If you prefer to keep your fingers on the keyboard and away from mice or trackpads, MercuryMover will allow you to do something simple: move and resize windows with the keyboard. There are a number of hotkeys for wiggling the windows into place, in 2 different increments, and a method of resizing windows via the keyboard.

Highbrow gives you fine control over which browser opens a certain link. For example, if someone sends you a link in IM and you want to open in it Firefox, but your default browser is Safari, you'd have to copy/paste that link into Firefox, or Safari will open it instead. But with Highbrow, you can quickly choose which browser opens what. Instead of mucking around in Safari prefs, Highbrow sets the default browser via handy menu bar item. Plus, you can opt for a floating window each time you click a link, and choose on the fly.

MercuryMover is $20 and a free trial is available. Highbrow is $12 and a free trial is also available.

Ever wonder what files your Mac is hiding from you? Maybe not, but once in a while there's a need to peek at the stuff OS X keeps you from viewing. Finder does a nice job of hiding the "guts" of some folders, you see, but there are occasions (troubleshooting, setting up a web server, looking for some folders, etc.) when you'll need to view and/or edit these files or folders. Enter hiddenfiles, a simple and unobtrusive widget that'll show those hidden files and folders.

Sure, you can use Onyx or Terminal and do some command line work. But it's much easier to drop into Dashboard, hit "Show" on the blue button and have Finder relaunch, showing all invisible files. I had to click on Finder in the Dock to actually launch it again, but when I did there were those lovely .DS_Store files, staring me down. I use this to remove the hidden _files off my daughter's PC-friendly MP3 player. That way she doesn't have to scroll through resource-fork versions of her songs.

The widget is free and available from developer Matthew Hansen's page.

You can find Mac applications that have been around longer than Retrospect, but not many that have the same ratio of copies installed to jobs/sanity saved. The venerable backup tool, now in its third decade and published by EMC Insignia (original developer Dantz was acquired a few years back) has been revitalized in version 8, now shipping, with scores of features that bring it to reasonable parity with the Windows version of the app.

The new Retrospect, which EMC previewed at Macworld Expo, breaks the administrative UI away from the underlying backup engine and allows backup managers to control multiple instances of the tool from one console. Simultaneous execution is supported now, along with advanced disk-to-disk backups, faster catalog rebuilds, single-write/multi-read operation, improved networking and tape drive support, and media & catalog cross-platform compatibility with the Windows 7.6 version. Video tutorials for the new v8 are here.

Retrospect 8, for the moment, only runs on Intel machines but can be used to back up PowerPC clients (PPC support is coming in a near-term update, the company says). Pricing starts at $129US for the Desktop edition with support for 3 client machines (a maintenance plan adds $120), and ranges up to $1700 for the Multi-Server, Unlimited Client version; there are also Single Server 20-client and unlimited client licenses available at intervening price points. Upgrade pricing is available through the EMC site.

R-Name is a simple, single-purpose application that takes the names of files and folders on your Mac and renames them one at a time or in batches. I use it almost every day. Yes, there are a dozen ways to batch rename files. I like R-Name for a few reasons:

• It's fast, both in loading and renaming
• Easy to rename just files, folders or recurse folder
• Hard to mess things up because you have to preview the new names before committing
• Drag and drop (Apple forgets how important this feature is all too frequently)

Here are the functions you can perform with R-Name: find and replace, number sequentially, add characters (beginning, before extension, at end), remove characters with the same options, change case, add/replace/remove extensions. There are some smart prefs too, but that's icing on the cake.

Oh, and did I mention: it's donationware! The author asks you to make a donation to UNICEF. Unfortunately, R-Name appears to be abandonware -- the author's site is currently down (thus the source code is unavailable) and best I can tell the app is only supported to 10.3. But it works for me. What renaming tool or workflow do you use?

Instead of rounding up 16 apps in one review, I'll just tackle five. Links from the title of the app take you directly into iTunes and the App Store.

WideNoise measures the noise in an area (using the mic on an iPhone, of course) and registers that online with your location. WideTag will show you regions of loud and quiet on a global, interactive map. My area shows "feather" because I took a recording in an empty house. The app looks like a prop from Fallout, with distressed metal and an analog meter, and I found the readings to be comparable to Decibel, which I've reviewed before. This might be good for finding quiet places in urban areas, provided people take the time to use it. I'm not sure $1.99 will have this flying off the virtual shelves, either.

Wooden Labyrinth 3D is exactly that, the classic game of a metal marble in a wooden, moving maze. We've seen several iterations of these on the store, but I think this version nails it. The physics are superb, the 3D is flawless, and the soundtrack is relaxing and pleasant. Plus, unlike real-world versions, you don't have to keep dozens of wooden mazes around -- there are several themes in the game which lead to several puzzles in each theme. In short, you're looking at a wide range of gameplay in this one app. My only complaint is one of organization: I would have preferred groupings based on difficulty, or some way to know how hard a level is before launching it. Is it worth $2.99? Considering the polish and replayability, I'd say yes. True, there are freebies out there, but none match the elegance of this app (and some which cost more aren't as good).

