Audio Hijack Pro updated to 2.9

Rogue Amoeba's great audio recording software Audio Hijack Pro has been updated to 2.9 and features a more polished user interface with better ID3 tagging and artwork for MP3 recordings. Hijack Pro is a very capable and easy to use audio recorder for capturing audio from any source on a Macintosh, or from external line or microphone inputs. I've been using it for a while now and it's always been reliable and smooth in use. Definitely worth checking out the trial if you are in looking for something to capture audio.

Key features of Audio Hijack Pro:

• Able to use VST and AU plugins (comes with it's own as well as any you have installed). These effects can be flexibly organised using a matrix style grid allowing you to create and save unique recording setups.
• Captures audio from web browsers, Skype, DVD, applications, Web radio streams etc.
• Quick recording bin allows for fast set up and recording.
• Records to pretty much all the main audio file types directly. AIFF, MP3, AAC, Lossless AAC, etc. all fully customisable.
• Able to schedule recordings and split a file or pause when silence occurs.
• Can grab all system audio from all applications into one file.
• Good metering and can be controlled via Applescript
• Works with Fission a separate lossless editor if required or you can point Hijack Pro to edit using your preferred application (e.g. Audacity, Wave Edit, etc.)
• 50 effects plugins included from 4FX and Steve Harris (LADSPA compatible as well as VST and AU).

For full details of Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro see the product page

WMD Excerpt

Thinking of buying a fucking camera?

http://www.merlinmann.com/amazon/blog/

Well stop thinking about it and buy it.

Also you should listen to You look nice today. No, really, just listen to it while holding your new fucking camera.

The Moose is back.

The Moose is back.

Since 1986 on Macintosh users have been able to irritate themselves with a talking interrupting moose. Now available for Mac OS X...

Uli's Moose with additional Terry Pratchett phrases available. Free but give a donation if you really over use it and drive yourself mad.

http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/moose.htm

Poladroid test

Poladroid test: VW Camper
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

A test of the new Mac application which processes your images and emulates a Polaroid print, very cute interface. www.poladroid.net/

The currently free beta places a small blue Polaroid camera on your desktop, you drag and drop pictures ont the camera which whirs and pops out Poladroid prints which slowly develop on your desktop. All works rather well.

350ppm

Syncing Journler across two Macs with Dropbox

Although Journler is a great information management and diary application, one feature that has been lacking is the ability to easily sync across multiple Macs. After syncing using the dependable Chronosync application and a target disc mode connection (Firewire, try doing that on the new Macbooks) I have found a better syncing method using the cloud. 

Dropbox is a new service which syncs a specific Dropbox folder on your Mac (Dropbox also works on Windows and Linux). It works very quickly as there is some sub file level smart updating and compression going on in the background. The links are all made using secure SSL and the storage is on Amazon S3. Your files are stored using 256 AES on the Amazon servers. There is also full versioning for changes to files o make it simple to revert to a previous version of a file.

The key thing is that unlike MobileMe (.Mac) there is a free 2GB account available until recently it was invitation only but now you can just sign up and be running Dropbox in minutes. 

So far I've found it very fast and reliable and also use it for Rapidweaver files I like to keep in sync across computers.  1Password from Agileweb Solutions new Agile keychain feature in 1Password v 2.9 also can make use of Dropbox rather than the more cumbersome keychain sync of MobileMe. Check out the key features at the Dropbox site.

How to set up syncing of Journler entries using Dropbox:

1. Sign up to Dropbox and ensure you are using the latest build available through the Forums at Dropbox e.g. v 0.6.404 solves problems with Mac OS X package folders which helps Journler RTFD files sync properly. 

2. Install Dropbox, on all Macs to be synced.

3. Back up your Journler folder (in 2.5.5 of Journler this is most likely in your Documents folder). 

4. If you have password protected your Journal, temporarily switch off this feature in Preferences, Advanced, before copying the Journal. Then quit Journler.

5. Copy the Journler folder into your new Dropbox folder. The original Journler folder can be renamed later and left as a back up copy.

6. Dropbox should begin its syncing process and eventually, the Journler folder will be synced and available on the other Mac/s.

7. You can now test the sync by opening Journler, using the Locate button and pointing it to the Dropbox stored Journler folder. After creating a test entry,you may reinstate your password option in the preferences menu at this point.

Note: only have one copy of Journler open on a single Mac at any time, otherwise the syncing is likely to be seriously confused. Remember, Journler is intended for single user working only and is not a true networking application.

