My Oats

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otzvfjT59Os&hl=en&fs=1]
Not what you think. This Web Service Is for creating your own wallpaper images.

This pretty much takes your mouse patterns which you draw and puts them into a cool symmetrical pattern. Many modes, many things you can do with it. You can select specific colors for the design as well as the background of it. And even, you can put it into photoshop and stick I don’t know, a logo into it (click for Good Morning Geek My Oats wallpaper!)? This is fun, and easy to do even with your eyes closed!
A cool thing about this is that it can link to a couple of other things.
1. It uses colors. and if you want to know what your color is, try out colourism.com! Simple. Put in your name and date and birth and it will tell you your color and complimentary color. That’s how I made that GMGMOWP (Good Morning Geek My Oats WallPaper) I mentioned above.
2. It doesn’t need to be a web app. What about Fluid (clickable)? It will become your own desktop application. I did try it using a web archive file and downloading doesn’t work. What’s the purpose of making a wallpaper if you can’t use it?
My Oats requires Adobe Flash player.
Free, online, no registration required!

iStat

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O-MXWa-XQ8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Some people who have followed my other blog Good Night Geek before it turned into an iPhone app review blog may have seen my post about MenuMeters. I have found an even better alternative though. iStat menus is a form of one of my favorite dashboard widgets called iStat (download link at the bottom). This is in menu form, but unlike MenuMeters, gives you a lot more info, such as temperatures and fan speeds. Also for you multi-core users, there is a separate CPU meter for each core. Finally, some definition between two cores. Also, I can monitor things like how fast my fan is running (for me it’s usually about 2000 RPM). You can also see why your computer is making far more noise than it usually is. I know. I’ll take a good look at my iStat menus. Wow, my temperature is almost 100ºF (you can change it form F to C to K), and Wow, my fan is running 3 times faster than usual at a blasted 6200 RPM! Now I know. I have my primary temperature (the one that appears in the menubar) as the enclosure bottom, but I can have it configured so it shows the temperature of well, almost anything! The nice thing is that if you want to monitor multiple temperatures, just choose the most important one as the primary and to look at any of the temps, just click the temperature in the menubar. it will then give you details of everything in your computer that has a heat sensor including CPU(s), Heatsinks, batteries, and even the bottom of your computer (enclosure bottom). It groups fans and power together, so if you click on the fan speed in my case, I can see how many watts everything is using and how fast my fans are going. Click on my CPU info and I can see a lot of info about what is taking up the most CPU, uptime, and even a button to open activity monitor. There is much more you can put up there in many different ways, But I already have a lot of stuff in the menubar and that does not work good with photoshop because of how many menus it has.

BUT HOLD EVERYTHING!
Now you can even check it out on your iPhone or iPod touch! All you need to do is download iStat server (free!) and install the iStat app on your iPhone ($1.99). Then, open the iStat server on your mac. It will give you a passcode. Next, open the iStat app on your iPhone. If you are connected to wifi, just select your computer and type/tap in the passcode. Or, you can simply click add and type in the IP address of your computer. After that, tap your Mac in the menu and bam. You will see Fan, network, CPU, uptime, and everything else that you could see on the computer itself. This will be viewable from anywhere as long as your computer isn’t asleep/offline. What’s going on inside your mac-iStat menus and server.
iStat menus
iStat server and iPhone
iStat Dashboard widget

Qumana

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Well, I think many of us long-time blog readers remember ecto. Well, that now has to be paid for. So I am hunting all over the web for another one because ecto now costs money. I had tried some that wouldn’t install right, but I finally found one. Qumana has a fairly old style, but really When it posts to the blog, gets the job done. when it posts to the blog, you wouldn’t really realize it was done with a fairly old style blog editor. It has all of the features as the blogger web interface, but has one big feature: saving to your hard drive. This means I can create posts even when I’m not connected to the internet, but I can publish them when I get an internet connection. Qumana is able to connect to multiple blogs of many sorts. The setup consists of entering your blog URL and credentials then selecting the blogs that you would like to be able to post to via Qumana. you can even insert an ad! Sadly, that is only compatible with adGenta, which I have no use in. But there is in fact one big flaw: the spell check is outdated. in fact, it only accepts internet as Internet. I don’t know if. this is correct of incorrect spelling, but from what I have collected internet is valid. Easy to use blog post editor: Qumana.
Home Page
Download for Windows
Download for Leopard
Download for Linux