Penalized is billed as an "adult" party game, but it's a bit less provocative than you might think. There's no explicit adult content, this is merely hinted at. The game is a series of challenges, like "Impersonate Ray Charles" and if the player can't perform the challenge, they must be penalized somehow. The adult part is in the penalty, so removing a piece of clothing is an option. So is chopping a cord of wood, you know, adult stuff. Penalized does include a lot of challenge cards in 6 categories, but the $1.99 may seem a bit much. Especially if you carry around a deck of challenge cards in your pocket already. This is also something you could cook up with TileStack, I think.

Keep reading for Pure Sleep and Army Knife, two apps I use on a daily basis.

Whenever we write about Mac OS X utilities for system maintenance, our readers always remind of us one freeware utility that does a lot of work at no cost -- OnyX from Titanium Software.

This multifunction application does verification of your Startup Disk and System file structure, performs a lot of miscellaneous tasks for system maintenance and cleanup, and lets you configure some hidden parameters for the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, the Login window, and even some of Apple's applications.

The improvements in OnyX 2.0 include faster operation, and deleting the applications cache, Internet cache, and logs has been improved. Most of these improvements are due to the application now being complied with the latest version of Xcode. One new feature lets you rebuild Mail's envelope index in the automation panel.

While the version 2.0 download is only available for Leopard, you can also download earlier versions for Tiger, Panther, and Jaguar. Support is pretty good; it's done through Titanium's forums and there are always answers available for most of your questions.

If you don't use OnyX, what's your favorite free Mac system maintenance utility?

Volitans Software has announced a giveaway to publicize their hard disk diagnostic utility, SMART Utility for Mac. Between now and 11:59 PM EST on December 24th, you can enter a giveaway in which the winner gets a choice of either a new Momentus 5400.6 SATA 500GB laptop hard drive or a Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 1.5TB desktop drive.

You don't need to purchase SMART Utility or even try out the software to enter, although Volitans would be happy if you download a free trial. SMART Utility provides more information than the SMART Status in Apple's Disk Utility, including predictive fault detection that can inform you that a drive is about to fail. Disk Utility only gives you an indication when your drive has already failed. While you could always run smartmontools from the command line, SMART Utility displays drive information in a clear, easy-to-read format.

Only one entry per person is allowed, and the winner will be announced on Christmas Day. Another 1.5TB of storage for the pile 'o equipment in my home office sounds like an incredible Christmas present!

The Big Mean Folder Machine is a useful tool from publicspace.net (developers of the indispensable A Better Finder Rename 8) that takes the drudgery out of either splitting files into multiple folders or merging files from different folders.

Why would you want to do either of these tasks? Let's say you're trying to back up 30 GB of photographs to DVD. You can either start dragging files to a folder and keep checking with Get Info to see if the folder size is less than the writable size of a DVD, or you can just have BMFM automagically split the group of files into folders that are perfectly sized for DVD burning. Or let's say that you want to take individual folders for former clients and turn them all into one big "Former Client Archive" folder. It's easy to merge all of the files in those different folders into one big archive folder. The Big Mean Folder Machine takes care of file name conflicts in that case.

Version 1.5 adds the ability to create deeper hierarchy levels (dependent on the number of files per level) and restores MP3/AAC functionality. A trial version limited to 100 files is available for download, or you can buy the application for $14.99.

Last night, Perian was updated to version 1.1.2. If you need to extend the capabilities of QuickTime, the free Perian plugin allows QuickTime to play back all kinds of popular video formats (.AVI, .MKV, .FLV and more). It's a handy utility for anyone who watches a lot of video on their Mac.

Here's a list of the bug fixes/improvements in 1.1.2:

• Fixed update checker never running - this version requires a manual install
• Enabled frame-dropping on AppleTV
• Fixed some frames being lost in AVCHD/.mp4 with newer versions of QuickTime
• Fixed another ffmpeg crash on G3s

You can download the update to Perian from the project's website. You can also see the version history list on their support website.


Thanks for the tip, Chris!

Ross McKillip over at Simple Help pointed out a great little Dock utility a while back called SuperDocker.

If you want a basic 2D Dock again, or think it would be cool to make the Dock look like a wooden shelf, then SuperDocker may be for you. This donation-ware utility not only gives you control over the look of the Dock, but also provides an easy-to-use portal for customizing other features of Leopard. SuperDocker can:

• Lock the Dock
• Make your Dock 2D
• Enable Dashboard widgets on the desktop
• Add the Development menu in Safari, including the Web Inspector
• Customize the Safari progress bar
• Disable the shadows on screenshots
• Disable the crash panel when an application crashes
• ...and a lot more

A number of Dock backgrounds and other items have been uploaded to the SuperDocker site; to install them on your Mac, you just drag and drop 'em on the appropriate spot in SuperDocker.

