It’s nice to at least have the image files named like image1, image2, image3, etc so that you can at least order them. Luckily for us Mac OS X users, we have a nice little tool that Apple has developed called Automator which makes such a batch rename task  a breeze.

Open up Automator by going to your Applications folder and then double click Automator to open it up. Alternatively you could use Spotlight or Quicksilver to open up the Application.

When Automator has loaded up you will be presented with a window similar to the one pictured below.

From here, select Custom and ht the Choose button to begin creating your workflow.

First, search for Get Specified Finder Items or click Files & Folders under Library and then select the action from there. When you have found it, drag and drop it to the right to add it to the workflow. Leave the field empty for now.

Next, search for rename in the search field at the top of the Application.

When you have found it, drag and drop it to the workflow. An alert box will pop up asking you if you would like to add a ‘Copy Finder Items‘ action to the workflow. Click on Add to add the action. All it does is duplicate the items to be batch renamed, serving as a backup in case things go wrong and leaving the original files intact. Choose a suitable destination for it — a new folder on the desktop should be perfect.

Your workflow should look like the one below.

There is one last thing I am going to change and that is within Rename Finder Items. I am going to change Add Date or Time to Make Sequential. Also change Add number to to new name, set this to whatever you like, I have named it image. Make sure that you tick Make all number 2 digits long so that when you reorder the images the ones that are image_2 will come before image_11.

We are all done.

Save the workflow as a batch rename application by going to the File menu and choose ‘Save As…’ Enter a name for it, like “Rename to Sequential” and select ‘Application’ for the file format and save it somewhere obvious, the Desktop, perhaps. To rename your images, simpley drag them over the icon and release. Automator will spring into life, copy and bulk rename your images, and save them to the destination you specified in the workflow.

If it is successful it should have copied all the images and renamed them image-1, image-2, image-3 and so on in the folder that you chose.

I went from this :

to this with a nice, simple workflow.

The advantage of saving the workflow as a batch rename application is you can use it over and over again. If you need to change the settings in the workflow, open the “application” in Automator.

There is a bulk rename utility for Mac OS X called NameChanger that is similar to what we have just done. But its nice to know that there are alternatives, for example if you don’t have an internet connection and can’t download NameChanger.

This has been a workflow that has came in useful for me on a number of occasions. Share your workflows with us and our readers in the comments below.

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

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Here I will discuss 3 of my favorite latest discoveries.

Twi.tt

Twi.tt is a service that allows you to create and share pictures, videos, documents, audio and even polls. When you go onto Twi.tt you firstly need to sign into your Twitter account. Twi.tt uses the OAuth method for logging users in so it is secure and Twi.tt do not store your Twitter username and password.

If you have never logged into a Twitter service using OAuth before it is as simple as two clicks. First click the Sign in with Twitter button and then click Allow when you have been taken to Twitter.

Twi.tt allows you to upload pictures, videos, documents and audio from your computer, link to it via a URL or capture pictures, videos and audio straight from your computer. They are also planning on adding support for emails in a few days.

When creating a poll you have 112 characters for the poll question and there is no limit for the number of poll answers. You also have the option of disallowing repeated votes and not posting your poll to Twitter.

When your poll has been created you will be given a link to it and a link to it will also be posted on your Twitter feed if you did not select the option to not post there.

The profile page that Twi.tt creates for you is almost identical to your Twitter account as it has your background image and your profile image. People also have the option to comment on content that you have posted.

Tweepler

Tweepler is a service that was created by @coryschop that lets you organize people (also known as tweeple) that are following you and who you are following.

To login in to Tweepler you must enter your Twitter username and password at the top of the site. When you hover over Why? next to the login form you will see that they state your details are encrypted and not stored.

When you log in you are shown a list of people that are following you but you are not following back. These are listed as Unprocessed Followers. If you do not want to add a person you can move them to the ignore bucket by pressing the arrow to the right. If you want to follow a person back you click the arrow to the right of their name.

You will be able to see everyone’s username, name, website, location and their bio. But if you click on more details you will get

• Information on the average number of tweets they post per day.
• The total number of tweets they have posted.
• Information on the number of followers they have
• The number of people they are following along with a ratio of following:followers. Their three latest tweets are also displayed.

It is possible to sort users by newest followers, oldest followers, name and username. If you don’t want to bother going through all of the Unprocessed followers you can click the Follow All or Ignore All button at the bottom of the page.

Tweetboard

Tweetboard is one of the most unique Twitter tools I have came across to date. What Tweetboard allows you to do is add a Twitter conversation for your site so that viewers can post messages and others can reply all in an easy to follow nested view.

Tweetboard is still in alpha but you can grab an invite by requesting one on the Tweetboard website by clicking the “Request a free alpha invite!” button. When you click the button it will take you to Twitter where you must send the message that is entered upon load.

When your account has been set up you will be notified. From the Tweetboard you can then grab the javascript snippet of code that will be placed on your website for Tweetboard to function. On certain content management systems and blogs the code may not work as intended to so some tweaking may be needed.

Tweetboard is a really good way of increasing traffic to your website and also a great solution of getting to know what your visitors think of your website.

If you have a favorite Twitter tool or service then post a comment below and share it with us.

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 application is installed on your computer and then it acts as a server and allows for your computer to be connected to. You can then access your iTunes library through your browser and stream any song that you have or share your iTunes library with others.

Since it acts as a server you will need to keep the computer turned on that you wish to access. If it is turned off then the application is not running and therefore you won’t be able to access your library. If you want to be able to access your iTunes library all the time but not leave your computer on, then the best solution would be to purchase a cheap computer that you can leave on all the time.

Installation and Setup

To download pulpTunes simply go to the pulpTunes website and click the Download Now button to being downloading the application. The file that will be downloaded is a zip file so expand it then open up the application named pulpTunes in the folder that is created.

The first time you start up the application a window similar to the one pictured below will be displayed. This is telling you how to access the library within your browser and to open port 15000 on your firewall so that you can access your library from outside your network. If you do not know your IP address then this will also be shown so take a note of it.

When you click OK if you go to http://localhost:15000 you will see all of your songs and playlists. Your iTunes server has now been setup locally – you’ve now shared your iTunes library, and anyone on your network should be able to access it if they know the port number. If you do not want everyone to be able to access it then you can setup an admin username and password by clicking on the icon in the tray and then selecting User Management.

When the window opens up check Enable User Management and then enter the username and password that you would like then hit save.

If you return to http://localhost:15000 you will now notice in the upper right corner that there is a hyperlink called Log in.

When you click the hyperlink you will be asked for the username and password that you have just entered into the User Management window.

If you successfully log in you will now notice a hyperlink in the upper right corner called User Management.

If you do not want anonymous users to have access to any of your library then uncheck the Has access box. If you want anonymous users to only access certain playlists or songs then you can do this by clicking All Playlists and selecting the playlists and songs that you want to allow an anonymous user to listen to.

To add a user that you do not want to be an Admin you must first create a group. I created a group called Users and I will allow them to rate songs so I check the Can rate songs box. To create a user, click on the Accounts tab and then press Add User. I named my user user1, the group Users and other required information. When I click save it is now possible to log in as user1 and listen to my library.

Advanced Settings

By default when the page loads, the first song automatically plays so to stop this, click on the pulpTunes icon in the tray and press Advanced Settings. If you uncheck Start playing songs, hit OK, then restart pulpTunes then the first song will no longer automatically play when the page has loaded.

The Advanced Settings window also allows you to change the port number that is used to access the library, so for example if port 15000 is used by something else on your router you can change it to a port that is unused.

If your iTunes XML library file is located somewhere else than the default location you can also change this here.

If you want to see who is accessing the pulpTunes server and what songs they are listening to, you can enable logging to keep track of this. Click OK and restart the pulpTunes server and the changes will be applied.

Please let us know what you think of sharing your iTunes library with pulpTunes by posting a comment below. If you know of a similar application feel free to discuss this below with other readers.

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If you browse through sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Blip.tv, you will see that there are lots of video tutorials but with very few of them clear to view and understand.

There are many things that are needed to create a great video tutorial and in this article, I will try my best to teach you some techniques I have learned along the way.

The Right Apps

To start creating a screencast, the you will need to first of all download an application that will allow you to record your screen. For Mac OS X, there are a few applications such as iShowU, ScreenFlow and Screenium. You can try out these apps by downloading them from their website. However, to be able to use the full functionality, you will have to purchase a license. If you are a Windows user then I recommend using Camtasia Studio because it has a lot of great features. Camtasia Studio for Windows is very similar to ScreenFlow for Mac OS X.

A free alternative for both Windows and Mac OS X is Jing. Jing is a screen capture tool from the creators of Camtasia Studio but has been created specifically for screencasts. Although the application can be used without any real limits, the only downside is that the limit on a single recording is five minutes.

For Linux users, there is an open source project on Sourceforge called Xvidcap.

