Author: Cyril Roger

Sourceforge.net, the biggest open source software development site, with over 100,000 hosted projects and more than a million users, just announced the winners of their Community Choice Awards for 2008. News of the event was surprisingly quiet, except in open source circles, even though it was open to any open source project, and not just the ones hosted on Sourceforge.net. It’s a shame that the event didn’t get more coverage, as it seemed to differ from what you normally expect of software ceremonies. A simple look at the category listing and you’ll see what I mean.

Most notable categories were ‘most likely to be the next $1B acquisition’, ‘most likely to be ambiguously and baselessly accused of patent violation’ and ‘most likely to get users sued by anachronistic industry associations defending dead business models’. You’ll get it, this event was much more than just about handing out trophies. It was an opportunity for Sourceforge.net and the open source community to speak their mind.

OpenOffice.org and phpMyAdmin were the big winners of the Community Choice Awards, picking up respectively three and two little statues (or whatever it is Sourforge.net handed out to them). VLC, which is clearly the most flexible and easy to use video player, picked up the prize for best multimedia, while Linux was hailed as ‘most likely to change the world’.

If the category titles are making you a little skeptic, just check out the names of the sponsors for the event: Microsoft, Mozilla, The Linux Foundation are but a few that helped make this possible. The finalists also include many applications that certainly would have deserved to win such  as the XAMPP Apache distribution or the Drupal and XOOP content management systems. If you failed to participate this year, make sure at least that you check out some of the winners.

Think your wallpaper looks bad? Wait till you’ve looked at the selection Macenstein came up with. I’ve rarely seen a bad wallpaper on a Mac, first because the default ones generally look pretty, and second because Mac users tend to be very concerned with the general appearance of their machine.

Lack of taste, yet, is everywhere. Macenstein’s list is a perfect example. Among the 21 different wallpapers chosen, you’ll find a strangely ‘swastika’ looking crop circle, a seedy casino billboard, and a PowerMac surrounded by two ladies in bikini. Some have gone for the celebrity endorsement style, although in a very awkward way, like you’ll see with the Jake Gyllenhaal and the Dawson’s Creek wallpapers. Worst of all though are the wallpapers that fit in an Apple motto or logo with an image that has absolutely nothing to do it with such as Superman, an Indian chief or a picture of Nelson Mandela and a ‘Think Black’ motto.

I hope you are not twisted enough to actually dare use one of these wallpapers. If you really want a beautifully designed desktop background, I suggest turning to UsingMac’s list of 90 wallpapers, all which are discreet variations on the Apple logo itself, with varying colors, viewpoints and contrasts. The bottom of the list pays hommage to the Leopard platform with different takes on the feline creature. A universe apart from the ones mentioned before. With the hordes of Apple crazy designers out there you’re guaranteed to find great looking material from people that love the operating system. It’s hard to pick out a favorite, but my preferences probably go to the Apple Vortex, Crashed Apple and Flaming White Apple.

Anyway, take a look at both lists and see if there’s any wallpaper you’d fancy putting up on your Mac.

Have you ever used the Bluetooth connection settings on your Mac? It allows you to connect wirelessly with any mobile phone, PDA, keyboard, mouse or other Bluetooth-enabled electronic device and easily exchange information in a short range. Bluetooth is very simple to set up, as easy as opening up Airport access and is as effective. You may not know this, but more and more applications now have some sort of Bluetooth capability. Although most are related to some sort of mobile device, you will find more traditional Mac applications that handle the wireless connection protocol. I’ve singled out a few. Let me explain to you how they use Bluetooth.

• Bluetooth Texter – Nifty little Dashboard widget that connects to your mobile device via Blutooth and uses it to send SMS messages.
• Phone Wallpaper X – Select and edit your wallpaper on your Mac then send it to your mobile phone via Bluetooth. Easy and quick way of updating the appearance of your mobile device.
• Delicious Library – The award winning cataloger lets you add new books, videos and more with a Bluetooth barcode scanner…if you have one at home. A quick way of scanning your items instead of using your iSight camera.
• wiSync – Still have an old iPhone model? If it’s jailbroken you can set up wiSync and make use of fast Bluetooth synchronization features. This will ensure you have the same files on  your iPhone and your Mac.
• SteerMouse – Make use of that snazzy Bluetooth mouse you bought recently. Assign functions, customize the scroll ball and set both speed and mouse movements.
• Booxter – Just like with Delicious Library, the Booxter cataloger lets you add items with a handheld Bluetooth bar code scanner. Small shops with a Mac will find this extremely handle to keep track of items.

In this switchers series, I look for the best PC program in its category, find a Mac counterpart, and explain why it’s better, all in the hope that those of you that are still on PC will be tempted to switch, and those that are on Mac hopefully discover something new. We started off last week by looking at common computer tasks, like communicating with friends, exchanging emails or burning discs. It’s now time to take this series a little deeper and compare more specific PC and Mac applications. Today I want to focus on programs only related to internet, albeit without counting browsers, messengers and mail clients as these were already covered last week.

The term ‘internet application’ is pretty vague, especially nowadays when we are connected most of the time anyways.  This is why I’ve limited this list to very specific applications: BitTorrent clients, P2P tools, download managers, RSS readers, Usenet clients and FTP programs. I’ve tried to pick what I consider the best application in each category for both Mac and PC, however give a shout if you think there is a better program than the one mentioned.

