Mac ReviewCast
Freeware for the Mac
by Tim Verpoorten
Each week when I do a podcast I wonder if this will be the week that there will be no new freeware releases or updates that we have not already talked about on The MacReviewCast. After all, how many great pieces of freeware can any operating system really produce? How many great Mac programs can developers give us day after day and make them free to use, or even donationware? But then I see that many of the freeware programs we talk about each week come from Mac developers that create both shareware and freeware for users. I doubt that we’ll ever run out of freeware programs to talk about, not with all the great developers programming for the Mac platform. Support these programmers by purchasing their shareware products and thanking them for giving you free-to-use software in exchange. Without the amazing group of developers, the Mac platform would fade away.
Now let’s look at the freeware we talked about in December on the MacReviewCast;
This month we saw TextWrangler update to version 2.1. If you're looking for a free text editor that does more then the textedit application in Mac OS X does already, grab TextWrangler from barebones.com, it's the baby brother of BBedit and being free certainly fits everyone's budget.
Google Maps Plugin.: http://www.briantoth.com/addressbook
The Google Maps Plugin enables you to look up your Apple Address Book addresses using Google Maps as well as get directions between your Address Book addresses. Google Maps supports street maps for the United States, the UK, Canada, and Japan at the time this was written. We all know how great Google Maps are. Well, now you can make them ten times more functional. And we all know functional is important in a Mac app.
myTunes: http://www.sonicswap.com/mytunes
With myTunes, you can share playlists with your friends or add new ones from people with similar music collections. Download cover art for all your tracks in iTunes and view discography or lyrics with a simple click. Like a universal remote, myTunes makes it easier to control iTunes, and enjoy your music. Keyboard control over iTunes without interrupting your work. Display what's playing and cover art when a new song starts. Automatically download optimized cover art for all your songs. View discography, lyrics, and background on songs, artists and CDs from iTunes. This program really makes iTunes more functional, and you all know functional is important in a Mac app. Didn't I say that before?
Frontrow enabler: http://www.andrewescobar.com/archive/2005/11/30/frontrow
Now you can sit back, relax and let Front Row start the show. Music, photos and video.” …on any Mac! Thanks to an update from Apple, Front Row can now be easily installed on any Mac running 10.4.3 Tiger. While you previous had to rely on quirky hacks, Front Row can now be added to Tiger with full support, including keyboard shortcut and sound preferences. If you wanted to see what all the fuss is about Front Row, here's your chance.
Next are a couple ofgames, the first one is Virus Out: http://www.littlegenerals.com/virusout
Concerned about viruses running amok on your Mac? Are the little devils hiding in your system, waiting to spring upon your vulnerable files? If so, then Virus Out might just be the solution for YOU! Virus Out will take you on a wild safari through your Mac in search of these elusive bandits. When you see a virus, be quick to squash it before it has a chance to cause harm. If you are lucky, you may even recover some funds those little guys have stolen in their journeys.
The next game is a seasonal one by an author that has a ton of great freeware, Koingo Software and the game is called Christmas Crisis: http://www.koingosw.com/products/christmascrisis.php
Santa's fallen sick this winter holiday. Ms. Claus has been cooking some of her most powerful chicken soup, but even that's not powerful enough! Santa won't be able to make his first deliveries until much later than usual -- but that is TOO late. You and other elves have been chosen to help make up for Santa's missed time! Fly over cities and drop presents down chimneys. Maintain a 70% success rate to save Christmas! Watch out for planes - you don't want to crash! Think of it as a Santa Sim. Have fun with the whole family playing Christmas Crisis.
Weathermenu: http://www.afterten.com/products/weathermenu/index.html
Automatically puts multiple icons in the menu bar. Downloads and displays current weather info for multiple cities worldwide. It can put MULTIPLE icons in the menubar for multiple cities. Full Forecast information, inform you of current weather alerts, and it uses National Weather Service Radar. The program has Full Solar and Lunar information too.
Tunatic: http://www.wildbits.com/tunatic,
It's in beta and it's freeware. Here's what it does. Ever thought; "what is this song?" Let Tunatic hear it and you will get the artist's name and the song's title within seconds. Tunatic is the very first song search engine based on sound for your computer. All you need is a microphone and Internet access. When you click Tunatic's ‘search’ button, Tunatic transmits the song's features to the Tunatic server. The server searches its database and returns the matching song. Tunatic can identify music from any genre except classical. It can only identify songs that were indexed into its database, which is kept up-to-date by the community of Tunatic users through a program called Tunalyzer. If you like a particular genre or artist and feel concerned about it’s being identifiable through Tunatic, use Tunalyzer to contribute to the Tunatic database (it's easy and effortless).
