Today St Clair software released version 3.0 of their great shareware application, Default Folder X.  Anyone who's come from - or worked on - a Windows environment knows that Microsoft has a much better save screen.  Who cares, you ask?  Well, when you can quickly navigate folders, file names, add and subtract both from the save screen, it makes a big difference.  This is just a little of what Default Folder X offers.

The feature I'm hugely excited about with version 3, is the addition of a Spotlight Comments entry window.  I wrote a piece recently about using Metadata as a filing system on the OS X platform.  This feature from St Clair closes the circle and makes this 'filing' scheme available to the masses.

Go check Default Folder X out - it's one of those programs that you quickly find that you can't live without.  And wonder how you did without it before!

In what seems to me, a very obvious move, you can now run Google searches through your Spotlight search bar.  A software company by the name of Caffeinated Cocoa Software has released a small utility that makes this functionality possible.  The software - Google Importer - is free, and a pre 1.0 version still.  Of course the warning should be made to be cautious - back up, back up, back up - before you install new tools like this.  But I've done it and haven't had any issue.  It works great, and has come in handy already in my daily searching.

If you've got an iSight camera for your Mac, you may be interested in trying the open source project, Gawker.  It allows you to create time-lapse movies of whatever the camera is pointed at.  You can even grab 'feeds' from other iSights on your network, using Apple's Bonjour networking.  Combine various feeds to do a multi-view time lapse from two angles, etc.  Seems like a fun thing to try - though I don't know how useful it is.  I'll have to test it out and see.  If you've tried it and have some thoughts, please share!  Course if your iSight is built in - as it is with the new Intel Macs - we probably won't care to see time lapse of you coding or something.  Check out the project website for some example movies - the one of ice melting is pretty cool actually.

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!

Robert Bamler has come up with a very novel idea of bringing the Wikipedia to the Apple iPod in the form of Encyclopodia, a free download. When you boot your iPod you can decide whether to start Encyclopodia or the original software (to listen to music), it is not currently possible to do both at the same time.

Encyclopodia can be installed on iPod generations one to four, including iPod Minis and Photo iPods. First and second generation and iPod Colour may work although the author has not any feedback about those versions as yet, but note that the fifth generation iPod, Nano, Video and Shuffle all definitely do not work with Encyclopodia. Be warned!

  

Download: [Encyclopodia 0.9]

Om Malik started another meme recently.  This time it's something I feel like jumping at - 10 Mac apps.  I feel like a great application is one that you forget is third party software - it just blends into the background.  Here are 10 apps I can't live without on my Mac - and they definitely feel like a part of the operating system.

(In no particular order)
Super Duper! - Backups are a necessary evil.  Super Duper! makes backing up your system simple and easy. 
Desktop Manager - Hands down, my favorite virtual desktop app.  The development support is virtually dead, but it remains better than the rest of the pack - at least in my opinion.
Quicksilver - If I were stranded on an island, Quicksilver would be the one thing I could bring with me.  Seriously.  It's that great.
Sidenote - Record quick notes for yourself in a simple, roll-away note window.
AdiumX - A multi chat account client.  Tons of customizable options.  Very solid.  A pleasure to use if you IM a lot.
Sidetrack - [This is a bonus thrown in for the iBook and PowerBook users.]  Setup vertical and side scrolling.  Assign trackpad tap as  "right click", assign tappable corners, etc.  It's the two finger  scroll that newer PowerBooks offer, on steroids.
Snapz Pro X - OS X has some great screen capture options built in, but if you want to take it to the next level, try Snapz Pro X.  You'll also get the ability to create movies of your desktop use.
Transmit - There are free ftp apps out there for the mac - I've used them all.  But Transmit is definitely the most polished and complete.  Gotta love any ftp program that sports tabs.
Audio Hijack Pro - Hijacks and records any audio that comes from your Mac.  Great for recording music, movie clips, or backing up old tape or vinyl too.
Forty-TwoDVD-VXPlus - Yeah, the name is a mouthful.  But the encoding capabilities, along with a nice itunes-like interface make this a powerhouse of an application.  Converts movies to iPod, PSP, and SD formats too.  Nice.
Textmate - This is the text editor to use.  If you're a coder, you'll heart Textmate.  If you just want a good text editor, the price may be a bit steep, but once you see some of the capabilities, you'll understand the magic.

