Saturday, December 29, 2007
Install Leopard with Your iPod
10:00AM Adam Pash | I’ve got a bad habit of losing or scratching up my optical media, which is why one of the first things I do when I buy a new operating system—like Leopard—is copy an image of the disc to my hard drive. Once it’s in the digital realm on my hard drive, I can rest assured that no carelessness on my part will result in a $100+ coaster. But how do you use that disk image now that it’s not in DVD form? Well, I use it to turn my old iPod into a Leopard installation beast. In general a plain jane external hard drive should work fine, too, but I generally use my iPod when I’m doing this, so that’s what I’m covering. You can just as easily replace “iPod” with “external hard drive” for the rest of the guide if you want to use an external drive or large thumb drive. More »
View Your Flickr Pics as Your Screensaver with FlickrFan
8:00AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Freeware app FlickrFan downloads images from any Flickr user, AP wire photos, or any other feed you give it, to a folder on your Mac that you can then set as the source folder for your screensaver. The app is still fairly young and a bit clumsy, but if you follow the setup instructions on the download site, it works really well (and is an excellent tool for keeping up with your friends’ latest pics). FlickrFan is freeware, Mac OS X only. Windows users looking for something similar should check out previously mentioned Slickr. FlickrFan More »
Watermark Your Pics with PicMarkr
7:00AM Adam Pash | Flickr’s a great place to share your digital photos, but if you’re concerned about others stealing your best work without crediting you, you might want to try watermarking your images. Webapp PicMarkr watermarks any selected Flickr pic or any image you upload from your desktop quickly and relatively painlessly, then lets you choose between uploading the results to Flickr or saving them to your computer. You’ll have to authorize the app with Flickr, and once you do you can browse Flickr sets, select pics to watermark, and choose from several different watermarking methods. Once you’re finished, you can upload the watermarked image to your Flickr account or save it to your computer. PicMarkr is a nice idea, but it’d make a lot more sense to see something like this integrated into Flickr’s new editing tools. PicMarkr More »
Manipulate Windows Quick-Like with WinMover
6:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Freeware application WinMover resizes, moves, maximizes, restores, closes, and performs other windows manipulation tasks with ease using a combination of your mouse and the Alt key. For example, if you want to resize a window, rather than pushing your mouse to find the few pixels around the window that switch your mouse to the resize cursor, just press and hold your Alt key, click the right mouse button anywhere on the window you’re resizing, and drag it around to the proper size. To move a window, hold Alt, left-click anywhere on the window, and drag away. Close? Alt-double-left-click. The shortcuts are fully configurable and very useful for manipulating your windows, especially if you don’t mouse with sniper precision. WinMover is freeware, Windows only, and Download Squad’s demo (above) gives a great overview. WinMover [MajorGeeks via Download Squad] More »Spicebird
5:59AM Adam Pash | A new Thunderbird-based productivity app called Spicebird is in development, promising to integrate email, calendars, RSS, IM, and more into one collaboration suite. If the video demo is any indication, it could be one helluva program. More »
Find a Complementary Colour Quick with Whats Its Color
3:00AM Kevin Purdy | Some of us have a great eye for complementary colours and matches—and then some of us still don’t understand why brown shoes and black pants are a bad idea. For anyone looking to set an image against a complementary background or find a colour scheme, Whats Its Colour (their grammar, not mine) is a free web app that can help. Upload an image and the site creates a palette page with a complementary background and a list of unique and dominant colors in your image. Photoshop and GIMP gurus might already know how to sift these kind of things already, but the visible colour matching could be a boon for presentation slides or small design projects. Thanks Chris! Whats Its Colour More »
Get Safari-Like Page Return with SnapBack
2:15AM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Users of Apple’s Safari browser have the ability to set a temporary “waypoint” to return to while following link after link, and Firefox users can get a similar utility with the SnapBack extension. If you’re going to be doing some serious click-digging on, say, a gadget review site, but want to return later to a main listing page, click the SnapBack button with a middle button to anchor it. You can then return to that page at any time with a single click, and reset the anchor again just as easily. While Gina may prefer the more extensive How’d I Get Here? add-on, I’m fast becoming a fan of SnapBack’s simple functionality. SnapBack is a free download and works wherever Firefox does. SnapBack [Firefox Add-Ons] More »
Prevent Ubuntu from Asking for an Install CD
1:30AM Kevin Purdy | One of the very few things that can remind a new Ubuntu Linux user of the long-ago days of ancient Windows is when the system asks for the installation CD or DVD to install a program or utility. That’s because Ubuntu keeps the CD as an installation option by default, looking for it whenever a net connection isn’t present. To keep CD begging at bay, the FOSSwire blog recommends the following: In Ubuntu (the normal Gnome version), go to System > Administration > Software Sources. On Kubuntu, head to the Adept Manager application, then go to Adept > Manage Repositories. Go to the Third Party Software tab Note: In Ubuntu 7.10, this option is in the “Ubuntu Software” tab instead Uncheck any entries starting with “cdrom,” then reload software lists if prompted Experienced Linux users likely handle most of their software source editing in the command line, but this tweak should help prevent a few headaches for beginners. Prevent Ubuntu asking for the CD to install packages [FOSSwire] More »
