Mac App A Day: Free Mac Software Thru December!

Yes, you heard correctly. In order to bring more publicity to Mac software developers, the Mac App A Day website is going to be releasing a new Mac app for free each night starting December 1st and continuing throughout the month, plus one more on New Year's Day. These will either be entirely free, or will have a trial period that has been greatly extended. The biggest problem will be remembering to visit the site each day! No titles have been announced, so we'll all find out together. Can I get a w00t w00t for free stuff?

Mac App A Day

Helpful Firefox Extensions

Welcome to November, all...mmm, I can almost smell that turkey cooking. Here's one for all the Firefox browser fans out there (yours truly, of course...and you have upgraded to FF 2.0, right?). One of the nice features of the way FF is put together is how you can add functionality to the browser very easily by just downloading and installing an "extension" in FF talk. Need an FTP client? Weather forecast? Want to know when a new GMail message arrives? There's a FF extension for that.

Well, econsultant.com has put together a pretty comprehensive list of FF extensions, sorted by category. I haven't tested any, but I don't think FF v2.0 should have any problems with them. At most, it may prompt you to download the latest version of the extension.

I Want a Firefox Extension to... (via econsultant.com)

Happy Halloween! Top 13 Online Halloween Sites

Well, the time is upon us...Happy Halloween! My blog is orange-ish for the day, and the photo is of me in costume where I work.

To get you in the spirit (groan), here's a site I came across that lists, in the poster's opinion at least, the Top 13 Halloween spots online. Enjoy, and try to go slowly when it comes to those sugar comas...

Top 13 Halloween Sites, Searches and Destinations (via SearchEngineJournal.com)

Play Adventure: Atari 2600 Online

I don't want to date myself here, but it was a Really Big Deal (tm) when, as a kid, I got for a Christmas present one year the Atari 2600 game console that I had been bugging my parents for. I would argue that everything you're playing on a game console today owes its start to the 2600. And if you bought one, there was one game that was a must-buy. That game was Adventure. The search for the chalice took you through castles, mazes, and encounters with deadly dragons and a psychotic bat.

Well, now you can find out for yourself what it was all about, as Adventure has been re-created online. Just click on the console buttons (just like on the actual system!) to launch your game, and remember to use the arrow keys to move around.

:sigh: ...when they talk about "back in the day", this was what it means for me.

Adventure

Pumpkin Carving Your Way To A New PC

Halloween is fast approaching here in the U.S., so there's still time for some trick-or-treat fun to be posted. Love to celebrate Halloween by carving a pumpkin, but don't want to leave your beloved computer out of all the fun? Combine the two, and create a pumpkin PC!

Being that this is an Apple-centric (and happily biased) blog, I present to you the Pumputer 1.0. But, since I am also OS-agnostic at work (I support both Windows and Macs at my Help Desk), I present to you the Dell pumpkin computer. Happy Halloween!

Pumputer 1.0
Dell pumpkin computer

Happy 5th Birthday, iPod!!

Yes, it was 5 years ago today that the original Apple iPod burst onto the scene, and helped the turn-around of Apple Computer into the media darling that it is today. It's amazing, looking back at the original model, to see how far the design of the case and click-wheel have come. C|net has a good story on the anniversary, plus I'm sure you'll be inundated with more news as the week progresses. Party on, iPod!

Apple iPod Turns 5: The Little Gadget That Could via C|net
Apple Computer iPod Website

Songbird 0.2 Version Released: MP3 Player and More

Songbird is an upcoming media player that owes much of its overall look to iTunes. However, whereas Songbird will play mp3s from your music library, it also goes beyond that functionality in what the site describes as a mashup between a "desktop Web player, a digital jukebox, and Web browser". Using built-in web pages listing mp3s, you can cruise to the webpage, see the music files as links, and then drag those files directly over into the library. Using the web browser aspect, you can add other bookmarks to music-hosting sites. You can also find and play videos. And oh yes, it's cross-platform capable -- Macs, Windows and Linux can all join in the fun.

Sound cool? It looks to be. To see a better description of how it all works, head on over to view a video demo, and grab yourself the latest Developer Preview, 0.2.

Songbird
Songbird Screencast

Google Docs and Spreadsheets: No OS Needed

Think about working in the the two arguably biggest applications in the Microsoft Office Suite: Word and Excel. Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to worry about what computer you used to create the document or spreadsheet, whether Windows, Mac, or other? What if you didn't have to worry about where you stored that document -- what if you could store it online?

Well, that time has come. Google has offered for a while a service called Google Spreadsheets, and now they have just added Google Docs. Docs was originally a product from a company called Writely, which was acquired by Google, and now these two applications have been released together at docs.google.com. To take full advantage, you'll need to have signed up for a free Google account -- you've done that already, right?

