Author: Cyril Roger

Windows: so you just got an iPhone and you’re desperately looking for a video? Koyote Free Video Converter is what you need: a free, easy video converter with support for all multimedia portable devices (PSP, Zune, iPod, iPhone…) so that you can enjoy your favorite movies on the go without struggling with a complicated converting tool.

Mac: You may have gotten used to Spotlight and set up your Dock with your favorite apps and folders, but are you still finding it hard to keep your Mac organized? Together quickly and easily stores anything and lets you keep files organized thanks to smart lists, labels, groups and notes. You can drag and drop elements between folders and make use of Spotlight at any time. Use it too much and you might not need the Finder ever again!

Symbian/Java phones: Bored of the same old default ringtones on your mobile phone? Then do something about it by using Create-Ringtone to make your own melodies. The software lets you change any of your WMA, MP3, WAV or Ogg files into a tone for your phone. You can make unlimited ringtones using Create-Ringtone!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mac Tricks And Tips have published a list of top 100 essential programs for Mac. It’s pretty often I come upon this type of post when looking for Mac news to give out. While the majority of them are often very similar, some differ on a few applications, depending on the writer’s interests and knowledge. This list, as you’ll find, is divided into six sections: computer files, internet, tools, little apps, multimedia and work. It would be hard to really pick out clear favorites in each category, but let me try out.

In computer files I’d single out the Quicksilver productivity app, because of its intuitiveness, UnRar X, because it is so precious when opening up archive files and AppZapper because it allows you to fully uninstall all associated files of a program.

My favorite Mac internet apps would definitely be the Transmission BitTorrent client, Adium for chatting on any IM service, Cyberduck to upload and download files and Unison to handle newsgroups.

Out of multimedia I’d single out the ultra versatile VLC player, Aperture for professional image editing, Google Earth for its originality and Pixelmator as an enjoyable alternative to Photoshop.

Of the so called little apps the only one that really stands out for me is iAlertU, an ingenious program for keeping thieves away from your Mac.

Moving on to tools, Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent and free backup solution in case you don’t have Time Machine, Coconut Battery is great to monitor your battery, and Growl is an essential tool to receive updates. Also check out Monolingual for translations and either Parallels or VMWare for virtualizations.

Last but not least, the best work tools for Mac are iWork as an office suite, Quicken for personal finance and Filemaker to organize your folders.