Mac only: We recently featured a multiple file type converter for Windows, but now Mac users can share in that same drag-and-drop joy with Dragoman, a free app that can batch convert images, photos, music, documents, and archives with minimal effort. More »
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I posted to google.com
Dragoman Batch Converts Nearly Anything with Drag and Drop Simplicity [Downloads]
April 13 2010, 6:00pm | #
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I posted to google.com
Dragoman Batch Converts Nearly Anything with Drag and Drop Simplicity [Downloads]
Mac only: We recently featured a multiple file type converter for Windows, but now Mac users can share in that same drag-and-drop joy with Dragoman, a free app that can batch convert images, photos, music, documents, and archives with minimal effort. More »
April 13 2010, 3:00pm | #
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I posted to google.com
Pollux Automatically Cleans and Tags Your iTunes Library [Downloads]
Mac OS X only: Free beta application Pollux analyzes the audio fingerprint of tracks in your music library and corrects the song's title, artist, album, art, lyrics, and more. It's simple to use and it works very well. While this sort of automated metadata fixing is one of the five big features we want to see added to iTunes, it's not something we're expecting from Apple any time soon. Pollux isn't the first to tackle this territory, by any means, and in the past I've highlighted TuneUp as my favorite tool of this ilk, so the first thing I wondered was: How does Pollux stack up to TuneUp? To find out, I pointed Pollux at a handful tracks that TuneUp has always had trouble identifying for me. The results: Pollux was able to successfully tag a few of the tracks that TuneUp was lost on. That doesn't necessarily mean that Pollux would have been able to identify all of the tracks that TuneUp was able to in the past, but it does bode well for the free Pollux. (TuneUp comes in a limited free version, but requires some money for full functionality.) I also pointed it at some tracks TuneUp had successfully tagged and found it batting a thousand there. Pollux works in a couple of ways: Either you can tell it to automatically analyze and tag any new files you add to iTunes (which makes it simple and unobtrusive), or you can select individual tracks, click its menubar icon, and click Tag Selected iTunes Tracks. Pollux is freeware (donations accepted), Mac OS X only; for the money, it seems like the best tool of its kind right now. Pollux
October 1 2009, 12:00pm | #
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I posted to google.com
Facebook Notifications Brings Facebook to Your Mac [Downloads]
Mac OS X only: Free menu bar application Facebook Notifications brings notifications and status updates from the popular social networking site to your desktop. After you install and enter in your Facebook credentials, just click on the Facebook Notifications icon for a quick look at your most recent notifications and messages along with quick links to take you straight to your news feed, profile page, or a new message composition window. You can even update your Facebook status at any time via a simple keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Alt+Ctrl+Space by default). Facebook Notifications also integrates with Growl, so any time you get a new update on the site, you'll also get a new Growl notification—particularly handy if you've set up Growl with Prowl to get push notifications to your iPhone for any Growl notification (something that Facebook on the iPhone doesn't yet support). We could debate the merits of Facebook as a productivity tool, but considering how many people use Facebook as their main hub of communications these days, I think it's a foregone conclusion at this point. An application like Facebook Notifications is a great tool for staying on top of what's going on with your Facebook friends. Facebook Notifications is freeware, Mac only, and despite the Facebook URL, it is not developed by Facebook. Desktop Notifications [Facebook via TechCrunch]
September 10 2009, 3:30pm | #
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I posted to google.com
Prep Your Mac for Snow Leopard [Snow Leopard]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/2KsdfT4A7C0/prep-your-mac-for-snow-leopard