Set The Right Resolution

The first thing to do when creating a screencast for the online audience is to set your screen resolution to the lowest possible setting.

The reason why we do this is so that we can record as much of the screen without losing too much quality when we compress the screencast after we have finished recording. Also, when viewers on video sharing websites view it at full screen mode then the screencast dimensions will most likely be smaller than their resolution. This means that they will be able to see everything clearly including the text.

The Right Gear

When creating a screencast, it is very important that viewers can understand what you are saying so that they can easily follow what you are trying to teach or show. For this reason, it is not recommended that you use the microphone that is built into your laptop because there is a chance that they will hear the fan and you may sound distant and unclear.

If you are going to create a screencast then invest in a standalone microphone or a headset. The headset that I use is the Logitech ClearChat Pro headset and it works great.

The Right Words

If you are doing a screencast for a video tutorial on how to create a script in PHP, for example; it is a good idea to perform a test run, create the script and think about what you would say at certain steps and making notes so that you can best describe what you are trying to get across. If you are creating a long screencast,it is better to pause the recording a take a break for a few minutes because if you make a mistake that you can’t resolve when recording the screencast, you can start again from the recording before you paused. If you are showing off a new tool to perform a certain task, then take some time to introduce the tool and the link to download it so that you do not cause confusion. Most probably, your viewers are those who are new to computers and don’t really know the means to search for the tool you are showcasing.

When you feel that there is no more that you can explain to the user, end the recording by letting them know the ways that they can contact you if they need help. List your Twitter username or email address.

The Right Format

Because the screen resolution was a very low setting, when it comes to exporting our screencast, keep the dimensions to 100%. The image below shows the settings I use for exporting my screencasts. For a short screencast I did recently, the size of the exported MOV file was 32MB and the duration of the screencast was 7 minutes 30 seconds. That works out to 4.3MB per minute which is relatively low to other compression techniques I have used in the past.

Compressing a file can take some time, depending on how long the screencast is and its dimensions. So go and grab a cup of coffee while you wait for it to finish.

The Finishing Touches

When the file has been successfully encoded and compressed, I will then open it with QuickTime Player and add a logo at the beginning of the screencast as well as a link to my website so people who stumble upon my videos on video sharing websites know where they can find more of my stuff.

Now that you have finished all the recording, editing and exporting, it is now time to upload your screencast to as many video sharing websites as you know. I upload to many video sharing websites because different people use different services so the more video sharing websites you upload your content to, the wider the audience you will reach.

If you have a website, then you should also embed it there. When displaying screencasts on my website, the service that I use is Blip.tv because the compression of your screencast when it has been uploaded is very good and hardly any quality is lost. They also have ads within the videos so you can make a little bit of money.

It is time to promote your newly created screencast on your website, so tweet about it and ask people to retweet. Add it to StumbleUpon and del.icio.us, use Facebook to promote it and here are 5 more tips on promotion, hope they come in helpful. Don’t forget to add it to tutorial websites if it is relevant to them also.

If there is anything else that you would like to know about creating a screencast then please feel free to post a comment below and I shall reply the best I can.

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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iMob Online

When I’m hanging around waiting for something this is probably one of the first apps I would open. It is an RPG based game for the iPhone where you play a mobster. In iMob the goal is to get as many mobsters to join your mob and earn as much cash as you can by completing missions and purchasing property within the game.

It is also possible to fight with other people and by doing this you can also earn money and game experience. When you reach the required experience for a level you will be able to upgrade your stats.

The creators of iMob have recently released another game called iVampires which has a similar concept as iMob but instead of being a mobster you are a vampire.

Space DeadBeef

This game is a side scrolling shooter game where you control a space ship and fire at oncoming enemies. The game never ends once you get to the end of a level the enemies will just carry on coming faster. At the end of each level you will have to fight a boss and the boss gets harder as the game progresses.

Super Monkey Ball Lite

Even though this is a Lite version of Super Monkey Ball I still find it very fun to play. The lite version only has 4 levels so once you complete these 4 levels, buy it!  It’s cheap like most iPhone apps and will cost less than a meal.

iCopter Classic

iCopter Classic is a remake of the hugely popular flash game Helicopter Game for the iPhone that has been around a few years. The first time I played this game I was hooked and couldn’t put it down. Its a great game and helps kill the boredom of waiting around.

Touch Hockey: FS5

There are two version of this game the free version and the paid version. The only difference being that there is an advert that loads up in between games. But besides that the games are exactly the same.

Touch Hockey is a great game for playing with a friend and you can change a lot within the game such as goal size and the score to get to for the player to win. The developers of this game create a whole bunch of great games for the iPhone such as Tic-Tac-Touch, Touch4 and Touch Tennis.

Let us know what your favorite app for the iPhone is. My favorite game out of these to kill time would have to be Touch Hockey because its great fun if you are playing it with a friend.

Post a comment below and tell us what your favorite game or app for the iPhone is for killing time.

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 site has two membership plans available at the time of writing this article – Basic (free) and Pro ($9.99 per month). With Basic and Pro you can use all four of Aviary’s applications. With the Basic and Pro account you also get access to basic tutorials on the applications so that you can learn how to use them properly.

With Pro you’ll also get access to new beta applications. As of writing this the application that is in beta testing is Talon the screen capture addon for Firefox. There are lots of other features that are only available to Pro users such as setting permissions on who can see your files, unlimited storage, the ability to watermark your images, more advanced tutorials on the applications so that you can learn more advanced techniques and community enhancements such as a Pro badge so that other community members can see you are a supporter and subscriber of Aviary.

Now let’s take a look at each of the four Aviary applications.

Aviary Phoenix

Phoenix is the Photoshop-like web based image editor of the Aviary application suite. Phoenix has quite a few advanced image editing techniques considering that it is a web based app. The layers, blending modes, alpha channels, layer styles, levels, hue & saturation and masking allow you to do some very effective image editing techniques.

If you head on over to the creations page and you see an image you like and wonder how it was created using Phoenix then you can click on ‘Open in Phoenix’ and you will be able to see what is on each layer.

Aviary Raven

If you are looking for a web based version of Adobe Illustrator that you can access from anywhere then Raven may be the perfect tool for you. Over at Aviary’s creation page for Raven I have seen a lot of creative things so I can’t see this application having many limitations for being a web app.

If you are a fan of Adobe Illustrator and are looking for something free with good features then I am sure you will be happy with what Raven has to offer.

Adobe Photoshop has it’s own online image editor known as Photoshop Express.

Aviary Toucan

Toucan is a great web application that allows you to create color swatches for projects such as websites. So instead of visiting websites like ColourLovers for color swatches, you could alternatively create your own.

Aviary Peacock

Aviary describes Peacock as a “visual laboratory”. Peacock allows images to be manipulated by applying effects to give it a completely different look and feel simply by dragging and dropping different generators, effects and controllers.

Anything that is created in one of the Aviary web applications can be used in any of the other applications that they have created. So far Aviary have four applications that are available for use but a lot more will be available soon that allow things such as 3D graphics manipulation and audio editing. So keep an eye on the site!

Let us know what you think in the comments and whether you think this site is a worthy web contender to their Adobe software counterparts that they are trying to rival.

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

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At the time of writing this article, Spotify is invite-only so if you would like to try the service and don’t know anyone who can invite you then the only way for you to try it out will be by purchasing a day pass or premium account. But for all you MakeUseOf readers the first 60 of you to leave a comment below requesting an invite will get instant access to Spotify!

Creating an account

When you have been invited you will receive an email with a link in it that will allow you to create an account. You are required to enter a username, password, email, postal code, gender and date of birth. It only takes a few seconds to create your account.

Once you have created your account you will be taken to a page where you will be able to download the Spotify client. Spotify is currently only supported on Windows and Mac OS X but if you are a Linux user you can download the Windows version and run it under Wine.

Starting up Spotify for the first time

When you first load Spotify up you will be asked for your account username and password. After logging in for the first time you will be shown a welcome screen highlighting all the great features about Spotify and how to best use the software.

After you have read about how to use Spotify you will see the main window of the application.

From here you will be able to see what’s new and the top songs that people are listening to.  If there is a specific song that you want to listen to then you can search for it in the Search field at the top left of the application. Then to play a song just simply double click it and the song will start to play along with the album art on the left of the application.

Features

The interface is very well designed and somewhat like that of iTunes and SongBird. Just like iTunes and SongBird you can create playlists of songs that you love. It is so simple to add any song that you like to a playlist so that you can listen to it again in the future.

If you are not sure what song you want to listen to then you can select Radio and then from there select what genre of music you would like to listen to and between which years. If you loved the sound of a song but forgot to add it to a playlist or forgot the name of it then you can simply view your history of songs that you have listened to and it will be there.

Conclusion

Spotify is a really impressive application and I would highly recommend it to anyone. If you would like to try Spotify then post a comment below with your email and we will send an invite to the first 60.  If you get one of the 60 invites, please come back to the comments section and invite those who missed out.

