clutter

Apr 27 2009

Menu Bar Madness!

Digital Bill from the Wizards
of Technology fills in for Brian

Ever since we’ve moved up to Mac OS X we’ve had a lot more stuff that we can
do up there in the menubar. There was always the Clock, Volume, Displays, and
iChat Status. And sure, Panther added Fast User Switching, and Tiger ads the
Spotlight search bar. And what mobile user doesn’t have the Airport Signal
Meter and Battery gauges? But, thanks to the hard work of shareware authors,
you can add functions to the menu bar you never dreamed of, from email notification,
to processor and memory use, to text shortcuts and even desktop cleanup.

1 Menubar All Menu Bar Madness!

Read on for some of my daily favorites.

mu Menu Bar Madness!DeskTopple

2 Desktopple Menu Menu Bar Madness!Ever
needed to take a screenshot and had to remove all of those icons from your
Desktop before you do? Or maybe you needed to make a presentation and had to
tidy up before hooking into the projector? With Desktopple,
you can quickly and easily hide all of your Desktop clutter. A quick trip to
your menu bar is all it takes. With Desktopple, you can quickly and easily
hide all of your Desktop clutter. Desktopple is a deceptively simple idea -
cover all your desktop clutter. Yep. Just sweep it under the rug. It can even
use your desktop picture to hide the mess.

mu Menu Bar Madness!Textpander

3 Textpander Menu Menu Bar Madness! Textpander is
a utility that helps you type more efficiently and more accurately (thank goodness!).
Textpander ‘listens’ to what you type and inserts predefined text snippets
on the fly whenever you enter their corresponding abbreviations.

Here are a few examples for what you can do with Textpander:

  • Insert standard greetings, text fragments, and signatures – including formatted
    text and pictures.
  • Insert the current date and time in any format you prefer.
  • Use editor-independent code templates and have Textpander position the
    cursor just where it needs to be.
  • Type special characters without having to launch any special characters
    palette.
  • Have Textpander correct typos automatically.
  • Import text snippets from other typing utilities.

Textpander quickly becomes one of those things you miss when it’s not there.
I certainly wouldn’t finish posting nightly podcasts as fast without it!

mu Menu Bar Madness!Gmail
Notifier

4 Gmail Notifier Menu Bar Madness!The Gmail
Notifier is
an application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages (You *do* have
a Gmail account, right?). It displays an icon in your Menu bar to let you
know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders
and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser. Then you can go
straight to the message, or the inbox, or to compose a new message (all of
which require a web browser of course).

The Notifier is in beta, like everything from Google. Before you download
it, we encourage you to review the system requirements and privacy information.

mu Menu Bar Madness!MenuMeters

5 Menubar Memory Menu Bar Madness!6 Menubar Process Menu Bar Madness!MenuMeters is
a set of CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for Mac OS X. Although
there are numerous other programs which do the same thing, they always were
either crouching or hidden. Some were even odd pulsing things on the desktop.
MenuMeters takes up precious little space on the menu bar, and gives me quick-click
access to stuff like how much hard disk is used up with swapfiles (sometimes
2GB!), or what my uptime is, or if there are more than 1000 pageswaps when
I’m playing WoW – good signs that a restart will make the game play with less
lag!.

The MenuMeters monitors are true Menu
Extras. This means they can be reordered using command-drag and remember their
positions in the menubar across logins and restarts.

Downloads from MacUpdate.com

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Apr 27 2009

How to reduce the clutter on your Mac desktop

(from Episode #25 of The Lab with Leo Laporte)

Desktopple Pro is a system enhancement for Mac OS X made by FoggyNoggin Software. It started out its life as simply Desktopple (which is still available for free from FoggyNoggin) and it was intended as a method by which you could hide your desktop. People who write tutorials or tech manuals take a lot of screenshots and Desktopple allows you to do that without showing the ever increasing collection of Picture.png files on your Desktop. The original Desktopple also found a market among those that give presentations in Keynote or PowerPoint as it allowed them to project their computer’s screen without giving people a glimpse at their private desktop files. It serves as a bit of a “boss button� for your desktop files.

When Desktopple went “pro� it took on the customary price tag (only $17 in this case) but it also added a bunch of new features:

First off, Desktopple Pro is a preference pane, which means that when it is activated it shows no Dock icon. It doesn’t use “Application Enhancer� so don’t worry if you’re concerned about keeping your system APE-free. It is accessed by a key command, from a menu bar icon or from a Dashboard Widget.

Desktopple Pro’s bread and butter is still Desktop Hiding. What the software does is kind of slip a second desktop picture (aka wallpaper) over the original desktop and all of its icons. You desktop is still there, you just can’t see it anymore. The appearance of the desktop picture is entirely of your choosing: you can make it the same as your current desktop picture, you can choose a different picture or a solid color or gradient.

