Some of these are applications you would not use every day, but are nonetheless good to have around for special situations or needs.

Internet

• Adium: Chat program that supports the basic features of more than 15 chat clients, include AOL, Jabber, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger (you may also want to get the official clients for Microsoft Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, as they support more advanced features)
• AdiumBook: Finds potential Adium contacts in your Address Book.
• AddressBookSync (for Facebook): Finds updated pictures from Facebook for your contacts in Address Book.
• Firefox
• iStumbler: Great for laptop users! Find open wireless access points wherever you are.
• Plaxo: Helps keep your Address Book data up to date (for contacts who have free Plaxo accounts), and syncs contact data between computers. Great if you have both Mac and Windows computers, and you want to keep their contact information in sync.
• Skype
• Transmission: BitTorrent client.

Word Processing and Text

• Bean: Simple, easy word processor.
• NeoOffice: This is a port of OpenOffice, designed specifically for OS X.
• TextWrangler: Saves plain (unformatted) text.

Audio and Video

• Flip4Mac: Adds proprietary Microsoft video formats to QuickTime, reducing headaches when you want to view videos online.
• HandBrake: Rips DVDs.
• Max: Converts between various audio formats.
• Perian: Adds additional multimedia formats to QuickTime, greatly enhancing your Mac’s ability to watch video online without installing all kinds of junk.
• VLC: Audio and video player that supports many formats.

Miscellaneous

• AppFresh: Searches your applications for newer versions you can download.
• BatChmod: Sometime you will need to change permissions on a file or folder; this program makes it easy.
• Locker: Batch locks or unlocks groups of files.
• Think: Hides everything but the application you are using, to help you concentrate.
• The Unarchiver: Supports many different compression/archival formats.
• WeatherDock: Great weather application.

What this means is that you can subscribe to weather reports for any city, and have the forecast appear within iCal. The 7-day forecast will display as a series of all-day events in the calendar. (All-day events appear as headers at the top of each day.) Weather details older than one day are automatically deleted, which is nice; it doesn’t fill up your calendar.

Here in an example page from Weather Underground, and the steps to get the forecast into iCal:
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=stl&wuSelect=WEATHER

This happens to be the page for St. Louis, Missouri. You can change the city to whichever one you want. In the upper-right, you will see the ICAL and RSS links. Clicking the ICAL link will download a file; that is not really what you want. If you right-click (or control-click) on the ICAL link, and choose the option to copy it, you can then switch to iCal, choose “Subscribe…” from the Calendar menu, and paste the address you copied. In iCal, right-click (or control-click) on the new calendar, and choose “Get Info.” Make sure the option to Auto-Refresh is set to “Every day.” Then you will get a handy 7-day forecast, unlike WeatherCal’s 5-day forecast.

In case you missed it, the MacHeist 3 bundle has been released. It’s really great this year; I’ve already purchased mine.

There are 12 apps in the bundle (three of them have not been unlocked, since the number of bundles sold has not reached the required number; but based on past years, it is all but certain that all apps will be unlocked). Even without the unlocked apps, it’s a great deal.

For a mere $39, you get:

• iSale ($40 retail), for creating eBay ad pages
• Picturesque ($35 retail) for quick photo effects
• SousChef ($30 retail) for managing recipes
• PhoneView ($20 retail) for manipulating/accessing your iPhone/iPod Touch data
• LittleSnapper ($40 retail) for managing screen captures
• Acorn ($50 retail) for simple photo editing
• Kinemac ($299 retail!) for 3D design and animation
• WireTap Studio ($69 detail) for advanced audio recording/capture
• World of Goo ($20 retail) for fun

If/when all the apps are unlocked, you will also get (at no extra charge):

• BoinxTV ($199 retail) for easy “TV studio” production
• The Hit List ($50 retail) for to-do list management
• Espresso ($80 retail) for web design

There are videos and descriptions for all these apps on the MacHeist website.

The most interesting apps in the list, in my view, are Picturesque, PhoneView, Kinemac, WireTap Studio, and BoinxTV. These five apps alone have a combined retail value of about $622. All for $39!

