MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 1st]” plus 8 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 1st]
- 3 Sites to Get Your Medical Questions Answered by Experts for Free
- The Best Free Audio Recorder For The iPhone
- Twones (Alpha) – Stumble, Discover, Bookmark and Share Music From Around The Web
- The Truth About the Stalker Tracker on Facebook
- 7 Tips For Effective Facebook People Search
- How To Create Your Own Portable App For A Flash Drive
- OpenShot – Finally, An Excellent Free Video Editor For Linux
- 15 Must-Have Free Apps For Your Mac & Giveaway
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 1st] Posted: 01 Mar 2010 07:31 PM PST Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
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| 3 Sites to Get Your Medical Questions Answered by Experts for Free Posted: 01 Mar 2010 05:30 PM PST
Often, diagnosing illnesses and symptoms can be extremely simple. Learning more about the condition that you have educates you, so you can make an informed decision on whether or not you should then seek medical attention or deal with it yourself.
Editor’s note: MakeUseOf is in no way advocating self-diagnosis and/or treatment. This is merely a source of information. If you require medical attention, do not hesitate to visit a healthcare professional. Medical Questions Answered Free – Ask Medical DoctorThis is a simple site with thousands of answered questions already in its database. It's really simple to use and is held in a very high esteem by its users. Along the top of the site there are various categories and links to the doctors' profiles and recent questions. There is also a ticker tape running across the top of the screen with numerous conditions including everything from Autism to Cancer and STIs.
The homepage consists mainly of this question form which you enter your medical query into. The response time varies much in the same way replies to comments on a blog vary. Whenever there is a doctor on call, then your questions should be answered. 24 hours would be the maximum you'll be waiting. However, you may not need to even 'ask' your question. As I mentioned above, there are thousands already answered so performing a search or sifting through one of the categories along the top of the site may be quicker. Med HelpMedHelp is a form of medical social network with over 9 million visitors per month. The community is made up of users and experts (experts are clearly marked). Registration is required to partake in the community. I think this is to keep you coming back and hopefully spread your own knowledge.
What I liked most about this site was that the community answers questions as well as experts. Obviously, the community could only answer general knowledge questions from their own experience. But with such a large amount of users there is bound to be someone there who went through it before you did. There is also user forums and dictionaries to look up medical jargon (this is very useful) and profiles of various health centres and treatments.
The community on MedHelp are supportive, mature and above all else, backed up by experts in their fields who keep the conversation accurate and dole out excellent advice to those who need it. The site also offers numerous tools and web apps to help you keep fit and track recovery data. Ryan profiled those here a few months back. MD AdviceThis website is also great for having your medical questions answered. When you first log onto the site, click 'Ask and Expert' in the left-hand column. This will bring you to the a page where you can submit your question to the doctor and receive a reply via email. There is also a vast library of previously answered questions, like the sites above. They also have loads of articles and information on the website such as 'Drug Information' and the 'Health Library'. The Health Library is the reason I chose MD Advice. It's packed with loads of common injuries and illnesses such as sports injuries and pregnancy along with health advice and nutrition. Furthermore, there is a community message board and also live chat rooms for both the expert and the members.
Always remember though, information found on the Internet should only be secondary to that of a doctor who you can meet in person and have checks done. For medical emergencies and extreme cases with a sense of urgency, it's best to visit your doctor. So there you go. Before you rush off to the doctors next time, check to see if your symptoms are something which can be treated at home. Which online medical services do you use? Image Attribution: Deadstar 2.0 Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| The Best Free Audio Recorder For The iPhone Posted: 01 Mar 2010 03:30 PM PST
Even though you may not need a lot of advance features in an audio recorder for iPhone, when a company like Blue Microphone offers a free, more feature rich alternative application, you might as well take advantage of it. There are more than a few audio recorders for the iPhone and iPod on the market. Blue Microphone even sells four other portable recording apps, but its free option works wonderfully well, and provides useful features that Apple itself could incorporate in its Memo app.
