Music this week is “Better Than Me” by Hinder.

Download AppFresh here.

Read about Pixelmator here.

Read more about Joost and how to get an invite here.

View some screenshots here.

Be sure to participate in the discussion in the Message Boards as well.

Boot Camp is Apple’s own implementation allowing you to either use your computer as a Mac, or turn it off and restart and use it as a Windows PC. Disadvantages include security threats as well as lack of ease of use. Advantage would be playing games at full speed on Windows.

Parallels is a Mac application that allows you to run Windows and any Windows applications on your Mac. It is feature rich including drag-n-drop from Windows and Mac apps, full mouse and keyboard support, iSight support, and the super cool cohernce mode. You can even configure Parallels so that the Windows applications show up in your dock and in Spotlight results. Makes it super easy for me to launch Internet Explorer!

CrossOver is from CodeWeavers and is the smaller utiltiy out of the bunch. While the previous two require a full version of Windows, CrossOver fakes Windows applications into believing that they are running on Windows. Because of this approach, some applications have limited functionaly or refuse to work at all. An example would be Internet Explorer. I was asked which approach would be better for web development. Parallels is best in my opinion because IE6 and IE7 both work, can be just a window, and you can continue to work on the website on your Mac. Boot Camp would require you to restart to preview your work and CrossOver has a few minor issues with IE6 and doesn’t support IE7 at all.

Be sure to check out the discussion about this episode in the Mac Fanatic Message Boards here.

I also mentioned a previous post about using DVD Shrink on a Mac, using CrossOver. You can read there here.

Read more about Boot Camp here.

Read more about Parallels here.

Read more about CrossOver here.

Screenshots (Click to view full-size)

Download Coda here.

Download AppZapper here.

Download CleanApp here.

Download OnyX here.

Download RapidWeaver here.

Be sure to enter to win one of three copies of RapidWeaver on the site here.

RapidWeaver 3.6 should be released early this summer. Check out the RealMac blog for updates on new features and release status.

You can download Schoolhouse 2 here.

You can download Journler 2.5 here.

Listen to the previous review of Schoolhouse 1 here.

Listen to a previous review covering Journler here.

SmartBackup is by far the best backup solution I’ve found for normal backups. The software is a lot like syncing your iPod. The first time you sync your backup, it will take awhile to put everything in the backup. However, subsequent backups take very little time and yet you always have your latest files. There are a lot of options to tweak for saving space and time and recovery is easy. Check out this app today!

Download SmartBackup here.

If you like this software, consider entering the Mac Fanatic Software Giveaway. Contest runs from April 23 until June 1. Read more details here.

Currently, the stats for the podcast come in at 49,292 for those episodes that have been downloaded by subscribers. The number is a few thousand higher at 55,681 for those that have been downloaded individually as well. So since 50,000 is a good number to celebrate, that’s what we’ll use here.

This certainly seems like a good time to give away something. So, if you have any ideas, requests, comments, now is the time to write in. I’ll leave the post open to suggestions for another week or two. Hopefully someone will write in with something good that is doable and I will be able to setup some sort of contest/giveaway again, similar to the iTunes Giveaway earlier this year. I might be able to coerce some developers into a free license, so if you have specific requests for some shareware, send them on in.

Keep the comments and emails coming!

UPDATE: I’ve heard back from Ged over at IconFactory, the great guys that gave us Frenzic. Turns out he’s excited about the giveaway too, enough to provide us with 3 full Guru copies (24.95 value each)! Many thanks to Ged from IconFactory and the rest of the team!

UPDATE 2: I’ve heard back from Andy from the Potion Factory. Turns out that the Potion Factory is willing to donate a license for Tangerine, a 24.95 value. Very awesome! The turnout of great Mac apps is very encouraging as I’ve only sent out three emails at this point.

UPDATE 3: There will be a copy of Rapidweaver available too, many thanks to Dan from RealMac Software!

UPDATE 4: I have received confirmation from the developers of CSSEdit, Typinator, PopCharX, SmartBackup, Journler, and ChaChing. If you have any special requests, please send them in soon.

Frenzic Screenshot



Little Shop of Treasures Screenshot

Sometimes we just need a way to get on with our day after a long morning of monotonous work. These two games will help get your brain back into working order in no time! Listen to this episode to hear a bit about gameplay and then be sure to download the trial versions or purchase them from the links below!

Download Frenzic

Download Little Shop of Treasures

Previous Quinn Podcast

You’re more than welcome to leave comments or send email and I’ll make a valiant effort to respond. Peace out, I hope to start writing more by mid-April if not earlier.

Tubular is an application geared to allow you to easily browse, search, and convert videos from YouTube. Very nice piece of software still under development, but worth looking at now. Music this week is Facedown by The Jumpsuit Apparatus.

