Mac ReviewCast
Best of the Best Freeware for the Mac
by Tim Verpoorten
This was a month of freeware updates that contained many applications that added the universal binary version to its download list. But, like always there are still many freeware applications that are either new releases, or updated with new features. We'll look at these applications and try to point you at only the best of the freeware. As always, the Mac ReviewCast podcast will have my weekly listings of freeware and at the end of each month we'll combine all the weekly picks and present them here on macCompanion. Think of it as the best of the best list.
Rip to iPod: http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts08.php?page=1 - riptoipod
It rips each enabled (check-marked) CD track to iTunes and immediately copies it to iPod, deletes the file, and removes the track from the iTunes library, giving the appearance of seamless CD-to-iPod importing. You can also change your encoder on the fly and your Preferences-set encoder will be restored after the rip. Works in OS 9 and OS X. The latest version allows you to select one of two or more loaded CDs, one of two or more mounted iPods.
iSquint: http://www.isquint.org/readme.php
I've talked about iSquint before, but it's such a great program for anyone with a video iPod that I have to mention it again. iSquint is an iPod video conversion app. It's up to 5 times faster than Apple's method, works well with AVIs and MPEGs, and it's free. It's also really easy. Just drag in your file, and click Start. You can also choose "TV" or "iPod" sizes, set your quality, or even go all-out by playing in the Advanced drawer. On a 1.5GHz G4, iSquint can convert most video files to iPod-screen-sized videos in real-time. Depending on a few factors, a 20 minute video will take up anywhere from 50-150MB of disk space.
Homebrew Formulator: http://brew.reboritull.com/
Are you a home brewmaster? Maybe you've wanted to try your hand at brewing your own beer? This app is for you. Homebrew Formulator is an application for creating and managing beer recipes on Mac OS X. It is a Filemaker runtime application, so it has a powerful database driving its capabilities. Some features include Creation of full mash, partial mash, and extract beer recipes, Beer list sortable by recipe name, beer style, or date brewed, Beer styles from the most current BJCP Style Guidelines. There are tons more features that would make any brewmaster salivate.
Next we look at a unique and beautiful program called;
Celestia: http://celestia.sourceforge.net
It's a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-go to' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit. Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects. This is breath-takingly beautiful, you have to check it out for yourself.
I love changing my desktop pictures, I'm amazed at the wonderful photography out there and how great it looks on my iMac's desktop. This program gives me the best photos out there for my desktop. It's called;
Pic-A-POD: http://www.troz.net/Pic-a-POD
It downloads the picture of the day from your choice of three sites: National Geographic, Astronomy, and Earth Science. Set your desktop picture to one of the downloaded photos. Schedule downloads to update automatically. Change the desktop picture periodically. Download photos of the day for any selected date.
Mini view to free up desktop space. Picture Browser & Viewer to scan through all downloads. Themes allow you to select a color scheme or design your own. I love great looking desktops and this program will do it for me.
DesInstaller: http://krugazor.free.fr/software/desinstaller/DesInstaller.php
The DesInstaller is a simple tool that reads the receipts generated when you install a pkg file with Apple's Installer. Every file installed by this package is removed, even if it has been modified, and archived if you ask the DesInstaller to. If you decide to use a reinstaller, you will get a tar archive, for portability, and a shell script with a "command" extension, to be double clickable.
Mr Tides: http://homepage.mac.com/augusth/MrTides/
This program is based (roughly) on XTide 2.8 by Dave Flater. The XTide web page is a great source for tide program information. It provides tide and current predictions in a wide variety of formats. Graphs, text listings, and calendars can be generated, or a tide clock can be provided on your desktop.
Beware of Molecules: http://totlandweb.info/
While Beware of Molecules is primarily a tool for calculating the weight of a chemical compound with a given chemical formula, we all know that such formulae are not always easy to remember, and to be honest, who remembers the formulae (or proper chemical names) of things like nicotine, caffeine or paracetamol? Therefore, Beware of Molecules 4.0 contains a database of not only what names ties to what formula, but also, where applicable, multiple names for the same compound or different compounds with the same empirical formula. (The presence of a given compound name is only required for name <=> formula translation, and not for correct calculation of the molecular weight.)This reference is automatically updated from Totland Software’s server, although this is optional.
tickr for flickr: http://www.stuffonfire.com/P/tickr/help/
tickr for flickr is a way to enjoy photos from flickr as they slowly glide down (or across!) one of the coveted spaces on the edge side of your desktop. You can search for photos by tag, by title and description, or by user, and tickr will scroll the photos until flickr runs out of photos to show you. In many cases, this is a really, really, really long time.
iFile: http://www.aliencrypt.com/page3/quick_convert.html
Using Drag and Drop Files, iFILE makes file format conversions easy and simple. You can convert single or multiple files at once into the following formats: Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text Format (RTF) - (RTFD), Simple Text (.TXT), HTML Documents, (HTML Web Archives), and (XML) Documents and the upcoming version 1.4 will have Adding simple and fast Graphic conversions. ( PNG, JPEG, GIF, Tiff, PSD, ...and some more.
