use

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

iPod must-have Freeware

I couldn’t believe that in the history of Freeloader Friday we’ve only covered iPod freeware twice. It’s time to set the record straight with free essential software for your Mac’s best friend.

This week’s I’ve chosen quality over quantity. All of these picks have found their way to daily use on my Mac, and I think they will on yours.

Yamipod iPod manager

This (Yet Another) Manager for your iPod is the only one you’ll need outside iTunes. Despite the dull name, this free app digs into your iPod’s hidden music database (which is also home to your videos, if you’re that fortunate) and allows you to copy music from the iPod to your Mac. It also allows you to import, create and manage playlists, import and export songs and add and edit lyrics.

yamipod iPod must have Freeware

As if that wasn’t enough, Yami also copies RSS feeds and other notes to your notes folder. For those of you who aren’t real excited about using unsupported software with your iPod, you’ll be happy to know that Yamipod isn’t as careless as some. It records a backup of your music database (one of the most vulnerable parts of your iPod) on every launch. So, its easy to revert if something goes wrong.

iSquint iPod video encoder

This one will only be on interest to iPod with video owners. But if you have one, you want this. There are a million lame iPod video encoding apps out there, and most share one big problem: encoding time. Even iTunes suffers from long encoding times. Enter iSquint.

isquint iPod must have Freeware

In my experience, iSquint is about twice as fast as EyeTV or iTunes. The author has built in easy presets that create great looking movies. iSquint gives you control over file sizes and format. You can optimize your video for iPod only viewing or TV via iPod viewing. The software queues encodings and is regularly updated for performance.

Fetch Art album art importer

You can rip your entire Pink Floyd collection, and iTunes will give you track names. But when you load them on your beautiful new 60 gig and they just look naked in the “Now Playing” display. Don’t let your ripped or otherwise acquired music play second fiddle to iTunes Music Store purchases.

FetchArt iPod must have Freeware

Get artwork not only gets album art for your songs, it automates the process. Highlight the song, choose Fetch Art from the script menu in iTunes and the AppleScript application finds the image on Amazon. Highlight multiple, or all, and the application will return art for the list, letting you select which to import.

Adding video, art and newsfeeds is easy. And the search for an alternate iPod manager is done. Rock on.

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