PTHpasteboard: http://www.pth.com/PTHPasteboard/
PTHPasteboard is a pasteboard buffer application. It keeps track of the last 20 (changeable in preferences) items that you copied/cut and allows you to paste them at any time. They suggest that you should move this application to one of your Applications directories and set it to autolaunch on login. It’s simple and does the job.
coconutBattery: http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/index.html
Did you ever want to know more about your battery than the battery icon in your menubar is telling you? coconutBattery isn't just a tool, which shows you only the current charge of your battery - it also shows you the current maximum capacity of it in relation to the original capacity your battery had as it left the factory. You also get information about the battery-loadcycles (how often did you fully load your battery), the current charger (coconutBattery even warns you if you plugged in a wrong charger for your Notebook) and last but not least, information about the age of your Mac. It also comes with a widget that tells you the same information. It's functional, attractive, and unique. Like all great Mac software.
ThisWeekonXM: http://www.xmrocks.us/products/products.html
Do you have XM radio? ThisWeekOnXM is an application that allows subscribers of XM Satellite Radio to download the latest programming events and see what programs are coming up throughout the week.
The data is taken from XM Satellite Radio's programming page and XM411.com's schedule pages. It is then displayed in an easy-to-use application, eliminating the need to open your web browser and find the URL's for those websites. It's great for quick access!
Pawns: http://home.comcast.net/~squarebin/Pawns.html
Do you play Chess? Well this has a bit of chess in it, but a lot of free spirit. The object of the game is get pawns (whether black or white) to their wooden box. This is done by placing arrows on the board to tell them where to go. Along the way you must avoid obstacles and enemy chess pieces. Sometimes the enemy chess pieces can simply be avoided, but you may need to encourage them to capture each other instead! This is a OMG (Original Mac Games) 2005 contest entry. Visit the OMG contest website for many more free Mac games to play and vote on. http://www.idevgames.com/contest/downloads
iTunes Alarm: http://www.johnnarun.com/itunes_alarm
This iTunes utility turns your Mac into the most fully featured alarm clock you've ever owned. It'll gently put you to sleep then quietly does the same for your computer. When its time to wake up, it'll wake the computer first, and then rouse you from your slumber with whatever music or radio station you choose. You can even use it to seamlessly change from one playlist to another, changing the mood at a specific time (a useful tool when its time for your guests to leave.) And, it stores five different alarms, so you can do all this without even looking at your computer.
Hallon: http://hallon.sourceforge.net
Hallon can create bookmarks in many applications (like iTunes) that usually can't create bookmarks and they are always accessible from a menu, whatever you are doing. You can e.g. bookmark your favorite songs, an email that you have to reply to later that day, some documents that you are working on or the contact information of a friend whom you need to call before the end of the week. And you play the song, open the email, the document or the contact information just by choosing the bookmark in the Hallon menu. You create a bookmark by selecting what you want to bookmark and then press a user-definable hotkey or by choosing "Add..." in the Hallon menu. If you want, you can write notes and set a due date with alarm for each of the bookmarks. Hallon comes with support for Address Book, Finder, iPhoto 5, iTunes, Mail Safari and Terminal but you can yourself add support for many other applications by downloading instructions from the website.
Himmelbar: http://softbend.free.fr/himmelbar/index.html
HimmelBar provides an icon in the menu bar to quickly access your installed applications by scanning standard locations such as local, user, network and developer applications. You can also add a custom location such as the Classic Applications folder, or any other folder of your hard disk that contains applications. It's very tiny in the menubar and does a great dropdown list of the programs you want in it.
WakeUpNeo Screen Saver: http://homepage.mac.com/jpietry/wakeupneo.html
Do you remember how Neo was contacted by Morpheas in the movie The Matrix? It was on his computer screen. Well this is a simple screen saver for Mac OS X and Windows, which display the same messages Neo received on his computer screen when the first contacted by Morpheus. This is a VERY simple screen saver. Keeps CPU cycles low, and the majority of your screen pixels black, while a very subtle Matrix theme. (Nice for saving my laptop battery as well as the screen.)
Imagine BootX: http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/software.php?sign=ImBX
Imagine is a software program to change the boot image shown at the beginning of the Mac OS X startup to any custom color image. You just need to drop an image on the program to create a custom boot image. Make your Mac as unique as you want.
Finally, you know Voodoopad is on my top ten list of Mac software. Well Gus Mueller also gave us a new freeware version of VoodooPad lite. So get on over to http://www.flyingmeat.com and check out either the freeware or the shareware version. Gus gave us new web exporting features, plugins, multi-alias support, and bug fixes and other improvements. See for yourself and let us know what you think about it.
Till next month, take care and listen to the MacReviewCast each week.
