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I know distractions aren’t really en vogue these days, what with all the GTD nonsense that we’re subscribing to. However, some (or the majority of us) enjoy listening to music while we work, so iTunes controllers are somewhat essential.

I Love Stars is a free application from Potion Factory, and it’s designed to do one simple thing. It simply shows up inconspicuously in your menubar and provides you with a simple interface to rate the current track.

Early last year, we compared several well-known Mac FTP clients. Though we established that Transmit was King, CyberDuck always stood out as a cheap, no-frills version.

However, that was version 2. With Leopard now well into it’s third iteration (10.5.2), CyberDuck has also been flapping it’s wings once again, but does it fly? Let’s take a look.

It’s here. Finally. You’ve heard the rumors, seen the video, now purchase the retail bundle. Available online for a limited period of time, the bundle contains 12 apps at a bargain price of just $49.

As usual, the MacHeist guys have done it again, with a bundle that consists of finance software, a word processor, an organizer as well as a handful of games for your Mac. Yea, lovely games.

Debates and arguments have always been brewing with regards to desktop versus web apps. While one camp will argue about convenience and having your data available everywhere, the other will side with speed, privacy and reliability that desktop apps can provide.

While I seriously doubt the holy war will end anytime soon, here’s an app that will provide some middleground. It’s called Google Notifier for OS X.

Today it’s time to dive into something that the geekier crowd will appreciate. We all know that maintaining a secure and efficient network is the pride of every geek, me included.

With that said, I want to introduce a useful utility that accomplishes just that. It’s called Cocoa Packet Analyzer, from TastyCocoaBytes.com. This app mixes form with functionality.

To start off, create a new capture file (using the default, temporary one will do) and select which networking interface to use (Ethernet, Airport, Firewire, etc.). Let it run for however long you wish and you’ll get your results after that. Yup, it’s as simple as pushing a few buttons and getting your bacon. If you have existing PCAP files (raw packet data captured by software written using libpcap), you may use Cocoa Packet Analyzer to view them too.

If you aren’t satisfied with the Finder, you have other choices. While some choose Adobe Bridge as their default file manager, others swear by ForkLift and even Pathfinder.

The ForkLift 1.5 Beta was just released, and boy are we in for a ton of treats. The biggest feature is of course, compatibility with Leopard.

After opening up the .dmg (disk image), you’ll notice one big difference. ForkLift has now been endowed with a brand new icon. In my opinion, the icon gives the appearance of a more mature app, which it really is, considering how far it has come since its beginning. Note that the icon is available with 512 pixels of goodness, so it really shines in Coverflow mode.

Hmm, that sounds like a good deal, if we’re talking about Mac apps designed to run on your Mac desktop/laptop. With most Mac shareware priced at (much) more than $10 a pop, it certainly sounds like a good deal.

But what about the iPod touch? iPod touch apps aren’t as fully-fledged as their desktop/laptop counterparts, so is the $20 that Apple is charging for an additional 5 apps still reasonable? Let’s take a look.

If there was one significant announcement in Mac shareware this year, it would be the MacHeist 2 bundle. Just announced minutes ago, the bundle is a seriously good deal.

Over the past month or so, MacHeist members were involved in several missions (or heists), where each heist would unlock a small set of Mac apps. At the end of it all the bundle would be unlocked for all to be purchased.

Even before the unveiling, there was a general feeling that the bundle would be amazing; I mean, just look at their Macworld ad:

One of the biggest features that Mac OS X (and Mac apps in general) provides is a more intuitive and efficient workflow. No matter how you try and spin it, Windows apps just can’t compare.

So here’s another nifty little Mac app. Called gMailContacts, said app streamlines the uploading of contacts from Mac OS X’s Address Book to gMail. For every contact, both the person’s name and email address will be uploaded.

Should you wish to register (for the low fee of $5), the app will extend its functionality by uploading the postal addresses and the phone numbers of your contacts. gMailContacts does require Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.10 or later, so users on older systems will have to upgrade to use it.

Early last week, VMWare released the next iteration of VMWare Fusion. Although this was simply a point release (aka 1.1), it still brought along substantial features. For the uninitiated, Fusion is one of four several different methods of running Windows on a Mac.

I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but some of us unlucky Mac users are still stuck with arcane Windows-only infrastructures. So what’s new in this version, and is it worth $79.99? After using it for several days, I’ve reached a verdict, and a great way for all of you to save 25% on purchasing a license.

Because of the relatively small display on the iPhone, browsing the web can present some unique annoyances; annoyances that you’ve never experienced on a desktop computer.

One feature that I frequently use, is to open multiple links in different tabs. Fortunately, I’ve found a great iPhone application that does just that. May I introduce: Tabulate.

Tabulate is a Safari bookmarklet; you simply drag the link into your Safari bookmarks for it to work. This means no need for any hacks, which can potentially turn your iPhone into an iBrick. Once you’re on a site with multiple links that you want to view, go to your bookmarks and tap on Tabulate.

There’s some good news for Mac users who depend on Microsoft Office. Currently, the two ways of running Office on a Mac are using the Power PC binary or virtualizing the Windows version.

I’m sure a lot of Intel Mac users are unsatisfied with the performance of the Power PC version; Mac Office 2004 currently has to be translated (through Rosetta) on both Tiger and Leopard.

However, if you purchase ANY version of Office 2004 (this includes the Student and Teacher, Standard, or Professional Edition), you’ll get a free upgrade to the top of the line Mac Office 2008 Special Media Edition (excludes shipping and handling). Sounds like a really good deal to me. This means you can save up to $500 on a new copy of Office 2008.

Last week, we ran a giveaway where readers could submit a “killer feature” they’d like to see in a future version of TaskPaper.

If you haven’t tried TaskPaper, you can check out our full review as well as an interview with Jesse Grosjean, the developer behind the great app.

With out further adieu, the winners are…

Jim and Cat. Cat suggested that TaskPaper should support the uploading of completed tasks to Twitter (and possibly Jaiku). Jim suggested the parsing of dates using a standardized format.

Everyone’s favorite duck is receiving a Leopard upgrade. That’s right, you will soon be able to hear the Adium duck ‘quack’, with the new AV Chat feature.

Adium is a widely used instant messaging program on the Mac, but one of its weak points when compared to iChat, is the lack of video/audio chat capabilities.

Of course, it’s taken quite some time for this feature to appear. This is partly because Adium is built on the Pidgin project. The underlying functionality like connecting and working with networks like MSN Messenger and AIM depend on Libpurple, one of the libraries from Pidgin.

We recently received several user questions regarding Time Machine, so we’re going to be replying to a lot of them. I’m sure a lot of you will be keen to know the answers too.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year and a half, you’ll have heard of Time Machine. It’s Apple’s interesting solution to the problem of backup. So, let’s head on to our first question.