Shareware Beat - Monday, December 29, 2003
OnyX 1.4.0 System Optimization/Maintenance Tool [OS 10.2 up] [OS X 10.3 up]
GNUMail.app 1.1.2 Email Client [OS 10.2 up]
Mac Pilot 1.1.1 System Utility
Move Items X 1.3.3 Moves Files & Folders Using Hierarchical CM [OS 10.2 up]
FruitMenu 3.2.1 Customizes & Enhances The Apple & Contextual Menus [OS X 10.1 up]
IC-Switch for Mac OS X
Powder 1.0.2 Interactive Snow On Your Desktop [OS 10.2 up]
FastScripts 1.1.5 Script Execution Menu Bar Utility [OS X 10.1 up]
HyperNext Creator 1.02 Card Based Software Creation For Beginners
HyperNext Player 1.02 Runs Stacks Built By HyperNext Creator [OS X 10.1 up]
Mail Scripts 2.0 Variety Of AppleScripts For Mail & Address Book [OS X 10.3 up]
Mac Messenger 3.0b1 MSN Chat Client [Mac OS 9 - OS X]
Macabinet 1.5 Released
Slacker ToDo Lists 2.1.6 [OS X][/url]
OnyX 1.4.0 System Optimization/Maintenance Tool [OS 10.2 up] [OS X 10.3 up]
OnyX is a utility of maintenance, of optimization and personalization for Mac OS X. It also makes it possible to configure certain hidden parameters of Finder, Dock, Safari, to remove a certain number of files and folders that become cumbersome, preview the different logs and CrashReporter, and more...
System requirements:
• OnyX 1.4.0 works with all Macintosh computers running Mac OS X version 10.3.x (with BSD subsystem).
• OnyX 1.3.1 works with all Macintosh computers running Mac OS X version 10.2.x (with BSD subsystem).
• BSD subsystem installed (in any case)
OnyX is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.titanium.free.fr/us/onyx/index.html
GNUMail.app 1.1.2 Email Client [OS 10.2 up]
GNUMail.app is a free, complete and fast mail application for GNUstep and Mac OS X. It uses the GNUstep development framework or Apple Cocoa, which is based on the OpenStep specification provided by NeXT, Inc.. GNUMail.app is licensed under the GPL, and the full sources of the application are available. GNUMail.app was written from scratch. It uses Pantomime as its mail handling framework.
New in this version:
• Tied the filtering code with the Address Book
• New Mailboxes Import bundle supporting Microsoft Entourage X and standard mbox files.
• Many POP3 and IMAP optimizations
• Lots of other features, bug fixes, refactorings, speed and usability improvements.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
GNUMail.app is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.collaboration-world.com/cgi-bin/project/index.cgi?pid=2/
Mac Pilot 1.1.1 System Utility
With its complete feature set and easy to use interface, Mac Pilot is truly your digital companion. Easily run advanced system optimization scripts, enable hidden options and features, and even erase your tracks.
Whether you're dealing with sensitive information, or even just birthday shopping, Mac Pilot will put your heart at ease with its ability to erase the most common signs of computer usage. It can, but is not limited to, forgetting about recently opened files, visited web sites, and launched applications.
Pro user or not, you can now optimize your system for best performance. No more dealing with troublesome command lines, and mind boggling acronyms! By clicking only a couple of buttons you can update your prebinding, rebuild your 'whatis' database, force empty the trash, run 'cron', repair disk permissions, and much more.
But, none of those are the REAL gold that Mac Pilot is hiding. Everyone loves the updates Apple brings us each year with a new version of the Mac OS. However, some features and enhancements don't make the final cut — but they're still there. A lot of these features can not only help improve your productivity, but also make using your Mac more fun. Let's not forget you can also turn off all these extra dazzling features, and a lot of the animations which slow down the Mac OS on older machines.
New in this version:
• New Feature: Disable Exposé Picture-in-Picture effect can now be TURNED OFF
• New Feature: Disable Crash Reporter Logging.
• New Feature: Clear Acquisition Current Downloads List
• New Feature: Clear Safari Form Values
• New Feature: Clear Safari Downloads List
• New Feature: Clear REALbasic Recent Projects List
• New Feature: Clear Finder Recent Folders
• New Feature: Clear Find File Indexes
• New Feature: Clear Acquisition Current Downloads List
• New Feature: Clear Vicomsoft FTP Client Icon Cache
• Fix: Type for Single User Startup Mode fixed.
• Fix: Clear QT Player Recent Files fixed.
• Mod: Caches & Histories panel now much more organized.