Mactracker

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC62nggALlA&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]Ever wondering how that old Mac you got 10 years ago sounded right when it turned on, just to remember what it was like? Ever wanted to see how much RAM that first mac that ever existed had? That is exactly what Mactracker is for. It is a free easy app, that gives you info an every single apple product in existence. In fact, for many it has the available startup chime and even death chime that you can play right out of your speaker system. It gives you history, If it is still supported, memory, RAM, ports, and everything else you could imagine including OS version and Finder version. It is really that simple. When I say it shows every apple product, I mean laptops, iPods, iPhones, Desktops, Cameras, Printers, and even Newton models! Who knew that the MessagePad 2000 had a code name of Q, 5 MB of RAM, and ran Newton OS 2.1, and was available in english and german? All of that and more came from a single window in Mactracker. and lucky for everyone out there, it’s available for windows too! there is also a FREE iPhone app of it that features all of the features from the desktop app, but lacks the history feature. In fact, the Apple genius training class in cupertino uses this app, and that is where I found out about it. Apparently they use it so much they even have a dock icon for it! Info on every single Apple product: Mactracker.

Vienna

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogv6PBsbHLc&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Do you like to read RSS? I didn’t before, but now that I have found the right app, I love to use it. I used to try to use things like Google Reader, Th Mail application that comes with every mac, and even safari. But none of those well, “clicked”. So I have finally found this really cool application called Vienna. This is a very clean RSS reader, with a catchy name and icon (all an app needs to be downloaded a lot). But not just that, this app is good. It is another one of those apps that I had scanned over at a website and hadn’t seemed interested, but once I downloaded and tried it, I couldn’t live without it. Vienna almost looks like a mail application. It has RSS subscriptions in the left sidebar, and shows the RSS posts in the center. Click on the post and it appears in the small sidebar on the bottom, just like the defaults for a mail client. The dock icon does have a small glossy badge in the top left with a number showing how many unread posts there are. To mark a post as read, simply open it in he sidebar on the bottom for 0.5 seconds. To know what articles are read and not, it shows a glossy blue ball next to the post which disappears when you open the post for 0.5 seconds or more. That feature also reminds us of the Mail application that comes on every mac, except in Mail the blue ball is matte. All together, this app is great for reading RSS and Atom feeds. In fact, Good Morning Geek has an RSS feed. After you download this, make sure you add this URL to your subscriptions!:

feed://goodmorninggeek.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

CamTwist

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_-2MYR7hQ&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Yet another amazing piece of software in which I need to post early from. But trust me, I have a great reason. I found an amazing piece of software called CamTwist.

I tried CamTwist a long long time ago. I would try, and try, and I’d never quite understand it. I kept on trying and I was like, okay, there are a bunch of options here, but what the heck do they do? Nothing is happening! But I recently finally figured it out.
No, it doesn’t record or broadcast. it is like a virtual memory camera, that the computer will recognize as a real camera or webcam. The advantage here is that you can have the webcam do almost anything. It can be a view of the desktop, a movie, a slideshow, or even a set of flickr photos. Or at least that’s how it is with CamTwist. It is probably most useful for it’s desktop feature. It also has many cool effects that I can use, so that I can make it look like it’s matrix, on fire, or just plain weird. Now here’s the catch: You have to have your own recording tool that can recognize available webcams. Like the YouTube quick-capture. You can select a microphone and a webcam. Under the webcam if you have CamTwist running, will be a camera called CamTwist. That video camera will be whichever you select in the CamTwist application- your desktop, the actual webcam, a flickr set, a movie, or even a slideshow Hit the record button and you are recording whatever you want. and using CamTwist studio, you can get amazing transitions between different sources and effects (watch the video a the top of the post). The studio part of the application makes no sense at first, but it’s easy to get the hang of once you know it. And let me say that I found the application yesterday, and I’m already posting about it today. That’s FAR above my standard. This application does more than that, by doing nothing more. As you know Skype does video chats. You can select CamTwist as your webcam, then you can show your friend your desktop over Skype, add cool effects, and even show video and pictures to your friend without doing a file transfer and risking a virus. Or if you still want them to be able to see you in the webcam, there is still an advantage: effects. I know that a friend of mine that used a Logitech QuickCam with effects. In fact, I did too, and we’d both have fun with those effects. Then I got my Mac and he was bragging that I didn’t have any camera effects and that he could change it to look so cool. Not anymore! I also have FAR many more effects that all work, and I can show my desktop, play a movie, play a slideshow, even s flickr set. HA. I can even make me or my desktop look like matrix. I can show a rotating apple on my or my desktop wherever I want. I can put a halo on me or my desktop, I can even show what iTunes song is playing, and even a little icon and text that shows the weather conditions for my zip code. Even better, I can do all of them (and more) at the same time! It even also works like Skype on ustream.tv, so I can have me with special effects on ustream.tv, or my desktop the same. But you know what that means blog readers? You can watch me make my posts. All it takes is a little bit of popular twitter freeware, then just follow me on twitter, and I will post when I’m broadcasting my desktop of me writing a blog post. In fact, I did the same for this post. As I wrote this post, it was available to everyone else who had twitter and got my update with a link to the live broadcast page. Those lucky people got to see me type this blog post. And next time, you could be one of the lucky people to! you don’t need a twitter account to view my feed, but to know when I’m broadcasting you need to have twitter and follow me. Does this easy to use CamTwist sound interesting to you?

