I saw this in US Macworld Sep 2006, may interest people if they wish to customise their mac... this list was complied while I was coordinating the Swinburne National Institute of Design Research NIDR masters of multimedia design course.
YOU’VE GOT THE LOOK
Whether you’re looking for a subtle palette change, special icons, or a
wholesale Mac face-lift, you’ll find free, downloadable resources online. (The
replacement icon for the Trash [right] is from Iconfactory.)
WEB SITE URL RESOURCE TYPE
Flickr
http://www.flickr.com
desktop pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr
Iconfactory
http://www.iconfactory.com
icons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iconfactory
InterfaceLift
http://www.interfacelift.com
themes, icons, desktop pictures
MacThemes
http://www.macthemes.net
themes
Rad.e8 Design
http://www.rad-e8.com/downloads/
http://www.macworld.com/1500
icons, desktop pictures
Rampant Mac
http://www.rampant-mac.com
desktop pictures
ResExcellence
http://www.resexcellence.com
themes, icons, desktop pictures, Mighty Mouse cursors
Wallpaper Vault
http://www.wallpapervault.com
desktop pictures
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Flickr.com | Group | Wallpapers (1024x768 minimum)
This tip isn't Mac specific, but I thought I would share it anyway. No one wants to stare at their computer with a dull old Desktop background, but where can you get high quality free desktop backgrounds? Why, Flickr of course! This Flickr group, called Wallpapers (1024x768 minimum), has thousands of pictures that folks want you to download and display proudly on your Mac (or PC, if you must).
http://www.flickr.com/groups/wallpapers/pool/
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This is a really nice interface... a great way to show how information design can change the normal clock or digital readout into something interesting...
PolarClock, a new screensaver from pixelbreaker. It features a visual clock (wait, aren't they all?) that consists of a number of circles rotating around each other. It's hard to explain, but the implementation looks really nice, and this one also offers a lot of customization. I'm not sure it'll replace your other clocks in terms of being easy to read, but as a screensaver, it looks good, and can be pretty functional as well. PolarClock is free, and can also be installed in widget form (or in Windows, if you happen to know someone who swings that way).
http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock/
Never wonder what time it is again! As for showing up on time, that one's still up to you.
via http://www.tuaw.com/
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Your Mac, Your Way I customized my Mac using Unsanity’s ShapeShifter to apply Daisuke
Yamashita’s Neos theme in white A (http://www.macworld.com/1497). Then I turned to ShapeShifter’s
options to improve text legibility and darken the sidebars B. Enlisting Panic’s CandyBar, I
replaced all the icons with Sascha Höhne’s Snow E.2 collection C (http://www.macworld.com/1498).
There’s very little support for interface manipulation on Intel Macs. In particular,
Unsanity (http://www.unsanity.com), a company that specializes in interface modifications, hasn’t yet released Universal versions for many of its applications (to see a compatibility list, go to http://www.macworld.com/1488). An Unsanity representative stated that Universal versions for all products were in the works.
Huge range of Mac Screen savers, and there are some classics in there too... enjoy...
http://www.pure-mac.com/screensaver.html
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http://www.dashboardwidgets.com/
Good Widget overview from http://www.tuaw.com/
When my machine was a rickety little 800 MHz iBook, crusted with too many hacks, apps and utilities, I just gave up on Widgets. Dashboard was a system hog on an already dog-slow machine, and I just killed it off.
My MacBook Pro is another story. While I've eschewed the volume of Widgets a true power-user may install, I have my fair share. Of course, until we're able to safely and securely swap our sets of Widgets around, I just keep a certain set loaded. Yes, I've tried MultiDash , primarily to swap around when I plug in to my 24" external monitor. I would have included a link to the MultiDash page, but going there today either crashed Firefox or made Safari eat up processor. Gotta love that...Anyway, as a Widget, it was too wonky for production use, so here's what I've settled on for daily use:
MultiDash page...
