Integrate video and audio chat with the popular open source chat application Adium using the freeware MeBeam plug-in. Once installed, you can start a video chat by right-clicking a contact and selecting “Initiate MeBeam Videochat”; Adium will automatically create a web-based chatroom and send the URL to your contact (sort of like Meebo is doing). As a bonus, the video chat is completely cross-platform and application independent since it lives in your browser. Unfortunately, the quality of the MeBeam chat was mediocre in my tests, with audio dropping regularly and a much lower resolution picture than you can expect with video chat from the likes of iChat. That said, I’d expect the MeBeam service to continue to improve, so if you’ve been dying for video chat integration with Adium, the free, Mac OS X-only MeBeam plug-in will do the trick.
MeBeam Plugin [via Adium Blog]Mac users: Access your menu bar and launch dock items from the comfort of your keyboard with the Ctrl-F2 (menu bar) and Ctrl-F3 (dock) shortcuts. Especially handy for former Windows users used to navigating menus from the keyboard using the Alt key, these shortcuts have a few key differences. You can use the arrow keys to navigate if you prefer, but on the menu bar, for example, there aren’t trigger letters for each item like Windows menus offer. Instead, just start typing the name of the menu bar item you want (for example, Edit) and then hit Enter once it’s selected. You can then repeat this for actions within the drop-down menu. If these shortcuts don’t work for you, you may either need to use Ctrl-Fn-F2/F3 or enable them with Ctrl-F1 (or Ctrl-Fn-F1).
Use the Dock without the mouse! [A New Mac Tip Every Day]Just like in the physical world, it’s easy to let digital clutter accumulate on your Mac: in fact, right now your Downloads Stack is filled with no-longer relevant files and your Desktop is covered in documents you finished with last week. The Windows Janitor cleans out files of a certain age from a given folder on PCs, but Mac users have an even more robust, graphical alternative: the automated, rules-based file manager Hazel. Let’s take a closer look at how Hazel can keep your Mac’s hard drive free of files you don’t need anymore.
Mac OS X only: Process all of your email from the comfort of your keyboard with free, open source Mail.app plugin Mail Act-On. If you’re new to Mail Act-On, just install the plug-in and then read the documentation for how to create rules for filing emails with your oft-used actions. When all’s said and done, Mail Act-On is similar to the Gmail Macros script but with less focus on navigation and much more potential for creating powerful rules for dealing with email. We’ve mentioned this plug-in once before, but this latest version adds support for Leopard. Mail Act-On is free, Mac OS X only. If you use Mail Act-On, share your favourite actions in the comments.
Mail Act-On for Leopard [Indev]Mac OS 10.5 only: With VNC built right into Leopard, you can remote control your Mac from any other Mac via iChat or the Screen Sharing client—OR any PC using the right VNC client. Apple doesn’t advertise this, but since Screen Sharing is just regular old VNC (albeit with a much more grokable name), our favourite Windows VNC client, TightVNC, works with it just dandy—with one small catch.
While some of us are still waiting to get our hands on the new Apple OS, the guys over at APC mag have been putting the cat through its paces. They’ve published a couple of useful articles looking at the state of play with application compatibility and Leopard, as well as an interesting article looking at the features which Apple seems to have dumped from their new OS.
Logitech mouse and keyboard users will hopefully already be aware that one piece of software it installs, Unsanity’s Application Enhancer, needs to be uninstalled before installing Leopard to avoid a system “bluescreen of death” at start up. On the plus side, there’s a growing list of newly updated apps which are Leopard compatible, including “Filemaker, EyeTV, BBEdit, Newsfire, Transmit, XTorrent, Parallels (Beta, Build 5540) and Audio Hijack Pro.”
David Flynn’s article looking at what’s been cut from Leopard is an interesting read. Apparently its new version of Address Book no longer lets you “use Bluetooth to dial your mobile and send SMS messages from the Address Book, and then to read and reply to incoming SMS messages on your Mac”. The article looks at a third party app which will help, and looks at other features which have gone MIA.
Leopard Giveth and Leopard Taketh Away [APC]
Leopard Compatibility: The Story So Far [APC]
Mac OS X only: Freeware application SpaceControl keeps watch of your hard drive space and alerts you when you’re getting low on free space. The application lives in your Mac’s menu bar and displays the total amount of free space available on all drives. You can also set alerts to notify you with a simple system sound or with an email when your startup disk drops below a threshold you define. In general iStat Menus is an excellent menu bar app for monitoring you system (including hard drives), but if you have trouble keeping enough free space on your drive, SpaceControl might be for you. SpaceControl is freeware, Mac OS X only.
SpaceControl [via Simplehelp]Leopard only: Another handy new set of features in Mac OS 10.5 that didn’t get much attention arrived in Preview.app, that trusty utility that opens images and PDF files. In Tiger, Preview was mostly a file viewer, but in Leopard, you can edit images, rearrange and merge PDF files, as well as perform batch actions on a set of files. Let’s take a look.
All platforms: Add drop shadows, round corners, resize and do much more to multiple photos at once with Phatch, a free batch image processing program. Phatch guides a user through creating customised, reusable “action lists.” Once a list is set up, it can be used to, for instance, size a folder of images down to 1024 pixels wide, round the top two corners with a five percent radius and convert them all to PNG files. Hit the “via” link below for a basic walk-through of Phatch’s features.
Phatch is a free download for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, although each platform requires setting up the Python environment and a few other packages, which is a bit easier to do in Linux. Windows users who don’t want to dive in can check out FastStone Photo Resizer, and Mac owners can try Photo Drop.
Phatch [via Phorolinux]Now that you’ve added another monitor to your computer setup, you’ve got double the screen real estate to get things done—but are you putting all that space to good use? Whether you want to stretch your desktop wallpaper or taskbar across two monitors or perfectly snap all your windows into place every time, there are a few utilities that can help you make the most of every last pixel of your dual monitors. Let’s take a look.