You also get a free app called EventBox just for visiting the page. It’s an interesting little app that pulls updates from various social networking sites.

I already have apps equivalent to iSale (GarageSale), Acorn (Photoshop/Pixelmator), The Hit List (OmniFocus), and Espresso (Coda). I’m not sure what I will do with those licenses. But even considering that I may not use all the apps, the bundle is a steal.

From the website:

CodeWeavers’ mission is to make Linux and Mac OS X fully Windows compatible operating systems. We do this through the power of Wine, which powers all of our CrossOver products. The CrossOver products make it possible to run Windows programs on Mac OS X and Linux without needing a copy or license for Windows itself.

Wine is an open-source reimplementation of the Win32 API for Unix-based operating systems. Wine allows Windows applications to be run without a Windows operating system license. CodeWeavers is the largest corporate sponsor of the Wine Project, and contributes all of its work to free Wine.

You can read about the reasons for the giveaway (quite humorous!) here.

I already own VMware Fusion, which I consider a better product. However, CrossOver is free today, and the software has been given a 4-star rating over at VersionTracker.com.

Unfortunately, Time Machine does not include any settings to control the frequency of backup. Fortunately, changing how often backups occur is not hard to do. There are basically three routes you can take; they all do precisely the same thing (change a particular configuration file):

• Use a freeware application called Time Machine Editor
• Use a freeware application called Lingon to edit the necessary file (this is the way I did it; however, Lingon is a powerful program that, used improperly, can totally trash your system, so beware; this is similar to using regedit in Windows)
• Navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto.plist and edit the file manually according to instructions here

This is truly so characteristic of Microsoft, it hurts.

If you are reading this in an email or RSS feed, and don’t see the video, visit my website.

Me with my new iPod Touch

I just bought a 2nd Generation (2G) iPod Touch 16GB. I have to say it is a pretty cool device. Although I would have purchased an iPhone if AT&T serviced my area, I think I will be quite happy with this. I bought it directly from the Apple Store, with my name and email address laser engraved on the back at no charge.

Although the iPod is known as a portable music and video player, the iPod Touch is so much more. Out of the box you can surf the Internet wirelessly, check your email, and use Google Maps with GPS (all of which require local WiFi availability). The built-in calendar, world clock, notes, weather, calculator, and remote control apps are pretty cool too. Hundreds of free and cheap applications are available. So far I have downloaded OmniFocus (the killer app for me), Del.icio.us Bookmarks, Facebook, several Bible applications, and some recreational and show-off apps including a virtual guitar (it’s really amazing … even though I don’t play guitar!), Enigmo (I couldn’t resist!), Koi Pond, a level (it really works … you can use it to level furniture), and a seismometer.

Many applications use the iPod’s motion sensor. For example, the level and seismometer make extensive use of it. A drawing program erases your drawing when you shake the iPod, and a virtual 3D dice application rolls the dice realistically when you shake.

The multi-touch interface is cool, too. When viewing a web page or Google Maps, for example, you can zoom in and out by pinching or sliding apart two fingers. The virtual guitar apps lets you pluck or pick more than one string at a time.

The device seems well-built. However, I am babying mine until a Speck protective case arrives that I ordered from Amazon.com.

It will be interesting to see what comes along in the areas of church and ministry. For example, there is a Jehovah’s Witnesses program that runs on the iPod Touch (and iPhone) that lets their missionaries keep track of which houses they have visited and which products have been left, using the devices’ built-in GPS capabilities. They get street-level maps, and markers showing who has been visited. Can you imagine something like this integrated with, say, the Army of Youth website, or designed specifically for a GYC outreach? I can even see applications for general Bible work and literature evangelism.

I was a little disappointed that the Touch does not include a built-in camera, like the iPhone has. Also it lacks a built-in mic, although there are rumors that Apple will introduce a mic for it soon. I would love to have a mic input so I can use it as a voice recorder with ReQall and for other purposes.