Once there, you'll see what genius is really behind these two apps, although I admit that I use Docs more than Spreadsheets right now. Everything is stored online. You don't have to worry what OS you are running -- Mac, Windows, Linux -- as long as you can get to a web browser and on the internet, you can get to your stuff. All the familiar tools are there, plus more...you can now collaborate with others, giving them access via email address to your docs online so that they can make additions and revisions if needed. You can even upload Word and Excel docs you already have somewhere on your hard drive, and start keeping them on Google Docs & Spreadsheets. And finally, in what may be the coolest part, you can Publish your doc or spreadsheet online or on your blog. If you go the online route, your doc is assigned its own URL on google.com that you can share with friends, family, and colleagues. Or, you can post it directly to your blog.

I'm just scratching the surface here. So go check it out for yourself, and see what you can accomplish in these apps when you break the bond tying them to your operating system.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Google Mac Blog and Google Mac Software Downloads

From an exciting post over on the Official Google Blog, music to any Mac fan's ears:

There are a lot of people who love Macs at Google, and we're really excited to contribute to the Mac OS X platform. I know how frustrating it is to not get a regular dose of Mac news or find the Mac application you want. So check out the new Google Mac Blog to get all the news, tips, and insider stories about Macs at Google. Another site you might want to visit is www.google.com/mac. Created by Ryan Brown, an engineer on the Mac team, this site showcases all of the Google applications for the Mac.

Now we're talking. I've been a Google fan since the very beginning -- it's nice to see them returning the love. You can bet these are two new sites I'll be checking out regularly. And, since we're talking news feeds, you are using Google Reader, aren't you? ;^)

Google Mac Blog
Google Software Downloads for Mac
Google Reader

Rare McD's Monopoly Game Pieces

So, are you playing the latest version of the Monopoly Game at McDonald's? If so, you know you need to collect game pieces from pull-off tickets from the food items. There are plenty of instant-win pull-offs, but to win money (prizes go from $50 - $5 Mil), you need to complete various groups on the Monopoly board -- similar property color groups, all railroads, etc. As you might imagine, there's a method to the madness of distribution of playing pieces. You will always seem to find all but one that you need in any particular series. Which means, if you knew ahead of time what the rare pieces were, and then got one, you'd be on your way to a cash prize! Well, Amazing-Bargains.com has done the work for you. Head on over and check out the site to see if you're on your way to Easy Street (or is that Boardwalk?). Here's a hint: If you have the Short Line Railroad, you're gonna love what you see here. If you do win, don't forget who told you about the site...

McDonald's Monopoly 2006 Rare Piece List @ Amazing-Bargains.com

Dead iPod? Try Charging It...

I've linked to great articles in the Small Dog Electronics newsletters that I receive, so rather than explain who they are again, I'll just let you know that today's snippet deals with customers who bring in supposedly "dead" iPods, only to have Small Dog techs discover that what they really needed was a good, long, charging. I'll let Matt from Small Dog take it from here:

In processing iPod returns, many times the problem is simply a fully
depleted battery. Customers report that the iPod does not respond
when plugged into a wall charger or the computer, but instead
displays a battery icon with one bar that does not flash. In most
cases, leaving the iPod to charge for 30-60 minutes will revive it.
If this doesn't help, though, Apple outlines five steps to take (the
five Rs):

1. Reset your iPod.
2. Retry with a different USB port.
3. Restart your computer.
4. Reinstall iPod and iTunes software.
5. Restore you iPod.

While we're talking about batteries, it never hurts to emphasize
calibration. After using your battery for a while, it's possible
you'll notice reduced capacity. Calibration restores the battery to
its full functionality. For iBooks, PowerBook G4, and iPod, plug the
machine in and wait for it to fully charge. On laptops, wait for the
ring on the power adapter to turn green; on iPods, wait until the
screen indicates "Charged." Now, disconnect the battery and run your
computer or iPod until it goes to sleep. Finally, plug it back in
and fully charge again.

The procedure is slightly different for the very last generation
PowerBook G4 (with the dual-layer SuperDrive and high-res screen),
MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Pro (17-inch). First, fully charge
the machine. Once fully charged, allow the battery to "rest" for at
least two hours, then disconnect the power and run it until the
machine goes to sleep. Turn the computer off, or let it sleep, for
at least five hours, then fully recharge.

Along these lines, iPod batteries tend not to last as long as laptop
batteries. If your iPod is more than a year old, Apple will not
cover replacement of the battery...but Small Dog can help. You can
order replacement batteries for every kind of iPod for self-
installation (we'll send you instructions and an envelope to send us
the old battery for proper disposal) or mail your iPod to us for
professional installation.

Apple's battery calibration page: http://docs.info.apple.com/
article.html?artnum=86284
The Five Rs: http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/

Thanks, Matt, and Small Dog Electronics, for another fine Apple pointer (sorry for the pun).

My Own Private Google

Everyone loves to see their name in lights...and a popular sport using the Google web search engine is to put in your own name as a search term, and see what hits you get back. It's called 'ego-googling'. Well, here's the best of both worlds...your very own personalized Google homepage! Create one for yourself or a friend, take a screen capture, and surprise them.

