"Where did all my disk space all go?"

When I was in college, each student was allotted 4 megabytes ('mega' is not a typo) of disk space for both email and files. Granted, this was back in the early '90s, before anyone had heard of "www." or had even thought of ".mp3" or ".mp4". In 1995 I acquired a 1GB hard drive and felt like king of the known world. Sure, it was in a case about the size of a loaf of bread, but an entire gigabyte! All to myself! Today I have a Drobo which is in a case roughly the same size as that 1GB drive, but it has 2 terabytes of redundant storage -- 2,000x the space on that prime example of mid-90s storage tech.

One thing hasn't changed: there's still never enough hard drive space. It seems to be as unavoidable as death and taxes. That Drobo? It's about 95% full.

Enter OmniDiskSweeper, a freeware program by The Omni Group which will allow you to find where your diskspace has gone. Now, there are a number of different programs out there for analyzing your hard drive space: DiskInventoryX, GrandPerspective, Baseline, DaisyDisk, and WhatSize, to name just a few. Choosing one may be as personal as which Twitter client or web browser you prefer. I like OmniDiskSweeper for two reasons: it is free and it is simple. It uses the same "Column View" that I use in Finder, and automatically sorts the folders which use the most disk space to the top.

For example, looking at the Drobo, I can see that about 50% of the space on that device is taken up by programs I have recorded using Elgato's EyeTV. You might also find files in unexpected places. A friend recently used OmniDiskSweeper and realized that he had tried to copy a bunch of files to an external hard drive, but something had gone wrong. Instead of moving the files to the external drive, they had just been moved into a folder in /Volumes/.

OmniDiskSweeper makes it easy to delete files right through the app; simply select the file and click the big red "Delete" button. A word of warning! A warning dialogue box will appear, asking you to confirm that you want to "Destroy" the files. They will not be sent to the Trash (since the assumption is that you are running OmniDiskSweeper because you want to reclaim diskspace), they will be deleted immediately.

The Omni Group made OmniDiskSweeper (along with several other utilities) free a few months ago, so if you looked at it and were turned off by a price tag, give it another look. It may not have as many bells and whistles as some of the other programs out there, but it's hard to beat OmniDiskSweeper for ease of use.

UPDATE: TUAW reader "ithinkergoimac" comments below that OmniDiskSweeper may report incorrect (significantly increased) file sizes if you are using TimeMachine.

Today's Friday Favorite is a new one to me, but it's been around for a while. I just picked up the latest version of HistoryHound from St. Clair Software -- more famous, probably, for Default Folder X -- and have been using it constantly for days. Its hotkey already has its own spot in my muscle memory. Here's what it does:

HistoryHound indexes bookmarks, history and cache from all of your browsers, with presets for Camino, Firefox 2 & 3, Flock, iCab, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, Shiira and URL Manager Pro. It means being able to bookmark willy-nilly in any browser and know that you'll be able to quickly locate noteworthy sites again, in any application.

Not just the bookmarks, though; in the background -- with a very low footprint -- HistoryHound starts indexing the full text of each page. Then you can search for exact or fuzzy matches, or with Spotlight-style boolean keywords for any text on the landing page. Search comes in two flavors: a tiny popup panel which can be assigned to a hotkey and provides a list of matches as you type, and a full, Webkit-enabled search window with page previews and a multi-column result list.

My Friday favorite is SpamSieve. We have mentioned it a few times previously, but since it has recently been updated to version 2.76 I wanted to sing its praises again. It's the best way I've found to deal with spam.

Using Bayesian filtering, SpamSieve installs as a plug-in to your mail client and lets you mark messages as spam. As you do, it builds a a corpus file of rules telling determining what is spam and what isn't. The more messages you mark, or train, the more accurate SpamSieve gets. I've been using it since November of 2003 and after years of training, it's so accurate that it rarely fails to catch an errant spam encrusted message. When it does, using either a keystroke sequence or a pulldown menu from your Mail client you can train it as spam.

At the start, it's quite labor intensive since you have to mark a few hundred messages for it to really start working, but it pays dividends. After a while, you'll have a personalized set of inclusion/exclusion rules that gets better over time. To give you an idea, yesterday I received 307 emails. Out of those SpamSieve correctly marked and moved over 30 messages and missed only 2 that needed training.

I was straining my brain today -- admittedly not a hard thing for me to do -- trying to think of a topic for a Friday Favorite. The answer was right in front of me all the time, since one of the most-used applications on my Macs is Snapz Pro X (US$69) from Ambrosia Software.

Snapz Pro X, currently at version 2.1.5, is a deceptively powerful Mac application that hides out of the way until you need it. What does it do? It lets you capture pictures and video of anything on your Mac.