FrontRow Enabler: http://www.andrewescobar.com/frontrow
Thanks to an update from Apple, Front Row can now be easily installed on any Mac running 10.4.4 Tiger. While you previous had to rely on quirky hacks, Front Row can now be added to Tiger with full support, including keyboard shortcut and sound preferences. The website has the download for Frontrow and the enabler, just go to the URL and follow the directions.
Gimp: gimp-app.sourceforge.net
If you never tried The Gimp, then you're in for a real treat. It's a Photoshop type program that's easy to use and multi-platformed. The best thing about it is it's free. Download it and give it a try if you're not running Photoshop.
Open Office: http://www.openoffice.org
As the name suggests, OpenOffice.org is the most open office suite available:
· no commercial licenses or software compliance issues to worry about
· no language barriers - if it’s not yet available in your language, the chances are it will be soon
· available on all major computing platforms
· the first office suite to comply with the OASIS OpenDocument format
· the source code for the software is freely available under a full OSI certified license
· the software looks and feels familiar and is instantly usable by anyone who has used a competitive product
· it’s easy to change to OpenOffice.org - the software reads all major competitors’ files
· OpenOffice.org is supported by a global community of friendly volunteers, only too happy to provide assistance to newcomers and advanced users alike
What’s in OpenOffice.org?
WRITER is OpenOffice.org’s word processor
Use CALC to bring your numbers under control. This powerful spreadsheet has all the tools you need to calculate, analyze, summarize, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.
IMPRESS is the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
DRAW will produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects.
New to Version 2, BASE enables you to manipulate database data seamlessly within OpenOffice.org. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, either using your own database or Base’s own built-in HSQL database engine.
CocoaBooklet: http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/cocoabooklet
This program lets you create a booklet out of a PDF file, which is known as pages imposition. It is a useful tool to reduce the number of pages that has to be printed, which lets you save a lot of paper.
A booklet is book that is bound in the middle. Which means that a booklet has four pages printed on one sheet of paper (two on each sides). The bottom line is that you simply print your booklet, staple it by the middle, fold it in two and you have a book: CocoaBooklet lets you use it as a PDF service. This is only available for Mac OS X 10.2.4 and above. Once you've installed it, try printing a document (from your favorite browser or text editor or whatever). On the print window, you will find a button with a PDF icon in it, if you click on this button you will have the opportunity of creating a PDF file but also to directly create a booklet.
These next two programs are from Peter Maurer, we've talked about him and them before, but he seems to create such great freeware apps that you have to talk about them again and again.
Service Scrubber: http://www.petermaurer.de
You all know about Mac's services menu right? It's the list of services performed from the drop down menu under the name of the program you're running in the menubar.
Wouldn't the services menu be much more useful if it weren't overcrowded by services you never even thought of using? With Service Scrubber, you can:
· restructure the services menu
· change service keyboard shortcuts
· disable services
Textpander: http://www.petermaurer.de
We've talked about this before and I just can't tell you how productive you can be when you learn to use Textpander. Haven't you always wanted to type more efficiently and more accurately? Textpander listens to what you type and inserts text snippets on the fly whenever you enter their corresponding predefined abbreviations. Things you can do with Textpander;
· insert standard greetings, text fragments, and signatures — including formatted text and pictures
· insert the current date and time in any format you prefer
· use editor-independent code templates and have Textpander position the cursor just where it needs to be
· type special characters without having to launch any special characters palette
· have Textpander correct typos automatically
· import text snippets from other typing utilities
Textpander is controlled from its own preference pane inside your System Preferences. Being designed for easy handling, Textpander blends in perfectly with your operating system.
Webphoto: http://www.ionize.org
Have you ever wished you could easily put your iPhoto library online? With webPhoto, you can.
webPhoto is a Java web application that reads your iPhoto Library and presents an interface similar to iPhoto via a web browser so that anyone on any platform can view your photos. webPhoto is perfect for multi-platform homes and businesses that have an iPhoto library they would like to share. Features:
- Display the contents of your iPhoto library via a web interface
- Automatically resizes images down for lower-bandwidth users (New!)
- Choose which albums to display
- Show or hide images associated to your iPhoto keywords
- Create user accounts to protect your images
- Require a login to view the photos in your site
- Easily email users to inform them of new photos
Xfolders: http://www.kai-heitkamp.com
If the finder is getting you frustrated, you may enjoy this freeware application. Xfolders adds to the functionality of the Finder by acing a little like that old Norton application called Norton Commander. If you ever used it, you'll know that it was a solid functional product. That's what xfolder is doing for the Finder, check it out.
That will do it for this month. Hope you find a few freeware items that help you enjoy your Mac as much as I enjoy using mine.
