But even the best will still have room for improvement. I was looking for a GeekTool script to display my “currently playing” song’s data on the desktop when I found TunesArt. After playing with the app for a while, I consider TunesArt as one of those must-have iTunes software downloads.

And combined with GeekTool, TunesArt would create a lovely and functional iTunes desktop.

Tunes at your finger tips

TunesArt is a menubar application that will do its job while sitting quietly in the background. If you click on it when iTunes is not active, you’ll have the option to turn on iTunes.

And if iTunes is running, you’ll get full iTunes control and more right from the menubar; including the ability to set the song rating, option to display lyrics, title and artist of the currently playing song.

One of the true strengths of TunesArt is the ability to assign shortcut key to various iTunes control. So, even if your fingers are busy typing your next best seller, you could tell iTunes to skip the track that you hate without even have to leave the word processor.

To activate this ability, you have to go to TunesArt Preferences, and open the “Shortcuts” menu. Check the “Enable Hotkeys” option, and click in the shortcut fields to assign your preferred combination for each available control.

The Preferences window gives you many other options to tinker with. From the General menu, you can choose whether iTunes will launch and quit along with TunesArt and whether you want to fetch lyrics from the net and attach it to the songs with no lyrics.

On the eye-candy side, we have Cover Art and Notification menu. The Cover Art menu lets you choose which cover art style you want displayed on the desktop.

Meanwhile, the Notification menu deals with how (and for how long) you want TunesArt to display notifications every time iTunes plays the next song. You can use TunesArt’s own notification, or Growl (or both).

TunesArt notification will appear under the menubar icon.

If you want to, you can activate the Last.fm feature that will connect you to Last.fm and send the list of songs you’ve listened to and recommend other songs based on the list.

It’s obvious that you need to have a Last.fm account before you can use this feature.

Tunes on your desktop

TunesArt  is an iTunes software downloads that will place a cover art image of the playing song on your desktop. And if you activate the feature from Preferences – Cover Art, playback controls will appear everytime you hover your mouse near the cover art display.

The lyrics display is a nice addition for those who like to sing along. You could edit (and add) the words directly from this window. TunesArt also has a (supposedly) very nice feature to add lyrics to songs automatically from the internet. But from during my few days of trying the app, this feature was always non-functional.

User could do a quick search of iTunes library via the search window and jump to the chosen song. Assuming that you have set the shortcut key combination, all the navigationa could be done without lifting a single finger from the keyboard.

The geek and the tune combo

As I mentioned at the beginning, I use TunesArt in conjunction with GeekTool script to display iTunes information. The duet is proven to work wonders in beautifying my desktop.

The GeekTool script that I use is:

osascript -e ‘tell application “iTunes” to if player state is playing then get XXXXXX of current track’

where XXXXXX is one of the metadata of the song such as: name, artist, album, etc. You can get more metadata fields by referring to iTunes’ column headings.

Please refer to my previous article about GeekTool on how to utilize the scripts.

Some drawbacks

Please note that you will not be able to close iTunes if you are using the above iTunes script in GeekTool. The script will keep on re-opening iTunes everytime you try to close it. This issue will not be a problem for those who always keep iTunes open. The possible solution is to put the scripts in a different group with other script so you could uncheck and deactivate them anytime without disturbing the rest of the scripts.

I’ve also mentioned one bug that I found in TunesArt — fetching lyrics. Maybe because it’s still in its beta version, the lyric searching feature of TunesArt is still not working. Hopefully the developer will fix this issue in the future release.

Personally, the drawbacks are minor issues. I found the GeekTool – TunesArt combination to be truly amazing – a great alternative to Bowtie in terms of appearance, and to GimmeSomeTunes (mentioned here) in terms of functionality.

Do you know other alternative iTunes software downloads to enrich your iTunes experience? Please share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• GeekTool – Display System Information on Mac in Style (4)
• Who Is Connected To My iTunes Library? (Windows) (12)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (15)
• Two Free Apps To Sync ANY MP3 Player with iTunes (19)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (33)

In the computer world, icons are an app’s visual representative and personal identity. In terms of marketing, icons are the packaging and one of the selling points. I know some people who would try out (or even buy) applications just because of the beautiful icon. If you think I’m exaggerating, visit the iTunes Store and go to the iPhone applications department.

Mac is famous for its good looking icons. Apple has set its icon standard so high that third party developers have to match or surpass the quality if they want to survive in the demanding community of Mac users.

Giving Files & Folders Some Personalities

Even though Mac users can feast their eyes with tons of beautifully crafted Mac icons, some general items always use the same old icons. I’m sure that, just like me, sometimes most computer users would love to give their personal files and folders unique personalities.

I’m not talking about changing the whole set of Mac icons for the whole system using some icon packages. I’m talking about changing icons for individual items using your own customized creation.

There are at least two ways to do that quickly and easily in Mac, manually and automatically. The first method could be done if you’ve already have ready to use Mac icons.

Getting Mac Icons

Due to the different file format, you can’t just use Windows icons in Mac – and vice versa. Mac icons are in .icns format while Windows’ is .ico.

While a great number of sites with free downloadable Mac icons are only a search engine away, a free web service to create your own Mac icons is a rare breed. The only one that I could find is iConvert. This service will help you to convert images into Mac icons. The service is also able to convert images to icons, and icons to icons for other platform like Windows and Linux.

So we can use this service to convert and use Linux and Windows icons in Mac (should you ever need and want to do that ), or convert Mac icons to be used in those other platform.

To use iConvert, you need to browse and upload the image or icon file and click “Convert“. As simple as that. After the converting process is done, the icons are available in Mac, Windows and Linux formats, ready to be downloaded.

With the icons ready, we can continue to the next step: replacing the old icons with the new.

Changing Icons

Replacing icons in Mac is very easy. You just choose a file or folder with the icon that you want to change and hit Command + I (or File –> Get Info menu) to open the File/Folder Info window.

Then drag and drop the new icon to replace the icon image at the top left corner of the Info window.

That’s it.

And as if the above method is not simple enough, the second option of changing an icon is even easier.

The Automatic Method

All the above steps can be done offline in a more simple manner using the help of a small application called img2icns. The app is available in the paid version and the free version – with some features disabled. But the free version is more than enough for daily uses.

Just drag and drop the image that you want to change into icon to img2icns and it will be automatically converted.

The next step is another drag and drop. This time, ‘the victim’ is the file or folder which needs the facelift. The new icon will be attached without all the hassle.

Alternatively, you could save the new icon as an .icns file to be used later.

Do you know of another application to create and change Mac icons? Share using the comments below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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• The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X (6)
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• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)

If I could do that, I could just use Expose’s shortcut (Command + F3 in my MacBook) – or the Show Desktop we’ve discussed before – to show the desktop to see everything that I have to do printed there. Of course, those with large screens will have everything visible at all time even without the trick.

With my recent adventure with GeekTool, everything comes full circle. Now my tasks and events can be shown beautifully on the desktop, and I can look at them anytime I need to with a single stroke of a shortcut key combination.

To be able to show tasks and events from iCal on the desktop, we need help from two freewares: the previously mentioned GeekTool and iCalBuddy.

In short, iCalBuddy is a command-line utility that can be used to query the OS X calendar database for items. Being a command-line based application, iCalBuddy is the perfect scripting solution to be used along with GeekTool.

The installation used to be something that ordinary people would try to avoid – involving working with command lines in the Terminal. But the latest version of iCalBuddy comes with an “install.command” file, which will make the process a snap. All you need to do is double-click it to start the installation in Terminal and then continue the process by pressing any key (or Ctrl + C to cancel).

Now that the installation is done, let’s add some to-dos and events to the desktop

After installing iCalBuddy, displaying iCal’s to-do and events on the desktop is a matter of adding new shell items from GeekTool. This means dragging out shell geeklets from GeekTool prefPane to the desktop and editing the items.

The most important part of the geeklet is the Command pane. This is the place where you write the command line to tell GeekTool what to do. This is the basic command line for iCalBuddy:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy *****

The “******” is where you put the customization strings. There are a whole lot of variations that you could use with iCalBuddy’s command line. There are some manuals that come with the installation file of iCalBuddy that you can refer to for further information. You could also access the program’s manual page by running “man icalBuddy” in the terminal to read the documentation for all of the arguments you can use when calling icalBuddy.

As for me, these are the strings that I use for my desktop.

To display iCal’s to-do, I use:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy –excludeTaskProps “notes” -nc uncompletedTasks | sed -e “s/*/–/” | sed -e “s/!/!!/”

While to display iCal’s events, I use:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy -nc eventsToday+7 | sed -e “s/*/–/” | sed -e “s/!/!!/”

These strings are not mine. I picked them up from a discussion between iCalBuddy users and the creator. So, the credit goes to them. And as you can see, what the customization strings do are:

• removing notes from the tasks (–excludeTaskProps “notes”)
• removing the calendar name (-nc)
• changing the * symbol in front of each item with — symbols (sed -e “s/*/–/”)
• displaying events for one whole week (+7)
• emphasizing the overdue tasks and events (sed -e “s/!/!!/)

You could do your own experiment adding and removing strings (or not).

Beautifying the look

Honestly, I spent so much more time experimenting on the look than on the function; dragging the position, changing the color, adjusting the size, that sort of thing. And here’s the final result (for now).

You could just let your creativity run loose and design your own. But in case you are wondering, I’m using Apple’s standard wallpaper, and Gill Sans – Regular and Thin – for the font. As for the layout, size and color, I think the screenshot has revealed them all.

While doing this article, I also found out several communities of GeekTool users who “show off” and share their desktop designs. If you’ve tried GeekTool and think that your design is cool enough, you could share them using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• iCalendar Lite- A Free Transparent Desktop Calendar (Windows) (12)
• How To Improve Your iCal Calendars With FlexCal [Mac Only] (4)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (15)
• Three Free Desktop Calendar Applications For The Mac (8)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (33)

On my quest to find applications to utilize the wasted desktop space I found GeekTool, a PrefPane (System Preferences module) designed to display different kinds of system information on a Mac’s desktop: an ideal enhancement for the idle property.

But it was not love at first sight. The tool was too geeky for me. While it did improve the desktop in the functionality department, it failed miserably in the looks department. The way it would display system information was actually made my desktop looked uglier. So I left this app behind and went on with my life.

The second encounter

Then one day, when I was in need of a tool to quickly display several system information, the GeekTool name popped out again. This time the function beat the form, I was ready to live with the unpleasant look as long as the purpose was served.

While tinkering with it, I found out that GeekTool has adjustable elements to tweak the look. With a little creativity I could get the best of both world; cool functionality and stylish looks. (Please note that I’m using the 3.0 RC5 version. But for those who have doubts on using Release Candidate version, version 2.1.2 – with different UI – is still available to be downloaded.)

The first step is to install GeekTool by double-clicking at the GeekTool.prefPane icon.

The app will be installed in your Mac’s System Preferences. Choose install for all users unless you want it to be accessible only by you.

The GeekTool System Preferences will automatically open after the installation. Check the “Enable” box to activate it.

An empty transparent “Geeklet Settings” properties window will appear. The content of this window will change according to which geeklet is selected.

You could also check “Show in menubar” and “Automatically check update” if you want to.

The shell settings

The next step is to pre-configure GeekTool. There are so many things that you can do with this tool for the geek, but for our today’s topic, we’ll just use the shell console. Drag the “Shell” icon to your desktop.

After the shell console is placed safely on the desktop, a new group called “Default Group” will appear under “Manage Groups” pane. The “Geeklet Settings” window will also turn into several setting options that you can edit.

The first setting is the name and posistion of the geeklet. This is an optional value that you can skip if you want to.

The second is the command which will be carried out by the geeklet which will be displayed on the desktop. It could be programmed to display a simple line of text [echo "your text here"], date [date], calendar [cal], or the uptime of your machine [uptime].