With the initial sync out of the way subsequent syncing should be extremely fast.

The next step is to see whether this works with Omnifocus!

Find out more abut Journler: Journler - Wherever Life Takes You

Origin of the emoticon in 1982

September 19th 1982 and Scott Fahlman invents the :-) emoticon.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/09/dayintech_0919

1982: At precisely 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posts the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman  :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:

:-(

Everything that hapens will happen today.

David Byrne & Brian Eno, back together again for the first time since My Life in the bush of ghosts. Being published first as a download (no DRM and flac versions - good for them).

Robot Parade, Vocoder goodness with a charming video

Robot Parade from Jared Foster on Vimeo.

Jake von Slatt, talks with Wired

Brief explanation how to make a Steampunk PC keyboard.

Remind yourself of the fragility of existence with a isight and a Mac.

DT4 Identity-SA is an "artware" of Project 7², a type of screen-based installation with visual feedback and sound synthesis. It displays a new type of animation of aesthetic graphics and deformed reflection of user's image.

Created by

	Tatsuo Unemi  Department of Information Systems Science, Soka University.
	Daniel Bisig  Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,University of Zurich.

Download here

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25590/dt4-identity-sa

UA Moog Multimode filter

Essential application for all Mac users

An absolutely essential application; file under cat noises.

http://www.oneriver.jp/USBCat/index.html

Your Mac Meows when a USB peripheral is attached or unattached.

Pointed

Pointed
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

nr John Lewis, The Hayes the march of pointy building proceeds into the recession. I remember when St David's 2 was announced my comment was "just in time for the recession". Rather like those early eighties shopping malls which sprang up everywhere in the UK at a time of 15% inflation; well done.

SSL in GMail now a permanent option

In GMail you can now set your connection to always use the encrypted secure https:// rather than manually change the URL when you are connected.

It's an option at the base of the Settings page

Welsh named FX unit for Guitars - Stompio!

Ble mae Stompio?

Mae Stompio yn yr llawr, ywrth gwrs.

(apologies for crap Cymraeg)

http://www.dv247.com/invt/48424

TapeDeck

TapeDeck
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

Trying out the latest version of Tape deck. The rather cute retro audio recorder. The latest version adds the ability to post directly to Youtube, with a video of the tape machine playing. Tape Deck is fun and easy to use, automatically organsising your recordings into "tapes" which are held in the slide out drawer (yes with sound effects of a drawer opening). TapeDeck records compressed AAC audio at the following settings:

High Quality - 44,100Hz, 16-bit, 64kbps (mono) or 128kbps (stereo)
Medium Quality - 44,100Hz, 16-bit, 48kbps (mono) or 96kbps (stereo)
Low Quality - 22,050Hz, 16-bit, 32kbps (mono) or 64kbps (stereo)

$25 from http://tapedeckapp.com/  created by the excellently named Super Ultra Mega Groovy company.

Audacity audio editor updated to 1.3.5

Audacity, the multi track, multi platform audio editor has been updated to 1.3.5d. Available for Windows, Mac OS X/Classic, Unix, and Linux, open source - free software. Audacity remains the best free alternative to paid for editors.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/

What's New:   Version 1.3.5d release notes not currently available. Version
             1.3.5:   Recording/Playback   
             + Several bugs fixed so that latency correction should be
               better, and more devices work correctly. 
             + Problems with invalid sample rates under Linux should be
               much rarer. 
             + Newer version of Portaudio library. 
             + New feature to record onto the end of an existing track
               (hold Shift while clicking Record). 

                Import/Export   
             + Updated versions of Libogg, Libvorbis, Libflac, Libsndfile
               and Twolame libraries. 
             + Handling of unsupported file formats more informative. 
             + Handling of file names with slashes on OS X improved. 
             + New dialog allows replacement of illegal file name
               characters on all platforms. 

                Interface   
             + Improved scaling and layout for rulers and VU meters. 
             + Envelope fixes/improvements including full control of
               undo/redo. 
             + New keyboard shortcuts and improved menu navigation. 
             + Preferences: 

             + More intuitive tab arrangement. 
             + New options for mute/solo and Metadata Editor behavior. 
             + Language can now be changed without restart. 

                
             + Expanded Build Information tab. 

                Effects   

             + New Vocal Remover plug-in, improvements for Generate
               effects. 

Steampunk desktop wallpaper site

http://steampunkwallpaper.com/

An excellent and growing collection of artwork of a Steampunk nature suitable for your desktop.

