Jonathan Davies

Name: Virtue Desktops
Price: FREE
Website: http://virtuedesktops.info/
Platform: Mac

I have to many windows open at once on my Mac, and it is a real pain, having to minimize one and then open another one close that so you can see your email, but then you get a chirp from Twitterific so you have to go find twitterific that has been buried under all these open windows. Now the long term solution would be to get an external monitor or if you have a desktop a secondary monitor.

But with Virtue Desktops, that replaces the need for one (I still want a 30” Display though!). The whole point of it is to basically add a few more desktops which you can surf between. Of course you can add more.

So I have mine arranged like this:

Desktop 1: Mail, Twitterific and Pownce

Desktop 2: Safari

Desktop 3: Everything else (in this case Pages)

So now I can skip between Windows and have three times the space compared to before. One cool “iCandy” feature that it has is the way you change between Desktops. It uses the Quartz Engine to do this and my favorite so far is the slide desktop.

So if you want to get four or so times more desktop space then try out Virtue Desktops for the mac - and guess what, it’s free!

Have I persuaded you to go give it a try? Or are you going to wait for Leopard which will basically have this feature built in? Leave a comment below or use the contact form.

Safari is currently the only web browser that does colour management, it uses a technology called webkit which allows it to display the colours as they are meant to be. Neither Firefox, Camino or Internet Explorer do this. Just to put it into perspective for you hear is a comparison:

As you can see it makes quite a deference. The colours are more more pronounced and they stand out far better. This is yet another reason that I use Safari

What do you think of Safari’s colour management? Should more browsers try to use it? Leave a comment or use the contact form!

My blog runs on the popular blog publishing platform Wordpress. One fof the great things about wordpress is that it is open source so many people are developing plug-ins that enhance the experince for your readers or you. I use mnay plug-ins on my blog, about fifteen, though most of them you never see. But anyway here are my favourite Wordpress Plug-ins:

Askimet -

I don’t care what sort of blog you have yu need Askimet. This plug-in is amazing at blocking spam comments that might be posted on your blog, so far on mine it has stopped nearly 500, yes I did type that correcdtly 500 spam comments and what is really cool about it is that it learns. So if I does miss one (though it has only missed a few spam comments for me) you can tell i that it is spam and it will learn.

You do need a wordpress.com account to get it to work but thats easy. I think the ten minutes of hassle that you get from setting it up saves you ten times as much time when deleting spam comments.

Flickr RSS -

As you can see on the left of blog, on the sidebar is my Flickr Pictures, I get thoses to pop up using the plug-in Flickr RSS. It is very easy to use and has lots of customisations that you can do, usch as the number of pictures to be shown, if they show a square, thumbnail or rectangle. You can also get it to change what photos you want it to show per page.

To get the plug-in up an running you have to go get a “code’ which will allow it to get the info it needs, it tells you how to do this and all you have to do really is go to a website and type in the URL

WP-Contact Form -

I find it a real pain when you wan to contact someones blog privately and you have to go hunting for their email address, so to iliviate my stresses on my own site I use the Contact From Plug-in. It’s supper easy to install and set up. All you have to do once you’ve got it installed it create a new page, I named mine “contact me” an d then go in to the code section of your WYSIWYG editor and put in and bit of text, and your done!

SRG Clean Archives -

I really wanted an archive page that was easy to navigate and use, Wordpress comes with one but I didn’t like it very much, but I did find one that I did like called SRG Clean Archive. As you can see if you go to my archive page, you select the month and in an AJAXy way the months post drop down, Pretty cool!

What plug-ins do you use on your wordpress blog? Leave a comment or use the contact form!

Is there a folder or file that you need all the time, but find it annoying to go through and finding it? Well I do, it is the folder that I put all my blog posts into, but unfortunately it is buried deep in Documents. So to be able to get it straight away you need to go to that folder and pick it up. You then drag it to the space at the top of the finder (you can see a picture of it bellow) You then hover over it until a green plus sign appears, when it does let go and it will pop into the top. Now when ever you are in the finder, all you have to do is click there and you can go to your favorite folder.

Do you have an Apple quick tip that you want to submit? If so use the contact form (the link is at the top of the page). If you submit one and I use it You’ll get credit (a link to your website - of course it doesn’t matter if you don’t have one) and the jealously of all your friend for been featured!

Please Note: I can not guarantee that jealousy of your friends

Name: Vienna

Price: FREE

Website: http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php

Platform: Mac

I recently went looking for a good, free (because I am a cheap scate) RSS Reader for the Mac - I found Vienna.

Vienna has a very clean interface and is very simple to use. It takes what could have been a really bogged down RSS Reader with bells and whistles that nobody ever uses and gives you something that works. When you want to add a new feed all you do is click the big plus button and input the feed. It also has special settings for Xanga, Blogger, MSN Spaces and many more places. Then you can choose in the preferences pane how often you want Vienna to check the feeds for new entries. It's pretty cool, also another cool feature is how Vienna is also a web browser, so if your feed (like MacRumors.com ) only lets you see some of the entry, all you have to do is click on the entry an within Vienna it will take you straight to the website.

Of course you can also make smart folders so that if you want to only look at any posts to do with a single topic, for instance photography you can do that.

All in all Vienna is a great RSS Reader and doesn't make a half bad Web Browser either - so check it out!

What RSS Reader do you use and why? Leave a comment or use the contact form!

OK this is totally random, but is pretty cool, I’m not sure if anyone else knows this but if you click on the subject button when writing a new email is Yahoo Web Mao; it gives you a random subject - here are a few of them

There are eels in my hovercraft

I served in the military under General Apathy

I Brake for Unicorns

What’s the corkage fee at McDonald’s?

I’d like 600 mirrors please

Did anyone know about this, have I just missed something? Leave a comment and tell me!

Sometimes I find myself very rarely using track-pad on my Mac because for me, I tend to use keyboard short-cuts. Here are the ones that I find the most useful:

command - m This minimizes the window that I currently have open.

ctrl - q Now this one is customized for me but I use it to summon quicksilver. For more read this post.

3. command - n Good old command - n, you know what it does - incase you don’t this makes a new file.

Alt-Tab This allows you to go through your already open apps and choose them.
Do you have an Apple quick tip that you want to submit? If so use the contact form (the link is at the top of the page). If you submit one and I use it You’ll get credit (a link to your website - of course it doesn’t matter if you don’t have one) and the jealously of all your friend for been featured!

Please Note: I can not guarantee that jealousy of your friends