Thanks for Clicking

I just checked my Google adsense account and discovered (for the very first time), I made enough adsense revenue to pay the $8 hosting fee and keep an extra $1.34 to buy bubble gum. Yup, MacSparky is now officially "in the black". Thanks Gang!

MailTags Just Got Better

The folks over at indev just released MailTags Leopard Beta 3. There are many bug squashes and improvements. Best of all is the addition of "MailTags Extras".

"MailTags now uses a modular architecture to use “MailTags Extras” that add functionality to the core tagging system of MailTags. An Extra can can be as simple as the included Message Color Extra, which provide a quick pick color list for messages; or as complex as the included ICal Events and To Dos Extra which interacts with Leopard’s new CalendarStore to provide an alternative task and event system to Mail.

Extras are located in ~/Library/Mai//Bundles/MailTags Extras/ . Removing an Extra from this folder and restarting Mail will remove all the Extra’s functionality. A extra may be partially disabled in the MailTags Extra’s preferences (certain internals are maintained to ensure ongoing data integrity)

In the future extras may be built to work with other data fields, such as a codified GTD system, or using Security Tags, and to work with other task and calendar systems, such as backpack or Google Calendar. Indev will publish a developer’s guide when the the Extra architecture is finalized."

Cough *** OmniFocus *** Cough

You can read about the details and download it right here. You can read my review of MailTags right here.

MarsEdit bumps to 2.05

My favorite blogging software, MarsEdit, just got a small bump to 2.05. The changes are mostly small things but include:

* Improved handling of HTML entities in categories;
* Support for specifying n umber of posts from Blogger;
* Restored some broken elements of Applescript;
* Miscellaneous bug squashes.

You can get the full run down here and download MarsEdit here. For the uninitiated, red sweater software still offers the free 30 day trial. You can read my review of MarsEdit here. Happy blogging!

MacWorld Bound

I had a fantastic holiday week split between visiting family and chasing my kids around the house. Now I'm planning my mid January three day escape to MacWorld. It looks like I'll be there Tuesday the 15th through Thursday the 17th. They are estimating 50,000 attendees so if anyone wants to meet up for a bite, please drop me a note. In the meantime, I've been sniffing around the interweb and found some great resources for MacWorld visitors.

Macworld.com

The "official" site.

macworldbound.com

This little blog has lots of great information for first timers like myself including things as simple as what to bring. I'm looking forward to reading its updates over the next few weeks.

If anyone else knows of good MacWorld resources, please post a comment.

ComicBookFonts New Year's Day Sale

I can't remember if I read it somewhere or heard it on a PodCast, but this morning OmniFocus reminded me of a great sale at comicbookfonts.com. They are charging a penny a year so most of the catalogue is $20.08 today. I really like the Hedge Backwards font. I think I could use this in some of my presentation work. If you are interested, today is the day.

Happy New Year Friends!

Happy New Year fellow Mac Geeks! I look forward to (among other things) making MacSparky even better in 2008. A few ways I'm going to do this include:

* Better production values in the screencasts (I'm slowly figuring it all out)
* Select guest posts
* Superior MacWorld coverage in just 2 weeks!

If you would like an excellent New Year's Resolution, try slowing down. Leo made an excellent post on this point over at zenhabits. Go and check it out.

iPhone 1.1.3 "Unofficial" Update Video

Gearlive has been posting pictures of their purported 1.1.3 updated iPhone. So many people have been calling it fake that they posted a video yesterday that looks very impressive. If it is a fake, it is a very convincing one. Otherwise, I am looking forward to 1.1.3. The video demonstrates moveable icons, Safari bookmarks turned into icons (yay Google Reader button!) and a quasi-GPS system using cell tower triangulation. Check it out.

Aquafy your Windows Box

Like a lot of Mac users, I find myself using a Windows box at work. My law firm has invested a lot of money into our network and some Windows specific software (not to mention years of data) which means I am often stuck on a windows machine. That doesn't mean you have to leave the OS X experience at home though. There are some good Windows applications that Aquafy the Windows user interface. Now granted these don't give you the full OS X experience, they do at least make things a little nicer. Kind of like giving a Yugo a new shiny red paint job with flames on the side.

Anyway, I actually licensed one called Stardock before I even bought my Mac. That was one of the things that pushed me over the edge. I figured if I was emulating a Mac, why didn't I just buy one? Now that I spend so much time in OS X, (I generally work on my laptop in the office these days) it is nice to have all the buttons in the same places when I do find myself working on the PC. I recently discovered another way to Aquafy your PC with FlyaKite OSX. This is free but I haven't tried it on my work PC yet. I'm much less adventurous with that machine. If anyone does give it a try, drop me a note and we'll get a post up.