These commands are UNIX command that usually run via Terminal. There are tons of them, and each of them can be customized using additional command strings. While it’s impossible to list them all here, you could always turn to the search engine for help.

Don’t forget to fill the the value for “Refresh every XX s”. To keep the diplay always updated, you might want to go for the value of “1″ second.

The last adjustment is “Font and Color”. Here’s where you can go wild. Using the combination of font type, color and the position of them, you could “dress up” your desktop to your liking.

There’s no strict rules on how to design your display of system information, just make sure that it would go along with your wallpaper. Here’s an example on how I adjusted the font and color to match the background.

Below is what I came up with after few minutes of trying GeekTool.

You could also look at how other people design their desktop using GeekTool in this Flickr Gallery.

This short rumbling merely touches the surface of what GeekTool can do, but I can assure you that more about GeekTool is coming your way.

Have you tried GeekTool? Do you have a GeekTool desktop to show off? Share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Enrich Your iTunes Experience With GeekTool & TunesArt [Mac] (10)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (15)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (33)
• Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] (7)
• Make your Desktop Bigger with 360desktop (Windows) (18)

There are of course other ways to organize desktop clutter, such as buying a bigger screen, opening less windows, or grouping the windows into several virtual spaces. I accidentally found a rather old application – but working just fine under Snow Leopard – which takes a completely different approach to the problem: making the windows disappear.

To show or not to show

Whether it’s only to hide your games when your boss is around, or to instantly switch your cluttered desktop into a clean working environment (where only the chosen windows are visible), Show Desktop is your solution.

As the name suggests, this small application will hide all the opened windows and show the desktop. Maybe similar to Expose, but more powerful. And all it takes is just a click.

When you run this application for the first time, Show Desktop will appear in the “Icon mode“. You can activate its function through the app icon in the dock.

Clicking the dock icon will hide all the open windows. Everything is disappeared, only the desktop is visible. The windows are not minimized nor closed, they are just vanished. In this state, the dock icons of those applications will look transparent.

If you click the Show Desktop icon while all the windows are hidden, the minimized Finder icon will appear at the dock ready to be clicked back to the desktop. But to restore everything back to where they belong, you have to click the Show Desktop dock icon again while holding the Shift key. You could also use Alt + Tab to restore only one of those hidden applications.

Further enhancements

For those who prefer to have a menubar item of Show Desktop instead of a dock icon, you could do so by going to the Preferences, either using the menu or “Command + Comma” key combination, and then tick the “Show in menubar” box.

Changing between the Dock icon and the Menubar mode requires you to restart the application.

From these General Preferences, you could also pick the icon style and choose whether you want Finder to stay open after you hide other applications. If you want to have access to this “hide/show all” ability the whole time, be sure to tick “Open Show Desktop at login” box.

In the Menubar mode, the one that you could click to hide or show all the windows is the menubar item. To show the preferences, you have to use Control + Click (or right click) at the item. The pop-up menu will also show you a list of open applications.

But the coolest feature of this app is the ability to make a kind of ‘whitelist’ of applications that will not be hidden. Users can add their own choice to the list.

Using this ability, you could repeatedly hide all the other open applications and leave only one specific app that you want to work with. This allow you organize your desktop and focus more on the work at hand and discard all the distractions.

A little trick

This app would be perfect if it has a shortcut key combination to activate the show/hide applications function. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have one. To overcome this limitation, I tried to create the shortcut key using the Keyboard preference pane. It was an unsuccessful attempt.

However, I found a simple cheat. If you use a launcher – something like Quicksilver or Google Quick Search Box – to “launch” Show Desktop while this app is already active, a similar effect (hide all windows) would be triggered.

The opposite is also true. If you use a launcher to open Show Desktop while holding the Shift key, all the hidden windows would appear.

Have you tried Show Desktop to organize your desktop? Do you think you will ever need the function to quickly hide applications? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (15)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (33)
• Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] (7)
• Make your Desktop Bigger with 360desktop (Windows) (18)
• How To Show iCal Tasks & Events On The Desktop [Mac only] (3)

Speaking of optical disks, CD and DVD are the most commonly used media by common people nowadays to store their multimedia digital memories. Being a media that supports interactive menus, it’s a bit surprising that most people use DVD only to store the raw data – just a direct copy of the files from the hard drive.

Maybe they just don’t know how to make a DVD, or they think that creating DVD interactive menus is not for everybody, “those complicated things are too advanced for my simple brain” they might say.

Getting started with iDVD

But compiling pictures and videos to make your own interactive DVD shouldn’t be a daunting task. Apple provides its users with a tool to make a DVD easily. The name is iDVD.

I was opening iPhoto to organize my photos and videos taken from my cameras when I saw that there’s iDVD sitting there nearby waiting. Curious, I opened it and found out that the DVD creation process is as simple as using other iLife apps like iWeb and Garageband.

When you open iDVD, you’ll get the familiar menu with several start options. As our purpose today is to quickly and easily create an interactive DVD with our personal photos and videos, the suggested choice is “Magic iDVD“.

The next step is giving your project a name and choose the theme for it. There are several theme groups available: 7.0, 6.0, 5.0 and older versions. Each group has several themes to choose for. I just picked the “Revolution” theme as it’s the first choice that appeared.

Then you can browse the media folder to find items that you want to include in the DVD. The materials could be music, pictures and movies. Adding them to the project is just a matter of dragging and dropping.

Hit preview to see what the end result will look like. A preview window will appear, complete with the remote control-like playback interface.

If your project contains a big size of data collection, it might exceed the maximum capacity of the disc and iDVD will give you a pop-up notification.

You could delete some files to reduce the size, or you could try to modify the encoder setting. To do that, open “Project Info” from the “Project” menu (or use Command + Shift + I),

And choose the lower quality setting from the “Encoding” drop down menu.

Click “Start Project” to enter the next stage.

Giving the final touch

There are other things that you can adjust from the menu interface. Click the “Menu Info” buttom at the bottom left of the window.

The menu info window will appear. Here you can adjust the loop duration, audio volume, buttons and drop zone. You could also change the background music simply by dragging and dropping any audio file from the hard drive to the audio box.

You’ll see the general folders of the DVD such as Movies, Pictures and Music. The folder and sub folder names could be edited easily by double clicking on it.

While editing the names, a text object setting dialog will appear. You could choose the font type and size here.

The last step is producing the DVD. From the File menu choose “Burn DVD” or hit “Command + R“. You could also save the DVD as an image to store in the hard drive (Shift + Command +R).

Another way to start the DVD burning process is by clicking the “Burn” button at the lower bar of the window next to the “Play” button. The process will stall unless you have a blank DVD ready in the drive.

And all that’s left to do is wait. The time will depend on how big your files are and how strong your Mac is. You could do something else while iDVD handle the necessary steps one by one.

There are a lot of iDVD features still uncovered by this short introduction, but I think it should be enough to start your own DVD project.

Have you tried compiling personal movies and pictures into an interactive DVD? Do you know other free alternatives to iDVD? Please share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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But recently, I could barely keep up with everything that happened around me just relying on my biological RAM alone. While I’ve tried several free to do applications to overcome my anxiety, I couldn’t find free apps that can match the power of Apple’s iCal calendar.

So I chose iCal Calendars to help me manage my life better. One problem though, adding multiple tasks and events to iCal requires a rather lengthy process, including keeping it open at all time. Luckily, there’s FlexCal. This small application which reside in the System Preferences is designed to overcome that very problem.

The installation and settings

The installation process is quick and easy. Double click the prefPane file and choose which users you want to install this app to. Unless you use your Mac with several other users and don’t want the other users to use FlexCal, choose “Install for all users of this computer“.

Then the System Preferences will be opened. Since FlexCal is still in 32-bit, System Preferences needed to be restarted before you can tamper with FlexCal settings.

There are several things that you should adjust to make FlexCal comfortable to use. First the “Setup” tab. Click the “Start FlexCal” button (obviously) and tick the “Start FlexCal at login” box to make sure that this app will be available at all time.

Then you need to set your own shortcut to be able to access FlexCal quickly. Click on the shortcut field and press your chosen combination.

Don’t forget to choose which window should be opened every time you hit that shortcut key. If you add Tasks a lot, choose “Task Window“. The same thing goes the other way around. But whichever you choose, it’s not that important (and you’ll see why later on).

Next is the “Advanced” tab. This is the place to further configure FlexCal. You could choose to add an alarm to all new Events and how early should the alarm goes off. You could also choose which calendar should be the default place for all tasks and events, and whether you prefer to use Textual or Graphical style to display the calendar.

Using FlexCal

Using this app is a only matter of hitting the shortcut key. If you choose “Task Window” as the default, this window will appear every time the key combination is pressed.

But you could easily change the window to “Events Window” by hitting the combination one more time (and continuously alternate between the two).

Hit enter after typing the task/event and it will be saved to iCal. To cancel it, use the Esc key.

You could move between the field using the Tab key (forward) and the Shift + Tab key (backward), but you couldn’t edit the “Calendar” and “Priority” drop-down menu without using the mouse. The rodent is also needed to change the style of calendar from Textual to Graphical (and vice versa).

I wish the developer would add the ability to use the keyboard to its full extent so the process of adding Tasks and Events to iCal could be done without the need to lift a finger from the keyboard.

Other than that minor annoyance, FlexCal is something that every iCal user should have.

Do you use iCal calendars to manage your life? Do you know better free alternatives to add Tasks and Events to iCal quickly and easily? Share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Three Free Desktop Calendar Applications For The Mac (8)
• iCalendar Lite- A Free Transparent Desktop Calendar (Windows) (12)
• How To Show iCal Tasks & Events On The Desktop [Mac only] (3)
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I too work with many windows opened at one time: mail, browsers and its tabs, text editor, media player, you get the picture. Most of the time I have to get the information from one window and use it on another. This method of working requires my agility to switch back and forth between windows and tabs, and also my wisdom to find the information among the clutters.

My best friends during the time of trouble with Mac window management are Alt + Tab (to switch windows), Exposé’s F3 (to show all opened windows) and Control + F3 (to show all opened windows within one application). Sometimes, I use Spaces to separate the “working” windows and the “entertainment” windows to unclutter the workspace a little.

Afloat – take two

Then I stumbled upon Jackson’s old article about Afloat and it really helped me with Mac windows management. But almost a year has past since that article was published and Afloat has been updated with a new Snow Leopard-compatible version and several new features.

So I thought it would be nice to have another look at this app from a slightly different perspective.

We’ll start with the installation. Unlike common Mac apps that only need to be dragged and dropped to work, Afloat needs SIMBL before it could be put into action.

After the installation, you need to restart any opened applications to be able to use Afloat. The app will add new menus under Window menu in any Cocoa application. Here are two pictures comparing the Window menu before and after the installation of Afloat.

It’s also been said that Afloat will not work with Carbon apps like Finder and iTunes. But I tried restarting Finder using Command + Alt + Esc and the new menus appear.

Maybe it’s because I use Snow Leopard. After I’ve searched a little bit on the net, I found out that according to Snow Leopard technology page:

All system applications except DVD Player, Front Row, Grapher, and iTunes have been rewritten in 64-bit.

Translation: there are not many Carbon apps left (Cocoa apps are 64-bit) and that Afloat will work for almost all the main applications. I don’t know about third party software yet since I haven’t explore too many applications after installing Afloat.

Now let’s see how this app could help us in solving our Mac window management problems.

The Seven Steps

First problem: working with several windows.

Solution: Instead of flipping through the windows, you could just put the source window always above others.

There are few steps to do to achieve this without disturbing the workspace.

1. First, go to the source window and hit “Command + Control + A” to keep the window always floating above.
   
2. Then hit “Control + Command + 1″ to make the window transparent.
   

   Note: Control the transparency level by using “Command + Control + Page Up/Down” or “Command + Control + Two finger scroll on the multi touch trackpad”. Restore the window to the non-transparent state (opaque) by hitting “Command + Control + 0″.

