You know that sudden motion sensor that's buried in your Mac to protect your hard drive? Want to have a little fun with it? Then check out Liquid Mac, a neat little app that makes your laptop's screen look like it's filled with colored water.
Once you've downloaded the app, select the color and response sensitivity you want, then gently tilt your laptop and watch the fluid splash around the screen. It's oddly soothing, actually, unless you slosh it around too fast and make yourself nauseous.
When you tire of making waves, adjust the settings to represent beads and watch it rain on your screen. To see Liquid Mac in action, check out this cool video.
Adium has a sweet new beta version available this morning. If you don't automatically see 1.3b2 when you check for updates, then make sure you've enabled "Update to beta versions when available" under the General tab in the Preference pane.
Several new features have been added, including:
Enhanced psychic abilities -- it opens a chat window as soon as a contact begins typing a message
Filtered search in the Contact list
Apple Address Book integration (access under Advanced tab in Preferences)
Integration with Facebook chat (enable in the Accounts tab under Preferences)
The latest Growl and libpurple updates
Additional information (such as "Last Seen" and Apple Address Book notes) added to the Contact Inspector
Fixed issues include the linkification of enclosed URLs, a memory inefficiency, and a pesky tendency for closed chats to suddenly reappear. All told, there are more than 150 improvements and enhancements to Adium, one of the hardest working chat apps out there.
I love having widgets of all kinds on my iMac -- even things like the Ski Report (I live in Florida), ESPN (it's not football season), and Flight Tracker (I rarely fly). I even have similar ones (though Apple calls them webapps) on my iPod Touch. Since I've exhausted all the webapps for the touch that I'm interested in, I was glad to hear Widgetbox announced a gallery of widgets just for iPhone and the iPod touch users. Check it out via any browser, or right from your iPhone.
Now, most widgets are Flash-based, but these aren't and therefore don't use Apple's SDK, but they're cool and work well nevertheless. Among my favorites are the Yahoo! News RSS feeds, Random Quote Generator, and the Flickr slideshow.
While there's not a ton of widgets available just yet, there are around 32,000 developers in the Widgetbox community so I suspect the gallery will be populated pretty quickly. There's even a short video tutorial on how to make the iPhone widgets, in case you're curious -- or motivated.
Eagle-eyed reader Walker was perusing hi-res photos of the Space Shuttle Endeavour (which is circling the planet at this moment, docked to the International Space Station in low-earth orbit) when he spotted an iPod through the crew cabin window. It's a massively cool find and we thought you'd like to know it's not the first time an iPod has braved the 3G hurtle into space.
When the unmanned Jules Verne spacecraft launched earlier this month for its historic docking with the ISS, it took along several commemorative items, including an iPod containing a special list of songs chosen by the winner of a 2007 contest.
STS crew member Leland Melvin went to the ISS last month aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, and he took along an iPod pre-loaded with his favorite Christina McBride album and a few songs he'd composed on the piano.
For Charlie Hobaugh's flight last year, he let his kids load his iPod for him. (Wow, that's trusting -- he could have spent the 13-day mission listening to Alvin & the Chipmunks).
Getting an iPod into space isn't easy. The lithium batteries have to be replaced with specially certified alkaline batteries. Once docked, crew members can't bring them on board the Space Station, however, since they haven't been certified as safe in that environment.
Your iPod may never make it to outer space, but if you want to protect it on your daily land-based EVAs, why not wrap it in a piece of history? Get a case from everQuest Design that's made from a piece of the Soyuz parachute. From one space geek to another, I ask you: how cool is that?
If you're a space freak, then you'll want to have a look at these three super-cool web apps for your iPhone or iPod Touch.
iSkyGaze tells you where to find various objects in the sky, depending on your location and the time of day. Sure, it'll show you where to look to see the sun and moon, but iSkyGaze also helps you spot things in deep space, like the Orion Nebula. This cool app even tells you how far away the object is, and the best time to see it.
Want to know how the sky looked on any given date from the past 10 years? Starry Night Mobile will tell you. It can also predict what your overhead view will be 10 years into the future. Just enter a zip code, landmark, or address and let the app do the calculating for you.