UPDATE : Invites are NOT needed because the service is now open to everyone.

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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1. Camino

Camino is a browser that has been around for quite some time now and was first released way back in February 2002. Camino uses the Gecko rendering engine which is the same rendering engine as many fast popular browsers such as Firefox, Flock and SeaMonkey. So if you like the way that the rendering engine works for Firefox then you should definitely give Camino a try. The inferface for Camino is real simple and easy to navigate around making it very user friendly.

To install and use Camino 50 MB of free hard drive space is required using Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

Camino Features

Toolbar Search
With the toolbar search you can search Google or any other search engine right from the toolbar from any website.

Find
From within Camino you can search through a webpage by hitting command+F and find results quickly and effortlessly.

Software Update
Camino uses the Sparkle framework so updates for Camino are hassle-free and take only seconds to complete.

AppleScripts Support
You are now able to write AppleScripts for Camino to give you a consistent workflow with your Mac. Camino supports AppleScript commands for adding, opening and deleting bookmarks, opening new tabs and windows as well as many more.

Session Saving
Camino will save your sessions so you can go back to the last webpages you had open when you last closed the browser.

2. Shiira

Shiira is another awesome browser that is Mac OS X native. Shiira is based off Web Kit which is the same rendering engine as Safari so this is also a very fast browser. Shiira has been in development for around 4 years so it has picked up some nice unique features along the years.

One really nice thing that I like about Shiira is the PageDock. The PageDock is similar to a tab bar but it is displayed along the bottom of the browser and it gives you thumbnails of the pages that you’re currently browsing. If you don’t like the PageDock though you can change it in the preferences so that Shiira uses a tab bar instead.

Shiira also has a cool little widget that you can use in Dashboard called Shiira Mini and it is basically a stripped down version of Shiira. It can come in really useful when you want to browse a website quickly without having to open an actual application.

With Shiira you can also browse a website fullscreen and use an Exposé like feature to browse easily around tabs that you have open
.

3. Sunrise

Sunrise is a very lightweight browser that is supported in English, Japanese, Spanish, German and Taiwanese. The current stable version of writing this is Sunrise 1.7.4. It is a very small 1.1MB app and requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later to run.

Just like Shiira, Sunrise uses the same rendering engine as Safari, Web Kit. The toolbar for Sunrise is really small so it gives a better amount of page viewing then any browser I’ve came across so far.

Sunrise Features

Visual Bookmarks

With Sunrise your bookmarks are displayed visually so it makes for quicker searching if you have a lot of bookmarks and can’t remember the name of the website you’re looking for but you can remember what it looks like.

Viewing Source

You can change the application that is used to view the source code of websites so you can choose an application that has syntax highlighting for easier viewing of code.

Search Engine

You can customize the search engine that Sunrise uses to search the internet for results that you want.

Other Features

Within Sunrise you can also press File->Save Entire Page as PDF to save the page into a portable document format. Another feature that Sunrise has is being able to change the alpha of the application so you can see what other windows you have behind it and you can change the width of Sunrise at the click of a button in case you’re designing a website and want to see what it would look like when the browser is at a specific size.

Have you used any of these three browsers? If so, let us know what you think of them in the comments!

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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Well within Mac OS X there is a very cool useful feature that I use a lot for when converting images to decrease the file size, flipping images horizontal and vertical, rotating images left and right as well as many more AppleScripts that you can add.

The first thing to do is to create a folder, I usual create mine in My Documents and then drag the folder onto the Dock.

After you have created the folder right click on and hover your mouse over More and then press Enable Folder Actions.

When you’ve pressed Enable Folder Actions, right click on the folder again and once more move the mouse over More but this time press Attach a Folder Action.

A window will pop up asking you to choose a file when you click Attach a Folder action. For the default folder actions on Mac OS X navigate to /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts. Here you will find a list of 13 AppleScripts that will let you convert images, rotate them and flip them. You can also download AppleScripts and put them in this folder or write your own. Select the AppleScript you want, for this example i’ll be using Image – Duplicate as PNG.scpt. After you have attached an action if you press the folder again you’ll see that you can attach another action, edit a folder action or remove a folder action.

When you drag and drop an image onto the folder you’ll now see that two folders are created. One called Original Images and the other called PNG Images. The Original Images is the images that you have dragged onto the folder and the PNG Images folder are the images that have been converted.

I hope that you have found this tip useful and that it improves your workflow when working on your Mac and saves you a lot of time from having to open memory intensive image editors such as Photoshop to do a simple task such as rotating an image.

If you would like you would like to learn how to write AppleScripts in OS X then I recommend that you go here or have a search around Google. AppleScript is pretty easy to get to grips with and is basically English, so if you know English then you should pick it up pretty quickly.

Post a Comment

Post a comment and tell us what sort of AppleScripts you use on your Folder Actions to give you a better workflow you your Mac.

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Boxee is basically XBMC on steroids because it has social networking features so that you can view what your friends are watching and listening to on Boxee, as well as plugins that are written in Python so you can really customize Boxee a lot. Boxee also gas a skinning engine so if you get bored of the default look of Boxee then you can always download other skins or make your own.

Get on Boxee

Because Boxee is still in alpha there is a very limited amount of invitations that they’re going to give out so the best thing to do is to get to Boxee.tv as soon as you can and enter your email address so that you can get on Boxee as soon as possible.

Once you’re emailed your invitation and go to their website you’ll be asked to enter a few details such as username, email, etc and it shouldn’t take anymore than 20 seconds to complete. After you’ve signed up you’ll be logged into your account.

The first thing that you will see when you login is a feed of your friends. Within the feed you will see the latest movies that they have watched and the latest music that they have listened too. If they rated it and liked it a thumb up will appear but if they didn’t like it then a thumb down will appear on the feed next to that movie or song. Whatever they listened to or watched will also linked to the imdb or last.fm page depending on if its a movie or music.

Under the Profile page is information about movies you’ve watched and music you’ve listened too.
The Friends page displays all your friends and also allows you to invite and add new friends.
Under the account page you can change your personal information and who you want to share your information with such as the world, your friends or nobody. Here you can also change your picture that is displayed throughout your profile.

At the bottom of the account page you have services. Here you can enter your twitter, friend feed and tumblr information and decide what information to share.
With these services you can twit, post and share.

Download and Installing Boxee

To download Boxee simply press the Download Boxee link once you’ve logged into your account then choose either the Mac OS X version or the Ubuntu Linux version. Support for Windows will most likely be added soon.
If you want to see the code behind Boxee then just simply download the source from the download page and play about with it.
If you’re on a broadband connection then Boxee should download fairly quickly as its only 30mb. The OS X version downloads as a package so you double click the package and click agree then click next then once the installation has finished Boxee will be in the Applications folder.

Using Boxee

When you first load up Boxee you will be presented with a window like the one shown above. From here enter your username and password for Boxee and you’ll be logged in.

This is what Boxee will look like the first time you login. In the top right corner is the weather and the time. Down the left side is what’s new, video, music, pictures, profile, downloads, settings and exit.

The main content that you see is the what’s new content and this is videos and music that your friends have recently listened too and watched.

When you select Video and hit enter you’ll see two more options My Videos and Internet Videos.
My Videos are movies that you have on your computer locally and Internet Videos are videos that a streamed from the internet and updated automatically via an RSS feed.
When you load up the Internet Videos for the first time the RSS feeds for sites that are there is blip.tv, CNN, Revision3, Cnet and Youtube.

For music it is the same but for the music streaming websites its jamendo, muxtape, shoutcast, bbc, last.fm and NPR. You can also listen to music that is on your computer or in your iTunes library.

Pictures allows you to look at pictures that you have on your computer or you can search for pictures on Picasa and Flickr.

Under Profile you can see the latest content that you and your friends have viewed on Boxee.

Downloads allows you to view content that you’re currently downloading.

Under the Settings tab you have options for video, music, pictures, network, appearance, system, media sources, general and the credits of the people who made Boxee.

I think that Boxee is a really good media player and that it is a lot better than Front Row.

Want An Invite?

If you want to give Boxee a try we’re giving out invites to the first 20 people who ask for them in the comments.

[rating=5]

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

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At the moment there aren’t many people on Socialbrowse because it is quite new so I recommend that you sign up and give it a go because it has quite a nice community.

One thing that I really like about Socialbrowse is that you don’t have to enter a username or password. The only information that you have to enter is your email address. By default your username on Socialbrowse will be ‘Anonymous’ but to change this all you have to do is simply go to your account then edit your profile.

From the ‘edit profile’ page you can enter your name and a little bit of information about you and what you’re interested in. You can also upload a picture or icon to make your profile look better and also so people can identify you on the site. Under the edit page there is also a Sharing and Preferences tab. Under the sharing tab you will see the RSS feeds for your account as well as a text field that will allow you to change your share name. Under the preferences tab you have two check boxes, the first being ‘email me when I get a fan’ and the second being ‘email messages posted on my profile’. If you don’t want to receive email notifications from Socialbrowse then you can easily disable them from here.

