Month: August 2008

There are so many burning programs out there, that it can be tough to separate the wheat from the chaff. To be honest though, the quality and speed at which you burn CDs or DVDs almost wholly depends on your optical drive. I like how easy it is to burn discs on a Mac, but I still prefer to use a third party application, simply because they offer more features to work with. Here is a roundup of the best five burning programs for your Mac:

•  BurnAgain DVD – A good choice if working with CDRs,CDRWs or DVDRWs. As the name suggests this app is specialized at burning data on discs already containing material. What’s more it works in an incremental way, comparing what is on the disc with what you want to copy and only saving new material. Note that BurnAgain DVD preserves you profiles and configurations to make future burns faster.
• Roxio Toast Titanium – A full suite which allows you to burn, recover and backup data. Roxio Toast Titanium includes both TiVo and Blu-Ray support, making it a good choice if you want to make use of the latest technology. Thanks to a streamlined interface you’ll find the burning and backup processes to be relatively straightforward.
• ffmpegX – One of the best all time open source applications for Mac, ffmpegX is an excellent choice for ripping DVDs or CDs and converting them into any video format you want. It’s quick and reliable, handles subtitles and includes advanced settings so you can adjust video and audio parameters.
• MacTheRipper – Another excellent open source alternative, MacTheRipper is fast and reliable. It’s a very popular choice when ripping DVDs. One of my favorite bits with it is that you can precisely select what you want to keep or remove from the DVD.
• Disco – Not only those it have a great interface (just look at the smoke effect when it’s running), but Disco is also very efficient. Drag and drop your files, choose a destination, and let Disco do the wor. The application is unintrusive and burns discs quickly. A nice little detail is that, thanks to motion sensor, it can alert you if your Mac is moved around in a way that could mess up your burning session.

As the flame burns out in Beijing this weekend, marking the end of a memorable Olympics, so too does my PC-based version of the games. Over the last fortnight I’ve staged events in a variety of sports, including beach volleyball, table tennis, cycling and tennis. Having picked up two silver medals in the Games I intend to celebrate at my own closing ceremony.

To take care of the music for the big event I’ve installed Virtual DJ. The program lets me play and mix my tunes to send the crowds wild. Because of the program’s BeatLock engine, songs always stay in the beat, so you can work your mixes faster than ever. Of course, the dancers at the closing ceremony will have to learn their routines in order to keep in time with the music. For this, I’ve downloaded Dance, a rather neat little app that teaches more than 180 different dance moves through a series of easy-to-follow tutorials.

Refreshments for the closing ceremony come courtesy of the cocktail-mixing app Professional Bartender, which boasts more than one thousand drinks recipes to help the athletes (well, me) chill out after their efforts.

Of course, the whole thing finishes with a big fireworks display. And if the Chinese can use CGI to make their explosions look a little more impressive, then why can’t I install a few fireworks downloads? The pick of the bunch is the Flaredance Firework Screensaver, which simulates fireworks explosions in an exhilarating display. This Fireworks Wallpaper helps to ensure that your screen is still lit up if you decide to interrupt the screensaver.

Once the party’s over all that’s left to do is get hold of the Schmap London Guide to start planning my trip in 2012. I better start training now…

The Terminal isn’t known to be the most exciting application on your Mac, even though if you know how to use it it can be a pretty powerful one. Now most people that make use of it will probably not really worry about the way it looks as long as it works and lets them enter their commands the way they want. That shouldn’t stop you from wanting to spice up your Terminal a bit.

I’ve found a great application, iTerm, which gives a proper Cocoa styled interface to the Terminal. Not only does it add a proper menu bar with buttons for the most important functions, like opening a new Terminal window, closing it or viewing extra information. iTerm also lets you add specific bookmarks and expecially features an execute bar, which is great for launching those all important commands. Overall to, it feels much nicer than the boring old Terminal window.

Another great tip I found, from Hongkiat, allows you to add any sort of custom greeting message in your Terminal window. Launch the Terminal then type sudo pico /etc/motd and enter your password. Type in your own MOTD (Message Of The Day) and press Control X to save. The custom message will appear at Terminal startup. You can change it any time you want.

Windows: Summer may not be the best season for real snowboard, so how about a virtual version? Project Powder is a free online snowboard simulator that enables you to compete against people from all over the world. Create your character, join the competition and make new friends while having fun and sliding down the most dangerous slopes!

Mac: There’s never going to be enough layers of security. Even on a Mac. The aptly-named Knox tool lets you create encrypted vaults to store all your sensitive documents. It features both 128 bit and 256 bit AES encryption and adding files to a vault is as simple as drag and drop. Note that Knox can also be of great use for secure backups and that it works perfectly with Apple’s Spotlight.

Smartphone: If you’re looking for a faster and easier way to play music on your Windows Mobile device then you may want to give Pocket Player a go. The app promises to give you more music for less taps, through multiple media and playlist formats, Internet connectivity, plug-in extensions, and an intuitive interface. The app supports a range of formats, including MP3, Ogg, WAV and WMA.

Ok, so we’re still in the middle of summer, so why would I want to talk about research papers? True, it’s not the most exciting of topics at this time of the year, but unfortunately it’s what many scholars around the world are working on right now. You may have a deadline and the important thing is to reach it with your paper completed.

