mac application

Better than Bill

Beat Microsoft at its own exclusivity game with this week’s free software picks.

Daniel’s HttpMail Plugin

Think you need Entourage to enjoy Hotmail access from your email application? With HttpMail Plugin you can access and delete your Hotmail in Jaguar’s Mail.app. There are limitations. Be sure to read the readme.

DropDoc

Drag Word files to DropDoc and it converts them to RTF files you can edit in TextEdit. The catch? It only works on certain files.

Mac Messenger

Enjoy the MSN chat network without using Microsoft’s client. You won’t have to sacrifice many features and will be able to enjoy a truly native Mac application.

What did I tell you? Never underestimate the capability of free software! Until next week, thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of Freeloader Friday.

Firefox Updates

Just when you thought all things Firefox had settled down, new extensions and updates get things fired up again. This week I’ll point you to the first public alphas of Firefox and Thunderbird 1.1as well as two cool new add-ons.

For those of you who like doing it all in Firefox, you have two less reasons to leave your browser with these free applications…

FoxiPod

This free Mac application works with the Greasemonkey extension (required) to allow you to send podcasts from a link in your browser directly to iTunes.

FoxiPod Firefox Updates

FoxiPod’s user script marks all mp3′s with a special button, and with one click FoxiPod downloads podcasts and sends them to a specified playlist or iPod.

AIMfire

There are a lot of great, full-featured chat applications out there. But, if all you need to do is jump on AIM to drop someone a note, you’ll be interested in AIMfire.

AIMfire Firefox Updates

With the AIMfire extension, a quick visit to Firefox’s Tools menu will fire up your buddy list and let you chat (with rich text support) from within Firefox.

Of course, progress is always being made in the quest to make Firefox the perfect browser. Since the 1.0 release, the Open Source team has been busy. If you’re the daring type, you can grab the bleeding-edge Alphas of the 1.1 versions of Firefox and Thunderbird.

I don’t need to remind you of the dangers of pre-release software, so beware.

Deer Park AKA Firefox 1.1 Alpha

New in this release we’ve got improved display options in OS X, image thumbnails on tabs and full keyboard access.

Thunderbird 1.1 Alpha

Naturally, the ‘Fox’s little brother is improved as well. the 1.1 Alpha includes default inline spell checking, Podcast support and improved feed reading and POP/IMAP access.

Have fun with the Alphas and extensions. And remember, there’s never a dull moment with Mozilla.

Brian

Let FunBooth and your iSight camera turn you into Mr. Potato Head

FunBooth 20070712 200511 Let FunBooth and your iSight camera turn you into Mr. Potato Head“Motion tracking” seems to be the technology of the day today.

Sourcebits has announced the release of FunBooth; a new Mac application that lets you take goofy pictures of yourself. FunBooth offers a selection of wacky disguises to dress up your face and it uses face detection and motion tracking in real time to move and scale the various hats, beards, noses and wigs to keep up with you as you pose for your still shots. Then it lets you save the zany pictures and even upload them to your Flickr account.

FunBooth is available for a limited time at an introductory price of USD$9.99. Purple hair is not included in FunBooth’s “props dock” but there is still a lot of disguises to try on–it looks like a lot of fun.

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