When you sign up to Socialbrowse you automatically get 10 invitations so you should invite your friends over so that they can join in on the fun too.

When you have installed the Firefox extension for Socialbrowse you will see three icons next to the address bar. The first icon opens up the sidebar so that you can see the latest websites that people are sharing and the latest comments that people have written.

The next icon is the comments. If you’re on a website and want to view the comments you can click this icon and view the comments as well as being able to comment on the website too so that people know what you think about it.

The third icon is the share icon. If you click this icon you will share this link in your feed and all your followers will be able to see it. If you hold down the arrow on the icon you can choose which category the link goes under or you can unshare the link if you accidentally hit this button.

The fun thing about Socialbrowse is that you get points when people share a link that you have shared. So share as many good links as you can find and have fun.

Tell us what you think about Socialbrowse in the comments and whether you like it, will use it or if you’ll give it a miss. Does SocialBrowse have the potential to give Stumbleupon a run for its money?

[rating=4]

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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Not exactly, in fact that kind of image is starting to fade away somewhat as Linux distros such as Ubuntu gain traction and mind share with each new release.

OK so Linux still has a market share closer to 1.5%. However things are beginning to change. Linux has never before been so easy to try. Here’s three ways you can install Linux on your computer.

1. Linux on a ‘Live Disk’

Each distribution can now be downloaded as a ‘Live Disk‘, a disk which will run Linux straight from the CD as if it were an installed operating system.

This is perhaps the best way you can try Linux for the first time as it allows you to play around with the OS without having to worry about your data, or partitioning or screwing something up.

The disadvantage is that the OS will run fairly slowly and you will not get much idea of the performance or flexibility of Linux.

Live disks are included with every Linux distribution, and are also provided on the cover of just about any computing and PC magazine. Looking over at my shelf I can see Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, gOS Rocket and Linux Mint on the cover disks of several magazines.

2. Run Linux using Virtual PC

Again, this is just another way to have a bit of a look and play around with Linux in a contained area with no danger of destroying your computer or anything. Microsoft provides Virtual PC 2007 as a free download and can run most distros, although you will perhaps need to find some fairly simple workaround’s for a few.

Again, the disadvantage is performance, both for the Virtual Machine and the host machine which has to lend system resources. The advantage I guess is that you will not have to burn an actual disk in order to try Linux out – the virtual machine can simply mount an ISO file.

3. Install Ubuntu using the Wubi installer

Lastly you can try Linux, Ubuntu specifically, using a special installer called ‘Wubi’. Mackenzie covered Wubi in detail here. Blake also briefly mentioned it in his article here.

Wubi installs Ubuntu as a file on your Windows System. It can be uninstalled like any other program and runs as if you were using a separate system partition. The only disadvantage is that hibernation mode does not work.

The set-up is laughably simple; all you have to do is get Wubi from here and start it up. Wubi is actually included in Ubuntu as of version 8.04 and is an installation option when using a Live disk.

Here are the options you will be presented with:

Pretty simple huh?

You can either download the Ubuntu file, or use a existing ISO image you have previously downloaded. To use a existing file simply place it in the same folder as the Wubi program.

After installing you will have to reset your computer. It’s crucial you reset ‘cleanly’, that means no turning the computer off impatiently, pulling the plug out the all etc. If you do, booting into Ubuntu may fail.

If all is successful you’ll be given a new option upon startup to choose either your previous OS, or Ubuntu:

Booting into Ubuntu will complete the installation and prepare your hard drive for the OS. A final reboot and everything should be working fine, choosing Ubuntu from the boot screen should now load up the OS and you can play around to your heart’s content.

It’s totally risk free, the worst that can happen is that for some other reason the installation fails. I’m sorry but I can’t help you there, simply boot back into Windows and uninstall Wubi through the Add/Remove programs panel.

If this occurs try installing a couple of times. There is a chance it will succeed the second time.

Hopefully this will give you the incentive to try out Linux for yourself!

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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All of the content on Muzu is video and they have built up quite a big library. All the music rights on Muzu are protected because they have signed a deal with over 200 international labels which includes Sony BMG Music Entertainment and a lot of other big labels in the industry.

On the front page of the website you will see that there are featured channels, top videos, best of the tube, live and documentaries. At the top of the website is the search bar where you can search for music videos by artists and bands.

If you’re looking for a new artist or band in a particular genre then you can easily discover them by choosing ‘genre’ or the type under ‘Browse Content’ and then clicking the arrow to continue. You will then be taken to a results page that will show you the type of music that you selected that’s available on Muzu. You can sort these by channels, videos or users, as well as ordering by ‘most viewed’ and ‘most recent’. If you see something that catches your eye then click the image to view the content.

When you load up an artist or a band, the first page you will see is the TV page. This is the page where a video of their featured content is played. You can view that band or artists profile, messages and Fan TV by clicking the other links at the top of the page. If you like the content on that page and want to send it to friends you can do this at the click of a button. Press “Send To Friend” at the top of the page and then enter your friends email addresses.

If you like the content a lot then you can also add it to your favorites if you have an account on Muzu. You can also send the owner of the channel a message by clicking ’send message’ then entering a subject and a message and finally pressing ’send’. If you’ve made a fan video of the artist or band you can upload it to their channel on the same page.

Creating Your Muzu Account

To watch content on Muzu you don’t need an account. But if you visit Muzu a lot and you want to favorite artists and bands then you should create an account to keep all your favorites organized.

Once you have created your Muzu account people will be able to view your user account at [your_username].muzu.tv or if you’re a artist/band muzu.tv/[your_band].

Customizing Your Channel

If there are videos that you like then you can add them to the playlist on your channel by clicking the ‘+’ sign in the video player to add it.

To change the theme of your Muzu profile go to ‘My Channel’ and then click ‘Customize’. From here click the themes tab and then you can choose which theme you would like to use.

On the Customize Toolbar there are widgets, themes, backgrounds and settings.

Under the Widgets tab you’ll be able to add playlists, images, texts and your Muzu Favorites to your pages. For the themes tab you’ll be able to choose a theme for your Muzu profile, for backgrounds you’ll be able to upload images and set them as your background and under the settings tab you will be able to change your password, default page and privacy settings.

Muzu is a nice simple website but it feels somewhat incomplete as if something is missing. How do you think Muzu scores compared to other music video websites out there? Some of the other cool websites to watch music videos that were covered in 12 Cool Places to Watch Music Videos plus recently added Cleepr, SSMunch and Seeqpod. Let us know by leaving your comments.

[rating=3]

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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This would have to be the single most voiced complaint I hear concerning Google Analytics. Aside from that its a solid service and a must-have for any aspiring blogger, but use it for any length of time and you’ll begin to wish for this as well.

Or it used to be.

After having used the Woopra Analytics service I’m confident in wholeheartedly agreeing with the promotional statement from the service itself:

“Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application.”

Yep, it is. Perhaps some commercial tracking applications are better, but since I only use free traffic analytics tools I have no idea. The service is provided through a downloadable desktop client with a basic online service unlike Google Analytics which is wholly browser based. This suits me fine as I always prefer desktop applications to using the browser and it opens the client up to provide a richer experience. Woopra is also available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems.

Woopra is still in beta at this point in time, and you’ll need to get approval after registering so you can’t just sign straight up and start tracking. The good news is that confirmation is pretty quick. I think mine took a few days but they may even have improved since then. Each website you wish to track also has to be submitted individually and approved, but this is even quicker and mine have all been approved within an hour or two.

User accounts are also limited to:

• Sites with less than 10,000 pageviews per day.
• Users with JavaScript and the latest version of Java enabled.

Live Tracking and Monitoring

Live tracking is what no doubt will attract people to the service, but Woopra’s service goes far beyond simply providing real-time traffic updates. Woopra can track 40+ events and statistics including:

• Country
• Operating System
• Browser
• Language
• Screen Resolution
• Pages Viewed / Time spent on pages
• Arrival and Departure points
• Current visitor actions and history
• and lots more

This kind of detail provides some amazingly useful data. It’s kind of creepy being able to find out so much about your visitors but it does give you greater power to adjust your blog to the audience viewing it. Have a lot of viewers with English as their second language? Perhaps integrating some translation features would be a good decision.

You get the idea.

Live Chatting

Perhaps the creepiest feature of Woopra is the ability to live chat with any one of your visitors. If you choose to chat to someone a popup will show up on their computer asking to click here if they want to chat.

Personally, If this happened to me there is no way I would click it! It just looks totally suspicious. It’s a cool sounding feature, I just don’t know how effective it would be in reality.

Searching, speed and Interface

One of the many advantages a desktop application has over web based services is performance. Without having to reload pages to display results, Woopra is much quicker to use than Google Analytics and is really quite reasonable, resources usage wise.