What makes Blue FiRe a better audio recorder for iphone is the ability to scroll through, bookmark, and set timings for recordings. When you launch Blue FiRe, it provides you with a page of instructions to get you started. It also includes a 5-minute recording of instructions that explains its other features. Listening to the instructions are not as good though as having an audio-visual manual, but it does walk you through step-by-step the features that may not be obvious when using the app. The sound quality is great, providing settings for low (11.025 kHz), medium (22.050 kHz) and high (44.1 kHz), and you can record or export in WAV, AIFF, or CAF (Apple's Core Audio Formats) formats. RecordingsBlue FiRe has the standard “start and stop” recording, but it includes features for doing automatic recordings without having to push buttons. You can set up the feature to detect sounds at a certain threshold level. Set it to a low threshold and it will detect voices in a room and stop the recording when very little or no sound is detected. You can even set a time to end a recording. This is great for dictating notes and recording interviews and lectures. MarkersAll recordings are automatically saved and can be retitled. An info button in the menu bar provides the time, date, file size, and length of recordings, but it also includes a feature to snap photos to capture the location of the recordings. And of course a winning app like this includes GPS settings for locations where recordings took place.
You can't edit out audio in recordings, but you can set and re-title markers for recordings, and also manually drag the playback head and handle back and forth on the wave form to hear different parts of an audio. Blue Microphone really made this feature configurable, allowing users to set intervals for jumping to and back between markers. These features are seriously great for students, reporters, and audio enthusiasts. Exporting RecordingsWith Voice Memo, you can email and send recordings through SMS; however, this can’t be done with Blue FiRe. But Blue FiRe does provide features for wirelessly exporting recordings via FTP transfer to a designated website, or even faster using the built-in web server download. Just click the browser button on the bottom left of the menu bar, link your desktop web browser to the designated URL, and all your saved recordings will appear for download in one of three audio formats. Blue FiRe allows for up to two gigs of recording time.
You can fine tune other settings in Blue FiRe and save them as your default. Blue Microphone packed lots of features in this app. It is optimized it for their portable Mickey microphone for the iPhone and most iPods. But if your portable device includes a built-in speaker, Blue FiRe still works without Mickey.
So my advice to take advantage of this free offering– Blue Microphone's Blue FiRe [iTunes link]. You never know when such an app may come in handy. If you do lots of recordings on your iPhone or iPod, let us know what you use. Related posts
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| Twones (Alpha) – Stumble, Discover, Bookmark and Share Music From Around The Web Posted: 01 Mar 2010 01:30 PM PST
Come to think of it, iTunes is just a slice of the pie. I don't have the figures for the number of musical sites on the web but I am sure it must be crossing over to the thousands. If one closes down, a few more will pop up in its place. We are spoilt of choice and at times, it's even difficult to pick one. Now, here's a web service on the horizon that's like a track marker as we wade through the internet listening to one tune after the other. It's still in alpha but Twones promises much to the average music lover.
It started off by allowing users to bookmark and share music and songs from 25 of the leading online music streaming services, but since then it has opened up to blogs and other sites too. Twones finds out these sites and spontaneously discovers it for our ears. Think of it as the StumbleUpon for songs. And just like StumbleUpon, the power of Twones is located in its toolbar. Also, just like the browsing service, you need to create a free account to keep all the information in one online location. The Music Bar is where it all isThe Twones Music Bar is the vehicle which helps us traipse across the web, across music services and blogs and locate songs to listen too. The Twones Music Bar can be installed as an addon for Firefox (support for other browsers are planned).
The songs can be played and paused from the music bar. The Music Bar also has four tools for four uses – Bookmark tracks
While listening to a track, you can click on the star icon and add the track to your playlist. Get more Intel on the track
The little 'i' icon stands for Band Buzz…it gives you some details on the artist and the track that's currently playing. Share musicTell the world what you are listening too with Twitter and Facebook to share music and songs you like. Discover music
Click the Random Track button and you will be taken spontaneously to a site which plays host to music of any kind. The songs are played on the site itself, as intended originally. Twones just 'discovers' the site for you. It's quite easy to lose our way in the jungle of music if we don't have a good tracking device. Twones has its own which can be opened up as a sidebar within the browser (Click on My Music).
The Bookmark button does the job. The process is one touch – as soon as the track loads and starts playing, click the bookmark star and the box for the playlist opens up. You can define a new playlist or let existing playlists auto-complete in the field by typing the first few characters. Tracks can be auto-posted to Twitter or Facebook and even scrobbled to your Last.fm playlist.