Custom Google

Think Pink for October: Breast Cancer Awareness

During the month of October, this blog will join others in going pink to show support for breast cancer awareness. Via the pinkforoctober site:

Web sites will Go Pink during the month of October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research.

As the site mentions, men can get breast cancer too, so check out the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month site and get yerself educated...

PinkForOctober.org
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Halloween Costume Ideas at Costumzee

It's October 2nd..holy smokes, that means there's only 4 weeks left before Halloween! You want to be something different this year...something cool...something scary. Where to start? Well, you could start window-shopping at your local spook shop or Spencer's. Or you can turn to the web (would that be a Halloween web? Never mind -- lame). At Costumzee, you can input your theme or character, and they will bring to you matches found in their database. Easy! Hmm, the Burger King! I wouldn't have thought of that one...

Costume ideas and community - Costumzee

Ramen Recipes at The Official Ramen Homepage

I don't think I'll find much disagreement when I say that ramen noodles have to be listed as "the official noodles of the college experience". They are cheap, taste good with their seasoning packets, or you can split them up, and use the noodles for one recipe and the seasoning packet in another. Every now and then, you can find them in the grocery store at 10 for a dollar.

Matt Fischer loves ramen too...so much so that he hosts "The Official Ramen Homepage", talking about everything ramen, but especially featuring ramen noodle recipes.

What, you're asking how he gets to call his site the "official" ramen homepage? Well, I didn't see you claim the title first...

The Official Ramen Homepage

Free Downloads at iTunes Store

Free is good, my friends...so let's call it Free Friday. One of the cool things Apple does in its online iTunes Music Store (ITMS) is offer a free music single each week that you can download to your iTunes and iPod. Recently, they've also offered some free movie and TV downloads. Problem is, I can never remember from week to week to get over there and find out what the free download is for that particular week.

Well, someone else apparently had the same problem as well, and decided to do something about it. Voila, the website Get Free Downloads on the iTunes Store was born. When you visit, you'll see lists of what has been recently offered for free at the ITMS, with buttons in front of each selection, leading you to its location in the store. Pretty cool! When it comes to enhancing your music collection, or perhaps trying a new music group or style, this site keeps your free options open.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Get Free Downloads on the iTunes Store!

Hidden Tetris in Mac OS X

I have mentioned this here before, but if you're a Mac user, firstly, congratulations ;^) ...secondly, a great small business in Vermont that caters to Mac users (and has a great web presence) is Small Dog Electronics [Disclaimer: I am not associated with Small Dog in any way, other than a satisfied customer].

One of the niceties they offer is a few tech newsletters, which I subscribe to. The latest edition has two stories I'd like to reproduce here, and this one is about the game of Tetris hidden right within the operating system -- Mac OS X. From the newsletter, Tech Tails #333:

[...]According to Wikipedia, Tetris was invented by Alexey Pazhitnov at the Soviet
Academy of Sciences at their Computer Center in Moscow.

Now, like the political messages possibly hidden in Shostakovich’s
music, Tetris is hidden in OS X’s UNIX subsystem. You can unveil and
play Tetris by browsing Applications Folder > Utilities Folder >
Terminal. Type “emacs” and click enter. Now simultaneously press
the “ESC” and “X” keys. Now type “Tetris” without the
quotations. Use the arrow keys to rotate and move the falling Tetris
blocks. Press the spacebar to make the blocks fall.

A whole bunch of games are hidden in emacs in your Macs terminal. To
see the rest of the games, open the Terminal application, and type:

“ls /usr/share/emacs/21.2/lisp

/play” again, without the quotations.

To play these games, repeat the steps above for launching Tetris,
except substitute the other game’s name for Tetris. To quit emacs,
simultaneously hold down the control and X keys, and then
simultaneously hold down the control and C keys.

As always, be careful when you are using the Terminal application!

Thanks, Small Dog! And now, off to play Tetris!

Free Fonts at BetterFonts.com

Are you looking to spice up a Word document, creating an invitation, or just plain tired of the font styles your OS offers? Here, in one place, is a huge collection (over 10,000, by their count) of freeware and shareware fonts. The site is BetterFonts, the "user-friendly font site".

BetterFonts

Free Software, Part Deux: Software For Starving Students

How could I forget Software for Starving Students (SSS)? Apparently, very easily. Same idea -- free software for Macs or Windows, and you can download the software immediately with a bit-torrent client, or via direct download (defintely try bit-torrent, if feasible, due to file size). Sweet! From their intro page:

What is SSS?

The Software for Starving Students CD enhances the Windows and Mac desktop computing experiences by providing an easy way to install free, high-quality software titles via a user-friendly interface. It includes popular open source programs like Firefox and OpenOffice, intended to help students learn about and benefit from open source and free software programs. The SSS team put all the most commonly used free programs onto one CD to make it easier for students to install useful software (including fully-featured office suites, 3D graphic editors and much more) for free.

