Testing a headline post

To many of of you, this is a familiar scenario. One day you decide to go to your local computer retail store, and purchase a new mouse for your Mac, it can be a Logitech or a Microsoft mouse claiming its full compatibility with the Mac. You arrive home, plug in your new mouse, install the drivers, and now you are faced with new challenges on getting this new mouse of yours to work.

Many of us power-users have gone through this many times. Most recently I bought a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. It’s a well designed, ergonomic mouse with very nice precision, but Microsoft’s Intellipoint software is just painful to use.

So, what’s left you might ask yourself? That’s where SteerMouse comes in. SteerMouse a neat utility that allows you to setup almost all kinds of mice to work great alongside your Mac. It even offers preferences that the manufacturer’s drivers don’t even pretend to do. This utility has been a life-saver for me, and I can’t use my Mac without it. Give it a test drive, and I guarantee you will love it. The demo can get annoying, so if you really like it, just buy it. Click here for more information

iPods have become the essential prop in the universe of sports and exercise. In retrospect, we never realized the strenuous inconvenience of attaching a Walkman, and subsequently, even worse, a constantly-skipping CD player to our bodies to take on the treadmill or the sports field. Or perhaps we did, but lived with the complacent idea that this was the best way possible to marry exercise and the privatization of music to our very own ears. The 2nd Gen. iPod shuffle is perhaps the most practical music device created to date. Let’s consider it’s quarter-size stature, for starters. The shuffle easily fits and clips on wherever a coin or a button can.

There is also its capacity to hold a generous and impressive 1 gigabyte of music (for the sake of practicality, no one really needs more than 240 songs at one specific time – not even during a marathon). The iPod shuffle is one of those rare gadgets that subliminally and unobtrusively facilitates our daily, fast-paced lives, by providing the essence of music at our (literal) fingertips.So, with Apple providing the smallest MP3 player ever, It would only make sense to create an accessory that will allow the 2nd Gen iPod shuffle to be attached to the body whenever, wherever; under any type of condition. (Yes, this is intended for olympic swimmers, and storm chasers alike). Enter the proactive minds at H2O Audio, who got their hands all, um, wet, by creating the iS2, the “smallest waterproof case ever”; a silicone sleeve that snugs perfectly into a polycarbonate impact-resistant case. Paired with the H2O Audio Series Waterproof Headphones, H2O Audio created an effective protection against the most destructive of elements. (more…)

Do you want a custom ringtone for your iPhone? Don’t want to shove an extra buck to Apple for a music ringtone? I know I don’t. MakeiPhoneRingtone by Rogue Amoeba is a fantastic small app created just for that purpose. It’s as simple as creating an AAC file with iTunes, dropping the file in MakeiPhoneRingtone, and it will automatically add the sound file to the iTunes Ringtone section.

Remember though, iTunes 7.4.2 breaks this feature! So, if you’re one of the people still using iTunes 7.4.1, wait until Rogue Amoeba releases an update to this utility before downloading 7.4.2. Review it, Download it

Ever wanted to have all those small freeware Mac OS X User Interface utilities stuffed into one big controller utility that will do it all for you? You know, Tinker Tool, SafariSpeed, and a few others. Mac Pilot might be just for you! I was skeptic at first about this utility mostly because it’s not free. My initial thought was, “hmm, this company might just be offering a Tinker Tool with two more features, and slapped a price tag on it.” To my surprise this was not the case. Essentially, it’s doing what all these other utilities will do for free, but now you have an option to pay for the availability of all these options to modify Mac OS X and its core applications in one package, and that’s not all. If you’re willing to shell out the 20 bucks to get rid of that headache, Mac Pilot is your way to go. My favorite is the ability to assign where my system Screenshots are sent to after I take them. They are always sent to the desktop, and sometimes I forget to delete, or find them. Because we all know our desktops can get pretty cluttered eventually! It also offers the option to change the format of the screenshot, how cool is that? There are literally hundreds of options in this utility, it’s amazing and I highly recommend it. Review it, Download it.

AppZapper is a nifty utility created by Austing Sarner. It will literally Zap any application you no longer want, and remove any associated files with it. Generally, I would just remove any given application, by choosing it from my Applications folder, and trashing it. Sometimes I would get lazy and not do a search for the associated preferences, support files, etc, to trash them as well. I know many people do the same.If you want to remove several applications at once, AppZapper will do it for you. Simply drag the applications to the Drag-n-drop window, and it will parse everything for you, and display what files are associated with each application. If you still don’t get a clear idea of what AppZapper does, think of the Add/Remove program which is built-in to the Windows Operating System, but for Mac OS X.