Snapper – manipulate sound files on a Mac

The folks at Audio Ease are working on a new Mac utility called Snapper. It basically makes it easier to access and manipulate sound files from Finder.

Every time you click on an audio file, a little window opens up, docked to the bottom of Finder. You can play files, or set Snapper to autoplay files when you click on them. You can also perform rough edits, like saving a selection of the audio as a new clip.

You can also convert files to mp3 with a click of the button, email a file or a selection from that file as an mp3, or import a file into Pro Tools for editing.

It’s not exactly a full fledged audio editing tool on its own. If you’re thinking about setting up a podcast or starting a career in radio, you’ll need more than Snapper. But it looks like a really nice add-on for Pro tools. It’ll be interesting to see if Audio Ease adds support for other programs like Audacity.

source [downloadsquad]

Sync Google Calendar with Apple iCal

Spanning Sync will make your Google Calendars and Apple iCal play nicely together with devices.

iCal and Google Calendars are great applications for different sets of reasons, one is online with sharing capabilities, one is desktop driven with great notifications and offline capabilities. Get ready to get excited Mac users, Spanning Sync syncs all of these features together and lets Mac users choose which calendar application you want to work in with total two way calendar synchronization.

If you find yourself working on different Macs, or require a calendar that is shared throughout the day, Spanning Sync ties in support for multiple Macs and sharing capabilities. Simply share a Google Calendar, and Spanning Sync will sync them all together. Changes made in iCal, will appear on the Google Calendar, and changes that are made to Google Calendar will be made on the iCal calendars. Apple’s iSync then works to sync up calendars onto capable devices like mobile phones and iPods as well.

There is a 15 day trial period for Spanning Sync, with a one year subscription costing $25, or you can drop $65 to purchase the app outright.

 

source [downloadsquad]

Mac Users Have Lower IQ?

Mac用戶的IQ比較低?

有時候,事實會讓人很難以接受…

John Heinz博士的一項研究表明:Mac用戶平均IQ要比PC用戶低15%.
超過6000多的參加者接受了測試,結果清晰的顯示IQ比較低的人會傾向於使用Mac.

通常人們都認為Mac用戶所受的教育更高,所以IQ也更高.但是結果卻正好相反.Mac用戶只答對了基礎問題的75%,而PC用戶卻高達83%.

John Heinz博士給出了如下兩個理由:

1) Mac用戶買電腦注重的只是外觀和樣式.他們不清楚電腦的真正性能.

2) Mac用戶已經被洗腦了,他們考慮的是藝術化而不是理性

Digg: Mac users have lower IQ?

source [cnbeta.com]

Software for Starving Students

Windows and Mac only: Software for Starving Students has released a 2007 edition of its collection of freeware and open-source software.

The collection includes well-known gems like 7-Zip, Audacity, Blender, and OpenOffice.org–all stuff you can easily get yourself, but here the legwork is done for you. Plus, it comes with an easy-to-use installer. The idea behind the project is to give students (or anyone else) a single CD containing all the software they’ll need to be productive.

Just one caveat: The download is a disc image file (DMG for Mac users, ISO for Windows), so you need to know how to burn that image to a CD. It’s pretty much a drag-and-drop affair for Mac users, but Windows users will need a program like Nero or Active ISO Burner, which is freeware. Software for Starving Students 2007.01 is free; it’s available for Windows and Mac.

source [lifehacker]

Game – Christmas Sudoku

Today’s Mac timewaster is Dracosoft’s Christmas Sudoku. I’m not usually a big fan of Sudoko, personally. I don’t need to spend my free time looking at numbers in a grid. Isn’t that what Excel is for? The folks at Dracosoft, though, replaced the traditional numbers with colorful Christmas icons. That I can get into. If you’re already into Sudoku, the three levels of gameplay should provide hours of fun. If you’re not hooked yet, this may just be the thing that drives you over the edge into obsession. The price tag is $5.99, with a one-hour free trial.

source [downloadsquad]

My Dream App winners announced

We haven’t been following the My Dream App contest as closely as our pals at TUAW, so in case you’re not up to speed, here’s the scoop: My Dream App is an “event where 24 finalists compete for a chance to have their dream app made into reality.” At the contest’s outset, people from all over the world submitted their ideas for the program of their dreams, and from those people a pool of 24 contestants was assembled by a panel of judges. Then those 24 were whittled away over five rounds by judges, many of whom could be called celebrities, like Steve Wozniak, Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, J. Allard, and Merlin Mann. Yesterday the final eliminations were made and the three finalists, whose ideas will be made into Mac apps, and who will get royalties on said apps, were revealed. The three winners and their dream apps were:

3rd Place: Michael Yuan – Cookbook. “The ultimate cookbook application, with online grocery shopping, thousands of recipes, Leopard voiceover technology integration, shopping list sharing, and more.”

2nd Place: Farzad Sadjadi – Portal. “File syncing from the future. Sync folders and documents between Macs effortlessly and watch transfer progress through a cool, highly visual wormhole user interface.”

1st Place: Cameron Westland – Atmosphere. “A virtual window to the outdoors for your desktop. View a virtual representation of your area’s weather when too busy to go outside.”

All of the the runners-up are also worth checking out (especially if you’re looking for ideas for your next app), and all of the finalists and runners-up will be getting some pretty cool prizes.

source [downloadsquad]

Pathway: A better way to Wikipedia?