For those of us who write for tech blogs, create technical documentation, or write books, Snapz Pro X is a fast way to capture full or partial screens. You press the usual Command-Shift-3 to take a screenshot, and the simple Snapz Pro X user interface appears...

Another Friday Favorite, our weekly opportunity to gush over one of our favorite apps.

This week's favorite is a must-have reference for all Apple fans. Mactracker has been around for as long as I can remember and is indispensable. It provides exhaustive information on every Apple product, from the latest Xserve to the QuickTake 100.

The iTunes-like UI keeps machines in categories like desktops, notebooks, devices, etc. Click any to reveal a chronological listing of hardware, sorted by folder. Finally, select any piece of hardware (or software) to receive a tremendous amount of information. Processor, RAM, release date, benchmarks and on and on. You can even listen to the startup chime where applicable.

You can make smart folders and even keep track of the hardware you own. I love the built-in timeline, which lets you browse hardware by year of introduction. Best of all, as new hardware is added, Mactracker is updated.

This great piece of freewawre is availabe for the Mac and iPhone/iPod touch [App Store link]. For me, it's indispensable.

Every so often I'll go through my Mac's hard drive and delete stuff that's just sitting around. The downloads folder fills with junk especially fast. I also download lots of software out of curiosity, and after a few months my applications folder is bulging.

While installing Mac software is often as easy as a click, uninstalling takes a bit more work. Rather than hunt around for preference files, etc. I use AppZapper. By simply dropping an app onto the cute raygun icon, AppZapper finds all of that application's related files -- preferences, caches, etc. -- and lists them in a window. With a click, it "zaps" them (you can disable that sound effect) to the trash.

Fortunately, they aren't deleted for good, so you can recover something zapped by mistake. Once you're ready, simply empty the trash to reclaim all of that precious hard drive space. Pro tip: Move it to your Finder Window's sidebar for easy drag-and-drop access.

AppZapper requies Tiger or Leopard and the $12.95US pricetag includes free upgrades for life. There are other apps that do this, yes, but AppZapper works perfectly for me.

Update: Some readers are reporting that AppZapper doesn't work properly under Leopard. It's never given me any trouble, but if you want an alternative, Hazel is a good one.

I'm a sucker for Mac maintenance utilities.

That's not to say that I run them on a regular basis like I should do, but whenever I find a new one I like to give it a try and see how it's going to work for me. Dare To Be Creative Ltd. recently released version 2.0 of MainMenu, a collection of Mac utilities that resides in your menu bar.

The US$10 application takes up very little real estate in your menu bar, displaying a small rounded square icon with a plus sign in the center (you can choose other icons as well). Clicking the icon unveils the menu seen at right.

Each of the clearly identified "buttons" leads to a submenu of functions designed to clean up or optimize some area of your Mac. Under the System submenu, for example, you can repair disk permissions (usually done with Disk Utility), run the daily, weekly, and monthly cron scripts for cleaning up log files, clean caches, rebuild the Launch Services database and the Spotlight Index, and update prebindings (not really necessary since OS X 10.4) and the Whatis and Locate databases.

You can also create your own batch files to run a number of the tasks at the same time, restart your Wi-Fi and flush your DNS cache, perform many user-related tasks, and more. When tasks complete, you get Growl notification.

MainMenu 2 is my Friday favorite because it puts a lot of maintenance mojo a click or two away; there's no need to use the CLI or dig into the Utilities folder, and yes, I am a very lazy person. What's your favorite Mac utility? Leave a comment!

Not since the Cola Wars or the Cold War have we seen a battle as fierce as The Twitter App Wars. Like salmon swimming upstream, each little app is fighting to gain your affection. I believe that there's no one Twitter app to rule them all. Instead, individual tastes and needs dictate which one becomes your go-to solution.

Unless you're trying to be sneaky.

If you're the type who loves to tweet but works for a boss who'd rather you spend your time being productive than tweeting pictures of your lunch, SpreadTweet is for you. Just launch, sign in and you're good to go. SpreadTweet looks just like an Excel spreadsheet. In fact, we'd wager that it'd fool anyone who doesn't actually stop to read what's written there.

It runs on Adobe Air, which turns some people off. Those folks can use the web-based version (which probably kills the illusion).

When I consider what should really be system software, I always think of three little beauties that belong on every Mac: Alarm Clock 2, AppTrap and TimeMachineEditor. They are all one-trick-ponies, take up little space, are free for the downloading, and Apple should buy them up for Snow Leopard.


Alarm Clock 2, currently up to version 2.4.5, sits nicely on your menubar ready to awaken you with your favorite song, or remind you that your dinner is ready to come out of the oven. You can set an alarm to use any song from your iTunes library, or if no song is chosen, it will just beep at you.