Although you’ll probably find less specialized applications on Mac than on Windows, I’ve noticed three excellent applications that not only help you handle your references, but also search and organize your papers and journals. These are, in no particular order, Sente, Papers and Reference Tracker. For those of you looking for quality Mac applications to help you out on your research paper, here is a look at each application’s notable features:

• Sente – I really like this reference manager. It has an iTunes-like structure to store and organize your papers in smart folders. The search function lets you reach numerous university library catalogs, PubMed and the Web of Knowledge. Sente also lets you download and search PDFs and has a great tool to insert citations into any word processor.
• Papers – Very similar to Sente, in that it offers the same sort of interface and structure. Papers lets you search through dozens of specified search engines for scholars such as ACS Portal or Citeseer. The multi-tabbed interface is great to keep more than one journals open at once and you have quick access to discussion panels from the right of the interface.
• Reference Tracker – Probably not as complete as the other two, Reference Tracker is still a very good program to handle your references.  The app keeps all your citations stored in the Harvard formatted list style and includes ISBN lookup and Amazon search. Handy if you are starting to lose count of all the references for your research paper.

In previous articles, we’ve often dedicated time to extolling the virtues of Linux. However, as with Windows and Mac OS X, there are plenty of reasons why the OS with the penguin mascot might not be the best choice for your PC.

Here are our top 10 reasons why you should leave Linux to the geeks and stay loyal to your current OS.

1. Because you’re happy with your current OS

Open source software is all well and good, but when you think of what we actually do with our PCs (reading email, browsing the web, listening to music), there are equally good solutions available for Linux, Windows and Mac. So, why change?

2. You don’t need to know how to build a car if all you want to do is drive

If you can build, program and understand source code then you’re highly-skilled and well done to you. But not everyone wants to do that, nor does everyone have the time to learn. If you can turn on your PC, click a couple of icons and access your favourite programs with no fuss, that’s enough.

3. So as to not look like a geek

All those tech terms might sound cool to someone already using Linux, but let’s face the truth: almost nobody in your circle of friends knows much about this kind of stuff, and you sound weird when you start talking about Gnome, Gimp and Synaptic.

4. Plenty of software, but what about quality?

There are hundreds of applications for Linux but at the end of the day, how many do you really need? We’d rather have one (easy-to-install) program that works perfectly than dozens of tricky, complicated apps that only ever do half of what they’re meant to.

5. The terminal is the Antichrist and wants to destroy us

Linux has changed considerably, and in most cases everything is done via windows and mouse clicks. But the terminal is still there, lurking in the darkness just waiting for the moment when you’ll have to use it, so it can respond with messages like “Incorrect command! I don’t know what you’re saying to me…install more packages while you still have space, I’m telling root! Mount point! Mount point!”. Don’t do it. You can lose your patience and your friends if you spend too long in the Terminal Zone. Continue reading “10 reasons not to use Linux”

Spurred on by my silver medal in the cycling last week, I was full of confidence going into today’s tennis event in my PC-based version of the Olympics. The event, which I invented myself, was a knock-out tournament consisting of one-set matches against the computer. I installed three tennis games on my PC and needed to beat the computer at each in order to progress to the next.

The first round saw me take to the court in Tennis Elbow. The game lets you compete on a number of different surfaces and also includes a World tour mode where you can compete with up to 300 players in 125 tournaments. For now though it was just to be one set, which I won by a convincing 6-2 margin. I really enjoyed this one, not just because I won, but due to the realistic graphics and ball physics, which makes it a very natural feeling tennis sim.

Bizarrely, my semi-final saw me paired against a raccoon called Rubin, in Tennis Titans. The control method here is rather simplistic and just involves moving the mouse and using the cursor keys to direct the shot. Once I’d got my head around the game controls (and come to terms with the fact that I was a possum) I managed to dispatch my furry opponent by one set to love.

After these two relatively easy opening rounds, I felt sure that I would at last pick up a gold medal in the Virtual Olympics. However, I didn’t reckon on coming up against such a tough challenge as the one presented in Dream Match Tennis. At first I was in awe of the polished graphics and excellent game presentation, but my hopes exploded when I realized how difficult it was to play. I found serving almost impossible and the game ran very slowly on my PC which put me off my stride somewhat. I lost 6-0 and had to settle for the silver medal – my second of the Games. Time may be running out for me to claim gold, but I’m determined to get one before the week is out.

The release of Apple’s MobileMe service, which was meant to replace .Mac, has been pretty disappointing and is still not up to the standards you’d expect from an Apple product. To keep its users quiet, Apple have therefore decided to offer a free 60 day extension of the service. This will only be available to those that had a MobileMe account as of August 19th 2008. Users that have recently purchased an upgrade, plan to buy an upgrade or whose trial period is set to expire soon will also benefit from the 60 day extension.

This is not the first free extension offered by Apple for shortcomings in the MobileMe service. On July 15th, Apple already handed out a free 30 day extension to MobileMe users. It now looks like they’ll be needing a bit more time to bring MobileMe to a level that Mac users expect. The free extension will unfortunately likely mean that you will still have to put up with syncing errors, downtimes and trouble accessing email and contacts. Apple have set up a thorough troubleshooting page for solving simple issues with syncing in MobileMe.

In an internal memo to Apple employees, which Ars Technica published a few weeks back, Steve Jobs recognized that MobileMe had been released too early and that it was a mistake to launch it simultaneously with the iPhone 3G, the 2.0 Software Update and App Store. He also stated that the team should have introduced every new application of MobileMe (Mail, Calendar…) in 30 days intervals so as to make sure each one worked properly.

If you really can’t wait for MobileMe to be properly up and running, check out one of our previous posts giving you a choice of alternative syncing tools for Mac. If you’re eligible for the 60 day extension I’d still make use of it though. Once Apple put they’re mind to fixing something, you can normally guarantee that they’ll be true to their word.