3. You could also use Overlay command (from Window –> Adjust Effect menu or Command + Control + F) to make the source window transparent, floating above other windows, and unaffected by mouse click or keyboard input. Look at number 2 in the picture.
   

   This “Adjust Effect” window will also give you access to set the window position (number 1), and the transparency level (number 4) as discussed above.

Second problem: the window we need is located in a different Space from the window we use.

Solution: Instead of turning off Spaces or moving the needed window around Spaces, you could keep the window on all Spaces, by checkin the option as shown in the picture above (number 3).

Third problem: it’s difficult to work with a transparent window.
Solution: Instead of turning the transparency effect on and off, you could just make it opaque when active by giving checkmark to the number 5 option in the picture above.

Fourth problem: the size and/or the position of the window is not right.

Solution: you could just resize and/or drag the position of the window, but you could do it easier by performing Quick Resize using Command + Control key while click and drag using the right mouse button anywhere in the window. You could also do a Quick Drag using Command + Control and left mouse button.

Normally, resizing the window require you to click and drag a specific point at the bottom right of the window, and moving the window could be done only by clicking and dragging the title bar of the window.

Fifth problem: you don’t know the location of the file that you are currently working on.
Solution: You could try to do a “Save As” and then click cancel. That might work with some applications. But there is an easier way, using Float’s “Show Window’s file in finder” menu or using the “Command + Control + Up arrow”. This is by far my most favorite feature of Afloat because I often have to rummage through Finder to just email the document that I’ve just finished.

Have you tried Afloat? Do you know other tips on using Afloat? Share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Pin Any Application Window To The Top (5)
• Improve Window-Management in OS X with Afloat [Mac] (14)
• How To Organize Your Mac Desktop With Spaces (8)
• How To Hide Running Programs on Windows with OuttaSight (8)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)

I’ve spent most of my free time last week in front of iPhoto. Aside from tagging faces with their names, I also have a lot of fun tagging photos with their location. This iPhoto feature is called Places, and it’s the ability to organize photos based on where they’re taken. Places is a nice example of integrating Google Map to an application.

Let’s go Places

I’m not much of a traveller myself – yet – so I could only imagine how cool this feature will be for those travelling photographers. I don’t own a GPS-enabled camera either, so imagine again, if I did because Places supports geotagged photos.

I could, however, tag my existing photo collection. All I need are some free time and a decent internet connection.

Photos are usually grouped by events, and every photo in each event is usually taken at the same location. So, to start tagging photos with their location, the best place to start is “Events” under the “Library” menu.

Select an event and click the small “i” sign on the bottom right corner of the event box. It will appear when you hover your mouse near the corner. Alternatively, you could select the event and go to “File –> Get Info” or hit “Control + I”.

An info box with some basic information about the event will appear. You could edit the event’s description and location here.

Every time you edit the place, iPhoto will offer you to find that location on a map.

After few seconds of searching, a map will automatically appear. The location that you’ve searched will be pointed with a pin. Click “Assign to event” button and all the photos in the event will be tagged with that location.

If you are not sure whether the pin really pointed to the correct location, you could zoom in the map by double clicking on it or by clicking on the “plus” (+) button on the bottom left of the screen. You could also choose to view the map by Terrain, Satellite, or Hybrid (combination of both).

If there are several locations within one event, you could tag individual photos with different places. All you have to do is select pictures with similar location, and repeat the above process.

Finding the missing places

One of the (dis)advantages of living in an “unknown” part of the world is that, most of the times, the location you’ve entered can not be found by the map search.

If this is the case, you have to locate the places yourself. Rediscovering places in the map is fun. Drag the map to center the position of the approximate location and click “Drop Pin” button.

To place the pin in the exact point, zoom in on the map and drag the head of the pin to the desired position. You could also set the size of the area by sliding the arrows that appear by the sides of the circle.

The final step is writing down the name of that place.

Organizing by Places

After the fun part is done, we can continue with even more fun: enjoying the photos based on the places. Zoom in on the area that you want to explore and click “Show Photos”. All the photos taken within the range of that map will be shown on the screen.

Or, instead of “Map” view, you could also choose “Thumbnail” view where you’re given the option of narrowing down the on the location.

Surely, with a GPS-enabled camera, all the geotagging would be done automatically. And those adventurers who travel a lot will have their map filled with pins. How exciting!

Do you go places and take pictures? Do geotag your photos to organize them? Share your adventures using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Use Face Recognition to Organize Photos With iPhoto [Mac] (5)
• Manage your iPhoto with these plugins (11)
• Windows 7 Libraries Explained – And Why You Want Them (51)
• Share Your Trips With EveryTrail (8)
• Photology – Must-have Photo Search Software for Windows (3)

With today’s limit set at terabytes, you can literary store millions of photos. Our problem now is not choosing what to shoot, but how to organize the photos afterward.

For most amateur photographers, the term “organizing photos” goes as far as collecting them into albums based on events, or maybe by the people in the images. While grouping photos chronologically by events is often done easily and automatically every time you move the photos from the camera to computer, sorting photos based on the people in each picture is not as easy as it sounds. Especially if you have to do it manually.

Recognizing the faces

The mundane task of how to organize photos can now be done easily and almost automatically using iPhoto. This photo management application that comes with iLife suite offers its users the ability to assign names to faces and organize the pictures based on the person in the photos.

This feature is called Faces. And using it, users can click and open every photo that contain a specific person in all of them.

The first step to enable Faces is to choose a picture with a person in it.

Then click the “Name” icon located on the bottom left of iPhoto’s window.

The chosen picture will be enlarged to fill the window. Click the “Add Missing Face” button that replaced the “Name” icon.

You’ll see that iPhoto will try its best to locate faces inside the picture. A square will appear around the faces with the tag “unnamed” below it.

All you have to do is double-click the tag and replace “unnamed” with that person’s name.

Repeat the process for other “unnamed” tags, and you can continue to do the same for other pictures with faces of different people.

From here on, things will get easier because iPhoto will help you by trying to recognize the same faces that have been tagged before. If you choose a photo with a previously tagged person in it, iPhoto will ask you to confirm the name.

Click the check mark to confirm or the cross to tell iPhoto that the name is incorrect.

However, no machine can replace the human ability to recognize faces. The Faces feature of iPhoto is amazing indeed, but it still makes stupid mistakes here and there. Once it thought that my little daughter’s dress was a face.

Mass naming the faces

If you have thousands of pictures, it’s possible that you’d be wiping off cold sweat right now thinking about renaming faces thousands of times. But you don’t have to be afraid, because iPhoto provides you with a way to do it almost automatically. Almost, but still better than having do it manually one photo at a time.

Click “Faces” on the left pane and choose one of the faces appear on the right.

While you are at it, you can edit the person’s full name and add email address to each face by choosing “File –> Get Info” menu or Command + I or by clicking the small “i” icon at the right bottom of the image.

After choosing a person, the screen will show you all the photos with that person in them. If you scroll down a little bit, you will see the second half of the screen labelled “So-and-so may also be in the photos below”.

Choose a close up view and “Confirm Name” from the bottom menu.

All the photos will focus on the possible faces of the chosen person. Your job is to click on every frame with the correct image to confirm the name to the faces. You could minimize or enlarge the size of the box by moving the slider, located at the bottom right of the screen.

There are other cool iPhoto abilities but we’ll save them for another time.

Do you use iPhoto to manage your photos? Do you know of other alternative photo management applications for Mac? Share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Use Geographical Info To Organize Photos in iPhoto [Mac] (1)
• Manage your iPhoto with these plugins (11)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Saving, Exporting & Uploading To Picasa Web Albums (6)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Master The Special Effects In Picasa (16)
• [Google Picasa 101] – How To Edit Your Photos (14)

I am also the member of those email junkies. And given the nature of my mobile work, I prefer to use webmail instead of desktop client. This choice enables me to check my email anytime and anywhere no matter what device that I use.

Speaking of webmail, Google Mail is one of the popular choices for many internet users. As per July 2009, there are about 146 million users who stare at their Gmail inbox every month. If you are one of the users who has been using Gmail since it become available for general public (February 2007), it means that you’ve stared at more or less the same old inbox interface for over two and a half years (roughly about a thousand days or so). And the number is multiplied for those who’s been using Gmail since the “invitation only” beta release back in April 2004.

Have you ever felt bored of the look?

How to change the Gmail appearence

The Gmail interface is not bad. I guess it’s designed with efficiency and practicality in mind. But it’s not the prettiest thing either. Most Gmail users just accept the sight that they’ve got everytime they log into their account. They have never noticed that they can change the theme of the Gmail interface if they wanted to.

Here’s how to change your Gmail theme.

• Click “Settings” on the top right corner of the page



• Choose the Themes tab



• Choose one of the available Gmail themes. Among them are “Random” (if you want Google to pick one for you) or “Choose your own colors“.



• There are themes that will change based on your location. If this is the case, you have to provide the necessary information.

If you choose the option to choose your own color, you’ll have a new window appear with several editable fields. If you bring your mouse to the left side of the field, a small arrow will appear. Click on this arrow and you’ll have a color picker box popping out. You can choose your preferred color combination for your Gmail theme.

Using Firefox add-on

Beside using the available themes provided by Google, there is another way to change your Gmail appearance and background: using a Firefox add-on. Even though this method will limit the facial-lift to Firefox only, the new refreshing look is worth a peek.

I stumbled upon this one add-on called Google Redesigned purely by coincidence. As the name suggested, activating this add on will completely redesign the look of three popular Google applications (Mail, Reader and Calendar) under Firefox. Each app has its own style and each style can be used individually or together as a group.

This is achieved by using Cascading StyleSheet (CSS) files which are loaded on the client’s browser. Google Redesigned does not use any remote images, however it does load style sheets from a remote server. Users can manually update the themes by clicking the Google Redesigned logo at the bottom of the Firefox window and choose “Check for style updates“.

This is the look of Gmail using Google Redesigned under Firefox.

While you’re at it, why not add another Firefox add-on called Integrated Gmail that will combine Google Mail, Google Reader and Google Calendar all on one page?

Have you changed the look of your Gmail? Do you know of any other methods to give your inbox a new look?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The 4 Fabulous Gmail Labs Extensions You Should Try Out (8)
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From my writer’s point of view, crafting science fiction is as exciting as – and so much even more challenging than – reading it . The science behind every great science fiction is always based on the real science that really exists in our real world. That’s why making the story believable requires an extensive amount of research.

But science fiction is not the only genre that requires research. Any kind of writing involves some process of data gathering. That’s why research tools  are  an indispensable part of every writer’s life.

Scrap everything to Scrapbook

One of the best research tools that I’ve come across so far is a Firefox extension called Scrapbook. Basically, this tool acts as a filing cabinet for all of your digital research data. Whenever you find something interesting on the net, you could add it to your scrapbook, either by dragging and dropping, right clicking or using shortcut keys.

We’ve discussed Scrapbook before. If want to get familiar with it, you could read Tina’s “Offline Browsing Anywhere Anytime – Part One” and my “7 Writing Addons for Turning Firefox into the Ultimate Writer’s Suite“.

One reader suggested Scrapbook+, a modification of Scrapbook with some improvements here and there. But with the exception of the highly visible 6 highlighters, I personally couldn’t spot the differences between these two. I use the plus version based on the developer’s claim that it’s faster.

As much as I love Scrapbook+ and Scrapbook to aid my research, they both have one similar major drawback: my data is only available on one computer. If you are a person who works with more than one computer (home, office, mobile, library, and any other possible variation), you’d wish that you could share your data from every one of your working points.

Well, my dear friends, with some modification and a little help from another tool, your wish could come true.