Doom on NeXtStep, Mac OS X for Development

John Romero the creator of ID Sotware; developed Doom and Quake on NextStep! (Steve Jobs Unix based expenso lux computer when he left Apple) presumably why there's always been Linux versions...

"Hey guys - so you want to know why I switched to Mac?  Well, the answer is pretty simple: Mac OS X is a more capable environment for development than anything I've seen since NeXTSTEP.  And guess what?  It really IS NeXTSTEP under the hood.

It's interesting to note that most people don't credit part of DOOM and Quake's success to the platform we developed those games on.  But it's really a big part of the success of those games because NeXTSTEP freed us in ways that MS-DOS could never have achieved.  Even cross-compilation of our code was a really sweet perk - all we had to do on MS-DOS was run the executable and it automatically bound to the DOS extender and the game ran.  The game EXE was compiled in NeXTSTEP and saved to a network drive.

Today there is absolutely *no reason* to develop on PC hardware.  You can run Windows XP/Vista in a VM Fusion window on one of your Spaces while the rest of your Mac runs native.  When you need to do Windows work, just switch over to that Space and you're there.  You can have other Spaces with other OS's such as Linux in them as well.  The Mac can do them all - at native hardware speed.

For a programmer, coding in Objective C is just heaven compared to development in C++ in Windows.  I'm not knocking Visual Studio - I totally love that product and used it happily for many years.  But Cocoa development is way more fun and easier.

Apple's unified User Interface across all their hardware and web really shows that the company has a very clear vision for their product line and they've accomplished something that no other company ever has - and that's why everyone is switching.  Their UI is FUN and EASY and does what you expect."

http://www.macheist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=120895

Awful Icons Alert: MobileMe

Awful Icons Alert: MobileMe
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

Goodbye .Mac, hello ickle fwuffy clouds. Hurumph. Exchange for toddlers. Except it doesn't really push from a Mac. Only polls every fifteen minutes except when on an iPhone where it does actually instantly push to the cloud. Hmm.

Blog rule number 8: Your title must be carefully phrased

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Video of the Office move - Marketing/Circulation

Click through to youtube and click on the View High quality link below the main video window to see properly.

David Byrne Playing the Building

Back up your Logic settings in dotmac (.Mac)

I just found that you can back up your settings in Logic Studio using .Mac. You set this in the Sharing section of the preferences window.

GPO telephone advert 1980 1

GPO telephone advert 1980 1
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

How the telephone was advertised in October 1980. Note the exciting colour range of the push button phone. The push button trimphone had the advantage that unlike the dial version it did not contain radioactive substances. 

There is a second picture here, featuring a green dress clad recumbent housewife...

How the Web was Won, fifty years ago

Interesting article in Vanity Fair July 2008 tracing through interviews, the origins of the internet from 1958 and the formation of ARPA.

Less annoying printable version link here

It's Thursday so here's another site...

nagromretep

ennui of the gui

ZeroDegrees Westgate St, Cardiff

ZeroDegrees Westgate St, Cardiff
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

The Cardiff branch of this microbrewery chain is housed in the listed facade of the old Westgate St., Art Deco garage. Formerly a car park and Taxi office. A much more interesting use, particularly as the former covering of white paint has been stripped away from the facade to reveal the detail. Mike Packwood (a learned connoisseur of Cardiff located hostelries, now based in the fine city of Liverpool) and I often used to muse on the possibilities of turning this building into a bar. I believe we thought the best name would have been "bar...code" or perhaps Bar-mitzvah or somesuch idiot styling.

Not that smart

Not that smart
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

It must have been an interesting meeting when they came up with this branding. Surely the typical purchaser of fish fingers doesn't care or know about Omega 3? A more profitable group to aim for might have been frustrated parents who do care about Omega 3 and have to deal with obstreperous children. The "We've added Omega 3, just don't tell them" approach may have worked better.

Wave your small blue sheep with pride!

There's no stigma attached, only a puncture repair kit. (No really there is a repair kit for er, over excitable Bluebird fans).

"The South Wales Echo will be in Cardiff week commencing 12th May to support Cardiff City on its road to the FA Cup Final at Wembley.



There will be lots of activity each day with a chance to buy a colour souvenir brochure and your South Wales Echo each day at the unit, with each purchase you will receive an inflatable Cardiff City/South Wales Echo branded blue sheep!

