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Written by MacSwitcher Andreas Hegenberg, SecondBar, still in early development, is the first successful attempt I’ve seen at replicating the menu bar across displays. Just launch this program and your menu bar magically appears on your second screen.
You can thus access menu commands from either menu bar.

Via SecondBar’s preferences, you can set the transparency of the second menu bar, and you can make the second menu bar movable (although I’m not sure why you’d want to move it lower on the screen). SecondBar also provides some useful keyboard and mouse-button shortcuts for quickly moving windows between displays and resizing windows to the left or right half of a display.

Just a few cons: SecondBar puts a second menubar up on a second monitor. Unfortunately, the name reflects reality–it only provides 1 more menubar, and not one per additional screen; moreover Secondbar it’s still an unfinished project so may hang up with some apps: be warned.

However, it works well for what it does. I tried some other menu utilities, but they all miss the boat for my needs.

Screen real estate is never enough, so is the menubar!

Download SecondBar by clicking here and check Andreas other apps as well!

I use/love/hate/hack WordPress for some websites I run/admin/work for.

Media uploading though – image, namely, has become an issue since every time you upload an image (PNG to be accurate) huge files are being stored along with their smaller thumbnails.

The catch is that WP ( > 3.x) generates thumbnails from uploaded PNGs that are far from optimized and so take a lot of (precious) storage space – and result in being slower when downloaded with mobile devices.
I know that we live in the gigabytes-hosting-giveaway era, but it’s still an issue to me!

At first, I tried with Photoshop, getting PNGs as small as I could but then moved on to a simpler solution.

Meet ImageOptim!

ImageOptim is a free and really simple to use image optimizer that works well to quickly reduce the file size of PNG, JPEG, and GIF image files.
The interface couldn’t get any easier: you just drag and drop images into the app and they’ll be optimized, whether it’s one picture or some hundreds (just in my case) it works the same.

The app works by finding the most suitable compression parameters for the image file type, and then it further reduces file size by removing unnecessary color profiles, EXIF data, and comments from the image itself.

Check it out! Optimization works well and it’s a lot faster than opening something like Photoshop.

You can even optimize ImageOptim itself by adjusting the amount of CPU gear it can use (so that CPU usage is correctly shared along with all other applications running): this is great on my i5 MBP – all 4 cores are devoted to get the job done really quickly.

Try now and find out how much you can optimize/reduce/save your image file – i found PNGs are on average 25% smaller when ImageOptim-treated!

ImageOptim requires Tiger and up, and is available in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Polish.

Download ImageOptim here!

I love text editors, it’s a long-time habit: most of the time I code in PHP and write articles on Smultron and WriteRoom much better than I do with Word (or OpenOffice, so to speak).

So when I came across OmmWriter I was curious: “Another one to add to my text-ed collection?”.

Ommwriter from Herraiz Soto on Vimeo.

OmmWriter (beta) from Herraiz Soto & Co draws a lot from Zen concept: simple yet effective.
You just download it and … there you are: a relaxing interface with nothing but your text.
The right-side menus & buttons and the windows-enlarging points appear only if you move the mouse.

OmmWriter is not just a text editor since it allows you to insert font style and size, but it saves to plain txt files; native and default file format .omm is still there, if rich text format is needed.

According to a Zen garden you can choose the background image and music, but besides this you can really type with no distraction whatsoever: just concentration on your ideas.

Nice & clean design, nice features – I really appreciate their web site too.

Apple kicks off 2010 tablet frenzy with the iPad: one of the most awaited and rumors-prone device in history!

A 9.7″ inches screen that’s essentially a bigger brother to iPhone more than a little one to a MacBook, but that’s what it was intended for.

Big news: meet A4 processor, Apple’s own processor, running at 1 GHz.
Available with 16 -32 and -64 GB of memory, with 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

Sports accelerometer, compass, mic and speaker and the usual iPod dock connector!

More facts: 10 hr batter, over a month of standby.

Runs the same Apps as the iPhone, so the iPad starts with a massive software library as well as developers support.

Introducing iBooks: the Apple alternative to Amazon Kindle service, books to be chosen and bought just like songs or apps on iTunes – er – iBooks Store, that is!
It uses the ePub book format, already available and popular, by the way.

It’s going to be available in two version, with or without 3G connectivity, along with AT&T data plan.

Pricing
WiFi versions 16 GB: $ 499 – 32 GB: $599 – 64 GB: $ 699
3G versions 16 GB: $ 629 – 32 GB: $729 – 64 GB: $ 829

WiFi version available in 60 days, 3G in 90 days.

[updating in progress]

Right now, Steve Jobs is uncovering the new iPad (the much awaited Apple tablet!)
Stay tuned!

The bundle that came for free

MacHeist did it again!
Usually their app bundles typically deliver a dozen Mac applications at a significant discount.
The latest bundle is even more affordable: it delivers you 6 Mac applications ($154 value) for Free!

* Mariner Write requires 500,000 total bundle participants to be “unlocked”.

My favorites?

I love WriteRoom (in fact I’m writing this very post with WR now) for its simplicity and ingenuity: it’s really “distraction-free” writing – with some pluses.
You get a Matrix-like editing screen that’s really good if you need to concentrate only on writing – and you ought to!