I've already decided that when the office machine dies, I'm going to put an iMac in there and run my windows programs through parallels or boot camp if necessary, but for the time being, these applications will have to do.

MenuBar Apps - iStat menus

Continuing my tour of favorite MenuBar applications, I thought I'd write a bit about iSlayer's excellent iStat menus. This application creates a preference pane that allows you to put a variety of tools in your menubar. It allows you to keep on top of memory, drive space, processors, fans, and other geeky details.

As you can see, iStat is loaded with options and can quickly hog up your Menubar. For giggles I turned them all on and filled half of the Menubar on my 17" widescreen MacBook Pro. Oops.

Trying to bring order back to chaos I reset the key stats to give vertical bars and I am good to go. It takes a minimum of space but provides all the information I need.

Setting up a New Mac on a College Budget

It’s funny how buying Macs becomes contagious. Since I bought mine, several friends and family have come into the fold. A few months ago, my sister told me she intended to buy a MacBook for each of her college age children. She enlisted me to help her. I was tasked with purchasing and setting them up so they could hit the ground running on Christmas morning. Now the pressure was on with this assignment because my brother in law is a PC wizard. There aren’t many things that can go wrong with a PC that Dr. Tom can’t sort out. Here is a guy that take’s PC’s apart when he is bored. So here I am with my sister “corrupting” his own children on Macs. It would be like General Lee’s kids going off to fight for General Sherman.

Anyway, I braved the crowd and went to the Apple store the day after Thanksgiving and took advantage of Apple’s one day $100 off deal for the MacBooks. I also bought a family pack of iWork (Reviews - Pages, Numbers, Keynote) and the AppleCare warranty for both machines. Finally I bought a Microsoft Office Student pack. This last bit wasn’t really that necessary but Microsoft had an incredible deal on Black Friday allowing me to get the program for $50 with a free upgrade to Office 2008. If it had not been for that deal, I would set them up with iWork and NeoOffice.

So I got these shiny white machines home and had a great deal of fun setting them up. In addition to iWork and Office I installed several programs built around the college budget ... meaning free or darn near free.

Web Browsing and RSS

For web browsing I set them up with Safari and Firefox. Safari got Inquisitor. Safari without Inquisitor is like a Ferrari with no gas. I also installed Vienna, a great RSS reader but lately I’ve been liking Google Reader so much that I set that up for them as well.

Mail

For Mail I set them up with mail.app and the Mail Act-On plugin. Read the Review Here.

Jumpcut

This is my favorite free MenuBar application. Easy to use and really helpful to anyone that writes. Read the review.

OmniOutliner

I got them student licenses for OmniOutliner which only cost $25. I really wish Omni had been around back when I was in college.

HandBrake

They both have big DVD collections and iPods. This was a no brainer. On the subject of video support, Flip4Mac and Perian are almost mandatory for anybody that wants to watch web video.

ImageWell

This is a great little app for making quick adjustments or watermarks on graphics files

CarbonCopyCloner

Bootable backup on a budget.

1Password

This is another application on my Mac that I just couldn’t live without. If you haven’t heard of it, 1Password allows you to track all sorts of passwords, web logins, and other data you want to keep secret. Read the review here.

Adium

A great, free all purpose instant message client.

iGTD

I actually prefer OmniFocus for task management but we were on a budget and iGTD has more then enough horsepower for college. Read the review here.

Tech Support Tools

It is inevitable that I will be doing tech support on these machines so I installed Disk Inventory X, iStat, and MainMenu. I’ll be installing Onyx when they get the Leopard compatibility sorted out.

In addition to the above applications, I also set up their iLife applications by loading the address book with my nice relatives and a few crazy ones. I left the fruitcake relatives out. I set up a few iPhoto events and even set up their iCal calendars.

I also put a folder in their dock with some choice screencasts from MacSparky and a few from Don McAllister to get them started. If they show enough interest, I’ll probably end up buying them memberships from Don’s website for their birthdays.

I also picked widgets and wallpapers specific to their personalities. If you haven’t already, check out interfacelift.com for just about any type wallpaper you can think of. It was a blast setting the computers up for them so when they unwrapped them Christmas morning they simply opened the lid and found them ready to go. I’m happy to report that less than one week after Christmas, they are both already confirmed switchers. I’ve already had a few iChat screensharing sessions with them to fix a few hiccups and just love how easy it is to help them out.

So what are you "Must Have" applications on a new Mac?