GOOGLE-X

CTM Development – PowerMail: “PowerMail™ version 5.5.2 for Intel™ and PowerPC™-based Macs

Now in its 11th year of continuous evolution, PowerMail delivers a unique blend of search features and e-mail management in a robust POP3 and lightweight IMAP4 mail client.”

Overview

With 63% of all messaging traffic now identified as spam (source: BrightMail 3/2004), how can dealing with e-mail become pleasurable again ?

Since the announcement of PowerMail 1.0 in August 1995, bringing a distinctive experience to Macintosh users has been our primary focus.

With the release of PowerMail 5, defeating spam takes center stage:

Rediscover an advertisement- free In Tray

With enhanced filtering mechanisms, a Spam filter assistant and intimate integration of SpamSieve for those who need it, you’re about to rediscover e-mail as uncluttered as it used to be.

New conditions and actions allow finer filtering of mailing-list traffic and help you organize your centers of interest in an ordery fashion; and while AppleScripts could previously be triggered by filters, scripts can now also extend the set of built-in filter conditions as well.

(Via ctmdev.)

I wanted to give you the heads up that Beta3 of the Update for Parallels Desktop for Mac is now ready for download. Nothing really “new” in this update, rather, this one polishes up several of the features that we released in Beta1 and Beta2. In this update, you’ll find that Coherence is much smoother, and that all windows, even ones with rounded corners or those with unusual shapes (like Windows Media Player) display correctly. USB also gets better with support for a broader range of devices, including things like Garmin GPS units, etc.

You can download Beta3 at Download

TMO Quick Tip – A Better Display Brightness Control: “Changing the brightness of your Mac’s display is a pretty easy thing to do, but what if you want more control – or you don’t want to jack up your ColorSync profile? You use Shades, that’s what”

(Via The Mac Observer.)

iPhotoToGallery: “

Gallery is a popular open source package for hosting photos. If you have your own website, you can install Gallery and put all your photons online. Your web hosting company may, in fact, have Gallery pre-installed or easily installable.

iPhotoToGallery is an iPhoto plugin that makes it easy to put your photos on a Gallery site. Simply choose ‘Export’ and then choose the ‘Gallery’ tab (see screenshot below.) Easy as .Mac!

(Via FreeMacWare.com.)

GlowWorm FW Lite: “

GlowWorm FW Lite will allow your to set up which programs can connect to the internet and which programs can not.

This program is free, though it does require registration with the site. Once installed, it will let you know each time that a program tries to connect and you can choose whether to let it.

(Via FreeMacWare.com.)

VMWare released “Fusion” which is a competitor to Parallels Desktop. Currently it is in Beat but here at Maconlysource.com we gave it a whirl with XP.
The cool feature of this app is the support for the built in iSight.

Installation was straight forward by inserting my booststrap SP2 XP CD (Note: Bootstrap is not rquired).

The screenshots take you through the install process which was uneventful.
Once installed, XP requested to change the display settings for improvements.
The resolution was not quite large enough (800X600) and I checked to see if there was a 1440X900 option. Just as in Parallels, I had to install the equuivalent “Tools” package to get the SVGA driver et.

Once installed I rebooted to 1440X900 and all was well.

Performance is on par with Parallels, faster than the new Parallels Beta version.

No crashes so far.

The cool feature is the toolbar showing the iSight camera (USB 2.0 on the Intel iMac). Also, in “FULL SCREEN” mode, Expose still functions and I can get quick access to my desktop and dock!

All I needed were the boot camp dries and voila!

I added a sample pic which was taken from within the “Picture” folder in XP.

I also decided to give “Movie Maker” a whirl and it worked well.
iSight Test.mov

The screen shots can be seen HERE

Another nice feature is tha availability of “Virtual Appliances” which are:

virtual appliances from software companies as well as the open source community.

I will check some Linux distros later.

I was able to drag folders and files from my desktop to the VMWare desktop and so sharing currently exists.

Also, I was able to suspend the OS. To resume took about 90 seconds but all devices were functional afterwards. From starting cold it took about 60 seconds.
The times were judged until Internet Explorer started and loaded google.ca.