The sidebar keeps you in the know with your own activities and those of your friends. Keep tabs on your playlists. The little search box is useful for searching tracks among your favorites. You can also check out public downloads, other users and sites to browse from the sidebar.
Twones goes very well with 'tunes'. It's just as fun as the novelty of StumbleUpon was (and is). Twones is still in Alpha, so some quirks are expected, commonly some songs refused to load in the Music Bar. It also just might take you down a few blind alleys where there aren't songs to be found. A way to search for songs should be a definite plus when the site rolls out completely. But hey, when it's free music and an alpha service why quibble in the first place. In the end, if you are a music lover, you wouldn't mind the misses. With more development, the hits will come to the fore. Try it out…stumble a few times and let us know what you discover. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| The Truth About the Stalker Tracker on Facebook Posted: 01 Mar 2010 11:30 AM PST
Additionally, I’m going to try to satisfy the demand for legitimate services that might not be “Stalker Tracker” on Facebook, but it provides at least some of the visitor tracking features you may be looking for. And anyway, I really should write something nice to make up for writing that article about how to use social engineering to view someone’s private Facebook profile.
In a very short time frame, the app was removed from Facebook due to serious privacy concerns. At this point, Facebook will not allow any service or code on anyone’s profile that violates the privacy of Facebook members – and that includes the privacy people feel entitled to when they view your profile. This is unfortunate, because even if you follow the sort of rules Tina outlined to avoid getting stalked, sometimes stalking happens, and it would be good to know so that the person can be blocked. The History of Stalker Tracker on FacebookThe major push of the Stalker Tracker sort of scams took place in 2007 when the Blue China Group ran a scam against MySpace users called Stalker Tracker. Operating from a website called StalkerTrack.com (no longer active), the group offered MySpace members the promise of seeing what users were “stalking” their profile most often. As with many of these sorts of scams, the site lists the service as in “Beta” testing, or otherwise not yet active, but users can sign up for the service using their MySpace (or in today’s version, Facebook) ID and password. Newer versions go by Facebook Profile Tracker, Profile Tracker, Stalker Tracker for Facebook, or some other variation. Ultimately, every one of these apps is set up to do one thing and one thing only – scam you and hijack your account. Let me make this very clear – Facebook Privacy Rules do not allow for publicly opening up member viewing activities. There’s no getting around this rule, no matter what some third party application vendor promises. Are There Any Facebook Profile Trackers That Work?Even though there’s no way to see who’s viewing your profile, there’s still a tremendous demand out there, particular among the growing population of Facebook users, for some kind of tool to see who’s viewing your profile. There are ways to see some of the activity that takes place on your profile page, but the solutions are by no means going to show you the identity of your visitors. At one point, there was even a solution called Stalker Checker, or Stalker Check, which really did allow you to see which members were most active on your profile. It was called the Facebook StalkerCheck.
While the application couldn’t show you who was viewing your account, it did show you the people who were posting or otherwise most active on your account. Now, this isn’t exactly telling you anything you don’t already know, but it had a number of people up in arms because it did show a spouse or significant other whether or not particular people (like a former girlfriend) were constantly keeping in touch with you on Facebook through profile or photo comments. Not exactly a privacy issue per se, but apparently Facebook has once again decided to pull the plug on yet another application that monitors user activity in some way. On August 19th of last year, Stalker Checker posted the following comment to their fan page: “(To all old fans) Facebook have done something to the Stalker Check group. We dont know what has happend, but are trying to get contact whit someone from the facebook office. The group was totaly gone this morning. We have now restarted the group. And hope you all can join again! We had alot of fans so if you out there… could help us bring some fans back it would be great! Thanks!” Clicking on the application link for Stalker Checker turns up the following error.
It appears that even an app that simply aggregates user activity on your profile is no longer allowed on Facebook. However, being the crafty geek that you are, you know that wherever HTML is allowed (like on your wall), there’s a way to monitor user view counts, at least. Monitoring Your Profile View Count With StatTrackerAny free tracking app that lets you embed HTML onto your web page to accumulate view count will work on your Facebook profile. The key is that you can’t use Javascript. So long as the code is only HTML, you’re good to go. In my case I chose StatTracker because it’s free and easy to use.
Just sign up and then fill in the project settings (none of it really matters, you’ll need need to remember the title you define here for when you want to check your stats). Next, make sure you choose the invisible tracker.