(Application Main Window)

Tubular Site

Thanks to all of the regular listeners and contributers to the site. It’s great to get emails from everyone and feedback, so keep that coming. I also hope to be posting a few articles from listeners that have wrote in with awesome ideas, applescripts, automator actions, etc. Those will be going up once I type and edit some more, asking for approval of my changes, etc.

Of further note, if anyone is a member of a student organzation on any campus that is Mac oriented or if you have been involved in any MUG (Mac User Group) before, please send me an email so we can talk. I have contacted my campus’s Apple Representative and finally receieved a response that there is no such group available on my campus and we’ve been talking a bit, with the possibility of me heading one up. I’d just like to get some feedback and ideas from anyone else if they have went through anything similar before.

In this episode I talk about four major applications for getting the most out of iTunes and your iPod. By all means, there are several more applications available than I could ever cover in this episode, but these are some applications that I really felt were important.

GimmeSomeTune is a very basic notification and playback control application. Visit website here.

TuneBar is unique because of the three playback applications I talk about here, this is the only one I know of that lets you search your library and select songs based upon more than just prev/next keys. Visit website here.

CoverSutra is by far the most beautiful of all of these apps and has a very nice feature set. Visit website here.

Tangerine is a program that lets you generate playlists based upon criteria such as length of the playlist, “generation pattern”, beats per minute, and beat intensity. Perfect for workout or studying playlists. Visit website here.

Also mentioned in this episode:
Widget for creating torrent files
Widget comparable to Billings 2 for project and task time management

Lionsgate has released several movies on iTunes this week. Some pretty popular titles such as “Terminator 2″ and “Basic Instinct” are now available. Read more here.

Interesting article about crashing an in-flight Tetris game. Very funny read. Basically the guy noticed that there were 4 levels to Tetris, he was able to set it to 5 by using another button pad and because of bad coding techniques (explained in the article), he was able to increment the level number to 127 and beyond, crashing the app because of some basic number representation theory ( adding one to 127 will go to -128 in a one bit signed char ). Read here.

A 66 year-old man freed his grandson from an anaconda. Wow. Read here.

Steve Jobs in deeper trouble because of back-dating stock options at Pixar, when he was still involved with that company. He was working at two separate companies and both are now involved in SEC investigations dealing with the stock options. Read here.

I found a widget this week that allows you to easily create torrent files. Basically, you just drag a folder, file, or group of files onto the widget and it will place a torrent on your Desktop for you. Extremely easy! Read here.

Once again, sorry for the lack of an episode this week, but be sure to check back next week when I plan on talking about several applications to enhance your iTunes experience on the Mac.

Billings 2 is an easy-to-use time and expense billing application for the Mac. With Billings, you can create and send great looking invoices or estimates in less than 5 minutes. Billings time saving features include seamless integration with Apple Address Book for efficient use of existing contact information, quick and simple posting of task information to iCal for project scheduling, beautifully rendered, fully customizable PDF estimates and invoices, customizable fields for capturing and tracking information specific to you and your customers’ businesses, and automated tax calculations for 120 regions globally. A full featured, 21-day demo version of Billings 2 is available at www.billingsapp.com.

Basically, this application lets you easily and professionally keep track of all your tasks associated with projects and clients, and deliver beautiful invoices and estimates. That is a bit of a summary, but this is a powerful application. If you manage your own small business of any sort and don’t have this, you need it. Billings will help you improve your operation’s appearance and give much needed importance and credit as well. Impressions matter!

(Some screenshots provided by MarketCircle)

Be sure to download the fully functional 21 day trial now here.

I run across people all the time who simply aren’t aware of what great software is available for making your instant messaging experience so much better. So, I’ve taken some notes and I’m ready to share a wealth of knowledge with you.

Chat Transcript Manager

This is a cool application which lets you organize, search, and manage your saved conversations from popular IM clients such as iChat, Fire, and Adium. Very useful for looking up stuff from previous conversations and works across all of the clients, so doesn’t matter in which one you last talked to the person in.

Chax

This is a very important addon to iChat. Talk about features you didn’t know you were missing!

Tabbed conversations, disabling picture-in-picture for video conversations, dock icon settings, Growl support and so much more. You have to get this to see everything that Chax adds to iChat.

CallWave SMS Widget

Small widget that lets you send text messages to mobile phones, for free. And you don’t even need a phone yourself. You can have all replies be sent to your phone or to an email address. Very nice little widget, and it’s free!

Links from the Show

I mentioned several links for this episode, so here they are:
I Love My Mac Giveaway from macCompanion
Download Chax
Read the article I wrote about Growl – useful for using Chax
Download Chat Transcript Manager
Download CallWave SMS Widget

Music this week is “Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace

Typinator is a simple application that lets you assign abbreviations to be replaced with text or images. For example, I have an abbreviation “sig.”, which when typed, automatically inserts the following text:
Matt Brewer
Mac Fanatic
All Mac, All the Time

http://www.macfanatic.net

matt@macfanatic.net

A nice little application, right? Repetitive typing is now conquered easily and this application has a lot of possibilities. Listen to this episode for more information as well as information about upcoming MacWorld 2007, Viewer 2.1, and the iTunes Promotion.

