I'm not the world's most patriotic Englishman, and I'm also not keen on allowing icons to fill up my Mac's menu bar unless strictly necessary.

That's why I don't let the Input Menu flag hog space up there; one of the first things I do on a fresh Mac system is remove it (by unchecking the "Show input menu in menu bar" box in the Input Menu tab of the International preferences pane).

That said, there are occasions when I wish I had quick access to the Character Palette - which can normally only be reached via the Input Menu. Grrr.

Which is why I dug around online to find a script that would call up the Character Palette for me, and saved it as an application, and Bob's your uncle. Now I can get to the Character Palette, via Spotlight, by typing "Command+Space CHAR return". Excellent.

You can get the script from this page on Mac OS X Hints. Click the "Get this script" thingy and it will open in Script Editor. Click Compile, then Run, just to check it does what you want - then Save As... an app, or a script if you prefer.

After we posted that neon Apple sign a little while back, reader Franco thought we'd get a kick out of this Apple flag for sale on eBay, and he was right. The best news is that right now, it's sitting pretty at only $10 (reserve not yet met, though) flying upwards-- what are you TUAW readers, rich?-- so you could own a little piece of Apple history for cheap.

As for dating it, the page says the 80s. No mention of Macintosh might put it before 1984, but that's just a guess-- Apple IIs were known as the first "personal computers" and those were made all the way up until the early 1990s. I really love those fonts, though, and of course the rainbow logo is a classic.

As you might remember, NewsMac Pro 1.2 brought some nice enhancements when it landed last November. Even though this latest version is just a .0.3 update, I think this app is finally maturing into a serious reader, and I also hope the NetNewsWire people are paying attention to what Rory Prior is doing with this most excellent of newsreaders.

This latest version brings typical things like bug fixes and new features to the table, but I think a couple of the most important new options are a new view (now a total of 4) for arranging your feeds and headlines, as well as more keyboard support for moving between groups, feeds and headlines. While using the keyboard isn't nearly as smooth as it is in NetNewsWire, NewsMac Pro is getting there, and I hope more users submit requests to move this feature up Rory's priority list. Most serious folks I know who use RSS apps barely touch their mouse while they're in the app, and I think it would serve NewsMac Pro well to gain this ability ASAP.

A couple other big strengths NewsMac Pro has are flagging headlines with different colors based on user-defined keywords, as well as an iTunes-style built-in podcast player, so you can keep everything under one roof, if you so desire.

With all this great stuff coming to life in NewsMac Pro, it certainly isn't still without its shortcomings. The demo casts off a time limit in return for allowing a user to add only 10 feeds. I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea this is, as I would imagine anyone looking at an RSS app like this is going to have far, far more than 10 feeds in their OPML (which reminds me: NewsMac Pro fortunately supports OPMLs with groups). The other clunky thing is the way feed and group updating is defined. You can specify different update intervals (30 minutes, 1 hour, etc.) for each group of feeds, which is certainly nice for some uses, but I can't find a way to specify any kind of a default for the app as a whole.

All things considered, I think NewsMac Pro is a great newsreader that includes some very appealing innovations in the world of RSS reading and organzing. If you're in the market for a great way to keep track of all your favorite sites and blogs, head over and pick up a demo. If it really floats yer boat, a full license costs a mere $24.95.