Monday 12th May – 10am to 4pm sited at the top of Churchill Way.
Tuesday 13th May – 10am to 4pm sited at the top of Churchill Way.
Wednesday 14th May – 10am to 4pm sited at the top of Churchill Way.
Thursday 15th May – 10am to 4pm sited at the top of Churchill Way.
Friday 16th May – 10am to 4pm sited at the top of Churchill Way. James Fox will be performing his City song on the unit.
Saturday 17th May – 6am at Cardiff City Car park to see the fans off, then back to Working Street (opposite Giles Sports) at 10am."

See the light

See the light
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

On the packaging for some disposable lighters:
Going through Dream and Success, Witnessing faith and Passion

Photographers being stopped from taking pictures in UK

Interesting piece on Saturday PM Radio Four news programme, about people being stopped from taking pictures in public due to the incorrect or over-zealous application of anti terrorist laws in the UK...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2008/04/youve_been_framed.shtml

You should be able to listen to the programme on the BBC Listen again service - it would be the 26 April 2008 edition of Radio Four's PM news bulletin.

How to quickly launch preferences for volume or screen brightness in Mac OS X

To instantly launch the preferences controls for audio or screen/display settings, simply hold down the Option key (between Control and the Apple command key, i.e. the Alt key) then press one of the keyboard shortcuts for either volume or brightness control. Newer Apple keyboards have re-mapped these keys, so exactly which keys you press depend on the age of your keyboard; the controls are usually marked on the keyboard.

Some more keyboard volume tips:

• To move the volume up or down in tiny steps, hold down Shift and Option when you tap the volume keys, this will move the volume in quarter steps. (Possibly this is Leopard 10.5 only, I can't remember it in Tiger 10.4).
  
• To silence the volume feedback "blips" noises which trigger at each step, hold down the shift key when adjusting the volume. The noises can also be turned off completely on the Preferences Sound controls window, uncheck "Play sound effects"

Does email encourage insanity?

Merlin Mann on the nature of email to make people behave like sociopaths...

http://www.43folders.com/2008/04/24/taking-crazy-out-email

Robot typing 02

Robot typing 02
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

Strange how a Gorillapod tripod is a very handy gadget, yet is also slightly sinister.

How to keep those cables tidy

Lifehacker has a good list of ten ways of tidying those errant cables. The bulldog clip as a cable organiser is the most snappy (sorry) idea.

Tidy those cables

These velcro re-useable cable ties are good, but a little pricey (Amazon UK), for a huge list of cable harnessing and organising widgetry, try StudioSpares (UK).

Nobody said every post has to be exciting, did they?

Engineer's Guide to Cats

Funny video from Paul Klusman

Max - a powerful multi format audio converter

Max for Mac OS X is now at v0.8 and Leopard compatible. A great open source project that can convert in batch mode and rip CDs. Handles a huge range of different audio file formats and meta tags.

Handles multiple processors such as the Core Duo type elegantly with good multi threading to speed up conversion.

Recommended.

http://sbooth.org/Max/

from the main site: "Once the audio is extracted, Max can generate audio in over 20 compressed and uncompressed formats including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, AIFF, and WAVE.

If you would like to convert your audio from one format to another, Max can read and write audio files in over 20 compressed and uncompressed formats at almost all sample rates and and in most sample sizes. For many popular formats the artist and album metadata is transferred seamlessly between the old and new files. Max can even split a single audio file into multiple tracks using a cue sheet.

Max leverages open source components and the resources of Mac OS X to provide extremely high-quality output. For example, MP3 encoding is accomplished with LAME, Ogg Vorbis encoding with aoTuV, FLAC encoding with libFLAC, and AAC and Apple Lossless encoding with Core Audio. Many PCM conversions are also possible using Core Audio and libsndfile."

Welcome to the Tagfest, Top applications for finding and tagging your files.

Punakea screenshot

You are desperately trying to find that document that you worked on last month, but you can't remember it's name or where you saved it? Spotlight can help, but by using tags or labels, you can help classify your documents and find stuff faster.

By applying a tag or metadata your documents will be easier to classify and sort. You can use this approach whether to just dump everything into one folder or have a neurotically organised uber-directory structure of hierarchical folders. Either way, you will benefit from applying tags.