Carbon Copy Cloner

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9u4jWnhQU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

When was the last time you backed up your hard drive? If you haven’t, start soon. Yank that hard drive from that old computer, stick it in a USb enclosure, and copy your important (or even not important) files over, you don’t need software to do that. Backing up is nice, and is what most people do. But what about your settings, wallpaper, wireless networks, bluetooth devices, and modded boot logos you put on there? When you back up, you only have files and maybe even applications. But to get the rest, you have to do something called cloning. It means exactly what it sounds like: clone your hard drive to a disk image or other hard drive. This means that you can boot off of the clone (only if it is a hard drive) and everything will be there: modded boot up, wireless networks, bluetooth devices, email, apps, wallpaper images, even monitor profiles. and if you have the right tool, cloning is free and as easy as 123. But that’s only if you have an awesome app called Carbon Copy Cloner. This is a REALLY easy to use freeware app for Mac, and is usually referred to as CCC. It really is as easy as 123.
1- Select source hard drive or file(s).
2- Select target hard drive or disk image
3- Click clone!
It will take a little while, and there is even a scheduler. Sadly, if you select the delete files on the target that aren’t on the source selection, you cannot save that as a scheduled task. But I just put a sticky note on my monitor and clone right before I go to sleep, and let it run overnight. My MacBook has a SATA drive, which is really easy because they make USB enclosures for those, and I have a 200GB SATA sitting around. So I have found that it is best like this for me:
1- Source as whole hard drive
2-Target as my 200 GB SATA in a USB enclosure, formatted as the default format for your Mac’s hard drive (for the Leopard computers like mine, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), which I would never change).
If you are running a desktop computer, get a other usb hard drive, or if you have one of the same kinds of hard drives you have in your computer sitting around, find a dock or usb enclosure for it to use as the target.
Now here is why you want the exact same kind of hard drive to clone to: If your computer crashes and you need your data immediately like you are in the middle of a conference call, just plug in and power on your hard drive through USB, and hold the option key while pressing the on button. You will see the hard drive of your computer, then with a USB icon (depending on how you connect your clone, it may vary) there is your backup. Click it/move with the arrow keys to select it and hit enter. Before you know it, you are booting your hard drive as it was when you hit the clone button in CCC at the speed of USB 2.0 which is 480 MBPS. Not the fastest ever, but loads almost as fast as the hard drive plugged in. now you are forgetting that you are running of of a clone. That is if you need your data right then. But if you have a little time, I recommend getting everything back to normal. In your computer, remove the crashed/ruined/wiped/whatever happened as long as it wasn’t destroyed physically drive and put in the backup. Then, put the crashed/ruined/wiped/whatever happened as long as it wasn’t destroyed physically drive in the USB enclosure. Boot from the backup that you put in the computer and open CCC. Then say clone to your original hard drive which is now classified as USB (or however you connected it). Then once it is finished cloning, switch the hard drive again. It will be like nothing ever happened. Now that is something that a backup can’t do. you can’t boot off of a backup, you can only boot off of a clone.
And to tell you the truth, I hated backing up. Backup applications were slow, time machine is a piece of crap (along with iCal: FIX IT APPLE!), and copying manually took to long. Finally, I get a nice interface, cloning, super quick cloning, and best of all, FREE!