This way no one sees that you’re keeping track of your visitor count! Next, make sure that you choose the HTML counter only. As the instructions advise, you won’t be able to track the visitor IP info or other identifying information, but that’s part of the reason Facebook doesn’t allow Javascript. At least you can see how many people are visiting your profile with the HTML counter!
Finally, you’ve got your code. Now let’s just go into Facebook and figure out where to insert that snippet. In your Facebook profile, if you don’t yet have the ability to insert “boxes” or otherwise add sidebar HTML onto your profile, you’ll need to add an application like “MyStuff” by Gigya, which is what I use. In “My Stuff,” you simply click “Add Code” and you can paste the code that will get added to your profile in the side Nav bar.
Once you’re done, everyone who visits your profile page will see a small, empty space.
Once you have this HTML pasted on your profile like this, any time someone visits your profile page, you’ll see the StatCounter numbers increase. Your stats page shows you how many visitors you’ve had up to a month back in time.
While this particular technique doesn’t exactly live up to the grand promises of apps like the Stalker Tracker on Facebook – there’s a big difference. This technique isn’t a scam. And while it won’t show you who’s stalking you on Facebook, it’ll at least show you how popular you are…or not! Do you know of any other ways to see how many people viewed your Facebook profile? Do you know of any Facebook apps that accomplish the same thing? Share your insight in the comments section below. em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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| 7 Tips For Effective Facebook People Search Posted: 01 Mar 2010 10:30 AM PST
Even if Facebook's Friend Suggestions does a wonderful job of helping you discover new friends, there are better ways to conduct a Facebook people search for those you are interested in. In this article, let us look at tips for doing a Facebook people search more effectively. We will cover both Facebook's inbuilt FriendFinder as well as a third-party application for advanced people search. Note that these searches find people based on the information they have entered in their Facebook profile.
Facebook People Search with FriendFinderFacebook Friend Finder is a collection of search tools to help you find people you know on Facebook. You can access the Friend Finder page from the Connect With Friends widget on the right sidebar on the Facebook homepage.
Let's see the different ways you can conduct a Facebook people search using Friend Finder. #1: Find People From Your Email Address BookFacebook can find people for you from your email address book. All major webmail services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail are supported.
If you use desktop email apps like MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, click the Upload Contact File link from where you can download an app for Outlook or upload contact lists from other apps. #2: Find ClassmatesBased on information in the Education and Work section of their profiles, Facebook helps you find former or current high school or university classmates.
#3: Find CoworkersSimilar to the Classmates search, you can also search for Coworkers in your past or current organizations by entering the name of the Company.
#4: Find People From Instant Messaging (IM) NetworksYou can simply enter your AOL, ICQ, or Windows Live Messenger credentials to let Facebook find your IM buddies. Advanced Search ApplicationAdvanced Search 2.0 is a better tool to search for friends on Facebook. Visit this link to access and install the application. If prompted to share your email address, click No, and click Click here to add the "Advanced Search" application link at the bottom. Click Allow in the Allow Access? prompt to proceed. Advanced Search first prompts you to fill out your profile and contact information to help others find you. You can choose to enter additional information about yourself if you like or leave it blank and click Save and Continue. You can optionally invite your friends to try the app or Skip that step. Finally, click Add Bookmark to access Advanced Search quickly from your profile.
After you complete these steps, you can access Advanced Search at any time by clicking the Applications link in your Facebook sidebar. #5: Find People by Age/Gender/Relationship Status/Star SignOn the Find People tab, you can search for people of a specific Gender and within a certain Age group. You can search by specific Relationship Status, or by their Star Sign. You can even search for people who have the same Birthday as you.
#6: Find People by Location (Country/Region)You can combine the above search restricting to a specific Country, Region, and City. For example, you can search for single people in your area according to their Star Sign and who they are interested in meeting. #7: Find People with Similar InterestsFor each of the above searches, you can further refine them to find people who share your interests. You can find people according to their Political preferences, or their Religious beliefs. You can restrict searches to people who are members of a Facebook Group.