• Opt: A few speed optimizations here and there, nothing major, but worth noting.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.0 or higher (Panther compatible)
Mac Pilot is $9.95 shareware
System requirements:
http://www.koingosw.com/products/mac_pilot.shtml
Move Items X 1.3.3 Moves Files & Folders Using Hierarchical CM [OS 10.2 up]
Move Items X is a set of Mac OS X-compatible contextual menu plug-ins which allow users to copy items, move items and make aliases. Users can copy files and folders from the desktop (or any folders) to a specific destination by using the contextual menu features. Destinations folders will be shown on the hierarchical menus, i.e. entire hard disks will be listed on the menus, and users can browse to any levels of the hard disks. Users can customized the advanced options of Move Items X through an interface software called Move Items Enabler. The current version is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.
Features
• Move, make copy or make alias of selected items to any destination in file system.
• Move selected items to a new create folder, or grouping files together.
• Names of grouping folders are customizable, and can be appended with date and time.
• Destinations are listed on hierarchical menus with unlimited depth.
• Can display the parent folder of selected items.
• Can memorize recently used folders.
• Customizable, i.e. users can add frequently used folders into the menus.
• Support unicode characters.
• Support both Apple's Aqua and Apple's Metal interfaces.
• Have more than 30 useful preferences.
New in this version:
• Improve compatibility with Mac OS X 10.3.2 Panther.
• Improve speed of menu displaying when the Style Manager is turned on.
• Improve Date and Time functions of To New Folder command.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
Move Items X is $15.00 shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.naratt.com/MoveItemsX.html
FruitMenu 3.2.1 Customizes & Enhances The Apple & Contextual Menus [OS X 10.1 up]
FruitMenu is a haxie that gives you the ability to customize the Apple Menu and contextual menus. Using a visual editor you can edit the contents of the menus to suit your needs and taste. FruitMenu will also display the contents of the FruitMenu Items folder inside of your Library folder, launch applications and shell scripts from the Apple Menu and contextual menus, to allow easy file navigation and launching. To make the haxie completely flexible and customizable, you can assign hotkeys to particular menu items. Last but not least, it is priced at only US $10!
Features:
• Put any folders and files in your Apple and contextual menus.
• Put complete disks in your Apple and contextual menus for easy navigation.
• Assign hot keys to your files, folders, and commonly used tasks.
• Access individual System Preferences immediately from a submenu.
• See your IP Address in the Apple or contextual menu.
• Speed up your system by disabling menu fadeout effect.
• Open any document with application of your choice through the contextual menu.
• Move any file or folder into your desired location.
• Preview graphics file right into your menu.
• Reveal and Get Info on files right from your Apple and contextual menus.
• Create individual configurations of Apple and Contextual menus for different applications.
• Use less-cluttered, faster implementation of Recent Applications, Documents and Folders than Apple's.
• Set desktop picture instantly with a single click.
• Browse contents of the selected folder in a menu, instantly.
• Organize the Apple menu the way you want or need.
• Easy to configure as it comes in usual Preference Pane form, accessible through System Preferences.
New in this version:
• Fixed a problem with the demo trial ending prematurely. If you are a registered user, no upgrade is necessary.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.1 or higher
FruitMenu is $10.00 shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/fruitmenu/
IC-Switch for Mac OS X
IC-Switch is a freeware helper utility for Internet Config (hence the "IC" in its name), for Mac OS X only. It allows you to change quickly and easily your default emailer, Web browser, news reader and FTP client, simply by choosing an item from a menu displayed in all applications.
This is equivalent to doing it from the Internet pane of the System Preferences application, but faster: you don't have to launch System Prefs nor to enter your password.
For more information, visit:
http://flip.macrobyte.net/software/
Powder 1.0.2 Interactive Snow On Your Desktop [OS 10.2 up]
Powder displays beautiful, interactive winter scenes on your desktop. Using an advanced particle engine and accelerated, OpenGL graphics, Powder makes you desktop come alive. Moving your mouse through the snowscape causes the snow to twist turn as if a breeze were blowing through it. Features include:
• 5 high resolution scenes
• Dozen of custom settings for each scene
• Display on your desktop, full-screen or in a window
New in this version:
• Works properly on Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)
• Fixed a memory leak in the frame rate display
• Two new scenes (Zen and Oasis)
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
• Quartz Extreme
Powder is $6.95 shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.sphera-soft.com/powder.html
FastScripts 1.1.5 Script Execution Menu Bar Utility [OS X 10.1 up]
FastScripts is a utility for quickly and elegantly running scripts (AppleScript or shell scripts) from whichever application you happen to be running at the moment. In most respects, it can be considered a replacement for the Apple-provided "Script Menu" menu extra. In addition to the functionality provided by Apple's Script Menu utility, FastScripts offers a number of compelling improvements.
