Camino 1.6 is now out in the wild, and it looks to be the release a lot of people were waiting for. With many new features as well as many updated features, Camino 1.6 is an excellent and compelling alternative to Safari and Firefox on the Mac.
New to Camino 1.6:
Toolbar Search Improvements: The toolbar search in Camino can now be edited and customized, with the ability to delete, rename, and reorder search engines. Camino also supports OpenSearch plug-ins.
Streamlined Find Interface: No more Find panel in Camino 1.6. Instead, a simple Find toolbar will appear when you need it at the bottom of the browser window (this feature is very similar to Safari's inline search, though Safari's find toolbar appears on the top).
Tabbed Browsing Improvements: Camino 1.6 now includes a scrolling tab bar. If more tabs are open than can be displayed in the tab bar, you'll see arrows on the right and left edge that will allow you to scroll through the tabs.
Integrated Software Update: Using the "Sparkle" framework, Camino now has an auto-update feature.
There are also many improved features in Camino 1.6, including AppleScript support, feed detection, and spell checking.
The big improvement in Camino 1.6 for many users has to be the updated keychain support, which now stores information for multiple accounts in the Keychain. And, as always, Camino will automatically block pop-ups, ads, and animations.
You owe it to yourself to download Camino 1.6 and take it for a test run. It might just be the best browser on the Mac. Agree? Disagree? Spell it out in the comments.
Sure, you make fun of the chintzy Time Machine animation when you're out to sushi with your geek friends, but secretly you adore it. When the night is late, and it's just you and your Mac, you turn on Time Machine simply to gaze longingly into its starry goodness.
But don't you wish that you could just get that pesky Finder window out of the way, so you could stare into the full, unadulterated Time Machine backdrop? Well, we've got the next best thing, friend: the Time Machine Screensaver.
The Time Machine Screensaver is a Quartz Composer Movie that is pretty much an exact clone of the Time Machine animation. To install the screensaver, you can drag it onto the Screen Saver window, or put it into your default Screen Saver folder, or copy it to the Screen Saver alias included with the download. Once you see it in your Screen Saver preferences, select the Time Machine Screen Saver, and off you go.
Now, it's just you and the Time Machine. Face to face.
If you want something a little more "Leopard" themed, with the colors from the default Aurora desktop picture, you can download it from the Time Machine Screen Saver discussion forum.
Chances are, if you've searched the web for a universal video converter for the Mac, you've come across VisualHub (formerly iSquint). Now, the makers of VisualHub have brought the same conversion magic to audio with AudialHub version 1.0.
AudialHub can easily convert audio files to most any format of your choosing, including AAC, MP3, WMA, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, 3G (cell phones), Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and Audio and MP3 CDs.
AudialHub brings the same simplicity-and optional advanced features-that VisualHub offers. If you want to use AudialHub for quick and dirty conversions, simply drop in some audio files, choose the output format, and hit start. That's it!
If you want more advanced conversion, you can look into the advanced settings, where you can set bitrate and channel, trim the audio file, add tags and comments, etc...
AudialHub also offers a Quick Preview capability, so you can instantly preview compression quality and trim settings before you convert. AudialHub also supports simultaneous conversions in separate queues, each with their own setting.
AudialHub is currently offered with a free trial; after that, it'll cost you $18.81 (you get a $4 discount if you're a current owner of VisualHub). AudialHub requires Mac OS 10.4.11 or later.
Deluge is an up-and-coming BitTorrent client for Mac, Windows, and Linux that looks strong enough to compete with the likes of Azureus, uTorrent, and Transmission.
Deluge supports the most common P2P features, including encryption, UPnP and NAT-PMP, Mainline DHT, proxy support, and more. The main strengths of Deluge, however, come from its design:
The program has a clean interface and is easy to look at, which makes for simple and unobtrusive torrent downloading.
The program was built to be extensible, with a rich plugin collection (many plugins are included in the software already)
The progam was designed to be lightweight; it doesn't tax your system like other BitTorrent clients.
Best of all, like previously stated, Deluge will run on Mac, Windows, and Linux. If you're willing to give Deluge the old college try, you can download it here – and be sure to report back what you like and don't like about it.
If you're like us, which we hope you're not; you don't become writers for Download Squad by being handsome, well-adjusted, and sociable, (Ed: Speak for yourself), you like to keep your applications up-to-date.
AppFresh is a promising new application for the Mac that aims to keep all of your applications updated, or fresh (hence the name). The wonderful thing about AppFresh is that it doesn't limit itself to only applications; instead, it scans all widgets, preference panes, and plugins for updates as well.