More resources:

For everything to do with tagging on a Mac try http://tagamac.com/

Finding stuff (paid for, but with the option to try):

HoudahSpot http://houdah.com/houdahSpot/index.html

Leap http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/index.html very iTunes like, lots of features. Leap allows you to search for files and quickly tag them. Leap can be heavily customised and offers a logical way of searching and grouping your documents. When Leap is running there is a menu bar feature with a clickable "bread crumb trail" of filters to find and isolate files and a pop-out window for quick tagging on the right side of your screen rather like Yojimbo, this is a very slick application with many customisable features. The typical default file types (Word, Keynote etc.) recognised by Leap can increased to any particular file type you wish to allow for fast searchign of files that are important to you. Leap handles tagging and searches, but gets close to being a Finder replacement with copy and move commands. Definitely worth experimenting with in the trial period of the demo download.

Free applications that make Spotlight more powerful:

Easyfind from Devonthink, the publishers of powerful organising and cataloguing software, fast and simple interface, uses multithreading for speed http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/

Punakea, a versatile tagging utility, free application, but please give a donation to the developer if you find that you rely on it. Has a tag cloud like many Web2.0 sites (think flickr) which helps visualise your content. Allows you to manage, apply and search tags quickly. Simple iTunes style interface. Much simpler than mucking around with scripts for tagging multiple groups of files. Punakea can also move files into a managed folder if you wish.

Spotlaser from Frovil Heavy Industies takes a little practice with the interface but yields good results allows you to narrow down your searches applying various filters. Results are displayed in a normal finder window, which means you can then use QuickLook if you're running Leopard.

For the latest versions of dozens of applications which use or enhance Spotlight check this list from MacUpdate

Another good idea is to add the Spotlight plugin for searching inside zip files. Try the Spotlight plugins section of the Apple Downloads site for the latest version. BetterZip provide a good free QuickLook plugin to show the contents of zip archives for Leopard users.

Quicksilver can also be used for tagging and searching if you're a keyboard orientated person. Quicksilver, is a minimalist but very powerful application but this is one of its many features (freeware). You'll either love it or hate it.

Metadata: this is data that describes other data, such as a library filing system grouping together "fiction" or "reference" books. The tag or label "fiction" is the metadata for a type of book. This principle can be seen in iTunes where songs can be labelled by genre.

Obsolete skills

http://obsoleteskills.com/Skills/Skills

Refilling a fountain pen - obsolete? Surely not!

Quick review of Analog Factory softsynth

Arturia Analog Factory is a collection of the Arturia softsynth emulations consisting of the Roland Jupiter 8, Prophet Vector, Prophet V, Moog Modular, Minimoog, ARP2600 modular and the Yamaha CS80. Although the full emulations are there, the interface for each synth has been simplified and there are 3500 patches (presets) ready to use. Think of Analog Factory as the live or fast version of each one of the softsynths. The interface is simple, but the full emulations are behind that interface.

After using Analog Factory for a while I found that the quality of emulations is superb. You have a reasonable amount of control with the usual ADSR, LFO, VCF and other controls available. For each patch there are also three controllers which have been assigned to whatever the most useful additional controls would be. These are usually well chosen and allow considerable changes away from the original patch. All control changes are smooth without audible glitches or zipping and the Arturia technology that emulates down to the transistor level on a particular circuit board is stunningly accurate at recreating the original analogue feel. I found that the controls were already mapped to sensible settings allowing immediate use with a controller keyboard (Axiom 61 key) and Logic. The only downside is the sounds can sound a little too clean, which can easily be remedied in the mix. There are two standard effects built in; delay and chorus which work well with the traditional sounds on offer.

Patches are selected using a straightforward and fast category grouping table, which allows you to quickly narrow down your selection. There is a useful "favorites" option which enables you to group and quickly select your preferred patches. There are also shortcut buttons to user selected patches on the main interface.

All categories of sounds are strong and useful with some stand out sequences (arpeggiator) patches which automatically match the tempo of the track when used as a plugin instrument. These are accurate emulations, so the polyphony is often limited to what the original instrument would have managed.

Analog Factory is a great way of having a huge arsenal of accurate analogue sounds at your disposal and represents stupidly good value.

Pros: Price, quality of sounds, range of patches, easily tweaked patches
Cons: fairly heavy CPU usage for multiple instances of Analog Factory, can take a while to load each instance.

Test computer: iMac 2GHz Core Duo, 2gb RAM, Logic

UPDATE: there appears to be a bug with Leopard 10.5.2, Logic Studio & Express 8.01 - saved projects with Analog Factory 2.0 instruments stored inside will cause Logic to crash on loading. Somewhat annoying. There's a work around until this is fixed: hold control down when you launch Logic and disable the Core Audio driver. Then load the project and switch on the Core audio driver by clicking enable in Preferences > Audio. Tedious, but at least it works.