Best of all, you can use this to find people who are fans of a specific Artist, Celebrity, Politician, Author, or Product/Company Facebook Fan Page. Using Advanced Search 2.0, you can mix and match these search criteria to your hearts content. This app currently indexes profiles of about 240 million people in its database. The lesser criteria you use, the more people you will find. Did you find new friends on Facebook using these tips? Let us know in the comments! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| How To Create Your Own Portable App For A Flash Drive Posted: 01 Mar 2010 09:30 AM PST
Personally, I have two flash drives on my keychain right now, and I can’t imagine how I ever got by without them. Thanks to the convenience of the modern thumb drive, I can copy documents or other important files onto a small drive that fits in a change pocket, and transfer them to another computer. This is in fact, what most people do with thumb drives–nothing special so far. Using your flash drive as a backup and transfer device is great–but you haven’t really unlocked the potential of the USB until you’ve installed some programs on it.
So, you found a really cool application and there was no pre-packaged version of it anywhere on the internet that would install it to your USB drive. Looks like it’s time to learn how to create a portable app for flash drive. Please note: I’m not referring to U3 flash drives; that’s a different ballgame in several ways (even though they can be used much the same way). The example application I’m going to make portable is Audacity, an open source audio editing program. You can download your own file, or follow along using Audacity (recommended for your first time) before you try this method on your own applications. Step 1: Download the application setup fileIf you’re following along, download the Audacity installation file. Make sure this download is relatively isolated or things will get confusing later. Step 2: Download Universal Extractor and WinRARDownload Universal Extractor and a program such as WinRAR. Install both programs–we need both to make this work. Make sure you allow both programs to associate with their respective file-types, and restart the computer if prompted–better safe than sorry. I didn’t need to restart, but it couldn’t hurt. Step 3: UniExtract the Setup fileRight click your downloaded setup file (in my case, it’s Audacity) and click “UniExtract here”. Go ahead and specify a folder that you would like to extract the setup file to. A folder will be created with the extracted files inside. Open up that folder for the next step.
Step 4: Find the EXE file that runs the programIn that extracted folder, look for the .exe file that runs the program. It’s pretty easy to spot and usually has the same name as the program you’re trying to install. For instance, in my case, the .exe is named “audacity.exe”. Double click the file and verify that it runs the program successfully. Step 5: Pack all the files into an archiveHighlight every file in that folder, right click on them, and click “Add to archive” in the contextual menu.
In the resulting dialogue box, name your archive “Audacity Portable” or whatever you prefer. Under compression method, select “Best”, and be sure to check “Create SFX archive”.
Next, click the ‘Advanced’ tab and click “SFX Options…”. In “Run after extraction” field, input the name of the .exe file that you located in Step 4. In my case, the name was “audacity.exe”.
Head on over to the ‘Modes’ tab and select “Unpack to temporary folder” and “Hide all”
Lastly, go to the ‘Update’ tab and select “Overwrite all files”. Now go ahead and hit OK, and watch WinRAR generate an application file. Step 6: Copy the file to your USB driveThis step is pretty self explanatory. Drag the application to your USB drive (wherever you want it to be) and then give it a test run! Double click the application to run it–on any Windows machine! This version of Audacity is Windows only. So to sum things up, we essentially found a file we wanted, extracted it, and then repackaged it with a few of our own preferences thrown in. Every time you click the application, it’s actually going to briefly unpack the file into a few hidden folders so that the .exe has access to the resources it needs. This means that the app takes about 2 seconds or so longer to execute (depending on the size of the app), but it will execute seamlessly. What do you think? Did this process work for you? I personally like this method, but there are others out there that can also work (like copying the entire program folder from the program files directory). Unfortunately, the other methods I’ve tried have been unreliable. The general rule of thumb for the method I’ve shown here is that if the .exe in step 4 executes successfully, the process will also be successful and you’ll be able to pack it all into an application file. I hope you enjoyed this article and found its contents useful. Let me know what you think in the comments section! em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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| OpenShot – Finally, An Excellent Free Video Editor For Linux Posted: 01 Mar 2010 08:30 AM PST
The tool should be powerful yet simple to use so that average Joe can use it easily. Windows and Mac have had good video editing tools for sometime now, Linux had a big void in this area until recently. The void has been filled by OpenShot. It is truly amazing and the best, free video editor out there for Linux, suiting the needs of many.