(Taken from the Typinator website)

Music this week is “Save Me” by Remy Zero.

Read more about Ergonis Software and Typinator here.

Schoolhouse

Schoolhouse is a very nice way to keep up with all of your coursework, simply put. Features include GPA and Final grade calculators, graphing of grades, prioritizing, Classcasting to share your assignments with classmates, sending assignments to iCal and iPod, and much more. The interface is very clean and well laid out. Overall it seems to be a very stable application that the developer has created to deal with his schoolwork himself. Also of note is that a new version, 2.0, is supposedly in the works with an expected release date over this holiday season break, as the developer is away from school and hopes to get it out with the extra time.

Be sure to listen to this episode to get more details!

Download the latest version of Schoolhouse here

Please note that this review was for a 1.x version of Schoolhouse. As of late March 2007, version 2.1 was released. This newer version is leaps and bounds ahead of the one talked about in this review, so please consider trying out the latest version for yourself. Expect an new episode reviewing this software in the near future.

I reviewed an application called Cast Life developed by Juan Alvarez, the same guy behind Cha-Ching, the cool financial application in beta right now. Links to all that is below the post info. Basically, Cast Life was a simple solution to creating podcasts, photocasts, filecasts, and newcasts. Feeder focuses more on letting the user dictate what happens with tons of options and more control. Not to say you couldn’t necessarily get this accomplished with Cast Life, but Feeder is a lot more flexible and a more mature product. Worth checking out if you have a need to create and maintain XML files yourself.

Mentioned in this episode:
Cast Life Podcast Review
Feeder Website
Sparkle Framework Website
Cast Life Website
Midnight Apps site – Juan Alvarez, Software Developer
Cha-Ching Website

Some of the basic features include wonderful code complete and suggestion, a gorgeous interface that lets you get anything done in one or two clicks, a visual styles editor that makes your life extremely easy and the most significant feature has to be the live preview window. With this you can open up any URL or file and override the stylesheet in use with the one that you are editing, for real-time previewing. From there you have innovative features like the Milestone manager that let you keep track of your progress and easily revert to a previous state and an easy validation window for keeping your code clean. A great app that you can download here and try out for yourself.

The Basic Code-Visual View

Milestones Manager Window

Live Preview Window

It was just a weeks ago that I had set down with my private beta copy of Disco, the new disc authoring app that has taken the Mac community by storm. Overall the application is very nice and seems to earn its keep. All of the bugs aren’t worked out of it just yet because it is still beta, but it’s a nice piece of software that clearly shows just how much work went into the project and will surely be one of those apps that Mac users keep around in their Applications folder. You can listen to my initial impression of Disco here.

What better way to learn more about Disco then talk to one of the guys from the Disco team, Austin Sarner!

Me: How long have you been using a Mac?

Austin: I’ve actually only been using Macs for about 5 years now.

Me: What was your first Mac?

Austin: A Titanium iBook, 1 Ghz.

Me: What is your current hardware setup?

Austin: MacBook Pro with a 23″ Cinema display

Me: What kind of educational experience have you had?

Austin: I have just finished up high school and I’m looking into going back to school down the road. Not sure what I’ll major in, but definitely something non-computer related.

Me: How long have you been developing on the Mac?

Austin: I’ve been developing since a few months after I got my first Mac, starting with AppleScript, then RealBasic, and now Cocoa.

Me: Do you have any other software that I’ve missed and should know about?

I’ve worked on a handful of other shareware and freeware apps in the past, most of which aren’t worth mentioning. AppZapper is my other significant project alongside Disco.

Me: What are you most excited about in terms of developer technologies to debut in Leopard?

Austin: Without breaking our WWDC NDA, I can safely say that Leopard so far appears to be a very developer centric release. There are plenty of new technologies that will allow us to take advantage of some pretty advanced UI functionality with little effort.

Me: Who is on your team and what is everyone’s main focus?

Austin: Our team is made up of Jasper Hauser, Brian Ball, and I. Brian handles the crazy marketing promotions, Jasper designs the pretty graphics, and I code it up. Together, Jasper and I design the workflow and interaction and also handle the blog.

Me: Who came up with the original idea for the app?

Austin: I originally had the idea to make a simple disc copying app. We started with that and things just kind of evolved.

Me: How long has the project been underway?

Austin: We’ve been working on Disco since late June.

Me: What features are you hoping to put tin the final 1.0 release that we haven’t seen in the beta so far?

Austin: For the most part, the beta is feature complete.

Me: What are your future plans for Disco?

Austin: We have quite a few cool features in the works. Things like Discography and Spandex push the boundaries of what you would associate with a burning app.