It has an Easy Wake option that slowly brings up the volume of your chosen song over an adjustable period of up to two minutes. As any good alarm clock, it comes with a snooze feature, which is also adjustable. I use it mostly as a kitchen timer that keeps me out of the kitchen. Multiple alarms can be set of course, and if you happen to have an Apple remote lying around, pushing the pause button will tell an alarm to 'snooze'. Since downloading it, I can't think of a day that that I haven't used it at least once



Apptrap is a preference pane that allows you to delete applications more completely than dragging to the trash and emptying. Trashing the normal way usually leaves support files in your library folder that will never go away and do nothing more useful than take up space.

With Apptrap installed, whenever you drag an application to the trash and try and empty the trash, you are presented with a window showing you the file and all support files that go along with the application, allowing you to trash them all together in one stroke. There are no settings, options or anything else to worry about. Just install it and forget it. The next time you delete an application, it will be there for you.

Note that AppTrap is open source but is no longer being actively maintained; the developer is looking for someone to pick up the project. If you want a commercially supported uninstall tool, you can check out the $12.95US AppZapper or the highly-recommended and multicapable file organizer Hazel for $21.95. Mat also wrote up a helpful Mac 101 on uninstaller tools last year.


TimeMachineEditor stops Time Machine from backing up every hour. On my network, with four Macs backing up to Time Machine, hourly, the network slows down to a crawl. This is especially annoying since my information isn't critical enough to be backed that frequently. TimeMachineEditor allows you to set exactly when Time Machine will run.

You can set backups for hourly intervals, like every 12 hours, or set up calendar backups which allow you to backup daily, weekly or monthly at any time you set. The hourly calendar interval is new to version 2.1. I have my Macs backup once a day during the wee hours with each Mac staggered by an hour or so to keep the network hit to a minimum.

Download all three and see how these brilliant little afterthoughts improve your Mac life.

Not long after I bought my first personal Mac in late 2004, I stumbled across an article that mentioned Ulysses, a text editor geared toward creative writers -- essentially the marriage between a word processor and project management software. It allows you to have all documents within a writing project at your grasp. As a journalist and author, Ulysses was a dream come true, but expensive. Costing more than $100 at the time, it didn't fit into a journalist's salary.

I wound up using CopyWrite for a time and was fairly satisfied with it until I read in a forum that people were having luck with a program which, at the time, was called Scrivener Gold. I gave the free beta a try and was blown away by the program's potential. When the full-fledged release of Scrivener came out in early 2007, I bought a license as a birthday gift for myself.

Scrivener pulls all the things needed for a complete writing project -- be it writing a script, novel, research paper or newspaper/blog articles -- together in one location and has so many features that even after nearly three years of use, I don't think I've fully explored all that it has to offer. I recently started work on writing my first graphic novel, and have really gotten the chance to flex Scrivener's muscles.

Another Friday Favorite, our weekly opportunity to gush over one of our favorite apps.

This week I'm going with an oldie but goodie that I use every day. Way back when Dashboard first appeared, my biggest problem with it was that I simply forgot about it. My main use of Dashboard is for displaying information that I want to remember, e.g. appointments with iCal Events, iCal ToDos with DoBeDo, the weather, etc. However, for this to be really useful it needs to be in front of my face a lot. And since I generally tend to forget to invoke Dashboard on my own this pretty much fails.

Enter the basic preference pane app Dasher, which does one simple, but amazingly useful thing: it automatically invokes the Dashboard after a set period of time. Everytime I step away from my Mac and return, the Dashboard is displayed with my appointments, etc. so that now they're in my face enough for me to remember them and Dashboard finally works for me.

Dasher is a free download from Splasm Software. It's an old piece of software that has not been updated in quite some time, but it still works fine on my 10.5.7 machine.

Incidentally, there's another way to accomplish something similar using an OS X screen-saver. DashSaver (donation requested) from High Earth Orbit installs as a standard screen saver and will also display the Dashboard after a set period of time.

There are few times I have used software that really caused my jaw to drop. Photomatix Pro did just that. It's a Mac OS X utility that allows you to create what are called High Dynamic Range (HDR) images from separate digital exposures taken at different shutter speeds (exposure levels). These pictures are far more colorful and impressive in their tonal range and saturation.

Many digital cameras have something called AEB, or Automatic Exposure Bracketing. You click the shutter once, and the camera takes 3 pictures instead of just one. In my case I usually shoot a normally exposed image, then one 2 stops under, and another one 2 stops over. If your camera doesn't have AEB you can do this manually.

