media applications

Apr 27 2009

Bulk up Your Blog

We’re all hooked on blogs. Not having one is like not having a MacMerc Option-Shift-K shirt. This week we’ll look at a couple solutions for pounding your photos online. We’ll also look at a couple “blog accessories”.

mu Bulk up Your Blog1001

This application uploads photos to your Flickr account (a free service, of course). It also notifies you when your friends photo streams are updated.

mu Bulk up Your BlogFlickrExport

Prefer to send your photos straight from iPhoto? If you have iPhoto 4 and Panther, this plug-in will let you do just that.

mu Bulk up Your BlogEnkoder

Now, moving back to our blogs, this program will help your bring mailto: links back to your blog. This application uses javascript to cook code that protects email addresses from spam bots.

PrintMyBlog

Can’t remember the last time you held a hard copy? This new site promises an interesting new service. Still in beta, the founders promise to allow you to sell “booklets” of your blog and receive a commission.

Blogbox.com

This site offers free, open source “rich media applications” to drop into your blog. These include widgets for weather, sound clips photos and more.

Now, what’s a good blog without some bells and whistles?

Brian

mu Bulk up Your BlogDownloads provided by MacUpdate

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Apr 27 2009

Media Master

Macs have always been media machines. This week we’re going to look at some powerful, free media applications.

mu Media MasterVLC

VLC is the king of media, and the leading Open Source solution for streaming media. It doesn’t stop there, it supports dozens of formats including DVD and VCD.

vlc Media Master

VLC allows you to stream over a network, and gives you access to advanced options.

mu Media MasterHyperion

This utility allows you to convert WMA Windows Media audio into malleable formats. This is one to keep on your tool belt.

mu Media MasterMMT EZ

Here’s a free, easy to use video tool for converting video and burning it to VCD or DVD.

mmtez Media Master

Options allow you to adjust advanced options for video and audio encoding. It comes in a straight-forward GUI.

mu Media MasterMSI Man

Here’s another burning utility that allows you to burn multi-session discs. MSI does it using the new .msi format for creating multi-session images and burns them using Toast.

mu Media MasterMiNews

Okay, this one has nothing to do with this week’s theme.

MiNews Media Master

Yes, this is yet another RSS reader, but I included it because I found the interface clean and its OS integration convenient. Web page rendering and easy sharing with Address Book contacts.

There you go, a full set of free media tools. Feel free to stream, edit and burn to your heart’s content.

Brian

mu Media MasterDownloads provided by MacUpdate

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Apr 27 2009

Media on the Go

We are beginning to see the world of pro-level Open Source media applications mature. As they become more popular, the benefits of their free source code are becoming evident. This week we have a collection of new portable versions of some Open Source’s best applications. As a bonus, we have a couple previews of good things to come in free multimedia applications on the Mac.

Portible Apps

Through the ever cheaper phenomena of Flash memory, the following applications can be installed to a pocket-sized drive and used on any OS X Mac without being installed on the Mac. These apps are content to live and run right from removable media, making any Mac you can get your USB drive in to yours.

Portable Gimp is one of the best-loved Open Source media applications. Now you can take it on the road, however the Mac you’ll run it on must have X11 installed. Ditto for Portable Inkscape, Gimp’s vector drawing counterpart.

We know about Portable Firefox and Thunderbird. Now you can enjoy XULtastic web designing on the go with Portable NVU.

But of course, if we what to cut to the heart of media, we want video and audio. Watch and listen to a plethora of media formats with Portable VLC. For recording and mixing on the closest Mac you can find, grab Portable Audacity.

Coming Soon

Yesterday Google announced a free 3D authoring environment (for PC, Mac version coming soon). If you don’t want to wait, you can download a free 8 hour trial of the Pro version of Sketch for the Mac.

NeoOffice is a OS X-friendly rework of OpenOffice. NeoOffice 1.2 is based on the 1.x version of OpenOffice, however an early release of the 2.0 version is available now – for a fee. The free download comes at the end of next month. Of course, you are welcome to compile the source yourself now, for free.

You can forget reinstalling all your favorite apps on each Mac you touch. Ahh, the freedom.

Brian

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