You can make Desktopple Pro always hide the desktop or you can have the software be triggered by a key command or by asking Desktopple Pro to activate whenever you launch certain programs. Desktopple Pro also plays nice with Exposé, multiple monitors, and Spaces (Leopard’s multiple desktop feature).

Desktopple Pro has added Window Cleaning, which hides any application that isn’t the foreground application. FoggyNoggin has provided an out in the form of an exceptions list that allows you to exclude certain applications from being hidden. Fans of SpiritedAway (the Mac OS X system enhancement, not the awesome anime film) will be happy to see this feature, especially if they are using an Intel-based Mac.

Menu Dimming is another new feature. It hides the menu bar and brings it back whenever you move your cursor to the top of the screen. It doesn’t remove access to the menu bar, it only hides it when you’re not using it. This feature is very similar to a freeware system enhancement called Menu Shade, but rolls it and all these other features into one neat package.

Productivity fanatics from the David Allen “Getting Things Done� cult should love Desktopple Pro. In fact it brings to mind the “Distracted Mac� episode of MacBreak only Desktopple Pro replaces 3 of the recommended applications does away with all those extra dock and menu bar icons—AND—Desktopple Pro runs as a Universal Binary. So it runs quickly on Intel-based Macs today.

To use Desktopple Pro is simple. Install it by double-clicking the .prefPane file, activate it in your System Preferences and then choose which features you want and set them up to your liking. Then it’s as simple as toggling Desktopple Pro using the key command you chose or from the Dashboard Widget, and customizing it from the menu bar (if you chose to use the menu bar icon).

The clutter just vanishes.

Desktopple Pro costs USD$17 and offers a FREE 15 day trial. Desktopple Basic is available for FREE but only gives you desktop hiding.

Download Desktopple Pro from www.foggynoggin.com

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Feb 28 2009

Verbatim TuneBoard for Mac

The TuneBoard is a great example of a problem that was waiting to be solved – and its solution. Desktops the world over are cramped. While monitors do get slimmer, external hard drives, speakers and cradles for handheld gadgets have made themselves at home on your desk.

The problem compounds when you need to find a place to plug in your ‘clutter free’ wireless mouse or keyboard’s base station and all the other extras you’ve accumulated.

The gift the TuneBoard brings is in its consolidation of speakers and keyboard. It does have other features I’ll mention as we go, but that is the defining feature of this product.

TuneBoard3 Verbatim TuneBoard for Mac

It does also help reduce clutter at your power adapter – by drawing power from USB which is its only cord. And I actually found the wired nature of the keyboard appealing – no batteries orreceiversto mess with. And after using wireless keyboards for years I’ve never really been sold on them. I’ve never had any use for the wireless-ness unless I was using a home theater Mac.

Because it is made for the Mac, you don’t have to remap any keys, though it would have been nice to have the same Apple/cloverleaf instead of the word “command.” The Mac-ness of the keyboard extends into the extra controls as well. In addition to the music control buttons we’ll talk about in a minute, there are previous/pause/next track buttons and an eject.

And now for the ‘tunes. I was surprised how few speaker-keyboard combos there are out there. The small speakers are not intended to satisfy more tan a couple sets of ears, but with that expectation they sound very good. For a workstation/desk area they are more than adequate. The base-boost is more like a normal use setting. Without it, the sounds suffers.

And the sound itself? Don’t expect the deep richness of a home audio system. The speakers are clear with a nice presence to them, though for obvious reasons it is not comparable to anything larger than a small boom-box. I must stress, for jamming while working at the computer, this system more an fits the bill. It also hits well beyond the mark for watching Hulu or YouTube videos.

TuneBoard2 Verbatim TuneBoard for Mac

And there’s backlight. I actually would have traded this feature if it would have slimmed the thing down bit, but it is cool. I’m not sure what you’re doing using the computer in the dark, but whatever it is, you’ll be able to see the keys.

The trade-offs? I already mentioned the size – it is a little wider (maybe an inch on either side) than the full-sized key layout requires. It is also deeper (toaccommodatethe speakers). They styling is subject to taste. I didn’t love it, but that’s why we share pictures. It is also not achickletkeyboard – for which I was grateful. I appreciated the depth of the action and the ergonomics of the keys which provide nice smooth feedback. The other drawback is the price – it is the most expensive wired keyboard I’ve looked at for a while.

Conclusion

There is a perfect buyer for this keyboard. The TuneBoard is the Mac mini’s best friend. The keyboard will deliver you from the terrible mono speaker on the mini while cutting the clutter. I expect tower owners will feel the same. PowerBook and iMac owners would see more volume out of these speakers, but may not see the urgency since they already have an okay audio experience.

I really liked the TuneBoard, It spent most of its time connected to my mini, because I don’t really ‘dock’ my PowerBook anywhere. The sound quality exceeded my expectation for their size and I really appreciated the clutter reduction.

Pick it up at Amazon for about $80.

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