paces.

Although I don’t really have a problem using Terminal, whenever there’s an option, I like to just make it easier on myself and use a GUI. So, I headed here and grabbed a copy of iJailBreak. After hitting the “Jailbreak” button, the app correctly identified that I was running 1.1.1 on an iPod touch, and i told it to continue. It starts by downloading a copy of Apple’s 1.1.3 firmware, and then patching it, and then uploading it to the device. Once it’s on the device, it tells you to go into Installer.app on your 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 (Dev team says only 1.1.2) device and download the “1.1.3 soft upgrade” from the System tab in Installer.

(I found the instructions window after moving some things around)

I was starting with a Jailbroken iPod touch (1.1.1 but then updated via OkToPrep), and then used iJailbreak for the rest of the dirty stuff. It really wasn’t difficult to do, but I had to make sure to refresh the sources manually in Installer.app to get “1.1.3 soft upgrade” to show up. Now, there’s supposedly another method from the “true” Dev team available on Installer, but as I had already used the other method, I can’t verify that it works.

But, I can tell you that I’m currently up and running with a 1.1.3 iPod touch complete with iPhone apps et all, and all it took was a little perseverence and a lot of patience. Check out the iJailbreak page for more information.

Plasq, a company well known in the Mac software industry (and a favorite of mine) this year introduced Doozla. Doozla is basically a refined version of Skitch (which we’ve written about before), but without the same level of screenshot integration, and a bumped up UI and demeanor that screams let your kids play with me!

Doozla is a fresh-looking program just announced at MacWorld this week. Its purpose is to “Play to Learn”, and it encourages young Mac users to explore their creative sides and just have fun. It’s a far cry from the coloring books of yesteryear, and IMHO, a nice step for the future.

The main screen of Doozla is incredibly simple: 4 simple options present themselves when you first open the quick and lightweight app. You can color in, using any of the various built in outlines that the app bundles, simply doodle and draw, draw on a snapshop from an iSight camera, or draw on a user-selected background.

The guys at plasq have kept in many of the features that we love from Skitch, but have expanded on many of the functions. For example, there’s a nice, kid friendly color palette that you can use, as well as different tools displayed in a very kid friendly manner. Also, when you click on a tool, you can hear what you’re clicking on being said out loud, another subtle but nice touch to keep the kids interested.

As a bonus, like Skitch, Doozla has built in Tablet support which worked absolutely flawlessly on my Wacom Cintiq. Pressure sensitivity was spot on, and everything really worked like a charm.

Doozla is available immediately from plasq’s website. A single user license will set you back $24.95, but that’s still a bit less than hiring a babysitter.

Aesthetically, iTunes 7.6 looks almost identical to 7.5, but the real biggies are what it adds support for. Read along to find out what’s going on under the hood.

The iTunes store has been refreshed with movies from most of the largest Hollywood studios. It’s incredibly easy to download films, either to rent or to watch. The movies are, however, encoded with a special version of Apple’s FairPlay DRM software that restricts the amount of time you have to watch a film. Once you download the movie to rent ($2.99 or $3.99 depending upon the title), you have 30 days to watch the movie before it expires. However, once you start it, you have just 24 hours to continue it, or you have to rent it again.

Rented movies can be transferred to iPhones, iPods, or other Apple portables that support iTunes content playback. Apple had always been opposed to the idea of “rental systems” in the past, because they didn’t think that people really wanted to “rent” their music. However, it seems like the less than stellar movie sales may have played a part in Apple’s decision to cave on the issue.

The new rental system, coupled with the iTunes store availability on the new software version of the AppleTV really might be the way for Apple to invade the living room once and for all. Only time will tell how successful this new system will become, but I have a feeling that Apple may have another hit on its hands, and the ease of use is really unparalleled.

While the contents of the Bundle can be likened to the secrecy of an Apple keynote, some slips have been (intentionally?) let out, and some of the included software seems to have been revealed. Read along to see what’s bound to show up.

Michael Rose over at TUAW seems to have it on good terms that the excellent Shareware Photoshop replacement app, Pixelmator will be included in the final bundle. This makes the app an incredible deal in-and-of-itself, as that single app alone costs $59. Not to mention the fact that their is bound to be a healthy selection of other apps included in the bundle.

Also, if you’ve been doing the heists all along, you can save even more, by applying the $2 coupons that were part of the “loot” at the end of the heists, making this deal even harder to pass up.

The MacHeist II bundle is set to be revealed tonight at 7PM EST (according to their e-mail), and will cost $49 (without any discounts factored in).