Why do you do this?

We created the SSS CD because we love open source software and want to help make it more accessible to students all around the world. Although all students need good software to be successful, many have a hard time getting it on student budgets. We empathize with them because we've felt that pinch ourselves. This software enables students to achieve more for less, and that inspires us. People all over the world are using free software to make their lives better.

After all of these years of mooching off of great volunteer programmers, this is our little way of saying thanks. By providing a tool that makes their great free software more accessible to software-hungry students from Boston to Bangalore, we feel we've given a little back to the free software community and to students all over the world. We are proud and happy to do so.

Have a great academic year, everybody!

SoftwareFor.org

Free, Open-Source Mac Software

Hello, everyone. With students getting ready to return to college (or having already arrived), I though it would be nice to post two site links. If you are a Mac-totin' and Mac-lovin' student (or anyone else, for that matter), and are looking to score some quality Mac software for free, have I got the links for you.

OpenSourceMac.org features software in a bunch of categories -- web browsers, e-mail clients, IM clients, FTP, bit-torrent...just to name a few! Plenty of Universal Binaries here, as well.

From their site:

Open Source Mac is a simple list of the best free and open source software for Mac OS X. We aren't trying to be a comprehensive listing of every open-source mac app, instead we want to showcase the best, most important, and easiest to use. This page should be a handy reference and a useful tool for getting more people to start using free and open-source software. If you think we're missing any great apps, please let us know.

Then there is FreeSMUG, or Free Open Source Software Mac User Group, dedicated to free software on the Mac. More fantastic software listings.

Enjoy!

iPod eBooks Creator Script

Just ran across this handy script today, courtesy of a site called Ambience...if you've got a large text file that you'd like to break down into smaller 'notes' that can be loaded and read on your iPod, check this out...from the page intro:

This utility/PHP script loads large text file and splits it into notes for use on iPod. It is easy to read your book in plain text format on your iPod via Notes functionality. All notes will be automatically linked, so you can move from one to another with absolute ease. It's as simple as turning pages of the book.

And so it is...now you can download large text files, like web site news, or reviews, or any other text, really...upload it via this site, and come away with something easily handled by your 'Pod. Niiice...

iPod eBooks Creator

Play Chess And Watch the A.I. Think

For those of you out there who love chess, here's a fascinating website, Thinking Machine 4. From the intro:

Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

The artwork is an artificial intelligence program, ready to play chess with the viewer. If the viewer confronts the program, the computer's thought process is sketched on screen as it plays. A map is created from the traces of literally thousands of possible futures as the program tries to decide its best move. Those traces become a key to the invisible lines of force in the game as well as a window into the spirit of a thinking machine.

I am by no means a good chess player, but it was interesting watching the A.I. sketch out its thought processes.

Thinking Machine 4

New Blog Layout via Beta Blogger

Hello there, K A C H U P fans. You may notice that the layout of my blog has changed. This is because I am one of the folks Blogger invited to their beta.blogger.com party, and so I 'updated' my blog to experience some of the upgrade features. It's pretty nice looking so far, and it does retain your previous template settings, so if all goes awry, I can hopefully revert back to my old layout. A major item I do see missing right now is the ability to edit the raw HTML so that I can put some of my own custom elements back in, like my page count and other tags. When that becomes available, I'll add them back. Stay tuned.

Make a Life Poster Using Your Mac

Hello...this is the coolest project I've seen in a while using your Mac, iPhoto, and PhotoShop. With these tools, you can select up to 98 photos, lay them out in a poster-size contact sheet of 30" x 20", then ultimately use iPhoto's built-in Kodak Print Service to order your poster. Too cool -- looks like something you'd find in the techie DIY "Make" magazine, but for Macs. It's all thanks to Mike Matas.

How to make a Life Poster

Sketch Swap: Share An Online Doodle

For the artist in all of us...there is Sketch Swap. You sketch something, submit it, and get a sketch back! From the About page:

You can draw anything except: if it's only a writing with no sketch, or writing only your URL, or anything a child wouldn't wanna see, anything completely garbled, just a dot, just a line, just a stick man etc. If you want to write something, you also need to sketch a bit... also, please only write in English so we can understand & approve it.

What a fun little toy...it sort of reminds me of passing notes in school, except in an unknown, pen-pal kind of way...

Sketch Swap

Google Games

You may remember back in February when I blogged about a game called Fastr that used the Flickr website to have you guess what tags a series of pictures had in common (don't remember that? It was back here). Well, that was Flickr. Let's look at Google.

You know I'm a Google fanatic. Sure, you got yer A1 and Yahoo and Ask, but I always come back to the king of them all in my opinion, Google. Well, who's to say that all you can do with Google is look up search terms? With all the technology Google leverages, surely there must be some creative soul that has come up with a way to play games using Google in some fashion, right?

Oh yeah. Courtesy of the Google Blogoscoped blog, here are so many Google games to keep you amused that you may forget what you went hunting for in the first place. Have fun...