An operating system update like this Friday's release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard is a perfect time to clean up your computer and start fresh. Let's prepare your Mac for this weekend's 10.6 upgrade. Before You Upgrade, Part 1: Clean Up Your Mac You don't want to take those applications you haven't launched in months, giant log files, superfluous startup items, and even old documents you don't need anymore into Snow Leopard, so the first thing you want to do is give your Mac the virtual hose-down. Audit your data, applications, and login items; run some maintenance, and give the old hard drive a checkup with Disk Utility. Here are detailed instructions on how to clean up and revive your bloated, sluggish Mac. Before You Upgrade, Part 2: Back Up Your Data Before you crack open that pretty Snow Leopard box, get yourself an external FireWire drive and run a full backup of all the important files on your Mac. If you've got Leopard now you should already be running Time Machine, so make sure you've got a fresh new backup completed. If you're still on Tiger, here are a gaggle of free Mac backup utilities for you to use. (But seriously, if you don't already: get a FireWire drive. Back up your Mac. Now.) Before You Upgrade, Part 3 (The Extra-Paranoid Track): Make a Bootable Backup of Your Mac Maybe you go through the entire Snow Leopard upgrade process only to realize that your one, essential, company VPN application isn't yet compatible. Maybe you accidentally lose files or apps in the upgrade process, or you just decide you hate Snow Leopard and want to go back to Leopard stat. One great way to ensure you can go right back to your working Mac's state before an upgrade is to mirror the current state of your Mac on a bootable external hard drive. Even if you've got a Time Machine backup, grab another external drive and clone your Mac's internal hard drive. With a bootable clone on hand, if anything goes wrong or you just want to boot back up into your old Mac's environment (settings, apps, data, and all), you can do so by holding down the T key Option key, restarting your Mac, and choosing the clone as your bootup disk. The Upgrade Path to Snow Leopard To install Snow Leopard on your Intel-based Mac, Apple recommends you go from Leopard using the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade disc, or go from Tiger using the $169 Mac Box Set. Here's Apple's full set of system requirements. The important thing to know is that you can only install the $29 upgrade on top of an existing Leopard installation. That is, you can't start with a formatted Mac hard drive and install Snow Leopard only, which is kind of a bummer for geeks who like to do totally fresh, from-scratch installations. Correction and update: We have confirmed that the preview of Snow Leopard DOES offer a standalone installer that works on a freshly-formatted hard drive without an existing Leopard installation or DVD. While we can't absolutely say before Friday whether or not the final release will work this way, it's very possible it will. (Read: The full version of the new Mac OS X may be just $29.) My apologies for the mistake! Thanks to commenters RudolphDer and dark42 for asking! Upate #2: Confirmed: $29 Snow Leopard installs whether or not you've got Leopard. Choose one of two methods for the upgrade. Upgrade Method 1. Install Snow Leopard Directly on Top of Your Existing Leopard Setup (Easy) If you're already running a relatively clean installation of Leopard, and you want to make this update as easy, fast, and painless as possible, you're just going to pop your Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac's drive and go. I did this using the Dev Preview of Snow Leopard on a well-used and cluttered Mac, and things went just fine. This is the upgrade path Apple wants you to take and suits most folks—with a good backup, you've nothing to fear. The only possible disadvantage to this approach is that some old logs and system files you don't need might stick around. Upgrade Method 2. Wipe Your Mac Clean and Start from Scratch (Advanced) Serious nerds who want their Snow Leopard installation absolutely pristine (and come from the Windows school of wipe-and-reinstall) can go all-out and format their Mac's hard drive, reinstall Leopard, upgrade to Snow Leopard,, install Snow Leopard and then restore their data from backup and reinstall all their essential apps. The one advantage to this approach is that you can take the opportunity to repartition your Mac's hard drive in the process (though if it's Boot Camp you want, you can set that up any time, not just when wiping your drive). You'll also know for sure your Mac is completely cruft-free. The disadvantage to this approach is that it's tedious and time-consuming. The Snow Leopard installation can take 45 minutes to an hour, then you've got to restore your Time Machine backup (depending on how much data we're talking, this can also take up to an hour) and then you've got to reinstall your applications. If you do decide to go this route on Snow Leopard upgrade day, here are a few notes: Only start once you have your Leopard DVD and Snow Leopard DVD in hand, and your data backed up. Inventory your Mac's application list. Command-line lovers can do a simple ls /Applications/ >> appsiuse.txt to get a textual listing of everything in the Applications folder. Otherwise you can just eye your Applications folder and note down its contents. Also check your System Preferences panes for any panels you've installed there. After you've inventoried your applications and backed up your data, insert your Leopard DVD and click on "Install Mac OS X." Insert your Snow