Pathway is a cool-looking Mac-only app that aims to be an alternative to a standard web browser for using Wikipedia. It aims to “help you discover Wikipedia without having to worry whether you’ll have enough time to read everything you want, or if you’ll get lost.” That sounds simplistic, but the execution looks great. Pathway draws a map of every Wikipedia page you hit connected to the page you got there from and the page(s) you went to from there. The map also shows all of the pages the current page links to for quick navigation. It also features Safari and Spotlight integration and the ability to export pages, and currently works with the English, French, German, Dutch, and Spanish Wikipedias. Pathway is a free download and requires Mac OS 10.4.

source [downloadsquad]

iTunes 7 新功能

Apple 今天宣佈推出 iTunes 7， 自 2001 年首次登場後，此次 Apple 對這個地球上最受歡迎的音樂播放器及線上影片、電影商店，做了許多效能與功能上的提升。iTunes 7 提供令人驚豔的新功能包含新的音樂專輯封面顯示、電視節目與影片、讓使用者可以快速在他們的資料庫中搜尋標題、隨意瀏覽，找到擁有的音樂或影片。

此 外，iTunes 商店 (www.itunes.com) 現在提供了 Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures 及 Miramax Films 等電影公司 75 部以上的電影，消費者可以購買並下載到電腦或 iPod 上觀賞，很快地也可使用 Apple 的 iTV* 在平面電視上觀看。電影將會在本身推出 DVD 時，同步在 iTunes 商店銷售，新推出的電影，其預購及發行首週可以 $12.99 美元取得，之後的價格便是 $14.99 美元，而舊的電影每天皆可以 $9.99 美元取得。

iTunes 7 的擷取畫面，更新的界面以及 iTunes 音樂商店：
使用者資料庫 Cover Flow 的擷取畫面：
新的 iTunes 電影窗格擷取畫面：
此外，從 iTunes 商店購買影片的朋友還有個好消息，隨著 iTunes 7 的推出，所有從 iTunes 商店購買的影片，皆可享有近乎 DVD 畫質、640×480 的解析度 (最大 480，視影片畫面比例而定)，高於以往四倍。下載的影片可在電腦及 iPod 上播放。iTunes 7 也包含新的功能，以便更方便管理且享受數位音樂與影片，包括增強的 parental control、不含控制項目的 iTunes 影片播放視窗、新的 Cover Flow 封面顯示畫面，可讓使用者以專輯封面直接瀏覽所有收藏的影片。

iTunes 7 可免費從 Apple 的 iTunes 網站取得，須有 QuickTime 7.1.3。

* iTV 僅是專案內部開發代碼，不是最終的產品名稱。

source [applewoods]

MacLibre – Open source software distribution for Mac OS X

MacLibre is a nifty little open source application for Mac OS X, developed at Google’s recent Summer of Code. Consider MacLibre to be the quality control of open source Mac apps, providing Mac users with a pre-selected list of applications available for quick and easy downloading through the use of MacLibre’s internal bittorrent client. More open source applications are being added quite often, naturally after passing MacLibre’s vigorous testing and quality assurance requirements.

source [bunch of nerds]

Apple’s New 24-inch iMac

對於 20 吋螢幕的 iMac 仍嫌不足嗎？新的 iMac 鐵定可以滿足你。蘋果在剛剛悄悄的推出了全新系列的 iMac ，不僅全面將 CPU 升級為 Core 2 Duo，更將螢幕尺寸更上一層樓，最高階升級為 24 吋，也終於增加了 Firewire 800 輸入埠。新的 iMac 規格如下：

• 17、20 或是 24 吋寬螢幕，24 吋解析度為 1920 x 1200。
• 1.83 、 2.0 或是 2.16 GHz 的 Intel Core 2 Duo CPU，2 MB 或是 4MB 的 L2 共享快取記憶體。
• 160 或是 250 GB 7200 轉的 SATA 硬碟。
• 內建 512MB 或是 1GB 的 DDR2 記憶體，時脈為 667 MHz，最大可擴充至 2GB 或是 3GB。
• Combo 或是 DVD 燒錄器光碟機。
• 2 個 FireWire 400，3 個 USB 2.0，24 吋機種配備 1 個 Firewire 800。
• 17 吋機種使用 Intel GMA 950 顯示晶片，64MB 共享記憶體，20 吋配備 ATi X1600 128MB 顯示卡，24 吋則是配備 nVidia GeForce 7300GT 128MB 顯示卡。
• 支援 Mini-DVI 接頭，可輸出 DVI、VGA、S-Video 端子，24 吋機種外接雙螢幕最高解析度可至 2048 x 1536。
• 內建 AirPort Extreme 無線網路卡，Bluetooth 藍芽 2.0+EDR，以及 10/100/1000 乙太網路卡。
• 內建 iSight 攝影機、麥克風、紅外線接收埠，隨附 Apple Remote 遙控器一只。

而根據蘋果官方表示，搭載了新 Core 2 Duo CPU 的 iMac 有著比舊款 Core Duo 快上 1.5 倍的速度。17 吋 iMac 的定價從美金 999 元起跳， 20 吋以及 24 吋則分別是美金 1,499 元以及 1,999 元。

source [老地方冰果室]