Overall, Disco is not a direct Toast competitor. We’re out to make a real disc burning app for real people and appeal to the actual user in every way possible.

Well, there you have it. Seems like Austin and Jasper make an amazing team and I’m excited to see what else they come up with not only with Disco, but for the Mac community in the coming years.

If you are interested in grabbing your own free trial copy of the Disco beta, you can check out the Disco website here for more info with introductory pricing starting at just 14.95 USD.
Also of note is the newly launched website created by theMacNurse called Mac App A Day which promises to have copies of some of Austin Sarner’s apps as part of their giveaway, so be on the lookout for those and more awesome Mac shareware applications for free on that website starting December 1.

I haven’t been able to produce an episode in what seems like ages for various personal reasons, but I’m back this week with all the news to catch you up on the latest in the Mac community as well as a look at an awesome disc burning application called Disco that just saw a public beta released today. Introductory pricing is available at 15 USD.

This application has been talked about so much in the last few months I was just dying to finally get my hands on the private beta a few weeks ago. The public beta that was released today lets everyone get in on the goods and provides many enhancements and bug fixes to the application. This app is simply amazing from an interface perspective. It is absolutely stunningly gorgeous with all the transparent and sexy black used throughout the app. Everything is liquid-smooth with transitions and so much eye candy that I’m looking for excuses to burn discs!

Overview of Features

Disco has a discography feature that keeps track of every file you’ve ever burnt so that if you need to find it later, you can just search through that and Disco will tell you what disc it is on. A very nice feature indeed. Disco easily lets you burn files that span multiple discs, has plenty of advanced features like multi-session support and even supports burning Video_TS folders for those of you that want to make a copy of a DVD that you’ve ripped to your Mac. Stuff like making copies, creating disc images and burning disc images is so simple and elegant that it’s amazing. The one really cool feature that I can’t use because my Macbook doesn’t have a graphics card that supports it, is the smoke effect. When you burn a disc on a supported Mac, the window smokes and is awesome. Burn baby burn!

If you purchase Disco at this introductory price from MacZot today, you are automatically entered to win one of three awesome Lightscribe Dual-Layer DVD burners. A very cool deal indeed.

Head on over here to take a look at the Disco website and download your beta version today.

Purchase from MacZot and enter to win the Lightscribe drive here.

Music this week is “Tush” by ZZ Top.

All that being said I’ve got an episode about 1/2 way recorded when I find time to polish and release it. I’m having issues getting up with the Cha-Ching developer, Juan Alvarez and getting him to talk with me, so I’m not sure if that interview will be pulled off or not. I’m hoping to get that interview out to everyone this upcoming weekend, but I’ll have to play it by ear. Once again, sorry for the lack of everything and I’ll try to make a few posts a bit later in the week after I get some school stuff done. Thanks for bearing with me.

I run across a lot of applications every day when I’m on the net. I check out all the latest postings on Version Tracker and keep my eye out for new software on Digg as well as some other blogs that I subscribe too. And the last place that I find software is MacZot. This application is one that I purchased as a bundle awhile back, a member of five apps that I got for something outrageous, like 5 dollars. I was a little disappointed when I read what was in the bundle because I hadn’t heard of any of them before and I wasn’t sure what the apps were capable of. Now I’m sharing KIT with you today as another application that you should seriously check into, especially if you want to get even more organized with your Mac.

Features

KIT has a bit role to fill: making your life more organized and productive. That’s a rather large project objective if you ask me. However, KIT goes a good ways to fulfilling that promise right from the start, you just have to let the application help you. KIT is based on a model similar to what all of us are familiar with in iTunes and iPhoto. KIT is based on a library model where you can easily import files of several different types, and then organize, tag, label, shuffle, search and just in general find what you need when you need it.

Upon first glance I wasn’t sure what role this application was supposed to fill since I use Spotlight for almost everything already. I use it as an application launcher and to find 99% of the files that I ever need. My Desktop is clear and I like to keep my dock as clutter free as possible as well. That just leaves me and Spotlight, a god-send in Tiger as far as I’m concerned. Therefore KIT has to do something more than just find your files easily.

After you import files into KIT, you can tag them for better and more efficient searching later. There is a sidebar that lets you easily add comments, just like Spotlight comments, so that when you search it will be easier to find it. You can create and delete categories, and assign colors to those categories so that it’s easier to identify what category a file is in at one glance, similar to what you can do in Mail.app with rules and highlighting (I use that feature a lot). From the sidebar you can quickly assign a category to a file, helping you out later down the road as we’ll see.

Since you can assign so much metadata to your files you’ve imported, cool features like Smart Groups, once again like we’ve seen in Tiger and iTunes, lets you aggregate your files from categories, comments, filenames, names, and much more. Very powerful stuff. There are also static groups that you just drag and drop files into.