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/08/12/widget-w … dashboard/
- Apple's own calendar, weather, iTunes, calculator, and search Widgets (Dictionary, White Pages, Yellow Pages, and Address Book). The unit converter is tucked behind the sticky note
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/
- Google search-- pretty much never use it since Google is built-in to every browser but Flock, although sometimes I use the Blogger one too
http://www.google.com/macwidgets/index.html
- Radar-in-Motion-- massive kudos to the poor developer who makes this, as NOAA keeps changing the protocols, formats, etc. I love this thing, but I love weather.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboar … otion.html
- WeatherBug-- this one has a bunch more features, but ironically doesn't work as well as R-i-M-
http://weatherbug.com/weather-widgets/mac/
iClipLite-- what would I do without this? Very handy for storing form letters, the very ones I use every day
http://inventive.us/iCliplite/
- iStat nano-- surely everyone is using this or its older sibling by now, right? Often I use it to check my IP address, but I really wish I could have it quit bugging me about updates, that is really annoying
http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=21
- Slothcam-- I have it always tuned to the TGIFriday's camera in Times Square, great for people-watching! (You will see me on there once in a while too)
http://glorioussloth.jackson-myers.com/slothcam.html
- Web Translator widget (uses Google)-- handy for quick language lookups, as my Spanish vocab stinks sometimes
http://www.tacowidgets.com/widgets/webtranslator/
- Airport Radar-- handy for checking signal strength of wireless networks
http://www.macwireless.com/html/support … /index.php
- PackageTracker-- from Monkey Labs, where they make a terrible TV Tracker... only terrible because every week they want me to update it, but it never gets faster or better, yet PackageTracker never bugs me about it
http://www.monkeybusinesslabs.com/softw … acker.html
- iCalEvents-- super-fantastic for glancing at my hard schedule for the day
http://www.benkazez.com/icalevents.php
- Backpack widget-- from Chipt.com, this Widget has saved me so many times it is scary. If you are a serious GTD nut, you must have a Backpack widget for simple ticklers, and this does the job better than almost anything. Plus, I can access my Backpack reminders from anywhere via web, so I have a constant backup. Combined with floating reminders via Growl, and you can really tame your to-do list.
http://www.chipt.com/
- an obligatory digg widget-- because I'm addicted, I'll admit (where's that Netscape widget?)
http://etl.myfxh.com/digg.html
- Veronica Belmont-- she's not a Widget, but a spunky tech pundit for CNet
http://blog.jkdesignny.com/?p=30
and of course, I have a TUAW widget!
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Dashboard- … dget.shtml
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The old-school Apple logo is keeping it real front and center, while the 'think different' writing actually belongs to 1000things herself. Don't adjust your ColorSync settings, however - the black appearance of the menubar and iTunes are courtesy of Unsanity's Shapeshifter, an app that can skin Mac OS X with new colors, icons and styles.
http://unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter
ShapeShifter is a revolutionary new product that lets you change the overall appearance of your Mac using 'themes'. We're not talking about just desktop backgrounds and icons here, we're talking about everything - the look of windows, menus, apps, buttons, absolutely everything. You don't wear the same clothes every day, your house doesn't look exactly like your neighbor's - why should the computing interface you use every day be any different. You personalize your physical workspace to suit your tastes and whims, so why not your Mac? With ShapeShifter, you can:
Change the overall appearance of your operating system safely, quickly, and reliably
Tweak existing themes to create the one that's perfect for you
Experience things that haven't been possible with Mac themes before
Quickly preview themes without actually applying them
Use Jaguar or Panther themes in Tiger effortlessly
User specific theme and icon set installations
Add and remove themes effortlessly
via http://www.tuaw.com/
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MacBook Pro Applications
http://homepage.mac.com/jonn8/lilt/
Jon Nathan has released a new application called Lilt that uses the ambient light and/or the sudden motion sensors in recent Mac portables to launch apps, files, or AppleScripts. Triggering a script allows you to do some pretty cool things (several example script actions are included).
Wave your hand over the light sensors (located under the speaker grills) and play your next iTunes track. Tilt the computer back and hear the time spoken to you. The possibilities are endless.
Lilt utilizes the ambient light and sudden motion sensors found on recent Apple Macintosh portable computers to trigger actions such as launching applications, files, or scripts. By launching a script Lilt can do some amazing things. Wave your hand over the light sensors (located under the speaker grills) and play your next iTunes track. Tilt the computer back and hear the time spoken to you. The possibilities are endless.
[via www.powerpage.org]
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MacBook Pro fan control application
Last Monday I reported that it was possible to adjust the speed of the MacBook Pro's fans via the command line. The hack involves modifying the plist files in AppleBlower.ktext and AppleFan.ktext. Editing the speed values for both fans allows you to speed them up to make your machine run cooler.