For accessing any kind of data, indexing is a must, and Woopra has some fantastic searching capabilities allowing you to access any data point in the system. What information do you need to help you manage and develop your site? Specific user names, IP addresses, geographic locations, user browsing data, visitor history, visitor paths, arrival and departure points.

The data is searchable. Using the Search panel, you can reach into the data to find specific information about your site’s visitors, learning more about your site’s demographics and loyal readers. Woopra simply digs deeper.

The interface also provides opportunity for greatly superior statistic displays and representations of data, for example demonstrating visitor locations on a global map.

There is much, much more to this service and I really cannot recommend it enough. Woopra say they will be offering an additional paid version for high traffic sites eventually, but for most of you I’m sure the free version will suffice.

I haven’t actually heard a great deal about Woopra around the place, do any of you use it? How have you found it?

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

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Butler is a really easy to use and powerful search tool for OS X. But the thing I really love about Butler is that it can do a lot more besides just searching. To find out what other features Butler has to offer, continue reading….

Using Butler

When you first load Butler the items in the menu bar are a monitor, a globe and a search bar.

Under the monitor are :

Switch users – this will allow you to switch between other users on the Mac.
Volumes – volumes displays all the hard drives and disk images open.
Applications – applications shows all the current applications that are running as well as a sub menu to all the other applications on the Mac. It also has a sub menu to a list of Applescripts.
System Preferences – this is a shortcut to your system preferences and saves you time by not having to open the actual system preferences windows.
Documents – Documents shows you all the files under your Documents folder.
Music – Music will give you a list of all your music and playlists (including smart playlists) that are in iTunes. It also shows the currently playing song and lets you rate it as well as pausing and skipping to the previous and next song.
Pasteboard – this can come in extremely useful if you copy a lot of stuff. Pasteboard will keep the last 5 items that you copied such as images and text.
Keystrokes sample – this is a sample of how to use keystrokes and will enter the text “Butler is crap Oops great”
Butler – under Butler there are actions such as searching your computer, customizing Butler, searching the configuration, link to a help file, preferences, check for updates and quitting Butler.

Configuring Butler

Under the configure window in Butler you are able to configure the kinds of items that are in the menu bar as well as assigning hot keys, abbreviations, hot corners and events.

Adding your own items is extremely easy and takes about 2 clicks.

First of all click the ‘+’ in the bottom left hand corner then choose from the type of item you want to add from : a container, file, site, separator, comment, smart item and a control.

For this example I’m going to create a smart item for iTunes so that when I type the abbreviation ’songinfo’ or hit the hot key Option-Command-I then information for the currently song playing will appear.

To do this press ‘+’ -> iTunes -> iTunes:Information

Then enter the following text shown below.

Add A New Search Engine

To add a new search engine to Butler is also very easy. First press Engines then ‘+’ and then Search Engine (Command-N).

For this example of adding a search engine we’re going to be adding the Twitter search URL. Set the Prefix to ‘http://twitter.com/tw/search/users?q=’. Now you should be able to search Twitter from your menu bar.

Butler Preferences

Under preferences you can change a lot of settings to do with the Butler application. The categories are general, docklet, menus, abbreviations, pasteboard, editing, looks miscellany and updates.

Within the preferences you can choose if Butler launches when your computer starts, if Butler should display a splash screen, what folders should be included in search results, how often to update the cache, whether to display icons for containers, websites, Butler controls and smart controls as well as a lot more preferences to do with how many pasteboards to keep.

Overall I think Butler is very good and useful. It has replaced Quicksilver on my Mac but will it replace Quicksilver on your Mac? Let us know in the comments!

[rating=5]

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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Shiira Mini

Shiira Mini is a slimmed down version of Shiira for the Dashboard which can come in useful if you’re wanting to do a little bit of searching when working on something without having to open an actual browser up.

Shiira Mini Settings

Within settings for the widget you can choose the URL of the homepage you want for Shiira Mini, what bookmarks bar to use (Shiira, Safari) and the color of the widget.

The Interface

Toolbar

On the Toolbar from right to left you have the back button, forward button, reload, stop, address bar, add bookmark, shelf, bookmarks, history, search, new tab/pagedock. Then below the toolbar is where the website will be displayed.

PageDock

Within Shiira you can choose whether to use the PageDock or a tab bar, by default when you first load Shiira up the PageDock the selected option to change this go to Preferences -> PageDock & Tab.

Below the PageDock is the Status Bar. On the Status Bar the first icon is for cookie information on the current website you’re viewing, next to that if the website has an RSS feed then this icon will appear and when you click it the feed will be displayed in the feed reader built within Shiira, when you click the arrow on the far right of the Status Bar it will toggle hiding and showing the PageDock, the four box icon is an Exposé like feature that will layout all the websites you have out so that its easy to browse a lot of websites and see what page you’re on.

Shelf

The shelf in Shiira lets you view and manage all of your Shiira and Safari bookmarks as well as files that you have downloaded. Within the shelf you can also seen your Firefox bookmarks and your history. You can also modify the search engines that can be used in the search bar on the Toolbar. By default there is a few already configured search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Excite, Dictionary.com and more.

Other Features

Full Screen

You can view websites in fullscreen so that the website covers your whole screen. Opera also has this feature.

Appearance

You can change the icons and theme of Shiira, there are only a few themes but at least its somewhat customizable. You can download Shiira themes from here

Page Info

Under page info you can view information on links, DOM, cookies, HTML, CSS, Javascript, the images on the page and other things such as flash files.

Language Support

Shiira Supports the following languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Korean, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish and Chinese.

Share your thoughts

Tell us what you think about Shiira and how you think it compares to other browsers such as Firefox and Opera.

[rating=3]

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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Slife is also the perfect tool for business professionals who bill their clients by the hour. By monitoring your online time usage of software, you can have a more accurate picture of how much to charge your clients.

Features

Growl Notifications
If you have Growl installed on your Mac then Slife will notify you when you have or haven’t completed activity goals so you can keep up to date with things.

Tracking
When you load up Slife, all the applications that are open will then start being tracked automatically so that you can easily keep track of things. Slife will tell you how long you have had an application open and how long you have had a document or webpage open. If you’re using Safari it will tell you how long you have spent on each webpage and if you are using Microsoft Word then it will tell you how long you have been working on each document.

Within Slife you can choose to view tracking by day, month, application, web and documents, activities and goals.

When tracking by day, dots and lines will show you how much time you have spent on an application. By clicking the dot you will see the document or webpage you were at, how long you spent at the webpage or how long you had a document open for. Each time you switch between different applications dots are created.

When viewing by month, you will see the dots which represent each application by using a different color but you cannot click them and view the information like when viewing by day.

Viewing by ‘Application’ will show you how long you have had Slife open for and what applications you have had open for that period of time by highlighting a grey bar in red.

When viewing by ‘web and documents’ it is displayed by viewing each application but shows how long a document or webpage was open for each application.

When you set activities you can choose which applications you want to be monitored under each activity. The default activities for Slife are checking email, preparing budget, designing web pages, reading news and doing online research. These can be deleted or modified and of course you can create your own. If I was to check my mail using Apple’s Mail application, Slife would monitor how much time I spent checking my email which I could then look at later.

When you create an activity you can set whether it is a goal or not and if you set it to be a goal you can then select whether you want to spend more or less time using certain applications. Once you have completed your goal you will get a notification through Growl telling you that the goal is completed if you have Growl installed.

If you use many applications and have browsed many web pages while Slife has been open then you can use the search function within Slife to see how long you spent on a particular webpage, how long you had a document open or how long you spent within an application.

If you want Slife to stop tracking your use of applications then you can click ‘Private Mode’ within the icon on the menubar and it will stop tracking. To start tracking again just simply press ‘Private Mode’ again and tracking will then resume.

So what do you think of Slife? Do you see yourself using something like this? Or is it more trouble than it’s worth? Think you know something better than Slife? Let’s hear about it….

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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If you’re prepared to pay for a text editor with a free trial option, there is Dreamweaver and Aptana, Aptana has three software packages Aptana Studio, Aptana Cloud and Aptana Jaxer.

If you don’t want to pay for a text editor and would prefer a free option, read on…

Intype

Intype is a really good lightweight text editor for Windows. The interface of Intype is just like the one for TextMate for OS X so it works really well and keeps things simple, easy and tidy. Intype has been around since its first alpha release back in January 2007 and is now on alpha version 3. The progress of Intype has been really slow because they only have two developers. The first is Martin Cohen who is the project leader and the person behind interface for Intype. The second person is Juraj Durech who is responsible for the core C++ programming.

When Intype finally hits 1.0 I think that it’ll be without a doubt one of the best text editors around. Why? Well, Intype is only at version 0.3.1 at the moment and it already packs a good punch. It supports bundles and plugins as well as a bundle editor and a lot more features. All of Intype’s finished and pending features can be viewed here.