Leopard DVD and click on "Install Mac OS X." When you reach the Snow Leopard Installer's "Welcome" screen, from the Utilities menu, choose "Disk Utility..." From there you can (say a little prayer) and format or repartition your Mac's internal hard drive. Once that's done, continue with the installation as usual. You get a few opportunities to restore your Time Machine backup during the Snow Leopard installation. Even if you pass each time, once Snow Leopard is completely installed, you can get your data out of Time Machine by running the Migration Assistant (located in /Applications/Utilities/). One important thing to know about restoring a Time Machine backup: you can't be logged in as the same user name that you're restoring. That is, if I'm logged in as gina, and my backed-up Time Machine user is also gina, the Migration Assistant either makes you rename the restored user or log in as another (admin) user to do the restore. The Migration Assistant also lets you decide what you restore: which data (in predetermined folders/categories, like Music, Pictures, Documents, etc), all of your Applications (or none), settings, and other files. Here's what that looks like: How are you planning to upgrade to Snow Leopard? Are you doing any special Mac prep beforehand? Tell us about it in the comments. Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, can't wait to get her paws on the Snow Leopard box. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
August 26 2009, 12:00pm | #
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I posted to google.com
Skype 2.8 for Mac Adds Screen Sharing, Wi-Fi Access, and More [Downloads]
Mac OS X only: Back in January Skype released a beta version of the popular VoIP application that added screen sharing tools, integration with Wi-Fi access service Boingo, better audio and video, and several other improvements. Today Skype 2.8 was released, officially rolling these improvements into the stable release of Skype. If you'd been waiting until they left beta to enjoy the new features, now's the time. Skype 2.8 is freeware, Mac OS X only. [Skype 2.8 via ReadWriteWeb]
July 20 2009, 4:35pm | #
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I posted to google.com
Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Mac Downloads [Downloads]
We've featured countless apps or all sorts over the years, but if you just want a quick look at the best free downloads for your Mac, this post's for you. This is the 2009 Lifehacker Pack for Mac OS X. Like our 2009 Lifehacker Pack for Windows (and its predecessor), the Mac version has the same goal in mind: to provide Mac lovers with a single, handy list of the best free applications that you're likely to use on a regular basis. Note: You can head directly to each application's download page from the [Download] links and see what we originally wrote about them at the [LH Post] link. Productivity Smultron: Whether you like the distraction-free environment of a plain text editor or you like to fire up a powerful environment where you can churn out some serious code, you can't go wrong with the open-soruce Smultron. It sports a nice tabbed interface for working with multiple documents and working inside a directory, syntax highlighting, and even a fullscren mode for those times that you want to work without distractions. [Download] [LH Post] Quicksilver: Even though it's no longer in active development by it's creator, we still can't get enough of this incredible application launcher and-then-some. We've taken you on a beginner's guide to Quicksilver, walked you through the various settings, provided video demonstrations of some of its coolest features, and in general have drooled all over this productivity-boosting application. And even though we're keeping a close eye on Google Quick Search, the Quicksilver-like app from Google that was developed by the same guy who made Quicksilver, it's still no replacement. [Download] Internet/Communication Firefox: All debates about security, memory use, or compatibility amongst the web browsers aside, Firefox can adapt to nearly anyone's browsing habits through a range of adaptations. Whether that's an extension/add-on (and here are our top 10 picks), a Greasemonkey script (again, our 10), or some deep-down about:config tweaks, Firefox can probably be what you want it to be. [Download] [LH Post] Adium: Pronounced like "stadium", Adium is a free, powerful multi-protocol instant messaging client that connects to everything from AIM and Google Talk to Facebook Chat, MySpace Chat, and everything in between. Adium is extremely customizable, works like a charm, and brings way more options to your chats than the OS X standard, iChat. Postbox: If you're not using your email's web interface, use this. It's basically Thunderbird, the open-source email client we'd previously included in our Lifehacker pack, but remixed with stronger, almost Gmail-like powers. It finds and indexes all the attachments in your email account, groups together conversations with