Review: Wireless Keyboard

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“The best wireless keyboard out there”–Me.
Yup, I love this thing. There is an amazing responsiveness to the keys, and it is TINY, but the keys themselves are the same size as huger keyboards. The new wireless keyboard is a huge leap from older apple keyboards. Only one thing, that isn’t actually a bad thing: I hope I don’t crack it in half!
The first setup is REALLY easy, and actually kind of enjoyable. First, you take it out of the box and of course, put it on your desk to see how it looks. Wow. now that’s an improvement of desk space. But it wireless, so it’s a little different from just plugging it in. So of course, you take out the rest of the stuff. Hey, look! there are 3 Energizer batteries that are AA. So the first step is to take them out of the packaging and untwist the left knob of the keyboard
and put in the three AA batteries, like shown in the picture below.
Then press the on button on the right of the keyboard, it should look like the picture below

Then you will see a small green light appear.

 

Now it is time to hook it up with your computer. Easy. Now what you have to do is go up to the bluetooth icon in the top right and click Setup Bluetooth Device like shown in the picture below.
Select Keyboard in the window that appears.
It will look for keyboards that are there. I have already paired and named mine before, and I unpaired it to do this demo. So this is why it has the actual name of my keyboard there. Select the keyboard and click continue.
It will connect and tell you a passkey to put in followed by the return key to confirm that you are actually pairing it with your own keyboard, not someone Else’s somewhere else.
Tada!
Now in the Keyboard and Mouse preferences you can name your keyboard and change other settings for your new keyboard!
So there’s the setup. Using the keyboard is great. It has the perfect angle for typing. And it is SO much thinner than the older keyboards, as demonstrated in the pictures below.
And look at the size of it. The exact same size as my MacBook, and way way way smaller than those older keyboards!!!
And with the Wireless Mighty Mouse it makes the ultimate wireless workstation, way better compared to the old ones, as compared below.
BEFORE:
AFTER:

And I’m sure that it looks great on your desk. Interested? Go get one for yourself.
Get a Mighty Mouse Here
EDIT: The above link is no longer active, because the new mouse is the Magic Mouse. The review on that Can be found HERE.

Double Twammy!

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Yes, double whammy, but of twitter. twammy. Twitter is definitely one of the best services I have ever used. Of course it is free, and it is web-based. it is very simple: a free micro-blogging service. If you aren’t using it, then you are definitely missing out on a lot. On twitter’s homepage, this is how it describes twitter:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
well if you are just to lazy to try and watch the video, I’ll explain:
Many people love to communicate with friends and family. But what are they doing? what are you doing? is one of the first questions asked by friends, family, and people you enjoy communicating with. Many times you can see what they are doing by blog posts, emails, and phone. But what about the things that people do and you never know about? you wouldn’t send, I’m mowing the lawn, and it is very tall, to someone in an email. they don’t really need to know that. But what about the people that are interested in you and do want to know that? this is where twitter comes in. You post what you are doing, and people that are “following” you see your update on their twitter homepage. You can post anything there though: just made a new blog post? post it on twitter so your followers know about it and go and visit. About to install hackintosh on your PC, and you are doing a live feed of it on ustream? post a tinyurl of the stream in a tweet to get some more viewers. Mowing the lawn? post it on twitter for your followers to know. You can follow other people you are interested in too. In fact, many celebrities have twitter such as Obama, Britanney Spears, and many others. Their “tweets” will show up on your homepage as well. Another sweet feature is replies. to reply to a tweet, just put @theirtwitterusername and it will show up as a reply. Another cool feature is that large companies setup what I like to call TweetBots because they look at every tweet looking for a keyord, usually their company name. Once when in Hawaii I tweeted, going out to dinner in lahaina somewhere, and don’t exactly know where, and guess what happened. I got a reply from Lahaina.com that said @maxswisher next time you need lahaina dinner suggestions, just come to Lahaina.com, and it appeared for me because it had the @maxswisher (my username) in front of it. All in your internet browser. But for you people that don’t like web-based much, there is something for you…
TWEETDECK!!!!
TweetDeck is by far the best twitter client for Macs and PC’s ever. On top of just tweeting, it now does many other cool things after an update: Now you can also post your facebook status! That part of it is a little bit on the buggy side given it is a brand new feature, but nonetheless it is AMAZING. You have a view in different columns, and each one can have something different. You can have one for replies to you in one, updates of your friend’s in another, and even make groups of different users for another. TweetDeck also has things like TweetShrink, which searches the words in an entered tweet and shortens them, like it will replace for with 4, etc.
It also has a URL shortener in it, so you can shorten URLs using bit.ly or tinyurl.com right in the client! You can also use TwitPic right there, and let me tell you: Wanting to find tweets with a specific word in them? easy! just click on the little magnifying glass on the top right, type in your term, and Voila! another column opens with all of the tweets for your search term. You can even have a column for Facebook friends’ status updates. Isn’t this thing amazing? Get it people!
TweetDeck Homepage*
Twitter Homepage