OpenShot will be available via Ubuntu Software Center starting with Lucid Lynx. Till then you would have to add the PPA to software sources. Go to System > Administration > Software Sources, on to the other sources and add the following lines:
Then issue the following command:
You are now set to issue: “sudo apt-get install openshot“. Just issue the command and rest will be done for you. Once installed, you can find OpenShot listed under Applications > Sound & Video. Fire it up and lets see what all it can do. The OpenShot site has a complete list of features, some of the more useful ones that one would expect in a good video editor are the likes of templates, transitions with live previews, audio mixing and editing support, compositing, watermarks and the ever so popular Ken Burns effect (the one you get in most slide shows these days in which the various images are zoomed and panned over)
The interface is typical of a video editor. You have the timeline at the bottom, a project/resource area to the left and a video preview towards the right. Transitions and effects can also be accessed via tabs on the project/resource area. First off, you need to add the files you want to work on. OpenShot can be used to create a video out of your photos or you can use it to edit existing videos as well.
Once the files are added, you can then click and drag resources onto the time line. Use drag and drop to arrange and re-arrange the resources as you please. You can simply click and resize the duration for which an object will be visible in the finished video. Hit the space bar and you get an instant preview of how the window will look like. You can also drag and drop transitions and effects on to the timeline. It is as easy as that!
OpenShot also lets you create title and text that you might want to add to your video. There are a number of styles and templates to choose from. To create a new title go to the Projects menu and choose New Title. OpenShot gives you a new window where in you can choose the template to use and create title/captions for your video.
When you are done click on File > Export Video and you can choose a format that best suites you. OpenShot uses FFmpeg so a variety of common and not so common video formats are supported! Overall, OpenShot is an excellent free video editor for your Linux desktop. In fact, I find it easier and more intuitive and won’t mind booting into Linux especially for editing video. It’s my video editor of choice when compared with other available free video editors for Linux. Know of a better tool or have a tip to share? Well here is your chance, sound off in the comments section! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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| 15 Must-Have Free Apps For Your Mac & Giveaway Posted: 01 Mar 2010 07:30 AM PST
The very first Mac article ever published by MakeUseOf was about Things. That was about 2 years ago. Since then we’ve continued to serve the Mac community well, publishing over 300 articles. While reviewing apps, part of the job description is testing them out. After we’re done, we ask ourselves the golden question, “Is this app a keeper?” That’s what this list is all about — those apps that eventually find a permanent place on our Macs to call Home. Everyone should have these installed, regardless of what you use your Mac for.
Dropbox
Sign up for a free account and you automatically get 2GB to share with your friends. Set up shared folders and anything you drop will be instantly downloaded by others. Need mobile access to your files? There’s an iPhone app just for that.
AppFresh
AppFresh is what you want. It will scan through all of your installed apps, plugins, preference panes, widgets and spew up the results in a matter of seconds. All the information you need to see will be laid out in front of you: latest version number, currently installed version, release date, release notes. It’s a geek’s all-you-can-eat buffet.
Adium
Adium supports a wide range of chat protocols from MSN to Facebook to ICQ to Gadu Gadu. If you use it, Adium supports it. Adding to its list of features, Adium is also hugely customisable in both its theme and functionality. Check out the addons that the Adium community has to offer.
The Unarchiver
To mention a few, it supports and unarchives RAR, ZIP, Tar, 7-Zip, Stuffit, CAB, MSI and even EXE files. The only format it cannot unpack is ACE. But that’s hardly a worry. Besides being clever, The Unarchiver is also efficient. You can click on as many RAR or ZIP files for it to unpack but it will never overwork your system. Instead, it will queue the files and unpacks them individually.
Transmission
It’s simple and minimalistic, it’s lightweight, it’s fast and there are a lot of cool things you can do with it. It will be a long time before I part with this trusty app.
AppCleaner
There will be a couple of mystery files left on your Mac. They won’t do much harm but since you’re uninstalling an app, chances are, you won’t need these files lingering on your Mac. AppCleaner solves this debacle. Drag any file you want to uninstall into AppCleaner and it will display all the related files. Make sure that you agree and click Delete. Goodbye, remnants!
Skitch
Skitch is one of the most basic yet impressive image editors for Mac. It is capable of saving images to JPG, PNG, PDF, BMP, TIF, GIF and SVG. That should cover most of your image-saving needs. I mainly use Skitch for simple image manipulations like resizing, cropping, converting to other formats and annotations. It’s quick and I love the fact that I know the output file size even before saving the file. Skitch also keeps a history of every file every edited. It may not sound like much but that’s what I love it for. I can turn the History viewer on and conveniently grab a file which I modified a week ago.
