Category Archives: Freeware

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!

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.

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.

No more mirrors!

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This post is outdated and false. For the newer alternative then Jing, look here

What?? I finally bought captivate? no…..
But I did get Jing! Jing is a free, simple, screen capture software. Unfortunately, the saved output file is a really disgusting kind of swf file. What I mean by disgusting is that it really doesn’t work with many kinds of swf to _____ kind of converters. The only way to view it is through safari(/Probably any other browser with flash installed), and since I don’t have a server for myself set up yet (I have a domain and a server, waiting to be setup!!!), I can’t put that there for you to view through the web. I would really like to have the video right below here. That is possible, but I would have to pay $15 a year for it. I know, not allot, but to me all free things are good. But to get it below, I would get the pro version of Jing, which I can upload it to youtube, and in youtube there is an embed feature that I could just put right below or in the code of this post. But luckily, TechSmith (the creators of Jing) have registered www.screencast.com, where you can upload your jing video. Which is how I am showing you the video I made here: http://screencast.com/t/MrUZCeFWon

You need to zoom WAY out to see my whole screen!

GO SAFARI!

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Well, I take back my fact about flock being the best! Well lookie here, Safari 4 beta is here! I have no idea how long I have been missing this, but I found out about it last night on the awesome blog Life Hacker. The new Safari is free, and works on PC and mac (unlike google chrome). Here are some new features and screenshots:

Top sites page
New Tabs
And the capability of importing from the previous install of Safari.
I mean, this browser is just plain awesome! It is also very quick, and has a wicked post-install video.
GO GET IT!

MappedUp

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Despite having a Mac-like name, MappedUp is also in a version for PCs. This app is great for news junkies.

Ever wondering what is going on around the world, and on a map where it is happening? This is a free app just for that.
Sorry for the amateur quality, I am unable to afford software like captivate, or another video camera with a microphone.
DOWNLOAD IT!
Macs:
PCs:

Flock

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I think some people may be wondering, what is my favorite freeware web browser? Well, after searching all over the internet and downloading almost every known web browser for Macs and PCs (don’t worry PC owners, all of the web browsers that were only for Mac were horrible).

What I want from a web browser (in priority order)
5. Ease of use
4. Social networking compatibility
3. Overall compatibility
2. Speed
1. Easy to use interface.

The story- when I had a PC, I was too very interested in trying out new software, particularly web browsers. Internet was my thing (and it still is). I had used Firefox, but before that I tried a web browser called Flock, which I had enjoyed.
Recently, I was trying Firefox to see if I liked it as the best. and I thought I liked it as the best. But while the Firefox post to my blog was stil in draft form, I remembered about Flock. And I finslly rediscovered it and I named it the best. It had everything I ad listed up there as for expectations. Especially speed. Once it finds the server, it can just suck it right out of there, a little under the speed of light (literally).
Also, it is really easy to use. But its biggest part is connecting with social networks. You can connect to blogs, photo sharing services, youtube, and almost everything else in existence. If you connect to a blog service, you can blog straight from flocks blogging interface, which still works while offlne, where you can save as a draft for publishing and editing later on. In fact, I am using the Flock blogging application to create this post.

Homepage

Download!
Windows
Mac
Linux

iChat

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I recently started to use Adium, which was yahoo, google, and everything else known to man. But I am always interested in all of Apple’s computer products, And iChat I had tried and was not satisfied. I have a yahoo, google, and facebook IMs, and iChat only worked with AIM. So I used Adium. Then I was looking at pictures of the OS X desktop, and I saw the iChat icon in the dock. So I gave iChat another chance. I opened iChat and put in my AIM, and I was like, Okay. This works. then, I saw what other accounts I could use. I saw a Google Chat account, and I put that in. It calls it the Jabber list because that is what it uses to connect the gmail with iChat. Then, I got an iChat account, and that was awesome. It is called an Apple ID, which apparently when browsing the Apple Store your checkout will already have the info from your Apple ID put into the info. it gives you a _@mac.com username, but sadly you cannot use that as an actual email address.  I haven’t met anyone with an iChat account, but when I do I think it will come in handy. Sadly it doesn’t work with Yahoo! IM, but most of the people I know that have yahoo IMs also have AIM IMs.

The UI is very nice, and I really like the chat interface. The buddy list interface is also nice. I like using it with the spaces function so I can assign it to all of my spaces so when I switch spaces my conversation will come with me. I don’t usually like to keep my buddy list open when switching spaces, so I can just press the X button or do a Command+H, and keep my chat windows open.
I think that iChat is a great IM application, and you can be reassured with compatibility with OS X because all macs come with it.
Use iChat if you have an AIM or Google account that you want to take care of chat capabilities.

Quicksilver

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Pre Script:Quicksilver is not to complicated but easy to use. also, in the screenshots of this page wallsaver is not enabled because it sucks up 2 things-

Battery life and RAM.
Spotlight is a very convenient tool. only with key commands, you can search applications, files, folders, web history, and much more. But some things you can’t do, like type in urls, or run scripts, or execute large text. Quicksilver is
pretty much a spolight, but you can execute urls. for example, here is typing in google.

To get to this text entry tool, just press the period key. it will look like this. this is after I had done the search for Financing. It automatically selects what ever you had come in the results of whatever you had typed in before pressing the period key.
Then you can do things like Large Type, and URLs. To open any item, just hit enter. it will do whatever the action is that is to the right to whatever is on the left. After Pressing the period key, I typed some stuff in. Here I typed in Apple is awesome!  and as you can see on the right it said Large Type (if all you see after Apple is awesome! is a square, it is actually an apple logo. if it is a square, you obviously have a PC).
Once you hit enter and execute it, the text will appear huge ( in this case “Large”, as Quicksilver says) accross you screen in white text. you can then hit the enter key or hit the escape key to exit large type.

Then when you hit enter, it will execute the Large Type. Once executed, it will do exactly that- Make it really big over your screen.
Plugins can also be used to do other things with quicksilver.
If you find to be using quicksilver more often than spotlight but find that you are used to the spotlight command-space, you can go into the spotlight preferences and disable the key command, then go into the quicksilver preferences and configure it to have the same key command.