Update 2: This appears to be fixed in Analog Factory v2.2.1 running on Logic Pro 8.

Curious about Getting Things Done? Start here

A great collection of links from Merlin Mann's 43Folders site...

GTD - Getting Things Done (David Allen's book of the same name has created at times geeky, but good meme)

http://www.43folders.com/2008/02/19/43-folders-best-gtd

The Best of Getting Things Done (43Folders)

Great collection of GTD Links from Merlin Mann's always interesting 43Folders site:

http://www.43folders.com/2008/02/19/43-folders-best-gtd

A new banner

Weird and wonderful search engine

http://www.oamos.com/index.php?hl=en

Try it and let it evolve...

builds an installation / movie from your search

SuperDuper!

SuperDuper! Daft name, good software. Make a back up now! Works alongside Time Machine from v2.5, creates a clone of your main hard drive - a bootable back up of your entire system. Trial version available. Very easy to use, reliable and has features like sandboxing - http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/

You require a second (typically external) hard drive to use SuperDuper! as there isn't much point in backing up a drive onto the same drive.

A free alternative is Carbon Copy Cloner, but SuperDuper is worth the money. Once you have a clone of your hard drive you can revert to the back up by restarting or booting your Mac, hold down the Option key and select the external drive to run from the back up. Two minutes and you're back up and running even if your main hard drive is broken. Intel based Macs can boot from either Firewire or USB2 drives.

After the initial back up incremental back ups can be scheduled and only take a couple of minutes. SuperDuper allows you to run scripts after back up, shut down your Mac etc.

Nouvelle Vague live at the Point, Cardiff, video

Another great gig at the Point, Nouvelle Vague take eighties indie songs and turn them into Bossa Nova style cabaret numbers...

Analog Factory

Just bought Analog Factory by Arturia, a collection of their analogue virtual synths...

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/analogfactory/intro.html

It has a good reputation, and offers a cut down interface for each synth (otherwise no-one would buy the complete emulations).

I'll try and report on the sounds and interface later.

Free Widgets for Welsh news and sport headlines.

Created some dashboard widgets that show the latest news headlines for Wales from icWales. All freeware and you can grab them from www.molebomb.com, eventually they will be hosted at the Apple Widget downloads section.

There are also widgets for Welsh farming & country news, business in wales, Welsh rugby headlines (Rugbynation) and football coverage from icWales. If you want others from icWales, just leave a comment.

Visit 

http://www.molebomb.com/page9/page36/page36.html

Created using Dashcode, these widgets are universal binaries, that require a minimum of Mac OS X 10.4.3, and of course Dashboard.

UK maps for Apple Address Book

See your contact's address...

http://www.fourbytwoflat.com/free_stuff/index.html

Neat plugin (Universal) for the Mac Address Book which gives you a location map for a selected address. Streetmap or Google UK maps. (Freeware)

Have you a story to tell from Wales?

Don't keep it to yourself, send a story in to the Western Mail & Echo:

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/send-a-story

Another feature on the recently updated icWales site.

Short Film "EVOL"

http://stevenpoole.net/music/evol/

by chris Vincze, with great music by Steven Poole.

Mac Address Book to Gmail contacts application

A tiny application by Ben Borofka (freeware) that alllows you to update your GMail (GoogleMail) account using the contacts held in your Mac Address book.

Create a new group in Address book drag the names you want to export into this group, select this group; then run the app and select the a to g created csv file. In Gmail use the import option in Contacts to pick up this file and import into Gmail.

The csv created by the a to g has the correct categories for Gmail. During import Gmail won't overwrite stuff, it asks you to confirm things such as differing phone numbers. Quite slick and doesn't lead to conflicts like some other applications. 

You can review the results in Gmail contacts section to alter anything you like after import.

Update: March 2008 updated to enable all contacts to be transferred, even those without email addresses in your address book application.

Title of this post links to: http://bborofka.com/atog/

Where's the # hash key gone on my Mac?

The hash key (#) on UK Mac keyboards is created using:

Option (alt) key ⌥+ 3

Molebomb

Launched www.molebomb.com as a repository for some of the band info and downloads, useful as the old Tiscali hosted site Massive Bureau of Everything is now only available via the internet wayback machine.

Built using Rapidweaver, very straightforward, rather slick software.