*Requires Adobe Air Application installer and Adobe Flash Player for download

I need your help- Yahoo!—Google?

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Fellow blog readers, I ask of you to do something for me. It is free, and I’d like you to use it in your daily lives for 2 days.
First, use Google Desktop for 2 days. get at least 3 Gadgets of your liking, and use them in your daily life. PC users might want to use the key shortcut to show the widgets instead of the sidebar,
but I may be wrong. Also try using the search box (PC users press CTRL 2 times really fast, Mac users press command 2 times really fast). After using that for 2 days, get Yahoo! Widgets. use the default widgets, try them out on your desktop, change the things you don’t like, and personalize it to your liking. After those 2 days, write HERE which you think was better, if you thought spotlight beat the google search box, and hive them both a rating out of 5 stars. You can download them below.

Review: Wireless Mighty Mouse

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I have always been interested in Apple’s buttonless mouse. But I used to be so aggravated by the lack of scroll capabilities and right-click. That was an an Apple Pro Mouse, which was the standard for the old tinted dome iMac. But now, all of that has changed.

Pros: Sleek buttonless feeling, wireless, right and left click, 360º scrolling, amazing laser precision, side buttons, and every one is completely customizable.
Cons: Side buttons a little hard to squeeze.
It is amazing how responsive the click is. It’s actually a, click!, loud, but you barely have to press on the mouse itself. It is also an amazing shape to the hand, for all sizes. It can run on 1 AA battery, but for longer life put in two. Also, If you have a mac, the Mighty Mouse works riot out of the box. It even comes with 2 Energizer Lithium Non-rechargeable batteries! All you need to do is pair it with your mac, and then you can start using it! I think that the default tracking speed is too slow, and I have it one notch away from fast. I also turned up the scrolling speed. The default is a little different from what you hear it is. Even the scroll ball isn’t set to 360º scrolling. I think that the best configuration is this:
Also, the precision of the mouse is amazing. I have never seen the kind of laser technology they use before. The light from the laser is completely invisible. The only indicator is a small green light above the laser. Also, the mouse turns off, by moving a slider over the laser. Reverse that to turn it on. But it doesn’t auto-connect, so to connect it, I need to use my trackpad and go to the little bluetooth symbol in the menu bar, hover over my mouse, and click connect, like below. The keyboard shortcut I assigned myself in system preferences, and that is not by default.
Also under the mouse preferences, you can rename the mouse, and see the battery level. If you have a bluetooth keyboard, you can do the same, but as you can see, I don’t have one (yet).

Fluid

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Hey, mac users. Remember what happens when you put a web location on your desktop or in the dock? You see a spring with an @ at the top, right? well, no more of that! With fluid, the website is actually an application, and you can select your own icon and name. But the interesting part is, that it is actually an application. It doesn’t open in safari, it opens in an app that is what you named it in Fluid. Below is a screenshot of the inputs. For this example I am using youtube with a custom downloaded icon, and I am saving to s specific folder I selected. The icon will work in every format (at least that is available of of google images) and every size, and Fluid will resize them for you.

All I have to do now is click create and it will create a .app file in the folder you selected (the default is applications). The app will look like the image below. Notice the name of the app is the name I specified in fluid (YouTube).
As you can see in the Get Info panel, it is a .app file.
Now, open the app.
WOW.
Take note of :
1. The icon
2. the menu bar’s app name
3. the lack of a url bar or back/forward buttons
4. the title bar of the window
If your icon is a png and has transparency, there won’t be a white background like in the above screenshot. That’s because my icon image was a jpg. But I can easily add transparency with Photoshop. If you have many sites that you visit frequently but you don’t want to use too much dock space, I would recommend stacks. Just drag the folder into the right side of the dock, like the below image.