Google Games

Key Points from the WWDC Keynote 2006

As promised, Mac fans, here's a quick list of links to what Steve Jobs & Co. presented at the Apple WWDC keynote this morning...

• MacOS X 10.5 Leopard, to be released in the Spring of 2007. Partial list of features here.
• Mac Pro replaces Power Mac tower, features 2 dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors.
• Xserve, also featuring Intel Xeon processors.

A link to the QuickTime stream of the keynote is now online! Find it here.

[Thanks Verne! :)]

Links to Apple WWDC Keynote Address

I wouldn't be a Mac blogger worth my salt if I didn't post links to on-line coverage of the Steve Jobs keynote at the 2006 Apple WWDC (World Wide Developer's Conference). MacDailyNews coverage is here. MacRumors coverage is here.

Enjoy the presentation! I'll be back to report some of my first impressions later on today, hopefully...start your engines!

[Thanks, Verne!]

Mac OS X Picasa Web Album Uploader

Google has had for a while now a service called Picasa that allows you to post photos online via Google, and organize them into albums, share them with others, etc. Very nice -- unless you were a Mac user. Well, that has been rectified as of today. The latest post to the Google Blog mentions, in part:

I'm happy to tell you about the release of Picasa Web Albums Uploaders (beta, of course) for Mac OS X. Picasa Web Albums makes it simple to share photos with friends and family, and now we've made it even easier on the Mac. This new download comes with two handy tools for uploading photos: There's a plug-in for uploading your pics within iPhoto. If you don't use iPhoto, or just want to upload the occasional picture, just drag your photos into the provided standalone app and click Upload. Either way, I can't wait for my fellow Mac users to showcase their talents.

Read all about it here. Links to creating a Picasa account (if you don't have one) and to the uploaders are contained within the article.

Geocaching Stats Added [sidebar]

I wanted to mention a great hobby my wife and I have been involved in for two years or so now, called Geocaching. Certainly you've heard of it, yes?

No? OK, in a nutshell, it's like a world-wide scavenger hunt, organized online the best by the folks at Groundspeak, via their website, Geocaching.com. Legend has it that, many years back, in Seattle, one individual was contemplating the idea that this new GPS technology could find practically any position on earth, if you knew the coordinates to punch in to your GPS receiver. He thought it might be fun to take a container with some trinkets in it, hide it out of plain site, post the coordinates on the internet, and have friends with GPS receivers try to find the cache. They did, and a new sport was born (please bear with me; this tale is from memory, and I'm sure greatly generalized...but the idea is the same). UPDATE: Read how it all got started in 2000 here.

Today, this sport has boomed, with caches hidden all over the country, in every state, and now around the world as well. The stated goal is to help folks get out, see the country, and travel to places you might not otherwise -- a scenic view, a fantastic campsite, a historical site. No digging is involved...the cache container is generally about the size of a Tupperware food storage container, something that is dry, and contains a log book for the cacher to log their visit, and occasionally toys or other trinkets to trade.

I am skipping over mountains of details here, and I really encourage you to visit the geocaching website and read all about it. Back to the point of this post, though...once you create an account, you can search for caches anywhere in the world to find (surprise yourself by searching around your town -- you'll be flabbergasted at how many are practically in your own backyard), and once you find a particular cache, you come back to the website, and log your visit online. Then they update your stats with how many you've found, and how many you've hidden yourself. They then have a way to generate the code to be able to post your stats 'banner' online, and that's what I did today ;)

You'll note that our total is rather low. One good reason for this...I use a power wheelchair to get around, so my wife and I try to filter out the caches that seem accessible to someone in a wheelchair like me. One method they employ is to rate caches from 1 to 5 in both difficulty of the hide, and difficulty of the terrain. I usually can get to most caches whose terrain difficulty is rated 1 or 1.5.

But enough about us...you can track our stats by the new little badge I posted here, but what's stopping you? If I can do it, anyone can! Get yourself a decent GPS receiver (some are available for $100 or so), and the forums on geocaching.com devote entire areas to discussing different GPS receivers. Once in hand, register yourself on geocaching.com, and then get out there!

In the words of Groundspeak..."Let's go geocaching!"

Groundspeak - Geocaching.com

Google Quick Reference Guide

For all you Google lovers out there...sometimes, you want to really refine your search, but you're not sure what different parameters you can define. You do know about what they call "Advanced Operators", right? These are ways to specify your search on Google.

For example, if you wanted to search for the definition of the word 'dictionary', instead of just typing the word 'dictionary' in the Google search bar (which will bring up websites featuring that word), you can type in 'define: dictionary' (without the quotes), which then does a lookup on the definition of the word, and returns those results. Similarly, you can type in 'movie: Superman Returns' and get back movie reviews and showtimes. Pretty neat, eh? Well, this only scratches the surface. And yes, there are places on google.com itself to find information on the available operators...but, in true 'net community-goodness fashion, Nancy Blachman has done the work for us, and come up with a cheat sheet that you can print out, and have handy for your next Google search. Clicking on the text near the top of the page ('Google Guide', or the 'Quick Reference...' title) takes you to more in-depth webpages on Google searching.