Access your Scrapbook data everywhere

My other indispensable tool is a data backup/synchronization service called Dropbox (which, again, has been mentioned previously here and here).

After installing the client (available for Windows, Mac and Linux), this service will create a Dropbox folder and everything inside this folder will be synchronized to your online account and to other Dropbox folders in other computers which installed under your account. It’s also possible to share folders with other Dropbox users.

As time has gone by, I found other uses of Dropbox aside from being a mere backup tool. One of them is using it to remote trigger file and torrent downloads. While trying to find a solution to have my research data available on other computers, I suddenly realized that I could use Dropbox to achieve that goal.

The first thing to do is to create a folder inside the Dropbox folder to put your Scrapbook data. Mine’s called “Scrapbook” but you could name it anything you want.

If you install the Dropbox client on several computers under one account, you can continue on to the Scrapbook setting up process. However, if this is not the case and you still want to be able to access your Scrapbook data from another computer, right click on the Scrapbook folder and choose “Dropbox –> Share this folder” from the pop up menu.

You will be taken to the Dropbox site under your account. Write down the email addresses of the Dropbox accounts to whom you want to share this folder with. These accounts would be the accounts of computers where you want to access your Scrapbook data.

This arrangement opens up another possibility: you could collaborate with others on data collecting.

Configuring Sharing on Scrapbook

The next step is configuring Scrapbook. Open Scrapbook using the key combination Alt + K and click the little arrow button next to Tools. Choose “Options” from the po up menu.

Choose the “Organize” tab and click the “Save data to” option. Click “Browse” to determine where Scrapbook should put your data. Choose the “Scrapbook” folder inside the Dropbox folder.

Please note that from my experiment, the above method is working with a fresh install of Scrapbook but not with an already built database. Alternatively, you could choose “Enable Multi-ScrapBook” to have several sets of data collections. This way, you could put your private data on one local location and share non-private data through the Dropbox folder.

Click the little arrow next to the “Multi Scrapbook” icon on the left of Tools and choose manage.

On the next Scrapbook management window, you could Add, Edit and Remove a scrapbook. Click Add.

Give a name to the new scrapbook and choose a location to save the data. Since our goal is to make the data available on other computers, choose the Scrapbook folder inside the Dropbox folder that we’ve created earlier.

Do the same thing on the other computers: accept the Dropbox shared folder if it’s installed under a different account, and set Scrapbook (either using “Save data to” or “Multiple Scrapbook“) to store its data in the shared Dropbox folder.

Another solution for sharing partial Scrapbook data is using the “Export – Import” feature from the Tools menu.

The combination of Scrapbook and Dropbox will enable us to work using the same data on multiple computers under different OS’s as both Firefox and Dropbox are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Just remember to pay attention to your Dropbox quota and the size of your Scrapbook library.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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For digital-age music lovers, the biggest advantage that iTunes has is the ability to play well with large-scale music collections. Add-sort-search and other library management tasks could be done easily and flawlessly.

But to some people, two of those great features become iTunes major limitations. First, iTunes only manages and synchronizes to Apple music players i.e. iPods. And second, the only store accessible from iTunes is (obviously) Apple’s iTunes Store.

A DoubleTwist Mac Review – Considering the alternative

Not everybody have iPods and/or iPhones. And for those who own one, it’s very likely that they also have other gadgets. To be able to synchronize our music collection to these non-Apple gadgets, we need help from other sources.

There are several alternatives that available for Windows, but the option is more limited for Mac users. So I did some searching and one of the few tools that I managed to find is doubleTwist. We’ve covered it once before.

This app is available for Mac and Windows and promises to give users the ability to synchronize their collection to other multimedia-capable devices. It also provide alternatives to iTunes Store to purchase and download music: Amazon MP3 Store.

Being the opposite of a shopaholic (especially everything related to digital online shopping), I don’t think that I would use the store feature. But I surely could use some help in synchronizing my music and movie collections to my mobile devices.

The first impression

The first time you open doubleTwist, a log-in window will appear. If you already have an account, just fill in your email address and password and click “Log In”.

Or else, click “Create Account” to open the registration window, fill in the needed information and click “Sign Up”.

The first thing that I wanted to check after the main window open is how much of my system memory used by doubleTwist. Users from Windows version reported that this app is not memory-friendly. Sadly, the same thing goes for Mac version that I’ve tried.

It consumes a major portion of the memory, even when it’s idle. I tried to compare it with the idle iTunes and the result is a bit shocking.

But memory-hog aside, let’s see how useful this app really is.

Connecting the devices

I have to admit that I’ve prepared myself to do some copying from my collections into doubleTwist library. At the very least, there should be some folder synchronization process that I must go through. But I was wrong.

You’ll notice that doubleTwist automatically uses the Music folder plus the existing iTunes Music Library and playlists as its own “Music” Library. This really is a nice time saver because no effort is necessary from user’s side.

The same thing goes for doubleTwist’s “Photos” library – it uses your Mac’s Photos folder and iPhoto library;

and “Movies” library that uses your Mac’s Movies folder and iTunes Movie Library.

The developer claims that this app is compatible with hundreds of devices – Blackberries, Androids and Palm Pre are among them – and there is the complete list on their website.

My Windows Mobile phone hasn’t been supported by doubleTwist Mac version yet, but I tried it anyway because many users reported successful media synchronization to unsupported device. But no such luck.

Then I plugged in my MP3 players one by one, and they all appeared on the device list and I could drag and drop my music to them easily. Unfortunately, doubleTwist doesn’t support folders so all the items from every folder are there in one list.

One easy way to manage the transferring process is by creating one playlist for each device that you have, and put your selected songs there. This way, you’ll only need to select the playlist and move the songs to your device in one go.

Wish list and wrap up

This app still has a lot of things to fix and is too far behind in terms of features to be in the same level as iTunes. One feature that I really love to see is the ability to automatically synchronizes a playlist to a specific device. I also hope that the memory hog could be trimmed down to minimum.

So to wrap everything up, I have to say that despite all the negatives, I still think this app would be useful for Mac users who want to make their music collection available to non-Apple devices.

Have you tried doubleTwist? Do you know other alternatives to synchronize your multimedia collection to non-Apple devices? Share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Sync iTunes Library to iPod and your Music Folder (Windows) (10)
• Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist (12)
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One of the alternatives that we could use to create documents on a Mac is Apple’s Pages, part of iWork’s suite of productivity applications along with Numbers (spreadsheet) and Keynote (presentation). The suite is tagged at US$79 and available for 30-day free trial. While the price is far less Microsoft Office suite, paid is still paid. But I think Pages has great features that’s worth the look, even it’s only during the free trial.

The Power of Templates

At the most basic level, Pages is a word processor. So you can use it for your everyday word processing activities from creating a document, writing and editing the text, importing other elements like charts and pictures, to printing or saving the document as a PDF.

Pages can also open documents from many other formats including Microsoft Word documents. Your work from other computers under any other OS can be resumed on your Mac using Pages. The same thing goes for the other end, Pages can also save your work as Word documents. To reveal more saving options, click the little arrow beside the name field when you save your work.

But the true power of this app lies in its beautifully pre-designed templates. Users can use these templates to quickly create professionally looking documents. As Apple puts it, “Even before you start writing, your document looks great.” This template-based method is also used by iWeb, Apple’s webpage design application.

There are over 180 templates for you to choose from, divided into two categories: Word Processing (work-related kind of documents) and Page Layout (more to the ‘fun’ type of documents).

From the Word Processing category, there are Letters, Envelopes, Forms, Resumes, Reports, and Outlines; while from the Page Layout category, there are Newsletters, Brochures, Flyers, Posters, Cards & Invitations, Business Cards, and Certificates. Both categories also offer blank documents and miscellaneous templates.

You can add your own templates and they will appear in “My Templates”.

Creating a good looking document using Templates

My first encounter with Pages was when my friend asked me to help him create a class newsletter. He was amazed at the stunning result that we produced in a short time.

And the process of creating that document required no rocket science. Here are the simple steps for creating good looking documents using Pages’ templates:

1. Open Pages and create a new document.

2. Choose a template

3. Edit the text and replace the pictures

4. Add as many pages as you need

5. Don’t forget to save your document after you’ve done.

Each template listed in the Template Chooser comes with several types of documents and each document consists of several types of pages. Playing with the combinations will provide you with a large number of choices and could keep you busy – in a fun way – for quite a while.

But if you think that the pre-designed templates are not enough, you could add more templates – free or paid – from the internet. One of the recommended places to get free templates is iWorkCommunity.

You could just open the downloaded templates, but if you want them to appear in Pages template list, you should put them inside this folder:

~/UserFolder/Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/Templates/FolderName

Creating your own templates

But why stop at using templates from others? If you think you have an artistic side that you could be proud of, or if you think that you will consistently use a series of layouts over and over in your project, you could create your own templates, either for personal use or to be shared with others.

You could start building your template from a scratch by opening a totally blank page or you could also do it by modifying another template.

If you are starting from naught, you’d want to add elements to your documents like text boxes, and shapes. This can be done by going to the “Insert” menu or by clicking the icon in the toolbar.

To fill in the text boxes, you could generate some “Lorem Ipsum”s from Lipsum Generator.

To add pictures, open Media Browser from the View –> Show Media Browser or by clicking the toolbar icon.

Then insert some pictures by dragging and dropping the items from media browser to document.

Every element of the page can be edited by selecting it and open the Inspector (View –> Show Inspector or Command + Option + I or the Inspector toolbar icon).

Add more pages according to your needs and repeat the steps.

Once the layout process is finished, you should enable every element of the page(s) as a placeholder. This way, you are able to customize those elements later when you use the pages you’ve created as template.

To do this, go to “Format –> Advanced –> Enable Placeholder Text Authoring” menu. Then select the text and choose “Format –> Advanced –> Define As Placeholder Text”.

To do the same with images, click on the item but choose “Format –> Advanced –> Define As Image Placeholder” instead.

The final step is to turn your document into template. Choose the thumbnail of a page and go to “Format –> Advanced –> Capture Pages” menu.

And name the page.

Repeat the process to other pages.

You could manage multiple pages in a template from “Format –> Advanced –> Manage Pages” menu.

Then use the arrows to rearrange the order and the minus (-) button to delete the pages that you don’t need.

If you want to share your creations, they are available in the same location as your other imported templates: ~/UserFolder/Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/Templates/

So far I haven’t found any free Mac alternatives for template-based word processors similar to Pages. But if you know any, share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Using CSS to Create Document Templates (6)
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But despite the endless warnings, we just can’t keep our hands off. Curiosity is an inseparable part of human nature. Human advancements are the result of making mistakes and learning from them. That’s why there are tools like Secrets, which allow non-geeky users to play with those scary configurations safely and unlock hidden mac features.

Tell me your Secrets

Secrets is a Mac OS X preference pane developed by Blacktree – the same guys who brought us Quicksilver. This little app will allow Mac users to peek into their feline’s deepest secrets which were usually only accessible via command line in Terminal.

To download the app, go to the developer’s website and click on the “PrefPane” link. The latest version at the time of writing is 1.0.6 (10.5+). It means that this app is not for Tiger users and below.

Using it is fairly simple. After installation, just open System Preferences and click on Secrets under the “Other” group.

A window full of modifiable items will appear, ready to be tinkered with to access hidden Mac features. In the left pane is the list of Applications and on the right is the list of their secrets (modifiable hidden settings).

You could go through the applications list one item at a time and change the settings of each one by one, or you could also use the search function if you know which settings that you are looking for.

*Editor’s note: It is advisable to only change one setting at a time and view their effects, in order to prevent crashes or other unfavourable results.*

In my opinion, the most important function of Secrets is the “Revert” button located at the bottom of the window. Clicking this button will revert the system to its default value. This is the safety net for the times when the changes you’ve made causing your system to become unstable.