Since I’m an avid Twitter user, Twitterrific is a valuable tool!
Just like WriteRoom, you get a full-featured Twitter window that requires very little system resources, stays quietly in the background, allows you to perform all Twitter operations.
(regular price for this jewel is $ 14.95 – for free is a steal!)

I’m intrigued by ShoveBox and still have to fully exploit its features.
I love the idea of being able to stack up all tiny data (URLs, products, single news, snippets of code) that I get into all day.
Hope Shovebox does it in a neat way as it promises: more on this will follow!

Click there to download this free bundle offer from MacHeist but hurry up, offer end November 12th 2009!

(Each application offered represents full licenses.)

Remember that free is the perfect number!

I’ll leave the boring economic & stock details to those really interested into this [so click here to read more Apple stock news], but Apple’s shares got up to $ 205.04 – super-atmospheric price!

For us, geeks, Mac-users and -lovers, what’s more important?

New products, of course!

On Oct 20th Apple introduced so many new produts and updates I barely can name all of them here, so let’s get a list to begin.

new iMac, it’s that simple: 21.5 and 27 inches display, new CPUs up to Core i7 Quad processors, up to 16 GB Ram (from the 8 Gig previously allowed). Simply gorgeous!
Several built-to-order options for Graphics cards, CPU, hard disk units available.
new MacBook: white policarbonate chassis but with unibody construction style, multitouch trackpad, 13.3 Led display.
new Magic Mouse: almost an iPod touch or a multi-touch trackpad – in a mouse! All the mouse surface is smart enough to keep track of your gestures!
Mac Mini: despite all rumors (and death bell tolls) it’s still alive – and fine! The 2009 Mac Mini sports a faster processor, twice the RAM, energy-saving features and a lot more!

A product I’m really interested in is the Mac Mini with Snow Leopard.
A special edition Mac Mini fully loaded with 4 Gigs of RAM, two 500 GB hard disks and pre-installed Snow Leopard Server with special remote management features.
Right now it’s the best way (and the most affordable yet) to get a great Mac server for your Home/Office and to fully integrate PCs and Macs!

Most Apple product should be available by the time you read this or eligible for pre-order; here are some prices:
Apple iMac 21.5-Inch starts at US $ 1.199
Apple iMac 27-Inch starts at US $ 1.699
Apple MacBook available for US $ 999
Apple Magic Mouse available for US $ 69
Apple Mac mini goes starts from US $ 599
Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server (unlimited license) is available for US $ 999.

It’s been a month today since I installed Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro 15″ unibody (late 2008) with 4 GB of RAM.
Final judgement?
It simply works, and slightly better indeed!

A few features I loved and checked with ‘real life’ test drive (on a unibody MacBook too, thx Alex!):

Installation process

Installation process is truly pain-free and foolproof: no fear, no complex settings, no need to be OS X-skilled! Just put in the Snow Leopard DVD, double click and wait!

Installation time

Installation time: it took less than 30 minutes on the MBP and a little more on the MB.
I guess the worst part of it goes with the slowness of DVD read cycles.

Don’t touch my settings!

All settings were preserved, no data loss, no settings loss!
I found each and every icon, Finder settings, Safari cookies, documents and application history…
Just as I switched off Leopard and switched it on again: apparently no sign of 10.6 intervention!

Blazingly-fast boot time

Boot time: my MBP now takes 45″ (yes, that’s 45 seconds!) from ‘pressing the ON button’ up to ‘full operating computer’ with a desktop that’s (still, my fault) cluttered with icons! With Leopard, as far as I can recall it took at least 1’40″…
On the MacBook it takes a little more, going near to one minute to get a fully working Mac.
Try that on a Win-based PC

(Disk) Space: the final frontier

Before installing Snow Leopard on my MBP, I managed to get 17 GB of free space (out of the 250 GB size of the internal HD). After installing Snow Leopard, free disk space jumped to 25 GB!
It’s the first time ever in my (computer) life I ever see an operating system upgrade that frees (that much) space!

Browser wars

I confess… I’m a hungry Firefox user with tons of FF windows and tabs always taking up more CPU % than what’s available and I’m used to Safari just as a second-choice browser (work with a lot of FF plug-ins, BTW).
Now that Safari is the only (AFAIK) 64-bit browser available on my Mac, I see that the same amount of opened web sites on both browsers gives Safari a clear edge over FF!
CPU % and memory usage is a lot more efficient!
I guess here’s where Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) gets nasty and makes the difference.

Anyway, Xmas wishlist: please, bring me Firefox 64-bit!

Airport status menu

At last, the Airport status menu gives the only information a Mac-road-warrior needs: Wi-Fi signal strength before attempting to hook a wireless network, besides the usual “lock” sign stating a closed/password-based wi-fi hotspot.

Which applications dislike Snow Leopard?

Until now, only Chromium (a not-so-official Mac porting of the Google Chrome browser) refused to launch and closes immediately.
I’ve been checking this useful list (http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/) against 10.6-incompatible software and found just a few notable missing titles.

