Really hypnotizing stuff just take a look at the squint-eyed Icons..

Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. Only downside being that it does not support the Skype protocol … this would be a wish list item for 2008…

Cyberduck is an open source FTP and SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer) browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface, integration with external editors and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, the Keychain and AppleScript.
Great little tool that integrates perfectly with Smultron (Editor featured further below)

Firefox 2: The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. With Firefox 2, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better. What could I say that hasn’t been said before – hands down the best browser available today.

Download the Flickr Uploadr to drag in photos from your computer, add titles, tags and other metadata and upload them all to Flickr. Ok I’m a little biased as one of the perks for Yahoo! employees is a free Flickr Pro account. But hey regardless I love the platform and the uploader is just a must have tool

Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes). It’s a standalone application that can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Its a tool that goes to the answer to my prayers category. I mean come on Apple guys – I can only use my iPod with ONE *%^$^&&% Computer?
Just think about it I have a comupter at home and one at work and I want to use the iPod with both machines – unfortunately iTunes would not allow you to do so… but Floola is the answer. great little tool

iSquint is an iPod video conversion app for Mac OS X.
It’s many times faster than QuickTime Pro, works with almost all popular video formats, and it’s infinitely free-er.
It’s also really easy. Just drag in your file, and click Start.

As to my earlier iPod Touch article I love this one…

Quicksilver: A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.

In the end, Quicksilver has one very important effect: the effort of frequent tasks fades into the background and you are able to act without thinking. After an adaptation period, Quicksilver becomes an extension of yourself; the process fades away leaving only the results.

I’ve sung the praises for this tool before Quicksilver productivity suite

Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to not confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. I started to use it cause its free and integrates with my favorite OS X FTP client Cyberduck (see further up).

VLC – the cross-platform media player and streaming server

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Thats your one size fits all media player for the MAC – if the file doesn’t play with VLC player it will not play at all… really

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Top 10 Free MAC OS X Tools – I couldn’t live without

Some time last week I’ve updated my Mac OS X to the most recent Leopard distribution. I have to say that I still need to find a real stunning improvement compared to the old version.

The new finder stacks, the time machine backup functionalities and some
additional eye candy just don’t justify the price or the fuzz made
about this new release.

Overall it is as stable as the previous version and for some applications it seems faster – but that might be a kind of subjective feeling more than real evidence.

Now yesterday Apple released new updates and security patches for said OS X Panther. I chose to install them – hey its all about security.

As a nasty little surprise the MacBook would open the setup assistant, that you have to run when you first install OSX. I have to say I was surprised – but little do I know and as I could not quit the assistant – I entered the information asked and the Mac restarted. And guess what it opened the assistant again and again and again… in an infinite loop

After numerous failed attempts to regain access to the dammed &#$&(*^$ , I started my iPod touch Safari and searched for a solution to the bug.

So here are the STEPS if you get caught in the Leopard Setup Assistant Loop Bug

1. Boot into Safe Mode by holding down the shift key upon boot… Waaaaaaaaaait really really loooooong it will finally work
2. DO NOT LOG IN
3. Hit the back arrow key
4. Then hit the restart button
5. Wait, it will then run/rerun the updates
6. Wait, wait, wait and it will finally restart…

Then you are back to normal which for me meant no data loss and everything was back to where I left it…

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Setup Assistant Loop Bug – Endless Misery with Mac OS X Leopard