Should someone call your cellular phone and it was not answered, the call gets forwarded to Callwave. Callwave will then record the voice mail if the caller leaves one, and present it on the widget with the call number, the date, the time and the duration of the message. Even if your caller does not leave a message, Callwave will still log it as illustrated on the screenshot below.

You can also delete voice mail (and undo) and add / edit caller’s name right from the widget. You can also specify how many calls you want the widget to show on its preferences’ window and whether to display the activation instructions (you only need to activate your phone once) as shown above. If you want to look at past history calls, simply click on “See All Calls” at the bottom of the widget and you will be forwarded to their website, where you can view deleted calls, refresh lists of calls, and manage your contacts.

One feature that I wish I can turn off is that Callwave will always send you an sms if you miss a call. A note will be displayed on your phone’s screen when you miss a call anyway, so I don’t need to be reminded twice. In addition, for some people, receiving sms on their phone will actually incur charges.

There is one cool feature called “Call Back” that you might want to try when you are on your account’s website. Let’s say after you have listened to a particular voice mail, you decide to return the call. Instead of fiddling with your phone to go to the “missed calls” menu, you can have Callwave connect both of you automagically with a single click.

Callwave Free Visual Voice Mail widget works with major U.S. carriers like Cingular, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon and 30 others. Download and give this widget a try here

A Droplet in essence, is a small application (weighing in at less than 150 KB) that delivers the usual image functions, like resizing images to new dimensions, rotating photos, adjusting compressions, format conversions, and more. Best of all it does this when files or folders are dropped on it. In other words, Photo Drop itself does not work as a regular application where you can directly edit your images.

You can save as many customized droplets as you want to meet your modification criteria. For example, you may have a droplet that resizes images to 640 by 480 and convert them to png image format or another droplet that rotates an image by 270* and adds a watermark. Of course, you can save and place these droplets anywhere you like and use them as many times as your needs desire.

Although Photo Drop is still currently a PPC application, I have no sluggishness issues at all processing tens of photos at a time on my Intel-based Mac. Let’s hope that the developer will release a universal binary version soon, negating the need for Rosetta. Rosetta is the dynamic translator software integrated into OSX to convert PPC apps to Intel format or vice versa on the fly.

Photo Drop may be a free application, but consider donating to the developer if you find it to be an indispensable image utility. You can download Photo Drop right here.

I have been using previous builds of CoRD for over a year now and the new version, which was released a few days ago, addressed some of the issues I have been experiencing. First, the beach ball of death when CoRD attempted to connect to a null machine on a network has been fixed. Second, the inability for the application to remember a custom port to connect to the windows machine has not only been resolved, but the developer went the extra mile in adding a new feature called Computers that allows you to store connection information. The user interface has also been redesigned giving it a fresh look while still maintaining its simplicity. Aside from a number of bug fixes, the new version of CoRD also gives you a tab-style view of open connections with thumbnail previews, as well as more screen resolutions to choose from.

If you still use the defunct remote desktop client from Microsoft, give CoRD a try. Looking at its roadmap posted on the application’s website, the future looks promising. You can download CoRD absolutely free here.

• Airport Utility
• Airport Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow Base Stations.
• Airport Disk Utility
• Airport Disk Agent

It’s about time Apple made this move since many owners of the new Airport Extreme Base Station (802.11n), including myself, have been unhappy with some of the connection problems and administrative issues. It’s important to note that this download does not update the actual firmware on the AEBS’ unit, it simply upgrades the aforementioned applications residing in your Mac. As always, make sure you backup your Mac first before getting the update, just in case. You can get the 12.7mb update either by running software update or straight from Apple.

Apple described iTunes as the world's best way to organize and enjoy your personal digital music and video collection with your Mac. iTunes is also the easiest way to sync music, videos, and more with your iPod.

With iTunes, easily create a digital music and video collection by importing your personal music CDs or downloading your favorite songs and videos from the iTunes Store. Create your own playlists, perfect for any mood or occasion. Burn playlists to CDs and play them on your home stereo, or sync iPod with iTunes and enjoy your collection in your car or on the go.

For the rest of you, don’t lose hope. We will have other rounds of giveaways soon on applications that you’ve probably been eyeing for, so check back soon.

The caveat is that the applications’ size becomes bloated. This is where Xslimmer, from LateNiteSoft, comes to the rescue. XSlimmer strips unneeded architecture codes from your applications and makes them launch faster, react snappier, and more importantly saves you a considerable amount of disk space, especially if you use a heavy-duty app like Aperture.

Upon launching Xslimmer, you are presented with a clean user interface ala AppZapper. You can drag & drop applications to it and Xslimmer will show the application’ current size and the projected space saved. You can also dump multiple applications if you want to or use the “plus” button on the bottom left corner. If you drop an application from a read-only volume, such as a dmg file or a CD, Xslimmer will install it to your default application folder and slim it down immediately for you – a definite time-saving feature. Xslimmer also provides a safety net feature by allowing you to optionally backup your applications before shrinking them to the destination folder of your choice – useful if you have an application that cannot be reinstalled for some reasons.