The languages that Intype supports syntax highlighting for are C, C++, CSS, HTML, HTML (Rails), Jasmine, Java, Javascript, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SQL, SQL(Rails), Textile, XHTML, XML, XSL and YAML. The Bundles that Intype comes installed with are PropertyList, C, CSS, DOM, HTML, Jasmine, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Rails, reStructuredText, Ruby, SQL, Textile, XML and YAML.

What is a bundle?

A bundle is like a shortcut for typing certain functions and commands in languages. An example of how to use a bundle in PHP is if I want to do an If statement, I would type ‘if’ and then hit enter and then it would fill in the other characters to save me time.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a very popular open source text editor for Windows that a lot of programmers use because of the functionality that it has. Notepad++ was first released in November 2003 and as of writing this article is at version 5.0.

Just like Intype, Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting for a lot of languages.

The languages that it supports syntax highlighting for are C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, PHP, CSS, makefile, ASCII art, doxygen, ini file, batch file, Javascript, ASP, VB/VBS, SQL, Objective-C, RC resource file, Pascal, Perl, Python, Lua, TeX, TCL, Assembler, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, Properties, Diff, Smalltalk, Postscript, VHDL, Ada, Caml, AutoIt, KiXtart, Matlab, Verilog, Haskell, InnoSetup, CMake and YAML.

Notepad++ has a style editor so that you can change the syntax highlighting of a language so that it’s more comfortable for you if you’re used to a different type of syntax highlighting that Notepad++ uses by default.

Notepad++ allows for the use of plugins and comes with 8 installed. Light Explorer, Spell-Checker, NppExec, MIME Tools, FTP, NppExport, Compare and Document Monitor.

Notepad++ also allows for the use of macros to save you from typing the same functions over and over again. In the preferences you can change everything from the tab size to the blink rate and width of the caret. There is also a shortcut mapper so that you can configure shortcuts to fit how you like.

Notepad++ has a lot of features that I could be here all day writing about so if you want to check out the other features that Notepad++ then head over to their website.

ConTEXT

When I was a full time Windows user my text editor of choice was ConTEXT. I really like the look and feel of ConTEXT – it’s simple and it just works. As ConTEXT is so light it requires hardly any RAM, so if you’re running a few memory intensive applications and you also need to do a bit of programming then ConTEXT is a good choice.

The languages that ConTEXT supports for syntax highlighting are C, C++, CSS, ConTEXT Highlighter, ConTEXT Language Files, Fortran, Foxpro, HTML, Inno Setup Script, Java, JavaScript, Object Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, SQL, Tcl/Tk, Visual Basic, x86 Assembler and XML. If you don’t like the syntax highlighting that ConTEXT uses then you can always edit it under Options->Environment Options->Colors. You can also download more highlighters from their website.

With ConTEXT you can integrate a compiler to compile source code that you have written to keep a good work flow. To keep things organized with ConTEXT you can also create and manage project files.

ConTEXT also allows the creation of macros to save you time from typing the same functions.

To view all the features that ConTEXT has view their website here.

What text editor do you use for programming? One of the ones above or a totally different one? Tell us all about your favourite program in the comments.

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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Getting Started

When you first install the Yoono extension you create a Yoono account so that all your stuff can be tracked and viewed by friends and other users. When creating your account you will be asked for a username, password, email, birthdate, gender and country. The only required fields are username, password and email.

After entering a valid username, password and email the next step will allow you to stay in tune with your social networks and instant messengers. You can also find friends who are already using Yoono by an address book on either Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or AOL, or simply by their Yoono username.

There are a handful of social networks and instant messenger credentials that you can add to Yoono.

Social Networks:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Piczo
• Flickr
• Friendfeed

Instant Messengers:

• AIM
• MSN
• Yahoo

I think so far that the supported social networks aren’t bad but I’d like to see Plurk included because that’s becoming pretty big lately and I’m a big fan of it.

The third step after adding the social networks and instant messengers that you want to use with Yoono is sharing your bookmarks. In this step you can select the bookmark folders that you want to share with friends on Yoono. Once you have chosen the folders that you want to share, if you check ‘Synchronize your bookmarks’ when you click ‘Finish’, another window will pop up saying that your local bookmarks do not match the bookmarks stored on the Yoono server.

From here you have four options :

• Merge the bookmarks on your computer with the bookmarks on Yoono server.
• Export from your computer to the Yoono server.
• Import from the Yoono server to your computer.
• Never synchronize your bookmarks with the server.

The recommended selection is the first one and has ‘recommended’ on the label. When you have chosen the option that you want and pressed ‘OK’ for all of the services that you’ve added, your credentials will be loaded up in the sidebar on the left.

The Sidebar

This is what the sidebar will look like when it’s loaded. When you browse different websites the tags below your name will change depending on keywords that are in the website. Clicking on the tags will take you to the Yoono search page and search for other websites with the same tag that you have clicked on. All the items in the sidebar are widgets and can be removed and others can be added.

The picture for your account is displayed as well as your account username and status. When you update your status you can choose the social networks that you want your status to be sent to such as Twitter and Facebook. Under your status is the tag cloud.

The Friends widget displays your friends who are online on instant messenger services that you are signed into through the Yoono extension. Your Twitter and Facebook statuses and friends are also viewed in the friends widget. If you click the RSS icon you can view the activity that has happened across services.

The Web notes widget allows you to drag and drop text, video and images to share with your friends. If you like a website you can also click the ‘I love’ button, if you don’t like a website you can click the ‘I hate’ button and if you think that a website is funny you can click the ‘Funny’ button.

The last widget that is displayed under the default Yoono sidebar is the Discoveries widget. What the discoveries widget does is displays similar websites and show users who like the website that you are currently browsing. If you click the ’surprise’ button at the bottom of the widget you will be taken to a random website. This works like Stumbleupon in a way.

Adding Widgets

Adding widgets is really simple and all you need to do is click the ‘Add a widget’ icon at the bottom of the sidebar. When you click this you will see other widgets such as Music, Photos and Videos. To add these simply select them and press ‘Add to the sidebar’.

What Do You Think?

Do you think Yoono is missing anything or do you know of a better extension for Firefox that is similar to Yoono? Or do you think Yoono is just another boring unnecessary social networking tool? Let us know by posting a comment.

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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If you use Ubuntu then you will most likely know of Transmission because it is the default bit torrent client.

A really great thing about Transmission is that it has been ported to the iPhone – this makes it possible for you to download torrents with your iPhone while on the move. Although it may drain your iPhone battery, it can still come in pretty useful.

The main build for Transmission though is for Mac OS X and includes specific features that no other build on another operating system has.

Some of the features that are specific to Mac OS X are downloading and seeding queues, basic scheduling, auto-seeding options, groups, customizable toolbar and an advanced progress box. For notifications there is support for the dock and Growl and to keep you updated. Transmission uses Sparkle to check for the latest program versions for you to download.

Transmission Features

Transmission allows for files to be dropped onto the application. Once you open the file you can then select what files you want to download that are inside the torrent, trash the torrent file, give the torrent file a group color and verify the local data so that the transfer starts from where it left off if you have attempted to download that torrent before.

You can easily view torrents that are active, downloading, seedings or paused by clicking the tabs near the top of Transmission and if you have a lot of files within Transmission then you can also narrow it down even more by using the search.

Within Transmission there is an inspector and this can be viewed either by right clicking on a file then clicking ‘Show Inspector’, pressing Command + I or going to View -> Show Inspector in the Menu. In the inspector you can get general information such as what bit torrent application was used to create the torrent as well as the date that it was created, information on the tracker, the hash, the percentage that the file is complete as well as a ratio of your download and upload on a file, people that you are downloading the torrent from and the files that you have selected to download.

Like most bit torrent applications Transmission will also allow you to create your own torrents in no time simply by choosing the file you want to create as a torrent and the tracker URL as well as comments then hit create and you’re all done.

If you’re downloading or uploading other files then you can limit the speed in which Transmission downloads and uploads torrents.

Tell us what you think of Transmission compared to other bit torrent clients. Do you prefer another client instead?

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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Weave is also a Firefox add-on and its purpose is to allow you to backup your Firefox settings such as your bookmarks, history, passwords, customizations and preferences and then sync them with the Mozilla servers so that you can access them from anywhere that allows you to access the internet. Obviously this data is encrypted so that it’s securely stored.

Setting up Weave

The first thing you have to bear in mind is that Weave is still a beta experimental project so you have to decide if you want to risk your Firefox user information in testing this. If you decide you fancy taking a walk on the wild side then read on.

To get started using Weave the first thing that you will have to do is go to the Weave homepage and create an account. Within a few seconds of hitting the Create Account button you will receive an email asking you to verify your account. Once you’ve verified your account you will be able to download the Firefox add-on.

Once you’ve downloaded the add-on and restarted your browser, press the sync icon at the bottom right of the browser then sign in. Once you’ve done this you’ll go through five steps of setting up Weave such as backing up your bookmarks, entering your account details that you signed up with and an encryption pass-phrase and performing an initial data transfer.