Hardware support

All the previously supported hardware still work with Snow Leopard.
Even my phone carrier HDSPA USB key from an obscure Taiwan company with almost indie drivers (rated for 10.5.x only) and vanishing support has been working from day one.

Suggestions

Any operating system upgrade should be done with a little planning, even on a Mac.
I love SuperDuper ease of operation and power: it allows you to almost replicate a fully working system on multiple drives.
If you need a proof of this, check Ken Rockwell’s blog and his “Free New Computer” post where Ken explains how he managed a disk upgrade on a Mac Quad G5 (not Intel!).

Conclusions

Go for it!
For less than US $ 30 you can get yourself not only the very latest operating system, usually a tech-geek desire, but a really useful and powerful way to revive your system, so go and grab a copy of Snow Leopard.
We’re not expecting miracles from Snow Leopard making older Intel-based Macs fly like an 8-Core Mac Pro, but at least you’ll get someting that fully exploits your existing hardware, makes a better use of available space and… eventually frees you from staring at a boot screen.

Starting today, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is available for shipping.
Current Mac OS 10.5 Leopard users are eligible to upgrade to Snow Leopard at the very low price of $29.

Snow Leopard is a truly exciting addition to the Mac OS X line, with half the footprint of previous versions, great new features in Expose & Stacks, quicker Time Machine backup, and faster wireless network interaction. It’s the world’s most advanced operating system, finely tuned.

Quicktime X and 64-bit support just to name a few features.

I’ll be checking ‘em out very soon and report about them!

Terminal usage shouldn’t deserve a boring reputation: here’ one more reason!

ASCII art has been with us as long as we’ve been using computers, and there’s a lot of great ASCII animation out there. How about watching the original Star Wars in ASCII animation?

A telnet server out there on the Internet serves up this amazing adaptation.

Just enter telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and hit return.

You’re definitely right: it’s Star Wars – Episode IV: A new hope!

The guy behind this masterpiece is Simon Jansen: kudos Simon!

Feel lazy?
Get here and watch ASCII-Star Wars in video (losing a lot of the fun…)

By the way, this is version of Star Wars doesn’t need any video codec and is fully compatible with any OS (maybe a Commodore 64 with suitable TCP/IP stack too!).

The AdSense Notifier add-on for Firefox has always been one of my favourite extension for FF.

Starting from Firefox 3.0 although, it had several problems.

Now, with FireFox 3.5 release things have gone even worse; moreover its developer, a guy named Allen G. Holman AKA Mincus, has no longer supported its creations nor updated it blog: where are you Allen?

So, no more support from developer, Firefox 3.5 no longer installing it: what else? Living with no Adsense notifications?
No way!

So… I came up with a solution and a way to get it running like before with some help and workarounds both on Mac OS X and Windows.

First let’s get back to basics.

Here is where it all started: AdSense Notifier add-on for Firefox, and here’s the author’s web site Mincus Code.

The first help I got was LancelHoff’s blog which give some good instructions on how to operate on XPI add-on packages.
[thanks Doug Poire AKA dcphosting_services for posting it on Mozilla.org!]

Let’s open it: call Gil Grissom for Adsense.XPI!

Step #1: in first place, get yourself a copy of Adsense.xpi and save it on your desktop.

[Note all instructions from now onwards will be the same for Mac OS X and Windows]

Step #2: rename the downloaded Adsense.xpi file as Adsense.zip and unzip it as usual, preserving directory structure, in a directory called Adsense.

This is the directory structure that you should see:

Step #3: fire your favourite text Editor (on the Mac I’m in love with Smultron) and open the Install.rdf file within the Adsense directory;

Step #4: check line #33 and replace the Firefox version number according to the line below:

<em :maxVersion>3.5.*</em>

we need to fool Firefox into believing that this plug-in is compatible with any 3.5.x version.
[Note: if you aren't willing to get into this when FF 3.6.x comes out, just put a 3.6.* version number and forget about it!]

Step #5: open nsAdsensenotifier.js under the Components directory with the text editor;

Step #6: look for line 103, replacing the following line of code:

var passwd = "";

with this code (replacing your actual password):

var passwd = "password";

This step will eliminate the annoyance of being asked again the Adsense account password;

Step #7: save all text files and close text editor;

Step #8: zip (or compress) the Adsense folder into Adsense35.xpi: beware not to include the Adsense path into the zip file! That is: no sub-folders or it will not work…

Check here the correct zip file directory structure:

Step #9: open Firefox and uninstall any previous Adsense notifier; restart Firefox;

Step #10: open the Adsense35.xpi directly from Firefox (CMD+O on the Mac or Open File – CTRL+O on Windows) and proceed as usual installing the plug-in.

There you are! Adsense notifier is up and running as usual!

Hope this helps you as much as it helps me!

Notes

I found this notable quotation:

“Anyone who uses Google ads on their blog and web site spends a lot of time checking in to see how they are doing. This has been called GAD or Google Adsense Disorder, and I definitely suffer from it.”

I definitely sign it!

Further readings: about GAD – Google Adsense Disorder and the notifier.

Please note: The following fix worked for me, however, I am offering no warranty for this information. Proceed at your own risk.