Quick Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet)

Canadian Animation Online

One of my passions is film, and animation in particular. In the art house theaters that I encountered in my college years, one of the treats was when an animation festival was slated to appear. In these, many works by directors you might know (but many more by folks you didn't know) would be displayed, one after the other. The producers would string together enough shorts to make an overall program length of an hour and a half or so.

One of the most consistently funny animation groups were the ones sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada. Do titles like "Blackfly" or "The Balgonie Birdman" ring a bell? No? Then get yourself over to the NFB webpage listed below to view any of 50 animated short films right in your web browser. You'll be glad you did. You can search the films as well, by title, director, production year, and more. Enjoy!

Focus on Animation - ONF

Etch-A-Sketch Master

I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s. Back then, it seemed like every kid, at one point in their kidhood, was presented with an Etch-A-Sketch as a gift. It was fantastic how you could manipulate two small knobs and produce an etching in silver powder that was your own personal masterpiece...until a sibling or some other individual with no conception of fine art grabbed your one-of-a-kind design, and shook it away into so many particles of inspirational dust again. Back to the tabula rasa.

Well, there's playing with an Etch-A-Sketch, and then there's mastering it. Don't think you can really create art on one? Check out the work of George Vlosich III on his website Etched In Time. You will be amazed. And you will find a new definition of the word "patience".

Etched In Time

Misheard Song Lyrics

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard about the books and desk calendars that feature misheard song lyrics. It all started in a collection called "'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy", a goof on Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. I got my sister a desk calendar for this year featuring a different misheard lyric each day, and some will have you in tears, they are so funny.

Well, I read something the other day online somewhere (nice and vague, huh?) that reminded me to check out the website. And so I did. It had been a while since I visited, and the site looks much nicer and has more interactivity than it did before. Take a look! You can look up lyrics by using the alphabetic index, or you can click on "Grab a random lyric", and see what random goodness is in store. Either way, it's a great way to find out what other people *thought* they heard. Probably the best part is, you can submit misheard lyrics yourself! Enjoy.

'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy (1st book in collection)
The Archive of Misheard Lyrics (website)

Frogger Croaks Again

So I have this younger sister. When we were growing up (not to give away our ages), we were all about the Atari 2600 game console. Two of my sister's favorite arcade games were Space Invaders and Frogger. When they came to the Atari, she was in heaven. But, then we all grow up, and you lose your liking for kid stuff like that.

Right?

Neave Games has some wonderful web-based games that take you back to those arcade classics, including Frogger, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Simon, and a few more. Save those quarters for some Pop Rocks and Wacky Packs, kiddos ;) ...I wonder how long it'll take my sister to notice this link?

Neave Games

Happy Independence Day Weekend!

We here in the U.S. celebrate our Independence Day on the 4th of July, but with that day falling on a Tuesday this year, it leads to a long weekend for most, stretching a 2- or 3-day weekend into 4 for some.

In the spirit of pyrotechnics, here are some fireworks for your browser. Java is required, and remember to turn up your speakers :)

Fireworks In Your Browser

Free Online Mac Games

OK, I know, I know -- I've been gone a long time. Sorry about that, but sometimes work and life intervene, and the dollars must be made. In any case, now that summer's here and the workload has decreased a bit, I thought it was high time to post again.

Noted on MacCentral.com today:

Macgamestore.com, which sells boxed and downloadable versions of commercial and casual games, has launched a free Web-based game service that lets you play fifteen different games online without paying a dime.

The games simply require a Java-capable browser, including Safari and Firefox. They’re Web versions of popular casual games that Macgamestore.com also sells, including Mystery Case Files: Huntsville and Fish Tycoon, as well as “classic” arcade games like Space Invaders and Asteroids.

Sounds great to me! Always looking for fun time-wasters for the Mac..

Check it out!
Macgamestore.com

Happy 5th Birthday to Mac OS X!

Fellow Macolytes,

Today, March 24, 2006, is an annivesary for our platform of choice. For it was five years ago today that the operating system that replaced the venerable OS 9 on the Mac debuted, it was called Mac OS X, and it was good.

Finally bringing the stability of the UNIX world to its underpinnings, protected memory areas for applications, and too many more to list, it revolutionized Macs forever, and paved the way for other important changes in software and hardware design and implementation.

John Siracusa of arstechnica.com, who by his own admission has arguably written the most words on the subject of OS X, gives us a interesting read on the auspicious occasion.

Five Years of Mac OS X

Welcome Kaboodlers!