The Secrets society

The feature that makes Secrets superior to other similar applications is its growing database of secrets. If there are new items available or if you install new tweakable applications, Secrets will download those entries and add them to the hidden Mac features list.

The update process is automatic, but you can use the “Update Secrets” button to invoke it.

Part of this ever growing database comes from ordinary users like you. If you know an unlisted secret or two, you can contribute them to Blacktree’s database so that everybody else can also benefit from them.

If you spot non-working secrets or if you have a secrets wish list, you could also contribute your thoughts to them.

Sharing few useful secrets

There are many useful secrets that I found among tons of other secrets. Here are few examples:

1. The ability to change the login desktop picture –> This is the first item on the “Top Secret” list. Click on the location on the right and Secrets will let you choose other desktop picture for the login windows.

   

2. Check spelling as you type –> this item is located under the “System” group. As a person who doesn’t use English as the main language, the constant red line that appears under every word I type could be very annoying. Disabling this option gives me a more relaxed view.

   

3. Login window text –> Dig deeper into the System group, you’ll find option to add login window text, along with other login options.

   

4. Enable/Disable Dashboard –> Not everybody uses Dashboard. While some people uses Widgets heavily, others might see them just as additional burden to the system. There are many ways to enable/disable Dashboard, but I found that using Secrets is the easiest.

   

5. Adding separators to the dock –> Secrets allows users to add separators to the dock either on the left side or on the right side (or both). There are also options to add Stacks.

   

   And here’s what the result looks like.

   

6. Quit Finder in the menu –> If you’ve ever wanted to quit Finder, you could use this option to add “Quit Finder” in the menu.

   

   And if you don’t believe me you could do that, here’s the proof.

   

7. X-Ray vision –> And here’s my favorite: Show X-ray folder in Quick Look. You can find it on the “Top Secret” or Finder section. If you activate it, you can view the contents of a folder while using Quick Look. (Secrets will ask you to quit Finder before the result could take place). Not really useful, but totally cool.

   

   Try it yourself by selecting a folder in Finder and hit the Spacebar key to activate Quick Look. Then take your time.

   

Have you tried Secrets? Do you know some other cool secrets that we can activate? Share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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But the iTunes Store is not the only web-based product from Apple that integrates well with Apple’s other popular products. There’s also MobileMe.

This is a service that provides its users with the ability to keep their email, contacts, and calendar up-to-date on all their devices automatically. MobileMe also provides a suite of web applications that let users access their information using a web browser, share photos and movies, host a website, and use an iDisk for online file storage.

The Price Is NOT Right

Considering the great ideas behind it, I can’t help but wonder why MobileMe receives far less attention than it should. Even from Mac users.

Maybe the main reason for this not-so-successful marketing attempt is the fact that MobileMe is not a free service. After the 60 days free trial, users should spare US$ 99 for a yearly subscription fee.

Actually, there’s nothing wrong about offering a paid service. The problem is, with everything that is available today online (and offline), you could assemble your own MobileMe-like features for free. And free is hard to beat.

Here are some options that you could use to have the similar features of MobileMe without having to open your wallet.

Matching the offers

Let’s break down MobileMe’s offers and then look at ways to match them.

1. Sync your contacts and calendars

With the help of GoogleSync, you could sync your Mac’s contacts and calendars to your smartphone.

The first thing you should do is to enable Address Book’s and iCal’s ability to synchronize with Google Mail and Google Calendar. Open Address Book and go to its Preferences (Command + Comma). Click Accounts, and give a checkbox to the “Synchronize with Google” option box and click “Configure”

Fill in your Google Account’s data and click OK.

Do the same with your calendar(s). Open iCal and go to the Preferences. Click Account and click Add.

Choose Google on the Account Type, fill in your Google account data and click “Create“.

Your Google account will appear and you could edit the information if you want to.

The next step would be to configure your smartphone to synchronize to your Google account using Google Sync. The supported devices are iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile.

You can find the complete instructions on how to do this on the Google Sync page. Just choose the type of smartphone you have and click on the respective instructions.

Don’t forget to backup your data before and after the process. You can’t be too careful.

2. Access information online

If you set everything up right in the previous step, your information will automatically be available online through Google Mail and Google Calendar. So, no problem here.

3. Share photos and movies

You could use various online services like Flickr or Picasa Web Albums to share your photos and many other video sharing services like YouTube for movies. Alternatively, you could build your own Wordpress photo gallery for this purpose.

4. Website hosting

This is also something that you could build yourself. We’ve discussed about several places where you could host your site for free, a method to create your own self-hosted Wordpress blog, and create and publish your iWeb sites.

5. Online Storage

MobileMe provide its users with 20GB worth of online storage, but there are already many free online storage providers out there that offer even bigger (or nearly as much) storage space.

Unmatched offers

There are of course features of MobileMe that are irreplaceable, such as the ability to find a lost iPhone and secure it. The integration between all of the features is also a plus point for MobileMe.

After listening to a free audiobook entitled “Free” by Chris Anderson, I think Apple should change its marketing tactics for MobileMe to make the service more successful. Maybe the basic features of MobileMe should be available for free while users are given options to upgrade the services for a fee. But that is just my personal opinion.

Have you tried MobileMe? Do you know other free (and maybe better) alternatives?  Please share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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That’s why I don’t need the expensive heavy-duty image editor with steep learning curve. On the other side, I can’t use the free but too-simple image editor alternatives either. Unfortunately, the available choices out there mostly fall into one of that two categories.

The Free Image Editor For Humans

After the seemingly never-ending quest to find the perfect image editor for my usage (free and powerful enough but user friendly), I found Acorn, which I personally think is the closest to my requirements.

This app, which is dubbed as “the image editor for humans“, is actually a powerful, free image editor with enough bells and whistles to satisfy even the professionals. Acorn is available in the free feature-limited version, and pro version. The first installation will give you 14 days free trial of the pro version, then you can register it or the app will be downgraded to the free version. Nevertheless, everyday users will find the free version more than enough to cater to their needs.

There’s no better way to understand what Acorn is capable of than to take it for a spin. So let’s see how this cutie caters to my needs.

Light Edit The Images

Here are some examples on how I use Acorn.

1. Resizing and Cropping

Let’s say that I’ve just captured a screenshot of an app, but the size exceeds the maximum pixels allowed by my editor. To resize it, I open the image using Acorn and go to the Image –> Resize Image menu (or hit Command + Alt + I)

Then I write down the required size, check the “Keep aspect ratio” box so that the image will stay in the correct proportion, and click OK.

Alternatively, I can use Crop to choose part of the image in the desired size. I go to the Image –> Crop menu (Command + Alt + K) and drag the edges. Cropping will not blur the image like resizing, but will not work if you need to show the complete picture.

2. Converting Images

I personally prefer PNG for my images because this format gives better quality, but sometimes the size will be too big for a blog post. In the blogging world, file size translates to traffic bandwidth and results in hosting costs.

So I compromise the quality to size by converting the PNG to JPG. I go to the File –> Save As menu (Command + Shift + S),

Choose the format and quality (for JPG only), and click OK.

3. Cover some secrets

Sometimes I have images that contains some personal information like an email address or user account. I could just place a solid rectangle above it to censor the information, but Acorn lets me do it elegantly.

First I choose “Flood Fill” from the drawing toolbox,

Then I would place the mouse cursor over the area that I want to cover while holding the “Alt” key. The “Bucket” will turn into “Droplet”.  If you click on that area, Acorn will adjust the “outline” color to match that area. Do the same for the “fill” color.

Next, I choose Shape –> Rectangular from the Drawing tools, and draw a rectangle over the area that I want to cover.

The result is as if there’s nothing written there. Compare the original image and the one that I’ve edited below.

Explore Away

The examples that I’ve given here are just a fraction of what Acorn can do. It’s impossible to discuss everything here. So I suggest that you explore the free image editor and use it according to your needs.

Have you used Acorn? Can you recommend other free alternative but powerful image editors?  Please share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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You – the house photographer – sits alone in front of your computer. All the images that you shot at the event have been edited and saved inside the hard disk. All you have to do now is share copies with your relatives. You still remember the horrible smiles that the uncles and aunts gave you while saying “send us copies…or else!” Your body trembles at the thought of failing to fulfil their request.

The Cool DIY Way Of Sharing Images

Considering the huge number of family members and the many parts of the world in which they live in, printing the photos and sending the copies to them is not the perfect answer. You don’t have the time, the energy or the funds. Burning the images onto CDs will still cost you your spare time, the blank disks and the postage.

You think about uploading the images to the web and then start looking for an online photo sharing service. But then it struck you. You remember that you have an idle Wordpress blog. Instead of leaving it untouched, why not build a photo gallery web site?

The whole process will not cost you a thing. It will still require your time, but spending the time to build a photo gallery web site is much better than licking envelopes and stamps.

Finding & Installing The Themes (& The Plugins)

Assuming that you already have your self-hosted Wordpress blog ready, you just need to add a few more ingredients: a photo-gallery theme and plugins.

In the past, you needed both the correct theme and plugins to build a photo gallery site. It’s a little bit different today. While you could still enhance the photo gallery functionality of your Wordpress blog by adding plugins, I found out that it’s not necessary anymore. With the advanced development of Wordpress themes today, you could build a cool photo gallery site just by using the right theme.

So our first objective is to find the theme. Stop by the Wordpress site and click on the “Extend” tab to find the Plugins and Themes directory.

Go to the Themes directory to find one that’s fit to be used in a photo gallery site. Use the search feature to help you. I found several nice candidates such as Monotone, Shoot It, Page Photo, Hope, Lunated, and AutoFocus.

But don’t limit yourself to my examples. Go out there into the wild wild web and search for more photo gallery Wordpress themes. You could install and experiment with all of them.

You can do the same with plugins. Different from themes, which can only be activated one at a time, many plugins can be turned on simultaneously. Nevertheless, I suggest that you don’t activate too many plugins at once with the same function to avoid conflicts.

Next, log in to your Wordpress dashboard (http://your.blog.address/wp-admin/) and click “Appearance” from the sidebar to manage your themes.

If you use the latest version of Wordpress (v 2.7 and above), you could do the “searching and installing themes” process directly from within your Wordpress admin area. Just choose the “Add New Themes” sub-menu under the “Appearance” tab (if you still use an older version of Wordpress, now is the perfect time for you to upgrade.)

You could search and limit the results to specific features – color, column, width, features, subject – using the Feature Filter. Tick the ones according to your preferences. Don’t forget to include the “photoblogging” option under the “Subject” filter.

There are several things you can do with the search results: Install, Preview and find out more Details about each theme.

If you like the theme, click “Install” and then “Install Now”

Then activate it.

If your theme supports widgets, you are advised to visit the Widget Setting page to activate them.

Just drag and drop the ones that you like to the sidebar.

Building The Blog

Now that everything is set, you could start writing your post, upload the pictures, and watch your private photo gallery takes its shape.

All that is left for you to do is email the address of your blog to those ‘meany’ aunts and uncles and let them know that they can download any pictures they like by right clicking on them. Add a little note at the end of the email that they could also add comments to the posts to share their thoughts and opinions – an extra bonus that won’t come with the hard copies.

If you’d like to see the results of this little experiment, you could visit Build A Blog. I finally decided to use only the AutoFocus theme without any additional plugins.

Have you built an online photo gallery using Wordpress? Do you know any tips, plugins, or alternative themes to make the photo gallery even more cool? Please share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The growth of technology contributes so much to the vocabulary expansion of modern people’s language. I still remember the first time I read ‘google’ as a verb. It was a sentence in one Sunday newspaper article explaining about how one technology journalist found materials for his writing.

We have hordes of newly invented words from the technological world entering the dictionary all the time. One of them is “podcast“. One dictionary defines podcast as:

An audio broadcast available as an MP3 file that you can play on a portable music player, such as an iPod, or on a computer.