Besides just being able to find your files easily, you can preview them right within the application, like a split view that we have in Mail.app This means your text files, movies, audio files, images, PDFs, and a really cool feature with webpages makes it easy for you to see what the file is without having to open up an external application. The Web Archive feature is really cool because it captures the page for you and renders it when you preview it. You can view the page offline and keep it for as long as you need it. You can also refresh and update the page later and there is an easy Action button so that you can open the page in an external browser or copy the address to your system clipboard.

All of this said, I’m sure that I’ve just scratched the surface of this application. Feel free to download a trial copy (regular price $25) and let me know if you find a use for it that I’ve missed. The app has a nice interface and is a cinch to use, so go give it a try today.

Music this week is “I Devise My Own Demise” by Papa Roach. Click on the album art in the site sidebar to go to music store.

Download your free trial copy of KIT here

This is a new application that is what using bittorrent technology should be like. Built-in searching and easy downloading of files makes the whole process seamless with great sense of elegance and style. Currently a free beta available for download, will be shareware once it’s finished. Music this week is “Hate Me” by Blue October.

Download the subtler replacement for iTunes 7 here.

Grab the Xtorrent beta here. 

I talk about the new products that were released this week, briefly go over iTunes 7, and a cool freeware application called LiquidCD that allows you to easily create audio, photo, data, and other DVDs or CDs, including burning Video_TS folders as well as making direct copies of discs. Music this week is “Lips of an Angel” by Hinder.

This is a nice application that allows you to get a lot accomplished and you should check it out for all of your disc-burning needs.

Download here.

To give iTunes 7 a makeover and let all of the aqua goodness back into the application, download AquaT from here and install it.  Note:  Backup your iTunes applicaiton first in case something goes wrong.

Thanks for all of the feedback and don’t ever hestitate to let me know, as I don’t pick up on some things after you’ve sit here and recorded and all that.  I need to get started earlier and let the episode sit some so when I listen to it again I can truly edit it correctly, but alas…..

I’m looking into the issue and will play around with it this weekend so that hopefully it will be fixed for this week’s issue.  Which will be out later Sunday evening, EST.

Codeweavers CrossOver for Mac is still a beta release. However, it seems to be a solid beta release and with the promise of new features to be added and more applications to be officially supported by the time we see a final release, this product looks like it will shape up to be a serious contender in the growing Windows virtualization sector of the Mac software community.

Essentially, you can get most of the same basic functionality of this product for free from an open-source project called Darwine, which is a port from the Linux project WINE for Mac OS X. I have tried using Darwine before, including using this same application, but I wasn’t sucsessful in getting it working. So, my experience with CrossOver for Mac was much better, but the open-source alternative (on which CrossOver is based) is available if you’re a tinkerer.

CrossOver and Darwine are described as a Windows API compatibility layer on top of the host OS. What makes this solution different from a complete virtualization solution like Parallels Desktop is that instead of having to run a full OS, like Windows XP, with all it’s services and processes, you are just going to be running the application. CrossOver will fool the application, in our case DVD Shrink, to believe that it is running on a Windows 2000 installation, and with a very few small exceptions, it runs withtout a glitch right beside all of our other Mac OS X applications. That being said, this is the holy grail in some respects, but the worst thing to happen for Mac developers in others (think “Let’s just write Windows software, they can always just run that on a Mac with CrossOver….”).

CrossOver for Mac

So let’s get started using DVD Shrink for Windows on our Mac! Of importance in this tutorial is the fact that you don’t have to have an Intel Mac to get this working as far as I can tell, although I haven’t tested it on a PPC one yet. (I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking here.  Yes, WINE ran just fine on Linux, but it was Linux x86, not Linux for PPC.  Therefore, CrossOver is for Intel Macs only, although I can’t find that on their website easily.  First, you’re going to need to download and copy the CrossOver application to your Applications folder (or where you keep your apps). Download CrossOver Beta 1 here. Now, fire up CrossOver for the first time. You’re going to get a box begging for financing everytime you launch the app, register if you wish to support the effort and get in on lower intro pricing (like what Parallels did). If not, just click “Continue”.

Now we need to install a piece of software. We’re going to be working with a program for Windows called DVD Shrink. This piece of software lets you take a DVD that is larger than the standard 4.7GB and shrink it to fit on that size disc, allowing you to make a backup copy of a commercial DVD. (NOTE: I do not condone or suggest that you use this tuturial as a way to break the law. Only copy or backup DVDs that you own and don’t distribute those). You can download DVD Shrink 3.2 here.

Once you have downloaded DVD Shrink, you need to unzip the zip archive. You will now see a program labeled “dvdshrink32setup.exe” on your Desktop with an icon with some gears and the CrossOver logo. If you double-click this, it should launch CrossOver, even if the program isn’t currently running. However, I recommend (just because I haven’t tested installing something that way) to go through the “Install Software” feature inside of CrossOver. Use the “Configure > Install Software” feature to bring up a window like the one below. The list of supported software isn’t very long (there is an online list as well that you can talk with other people about your experiences with a certain piece of software), so we’re going to use the “Install Unsupported Software” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the window.