• uTorrent – Transmission – uTorrent is fast, lightweight and gives you extensive information on torrents. Transmission does all that AND has a speed limit mode, filtering and priority settings.
• Ares Galaxy – Acquisition – It’s no surprise that Ares is so popular with PC users. It offers a large network, is fast and responsive and isn’t bogged down in features. Acquistion can search both the Gnutella and BitTorrent networks and has a beautiful and structured interface.
• Internet Download Manager – Leech – Heavy duty downloaders will like having a program to handle all their files. Leech keeps downloads well organized, adds password protection and lets you mark URLs for future downloads.
• Abilon – Times – News junkies will appreciate having a powerful desktop RSS reader. While Abilon for PC is both attractive and powerful, I prefer the original newspaper view of the Mac Times reader , the way you can stack articles to read and toggle feeds and pages.
• UseNeXT – Unison – Addicted to newsgroups? UseNeXT provides a great way to browse through them and download at once. Unison for Mac is nothing short of impressive though: simple and intuitive, yet filled with features like multiple browser views, grouping and easy server setup.
• SmartFTP – Transmit – The Mac client still beats the feature rich SmartFTP thanks to Amazon S3 support, handling of remote URLs, droplets and a functional interface.

Let me be honest with you: my goal here is to clearly push you to ditch your PC for a Mac. How am I going to manage this? I will use a series of posts, starting with this one, where I recommend a Mac application for every PC program you might use. And to top it off, I’ll prove to you that each and every one of these Mac programs is better than their PC counterpart. In this first post we start off with basic apps, you know, the essential programs you use every day to do things like communicate with friends, work on documents or connect to the internet.

Outlook Express – Apple Mail – Finding Outlook Express excruciatingly slow every morning at startup? Apple Mail always starts up in a flash. Another thing I’m really surprised with Outlook Express is the lack of a truly effective search tool, where Apple Mail makes use of the lightning fast Spotlight. Add to that the great templates in Mail and the wide choice of third party plugins and you have a clear winner in Apple Mail.

Windows Live Messenger – Adium X – Why put up with the advertisement-ridden Live Messenger when you can use the open source and highly customizable Adium? The Mac messaging client lets you connect to almost any IM protocol like AIM, MSN or Jabber and can be customized with all sorts of icons, audio, styles and script. True it doesn’t offer voice or video chat yet, but you’ll still get encrypted Off The Record messaging.

Microsoft Office – iWork’08 – This one is a no brainer. iWork’08 is cheaper, smoother and creates better looking documents, particularly presentations under Keynote. You’ll also be able to work with any Microsoft Office document, whether Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

Internet Explorer – Safari – Apple’s homemade browser loads twice as fast as IE and integrates perfectly with Keychain, so your online account data is always safe and sound. The sleek metal view and clear bookmark also contrast with IE’s convoluted interface.

Nero – Roxio Toast Titanium – I’ve always found Nero too bloated a program and draining on PC resources. Roxio Toast Titanium on the other hand is much easier to use and offers a streamlined process so that disc of yours is catalogued, burned and ready to watch in no time. It now lets you watch movies on your iPhone and mix your own sounds.

Apple’s big event last week was marred by delays, glitches and errors. Many sources claim the Cupertino firm was simply too ambitious. You can’t expect to try and launch four products at the same time and get everything running smoothly. If it wasn’t Apple stores delaying their opening time, or activation of new iPhone 3Gs taking longer than expected, it was Apple’s servers having a hard time dealing with both new customers and older iPhone users downloading the iPhone 2.0 software update.

The launch of Apple’s updated and revamped .Mac service, which is now called MobileMe, and should offer seamless synchronization between all your services, was also particularly disappointing. A high level of demand on Apple servers caused the service to run very slowly and many users complained that it took an excessively long time to load the Address Book. Some customers simply could not log on to it or found the MobileMe site to be unavailable. Apple has kept surprisingly silent over the range of troubles the launch had to suffer, but it seems all services are now slowly getting back to normal. Unfortunately, for many customers, it will be hard to forget such a disappointing event.

While you wait for Apple to fix all the issues with MobileMe, why not try using a synchronizing tool that will keep your iCal and Google calendars always up to date? Here are a few good alternatives that will get the job done for you.

•  Spanning Sync – Merges your Google and iCal calendars quickly and easily.
• BusySync – Share and edit iCal calendars with anyone online.
• Scalp – Share your iCal calendars with others via FTP.
• gsync – Syncs your iCal and Google calendars seamlessly.

Only a few hours to wait (9 AM Pacific Time) and Apple will unveil its new Mobile Me service, iPhone 3G and App Store. This last one may simply be the biggest news of all. Ever since Apple released its iPhone Developer Kit enthusiasm among independent developers has been incredibly strong, reflected by the sold out WorldWide Developer Conference, which was largely dedicated to the iPhone.

Although, typically, little information has leaked on the App Store, Steve Jobs has mentioned that already 500 different applications will be available, with a quarter of them being free while the rest should only cost a max of $9.99. Also, according to the New York Times, a third of the applications will be games. The rest will have its fair share of educational, communication, productivity and other sorts of programs. Forbes states that Apple will take a 30% cut on the sale of any iPhone application, and in the long term developers will be able to set their own prices.

We’ve already seen demos of many iPhone apps and games in the last few months, but with the imminent launch of the App Store I’ve noticed many video demos are now unavailable. A case of Apple cracking down just to make sure all eyes are on the App Store? In any case I’m anxious to see how all these applications will make use of the most exciting iPhone features like Multi-Touch and its different sensors.  Apple is entering a whole new territory here, but it seems they’ve got everything well covered. One more market conquered?