Still, despite room for improvement, it is a great tool (and a bit of a toy!). I am very happy with it, and highly recommend it.

The second annual MacHeist promo is underway. This bundle includes more than $350 worth of applications, for only $49. Two of the three “locked” apps have already been unlocked in the first 3 days of the promo. And the third locked app is well past 3/4 of the way to being unlocked. And that’s with 10 days left … so it’s pretty much guaranteed that all 11 (there’s a chance a 12th will be added) apps will be unlocked and included in the bundle.

If you visit the MacHeist website, you will find a description of all the apps. Just click on their icons to learn more. The most useful ones in my estimation are 1password, Awaken, Speed Download, AppZapper, CSSEdit (if you edit websites), Snapz X Pro, and Pixelmator (which is not unlocked yet).

1password is helps you manage your passwords and much more. It does everything the autofill features of Safari and Firefox do, plus some other nifty things. You can create multiple identities — for example, one for work, one for home – and auto-fill forms from whichever identity you want. It can store secure notes on any topic you want. It has a “Wallet” feature where you can securely enter your credit card information and other personal details, to save typing them. It’s quite flexible, and you can use as many or as few of the feature as you desire. (Personal details were obliterated in Photoshop from the image above.)

AppZapper provides the uninstall functionality that Apple should have built into OS X. Before deleting an application forever, it allows you to see, and selectively keep if desired, any files related to the application.

Awaken is a glorified alarm clock. You can enter as many alarm events as you like. These can play iTunes playlists or other media that you select. You can also launch applications or files at specified times. It also has an egg timer (countdown timer) and a sleep timer (go to sleep listening to music, and it eventually shuts itself off after the time you specify). The clock can be show full-screen (handy if looking at it from bed), and it can be controlled via an Apple remote.

CSSEdit is for the webmasters out there. It allows you to edit CSS files with all kinds of super cool features every computer geek will love.

Snapz Pro X is a screen capture utility. Besides simple screen captures, it can also capture specific program elements, selected screen areas, and — most impressively — movies and other things that change over time.

Pixelmator (not yet unlocked as of January 13) is a cool-looking Photoshop-type application for editing photos and other types of images. If you look at the screen shots, you’ll notice it contains many of the same tools and features as Photoshop (Photoshop Elements is about $80 retail, Photoshop CS3 is $620–$1,040 retail, depending on the version). Although it doesn’t do everything Photoshop CS3 does, it appears to cover all of the most common tools and commands. And unlike Photoshop, it is designed exclusively, and optimized specifically, for OS X.

Speed Download was recently added to the bundle. I’ve been using this application for years. It’s very handy if you ever have to deal with downloads over slow internet connections, or downloads that are difficult to start or finish.

Other applications in the bundle include CoverSutra (works with iTunes, requires OS X 10.5), Cha-Ching (financial app), iStopMotion (create your own stop motion videos — fun!), and TaskPaper (note-taking app … a little underwhelming, but what can I say? … a better app is OmniOutliner). There is also a hint that one or more additional apps will be added before this bundle offer is done.

Interested? Head on over to MacHeist and buy the bundle!

If you’re wondering what this “MacHeist” thing is all about, it starts as a series of online puzzle games in the form of missions (“heists”). Those who complete the puzzle missions get other free apps, as well as discounts on the MacHeist bundle offered at the end. I completed all the puzzles this year (with help from other users … the puzzles can be very tough), and came home with all kinds of cool stuff. You can read a fuller description of this year’s puzzle goodies here.

I don’t HATE Microsoft — even though my repeating “Microsoft is Dead” makes me smile and laugh involuntarily. I used to be very supportive of them (especially in opposition to Mac OS 7, 8, and 9), but lately they have become so inept and mired in the past that I cannot enjoy their OS anymore. Mac OS X is so much better, which I’ve been using ever since shortly after it was released a number of years ago. I’ve tried Linux, but it left me unimpressed, and I haven’t tried any of the more recent Linux distributions such as Ubuntu. OS X works very well. And while it’s not perfect, I say it’s the best OS available for general users.