When the setup is complete you will see a confirmation message telling you that Weave will connect automatically each time you load up Firefox. However you can uncheck this option in the Weave preferences.

Your Firefox settings will now be synced automatically.

Weave Preferences

Under the Account tab in Weave Preferences you can sign out of the account and use another account if you have a separate account and choose whether Weave should automatically connect each time you start Firefox.

You can choose which items you would like to have syncing to the Mozilla servers from the Data tab. The items you can choose from to sync are Bookmarks, History, Cookies, Saved Passwords and Saved Form Data.

The Add-ons tab in the Weave Preferences will let you find, install and manage Weave add-ons.

The last tab under the Weave Preferences is Advanced. In the Advanced tab you will be able to choose the location of the server that you want your data to be synced to. There are debugging tools below the server settings. Under the debugging tools you will be able to reset your login, reset server lock, reset server data and reset client data.

Obviously it’s still early days for Weave but with Google Browser Sync out of the picture, Weave has little serious competition to worry about.

If you have tested Weave, please post a comment about your thoughts on Weave and let us know what you think about it. Is this something you will use? Do you see potential in Weave?

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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Status Screen Saver is a screensaver that allows you to view how many unread emails you have in your inbox within the Mail application, view how many unread feeds you have in NetNewsWire and view your number of unread tweets from Twitterific. Status Screen Saver will also soon support Google Notifier and the RSS reader Vienna.

Wallsaver 2.2.2 If you’ve just recently bought a brand new Mac then the chances are you have a lot of memory that isn’t being put to use so why not set your wallpaper as a screensaver to jazz up your desktop a little. You need to be running Mac OS X 10.4 or later and have a Quartz Extreme-capable graphics card with at least 32 MB of memory for this cool little goodie to work. You can activate Wallsaver whenever you like or restore your default wallpaper without any hassle.

EarthDesk is much like Wallsaver but the wallpaper is set to an image of the earth which shows which countries are in daytime, nighttime and all in realtime. Hurricanes, cloud cover and typhoons are also shown with information on 10,000 cities throughout the world. If you have multiple displays, the image of the earth will be carried over all of them to keep a constituent look and feel. You can also set this to run as just a screensaver for when you’re away from your computer. EarthDesk runs on both Mac OS X 10.4+ and Windows 2000, XP and Vista. I’ve only used the Mac version of EarthDesk and it installs within a preference pane.

Rainy Day 2 is a nice screensaver that make clouds appear at the top of your screen and rain fall down onto your desktop. You can control the amount of rain, cloud type, lightning and rain contrast. When the screensaver has been left running for a few seconds the windows that you have open will appear to be smudged which is a nice effect that I like. When you download the program and extract the zip file there is an installer package in it. Follow the installation then once you have finished, you will find the screensaver under System Preferences -> Desktop & Screensaver. This screensaver only works with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).

Phantom Butterflies is a screensaver for Mac OS X 10.4+ and Windows XP that has butterflies flying around your screen. You have the option to make the butterflies glow which I think is a really nice touch and you can also change the colour of what you want the butterflies to be as well as the amount of butterflies that there are on the screen.

Finally, I want to tell you about a couple of cool tools we covered earlier. If you want to use your motion screensaver as a wallpaper? Check out Animated Desktop, using this utility you can emulate the functionality of Vista Ultimate DreamScene (video screensaver) both on Windows XP and Vista Home edition. There is also a cool website called InstaSaver, this one lets you make your custom screensavers using the images from your PC.

If I’ve missed a screensaver which you think should of made the list then please post it in the comments!

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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We’ve already previously taken a look at some Adobe AIR applications worth installing but more and more websites are constantly jumping on the AIR bandwagon. So here are some more new AIR apps worth a look.

COLOURlovers

If you always find yourself on COLOURlovers looking for colours, palettes and patterns then the COLOURlovers Desktop Color Finder could come in pretty useful for when you’re needing a palette.

Just like on the website enter the keywords that you want to search for and choose if you want to search for colours, palettes or a pattern. Then select how you want to sort the results and then hit “search”.

This one is useful for artists, designers, decorators or just anyone looking to re-decorate their house.

Ora Time and Expense

Ora Time and Expense is an AIR app that everyone wanting to track time should have. If you’re a freelancer and you need to time a project that you’re working on as well as generate reports such as invoices, expense reports and timesheets in various formats (.csv, .htm, .xml, .xls) then this is a good app to install.

When you first run it, make sure that you configure the settings so that the First Name is your name and not “John Doe”. After doing this you can then choose the data format and other settings such as number of decimal places for money and hours. New projects, clients, task types and expense types can also be added.

Once you’ve got everything set up you can start a “New Task” if you know how long it’s going to take or you can start the timer and this will start a task. You can also pause the timer in case you have to run out somewhere. Once you’ve finished doing the project you can generate in a number of formats and then print it or send it via email.

Tumblweed

Tumblweed is like Twhirl but it lets you post updates to Tumblr. Just like on Tumblr you can post a text entry, photo, quote, link, chat, audio or video. Within Tumblweed you can also post a snapshot which will let you take a picture using your webcam then add a caption and then post it.

Shrink O’Matic

Shrink O’Matic is an AIR app that allows you to resize one image or multiple images at the click of a button. Once the application is open, select the output width and height or ratio then the output name that will be given to the images and then the format. You can choose to keep the format the same or convert it to JPG, GIF or PNG.

Password Keeper

A nice AIR app that I recently discovered and one that I will be using a lot is Password Keeper. If you have a brain and use different passwords for different websites then sometimes remembering all these passwords can be a pretty hard task. Password Keeper does exactly what it says on the tin – it keeps all your passwords in one lightweight and nice AIR application. When you first run Password Keeper you enter a username and password for Password Keeper then you will be logged in. From here you can add passwords. To add a password click “New” then enter the title of the website, the URL, your username and your password for that website then click “Save”. Your password is now saved and can be retrieved at any time.

As I said, the number of AIR apps is increasing all the time. So which new ones have caught your eye recently?

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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Once you’ve downloaded ooVoo you’ll be asked to create an account if you don’t already have one. You’ll be required to enter a ooVoo ID, a password for your account and your email. When you click the next button you can enter a display name and a picture. Then when you click next again you’ll be asked to enter some personal information but this is optional so you can just click finish. When you click finish you will then be logged in to ooVoo and see a welcome window telling you about the features that ooVoo has to offer.

Features

• Video Call
• Video Message
• Find Friends
• Record Video Call
• Video Effects
• Chat
• Send Files
• Sidebar View
• ooVoo Link
• Privacy

ooVoo has quite a few nice features that makes it different to any other messaging client I have came across. A nice feature that I like about ooVoo that (as far as I know) no other messaging client has is that you are able to record video voicemail messages. So if someone is offline and you need to tell them something, instead of sending an email, send a video message and give your fingers a rest.

You’re also able to record video calls so this can come in useful if you have a meeting over ooVoo and you need to check back on something later that was said that you may have missed or you need to clarify.

If you want to find out if any of your friends are using ooVoo you can simply do this by clicking “import contacts”. You will then have a choice of 8 services to check if your friends are using. The 8 services are AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, IcqMail, mac.com, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Mail.com. If your friends aren’t using ooVoo you can either send them an email from ooVoo or send a video message asking them to sign up and add you.

If you’re using the Windows version of ooVoo you will be able to do video effects with your friend when in a video call. This feature is not available for Mac OS X so you won’t be able to do it unless you install Windows on Bootcamp, Parallels or VMware.

Just like every messaging client, ooVoo will let you message and talk to your friends with text. Up to six people can join a conversation and you can send messages to offline contacts and they will receive the message when they next log in to ooVoo.

With ooVoo you can also send files to your contacts and friends and can send up to twenty files to as many contacts as you want at any time. A really nice feature is that you are able to send files to contacts who are offline and they will receive them the next time they log on.

Another cool feature that I like about ooVoo is the Sidebar View. If you’re working on many files and ooVoo is getting in the way you can switch to Sidebar View and it will put ooVoo to the right of your screen so that it is out of the way but you can still see your friends and contacts if you’re in a video call.

If you want people to see if you’re online on ooVoo and available, you can add an ooVoo link to your blog, website or email signature. If someone views your ooVoo link and sees your online status, they will be able to call you and chat to you instantly. Within the privacy settings you are able to set who can see your ooVoo status.

Within the privacy options in ooVoo you can also set whether everyone can see your picture or just your contacts, if video calls start automatically and who can contact and call you.

Do you use ooVoo? Or do you have another preferred VOIP application?

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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Using QuickShareIt is really simple and is a nice tool to have on your computer. First of all download the application then add it to your Applications folder and then drag the QuickShareIt icon into your dock. Once you’ve done that then all you have to do now to upload files from your Mac, is to simply drag and drop the file and it will begin uploading to QuickShareIt’s servers.