Photomatix Pro combines the three exposures you've taken into one, and tone maps the image into a JPEG or TIFF that displays a really wide dynamic range. The result is often a stunning picture, with little loss in the shadowy areas, and no blown-out highlights. It's hard to do if you are shooting people because they will move between the 3 exposures, but works great with landscapes. A tripod is recommended, but I've done just fine handheld and Photomatix Pro will automatically line up (register) the 3 images.

Words can't describe the difference, so I've included a few examples to look at. There are other Mac apps that do similar things, but I've had the best luck with Photomatix Pro. They also make a Photoshop plug-in and one for Aperture, but I think the full program is the best. Newer versions of Photoshop also support the creation of these HDR images, but the results are not as spectacular in my view. There is also a free, basic version of the program that lets you combine 2 images, but it is simply not as effective.

You can search for a lot of information on HDR photography on the web. I have found this site to be very good, and it reviews the different software that is available. It's very easy to overdo the look of HDR images, and Photomatix Pro gives you lots of control. You can make your images really good, or outlandish. The control is in the hands of the photographer. To many, HDR will be old hat, but a lot of photographers haven't tried it, and will be pleasantly shocked at the results.

Since you can download Photomatix Pro for free, if you are serious about digital imaging, I'd give it a tryout. If you buy the full version it is US$99.00.

Here are some examples of how HDR imaging works. Of course these images are reduced in quality and resolution, so they only hint at the differences.

Hey, the weekend is coming, so how serious can we be? Sky Burger, [App Store] a pretty cute arcade game for the iPhone and iPod touch, is free today only. Note: As of Saturday morning PDT the app is still free.

The game involves tilting your iPhone to catch ingredients to make a sandwich with the required ingredients. There are 50 possible burger orders to try and get right. You cap it all off with a bun. It reminds me a little bit of the theme of the 1982 game called Burger Time.

Sky Burger seems a bit silly but it can get pretty addictive as you try to build up points and tips. The game has good music and sound effects. Try it for free: even vegetarians will like it. Tomorrow the game goes back up to US$0.99. Even at that price, it's pretty good fun.

Thanks, Ian!

If you have a photographic memory, you may recall an article I wrote for TUAW about a year ago describing how to use AppleScript to make it easier to transcribe QuickTime movies and audio. In the comments for that piece, a program was pointed out to me (thanks imnotjesus) which has become a valuable tool in my toolbox. Transcriva is a single-purpose program for transcribing video and audio clips with a rich set of features certain to make your life easier. If you're doing professional transcription, recording audio notes in a class or a meeting for later reference, preparing sub-titles for a movie, or anything which involves copying what's being said or shown into text form, Transcriva has tools to fit, and pricing I find very reasonable.

The main window of Transcriva offers a library view of your transcriptions, a media playback bar and your current transcription. With user-configurable keyboard shortcuts, it's possible to comfortably operate during a transcription without your hands ever needing to leave the keyboard. It even works with a foot pedal, if you're set up with one. You can control playback speed and set it to match your typing speed, as well automatically jump back a configurable number of seconds when you pause and resume playback.

Of all of the features available, Follow-Along is my favorite. It allows you to play back your audio after you've transcribed it, and highlights the appropriate sections of the transcription as the playback head moves through them. More importantly, clicking on an area of the transcription jumps to its related point in the playback, allowing you to quickly review the audio associated with a note or transcription. This is important because that's exactly how I use Transcriva, taking notes from audio recordings or even during a recording when I'm using the built-in record features. Then I can review my hastily typed notes and immediately hear the audio that was happening at the time I took the note.

It's great for recording meetings and annotating recorded Skype conversations. I imagine it would be an amazing tool in class, if you were in a situation where recording and typing were allowed. I haven't been to school for a while. The functionality is similar to Pear Note, but at $29.99US, Transcriva comes in $10US cheaper and packs more features.

Transcriva can handle just about any type of audio or video you can play on your Mac. It uses QuickTime, and with Flip4Mac and Perian installed, you can extend the possibilities to include WMV, AVI, DIVX, FLV and more. When you're done with a transcription, you can export it to RTF or Word formats for sharing, publishing or continuing editing externally. I use Transcriva to recap interviews I do over Skype, and take my notes in an "outline" format which I can, with a little finagling, turn into a mind map or outline for an article.

Transcriva has made my life exponentially easier and is a tool I'd gladly recommend to anyone with similar needs. My direct experience with the developer has also been great, with quick response times and a single bug report resulting in a new build within a couple of days. Transcriva is free to try, $29.99US to buy. You can download the trial at the Bartas Technologies site. If you hurry, it's even discounted to $19.99US in the MacUpdate Promo today.