similar subject chains with the "Gather" command (like Gmail's conversations), offers tabbed inbox and message views, and lets you organize emails under your own chosen "Topics." It's also got built-in easy setup steps for Gmail and other webmail systems-in other words, everything we're waiting to see Thunderbird implement. [Download] [LH Post] Utilities Unarchiver: OS X's default Archive Utility handles a lot, but the first time you come across slightly more unusual (but still very common) archive types like RAR, you'll notice it stumble. The Unarchiver handles ZIP, TAR, RAR, 7Z, StuffIt, and several more obscure archive types without flinching. [Download] [LH Post] Transmission: The most popular BitTorrent client for OS X, Transmission rolls virtually every feature you'd want out of a good BitTorrent application into one clean, easy-to-use package. You can even remote control your BitTorrent downloads with Transmission, or get clever and start new BitTorrent downloads at home from any computer with Dropbox (mentioned below). [Download] [LH Post] AppTrap: One of the best parts of OS X is that uninstalling an application is as simple as deleting it, right? Yes, but not exactly; often simply deleting the file leaves your computer with old junk files sitting around that used to belong to the application you just deleted. AppTrap automatically detects when you're deleting an application, looks for associated files, and automatically deletes them for you along with the app in question. [Download] [LH Post] Burn: OS X comes with Disk Utility—a very nice burning application plus some—out of the box, but it's often used only for more advanced ISO burning, disk formatting, and other heavy-lifting type activities. Burn, on the other hand, is a simple, user-friendly CD and DVD burning application that does data, audio, video, and disc copying with aplomb. [Download] [LH Post] Multimedia VLC - Got a video or audio file to play? VLC probably plays it. Don't like how heavy Quicktime is? VLC is lighter. Want it free, working on any system, and have it show album art from your tracks? Done and done. [Download] [LH Post] iTunes: We've seen stronger competition for your music management in OS X this year than ever, particularly with the recent release of Songbird, but right now you're still better off sticking with iTunes on your Mac. Not only does it integrate seamlessly with your various iPods, but it also integrates with most of your Mac's iLife applications and other Mac apps. So while you'd better watch out for the competition, iTunes, you're still the favorite for music. [Download] [LH Post] File Backups/Syncing Dropbox: Put simply, Dropbox makes synchronizing your files across Windows, Mac, or Linux systems a very simple, almost magical process. Put a copy of what you're working on or want saved in your Dropbox folder, and it's synchronized to your account, which has 2GB to start with, and gets bigger if you recommend friends. When you're at another one of your own computers, your Dropbox updates and grabs those files. If you're at someone else's system or on a smartphone, head to Dropbox's mobile-friendly site and grab what you need. It's not quite a backup tool, but it is one of those utilities that makes a lot of old habits—thumb drive copying, CD burning, emailing attachments to yourself—seem unnecessary. [Download] [LH Post] Mozy: If Dropbox is where you stash the stuff you're working on or enjoying at the moment, Mozy is the backup service that saves everything for when your system goes black on bootup. The free accounts for Macs (and PCs) offer 2GB of free online space, and with the really smart filtering tools, you can have Mozy crawl your whole system and back up financial documents, Excel sheets, and any file with "Steve" in it. If you spring for a monthly unlimited plan, Mozy is a smart whole-system saver—one that doesn't eat bandwidth when you're using it, and works when you're not working. [Download] [LH Post] If you were to compare this pack of software with our Lifehacker Pack for Windows, you'll notice a fair amount of overlap. That's because, luckily for all of us, in many cases free, cross-platform software is thriving. In other instances, we didn't include a Mac version because the system default is already a very solid choice. (For example, where we recommended Foxit Reader on Windows for lightweight PDF duties, we'd just suggest the built-in Preview in OS X). Other utilities, like Texter, don't have a completely free Mac alternative (though we do very much like TextExpander, which has a free trial beyond which it turns nagware). Things change daily in the world of free software, and we by no means believe that this list is absolutely definitive, so if you've got your own I-can't-believe-they-didn't-include-X must-haves, tell us all about them—and share any other thoughts on our list—in the comments. Happy downloading!
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June 16 2009, 7:30pm | #
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