AppFresh even scans your system for Apple updates, thus removing the need to run Apple's Software Update separately. It also takes the place of Microsoft's AutoUpdate, if you have Office 2004 or 2008 installed.
Another gold star for AppFresh: you can download and install updates from directly within the AppFresh interface.
AppFresh is currently a Development Preview, and will remain free at least until version 1.0 (the developers haven't promised anything beyond that). AppFresh works on both Tiger and Leopard.
The free program, written by computer studies student Bradley Beach, was designed for Mac and Linux users who don't have the built-in convenience of one-click downloading from Picasa Web Albums.
Picasa Webalbums Assistant enables you to download from albums that are both public or private. If you need to download from a public album, enter in the username of the Google account, and Picasa Webalbums Assistant will find all public albums under that username. If you want to save photos from a private album, you'll need the invite link sent by the user.
Once the album is located, the Assistant will automatically load preview thumbnails of all the pictures in the album. You can choose to download all of the pictures or a selection.
While Mac users patiently await the arrival of Picasa for the Mac (which one ambitious Google employee promised was coming this year), and its built-in communication with Picasa Web Albums, tools like Picasa Webalbums Assistant (and the free Picasa Web Albums Uploader) make the wait a little more bearable.
Have you ever needed to install an application, complete with custom setup and preferences, onto a large number of machines? The free program InstallEase aims to help streamline this process (and keep you from reaching for the Maalox).
InstallEase enables the user to create custom install packages for any application. Once the custom install package is created, you can use it to install the same application, preferences and all, on any number of machines.
So how does it work? While we'd like to say "by using furry gnomes," alas, that is not the case. InstallEase takes automatic snapshots of your system both before and after installation. The program then compares the changed data and uses that data to create the install package.
If you really like to get your tech hands dirty, you can manually create install packages by dragging and dropping which files will be added onto the InstallEase interface.
InstallEase also features the ability to create an uninstaller, custom filters, and support for PKG, Iceberg Project, and DMG packages.
InstallEase requires registration, and is Mac only.
Office suites like Google Docs and Zoho Office have been busy adding offline access to let you access and edit spreadsheets, text, and presentation documents in a web browser whether you're connected to the internet or not. But paying ThinkFree customers have had this ability since last year.
That's because ThinkFree offers two products: an online, web-based office suite and a Microsoft Office-compatible suite for the desktop. Users can synchronize data between the web service and their desktops. But up until this week, users had to pay $50 for access to the desktop software. Now, as expected, ThinkFree has launched a free version of its desktop software.
Now, here's the interesting thing. You don't even need to sign up for an account to download the desktop software. So if you have no need for an online office suit, synchronization, or 1GB of free online storage space for your office documents, you can just treat ThinkFree Office as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, or whatever you've been using. But you will need to sign up for an account since ThinkFree will only save files if you have an account. Files will also automatically be saved to a ThinkFree folder for synchronizing with the web service. If you don't want to synchronize your files with the server, just never login again.
The applications can open and save documents in a variety of formats including Office 97 - 2007, PDF, RTF, and CSV. ThinkFree Write, Calc, and Show also do a great job of opening documents we've created using other applications, recognizing features like notes in our spreadsheets that other free tools like Gnumeric miss.
Just when you thought -- "I wonder what Google could possibly develop next?" -- the company busts out a new layer for Google Earth which gives users the ability to browse the day's New York Times headlines by region.
In all honesty, the feature is a great idea, and we're sure the company has some work to do (hopefully adding support for other news outlets), but it comes off as "half-assed" for now with New York (what a surprise!) getting the most NY Times markers. California, Mexico, Michigan, and a few other places get a marker too, and as you can see in the picture, the NY Times provides Google with the most important of news stories. Oh well, it'll probably get a lot better.
Other Google Earth improvements in version 4.2 include a simpler GUI, high-res photos of terrain, the ability to explore stars and constellations, and more.
Desktoptopia is a utility that changes your desktop background automatically with well-designed pictures that are chosen by the Desktoptopia team. Originally created for Mac OS X, a PC version is now available in beta.
On OS X, the app installs as a preference pane where you can change the rotation time (hours, days, etc.) and select feeds from which to pull pictures. Desktoptopia offers categories like abstract, film, photography, and typography. You can also add your own feed, which greatly increases the functionality of the program.
How many of the applications you use on a daily basis are web-based as opposed to locally installed native applications? For me, the answer is way more than I ever would have expected.
Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have vehemently denied that the future of development is on the web. As much as I could see and understand the value of a ubiquitously available web-based application, there's just no way to approach the level of power and integration (not to mention the ability to be always-available) that is possible with well conceived and developed desktop software.