Uploading files up to 100MB are allowed so that should be plenty of size for uploading images and videos because I doubt that there’s many images out there that are over 100MB! Once you’ve dragged your file onto the QuickShareIt Dock Icon, the icon will change telling you the upload speed and the progress of the upload.

As well as images and video, QuickShareIt also allows you to instantly upload text clips dragged from any other application. Once your file has been uploaded QuickShareIt state that your file will be on their servers for at least 30 days so this should be plenty of times for your clients and friends to view and save the files that you have sent them.

Once your files have been uploaded a window called Recent Shares will show up and display the recent files that you have uploaded with the name of the file, the size of the file and the date and time that it was uploaded. By clicking the button to the right of the files you can either copy the file’s URL on QuickShareIt’s servers to your clipbooard which you could then paste into an email or instant messaging client, open it in the browser, remove it from the list or delete the file entirely from QuickShareIt’s servers.

Have you used QuickShareIt? What do you think of it? Or perhaps you use an alternative service that you’d like to share with us in the comments?

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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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In this post I will discuss a few cool widgets that I have stumbled upon while browsing the Opera Widgets archive.

(1) PageRank Widget

Page Rank is a cool little widget that you can download within Opera that lets you calculate the Page Rank of any website within seconds.

This tool can be very useful for when you want to know the Page Rank of a website when you already have Opera open.

(2) Flash Video Downloader Widget

Flash Video Downloader is a pretty cool and useful widget that can come in quite handy if you always find yourself downloading videos from video hosting websites such as YouTube. Flash Video Downloader allows you to enter the web address of a video and will then start downloading the video to your hard drive. All in your browser.

(3) ProxyWidget

Maybe you’ve been blocked from another website or you simply want to hide your identity online then ProxyWidget will do that by giving you a list of proxy websites to select from.

(4) Google Hacks Widget

Is there an application or tool that you need but can’t find? If so, then this widget called Google Hacks can come in pretty useful for finding things that you need when you can’t find them. This widget allows you to search for music, books, videos, tools, hacks, proxys, lyrics, fonts, applications, torrents and cached website all within an Opera Widget.

(5) Widgets for Web designers

Are you designing a website and need help with CSS? CSS Help is a great widget that can help out a lot if you can’t remember or don’t know much about CSS.

If you’re practising your HTML and CSS or you want to see a live HTML preview of the HTML and CSS that you’re writing then the True HTML Editor is a useful tool when doing things like this.

Now say that you need to know the width of another webpage because it looks like the size you want yours then Ruler can measure the size of anything in the Opera web browser. Once you’ve done your HTML and CSS maybe you’ve got a local server running and you want to know your IP address so that you can give it out to friends and clients. IP Address will give you your IP address within two clicks while in Opera.

(6) Multi Translate Widget

If you’ve ever been browsing a website but can’t understand a word thats on it because it is in another language then the Multi Translate 2.0 widget can come in useful for you. It will let you translate a snipprt of text or a whole page by using PROMT, Google or BabelFish.

(7) The Free Dictionary

The Free Dictionary widget is a really useful widget when browsing the web and wanting to know the meaning of a word, just simply type in your word and a description of the word will come up along with how to pronounce it and a link to more information about the word.

(8) Twitter

The last widget that I am going to include is the Twitter widget. This is an essential tool for anyone out there that updates their Twitter a lot.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this post and found some widgets that you will use and find helpful within Opera. Go to the Opera Widgets website to find out more cool and interesing widgets, or if your interesting in making your own head over to the Opera Widget Generator.

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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So I have decided to make a list of five alternative chat MSN applications out there for Mac OS X that have better functionality and allow you to customize the look and feel of the application.

(1) Adium

Many Mac users will most likely have heard of Adium. Adium is probably the biggest multi-protocol instant messaging application that there is for Mac. It can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo and several others. Adium uses the libpurple library for most of its functionality so it is very stable. Adium allows users to customize almost anything within the application such as the buddylist window, chat window, sound sets, dock icon, status icons, plugins, apple scripts and so on.

The only downside to Adium is that, like MSN Messenger OS X, it doesn’t support video chats or chatting with a microphone. Overall however Adium is probably the most stable and most customizable messaging application there is out there for MSN on Mac OS X.

(2) Proteus

Proteus is a Cocoa application so it runs at native speeds on OS X. Proteus doesn’t just support MSN – it also supports AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and Jabber. Just like every other MSN client in this application so far, Proteus also allows customization of the contacts list, messaging window, sound set and status icons.

Proteus also allows for SMS forwarding in case you’re away from your computer and waiting for an important message from someone. I really like Proteus and think that it has some nice effects that finish the application off nicely and make it a nice application to have open. A downside to Proteus though is, just like Adium, it doesn’t support video chat.

(3) Fire

Fire is identical to Proteus as it is also a Cocoa application. So it also runs at native speeds on OS X and supports many IM clients (7 in total), not just MSN.

Fire is quite a nice application and lets you customize the sound sets, add feature plugins and choose between visual themes. It’s also open source so if there’s a feature which you would like to add to it and you know your way around XCode then you can.

(4) Mercury Messenger

Mercury Messenger is a Java based MSN application and because it’s Java, it also works with Windows and Linux.

A great feature about Mercury Messenger is that it supports video chat. Just this feature alone makes Mercury Messenger an essential application that you need on your Mac if you want to video chat to your friends and clients on MSN. You can also stream video files over your webcam stream which is a really cool feature. Mercury Messenger is customizable but not to the extent that you can customize Adium. With Mercury Messenger you can add plugins, change the skin and add custom emoticons to friends but that’s as far as customization with Mercury Messenger goes.

A nice thing about Mercury Messenger is that it is portable and can run from a USB memory stick. So you can load up Mercury Messenger and use it from any computer with the internet access.

(5) aMSN

aMSN is much like Mercury Messenger because it’s Java based and it runs on Windows and Linux as well as OS X. aMSN also supports video chat just like Mercury Messenger. Additionally is also supports video conferencing (unlike Mercury Messenger).

aMSN comes in about 40 languages worldwide so if you don’t speak very good English then download the version of aMSN in your own language. A nice feature about aMSN is that it allows you to send and receive voice clips just like Windows Live Messenger for Windows. With aMSN you can also sign into more than one MSN account at once without having to open up other MSN clients.

Just like Adium and Mercury Messenger, aMSN also has tabbed windows to keep all your current messaging windows together and organized. Plugins and skins are also supported with aMSN so you can customize the application up a bit.

6. Honorable Mention (Pidgin)

Pidgin was originally compiled for Windows and Linux but if you do a little bit of searching around Google you can find ways how to port Pidgin over to OS X in just a few minutes. Pidgin is a very nice application and definitely worth checking out. If you’re interested check our post on Pidgin Tips here.

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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Pencil Features

1. Tools

The tools that Pencil currently has within the application are:

• Pencil Tool
• Paint Brush
• Pen Tool
• Polyline
• Eraser
• Clear Button
• Paint Bucket
• Color Picker
• Select Tool
• Move Tool
• Move/Zoom Canvas
• Modify Curve

2. Options

Under the Options tab you can change the color of the paint brush, paint bucket and pencil. You can control the size of the brush, the feather and there is also an option called “size with pressure” which defines the brush stroke with the amount of pressure applied. You can also Preserve Alpha and Stop at contours.

3. Time Line

Under the Time Line tab it is possible to add layers such as a Bitmap Layer, Vector Layer, Sound Layer and Camera Layer. As it’s an animation application you can also add and remove KeyFrames. On the Time Line you can also choose to use onion skinning to see the previous frame and the next frame so that you can trace what you drew to animate it. The default FPS is 12 but on the Time Line you can choose up to 50 FPS. When playing your animation you can also decide to loop it so that you don’t have to keep pressing play over and over again.

4. Colors Tab

There are quite a nice range of default colors already on the colors tab, but if there’s a color that you use a lot and it’s not there then you can click the ‘+’ sign and add it. You can also choose to remove colors from the color tab by hitting the ‘-’ sign. From the colors tab you can also select the alpha.

5. Extra Features

A really nice touch to Pencil is that the whole layout is customizable so if you don’t like the way it is laid out then you can change the tabs around so that the application suits you. The tabs can also be detached. Sound and image can also be imported into Pencil, so if you create a sound in an audio application like Fruity Loops and want to use it in your animation you can, and if you have created an image in Photoshop then you can also import it into Pencil.

6. Exporting

When you’ve finished your animation, you can export it in either an Image Sequence, X-Sheet, Quicktime Movie or a Flash Movie (.swf). You can also import and export your Color Palette.

Overall I think that Pencil is a really amazing piece of software considering that its absolutely free. It’s also open source so you can download the source code and take a look at how it’s built. Pencil is still only in beta but when its first full version is released it’s going be a really hot application.

Download Pencil @ les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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

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