The thing that didn’t even exist a decade ago, now can be found almost everywhere with almost any topic imaginable ranging from small talks, light jokes, breaking news, tutorials, to university lectures by well-known professors.

Podcasting

Some people never know about the production side of how to create a podcast. Some don’t even want to know, because they think about all of the difficulties that lurk behind it. But actually, creating podcasts can be fun. And any Mac user armed with Garageband could learn how to create a professional-quality podcast as easy as creating a ringtone for iPhone.

Open Garageband and pick “Podcast” from the New Project and click “Choose”.

You will have to tell the app where you want to save the project.

There are three pre-set tracks ready: Male Voice, Female Voice, and Jingles; and basically, all you have to do is drag and drop the jingles to accompany your voice.

Let’s start with the fun part: exploring the jingles. Click the Loop Browser and choose Podcast Sound View. You’ll have tons of ready-made jingles, stingers and sound effects that you can use by dragging and dropping them to the “Jingles” track.

While I can safely say I understand what jingles and sound effects are, I still don’t know what stingers are. My best guess is (CMIIW) that they are things that you put before, during or after a short talk in order to emphasize it.

You can add as many Jingles track as you need. The easiest way to do so is by duplicating it (Track –> Duplicate or Command + D).

And then, the voice recording. Click on the track (Male or Female Voice) and click on the record button below.

There are many factors that determine the quality of the recording, but two of the most essential are the quality of the microphone and the recording environment. So, invest in a good microphone and do your podcasting in a place with minimum distractions.

Don’t forget to put a face to your podcast. You could use a picture from the iPhoto library for this purpose. Open the media browser from the right pane and choose “Photos”. Browse around to find the one that you like (or the one that you’ve prepared before), drag and drop it to the empty Episode Artwork box.

To change the name, just click on the “podcast track” bar above

and write down the title on the information pane on the left.

Broadcasting

Broadcasting comes right after the podcast production process. Garageband provides you with several alternatives in the Share menu. You could send the podcasts to iTunes (before submitting them to iTunes Music Store), to iWeb, or save it (hard drive, USB or any other kind of storages).

We have discussed a little about building websites using iWeb. Adding Garageband-made Podcasts to enhance iWeb-made sites is as easy as clicking a menu.

You could get more information on submitting your podcast to iTunes Music Store on this page.

Garageband is one of the tools that can help you create great quality of podcasts easily and at the same time having fun doing it. While there are still so many things that we can discuss about Podcasting using Garageband, I hope this short article could help you to get started in the Podcasting world.

Have you tried podcasting? Do you know other podcasting tools? Share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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I was very proud to own the gadget that cost me a few months of my salary, because only a few people could afford cellphones in those days, and not all cellphones from that era could play monophonic ringtones. Most could only beep.

Now, the ringtone technology has gone way beyond monophonic. Polyphonic is also outdated. Even cheap China-made phones used by the street fruit and vegetable sellers – who walk the damp narrow alleys of poor third-world countries – can use MP3 songs as the ringtones.

While you could buy ringtones for your cellphones if you want to, creating one feels more rewarding. As a bonus, you could show off to friends and relatives your unique ringtones that nobody else has. And if you use an iPhone, your path to being able to create one of your own ringtones is very clear.

Grabbing goods from Garageband

Maybe there are many Mac users who are not aware that they have a tool to create their own quick and unique iPhone ringtones: Garageband. This easy to use music creation software comes free with every purchase of a Mac unit as part of the iLife suite.

To create your own ringtone using the latest version of Garageband – v ‘09, you just have to choose the “iPhone Ringtone” menu from the start up screen, then choose either Example Ringtone (to use and edit pre-made sample), Loops (to use and build a new one using Apple Loops) and Voice (to user your own voice as the ringtone).

The next step would be giving a name to this project and choosing the place to save it. Unless you speak music language, I suggest that you not meddle with the song adjustments (tempo, signature, and key). And actually you don’t need to because we wouldn’t deal with complicated song building anyway.

For those who chose Example Ringtone, you’ll see the 17 second sample. Click the play button to listen to it. Should you want to use it, you could export it as a ringtone (more on this later).

The same thing applies if you choose Loops. But here you could enhance your tone by adding more loops from the loop library on the right pane.

Recording your own voice

Voice option will give you two pre-configured tracks: Male basic and Female basic so you don’t have to adjust anything to optimize the recording.

There are many other voice configurations available from the track info pane on the right.

You’ll also have an alloted 20 second loop to use, but you could adjust this by dragging the end of the yellow loop bar to the time position that you’d like.

Actually, the one that we call the ringtone could be anything from a standard song to a spoken word. If you have a deep broadcaster voice, for example, you can just speak out your own ringtone. But Voice option is also a good place to start if you could sing (or not) and want to record a mini-choir of yourself as the ringtone. Garageband allows its users to create songs from many tracks like Voice 1, Voice 2, Voice 3 etc.

To add tracks, go to Track –> New Track menu or use Command + Option + N

Using songs from iTunes

I personally would like to choose part of an existing song from iTunes as the ringtone. So after the main Garageband window opens, I’ll just delete the existing track (Command + Delete) and choose the Media Browser from the lower right corner of the window.

Then I dragged and dropped a song from the list to the main pane.

The song was converted into Garageband track and ready to be edited.

To determine which part of the song will be converted into a ringtone, I adjusted the loop bar to the position that I prefer. This loop bar time should be 40 seconds or less.

Exporting to ringtone

To export the part of the song into the ringtone, I went to Share –> Send Ringtone to iTunes menu.

Another conversion and export process will take place and…

The ringtone will be placed under the ‘Ringtone’ folder in iTunes as a m4r file and will automatically be synchronized to iPhone the next time it connected.

Non-iPhone users could also use Garageband to create their own mp3 ringtones, but that process requires a different method and enough to be written as another article for another time.

Have you tried to use Garageband to create iPhone ringtones? Share your opinions using the comments below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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But even with all of the past fuss, Wordpress was (and still is) the ultimate blogging platform for everyday folks like us.

Today, almost every part of the installation has gone from manual to automatic. With the help of the installer script that basically does a Wordpress auto install, you can have Wordpress up and running with just one click. Most web hosting services have included at least one script in their cPanel. The most popular two are Fantastico and Elefante.

A Better Wordpress Auto Install Alternative

But “most web hosting services” means “not all web hosting services”. For those who use webhosts without this one-click-install luxury, their options were only to install manually or move to another service.

Luckily, that too is a problem of the past because there’s a web service called SimpleScripts that can help us install and upgrade Wordpress easily on almost any hosting platform which meets the system requirements. SimpleScripts can also install many other popular web applications such as Joomla, ZenCart, Roundcube and Drupal.

SimpleScripts is available in two versions, free and pro. The free version has a limit of three installation while the pro version has no such limitation but will cost you US$15 per year.

Besides providing users with easy, one-click Wordpress auto installs, SimpleScripts will also send email notifications every time the installed web app has an available upgrade.

Using SimpleScripts

To use the service, you first have to register. Just click on the signup link at the top right corner of the web page.

The registration process requires you to provide your email address and the web hosting service. There are a number of supported hosting companies in the drop down list. Choose “Other” if the one that you use is not there.

After clicking on the “Create Account” button, you will get an email with your login information and you are ready to begin.

Choose “Wordpress” from the script list. You can see that SimpleScripts has already provided its users with the latest version of Wordpress. This is another advantage of using this service over other similar installer scripts which are usually not updated frequently enough.

The installation is easy as 1-2-3:

1. Click install
2. Fill in the necessary information (domain and FTP) and
3. Click “Update”

If all of the information you provided were correct, and if your hosting service met the system requirements, your Wordpress should be installed successfully.

You can also use SimpleScripts to upgrade your existing Wordpress installation. To do this, choose “Import” instead of “Install” in step one.

Choose the “I need to update my FTP information” link under the “Install” button if the Wordpress you want to upgrade is different from the one that you’ve already installed, or if you want to install a new one in a different location.

I personally like this service better than other similar installers simply because it puts the user in control yet being easy to use.

Have you tried SimpleScripts? Or do you know other free ways to auto install Wordpress? Share using the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• iWeb – Build A Quick, Easy & Beautiful Website [Mac only] (31)
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This free Mac website building tool comes with iLife suite – free with every new Mac purchase. It promises its users quick and easy ways to build beautiful websites. To be able to achieve that, iWeb comes with various ‘plug and play’ ready-made templates for users to use and modify.

Experience is the best teacher. So there’s no better way to explore what iWeb can do than by using it to make use of our domain name and web host.

Settling on the Settings

The first thing that you’ll see when you first open iWeb is the choices of templates. Don’t worry too much at this stage. Just pick the one that you like, and you can change your mind later.

Then we can continue with the settings. Click the “Site” item on the left pane, and you’ll see the “Site Publishing Setting” opened in the middle pane. This is the place to change the name of your site from “Site” into something more appealing.

If you want to publish your site on your chosen hosting service, choose “FTP Server” from the “Publish to” options. (Note: This option is not available on the older version of iWeb). Then fill in all the fields with the required information; from the site name, to the FTP settings, to the website URL.

For you Facebookers, there’s a bonus that you’ll love: the ability to update your Facebook profile when you publish your site. Tick the checkbox and provide the user information if you want to activate this option.

Shaping the Site

The web building process itself is as simple as adding pages (Command + N), editing the text, and replacing the pictures.

If you want to, you can edit every element of the page by clicking on that specific element and opening the “Page Inspector” from the “View –> Show Inspector” menu or by pressing “Command + Option + I”

There are several types of pages that you can add, such as a blank page; ready to edit pages (Welcome Page, About Me page); blog page – where you can write and update your posts; and also the rich-media pages (Photo Album page, Movies page and Podcast page).

The pages will be placed in the left pane and you can re-arrange the order as you like. You can also add another website(s) (Command + Shift + N) to the project, each with its own pages and themes.

Enhancing with Elements

To enhance your site, you can add as many kinds of elements you want to each page. There are four tabs on the right pane:

• Audios –> You can add music to your pages from Garageband and iTunes



• Photos –> You can add pictures from iPhoto and Photobooth



• Movies –> You can add movies from iMovie and iTunes



• Widgets –> You can add several ready made widgets, including the one to include HTML code called HTML snippet widget

There are more advanced settings that you can do by going deeper into the Page Inspector, but the scope is too big to be discussed here. You can find many nice effects while you experiment with iWeb.

After the building process is done, you can do the final step by clicking the “Publish Site” button below. If you put the FTP settings right, everything should be uploaded to your server, and your site will be alive.

iWeb might not be the ultimate tool for those professional-level web designers. But for everyday folks who just want to build a beautiful site quickly and easily, this app is more than capable to fulfill their needs.

Have you tried iWeb? Got any tricks to optimize iWeb? Share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Sure, you can get tons of results from search engines. But most of them turn out to be more annoying than useful. In the end, the results that we can count on are those which come from peer recommendation.

So, to help readers with their web-building experiments (and for my own future references), I tried to compile a list of good easy and free web hosting services. Many of the entries are readers’ recommendations, others are the remainder of the search engine results after filtering out the unqualified ones.

The elimination process

Before revealing the list, let’s look at several factors that made a few services good enough to not be eliminated from the list. Please note that I’ve tried my best not to play favorites, but my personal opinion might differ from others.

First, the features that make these web hosting services easy to use. One service offers different arrangements than the other one. But the ones that we are looking for must have:

• an installer script (usually Elefante or Fantastico) for automatic installation of Wordpress (and other server-side applications)
• access to a control panel for easier web management
• the latest version of MySQL and PHP (at least not too old)
• FTP access to upload and delete files
• the ability to host our own domain (so we can use the CO.CC address or other personal domain).