The folks over at DVD-To-iPod-Coverter.com have a nice guide on how to rip DVDs and toss them on your iPod video. Being a 'technologically adept' person, I get asked how to do this all the time, and frankly it pisses me off because I have no idea since I don't own an iPod video.

The website offers some free, fully functional, and not time limited software for you to use to convert your DVDs and toss them on your iPod. Seeing as how Apple tries to make everything incredibly easy, it's amazing how difficult it can be for computer newbies to do this. There are, of course, various other software tools you can use to accomplish this task, but this guide is a great place to start.

The guide is simple, easy to follow, and complete. It's definitely there for people who have no idea what they're doing and if you know those kinds of people, feel free to send them the link. The guide includes a ton of pictures if words aren't enough, and the pictures are simple and easy to follow. It's nice that someone finally put a guide together for those that need it.

As OS X 10.4.6 dropped, the computer world went nuts with the whole Boot Camp thing.  But amidst the incredible news, an interesting item was overlooked by most.  You see, Boot Camp makes it possible to dual boot to Windows XP (unless you've been living under a rock, you know this already).  In order to do that, a Partition needs to be created on your hard drive for XP to live on.  Has it clicked yet? 

So a partition had to be created to boot XP from - which meant you needed to create a partition on the drive you were currently using without disrupting any of your currently working files.  That's a nifty trick.  Obviously Apple has streamlined this process so the folks who get queasy about these sorts of things don't have to lose their heads.  But the capability is there, and it's pretty significant.

Luckily, Mac Geekery has a little run down on how to try this for yourself.  It's surmised that the capability is only evident on Intel Macs.  I tried it on an external hard drive of mine (I'm running a G4 PowerBook) and it didn't work for me.  BUT.  I'm not all that savvy when it comes to technical partitioning and such.  I can get a vanilla partition or RAID setup going, but this stuff was admittedly, over my head.

Let us know if you've tried it, and what your experience was.  Of course, back up, back up, back up before getting started.

Intel has released a number of compilers and libraries that compensates Apple's new platform, and can be integrated with Xcode. Intel has made these tools to make targeting applications for the Intel Core Solo and Core Duo processors easier and the application itself will become more efficient and faster. The four tools are:

• Intel Fortran Compiler for Mac OS: For compute-intensive applications, this compiler will maximize application performance fast and easy. This supports OpenMP. It also takes full advantage of the features in the Intel Multi-Core processors.
• Intel C++ Compiler for MacOS: This compiler is highly optimized for the handling of demanding applications. This compiler has an advanced support for threading through OpenMP and the auto-parallelism capabilities.
• Intel Math Kernel Library for MacOS: This library has the mathematical functions which will reduce the need for hand-coding.
• Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Mac OS: This library set has highly optimized functions for math, graphics, audio, video, image, etc. to enable to reduce development time.

These compilers and libraries integrate with Xcode nicely. Intel has also included the documentation for these libraries. There are free trials for each of these tools, however, if you want the full version, prepare to dig deep in to your pockets cause these are quite expensive. The Fortran compilers standard and professional versions would cost around $499/$649 respectively while the C++ compilers are around $399/549. The math library is $499 and the integrated primitives are $199.

WinCurity have a useful article on identity theft and information loss. For example, you're ready to get rid of your iPod, phone, laptop or whatever gadget you may have that has important information stored in it. The first thing you do is delete all of the contacts, contents or whatever is in it right? After having done that, you'll either sell it or give it to a charity shop; however, unlike a lot of people, you forgot that anybody, with the help of a bit of software, can recover and view what you used to have stored. When that happens, all sort of trouble can go to you and your friends (those who are in your contacts.)

Thanks to WinCurity, they give various case studies and solutions to aid you in properly deleting information. This all goes down to the physics of memory. For example, on a hard disk when you delete something, all it does is reallocate the space, so the information is still there waiting to be overwritten. Even when it's overwritten or scrabbled, there is the possibility of finding what was there. Lets hope this information is useful to those looking to dispose of their technology.