Click “Continue” in the next window. The next window is informing you that installing software that isn’t officially supported has a good chance of messing up what you already have installed and working. If you follow the suggestions, then you can create a new “bottle” which is essentially a little container where your application thinks it’s running in Windows. For this tutorial I haven’t installed anything before, so I had to create a new bottle to start with. It’s up to your discretion whether you’d want to keep using different bottles for every program or not. I’m not sure what the effects on hard drive space and the like would be.

The next window that appears lets you choose the installer that you’re going to use. This is the “dvdshrink32setup.exe” file that we unzipped on our Desktop. Choose the left option in the window and then browse to that file and click “Continue”. From there it will launch the actual DVD Shrink install program for you to install with. Use all of the default options until you are finished with the installer.

Once you have that installed, go back into CrossOver and go to your “Programs > DVD Shrink > DVD Shrink” menu to start the program that we just installed. It will launch the program and then we can get started backing up a DVD. I won’t go into much detail here because there are numerous tutorials available on the net about using DVD Shrink. Use Google and find those. I’ll mention just a few quirks with the program here because they are related to CrossOver and the Mac.

You won’t be able to access the disc itself in this program. CrossOver doesn’t let the program see the physical drive itself. This being said, you won’t be able to use the built-in burn functionality either. You’re going to need some free hard drive space to get this accomplished because we’re going to be copying the entire DVD uncompressed to you hard drive (from 4.7 up to almost 9GB in some cases), then we’re going to encode it in DVD Shrink (I’m assuming that takes up some space somewhere) and then we’re going to create another 4.7GB disc image.

To access your DVD, you’re going to need an application that will “rip” the DVD to your hard drive. There are a few solutions available for Mac, the most used being MacTheRipper. (I’m not linking to that here for copyright violation issues. However, you can find it on VersionTracker or MacUpdate). Rip your DVD to your hard drive and it will create a folder with the name of your DVD and in that it will have a “Video_TS” folder. That’s all good. (Recommend placing this on your Desktop as it will make locating it easier later).
Now, back in DVD Shrink, we need to open up the DVD we just ripped to the hard drive. Click the “Open Files” button back in DVD Shrink and we’ll have to browse for the “Video_TS” folder that we just ripped to the drive. If you placed this on your Desktop, you can use the “My Mac Desktop” folder in the file browser for easy access. If not, finding it is going to be a pain. Your hard drive shows up a few different ways in the browser (Your home folder as well as the root of the drive) and if you have stored it on an external disc, you would have to use the “/” and then “Volumes” to be able to find the name of your disc. This is very confusing for some Mac users because they have never seen folders with that name before. If you’re interested in why you are seeing that, read more up on Unix and it’s underpinnings in Mac OS X.

Now that we have sucsessfully opened our DVD, you can change a bunch of settings to tweak the compression on your extras, languages, submenus and more. You want the whole bar across the top to be green, saying that it will fit onto one disc just fine. Once that is done, we’re going to want to “Backup” our DVD. After clicking the “Backup” button, you have a couple options to save our work. You can either save it as a Disc Image which we can later simply burn to a DVD using Disk Utility, or you can save it to a folder, which will create another Video_TS folder, which you would need something like Toast, or LiquidCD (which is very nice and free, I’ll be talking about it in another episode) to be able to burn to DVD.

With whatever option you choose, you now have a working version of the disc you started out with, except that you have it on a smaller, regular DVD now. If you’re confused about how to burn a disc image using Disk Utility, you need to open Disk Utility (Applications/Utlities) and open an image from the “File” menu. Then select that image in the left-hand pane and click the “Burn” button to burn the image. You can also do this with several other applications, but this is an easy way as well.

I hope that everyone has had sucsess with DVD Shrink and can now sit back in wonder at what you’ve accomplished. Be sure to send me emails and talk to me on AIM if you have any questions about the topic and I’ll get back to you shortly. Also, if you found this article helpful, be sure to click the big “Digg This” button at the bottom of the page so that we can share this info with others.

Boot Camp

I was originally going to do an indepth review of Boot Camp here as well, but after looking around the net for awhile, I realized that there is already several hours worth of reading available for people to read. That said, I was pretty impressed with the painlessness of the whole process and I didn’t have any problems getting Windows XP SP2 installed on my Macbook. My whole obsession with this started because I was going to place and boot XP from my external USB drive, but not having time to get this accomplished right now, I settled for trying this out. If you have a need for better video and graphics support (such as games!!) than what Parallels provides, than this is a pretty cool solution. It’s also free and will be bundled in with Leopard itself when that finally launches. Key thing to remember is to just backup your data before you get started, and that you can’t use any disc except a full install, no upgrade discs.

You can download Maintenance here.