Second, the free factors. Most of the time, free is not really free. Some services offer free hosting with ads, some take forever for the activation process, some others require users to make a minimum number of posts in some forum before becoming eligible for the service. The ones that we are looking for should be “as free as possible”.

Again, the list is compiled with “newbies” and “experimentations” in mind. For better features, bigger disk space, monthly data transfer (bandwidth), access to customer service and technical support, and peace of mind, you should go and get yourself a paid web hosting service. Try Resellers Panel for much cheaper resellers price.

The Survivors

Here are the ones that still stand after the showdown.:) In no particular order, of course. I’ll only mention the disk space and monthly data transfer for quick comparison purposes. Please refer to each service provider’s website for the full list of features as they will be too long to list down here.

Zymic

Gives you:

• 5 GB disk space per account with unlimited account per users
• 50 GB of monthly data transfer

XtreemHost

Gives you:

• 5.5 GB disk space
• 200 GB of monthly data transfer

Hosting-Engine

Gives you:

• 150 MB disk space
• 4 GB of monthly data transfer

Host-Ed

Gives you:

• 150 MB disk space
• 4 GB of monthly data transfer

Freehostia

Gives you:

• 250 MB disk space
• 6 GB of monthly data transfer

PhpNet

Gives you:

• 350 MB disk space
• 15 GB of monthly data transfer

000Webhost

Gives you:

• 1.5 GB disk space
• 100 GB of monthly data transfer

Footnotes

I hope this list can help you start your first (Wordpress) blog or website (or park some of the domain names that you have).

I’m sure there are more options lurking somewhere out there, but these are the best that I could find within a few days of searching.

I also found out that some of these services don’t last very long. Many of the links that I found are dead. I guess that’s another side of free services that can’t compete with paid ones.

If you know of other good alternatives, please don’t hesitate to share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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But that doesn’t mean that I will never embrace another potential ways to get my things done. The problem is, the only application that I know utilizing mouse gestures is Opera, so I never really had the chance to really taste how delicious mouse gesture can be.

Then I found FlyGesture, a free application from FlyingMeat that promises to bring mouse gestures to every corner of the Mac OS X computing experience.

One Mouse to rule them all

If I have to describe FlyGesture using my own definition, I might say that this an application that will translate mouse gestures into almost any possible action(s). And before deciding that I am being hyperbolic, let’s see what this baby can do.

The first thing to do after opening the application is to visit the Preferences (FlyGestures –> Preferences menu or Command + Comma). Here you can choose which hotkey (and which mouse button) to activate the application and listen to gestures.

The default activation hotkey is F1 and mouse button is disabled. You can change the hotkey if you want to. And if you happen to use a multi-button mouse with an unused button available, you can assign this button also to invoke FlyGesture.

This app comes with a library full of preset actions. To see all the available gestures, you can open the catalog by going to Window –> Open Catalog menu or by using Command + T.

You can add your own gestures by clicking the Plus (+) button at the bottom of the window. Deleting the existing gestures is also possible by clicking the Minus (-) button.

If you decide to add your own, you’ll see the gesture input pad. Click the middle button and start drawing your gesture. Click again when you’ve finished. Click OK to accept the gesture or reset to redraw. I suggest you to create simple mouse gestures because drawing difficult shape every time you want to do something can be frustrating.

After clicking OK, you can add actions that you want to be executed by the gesture you’ve just created. The options range from activating applications, running AppleScripts to typing texts.

You can add several actions to one gesture, just like building Automator workflow.

This ability opens up countless possibilities, limited only by your imagination. You can build a gesture to write a simple signature or you can go wild and create one that will: save your work, upload it to the FTP, create an email and send it to your clients telling them that the work is done, make the computer say “goodnight” to you, play a lullaby while you go to bed, and turn itself off.

Put the gestures into action

Using FlyGesture is as simple as pressing the hotkey (or the chosen mouse button), perform the preset gesture to activate the assigned action(s) and pressing the hotkey once more. That’s it.

Some might think that using mouse gestures is not practical because you have to memorize so many gestures. But I think it’s the opposite. Just create one or two (or several) gestures that will perform complex actions that you do routinely, and use your normal methods to do everything else. This way, you’ll get the best of both worlds.

Since FlyGesture also works with trackpad, it’s also possible to use it to write Chinese characters on older MacBooks if you want to.

Have you used FlyGesture? Or do you know other alternatives to mouse gesture applications? Share in the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Sometimes you find something at work that you want to download for your home computer (or vice versa). You could:

• download it on your work computer and bring it home later, or…
• ask your home computer to do a remote download right away – real time – from your work computer.

There’s nothing wrong with the first option, but even from the non-geek point of view, the second one is way cool. So if you have a Mac machine (which is always connected to the net) and a Dropbox account, I’ll show you how to set up the system to do a remote download – non-geek style.

Note: Dropbox is a service which will allow its users to synchronize files online and across computers. If you haven’t got it, you can get the free version, or you could try the 14-day free trial pro version (credit card required but you won’t be charged).

To learn more about this service, you can read our article comparing Dropbox and Sugarsync.

How the system works

Before we start, I think it’s best to understand how this remote download trigger works. I got the idea of setting up the system when I wrote about “2 Useful Tips For Organizing Electronic Files [Mac Only]“.

Basically it would go like this:

• you find a file that you want to receive through a remote download
• you get the download link and save it into a text file
• you put the text file into the specified Dropbox folder
• that folder will be synchronized with the same folder in your home computer
• the addition of this new text file inside the folder will trigger a download action
• after that, the text file will be moved to another folder and synchronized back to your work computer. You will be notified that the remote download process has started.

Setting up the system

Here’s how I set up my system. You can do some modifications according to your preferences.

First, I created a new folder inside the Dropbox folder on my home computer called “Remote Download“. Inside the folder I created two other folders called “New Links” and “Started“.

Then I created an Automator workflow to trigger the automatic download. I went to “File –> New –> Folder Action” menu and I :

1. Set the “New Links” folder as the trigger for the folder action



2. Chose “Files & Folders” from the Automator library



3. Dragged the “Filter Finder Items” workflow as the first action, and set it to “find all .txt files inside the New Links folder



4. Dragged the “Open Finder Items” workflow as the second action and set it to “open the .txt files using my download manager. Please note that you have to use a download manager that can import download links from txt files. I use iGetter (not free), but you can experiment with the download manager that you choose.



5. Dragged “Move Finder Items” workflow as the third action and set it to move the .txt file to the “Started” folder.



6. Saved the workflow as “Automatic Download“

You can change the folder’s name and the saved workflow to your liking, but you have to set the workflow actions accordingly.

How to use the system

To use the system, you just save a download link into a text file and put it in the “New Links” folder inside the Dropbox’s “Remote Download” folder in your work computer. You can also use the web interface if your work computer don’t have the Dropbox application installed. The text file will be synchronized and the download will be started automatically in your remote home computer. The scenario is also applied the other way around (from home to work).

The cool thing is, you can trigger the automatic download from any operating system (or even a mobile device) as long as you can connect to the net and can save a text file.

I strongly suggest you put one link inside one text file. Multiple links usually caused the download manager to ask for confirmation, so the download won’t start automatically.

As an additional bonus, you can set your work computer to notify you every time a new file is added into the “Started” folder so you’ll know that somewhere far away your download has started. Just set another Folder Action from the Automator.

You can use the same principle to trigger a torrent download, but instead of a txt file, you put the torrent file in a Dropbox folder and set your torrent client to monitor that folder and start the download automatically everytime a torrent file is detected. I know that Transmission is able to do that. But if you are using another torrent client that doesn’t have monitoring features, just use Folder Action.

I’d love to write a similar system for Windows users but I haven’t found a Windows equivalent to Mac’s Folder Action and download manager that can import links from a text file. Can anybody help?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The problem is, the process of building your own self-hosted blog is (almost always) not free and is considered complicated. So most newbies will choose the easier path and never give themselves a chance to experiment.

I personally believe that experience is the best teacher (and that you should never consider yourself a cool person if you’ve never tried to “build” a blog).

So, if you are in an adventurous mood right now and willing to take up the challenge, I’ll show you how to easily set up a free Wordpress blog site.

Some of you might ask, “Why Wordpress?” I could go on and explain how cool it is, how it has grown from a simple blogging platform into an advanced CMS (Content Management System) and still stay simple and free, how you can expand it into virtually everything by adding plugins and themes; but to save you the time, I’ll just go with “Why not?”

Getting your own domain name

The first step in our little project is obtaining a domain name. But with zero budget, you shouldn’t expect to be able to snatch a dot com – or any other popular dots like org, net, name or tv. For this experimental purposes, we’ll go with a less popular but free alternative.

The free service that I always use for quick and free domain names is www.co.cc. This service will provide you with 2 free domain names (with .co.cc suffixes) for personal use. (But that doesn’t mean that you can’t register for more with different email addresses. Wink!)

Visit the site and search for the availability of your chosen domain name(s). I’ve registered buildablog.co.cc for this article so you can’t claim that one.

If your chosen name is available, please check whether it’s available for free because there are names which are not free. Then continue with the registration.

If you’ve been here before, you can log in with your account. Newcomers click “Create an account now“.

After completing the registration process, you need to set up your domain. This step should be done within 48 hours or they will delete the domain. So click the set up button now.

Finding yourself a host

To be able to set up the domain, you need a webhost. So, we’ll postpone the domain set up process for a while and find ourselves a webhost first. I stumbled on a service which provides free webhosting without ads called 000webhost. You won’t get premium features, but 1.5GB of disk space and 100GB of data traffic per month should be sufficient for our project.

Sign up for free hosting with your registered domain name from the previous step, and you’ll get the DNS addresses needed for the domain set up – both in the confirmation email and in the website. Armed with that information, we are ready to go back to our postponed task.

Please note that the host set up process could take a long time (up to 24 hours). So be patient here and refresh the page often.

Setting up the domain

Back at the “Manage Domain” page, choose the number one: “Name Server” option and write down these values:

- Name server 1: ns01.000webhost.com
- Name server 2: ns02.000webhost.com

Then click “Set Up“, and you’ll go into another waiting game.

Installing Wordpress

After the host and the DNS settings are active, we can log in to the cPanel to install Wordpress. You can log in using your email address and password.

Find the Software section inside the cPanel and choose Fantastico, then select Wordpress and provide the admin name with the chosen password. The Fantastico installation script will make the Wordpress installation easier by automatically building and linking the database for you.

You have to decide where you want to install Wordpress. If you leave the sub-folder blank, then Wordpress will be installed in the root folder: your domain name and you can access it using –> http://www.your-domain.co.cc. But if you put name in the sub-folder, then Wordpress would be installed in that folder and accessible via http://www.your-domain.co.cc/foldername

Customization and final notes

You can customize your Wordpress installation using plugins and themes and upgrade it to the latest build via FTP. The details of the FTP is available in the welcome email and in the cPanel. I won’t go into detail here because discussing that topic would require another one or two more articles.

With all that said and done, I have to emphasize that the free domain name and free hosting service will only go that far: as an experiment tool. If you want to do this seriously, you have to go with the paid service as they will provide you with more necessary bells and whistles.

But let me share one last trick here: you don’t have to settle with the price that web hosting company offer you. You can get a far cheaper price by applying for a web host reseller account. Normally, this kind of account is not opened to the general public and also not free. But I found one which is free for everybody to join called Resellers Panel. (The link will put me as your referrer, but you can go directly to their website if you want)

By applying to become a reseller, not only you can get the cheapest price for domain names and hosting but you could also start your own business by reselling the service with the market price.

Do you use Wordpress? Have you tried to install one on the web server? Share your experience using the comment below, and don’t forget to check out our article on installing Wordpress locally in your hard drive.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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We have discussed the usage of tags in file management, but it would be nicer if all of those files are automatically sorted and placed in a specific folder pre-configured for them. MP3s will go into music folder, images into pictures folders, PDFs into document folders, and so on.

