Month: April 2008

Have you ever thought that your computer can help scientists solving critical world problems like cancer, AIDS and global warming? This can be achieved thanks to distributed computing. This technology allows to use your computer as if it were just one of many CPUs all joined via the net to form a supercomputer. Once it has processed a package of data it connects to a centre to upload the results and download new materials.

If just a small percentage of the world’s estimated 650 million PCs were doing so, it would result in the creation of a huge amount of calculating power, enough to solve problems that would otherwise take years. You can help find cures for diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, search for cosmic gravitational waves (whatever they are) or help in the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence. There are many projects you can join and two main platforms you can install:

• BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is a free, open-source software. You can select which of the nine projects to help.
• WCG (World Community Grid) is founded by IBM and currently hosts 5 projects.

When choosing a project, always check the intellectual property of the results which have to be available to the whole scientific community. Some projects that at the moment need particular help are Rosetta@Home, Einstein@Home, SIMAP, World Community Grid, specifically Human Proteome Folding and FightAIDS.

Other three interesting and easy ways on how digital technologies can help us to make a difference with not a great effort are:

The Hunger Site, where you click in the main page the ‘give’ button to see lots of little banner which should pay to sustain different projects, from protecting the rain forest to sustain the research against breast cancer.

FreeRice, where you play a challenging word game and for every right answer you donate grains of rise distributed by the United Nations World Food Program.

Kiva, where you can lend small amounts of money to people in developing countries to support their projects.

Among all the mail clients available for Mac, I consider Apple Mail to be one of the best. It’s easy to use, making it attractive to new users, yet has enough features to keep more advanced users pleased. Another major plus is that it comes preinstalled in your Mac.

What Apple Mail users don’t always know though is that their mail client can be complemented with a number of plugins, which perform specific actions. A good deal of indie Mac developers have worked on all sorts of plugins that add new features to Apple Mail, and most of them are generally pretty good.

You could spend some time looking for them on the web. Or you could start out by taking a look at these four useful plugins listed by MakeUseOf. Having tested them out myself, I do believe they improve the overall performance of Apple Mail and add necessary features to the client. Take a look at them and see which one you might need:

Mail.appetizer – Preview incoming messages when they’re downloaded without opening up Apple Mail. Also lets you mark messages as read or delete them straight from the notification window and display headers. Great if you receive a lot of emails and don’t want to waste time opening up the client at every moment. Mail.appetizer is still in Beta and may be a little bit unstable.

Letterbox – Change the normal Apple Mail interface to a three-column view. Best for widescreen monitors, it sort of reminds us of the explorer view. A good way to quickly browse through mailboxes, folders and emails.

Attachment Scanner – Because everybody’s forgotten to add an attachment to an email at least once. This program looks for words like ‘attached’ or ‘attachment’ in your message and warns you if you’ve forgotten to add your document.

Mail Act-On – You can’t properly master your inbox without rules. This little plugin is for the productivity junkies out there. It allows you to assign keystrokes to your rules, making them much more accessible.

The question with plugins is always which ones to choose. You don’t want to overload Apple Mail with plugins, and turn it into a memory hog. What I recommend is to try out the ones that sound interesting to you for a few weeks, and then based on your usage of them, only keep the ones you need. This also goes with browser extensions: every once in a while you need to check out the ones you have and get rid of those that you aren’t using.

I’ve never been much of a poetry fan although as I get older, I’m growing to appreciate it more. I guess part of the reason for this is that poetry is often about trying to describe and reflect deeper issues of life and meaning that you don’t really appreciate when you’re younger. However, while I’m growing an appreciation for reading it, I’d never dream of writing it.

If you’re simply lacking inspiration to get your poems out, then you can use a number of software tools to help you. VersePerfect is a good starting point as it has been written by experienced poets and helps you find that illusive rhyming word that you’ve spent all day trying to find. If it’s good enough to get a write-up in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, then it’s good enough for me. Virtual Poet meanwhile is an interesting if slightly simpler alternative aimed more at those that want something to help format and organise their poems. It’s designed more for short and sweet poems but features around 60,000 words to help them flow well.

If you’re a true poet at heart, then you’ll probably find computers a rather sterile tool with which to let your words flow. But before you pick up your pen and quill, try Visual Typewriter which replicates a real typewriter for a more authentic writing experience. And if you’re an old romantic, then light a candle and use Love Quotes to get your creative juices flowing and watch your loved one melt at your words.

Video converters are ten a penny these days, which generally means that you’ll come across as many good programs as terrible ones. Although you may not have excessively high technical requirements and may simply want to convert from one format to another it’s still best to go for a better known application.

You can find all sorts of reason for needing a video converter: it may be that you want to play a video for your iPod, or your video player only supports one format, or you need to post your video on the web and are looking for a file type that doesn’t take too much space. The reality is, considering the number of video devices that we use in our lives, converting almost becomes an obligatory task. And you want to get it right, so that the movie that comes out on the other side possibly looks as good as it was at first. Here we list up what we consider the best video converters for Mac and let you know why:

• Sorenson Squeeze – Pro choice for converting and encoding to any video format. Excellent for Flash.
• Reelbean – An all-in-one exporter, converter and media player.
• RoadMovie – Batch encode, add subtitles and upload to the web.
• ffmpegX – Handles all sorts of formats and subtitles. A must!
• HandBrake – A Mac fan favorite for ripping and converting DVDs to MPEG4.
• MediaFork – inspired by HandBrake, it may be a little easier to use.
• VisualHub – Quickly convert to any video format and prepare for DVD.
• iSquint – A free version of VisualHub, with a little less features.
• iPod Video – As the name suggests, it’s your one stop shop to convert any video or audio to iPod format.
• Flash Decompiler Trillix – Extract objects from a SWF or convert to FLA.

My favourite games have always been racing games and I remember the days when racing against a friend involved being in the same room and even sometimes using the same keyboard. Nowadays, however, distance is no issue. You can race against buddies in any part of the globe as long as they’ve got a fairly decent internet connection. The only question is, which game do you choose? There are so many great racing games out there that’s it’s not easy to choose but these 5 must surely rank as a selection of the best ever made that can also be enjoyed against online opponents:

Need For Speed Carbon – Amazing graphics, blistering circuits and superb gameplay

KartRider – Fun cartoon style karting game that you can play against up to 8 players

Drag Racer – Pimp your car for a super-smashing ride

Drift City – Take to the streets of San Francisco in a world without oil

Street Challenge – Impressive free street racing game with lots of depth and levels