A similar app that is popular with a lot of Mac users is OnyX, which adds maintenance and optimization utilities to the mix. Do you customize your Dock or Finder? If so, what utility do you use? Let us know in the comments.

[via CreativeBits]

Here's a nifty little application. DesktopLyrics is a free utility that displays the lyrics of the song that's currently playing in iTunes on your desktop. You can position it where ever you like, choose your font and then just let it run. Pretty neat, right?

Here's the catch. The lyrics must be in iTunes already, as DesktopLyrics doesn't fetch them. You could use an application like GimmieSomeTune (which we've written about before) to do this, or, if you're a masochist, enter them by hand. But I've thought of a better idea.

I'm teaching myself Japanese with the fantastic podcasts at JapanesePod101.com. Something I like about them is that they embed each lesson's transcript in the file itself. So, tapping on my iPhone's screen as I listen brings up the text of the lesson.

Now, I can launch DesktopLyrics and follow along with the transcript, both the Japanese and the English translation, on my desktop as I listen. I love it. Check it out, and happy learning!

[Via LifeHacker]

You may sincerely wish never to need it, but if you run into a situation where your Mac refuses to boot fully to the Finder and you don't have any boot-capable utilities to tackle the problem, Kristofer Widholm's AppleJack is probably your best friend in the trenches. The single-user-mode tool is only available if you start your machine while holding down Cmd-S to boot to the command line (as per Dave's tip from yesterday), but once there it streamlines the process of checking your disk for errors, repairing permissions, cleaning caches, zapping corrupt preference files, and deleting leftover virtual memory swap data. You could do most of this yourself via a series of commands, but AppleJack is a) much, much simpler and b) completely free and open source.

For a long while it didn't look as though AppleJack would make the leap from Tiger to Leopard, as Mac OS X 10.5 made some key changes that broke AppleJack's functionality (specifically, the 'id' command didn't work, and the /etc/rc file was removed). Developer Steve Anthony jumped into the project this summer and was able to code around the Leopard-specific problems, finally giving us back our beloved AppleJack in version 1.5.

Let's all raise a glass of the original Jersey Lightning to Kristofer and Steve for their work on behalf of Mac troubleshooters everywhere.

While Guy Kawasaki might be able to get 36 hours of standby life out of his iPhone 3G, many of the rest of us are struggling with having enough power to make it through a day.

Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine in Seattle, came up with a great idea for any iPhone developers in the TUAW audience. He'd like to see an iPhone power miser application that could turn off 3G, location services, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and push e-mail with one tap (low drain mode), then turn on all of the same services with another tap (full power mode).

Davidson explains that it currently takes him 15 steps to disable the power-hungry features of his 3G, and another 15 steps to turn those features back on. Whether or not those features are something that the average NDA'd iPhone developer can actually control is one big question; if they aren't, this would be a great app for Apple to develop -- quickly!

Me? I'm waiting for "The Clapper" version of the power miser app -- "Clap On! Clap Off!"

As a fan of his EntourageABMenu utility, I was pleased to discover that developer Jon Nathan has a new item in his kit: Dialectic, a phone dialing tool that has more tricks than a magician's convention. Dialectic replaces the older Jon's Phone Tool and provides a bridge between almost any Mac PIM or database (including Address Book, Entourage, Now Contact, Daylite and more) and phone dialing via VoIP systems, hardware dialers, modems, Skype and other voice chat apps, Bluetooth-enabled cellphones... the list goes on.

Dialectic can trigger events via AppleScript when a call starts, so pausing your iTunes playback (or indicating a call start in your billing tool) is straightforward. If you make a lot of phone calls, you might be interested.

The online help includes a crowded page of resources, apps and scripts to get you rolling. Dialectic is a Universal Binary, costs $25 for new users and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.

Thanks, Rich.

Sometimes Command-C and Command-V just aren't enough. You're working on a project and want to capture a bunch of text, pictures, or code, and then paste it into the project you're working on. Using the Mac clipboard, you're toggling between open applications, cutting and pasting like there's no tomorrow. Wouldn't it be nice to capture all of that information into one place, then pull it out when you're ready to use it?

Corkboard (from Ayluro) does exactly this -- you press a hot key or click a menu bar icon, and a transparent "corkboard" appears. You can either paste or drag-and-drop items onto the corkboard, then hide it. If your machine crashes, or if you need to restart it, no problem -- the items that you've pinned to the corkboard are there. When you're ready to use those items (text, sound, pictures, etc..), just open Corkboard and drag them into the receiving app.

Corkboard accepts many types of media, and Ayluro has created a framework so other applications can work seamlessly with Corkboard. It's currently a time-limited beta (download here) with an introductory price of $12.99. Developer Jonathan Grynspan expects the app to leave beta in early 2009. Give it a try!