I figured that there should be a few apps that I could offer as tips for organizing electronic files. After a quick search, I found three alternatives: Hazel (powerful, but not free: US$21.95 with 14-day trial), File Actions (not as powerful as Hazel, but free) and Apple’s Automator (powerful and free). Since MakeUseOf prioritizes on free applications, let’s dig a little deeper into File Actions and Automator.

Monitor and Move
The basic function of File Actions is simply to monitor certain folders and automatically move files based on a set of rules.

The first time you open this application, you’ll have a blank window. What you have to do now is set the time intervals between checks. After that click on the plus (+) button to add new rules.

There are three factors that will determine the rules:

• The locations to be monitored –> there are several location that you can choose by ticking the box next to it, such as: desktop, documents, downloads, and other. Ticking ‘other’ will make this app check all other locations on the hard drive. You can choose multiple locations to be monitored.
  
• The destination – where the files should be moved –> just like the first item, you have several options to choose. But here, you can only choose one location as the destination.
  
• And of course, the rule itself –> you set some rules by deciding what string should be matched to activate the process. There are four options: file extensions should match the strings (File Suffix is equal), file extensions should not match the strings (File Suffix is not equal), name should match the strings (File Prefix is equal) and name should not match the strings (File Prefix is not equal). Then you can write the strings. Use comma to separate multiple strings.
  

For example, if you want to move all of your downloaded MP3s to the music folder, you can choose the Downloads folder to be monitored, choose the music folder as the destination, choose “File Suffix is equal” and add MP3 as the string. Click OK to save and you can rename the rule from the main window by clicking it.

Automate with Automator
But File Actions is an old application dated back to 2007. Even though I can use it just fine in Snow Leopard, I found some glitches like the inability to choose a specific folder to be used as “Other” in the destination. So let’s try the second option: Automator.

For the purpose of moving files automatically to their destined location, you’ll need a very simple workflow. Open Automator (Applications –> Automator) and choose Folder Action. This is an action which will be activated everytime there’s a new activity happened to a specific folder.

Suppose we want to achieve the same thing as before: automatically move all the downloaded MP3s to the music folder, the first thing to do is to choose which folder to monitor. We’ll just set this to Downloads folder.

Then we’ll choose “Actions” tab, and “Files and Folders” from the library and we can start building our own Automator Workflow.

We can build the workflow by dragging and arranging the actions into the main window. We only need two action items here: “Filter Finder Items” and “Move Finder Items”.

Set the file extension to be filtered to MP3 on the first action, and Music folder as the location to move Finder items.

Then we save the file and let Automator takes care everything else.

Repeat the process for other folders and other types of files.

The example I provided here for organizing electronic files is just a very simple one. But we can create far more sophisticated automations using Automator by tinkering with all the filters and rules. The limit is your imagination. What have you used Automator for?

File Actions

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Trying to create a screencast has been one of my to-do-later items. I never get around to do it since there were always things that get in the way. But with the arrival of this QuickTime X, I thought now might be the perfect time to try and offer readers a QuickTime X review.

Screencasting made easy

Honestly, I was expecting a series of difficult steps to take to produce a good screencast. I couldn’t be more wrong. Screencasting using QuickTime X is as easy as pressing the record button.

• The first thing to do is to activate “Screen Recording” mode by going to “File –> New Screen Recording” menu or by using Command + Control + N shortcut keys combination.

• Then a small screen recording window will appear with the “Record” button in the middle. By clicking the small arrow button at the bottom right corner of the window, you can access a few settings that you can meddle with: the microphone to use, the quality of the movie and the location to save the screen recording.

If you have a decent external microphone, plug it in and choose “Line In” in the microphone setting to have better sound quality. Otherwise choose “Internal Microphone” to use your computer’s built-in microphone. If you don’t want to put any sound in the screencast, choose none.

• Click the “Record” button. A confirmation window will pop up. Click the “Start Recording” button.

• The screen recording window will disappear and everything that happens on the screen will be recorded (with your voice as the narrator in the background).

A little tip here: close or minimize other open windows during the screen recording so the screencast will not be distracted by the mess. You can also try to do the screencasting in an empty virtual desktop by switching Spaces (”Control + Arrow Buttons” or “Control + Number Buttons“). Another trick to have a clean background for screencasts is by opening an empty text document (or a picture) and enlarge it to fill the whole screen.

• You can stop the recording by clicking the stop button in the menubar or by pressing the key combination of “Command + Control + Esc“.

Your movie will automatically be saved in the location that you’ve set before, and will be opened for you to be evaluated (and trimmed if necessary).

Please note that the screen recording process using QuickTime X will record the whole screen. This setting will result in a movie as big as your screen with a very large filesize. And if you convert the movie into a smaller size, the text will be unreadable. It would be very nice if there’s the option to record only a portion of the screen.

Trimming the screencast

QuickTime X also gives users the ability to trim the movie. This way users can shorten the long screencast and keep only the important part.

To enable trimming mode, click on the share button (second from the right on the play bar) and choose “trim” from the option window.

The play bar will change into an iMovie-like scene bar. You can slide the left and right edges to the position that you want before clicking the Trim button. Everything inside the block will be kept and everything outside will be trimmed out.

However, users can’t trim out portions of the movie clip in several places like the previous Pro version of QuickTime. Again, it would be nice to have that feature added to QuickTime X.

Sharing the screencast

For a short wrap up to this quick screencasting thing, let’s look at the sharing option.

QuickTime X makes it easy for users to upload the movie to YouTube by clicking the “Share –> YouTube” menu.

A YouTube login window will appear. Fill in your user name and password and click “Sign In“.

Provide some additional information about the movie, click “Next” and your movie will be on its way to the virtual world.

In general, I think QuickTime X is a decent screencasting tool for common users. It still lack several necessary features to make it a good one, but it has a lot of potential to grow and the future looks promising.

For the time being, users who need another free alternative to screencasting tool with more bells and whistles can try Jing. Don’t forget to check other articles about screencasting tools.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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My own story began with the failure of the back up drive, which was the legacy of my old PC days. I figured I could survive several days without backing up my data before buying a replacement drive. Well, days turned to weeks and months turned to years, then my main hard drive finally failed. Then I remembered, “Ah, yes… I have to buy that second hard drive to back up my data.”

But the common condition of not backing up is because most people don’t want to go through the tedious process of constant “choose and copy and paste”. We need help from free back up utilities, and the first requirement is the ability to automate the whole process.

Travel Through Time

Starting from Leopard, Mac OS X comes with its own “set it and forget it” back up utilities called Time Machine. Over its lifespan, this application has been refined into a very capable utility and should be the first option of back up tools for common Mac users.

Activating it requires no rocket science. Just go to the System Preferences and click on Time Machine.

Users need to plug in the external drive, select it as the destination drive, and switch the Time Machine on – literally.

However, Time Machine can’t work with MS-DOS (FAT) formatted drives. So, if you want the external drive to also be available for Windows machines, you can’t do time travel.

Other disadvantages of using Time Machine are:

• The backup can’t be used to boot the machine
• Users can’t control when the process should take place
• Since this tool will record the state of the main drive all the time, it will (eventually) take up a very large space.

Attack Of The Clone

Another alternative is the free backup utility Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). I’ve tried the latest stable version (v. 3.2.1) and it works well under the new Mac OS X v 10.6.

However, the developer suggests that Snow Leopard users should upgrade their copy with the newer beta version (v. 3.3.b5 at the time of writing). You can do this by downloading it directly from the developer’s site or by using the “Update CCC” menu directly from the app.

As the name suggests, this free backup utility will create a clone of your disk. By default, CCC will back up everything from the main disk to the chosen destination. But this setting can be changed easily by choosing “Cloning Options”

If you choose “Incremental backup…“, you will be able to select which items should be excluded from the backup process by unchecking them. Give a check mark to the option “Delete items…” if you want to create the exact copy of your main drive, but if you only want to do a one-way backup, leave this option alone.

For the target disk; you can choose either an external disk, a new disk image, an already available disk image, or even a disk in a remote location.

The advantage of using a disk image as the target disk is that you can use non HFS+ formatted disks as the image location. It’s also possible to place the image on the main drive. The only disadvantage to this option is that you can’t boot from a disk image.

After everything is set, you can push that “Clone” button on the bottom-right corner of the windows.

The cloning process can also be scheduled easily through the “Scheduled Task…” menu (or by using the shortcut key Command + S)

Return Of The Clone

In these data cloning rituals, there’s another process as important as the backing up: restoring the data. This process should also be as painless as possible.

Fortunately, CCC makes the data restoration process as simple as switching the source – target disk. Too easy to be true, huh?

So do you back up your data regularly? Do you know of any other free alternatives for backing up a Mac? Share your thoughts using the comments below.

Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC)

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Being an Opera long-time fan (back to the days of Netscape vs. IE), I’m also curious about what goodies Opera 10 has to offer. So I gave Opera 10 – Mac version for me – a test drive, and here is my Opera browser review with several nice features that I like.

Speed Dial those pages

The first thing that users will notice is the “speed dial” page which will always be shown every time a new blank page is opened. The idea is that users will be able to access their favorite pages using these pre-configured “dial-pad”. Something like “Top Sites” in Safari.

There are nine default boxes, click an empty one to add a web page and click on an assigned one to go directly to that page.

Users can configure how many dial-pad boxes they want – from 4 (2 x 2) to 25 (5 x 5), what background image to show, or whether they want to hide or show speed dial.

What makes this feature special is the ability to synchronize these speed dial boxes to other Operas in other places, even under different OSes and different devices.

Link with Opera Link

The synchronization process discussed above is done using a feature called Opera Link. Using this service, users can synchronize Speed Dial, Bookmarks, Personal Bar, Typed History, Notes, and Searches.

But before using it, users should sign up first for an Opera account.

I think this synchronization feature could be Opera’s strongest selling point because of the existence of Opera Mini. As one of the leaders in mobile browsers, Opera Mini could “persuade” its users to try the desktop version just to have all of their data synchronized between devices.

Playing with Panels

Opera has a customized side panel which can be opened by clicking the “Panels” button next to tabs.

Users can fill in the panels with useful tools like Bookmarks, Widgets, Notes and History, by going to Tools –> Appearance menu

and then choosing the Panels tab.

Mail and Chat

Opera has an email client built-in the browser. Even though some users might prefer a stand-alone client, others would likely embrace the idea of Mail-Browser integration.

The first step of using this client is creating an account.

Beside email, there are other kinds of account that could be set, such as Newsgroups and IRC chat. (I wonder whether anybody still use these two classics and I also wonder why Opera included them).

Peeking through tabs

This one is a simple feature which I think is very useful. Users can peek into the background tabs just by hovering the mouse above the tab.

Turbo-charge the browsing experience

Opera 10 has another unique feature called Opera Turbo. Opera claims that this feature is able to boost the Internet bandwidth speed on slow connections by using Opera proxy servers to compress data and image traffic before they reach the browser.

To enable the feature, just click on the Opera Turbo’s teeny-weeny button on the bottom-left corner of the window.

Users should customize the turbo setting first before using it. There are three settings available: Automatic, On and Off.

Those with slow internet connections will be grateful for this free service provided by Opera as there are many similar services out there that charge high monthly fees for more or less the same features.

Surely, there are many more features in Opera 10 such as mouse gestures and widget support (similar to addons for Firefox), but for now, I’ll limit myself to these favorite features of mine.

And if you think you still need a little bit “nudge” to try Opera, please look at the CPU usage comparison between Opera and our favorite Firefox. (Those are dynamic numbers which always change slightly from time to time, but you get the picture, right?)

One more thing, for this Opera browser review I used Opera for Mac, but I assume the features would be the same under different OS. Opera 10 is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, QNX, OS/2 and BeOS.

Do you use Opera? Which features do you like? Share your thoughts and opinion in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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