Monday, September 13, 2010

Looking for a bargain? Try the MacUpdate Bundle...

I decided to buy the new MacUpdate Bundle and surprisingly I didn't regret it five minutes later like I usually do after an impulse purchase.

For $49.99 you get $443 worth of apps and if you are one of the first 20.000 buyers you get two bonus apps. The loot is as follows:





ShareTool from YazSoft - Securely connect to your home or office network
via Bonjour from any location. 
Backup Pro from Belight Software - Synchronization and backup utility
that gives you more options that Time Machine does.

Voila from Global Delight Technologies - Capture and record, edit,
annotate, organize and share images and video.

Espionage from Tao Effect - Not quite what the name suggests, this is an
encryption application. It lets you encrypt and password protect individual
folders and files. Integrates with Finder and various other applications. The
app also features an auto backup feature.
My Living Destop from Amuse Inc. - Does just what the name says, features
25 different scenes and lets you import your own videos. Also includes a
video screensaver.
Mind Node Pro by Markus Müller -  Mind mapping application. Pretty
straight forward and most of all simple, quick and easy to use. Just the way
I like it.
Toast 10 Titanium from Roxio - This hardly needs introduction, standard CD &
DVD burning suite for OS X. Ships with a gaggle of secondary utilities
including a Disk Cover editor.
Concentrate  - Workflow and productivity app that helps you
streamline your workflow. Does things like block distracting websites and
lets you define an activity and launches the apps and websites required.

Cashculator from Apparent Software - Who doesn't need to organize
their finances? The interface is clean, simple and intuitive the only data export 
option is *.csv format. This forces you to do use Excel's lame import wizard if 
you ever feel the need to do analyze your expenses with a heavy duty app.  
It would be cool to have an iPhone/iPod counterpart for this CashCulator.
Live interior 3D standard from Beligth Software - Easy to use 3D interior
design app. Not exactly something I'll use a lot but it looks pretty impressive.
Bonus: Vitamin R from publicspace.net - A productivity app that basically
aims to help you to organize your tasks and increase your productivity using
time-slicing.
Bonus: Compartments from LittleFin software - A Home Inventory program.
Need to organize your possessions?

I can find a use for all of these apps but the highlights for me are Mind Node ProBackup Pro, EspionageShareTool and Toast 10 Titanium in that order. The offer expires in 9 days from the time of writing so don't wait too long.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Steve Jobs zapped my iPod icon

My old iPod used to appear as an icon, like a USB drive, on my desktop when I plugged it into my MacBook which allowed me to eject the thing irrespective of which space I was in by simply going to the desktop selecting the thing and hitting [CMD] + [E]. When Apple removed that feature it annoyed me somewhat since I now had to switch spaces, find the iTunes window, locate the iPod (or iPhone these days) and eject it. I wasn't too fond of the idea of using one of those menu applets (although there are some nice ones) so I finally got around to creating a little application that ejects the iPod.

Fire up the AppleScript Editor:




Copy the following code into the edit window:

1:  tell application "iTunes"  
2:      repeat with s in sources  
3:          if (kind of s is iPod) then eject s  
4:      end repeat  
5:  end tell  

Save the script with the following settings:


Finally let's change the default icon, the easiest way to achieve this is to click the "Bundle Contents" button in the upper right corner. Delete the applet.icns icon using the right click menu, drag and drop the Eject iPod.icns file (which you can download here) into the "Bundle Contents" pane and rename it to applet.icns. Finally save the AppleScript app again. I like to keep this thing in the dock although I ususally prefer to run it through Spotlight which is the reason I created this app in the first place. Quick and easy. If you are lazy you can also download this crappy little app here.