Skip to Content

Free TUAW iPhone app -- try it now!
AOL Tech

screensavers posts

Filed under: Humor, Software, Snow Leopard

iSight Screensavers: Interact with your screensaver


Some of you may have noticed that some of your screensavers don't work after upgrading to Snow Leopard. If you're running a 64-bit instance of the operating system, you won't be able to use most of your old third-party screensavers because they're probably not compatible. Many of our favorite screensavers weren't working... so instead of waiting for the developers to release them in 64-bit, we decided to see what else was out there.

iSight Screensavers from Majic Jungle (the creators of FluidTunes) isn't new, but it's something we've never covered here on TUAW. It was one that showed up first in our search and ended up killing our productivity for the rest of the day. And the next day. In fact, we've not really recovered productivity since we clicked the "test" button in System Preferences.

Majic Jungle has made a killer screensaver that allows you to interact with different effects and filters using the iSight camera, or any webcam attached to your mac. I won't get into the countless scenarios we created (we're pretty easily entertained), but here's a list of interactions from the creators' site to help explain what it does:
  • Fluid - Play with a beautiful fluid dynamics simulation
  • Particles - Create magical looking brightly colored particles wherever you move
  • Champagne - Immerse yourself in a champagne world and watch as bubbles appear all over you
  • Fire - Set yourself or your desktop on fire - in a painless kind of way!
  • Water - Ripples appear wherever you move
  • Flipping Grid - Can you get all of the squares to flip over together?
  • Core Image - Over 30 configurable effects using powerful Core Image filters
iSight Screensavers is Universal Binary and Shareware. If you'd like to remove the watermarks, you can purchase a license for $4.99 -- pretty cheap considering my wife and I are more entertained by this than by a $25 night at the movies.

Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Internet Tools

1001: A really cool Flickr client



The old adage that 'a picture is worth 1000 words' is still going nice and strong. Considering the sheer number of pictures that Flickr is hosting these days, that could be a lot of stories to sift through - why not try out a desktop app to help with all the work?

1001 is a unique Flickr client from Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac version of blogging app ecto (the one with a slick new alpha version) and RSS newsreader endo. In addition to letting you upload your own photos to Flickr, I think 1001's primary appeal lies in its downloading and viewing abilities. It provides rich features for watching the stream of photos from your friends and groups, filtering the public photo stream with tags, blogging (of course) photos you like, displaying a Growl-like popup with certain photos you want to see and even using photo as your desktop wallpaper or screensaver. It's a really interesting way to interact with Flickr, and the only downside is a somewhat unique UI that might make it a little confusing to navigate 1001 your first time through. For a quick primer: 1001 allows you to pull down these photos by setting up one or more 'streams' that specify exactly what photos you want to see. You can create one stream for, say, just your friends (or even specific friends), and another for Flickr's popular Interestingness page. You can then toggle the different streams on and off depending on your mood, allowing you keep the streams from becoming a flood. Be sure to use the Streams button in 1001's toolbar, or check out the Streams menu to get started.

All things considered, this really is a great app for Flickr enthusiasts or even newbies starting out. Once you get over the very brief learning curve, 1001 is a powerful app that lets you view just the Flickr photos you want and use them in other places on your Mac. But what does all this Flickr wonderfulness (hey, if Flickr can use pseudo-words, so can I) cost, you ask? Surprisingly, it's donationware, and I encourage you to show Tijsseling some appreciation if you enjoy 1001 and would like to see ist development continue.

Filed under: Accessories, Odds and ends

plasq releases free Sqreensavers

plasq, developers of the hit Comic Life, have released a package of 10 screensavers for your Mac. They are funky, they are fun, and best of all they are free.

Now, I know what you're thinking, 'who cares about screensavers?' This is a matter or personal taste, but I would venture that these are some of the best looking OS X screensavers out there (especially A shining).

The sqreensavers (see what they did there?) require OS X 10.4.

Tip of the Day

To get an instant map to any address, just go to your Address Book and right click on the address field of any one of your contacts and select "Map Of." The address will then be revealed in Google Maps on Safari. You can do the same if a data detector determines there is an address in an e-mail in Mail.


Follow us on Twitter!
 TUAW [Cafepress]

Featured Galleries

DNC Macs
Macworld 2008 Keynote
Macworld 2008 Build-up
Google Earth for iPhone
Podcaster
Storyist 2.0
AT&T Navigator Road Test
Bento for iPhone 1.0
Scrabble for iPhone
Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer Briefcase
Apple Vanity Plates
Apple booth Macworld 07
WorldVoice Radio
Quickoffice for iPhone 1.1.1
Daylite 3.9 Review
DiscPainter
Mariner Calc for iPhone
2009CupertinoBus
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
MLB.com At Bat 2009
Macworld Expo 2007 show floor

 

More Apple Analysis

AOL Radio TUAW on Stitcher