A nifty feature called “App Finder Genie” is especially useful when you run Xslimmer for the first time or have installed many applications since the last time you use Xslimmer. As its name implies, Xslimmer will scan your hard drive for any Universal Binary applications it can safely shrink. By default, any apps found in the /Developer, /System, and /Library directory is ignored. You can also add any folder containing apps you want to treat as private to a blacklist in preferences. Moreover, to prevent breaking certain applications, Xslimmer regularly updates its public blacklist of applications so you can be assured, applications that should not be slimmed down will be left alone.

Several new features are the ability to strip unneeded languages from your applications, letting you save even more disk space than ever before. You can also now easily mark your applications to the personal exclusion list. More localizations have been added, many immprovements to the user interface, and finally one that surely is in most people’s wishlist is the integration of Quicksilver making slimming down applications even easier and faster.

Another nice touch to Xslimmer is the history window. It lets you see what past applications you have shrinked, how much space you have saved so far, reveal applications’ location, the ability to report applications back to the Xslimmer team to evaluate if a problem is found, and to restore applications to their pre-slimmed states if you have enabled the backup option in the preferences.

I wholeheartedly recommend Xslimmer to anyone and I suspect many of you will like and use it a lot, just like I do. But don’t just take my words for it, very favorable reviews from Versiontracker and MacUpdate are testaments of how useful Xslimmer can be. For $11.95, it’s definitely a steal. But wait, there’s more. If you have tried Xslimmer, this is your opportunity to leave constructive positive and negative feedbacks to help the developers add, fix, and improve features that are important to you. Why? because they are giving away copies of Xslimmer to 2 lucky winners. So, what are you waiting for? Start slimming here

This is where Matthieu Beaumel’s Deep Sleep widget comes to the rescue. This simple widget changes the default sleep mode temporarily on your laptop, from hardware suspend (suspend to ram), where your main memory is kept powered allowing the machine to wake up quickly to software suspend (suspend to disk), also referred to hibernation mode. Essentially on the latter, It dumps the state of your machine and the contents of primary memory into the hard drive and consequently turns your machine off. Hence, you do not have to worry about it waking up en route to your destination. When you wake your machine by pressing the power button, the saved data, called sleepimage, is reinstated to the main memory. It will take your machine approximately 10 seconds to perform a restoration, however, so it is not as fast but the benefit is there. One side note: if you are running Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later, Apple introduced another variation to its default sleep mode called safe sleep. In addition to powering your RAM to maintain its contents, and the state of your machine, this data is also saved into your hard drive at the first stage of sleep operation in case the battery on your machine runs out of e-juice.

Prior to discovering Deep Sleep widget, I have to go into the Terminal and use the pmset command to accomplish the same objective Deep Sleep does. However, it is lucidly a hassle. I have to amend the hibernate mode every time it wakes up. Of course, I could write my own simple script around pmset to curb the inconvenience but with Deep Sleep, one click is all it takes to get the job done. One current minor downside is that Deep Sleep does not return you to the desktop immediately after clicking on it prior to commencing its operation. Hence, when you wake your machine up, you need to press f12 one more time to get rid of the dashboard. Nevertheless, Deep Sleep is a free widget that I suspect many of you will find it useful. So the next time you are scurrying across campus with your laptop because you are late for class, you can rest assured it will still sleep safely and soundly.

Get a better sleep here. Make sure your machine is supported.

If your machine abruptly locks up, heat is usually the primary culprit. When I run Aperture on my Macbook Pro, temperature can hover around 85 *C (185 *F), even sitting on a Griffin’s iCurve. Over time, several independent developers wrote applications that attempt to rectify the thermal issue. One particular macware that I have been regularly using is smcFanControl. It is basically an intel-only application that displays the temperature of your mac in either celsius or fahrenheit format and more importantly control the built-in fans’ speed.

New Features
Hendrik Holtmann, the developer behind smcFanControl, has recently released version 2.0. Not only has it been rewritten from the ground up, but there are a number of compelling new features worth trying out.

The former standalone application has now been moved to the menubar resulting in a speedier access to fans’ settings and quicker monitoring overlook. I am also glad to see that the new version supports all intel-based macintosh including Apple’s flagship Mac Pro. One of the most sought-after features absence on the previous version was the ability to save and apply fan settings for different usages and version 2.0 delivers upon that with just a mouse click . For instance, if you use portable macs, you can have smcFanControl automatically apply your fans’ speed’s favorites depending on your power-source. One thing to note is that, you can only set the fan’s minimum speed as defined by Apple’s defaults, meaning you cannot “turn off” the fans. The new version also eradicates the old authentication methodology and opts for OS X verification. The option to auto-start smcFanControl after login has been redesigned as well.

Final Thoughts
There are two missing features that I hope the developer will consider implementing in the future version. First, wouldn’t it be great if smcFanControl variably adjusts the fans’ speed in real time based on the temperature you have pre-set? This is pretty useful in a scenario where your machine has cooled down and it does not need the fans to be running in full blast anymore or even the other way around.

Second, the “sync sliders”, which adjust two or more fans’ speed simultaneously is missing on the new version (Macbook has only one internal fan, so don’t be alarmed when you don’t see the “other”). I suspect that the latter will be available on the next release. For those users who use heavy-duty applications such as Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Photoshop, or what have you that make the processors work as much and as hard as possible , especially in their laptops, smcFanControl is a must-have. Not only do I highly recommend it, it is gratis. If you find it useful, however, consider donating the developer who has worked hard to make this possible.

Get your heatbuster here.