I know this is a quick and dirty post but we will do more comparisons with Parallels in the New Year.
So back to the Rum ‘n Egg Nog, and Merry Christmas!

USB 2.0 support. Work with critical USB 2.0 devices like external hard drive, printers, and scanners at full native speeds. Just plug and play! A heads up; “isynchronous” devices like Bluetooth devices, webcams, etc. do not work with USB 2.0 yet, but we’re working hard to get them up and running. When we have new devices support, I’ll let you know immediately.
Full-feature virtual CD/DVD drive. Burn CDs and DVDs directly in virtual machines, and play any copy-protected CD or DVD just like you would on a real PC.
Improved Coherence mode. The groundbreaking feature that lets you run Windows applications without seeing Windows is now even more usable. Starting today, you can:
Place Windows applications on your Mac desktop or in your application dock. Just click to launch them directly from OS X!
Use Command+tab to cycle through Windows and Mac applications simultaneously, and “hide and show” Windows applications just like you would with Mac applications
Use Coherence in both Windows XP and Windows Vista!
Better support for using Boot Camp partitions in Parallels Desktop.
Full support for both FAT32 and NTFS partitions
Easy offline configuration; simply tell Parallels Desktop that you want to create a virtual machine from a Boot Camp partition and click “start”. No complicated set up required.
No need to re-activate Windows each time you switch between Boot Camp and Parallels. Activate Windows only once and work in both environments.
Use Parallels Transporter to make VMWare Workstation and Microsoft Virtual PC images work Parallels Desktop. Use Parallels Transporter, our free tool that helps users move an entire real PC to a virtual machine, to make an existing VMWare Workstation or Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine compatible with Parallels Desktop for Mac. Whether you’re moving a real PC or a VMWare or Microsoft virtual machine to Parallels Desktop, you won’t lose a single byte of data or re-installing a single application.

Download Beta2

FLYING YOGI: Fun Stuff – Menu Utilities Collection: “The Menu Utilities Collection is a free compilation of various small utilities that run within your Mac’s menu bar. Included in this compilation are:”

(Via flyingyogi.)

Snowfall – A Screen Saver for Mac OS X: “”

(Via alittlebitofnothingleft.)

Aquafadas launches PulpMotion 1.0: “AQUAFADAS LAUNCHES APPLICATION FOR INTEGRATING PHOTOS, MOVIES AND MUSIC INTO PERSONALIZED ANIMATED DISPLAYS

Ease of use, originality and low price make PulpMotion a newcomer to watch.

(Via AQUAFADAS.)

Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 9A321 Screenshots: “AeroXP and ThinkSecret have posted galleries with screenshots from the latest seed of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Features depicted include:

- New installer screens (screenshot)
- ZFS Formatting (screenshot, screensh…”

(Via MacRumors.)

Who Says Macs Aren’t Used In Businesses?
Arik Hesseldahl

I was at the Hewlett-Packard analyst’s meeting today and a funny Mac-related thing happened. I happened to sit right behind a four people folks from Soleil-Cross Research, three of whom were typing notes on MacBook Pros.”

(Via businessweek.)

Take iSight snapshots during invalid login attempts: “With the new MacBook Pro’s including built-in iSight cameras, I thought it would be useful to take an iSight snapshot of anyone trying to break into my laptop. This is done by tailing /var/log/asl.log for invalid login attempts (both at the login screen and screen saver). I have created an authsight program (1.5KB download) that provides a monitoring daemon which calls the camera after an invalid login attempt, and also includes a launchd manifest. An iSight command line tool named iSightCapture is also required.

It would not be too difficult to modify this tool to call home and even email photos should a laptop be stolen.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one, but there are easy install/uninstall instructions in the package.]

(Via Mac OS X Hints.)

Convert WMA files to other formats with a free app: “I found a very easy and free application to change WMA files into other formats, such as MP3, etc. It’s called Switch (the current version is 1.0.5). It’s got an easy-to-use interface, and the free version worked fine for my conversion needs.

(Via Mac OS X Hints.)