The problem is that many people don't like to use the command line and feel more comfortable with a graphical application. Enter Hendrik Holtmann's smcFanControl, a GUI application that lets you control your MacBook's fan speeds manually to make it run cooler.
According to CoreDuoTemp (another must have MBP app) my MacBook Pro was running at 162°F before running smcFanControl. After I launched the application I increased both fans from 1000 RPM to around 3000 RPM and within 10 minutes my temperature dropped to 115°F - a drop of 47°F. When I increased both fans to 6000 RPM (the maximum) the temperature dropped to 102°F after another 10 minutes. After all was said and done I was able to realize a temperature drop of 60°F on my MacBook Pro.
The only real down side is that your machine runs a lot louder with the fans running at full kilter. Users that are capturing audio or video or working in very quiet studios may opt for a quieter (albeit hotter)-running MacBook Pro, but users that regularly have to use an Apple notebook on their lap should absolutely download a copy of this excellent software tool. Since smcFanControl is software I'm not sure if it has any impact on Apple's warranty, the jury still seems to be out on it.
Apple should add smcFanControl to the Energy Saver control panel for all Mac portables. It could be in the form a little slider control that ranges from cooler/nosier on the left to hotter/quieter on the right. It would be even better if Apple offered a dynamic fan setting that allowed you to set a "not to exceed" temperature when in "travel mode" for example.
Finally, I can use my MacBook Pro on my lap again!
smcFanControl
http://www.conscius.de/~eidac/index.html
CoreDuoTemp
http://macbricol.free.fr/coreduotemp/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=308
[via The Apple Core]
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Raging Menace - MenuMeters
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/
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, none had quite the feature set I was looking for. Most were windows that sat in a corner or on the desktop, which are inevitably obscured by document windows on a PowerBook's small screen. Those monitors which used the menubar mostly used the NSStatusItem API, which has the annoying tendency to totally reorder my menubar on every login.
The MenuMeters monitors are true SystemUIServer plugins (also known as Menu Extras). This means they can be reordered using command-drag and remember their positions in the menubar across logins and restarts.
MenuMeters is open source freeware released under the GNU General Public License
Mac OS X 10.2 - 10.4 PowerPC or Intel based Macintosh (Universal Binary)
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Some students have been wanting to run websites off their macs, here is a site that may involve the mac mini, but will be useful to most modern mac users wanting to setup their mac for various online adventures... enjoy
Video series focuses on Mac mini as server
Brian at FreeMacBlog works for a company called Macminicolo, which will store your Mac mini in a nice, friendly server cage where it can sit with its friends and distribute web pages, email or whatever you want. After setting up and maintaining a large number of minis for clients, Brian decided to take what he has learned and create a video series on the nuts and bolts of setting up your mini (or any OS X Mac for that matter) as a server. The first video can be found at freemacblog.com, and focuses on the initial setup. Check it out, and put that Mac of yours to work.
FreeMacBlog
http://www.freemacblog.com/
Macminicolo
http://www.macminicolo.net/index.html
first video - initial setup
http://www.freemacblog.com/mac-server-s … al-set-up/
http://freemactips.com/wp-content/video … Video1.mov
http://www.macminicolo.net/videos/ServerVideo1.mov
(Don’t forget to grab the FreeMacBlog RSS feed so you will be aware of the future videos. Upcoming videos will show you how to set up your Mac as a web server, a FTP server, and a mail server.)
http://www.freemacblog.com/feed/
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http://www.objective-cocoa.org/fenetres … nload.html
What is it ?
You are not using your windows ? Fenêtres Volantes make them fly ! After some idle time that can be set in the System Preferences, the windows take off the screen and flutter in the void. On a mouse move, the windows immediately come back and stuck to their original position.
System requirements
MacOS X 10.4.6 Tiger or above
G4, G5, Intel - 1GHz or above
How to install ?
You just have to open the .zip file if it has not been done automatically. Then you just double-click on the file, and MacOS X will guide you for the rest of the standard installation.
Click here to download Fenêtres Volantes
116 kb - version 0.2.3b UB - 27-07-2006 - zip
http://www.objective-cocoa.org/fenetres … tes_b1.zip