Of course, back then I didn't imagine that web applications could become as useful as Google Calendar or Remember the Milk. I also didn't imagine that light - yet still useful - versions of these apps would be available from my mobile phone almost wherever I was.
Most of these are probably pretty familiar names, but one is a newcomer in the web space: Evernote. Still in beta, the new version of Evernote contains a full-featured web version, but synchronizes seamlessly with desktop software on either Windows or Mac platforms. And it's a breath of fresh air.
Flow has been in the works since the days of OS X Tiger, but the freshly released version takes things up a notch with a slick UI and a feature set that takes advantage of the power of Leopard. Flow is an FTP client, a text editor with a useful live preview feature, and a bookmark generator for drag-and-drop uploading. Add tabbed navigation and phenomenal ease-of-use, and it's got everything we want out of a new Leopard app,
Flow does have some neat extras, but first and foremost, it's an FTP client. When we tested it, it smoothly handled multiple connections to FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and even the often-criticized .mac service. The only thing we would have changed about the interface: a "recent connections" button or menu item would be nice. The bookmark button in Flow is easy to find, but sometimes we just forget to use it. Speaking of bookmarks, Flow has a unique feature that lets you save any bookmark as a droplet - a tiny app that quickly uploads anything you drop on it, without even opening Flow itself.
Once you've got some files on the server, Flow really sets itself apart from other FTP apps. You can edit your html and css files on the fly, and watch the results in a live preview. This is amazingly powerful, and saves a lot of time when you just need to make a quick change. Forgot to close an html tag? Don't bother uploading a new copy of the file, just edit it in Flow! It even supports Quick Look, so you can preview images right on the server.
YemuZip is a free Mac application for creating zip files for use on a Mac or PC.
But wait, doesn't the Finder have its own built-in Archive (zip) function?
Yes, it does -- but oftentimes, when you create a zip file on a Mac and unzip the file on a PC, you'll get a lot of gobbledy-gook along with your unzipped files. That's because the PC doesn't know how to read the Mac-specific metadata. YemuZip will zip your files in either a Mac or a PC format so you can avoid the unnecessary information.
The application itself couldn't be easier to use. Simply drag and drop the files you wish to compress onto the YemuZip interface, choose whether you want a PC or Mac specific zip format, and away it goes, merrily compressing.
YemuZip is free for personal use, and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Seesmic, which is in private beta, is basically a micro-video-blogging service, which allows users to record and share short videos and respond to videos from other users. Seesmic has often been described as Twitter for video chat. Today that comparison becomes a bit more apt, as Seesmic has acquired Twhirl, one of the most popular desktop clients for Twitter.
Twhirl is one of several Twitter clients built on Adobe AIR which use Twitter's API to essentially make a web-page based service feel more like an instant messaging client. You can run Twhirl as a desktop application on your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine. When new messages come in, you get an alert, and you can sort messages by replies, directs, or personal and public timelines. Twhirl also recently added the ability to repost messages to other micrblogging services like Jaiku and Pownce.
So what does this acquisition mean? First and foremost, Twhirl will be getting Seesmic video capabilities soon. As you can see from the screenshot to the right, video messages will show up in a timeline just like Twitter messages. Users will be able to click on a video message to open up a window that will play the video.
Second, so far Twhirl's creator Marco Kaiser has been developing Twhirl in his free time. Yet he's been able to build one of the most capable Twitter clients around. Now that he's working for Seesmic, Kaiser will be able to work on Twhirl full time. We can hardly wait to see the results.
Not surprisingly, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur decided to share his thoughts on the acquisition with a video. You can check it out after the jump.
When the iPhone Dev Team announced on April 1st that their team was being dismantled, and their intellectual property was being swallowed down the gullet of some fat-cat enemy of the people, Some sites took the bait (albeit with a small dose of skepticism).
Now that the fog that is April Fools Day has lifted, the iPhone Dev Team has revealed that, like Hilary Clinton (and Rocky), they are not going to abandon their mission. In fact, just to show that they are good sports, they gave Engadget a hands-on walkthrough of their new Pwnage tool, which will let you load any firmware you want on your iPhone, including patched firmware not signed by Apple (bring on the Linux!). The video is available here.
Update: The Pwnage tool is now officially available from the iPhone Dev Team; though, for now, the tool is Mac only.
Camino 1.6 is now out in the wild, and it looks to be the release a lot of people were waiting for. With many new features as well as many updated features, Camino 1.6 is an excellent and compelling alternative to Safari and Firefox on the Mac. 
