Proteus

You may remember this post where i mentioned that iChat is great. But, it in fact as I said, doesn’t support Yahoo! which I now really need. So I turn to Adium, but the interface just bothers me. Why? I really have no idea. But, I lived with it, and one day it refused to connect to Yahoo!. Below is a list of the only good multi-protocol IM clients for Mac.
Adium
Fire
Instandbird
Proteus

So Adium won’t connect to Yahoo!. Off the list.
Fire as discontinued development, and I don’t want an updateless application.
Instantbird is a little too purist, with contact list, chat.
Hmm Proteus? Never tried it.

Wow. It connects to everything. It looks great. It operates great. The interface is nice. And best of all, the dock icon rocks. And I think I know why I didn’t like Adium–there was always a bird watching me a flapping it’s wings when I got a new message. Luckily, with proteus when I get a new message, the dock icon just bounces.

Proteus is the one IM application for Mac that I can live with. Yes, there is Pidgin, but that requires using the fin library and X11 (which trust me, don’t even try). The interface is simple, it connects to everything, it has options.

So Proteus is changing some of their sites, so the links to get extra stuff are all broken. I’m sure that will be fixed in the future, but the interface is still amazing, simple and functional. That’s why I like this more than the others: No flapping ducks, simple and easy but customizable interface, frequent updates, and connects to everything no problem. And that’s why it’s better than Adium, Instandbird, and fire.

Download
Homepage

Mail.appetizer

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESevkOA2DCo&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
This is one of the best plug-in for mail in existence.

Those Microsoft Outlook users, [you really need to get a mac!] are familiar of when you receive a new email it shows a notification box saying that you have a new email and it gives you a little bit of info like some (or all) of the message, the sender, subject, and even more (i don’t remember, I stopped caring about outlook when i got a Mac). Well, people may want to see what the message is when they hear the message indicator from the mail app. That’s what this is. The version(s) for Leopard and tiger are in beta, but let me say–it ROX. No, not “rocks”, ROX”. when I get an email, i see a little box in the top right of my screen (you can click and drag the box to where you want the notification to appear) that has the sender, subject, and as much of the message as i want. you can change transparency, and in fact a lot. here is a screenshot of the preferences.

So now when I get an email, I have a little window that shows if it’s worth checking or leaving for later.

Yes, that’s it. I love it because hey, I have new mail! I’m too lazy or I’m busy so I can’t open the Mail application to check it. But what if it’s important? How should I know? Mail.appetizer. It is also incredibly customizable.
Incoming mail at a glance–Mail.appetizer

Homepage

Download for Leopard (beta)

Podcasting Part 1 (Q+A)

This isn’t about just one piece of software–this involves feeds, servers, podcatchers and iTunes.

Podcasting. That one free thing of audio broadcasts that everyone has hopped onto, and people can subscribe too. Sadly, I’ve seen many people who have no idea how it’s done. Here’s some FAQs about podcasting with iTunes.
Q: Do you submit a podcast by getting the right account with apple and uploading it to their servers?
A: No. Apple does not provide any server space to host your podcasts, that is something the podcaster needs to have.
Q: Is podcasting as easy as putting an mp3 on a server?
A: After you have set it up, you put it on the server and update the XML feed.
Q: I want to do a podcast. I have people, material, (a) microphones(s), a way to save to mp3, and a server with a working domain. Can I podcast to iTunes?
A: Yes. That is al you need, but you need to create an XML feed for iTunes. This is NOT easy, unless you know how to do it the easy way (which we will talk about later).
Q:How do I submit the podcast to iTunes?
A: As I said, you need to have an XML feed. To submit the podcast, just go into the iTunes store in the iTunes application, select podcasts in the left sidebar, scroll down and click submit a podcast (left sidebar). There, put in the URL of your XML feed.
Q: After submitting, does it just appear in the iTunes store?
A: If all goes well during the submission, you will get a confirmation email saying that your podcast is under review wait approximately 24 hours, and you should get another email saying it was approved, ad the email will contain a link that opens to your podcast in the iTunes store. 24 hours after that, the podcast will be searchable in the itunes store.
Q:How much money does it coat to do it the easy way?
A: Other than the server space, completely free of charge.
I hope that this gave you a better understanding of what podcasting is like under the hood. There will be more posts on podcasting, including what the “easy way” is.