I just wanted to say "hello" and a big "welcome" to viewers to this blog from the Kaboodle site. Checking my logs, I've seen an influx of new visitors since I reviewed Kaboodle here. Take a look around, and please come back! Hopefully a few of you will be Mac fans, and will find something here to pique your interest. And hey, how about someone Kaboodling this site, and letting me know where to find your page? ;)

Camino 1.0 Mac Web Browser Released

For all you Mac-lovers out there...the Mozilla organization released v1.0 of their Camino web browser this past week. The Tech Tails newsletter I receive from Small Dog Electronics does a better job explaining it:

Many of you are probably familiar with Mozilla FireFox. It is one of the best browsers around for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Well, Mozilla also has a browser for OS X only, Camino, which is a bit more lightweight then FireFox.

Camino has been in beta for quite some time. This past week they finally released version 1.0. The new version includes an updated download manager and better built-in ad-blocking. Camino also works with other OS X applications such as Address Book, Keychain, Finder, and Bonjour. Like FireFox, it supports tabbed browsing so you don't need to have ten windows open when you're surfing the web.

Camino is an open source project, meaning users all over the world can work on this project and help make Camino a better web browser. Camino is a universal binary, so it will work nice and fast on the new Intel Macs.

I've downloaded it on my Mac, and it has been smooth as silk so far. Give it a try!

Camino 1.0

Cranky Customers Unite!

I have been a fan of Randy Cassingham's writing for some time now -- years, in fact. What, you don't know him? You may have run across his work if you ever received an email forward with a list of 'funny lawsuits' or 'really true stories', because the person who sent them to you is sending on, many times without attribution, Randy's work.

The two mailing lists I mention are actually the Stella Awards, for "any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits", and This Is True, which "reports on bizarre-but-true news items from legitimate newspapers from around the world (never "tabloids")". Randy is a syndicated Colorado humorist, and his commentaries on this stuff are priceless, as well.

I mention his past work to really push his latest effort, Cranky Customer, True Tales of Customer Service Incompetence. My day job deals with customer service, and if yours does as well, then you know how it is when you try to be the best at dealing with people day in and out, then find awful customer service people dealing with you. We all have horror stories about bad CS reps and companies, don't we? Well, now Mr. Cunningham has taken on the topic with his newest website, and the topics have already been drawing some good responses. Companies that won't stop calling, packaging you can't break into, bad phone etiquette -- you get the picture. Head on over to these sites to enjoy, or signup for the email lists - you won't be disappointed.

This Is True
The TRUE Stella Awards
Cranky Customer

First Mac Virus/Trojan Ever? Negatory...

I just had to get my two cents in on all the furor over what was supposedly reported as "the first new virus or trojan horse" to hit the Mac OS X platform. As I suspected, all the alarmists were up in arms about something that turned out to be quite the disappointment for them in the end.

I subscribe to a wonderful email newsletter from a company called Small Dog Electronics, that has supported Macs for many years. I am not associated with them in any way, except as a satisfied customer. Anyhow, the newsletter I want to quote from is called "Kibbles & Bytes #453", and they explain the whole brouhaha better than I could:

Oompa Loompa Trojans?

The blogs were abuzz with news of what some called the first "virus"
for Mac OS X, which masks itself as the latest pictures of the next
version of Mac OS X, Leopard. If you download the file
"lastestpics.tgz" and enter your password to uncompress and run it,
it would attempt to send the file to everyone in your iChat buddy list.

Contrary to some reports, this is not a virus. It requires user
action to download, decompress, and launch the program. I don't know
about you, but I don't think I would ever download a file with the
".tgz" extension. That screams WATCH OUT! You cannot be infected
with this malicious software unless you intentionally download the
file (or get it via email or iChat direct transfer). Then you would
have to double-click on the generic icon to decompress it and then
double-click on the resulting file. Depending on how you have your
system preferences set up, you would probably have to enter your
admin password,too.

You can't "catch" this virus — you have to go through all those
steps. Always remember that it is important to understand what you
are downloading. Be cautious about running applications if you are
unsure of their origins. It is easy to make a file that would erase
your hard drive if you answer "yes" when Mac OS X asks you if you
want to erase your hard drive.

Symantec, which has a vested interest in discovering security issues
so they can sell you some software, has classified this Oompa Loompa
Trojan as a category 1 threat (on at 5-point scale with 5 being the
most serious threat).

So, rest safe, Mac fans...your platfrom is as safe as ever, and can still leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Small Dog Electronics
Small Dog Electronics - Mailing Lists

Writing Tips For Non-Writers

I happen to be from a family that really knows how to write. I have a sister who is a published author, and my wife has the next, great romance novel under wraps, and just needs to spill the words out on paper. But, all of us siblings (six total) seem to have been comfortable with writing, whether cards, letters, assignments, or e-mails. I believe that we were all influenced by my mother, who not only liked to write notes, cards and letters (as she still does today), but occasionally kept little travel journals on our family trips. I also claim her as my direct influence on doodling when I talk to someone on the phone. But, I digress.