In this episode, I’m taking a look at just what makes Intel Macs different from those that have come before it. To sum it up very briefly, with an Intel Mac you have options to run Windows and other PC related OSes that you didn’t have as a feasible option before. Products such as Parallels Desktop and Boot Camp allow you to easily install and use Windows and Windows applications on your new Intel Mac.

There will be one more podcast before I’m off to WWDC in great San Francisco. Be sure to leave me comments, send emails, keep the human interaction alive!

Also mentioned in this episode was the Ten Minute Mac podcast hosted by James Matarrese. You can look at the podcast in the Music Store at this link, or view his website at this one.

Cast Life is a recently released application that allows you to easily create, maintain, organize, and enjoy the power behind RSS. Easily publish a podcast, create a photocast to share your new photos with friends and family instantly, distribute files as they are updated and more. Designed so that your can get started with RSS quickly and have a brilliant feed in no time.

Basic Screenshot of Application (Photocast Shown, click to show full size)

You have many options to publish, including FTP support, .Mac integration as well as the option to export to a folder.

I have created sample feeds so that you can view some simple results when using Cast Life for yourself. You can subscribe to these feeds below to see the outcome.

You can subscribe to the podcast by using the Cmd-U or “Subscribe” under “Advanced” in iTunes and entering the following address.

You can subscribe to this photocast from within iPhoto by using the Cmd-U or “Subscribe to Photocast” feature and entering the following address.

http://www.macfanatic.net/cast_life/photos/Mac%20Fanatic’s%20PhotoCast.rss

You can subscribe to the filecast using a standard RSS reader, or use Safari, with the following address.

http://www.macfanatic.net/cast_life/files/Macfanatic.net%20FileCast.rss

You can subscribe to the newscast using a standard RSS reader or Safari with the following address.

http://www.macfanatic.net/cast_life/newscast/Macfanatic%20Newscast.rss

Technorati Tags: Cast Life, Review, RSS

This is a great, true Mac OS X application. There are amazing transitions, effects, a wonderfully laid out and well implemented interface along with great features. Sad thing is that the Tetris company just contacted the developer (only took them a few years, no doubt) saying that they were infringing on copyright laws and all that. So, while the developer figures all this stuff out, there’s not an official release available.
This program has many unique features including:

• Single Player Mode
• Dual Player Mode and Tournament Play
• Tons of features with Network Play such as Bonjour support, built in chat, score tracking for all players and a webpage listing servers available over the net.
• 10 Levels to choose from, fully customizable keyboard settings, and it’s freeware!

Main Window

Bonjour Networking

Network Chatting

All in all, this is a wonderful application and a good implementation on the original game, so be sure to head over to the developer’s site here.

Technorati Tags: Quinn, Review

So, my question to everyone out there is simple. Is there something I’ve missed here recently? I’m guessing that I’m just not talking about interesting stuff for all to hear coupled with the fact that it is summer and it makes it harder, at least for me, to stay on the computer and keep up with this kinda thing.

Just any comments on the matter would be welcome. I’m always looking for more ideas for episodes and welcome feedback, whether it’s harsh and critical or the pleasant hello.

Without further ado, here is the commercial from the 1984 Superbowl that helped put Apple on the map.  This is modified from the original in the fact that the woman is wearing an iPod, but the same effect is there.  The Macintosh was going to change the world in 1984 and here we are 22 years later.  Pretty impress use of advertising if you ask me.

Flock builds on Firefox’s features. This browser adds native support for:

• Posting to many different types of blogs
  Flickr and Photobuck integration that includes uploading and viewing photos
  A great RSS reader
  A “snippet” clipboard for keeping snippets of info around (hence the name)
  Spotlight-like searching with Yahoo instant search results
  Delicious bookmark sharing between multiple computers, advanced bookmark tagging and searching, as well as support for multiple bookmark toolbars, so you’ll always have access to your important bookmarks right there on the toolbar

This is an amazing browser with huge potential in the marketplace. While it still may only be a Beta 1 (0.7) release, it is very stable and I highly recommend downloading it and trying it out for yourself.

Technorati Tags: Review, Browser, Flock

I’ve never seen a Newton in real life before, but I think this is one of those things that Apple users need to see and get cultured in our unique ancestry….so, expect the 1984 commercial in the upcoming weeks as I try to spread some culture to any new Mac newbies that may be out there watching.  Buckle up, drive safe, and have a good week!

Implementing RSS using Rapidweaver

I imagine that the majority of the listeners of this are going to be Rapidweaver users, since I get a lot of feedback asking for stuff dealing with Rapidweaver. So, I’ll spend most of my time focusing on this. Rapidweaver only has one type of page that supports RSS, that being the “Blog” page. You use this type of page for creating blog entries, as well as if you were going to produce and distribute a podcast.
First add a blog style page. Then click on the “Setup” button and view the “RSS Feed” options to get your feed setup for use.