If checking out satellites or the International Space Station as it passes overhead is more your thing, then you'll love LookUp. Once you enter your location, the app will tell the precise time various orbiting objects will zoom by, complete with exact elevation stats and how much time you'll have to see it before it dips below the horizon.
Oh, and here's a bonus app for all you werewolves.
Looking for a cheezburger to go with your iPhone? You're in luck. The goofballs (and I say that with fondest affection) over at ICanHasCheezburger have created an official iPhone app so you can cart the cats around with you wherever you go. Just bookmark this on your phone's Safari browser and whenever you visit you'll be greeted by the 30 most recent lolcat pictures. It even updates every time there's a new post.
Don't have an iPhone? To dream and drool, check out the demo page the creators put together (it's only viewable on a Mac).
When Steve Jobs announced five new apps for the iPod Touch yesterday, people were ecstatic -- for about ten seconds. Once he mentioned the upgrade would cost current iPod touch owners $20 (they're included on all new units), most of the comments from participants following the keynote in TUAW's IRC channel were largely unprintable.
Apple's customers aren't usually the sort to take things lying down, however, so now there's an online petition calling on Apple to make the apps free to current customers. As I write this, there are close to 600 signatures and climbing.
It's worth noting that Michael Rose and John Gruber pondered the possibility of iPod touch updates and user costs back in October 2007, as Apple's quarterly earnings report indicated that the iPhone's subscription accounting model was not being used for the touch. At the time it wasn't clear what would happen when functional updates to the iPod touch were released; now we know that they come with a price tag.
Though there was plenty of other news at the Keynote today, iPod Touch users got a little love thrown their way today -- for a price. Master Steve announced that effective immediately, there are five new apps available for the Touch: Mail, Stocks, Notes, Weather, and Maps. Oh, and it will set current Touch owners back $20.
Preview mail before you open it, display grapics and photos inline, and view HTML, PDF, Word, and Exel attachments.
Stocks, Weather, and Notes all appear as widgets on your home screen.
Google Maps determines your approximate location if Wi-Fi is on and gives you directions, marks specific locations (Starbucks?), and has both hybrid and satellite maps to show you the way.
Granted, it's not as exciting as the iPhone update (nor is it, ahem, as free) -- but at least we've got notes and mail now, right? That ought to count for something.
Picture it: you're riding in the car and a great song comes on the radio. You're dying to know what it is so you can go buy it ASAP but there's no satellite radio receiver to tell you what's playing. How can you find out what song it is? Whip out your iPhone, put it near the car speakers, and watch the screen. Poof! There's the song, artist, and album.
No, I am not kidding.
Our own Erica Sadun was inspired by someone who came up with the original idea, she set off to make it happen, and the result is Listen. It's still "very beta" but, hey, it's still one of the coolest iPhone hacks I've ever heard of. Go check it out and let us know in the comments how it works for you.
If you're trying to figure out what to buy yourself with the gift card you got this holiday season, let me recommend David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition. I was fortunate to get a copy of it for Christmas this year (thanks, sweetie!) and it's 866 pages of sweet, Leopard-y goodness.
The book is divided into six sections that cover just about every conceivable thing you could ever want to know about the OS. It takes a look at how to maneuver around the desktop, how to use the native apps to their fullest potential, what to do with once your online with your Mac, and everything in between.
If you already know your way around OS X, this manual is a terrific reference tool for looking up obscure things you don't do very often, like tweaking onscreen colors to mimic a Windows PC monitor. At the other end of the spectrum, if you're a switcher there are roughly seven trazillion tips and tricks to help you learn how to get the most out of your new operating system.
Pogue's writing style is upbeat, easy to understand, and sometimes downright hilarious. The book is well laid-out and progresses fairly intuitively, although the editor seems to have gone a little crazy with the headings, sub-headings, and sub-sub-headings on many of the pages. Also, while I'm sure Pogue touches on all 300 of Leopard's new features, it's not always immediately clear which features he's describing are different from the previous version, Tiger.
Despite these minor shortcomings, I love this book and think it's a great addition to any Mac users bookshelf. This manual is one you don't want to miss.