• "SmartSwitching" avoids unnecessary context switches
• Elegant Application-Specific scripts support
• Convenient shortcuts for editing and revealing scripts
• FAST!
New in this version:
Addresses a number of issues related to errant behavior with large numbers of script files:
• - "Corrupt" menu item names like "ABOUT_MENU_ITEM".
• - Scripts don't show up in the menu (usually scripts that are deeper in the script hierarchy.
• - Probably fixes some of the random bugs that have been reported but are not reproduceable.
For more information, visit:
• Mac OS X 10.1 or higher
FastScripts is $10.00 shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.red-sweater.com/RedSweater/FastScripts.html
HyperNext Creator 1.02 Card Based Software Creation For Beginners
HyperNext is an easy to use software creation bundle that allows hobbyists, students, educators, in fact anyone, to quickly start creating their own software.
HyperNext has been designed with ease of use in mind and has both a simple interface and an easy to learn programming language so that even non programmers can quickly start creating software that works.
With HyperNext Creator you can build both standalone applications and stacks. Standalone applications are great for bundling a piece of software together for shareware or commercial distribution. In contrast, stacks are much smaller and can be run by anyone who has a copy of the free HyperNext Player. There are versions of HyperNext Player for both OS X and OS Classic.
The HyperNext bundle also comes with HyperNext Developer that allows HyperNext plug-ins to be built. Plugin-ins are small programs which extend the functionality of HyperNext and can be used by other HyperNext users in their projects.
The demo version of HyperNext allows you to use most of HyperNext functionality on a trial basis for 30 days. Your projects can be saved at any time although they will run only within the HyperNext Creator or HyperNext Developer.
HyperNext is shareware and costs $24.95 for Personal, Educational or small Shareware use. Alternatively, the Commercial version costs $49.95. You can buy it from either Kagi or Esellerate and pay for it in many ways.
Note, all software created with your registered version of HyperNext is royalty free, this includes your stacks, applications and plug-ins.
New in this version:
• Improvements to editor, compiler, save/load and runtime system.
• Improved demo projects.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.1 or later
HyperNext Creator is $24.95 shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.tigabyte.com/default.html
HyperNext Player 1.02 Runs Stacks Built By HyperNext Creator [OS X 10.1 up]
HyperNext Player runs stacks created by HyperNext Creator. Stacks are usually quite small, about 50k and are easy to distribute, needing just a HyperNext Player to run. Stacks are also platform independent, working on both OS X and Classic.
New in this version:
• Improved save/load to match HyperNext Creator and better demo projects.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.1 or later
HyperNext Player is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.tigabyte.com/default.html
Mail Scripts 2.0 Variety Of AppleScripts For Mail & Address Book [OS X 10.3 up]
MacOSÂ X's Mail and Address Book have large AppleScript dictionaries which allow almost every aspect of these programs to be scripted. Since some features are rather cumbersome in the standard implementation, IÂ decided to write some scripts to ease workflow. IÂ started writing the scripts after the release of MacOSÂ X 10.2 (Jaguar) and made several improvements and additions over time. After the release of MacOSÂ X 10.3 (Panther) all scripts have been completely rewritten as AppleScript Studio applications allowing for many additional features.
Features:
Mail Scripts is a collection of AppleScript Studio applications for Mail and Address Book offering additional features or simplified workflow. Mail Scripts consists of the following scripts:
Add Addresses (Mail)
• Add addresses found in the selected messages (in the header fields "From", "To", "Cc", and "Bcc") to the Address Book. This is much more flexible than the "Add Sender to Address Book" available in Mail and provides a convinient way for creating mailing lists.
Archive Messages (Mail)
• Move messages from the selected mailbox(es) to an archive mailbox or export them to standard mbox or plain text files for backup purposes or import into other applications. You can select to move all messages or only messages sent within or certain period as well filter messages based on their read and flagged status.
Change SMTP Server (Mail)
• Switch between different already defined SMTP servers or define a new one. This is especially useful if you are using your computer in more than one location and have to switch servers for several accounts at once.
Create Rule (Mail)
• Create a new rule based on the first of the selected messages. This saves you the trouble of copy/pasting address or other info between the message and the rule window and provides a much quicker way for setting up a rule with multiple criteria/actions.
Remove Duplicates (Mail)
• Locate all duplicate messages found in the selected mailbox(es) and move them to a separate mailbox for easy removal (duplicate matching is based on the unique message header "Message-Id").
Send all Drafts (Mail)
• Immediately send all messages in the "Drafts" folders for all accounts. This saves you from having to open each draft in order to send it.
Export Addresses (Address Book)
• Export addresses from the Address Book into tab-delimited text files. You can select which groups and which fields you want to export.