For those among us who could use a few tips to straighten up our writing style from time to time, I present this wonderful site I came across from a blog called "Whatever". The post is titled, "Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want to Work at Writing", and it is excellent. As the author notes, even for-real writers will glean some tips here.

Whatever: Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want to Work at Writing

Fastr - A Flickr Game

Most of you already know about Flickr, a website where you can create an account and share photos with the world. Well, as you might expect, Flickr has amassed quite a collection of photos over time. What else can you do with these photos besides view them? Play a game with them, of course!

Fastr is a game that bases itself on the fact that, when you save a photo to Flickr, you can also add one or more 'tags' to describe the image, so a picture you upload of your tuxedo cat could be tagged 'cat', 'tux', 'tuxedo cat', 'black and white', etc. In this game, Fastr will present a series of ten photos. Each photo is presented about 5 seconds apart. Your job (after typing a name for yourself), is to enter a guess for what word you think all the images shown were tagged with. If you type a word and it is correct, you get points (from 1 - 10) based on how quickly you identified the tag (got it right after the first photo? 10 points. 2nd photo? 9 points, etc.). If not, type another guess. Keep typing until either all ten photos are shown, or you guess correctly. You'll know when you get it right; you immediately win the points you were entitled to. Then it starts with a new series of photos. You see your score, with other players, on the left of the screen. After a set number of rounds, the game ends, then starts a fresh round and clears the scores.

It took me much longer to describe it here than it takes to just jump in and start playing. Good luck, and have fun! If you see a player called 'Kachup', you're up against me!

Fastr - A Flickr Game
Flickr - Store, Search, Sort and Share Your Photos

Tour Walt Disney's Home at Disneyland

Fascinating. Via The Orange County Register, you can take an interactive tour of the apartment home of Walt Disney within Disneyland in California. As you take the tour, Disney historian Tim O'Day shares tidbits of information about select artifacts. Requires Flash 7 player.

Walt Disney's Apartment via The Orange County Register

Kaboodle: Saving and Commenting on Websites

I just came across Kaboodle this week. It makes use of the idea of "social" sites on the 'net, where not only can you get something out of the site, but you can invite others to share their opinions as well.

With Kaboodle, you add a toolbar to your browser window, with two buttons: Add to Kaboodle , and My Kaboodle. Then you're ready to start Kaboodling! OK, ummm...what's that? OK, check it out...

You're on the web. You come across a page you think is particularly nifty. You click on your 'Add to Kaboodle' button. Kaboodle then creates a sumamry of the page. You can then come back to it at any time by clicking on the 'My Kaboodle' button. Also, at the time the page summary is created, you can add notes. Finally, on the Kaboodle site, there is a Share Page option that allows you to share what pages you're Kaboodling with the world. Then, I could see that page, add my own comments, and so on. That's the "social" part of the process.

My brief run-down doesn't do justice to the nice intro they give to the site. The link below will take you to the 'How It Works' section of the site. Click on the links for how it works step-by-step, and for the FAQ. Happy Kaboodling!

Kaboodle: How It Works
Kaboodle Home Page

Atari 2600 Tank Combat Rides Again

Ahh, the good old days...remember back in the 70's, when the coolest videogame console around was the Atari 2600? ...um...or am I really dating myself now? In any case, the console shipped initially with the iconic game "Combat". Using tanks and airplanes, you tried to take out your opponent before they did the same to you. The tank option was always my favorite. You'd each start at opposite corners of a maze, then make your way to a strategic spot where you could rain turret fire down on your opponent...

Sorry, got lost there in the moment. Anyway, my point is this...some kind soul has brought back the Atari 2600 Combat game, programmed in Java, and renamed as TurboTanks. You can now play against a computer opponent using your browser. Game on!

TurboTanks

Happy 22nd Birthday, Macintosh!

Yep...it was this very day, 22 years ago, when we learned why "1984 won't be like 1984". The now-mythic Super Bowl ad that introduced the Mac also introduced us to the idea of commercials during the big game as an event unto themselves. But, at the core of it all, was this new computer. Small. Personal. And with some new pointing device called a "mouse". MacDailyNews has a great article on the commemoration, with links to the "1984" commercial and a true rarity -- a movie where a very young Steve Jobs introduces the Mac at Cupertino's Flint Center.

So, happy birthday, Mac...and many more!

MacDailyNews - Happy 22nd Birthday, Apple Macintosh!

Post-Its Meets the Web

Do you find using sticky notes useful in your everyday life? How about on your computer? OK, take it another step -- how about on the Web itself? Enter Mystickies...from their intro page:

To put it simply, Mystickies allows you to place little yellow squares of digital paper anywhere and everywhere you feel like in the whole wide web. Along with the ability to put sticky notes on webpages mystickies offers a powerful interface to browse, search, sort, edit and generally have a wonderfull time with your sticky notes from any computer that has internet access.

Sounds good...stickies that come up whenever you load the page. Now you can load it up, then set it as your browser's default home page. Cool!

Mystickies - Sticky Notes for the Web