Perian & VLC
I would probably be at the wrath of the Guillotine of Tech if I used the word “video” and didn’t follow it quickly with “VLC”. For years, VLC has reigned cross-platform champion as the most capable video player. Macs are no exception.
iStat Menus
iStat Menus makes this information easily attainable — on your menubar. At the cost of some menubar-estate, this preference pane will add vital information like CPU usage, temperature, memory usage, network activity and other goodies to the top of your screen where it’s visible at all times. Sure, this may go against Apple’s teachings but hey, we’re geeks — we need to know everything that’s going on, all the time.
OnyX
Think of OnyX as a strict physician. It inspects and examines your Mac for anything that might seem wonky and straightens out all the kinks. It can also clean out old log files and performs a series of automated maintenance to keep your Mac healthy.
Teamviewer
Teamviewer is one of the best zero-configuration remote-support applications that’s available. Period. And since it’s also available for Mac, why not take advantage of it? Even if you’re not on the receiving end, having Teamviewer installed is really convenient if you are your family’s tech-support team.
Quicksilver
With a couple of quick keystrokes, sending an email or transferring files can be as simple as launching an application. But don’t be fooled, it’s not a simple app launcher. It can do so much more! It definitely takes a bit of getting used to but it’s highly rewarding once you’ve honed the skill. In fact, you may feel slightly disabled if you’re on a Mac without Quicksilver.
Bean & TextWrangler
Bean is has slightly more features, supporting Word documents. Aside from that, it also launch amazingly fast! Bean is an alternative to using Microsoft Word on my Mac. Since I don’t work with Word documents that often, there’s no point in forking the money over to buy a copy.
I use TextWrangler for different purposes, mainly for what lacks in TextEdit — a word counter. It also supports coding and HTML, which is helpful on occasion.
Carbon Copy Cloner
With features like scheduled tasks and incremental backups, it’s almost a good as Time Machine (without the fancy interface). It allows you to make complete or selective backups of your Mac, backup to a networked Mac, backup to a disk image and even restore from one. Using Carbon Copy Cloner means freeing yourself from the backup schedules of Time Machine and having complete control over your backups.
Burn
Burn is a simple application that slips right into place. In fact, it’s so simple, it’s crazy. I messed around with it a bit by dragging an AVI and told it to burn a video DVD. I thought it would produce an error of some kind because only MPG files can be used. You know what Burn returned? “Would you like me to convert it for you?” I can’t believe this app is free.
So there you go. 15 apps worth having on every Mac. Have a favourite app that’s not on the list? Share it with us in the comments. Now on to some serious giveaway business. MakeUseOf 11-day Mac GiveawayNot all apps that we feature here must be free. In fact, some of the very best apps are commercial. The amount of effort put into them really makes them shine and so developers charge a small fee (and rightly so). We’ve managed to find 11 great must-have commercial Mac apps and decided to share them with you. Starting tomorrow, we will be offering one app to be given away daily for the next 11 days. We have an average of 15 licenses available for each individual application, so you’re well covered. The giveaways will operate almost like every other giveaway we’ve organised on MakeUseOf but with a few casual differences. For one, we will be unlocking 1 application giveaway every day. Winners will be announced as soon as the next giveaway begins. Secondly, you have to manually enter the giveaway to be eligible to win (aside from joining our Facebook fan page, that goes without saying) — we cannot pick winners from our Facebook fan pool, not everyone has a Mac. The rest of the rules are about the same. So, what do we have to offer? Can you guess what they are?
That’s right. The first app we’re giving away is Intego’s VirusBarrier x6. A standard license is worth £48 and offers protection on 2 Macs. We’ve got 10 licenses to give away. How do you get one? Tune in tomorrow. em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers! Related posts
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Highly regarded by productivists as the definitive must-have application, Quicksilver has finally won me over. Sure, its highlight may have been the Tiger-Leopard era but it still has its place in Snow Leopard.
I bunched these 2 apps together, not only because they’re both text editors or because they’re free. Rather, it’s because I simply couldn’t make up my mind.
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