The previously thought impossible is now actually possible. With a small appplication available in Installer.app, you can make actual voice calls on your iPod. How cool is that? Read along to find out more.

This software allows you to use your iPod touch along with a WiFi connection to make actual voice calls to landline or mobile phones. When coupled with the necessary homebrew microphone that uses the iPod’s dock adapter (you can find it here), it’s possible to use your iPod touch as if it was any WiFi VoIP phone. To download the app, you first need to add the TouchMods repository to your iPod touch’s Installer.app. The necessary address is: http://touchmods.net/rep.xml

After you download, just click on the green Touchmods logo that will appear on your iPod’s springboard (homescreen). After you enter the details for your SIP VoIP account, push the “Save” button and then you should be good to go.

Below is a video showing the software in action.

This is a pretty nice New Year’s Gift from TouchMods to you all, and you can show them your appreciation on their site. TouchMods is freeware, and available through Installer.app or their website.

Enter Mailplane, the excellent desktop client for Gmail. With this lightweight app you can make Gmail your default e-mail program and you never have to deal with Mail.app again. With a couple of simple clicks, you can have Mailplane become your default client and the functionality it adds to Gmail is just awesome.

Although you could make yourself a desktop Gmail client with the previously mentioned Fluid, there are just too many great features integrated into Mailplane to let it slip by unrecognized. The most obvious is that it is an actual program; you can set your Mac to use it as a default program for all mailto links. Also, you can manage multiple Gmail accounts with the app. Mailplane also supports Growl notifications of new messages. However, the integration doesn’t stop there. Mailplane features a media browser that is very similar to that of Mail.app and also integrates into the iLife apps (i.e. an “Email” button in iPhoto ’08).

Another useful feature that you don’t get with the online version of Gmail is drag and drop functionality for attachments. To attach a file you just drag the file onto the window and Mailplane will either add it to the current e-mail or open a new mail page.

In beta for almost 8 months, Mailplane has matured into a very slick little desktop e-mail client. It provides the best of both worlds: desktop functionality and online convenience. There are still a plethora of things that I’d like to see in future versions. For example, how about some way to integrate with Gdrive, the unofficial way to use some of your Gmail storage space as an offsite backup option? Also, what about a companion program for Google Calendar that can work both online and off?

Mailplane is nearing the end of its beta period, which ends officially on December 31, 2007 as does the nice $5 Beta user discount. After that time, Mailplane will cost $24.95 and is available from uncomplex gmbh.

Enter Videobox, from Tasty Apps. This awesome little application does one thing, and does it pretty darn well. As the name implies, it is a standalone application that lets you drop the URL of almost any video that you find on the web, and it downloads the video, and then converts it into MPEG format for viewing on an iPod or just on your computer. Read on to see what else this handy app can do.

One of the biggest advantages of Videobox is the wide range of online video sites that it supports. It obviously supports YouTube, as well as most other popular video sites. I tested YouTube, CollegeHumor, and Break with no problems.

To use this super simple app, just navigate in your web browser to any of your favorite video sharing sites, and pull up the video. Then, just click a couple of times in the address bar until it’s all selected. Then, drag the whole address right onto the Videobox window. It will tell you that it’s loading, and then after a few seconds a thumbnail along with a bunch of other information will pop up.

Just hit the down arrow button next to the video, and it will start the download process, and then proceed to converting it for a compatible format with your Mac. The time it takes depends upon your internet connection, size of the video, and the specs of your particular Mac.

Once it’s done downloading, import it into iTunes, save it into a folder, or just leave it where it is. But next time you want to watch it, you won’t need an internet connection to have that ability.

Although there are many similar apps that allow you to download Flash videos from online video sites, Videobox is probably one of the most polished by far. It has a nice, simple, clean interface, and the ease of use is really just phenomenal.

Hopefully, in a future release, Tasty Apps can find a way to add a button right to Safari to allow you to have it automatically download the video, similarly to what another Tasty Apps’ app does, Web Snapper. A nice little button at the top of my screen would make it that much easier to capture any video I want, and there would be no need for this drag and drop business.

Overall, this is a really great app, and it does its task very well.

Videobox is available from Tasty Apps and costs $8 (while in “Pre-order”, and then it goes to $15)

Now, a team in Japan has released what appears to be the first external plug-ins for QuickLook, and they really add some awesome functionality to this already useful new tool. So in this article I will take you through the installation of a nifty Quicklook enhancement, that I really found helpful.