Search Addresses (Address Book)
• Find all addresses inside the Address Book matching one or more criteria. As opposed to the "Search" function built into the Address Book, this lets you search in any field as well as for empty and non-empty fields (Note: due to a bug in the Address Book's AppleScript implementation, "First Name" will always return a non-empty value for system versions of at least up to 10.3.2 - I have reported this bug to Apple and hope that they fix it with the next system update).
• As an example, you might use this script to search for all phone numbers with a certain area code in order to update your contacts after an area code change.
New in this version:
New features:
• All scripts have been completely rewritten as AppleScript Studio applications and now require MacOS X 10.3 or higher. (Since the AppleScript dictionaries of 10.2.x and 10.3.x for Mail and Address Book are not compatible with each other, Mail Scripts 2.0 will not run on system versions before 10.3 and I won't be able to write a version able to run on 10.2.x either...)
• All scripts now have interfaces giving the user feedback about the current status. The new GUI shold also be much more straightforward, utilizing single dialogs instead of a succession of several dialogs for the individual options.
• Scripts are installed into the application-specific script menus for Mail and Address Book making the system-wide scripts menu unnecessary for the operation of Mail Scripts
• In addition to the standard English interface, the scripts have been completely localized in German - please contact me if you want to help localizing to other languages
Improvements/bugfixes:
• "quick sort" is now used for all sorting done inside the various scripts (instead of the simple ASCIISort used before) - this speeds up sorting on long lists considerably (quick sort scales with O(n log n) whereas ASCIISort scales with O(n^2). Many thanks to Markus Kaspar for providing the original AppleScript implementation of quick sort)
• (Add Addresses - renamed from Manage Mailing Lists): Full name information is now added for new contacts; the script should parse most name formats properly and put the information in the correct fields
• (Archive Messages): Consolidated "Archive Messages" and "Export Messages" into a single script. Messages can now be also selected based on their read and flagged status.
• (Create Rule): Updated to support new rules actions introduced in Mail with MacOS X 10.3
• (Remove Duplicate Messages): Improved speed and hopefully prevent a possible stack overflow in AppleScript which would manifest itself by the error message "The variable theHeaders is not defined". In my tests, the script ran fine on a total of more than 10,000 messages - string handling in AppleScript is not exactly fast though...
• (Send all Drafts): Drafts with attachments will now be send as well, the attachments will be preserved
• (Export Addresses): Updated to support new fields introduced with MacOS X 10.3
• (Export Addresses): Output files will now be sorted according to the preference setting "Display Order" in the Address Book
• (Search Addresses): Updated to support new fields introduced with MacOS X 10.3
• (Search Addresses): Display search results within the script - creating a group from the search results is now an option.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
Mail Scripts is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/Mail_Scripts.html
Mac Messenger 3.0b1 MSN Chat Client [Mac OS 9 - OS X]
A chat program that uses the MSN protocol.
New in this version:
This is the first Panther-compatible version. There are also other improvements, such as block button in chat windows, a Flush button and some User Interface improvements.
System requirements:
• Mac OS 9 - OS X
Mac Messenger is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.sparktech.tk/
Macabinet 1.5 Released
Radical Breeze has released Macabinet 1.5, a free update to their file organization utility for MacOS X which adds support for systems with multiple monitors.
Macabinet is a theme-able, highly customizable drawer where you can store whatever files you like...and it slides (or fades) out of your way when not in use.
What's changed in Macabinet 1.5 :
- Can now place the Macabinet drawer on any monitor on a multi-monitor system.
Possible uses for Macabinet:
- Store your downloaded files in Macabinet.
- Keep your desktop free from "file clutter".
- Store your commonly used documents in one convenient (and out of the way) location.
- Store files you just don't have any other place for but want to keep.
- Multiple users can use the same Macabinet folder on a network drive to easily share files.
Macabinet is $10 shareware
Macabinet
http://www.radicalbreeze.com/macabinet/index.html
Macabinet Theme Maker:
http://www.radicalbreeze.com/macabinet/thememaker
Slacker ToDo Lists 2.1.6 [OS X]
Mindlube Software has announced Slacker 2.1.6. Slacker ToDo Lists is a todo list, outliner, calendar and notepad. Get organized with this power tool for Mac OS X!
The 2.1.x series of releases has eliminated most or all of the bugs with Slacker 2s' many new features. Slacker 2.1.6 is a bug fix release. See the README file in the dmg disk image for an important list of bug fixes and changes.
Download:
http://mindlube.com/download/files/Slacker-2_1_6.dmg
More Info:
http://mindlube.com/products/slacker/
Charles W. Moore