Even though Leopard ships with Boot Camp, lots of Mac users still get their virtual groove on with VMware Fusion, and its super-slick window display tool Unity. Today VMware announced Fusion 1.1, an upgrade that sports some cool new features and improvements:
As expected, the upgrade now supports Leopard
Better 3D graphics via the "experimental support" for DirectX 9.0
Full Vista and XP support
A beta version of VMware Importer, a tool that allows users to quickly import virtual machines (including Boot Camp)
Overall better speed and performance
All told, there are about 25 enhancements in Fusion 1.1. Pat Lee, VMware's senior product manager for Mac products, told me that this upgrade is "all about giving the user choice." He points out that the biggest advantage of Fusion over Boot Camp is the ability to access your Windows virtual machine on the fly.
Lee says that, unlike Boot Camp, it's not necessary to shut down your Mac and reboot into Windows every time you want to get to a Windows app. Instead, just use the Unity tool to co-mingle your Windows and Mac apps right on the same screen.
On the other hand, if dual-booting is your thing, you can always use Importer to create a virtual machine.
The upgrade is free for existing customers. If you're ready to try it out for the first time, snag a free 30-day evaluation from the company Web site or purchase it for $59.99 with a $20 rebate (US only).
Blogger Christopher Price recently pointed out that Leopard is greedily eating up about 1 GB of disk space by dumping unnecessary language packs onto your computer's hard drive. Christopher makes two interesting points about this.
First, the language bundles aren't necessary for typing or editing documents in other languages, they're simply there for translating the menus, dialog boxes, etc. of native apps. Second, a custom Leopard install won't help you avoid bundle overload because deselecting these files isn't an option.
To wrench your precious disk space from the greedy jaws of Leopard, Price recommends deleting them with Youpi Optimizer. I ran the program on my Leopard-ized iMac and was amazed to find that it freed up more than 4 GB of space. My partner ran it on his Tigered MacBook Pro and he recovered around 2 GB.
Price says he thinks the bundle bloat is a deliberate attempt by Apple to sell more computers with bigger hard drives. I don't necessarily agree with that but it did get me to wondering: What other unneeded files are lurking in our systems that we can delete without affecting performance? Thoughts? Ideas? Bueller?
Widgets are way too much fun. Though your Mac ships with a few of them already installed on the Dashboard, frankly they're kind of boring. I mean, how much fun is a calculator, clock, or calendar? Did you know there's a bunch more hiding in the far corners of your computer, and even more waiting to be discovered online? Let's take a look at where to find the extra goodies.
Check Off is a free little tool that sits discreetly in your menu bar and pops open with a single click to display a basic to do list. I wasn't a big fan of Tiger's native to do list so I started using this a few months ago and it's been a pretty handy little app. Though it looks like Apple finally got its act together by incorporating a to do list into Mail.app, but I don't think I'll give up Check Off entirely since its bare bones functionality has come in rather handy sometimes.
Check Off is mainly for jotting down quick notes on tasks you need to complete so don't expect it to do a lot of heavy lifting. If you just need something to keep you on track or are looking for another way to send a to do list to your iPod, though, then Check Off is just the thing. It's also somewhat tweakable -- you can drag and drop to sort folders, color-code your entries, and attach notes to each to do, if you're so inclined. Version 3.7 has just been released with Leopard compatibility and a few bug fixes.
What it does: Atten-HUT! No more whinin' about how yer Mac won't run Windows without kickin' it around the block a few times. Leopard now comes with Boot Camp so you can tell your machine whether to come to the party dressed in its Leopard or Windows togs. (You, Soldier, better be wearin' yer camo!)
Stop yer complainin' that yer drivers won't work right, neither. Our fine Admirals up at the Cupertino H-Q got ya covered. The Leopard DVD comes with everythin' you need -- if ya think you've got what it takes to handle it.
Already running Boot Camp Beta? Well, ain't you special? Leopard walks you through the upgrade and gives you the new drivers that ya need. Who will use it: Soldiers who alternate OS X and Windows Vista or XP. Too much dual-bootin' goodness for ya? Toughen up! Get used to it. This is Leopard, ya big lug. Now drop and give me 20!
You know that sudden motion sensor that's buried in your Mac to protect your hard drive? Want to have a little fun with it? Then check out Liquid Mac, a neat little app that makes your laptop's screen look like it's filled with colored water. 
Adium has a sweet 
My name is Lisa and I'm a widget junkie. 
that's trusting -- he could have spent the 13-day mission listening to Alvin & the Chipmunks).