User XDD from .Mac has uploaded the Folder.qlgenerator QuickLook plug-in to his .Mac homepage as well as Zip.qlgenerator. To install, simply download this folder and uncompress it. With the folder uncompressed, you should see a couple of files inside, including a Readme, and the actual Folder.qlgenerator file.

Head over to your root ~/Library (the one when you click on your HDD, not the one in your home folder) and then find the folder entitled QuickLook. Now, simply drop the Folder.qlgenerator and Zip.qlgenerator into that folder.

Try and QuickLook a folder and you should see a new screen that shows the contents of that folder and not just the one large icon that QuickLook displays by default. If it doesn’t happen right away, either give it a minute, or try opening a Terminal window (located in /Applications/Utilities) and typing killall Finder. This relaunches the Finder application, and should restart QuickLook properly.

Once you have it working, you should see that there’s a significant amount of new info that is now available to be viewed through the standard QuickLook window.

And another shot.

I found Zip.qlgenerator is incredibly useful to see what is actually contained in a Zip file without having to uncompress it. You can just invoke QuickLook with a .zip file selected and it will show you a list of the files that are within it.

Keep in mind that this is still BETA software, so there are definitely some bugs, but personally this seems to be working fine. One thing that I’d definitely like to see implemented is better scrolling to see all of the folders (or other contents) of a folder, as well as the ability to click on something in the folder being QuickLooked and have the option to launch the app. Also, it would be really cool if QuickLook on external drives could be enabled somehow?

So yeah this is a bit of a hack and it’s really done at your own risk, but if you have any problems, it shouldn’t be a big deal to just trash the Folder.qlgenerator file and go back to the way it was.

Let’s hope that this is just the beginning for home brew QuickLook plug-ins and that there are many more to come!

One application that illustrates this quirky display issue is Parallels, especially when in its incredibly handy “Coherence” mode. But having the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen mixed with a 3D dock doesn’t make for an exactly pleasurable experience.

Coherence is a major feature of Parallels Desktop for Mac that allows you to ditch the actual OS window and allow for fairly seamless integration between the guest operating system and Mac OS X. One of the things that it does when entering coherence mode is basically removing the background image and your windows desktop, leaving only the taskbar visible (which can be manually turned off as well).

Most people have their taskbars set to the bottom of the screen because that’s where they feel most comfortable. However, when in coherence mode, this setup doesn’t work as nicely as it did in the days of Tiger because of the controversial 3D “shelf” dock. Luckily, making XP or Vista (or probably other Windows OS’s too) work with coherence in a more clean fashion isn’t that difficult to do. All that’s involved is “unlocking” the taskbar, and then dragging it to the top (or side) of your screen.

Taskbar on the Bottom

Taskbar on the Bottom + Magnification = Weirdness

Right (or control) click on the taskbar in your Windows guest OS and make sure that the option to “Lock the Taskbar” is unchecked.

After the taskbar is unlocked (if it wasn’t already), just click down in an empty space along it and drag it to one of the sides, and while still holding down, onto the top of your screen. It should relocate, and to move it back, you just do the same process in reverse.

With the taskbar on top, there’s no more annoyances with it interfering with the dock or anything else on your system. It’s conveniently located at the top of your screen right underneath the menubar and all of your dock settings are the same.

However, once a window is hidden, it’s really not that useful because you can’t even tell that it’s hidden, other than not seeing it.

You can always use the little triangle under the dock icon (if you’re on Tiger) or the blue light (on Leopard), but I’ve found a quick trick that makes hidden windows a little easier to work with, and to know if they’re actually hidden. It makes use of an OS X tweaking app called MacPilot from Koingo Software. Read along to see how I did it.

Although MacPilot is a shareware app, you can still use it for free for 15 days, which is more than enough to make your desired tweaks. For this tweak, you want to head over to the “Dock” tab in the application. You’ll see that there are literally hundreds of mods and tweaks that you can make to your system from this incredibly handy application.

To make your hidden applications more distinct from your other applications, you simply check off the “Hidden applications have translucent icons” option in the second column. Click on “Apply Changes” and it will tell you that it needs to reload the Dock to make your changes visible.

Now, it’s much easier to notice the difference between hidden windows and non-hidden ones, with a simple little trick. In the Image below, Safari is hidden, while the other applications are not.

Note: If you’re comfortable in Terminal, you can run this command from the Terminal application, located in the /Applications/Utilities folder of your Mac.

defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool true
killall Dock

You can also do it with a GUI application by using MacPilot. MacPilot is $19.95 from Koingo Software, and there is a 15 day free trial available, but if you find this app as useful as I do, you should consider purchasing it.