While Firefox may partially dominate the browser scene on Macs, it's got a lighter, faster sibling named Camino that does a lot of things right.  I tend to have a hard time settling on one browser in particular, and so often switch back and forth between Firefox, Safari, and Camino.  While Camino is probably my favorite, it tends to be a bit lacking the extensibility it offers.  It does what it does and not a whole lot more.  Of course this is a big part of what makes it faster than its brethren.

But Jon Hicks, creator of Pimp My Safari, has also started Pimp My Camino.  You can find all the plugins, modules, and skins for Camino all in one great place.  Some of the tools may be more useful than others.  But the site can only grow.  Having a central repository for all these great tools is nice for anyone hoping to expand their browsers' capabilities. 

If you've come across tools - or have some of your own - that aren't listed there, get them uploaded for everyone to enjoy!

For those who long for 80's nostalgia and were disappointed when the iPod Hi-Fi turned out to be a full-sized audio system - here's an alternative.

Bill Machrone, writer for PC Magazine found it effective to simply build one of his own. His iBoom Lo-Fi consists of an old portable "boombox" cassette player from which he removed the inner workings. After that, it was a simple matter to adapt the mechanism to hold an iPod. The best part, according to Machrone, is that the "low-tech" exterior effectively hides its high-tech electronics - presumably, making it less likely to be stolen. Machrone's design utilizes the old cassette transport buttons to control the i-Pod, so unless someone actually opens the thing and looks inside, there will be no way of knowing.

The best part of this project is that it takes little in the way of tools or expense (although some minimum knowledge of electronics is helpful). The project came in at under $50 (not including the i-Pod).

Rather than opting for a standard dock, one iPod fan has created his own stand in the shape of the Apple logo.

Dutch-speaking Klaus, who is a regular contributor to the German website iPod Fun, shown off his creation to other people in a Apple related modification competition. Amongst his unique product, other visitors posted pictures of other surreal modifications, such as homemade iPod batteries and chargers.

Although, don't expect to find it on the Apple store anytime soon.

OK, first a little background on the Merom processor from Intel. The Merom is a mobile 64-bit processor. It is said to offer 20% more performance than the current Core Duo at the same battery life. It will reportedly come with 4MB L2 Cache (up from 2MB on Yonah), and it's supposed to be released in late 2006.

Now for the great news. The same guy who had revealed earlier that the Mac mini could be processor upgraded simply by swapping out the socketed Intel processor, now reports that the unreleased Merom 64-bit mobile processor is also similarly compatible.

"It is possible to drop in Merom into Mini, one hell of an upgrade path. confirming this is a working combo, just drop the chip in."

More details aren't available. Blame it on those pesky NDAs. This time, the backward compatibility has been advertised by Intel themselves .

"During a separate briefing, Intel's Mooly Eden showed a benchmark pitting a Dell Core Duo system against the same system with a Merom processor (Eden literally swapped out the Core Duo CPU and stuck in a Merom processor, partly to showcase its backwards comptability). The benchmark was a custom Quake 4 timedemo, with the Core Duo system scoring 106.6 fps while the Merom system scored 134 fps: advantage Merom by just over 25%. We don't know any of the specifics of the settings on the systems, other than they were claimed to be identical."

It's great times for Apple fans these days, after Windows XP booting on it, and later bootcamp. Clearly, Apple is on a roll these days. That ought to shut-up the critics who were up in arms after Apple announced their partnership with Intel.

Now I'm all up for modding and weird changes that can be made to PC's and Macs, however they have to be practical. In this sense I feel this person failed. I was trawling through the blog section down at Yahoo Technology News which pointed to a projects piece based on the Mac website.

Now it seems that certain individual has attempted to make himself a fully fledged Media Centre, Mac Style. He's done this by using some very random bits of equipment and material including 8 Apple speakers and a Subwoofer, a toilet roll, an iSight and an IR port. This has all been cocooned in a wooden box covered in varnished ply, all of which wont do wonders for his cooling. He's succeeded at making something at which we should take note of, however I do wonder why this guy turned a perfectly portable unit into something, where the furthest its going to travel is in the back of the removal van when he moves home.

