Nachdem Psystar mit seinen OpenMac-Angeboten einige Wochen den Mac-News-Markt dominiert hatten wurde es nach Apple’s Klage relativ ruhig um die Firma. Doch nun ist der Bann gebrochen und die nächste Schlagzeilen-Welle kommt auf uns zu.

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Bin gerade über einen wirklich schönen Bildschirmschoner gestossen:

PolarClock3

PixelBraker bietet den Screensaver kostenlos für Windows sowie Macs (in diesem Fall auch als Dashboard- Widget) an. Die Optionen sind vielfältig und bieten so ausreichend Möglichkeiten den Bildschirmschoner an seine Wünsche anzupassen.

Vorschau gefällig ?

Eigentlich einen Versuch wert … vor allem weil es mich interessieren würde ob ein zweiter Klick in die Options auch jeweils System Preferences.app mit dem wunderbar farbenfrohen Beachball langfristig beglücken würde.

Bei mir war dies unter 10.5.4 zwei mal der Fall was mich trotzdem nicht hindert Polar Clock zu verwenden.

Links:

• PolarClock Homepage
• via: UsingMac (lohnt sich für weitere Screensaver)

Um ehrlich zu sein, ich weiss nicht was ich davon halten soll.

Der von mir am meisten gehasste Verlag auf diesem Planet (Axel Springer) hat sich entschlossen in den kommenden Jahren komplett auf Apple Rechner umzustellen.

Wie es aussieht ist man mit den gemunkelten 12.000 Rechnern dann wohl der EU-weit größte Mac-Kunde und weltweit wohl Nummer 2 hinter Google (aber hallo).

Die vielerorts zitierten Gründe für den Umsteig auf Apple Rechner beim Axel Springer Verlag sind laut einem Vorstandvorsitzenden:

“Apple steht für Kreativität, für Innovation, für Ästhetik und Kompetenz auf höchstem Niveau - und bildet damit für uns den idealen Partner.”

Also BLA. Irgendwie riecht das nach Managern die umbedingt was optisch schönes haben wollen (MacBookAir und das iPhone z.b.) und das mal fix umsetzten ….. nunja sollen Sie machen.

Bin ja gespannt wie lange und aufwendig der Umsteig sein wird, ob es sich abgesehen von dem kurzfristigen Image-Hype und dem grossen Trara in den Newstickern auch langfristig lohnen wird.

Für Apple wird sich der Deal sicherlich lohnen, wenngleich es mich auch hier interessieren würde ob der Springer Verlag Vorzugspreise erhält bei der Menge oder ob die Jungs aus Cupertino ihre Preisvorstellung komplett 1:1 zum normalen Markt durchziehen werden.

Und meine wage Vermutung: in den naechsten 15 Jahren werden wir aus diesem Hause den Wechsel zurück zu Microsoft Windows XY erleben

Maybe some of you have noticed those small physics-games available in the web like Crayon Physics or similar.

Friend of mine forwarded another one to me called: Phun

Quote / about Phun:

Phun is a Master of Science Thesis by Computing Science student Emil Ernerfeldt for supervisor Kenneth Bodin at VRLab, Umeå University, Sweden. The solver is based on work by Claude Lacoursière

Phun is meant to be a playground where people can be creative. It can also be used as an educational tool to learn about physics concepts such as restitution and friction.

Phun was coded in C++ using OpenGL, GLEW, SDL (for window management), SDL_image (for reading images) and boost, including boost_filesystem. Everything was coded by Emil Ernerfeldt, including the physics engine and user interface.

Video:

Links:

• Phun Wiki
• Phun Download

Looks like its not that unusual that users do accidently delete their images or just got problems with the filesystems itself on memory-cards or similar.

Today i stumbled upon an application for all major platforms ( Windows, Linux, Mac OS X ….) called:

PhotoRec

Quote:

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom and lost pictures (thus, its ‘Photo Recovery’ name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media’s filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted.

PhotoRec is free, this open source multi-platform application is distributed under GNU Public License. PhotoRec is a companion program to TestDisk, an app for recovering lost partitions on a wide variety of filesystems and making non-bootable disks bootable again. You can download them from this link.

For more safety, PhotoRec uses read-only access to handle the drive or memory support you are about to recover lost data from. Important: As soon as a pic or file is accidentally deleted, or you discover any missing, do NOT save any more pics or files to that memory device or hard disk drive; otherwise you may overwrite your lost data. This means that even using PhotoRec, you must not choose to write the recovered files to the same partition they were stored on.

Links:

• PhotoRec Homepage

I am still working on my small User-Interface for Exiftool on Mac OS X. guess i’ll be able to put a test version online in some days.

After having finished this app i should be able to write a small summary about my experiences with AppleScript.

Till now the UI is able to:

• Write a Comment into the EXIF-Data
• Write a new CreatorTool into the EXIF-Data
• Write a new Software into the EXIF-Data
• Delete all Photoshop informations

including Growl-Support.

Just found this small hint in Apples Tip of the Day section

Quote:

Do you find it as annoying as I do that Mac OS X adds the word “alias” every time you create an alias? (I know, previous versions of the Mac OS did that as well, and it annoyed me there too.) Well, you can bypass the “adding-the-word-alias” uglies altogether by holding the Option and Command keys and clicking-and-dragging the original file outside the Finder window it’s currently in (I usually just drag mine to the desktop).

This creates an alias without the word “alias” attached. (Note: Don’t worry, you’ll still know it’s an alias, because its icon will have a tiny arrow at the bottom left-hand corner.)

Just found the notMac project.

About the project (quote):

Welcome to notMac, a free, open-source utility for using the client-side dotMac services provided by Apple. Since many people already operate their own servers and don’t require dotMac’s server-side features—such as an @mac.com e-mail address or online access to their contacts—the notMac Challenge was started to encourage the development of a method for using the other OS X and iLife integrated services—like syncing and iDisk access—using one’s own hardware. Thanks to the generous contributions of people from around the world, and a dollar-for-dollar matching fund, the challenge raised $8,622.

Currently the solution requires a server running OS X, but efforts have already begun to create Linux and Windows compatible versions. The installer and source code can be downloaded from SourceForge by clicking the links above. For any questions or comments, please visit the forums. Again, congratulations to Ben Spink for winning the challenge. I’m sure the rest of the Mac community appreciates his hard work as much as I do.

Sounds great. Gonna test this application for sure.

Download here

Forums here

If you ever need another mac address do the following in Terminal.app, which is located in /Applications/Utilities :

10.5 / Leopard:

sudo ifconfig en0 lladdr 00:00:00:00:00:00

10.4 / Tiger:

sudo ifconfig en0 ether 00:00:00:00:00:00

Edit:

A static method can be found here (thanks to MMM)

Ever wanted to have an easy & free solution for creating mac-icons ?

Take a look on img2icns

Quote from versiontracker:

Img2icns is a converter tool for your images. Enjoy creating thousand of icons from your pictures.

Img2icns is an great tool both for developers and home users:

• Can create .icns file (for developer) or folder with attached icon
• Very nice and unique user interface
• Convert from 1 to 1000 icons without pain!
• Very fast conversion, also from huge files
• Free and opensource application!

I have tested 0.5.1 and it was really easy to use, so give it a try.