In Rapidweaver 3.5, you can add text in the “Summary” field. Adding text here lets you summarize what is displayed when people view your feed. They would only see this text and then your readers would have to view the full article to get the text in the “Main Entry” area.

Once you click on the “Setup…” button, you get the following window where you can customize your RSS feed even more. Most of the fields are self explanatory and I briefly talked about them in the podcast as well.

Now that you have all of that setup, you just need to publish and view your site in a browser and there will be a little blue icon with RSS in it or the orange feed icon if you’re using something besides Safari. Congratulations, that wasn’t hard, was it?

Implementing RSS using iWeb

iWeb is actually a lot easier to get up and running with RSS. You have to have either a “Blog” or “Podcast” style page, and there are options for both of them under the “RSS” tab in the Inspector window. It’s already enabled for you, all you have to do is to add entries to your blog and you’re all set!

All you have to do is add entries. To do that just make sure that you’re viewing the “Entries” part of your blog page.





The “Blog” part of the Inspector gives you options for your blog page while the “Podcast” part gives you more control over your podcast, while using iWeb.

Anyone should be able to get all this setup pretty easy if they wanted to. The key thing is to figure out if you really need RSS for your site. If you’re going to podcast, then it’s a must. If you add a lot of stuff to your site, or blog, then it’s a must. If you just have a website that you change once a month, you probably don’t need the trouble of setting this up.

Read more about Rapidweaver, the awesome website creation and management application from RealMac Software here.

Read about Apple’s own iWeb here.

Read about Newsfire, the killer RSS aggregator for Mac OS X here.

Technorati Tags: Rapidweaver, iWeb, RSS

Searching around on the net turned up some good resources for getting plugins for Safari. You can grab a lot of good stuff at Pimp my Safari. I also encourage web developers to take a look at WebKit as well.

Some plugins that I highly recommend are the Safari Stand and Safari Teflon plugins. If anyone has used Saft, please let me know about your experiences.

Music this week is “Born to Lead” by Hoobastank.

I would have really liked to share the “Doncha Wish” skit, but it’s not going to work. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.

I talked about several WordPress plugins in this episode. You can find links to all those I mentioned at the post below:

http://www.macfanatic.net/blog/2006/06/07/wordpress-plugins/

I talked about Canvas in this episode (the editor for WordPress themes). View that at the below address.

http://www.freshpursuits.com/canvas/preview

Grab the AppleScripts for editing all kinds of stuff for iTunes at:

http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/

Finally, the biggest topic that I covered and need to link to is for Mint. You can grab Mint at: http://www.haveamint.com

You can grab all kinds of Peppers (plugins for Mint) at the below address:

http://massiveblue.net/pepperminttea/

Sorry about all the links in this episode, but be sure to get out there and explore!

Music this week is “Searchlights” by Falling Up.

The battery life is on par with the previous 14″ iBook G4 I had. However, I think there is a difference when you put the computer to sleep. I don’t have hard numbers for this, but I’m 99% sure that I could leave my iBook in sleep for a few days at least, without it draining the battery. However, after about 24 hours in sleep, my Macbook will have drained a full battery and be dead.

Just a word to the wise, if you’re not going to be using your Macbook, shut it down.

I downloaded another clip just earlier today that I liked from the Firefox Flicks site, and this one wouldn’t convert either. If anyone has any suggestions about converting (QT won’t let me export, share, etc) maybe some type of saved/protected file, let me know. It’s just a regular .mp4 from what I can tell, but there’s something different about it.

“About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things…..The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do”

That, my friends, is a phrase worth thinking about.

Talk about using the new black Macbook for a little over a week, all the pros and cons to the system.

Music this week is “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers.

There is no podcast next week, I will be on vacation.

I think this one looks extremely professional, but is very funny at the same time because of the animation. Hope everyone enjoys.

A friend at work recently introduced me to this British comedy called “The IT Crowd” and I’m hooked now. It is based around 2 geeks and one woman who is computer illiterate all thrown down in the basement of this large corporation and all the trouble they get into. This little clip is from the beginning of the first or second episode. It’s a commercial that the characters are watching that’s advertising the “new and improved emergency services”. I find it insanely hilarious because of the commercial itself and the tune is very catchy. In fact, I clipped it and have it as my ringtone on my phone. 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3….

Grab the ringtone here

You can catch the full rss feed at:

feed://www.macfanatic.net/blog/feed/atom/

There is also a feed that is specifically podcast related that’s located at:

feed://www.macfanatic.net/blog/?feed=rss2&category_name=podcasts

Recap of news and rumors for the week, talk about switching over to WordPress for the blog portion of the site, down and dirty talk about Daylite 3 with music by Brad Paisely, “Whiskey Lullaby”.

I completely forgot to mention in the episode, but I was contacted earlier in the week by a student at Texas University who is doing AIDS documentation. To make the point short, he is trying to raise funds for a better computer, and you can check out the site here if you’d like to learn more or donate.