Either way take a look at it, and make sure that check out the rest of the projects based on the site:

There are some of us who Apple have kindly forgotten about when concerning recent updates. Its a shame how they forgotten about their most loyal and long term customers, but hey what you gonna do about it? This is what - EuPod. Now this works in the same sort of way as the official Apple version, however this works with any of the older models, plus it has other features such as number display for the battery, backup, encryption and also network sharing of the iPod.

Good thing about this is its free, and as a very long user of this, I can safely say it worked for me. It allows the volume to be pushed up to 180% and on my 40GB 4th Gen the battery life on full volume is still well over 6 hours. I'll write a feature on headphones to compliment this volume increase, and if you pick your pair wisely, you will see there is no distortion in the sound. Oh, and finally, if you so wish, you can donate a few bucks to the maker, who will then invest that in a nice cold Larger.

*Note* USA models are unaffected by the volume ban therefore this programme is intended for use by European models, also it only works with units upto 4G, after that you should use the official release by apple*

Were you one of those people who felt let down by Apple's lack of expressionism in their products? Did you feel lost without your iPod Video not suiting your older silver iPod Mini? Well since about the year 2000 a company based in Winona, MN called ColorwarePC have decided to take it upon them to push the art of professional and clean customization to the max. Their result? A fine range of products mainly involving Apple, which can be coloured to suit your needs and your preferences.

This comes at a cost; for their most popular products, most likely a 60GB iPod Video, customization costs a further $95. However the line doesn't just end at iPod Video and Nano's, no my friends, you can now get your Intel Laboured iMac's and Mac Mini's changed, as well as your iBook and PowerMac. These services once expanded further, including consoles, but they have since ceased this opportunity.

As a product, I think this is a very unique opportunity in that you can own a piece of modern life, safely in the knowledge that no one around you will be able to dazzle you, but instead you can woo the crowds with a special item. Get this too, the company also color codes all your accessories, now that's just amazing! I'm thinking about one of the iPod Video's, but only as soon as I can foot the bill for shipping to the UK, but still, those in the US can get a much cheaper incentive.

We've been hearing all kinds of an Altoid tin case can do, such as the Altoid tin dock, tin charger and more, but now it's Apple's turn. Some Altoid fan (I doubt an Apple fan would do this ;-)) has turned his used iPod Shuffle into an... Altoid case.


The full tutorial is [here]. The only thing I wish to add is - make sure you sanitize the case before putting it into use...

Here's another run of a dual booted WinXP / OSX over at Nirlog.com

He covers the main installation sequence, and notes the few problems he encountered.

Aside from a small hiccup on the partioning, and lack of wireless, everything looks to be up and running with nary a problem.

He follows the Wiki HOWTO, which takes you step by step through the whole process.

Now if there was ever that game you wanted to play, or if your company makes you run Windoze, you can now get away with doing it on your MacBook.

To get started the 1st thing you'll need to do is:

[Download the bootloader]

That silly little contest organized by Colin Nederkoorn has has finally drawn to a close. To recap, Nederkoorn offered a nice bundle of cash to the first person who could successfully boot Windows XP on an Intel Mac. A certain narf2006 was the first to submit his solution, and the world eagerly awaited verification - or repudiation - of narf's process.

Now we've received word that Nederkoorn has verified narf's solution (and that narf's been paid, but that's not really the point here, is it?). We're wondering what's going on at Apple and Microsoft as a result of this development. We're thinking that we should await some sort of announcement from those guys. Well, an annoucement would certainly be forthcoming, given how momentous something of this sort would be, whether true or false - but we're really wondering what we can now expect from both companies, especially Apple.

And, of course, we're just dying to give the process a whirl ourselves...