visit

Quicktime Tools

To mark this weeks preview release of Quicktime 6, I’ve decided to feature a handful of useful and fun Quicktime tools. Best of all, as always, they’re free!

This week we’ll take a look at some useful applications that let you do more with your Quicktime movies.

PresentMovie

First up is a great little program called “PresentMovie”, and it does just that. For those of you that are Quicktime Pro veterans, you know the “Present Movie” command displays a movie full-screen (and with no menu bar).

PresentMovie brings this display capability to non-Quicktime Pro users. By dragging a movie to the “PresentMovie” icon, it automatically plays it full screen. To configure settings, launch the app by itself.

MovieFloat

If full-screen isn’t you’re style and you prefer to watch movies while you work on your computer, MovieFloat may be a better fit. This little app launches one or more Quicktime movies in floating, always-on-top windows. A visit to the applications preferences gives you a chance to change the settings. Among the playback settings is the ability to change the transparency settings for the movie, allowing you to reveal other windows below the movie. For OS 9 users, check out SteveMovieFloat for similar functionality.

Save Hollywood

If activism is your bag, check out SaveHollywood. While you won’t preserve an inch of rain forest, you can let the office know what you care about even while you’re away from your computer.

SaveHollywood is a screen saver module for OS X. By dropping it into your Screen Saver folder in your Library, you add it to the selection of built-in screen saver modules. In your System Preferences you can configure Save Hollywood to make a screen saver of one or a series of Quicktime movies which can be displayed in order or randomly.

So, now you can have your Quicktime full screen, on top of your work and even while your Mac is idle. So, after trying out Apple’s new Quicktime 6 preview, you should have plenty of fun with your movies. Yeah, I’m too good to you…

Until next week, Brian

(PS, if you find that QT 6 isn’t treating you right, don’t miss the QT 5 re-installer.

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

Free TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary for Typinator released

typinator 20070822 201733 Free TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary for Typinator releasedThe latest update to Typinator from Ergonis Software gave the program the capability to correct typos and misspellings as soon as they’re entered. To help users get started immediately, Ergonis provided dictionaries of more than 800 common mistakes in each of English, German, and French. Now Typinator has become even more useful with the addition of the public domain TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary in English, which enables Typinator to correct over 2,300 additional mistakes on the fly.

Visit Ergonis Software’s web site to download a free trial version of Typinator and the TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary. The upgrade to Typinator 2 is free for anyone who purchased Typinator in the last 2 years. Typinator 2.0 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer. Mac OS X 10.4 is recommended. Single licenses of Typinator sell for EUR19.99.

Note: