posted on Mac Beginners

Security and peace of mind on a mac may be simpler and somewhat less of an issue than what you had when using a windows machine, especialy when it comes to the virus perspective. That said however, for any computer connected to the internet a firewall is something that you need to keep from intrusion onto your computer or indeed your network in a business environment. Now for the average home user turning on your inbuilt OSX firewall in system preferences should suffice - you will find firewall options under “Sharing” - or if you are someone like me who never trusted the inbuilt windows xp firefall to start with or in fact you need something a little more in your firewall software as you need it for a network then there are some software you can look into.

First off we have a freeware application called WaterRoof which is a frontend for the Mac OS X firewall and will help you configure extra options and monitors with setup wizards and an easy interface. Second up is the commercial software DoorStop X Firewall which again claims to add extension to the built in OSX firewall control, and on the main page you will find another piece of software a book and most interestingly a link to their blog on security which may be worth a look.

Now on the business/networking side of things is Intego NetBarrier with firewall, anti-vandal tools, privacy protection, data filter and monitoring tools you can secure your computer/network and keep a close eye on what’s going on.

Antivirus protection isn’t really neccessary we are told but in the light of recent shenanigans and possible future developments i can’t help but feel viruses are on the way to OSX, so just in case get your hands on a copy of ClamXav to make your online and network usage totally secure for your mac.

posted on Mac Beginners

So, i recently discovered flickr and started my hobbiest photography going around places for walks wth my camera taking shots - nothing specific in the way i go about my photograhs, anyway for thos of you that are also into photography on your mac a few things to help out with your photos and flickr.

First off, there is PhotoInfoEditor which enables you to edit the meta data of your photos, adding location details as in City, Area, Country, Lattitude, Longitude, Altitude with the assistance of google map and you can add descriptions and comments to each file also.

Now for those of you that are into creating panoramas and looking for good solid software to create and stitch together your panoramas - look no further than Hugin - Panorama Tools GUI, and yes it’s free! If you happen to download and use would someone be so kind as to teach me how to use it

I have also discovered some neat apps that work with your fickr account tickr for flickr and Sniper. Tickr - as the name suggests - is a ticker-tape effect of scrolling phtos across or down your desktop, you search using keyword box and the results are scrolled through of which if you move the curor over a photo the stream stops and shows information about that photo. Sniper on the other hand is basically a replacement for the flickr interface in the style of an iPhoto like image viewer application and has some nifty features to sort, view and upload photos as well as access your account details all within the application window.

One of my personal favourite freeware applications for things photographs and flickr is JetPhoto Studio which lets you creat backup web album of your photos with descriptions and notes, edit exif meta-data, works with google earth for GPS tracking of your photos and also the ability to output photos to a flash gallery along with a few other features bundled in.

posted on Mac Beginners

Admitedly a few of these apps may be for the more advanced user, but they are pretty straightforward and easy to learn if it’s the type of thing you think you need. Much like your old windows box maintenance is the key - although not as often and not as intense, i have already mentioned AppDelete - an application that will delete the application you choose and any associated items (files and folders) that belong to that application - and Main Menu - an application that sits in your menubar and makes running maintenance scripts a one click easy job but i think it is worth mentioning a few other things to help with the mac-housework.

First off, something that comes in usefull every now and again to clean out my browser caches, history, searches etc is a little application called AfterSurf - basically quit your browsers, tick a few boxes and hit “clean” and job done - relieve that sluggish browser affect and check out AfterSurf.

Now this one may seem a little advanced but it is worth mentioning as a lot of people seem to use this - it’s called AppleJack and its troubleshooting assistant and maintenance application that runs from the command line, if you like, in a menu base system. I don’t personally use this but people do tend to find this a handy tool so it’s worth checking out to see if it’s for you.

A little tip to win back some space from osx on your brand spanking new machine is to remove the extra language support files that osx installs - like for instance, i’m british and personally only need the british and american english language files all the rest like africaans, basque, etc are just laking up space. To help you do this there is an application called Monolingual just tick the boxes to the languages you DON’T require and hit “remove” and job done - takes a while for the files to be extracted and deleted, and remember to be carefull to ONLY remove the languages that are not required or it’s to the install disks for you and i don’t want to be the cause of that.

Punakea File management - “Punakea is a little app trying to help you cope with the day-to-day struggle of managing your files. Designed to complement Spotlight, it allows you to tag your files and bookmarks, freeing you of the strict hierarchy of the Finder’s folder structure.”

Set your default applications to open certain file types and file extensions with RCDefaultApp and you’ll never end up opening up your heavy duty image applications when all you want to do is view a jpeg in preview.

In the menu under the open application name there is a submenu called “Services” and with ServiceScrubber you can trim it down to only the services you use like the screen grab service - for instance i also use thesaurus, translation service, omni dictionary and they go into the service menu for use within applications - check it out if you haven’t discovered the service menu yet and make it work to your needs.

posted on Mac Beginners

someone suggested the idea of recommending a sort of “starter pack” of freeware apps that are going to set you on your way with Mac OSX, ok then a great idea lets see.


AppDelete

iBackup

MainMenu

Butler or Quicksilver

Adium

Thunderbird

OpenOffice or NeoOffice

LiquidCD

All your basic needs covered there i think.

posted on Mac Beginners

If that is your train of thought, then i maty be able to help. The best thing i have found about Mac OSX is the freeware available for it - freeware that is of such great quality and diversity, you can get a piece of software for almost anything you can imagine you need for the mac and then some you would never think of. Ok lets start with the all important nitty gritty of replacements for microsoft office, as i don’t imagine you’ll be going out to purchase that straight away - or at all, try OpenOffice or NeoOffice for full ooffice suite replacement but if you are like me and just needed Word every now and again try AbiWord for your document needs, as it can open and save to .doc file extension. Another thing i feel i need to tell you is about system productivity and maintenance applications, first off you may hear of have heard about Quicksilver or Butler or maybe not - check them out they will make your use of OSX much quicker, easier and refreshing - my personal pick is butler, but why not try them both out and compare as there are a few others out there similar to these two. Secondly, maintenance - keep your mac upto scratch and in perfect running order, this is not the ordeal you had to go through to try to keep windows running smoothly, check out and install MainMenu - a simple one click autoomated maintenance application that sits in your menu bar. Other notable apps you will need are the likes of Adium for all your IM communication needs on AIM, MSN and Yahoo, with plenty more things to discover in freeware software i won’t spoil the experience for you of discovering cool OSX software, gadgets and tools i suggest you keep an eye on sites like Cool OSX Apps, FreeMacWare.com, Super OSX Menubar Items, iusethis and then you also have Versiontracker

As an example of what is available in freeware and which apps are most usefull that your mac cannot do without, my list is as follows - that is the list of freeware that is actually on my machine and which i use constantly.

IM Chat - Adium X, CD Media - LiquidCD, Email - Thunderbird, System-wide Productivity - Butler, Maintenance - MainMenu, Time and Date - JetClock, FTP - CyberDuck, Photo Gallery and Flickr - JetPhotoStudio, Screen Capture - SnapNDrag, Font Management - Linotype Font Explorer X, Disc Image Mounting - FlashMount

And i do have a few notable others on my machine, it is of great interest to me to see what is out there and test out anything that i may find usefull.