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HamachiX Updated with Leopard Support
Posted by Gina Trapani at 11:30 AM on May 22, 2008
Mac OS X Leopard only: Our favourite free virtual private network client for the Mac, HamachiX, has been updated (finally!) to work with Leopard. HamachiX is a graphical front end to the Windows Hamachi product, and essentially it lets you access your Mac remotely over the internet as if it were on the local network. That means you can listen to shared iTunes libraries, remote control your Mac, and access file shares as well. HamachiX isn't as easy to use or quite as stable as the Windows version, but it lets you network with PCs running the client as well. Here's how to create your own virtual private network with Hamachi.
The newest version of our favourite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing. After 17 months of alphas and betas, Mozilla's finally made a feature-complete 
The writers at Macworld are going over to the dark side and listing all the Windows applications that make them want to dual boot or virtualise Windows on their Intel Macs. The main package that makes Windows-on-a-Mac worth it? Microsoft Office 2007, simply because it includes Outlook and Access, both Windows-only packages. (Yes, Office 2008 for Mac includes Entourage, but Entourage can't do everything Outlook can.) Likewise, some of the other Office on Windows programs have features MS Office on Mac does not—like Word's handy revision tracking. Other applications on the list include IE 7 (for web site testing), Windows Media Player 11, Visio, and Netflix. Oddly, Macworld didn't mention the one program I absolutely pine for when I'm booted into OS X.
Personal finance blogger J.D. Roth is on the road towards making his money system completely paperless. Direct deposit, automatic savings transfers, Quicken, and auto bill pay gets most paper out of the way. Then Roth scans any paperwork that does come in to PDF with our favourite scanner—the 
Windows/Mac/Linux: When you want to create a large poster but don't have access to a wide-format printer, you want printing utility PosteRazor, which produces PDFs of your large image across several pieces of regular printer-sized paper. Load up your large image in PosteRazor, and tell it how many sheets of paper you want it to span, and PosteRazor will spit out the appropriate number of PDF file pages. Print out the resulting sheets and put them together to make your large poster. Just make sure your image is super high resolution. Great to make posters for the next office roast or maybe the kids' room, PosteRazor is a free download for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Windows/Mac/Linux: Freeware Adobe Air application Snackr runs a news ticker of your RSS feeds at the bottom or top of your monitor, or as a scrolling sidebar. The application is very customisable, allowing you to add feeds individually or import an OPML file of feeds from your current reader of choice. If you like to keep an eye on all the latest updates to your newsfeeds, Snackr is an excellent option. The attractive Snackr is freeware, cross-platform, and requires 
Windows only: Freeware application Some PDF to Word Converter takes your PDFs and—as the name implies—converts them to Microsoft Word documents. It's always been a cinch to print Word documents as PDFs, but going the other way around is generally more difficult. Many online tools can handle PDF-to-DOC conversions, but most of us don't want to upload our sensitive docs to the web for third-party conversion, so desktop tools are preferable. We've featured one other 
Whether you're a weekend photographer or seasoned professional, Wired's Charlie Sorrel says you should always use your digital camera's RAW setting—no excuses. Sorrel cites increased dynamic range, no in-camera processing of the image, and full reign to adjust the results using all of the pre-compressed, raw data available in the image (hence RAW). The downsides to RAW, on the other hand, include slower capture times, larger files, and lack of support on lower-end consumer cameras. (Then again, if you've got a Canon point-and-shoot, there's a good chance you can add RAW support and other high-end features by 
Windows only: Need to make sure your instant message chats can't be intercepted or read by third parties? SimpLite, a free suite of encryption packages, allows for fully encrypted chats over AIM, MSN, Google/Jabber, or Yahoo-based clients. Grab the appropriate package for your chat program, create a secure encryption key, and have anyone you're talking to do the same. It's not quite as easy as GAIM/Pidgin's 
Blogger Jeff Kelley prefers his windows take up specific areas of his screen, regardless of the monitor he's plugged his MacBook Pro into. His solution? An AppleScript that determines his screen size and arranges his windows appropriately. Whenever he wants to rearrange his desktop to those specifications, he just runs the script. Geek factor aside, the script can be easily modified to maximise your screen real estate to fit your tastes. Windows users have apps like 
Google Earth has added geo-located Google News stories to its many useful layers, giving users of the desktop app access to national headlines and local news. Starting today, users can expand the "Gallery" node in their left-hand "Layers" menu and click "Google News" to have tiny newspaper icons displayed on their map. Click on a news icon, and you get the first paragraph and relevant links to the story. For tracking election news or seeing what's happening in your neck of the woods, Google Earth has become a pretty handy tool.
