Today through Sunday only, MacZOT offers a free version of Inventive’s iClip 3, apparently to build up an audience for the upcoming introduction of iClip 4. I’ve been playing with it for a little while this morning.

iClip extends your clipboard into an entire scrapbook of clippings, which I’m sure can be very useful for the right kind of application. As for me, I’m not sure I’m going to keep on using it after today. For items, particularly text items, that I use a lot, I prefer to create macros with QuicKeys.

As for pictures? I didn’t find a huge advantage to sticking them into the clipboard over keeping a folder open and dragging them out as needed. What’s more, I can move a folder around my screen–and I can’t drag around the clippings.

I was hoping to be a lot more impressed with the software than I actually was. However, given that it’s free, if you’re looking for a clipboard extender of this type, it may be worth giving it a spin. And, if it suits you, consider upgrading when iClip 4 appears.

Beyond the Break Season 1: Episode 1 “Charging It”
Lacey buys a one-way ticket to a new life, as Kai copes with her old one. Birdie finds love, and Dawn finds… something else. The four Wavesync girls roll with the tide of friendships and romances as they try to prove that they’ve got what it takes to survive both on- and offshore.

Blade: The Series, Season1, Episode 1
Immortal warrior Blade continues his fight against a shadowy underworld of vampires who are threatening total domination of mankind. Blade meets Krista, a recently dispatched US military combat medic who is investigating her brother’s suspicious murder. As Krista is pulled into the underworld, she teams up with Blade and his partner, Shen, to infiltrate the vampires from the inside and out. However, Blade has to keep strict tabs on Krista, who could easily succumb to the dark forces of the underworld she now inhabits.

Superman Returns: Exclusive Premiere Scene
In the press room of the Daily Planet, Clark Kent receives a distress message from Lois Lane. With no phone booth in sight, Clark quickly ducks into an elevator to make the change to Superman.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 1, “Underage Drinking” Episode
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a half-hour comedy that focuses on four friends who own and operate a bar in South Philadelphia and try to maintain the balance of power between their business and friendship. In the show’s first season, the gang tries to prove Charlie is not a racist; a girl from Charlie’s past reveals that he is a father; they relive their high school years; the gang learns Charlie might have cancer; the guys buy a gun; Mac and Dennis get close to a dead man’s granddaughter; and their gym teacher has been accused of molestation.

Making of the Sunny Pilot
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, behind the scenes.

Best of Sunny Funnies
The funniest moments from Season 1 and 2.

Bono in Africa, with Brian Williams
An inside look at U2’s Bono and his mission of hope in Africa

I just found a free workaround to something that’s annoyed me about my otherwise dependable printer forever—the huge margin it leaves at the bottom of the page. Whereas the top, left, and right margins could be as small as a quarter inch (0.64cm), the bottom demanded almost three times that.

The cool thing was that I discovered the solution while fixing another problem: unreliable printing over my AirPort Express. Although my Windows laptops print fine over the Express’s Wi-Fi connection, half the time the Mac would print a few lines and then give up.

Following a tip in the comments of an ancient Mac DevCenter blog, I set the printer to use a GIMP driver instead. I simply…

1. Clicked the link https://127.0.0.1:631/admin;
2. Entered my Mac user name and password;
3. Clicked the Printers button in the page that came up;
4. Clicked the Modify button for the Wi-Fi printer;
5. Clicked through a few screens, and then entered the IP address of the AirPort Express (I found it in the AirPort Admin Utility);
6. Clicked through a few more screens and selected the model of my printer.

Step 4: Pick your printer.

Boom! Not only did the printer start printing over Wi-Fi, its margins were reduced to an eighth of an inch on the sides and zero inches on the top and bottom. Near-borderless printing for free!

I thought I would use this blog entry to address the many excellent comments to my previous blog entry on Apple moving away from computing and turning into Sony with a design sensibility. A quick note of policy, I welcome all comments and I try to have a thick skin. I write what I want to write, not what I think will create controversy or provoke anger. Now to the comments.

Everyone has their favorite applications, but these are 15 of my personal favorites that I’ve collected here because they save me time or solve a particularly unique problem. I hope you find something on this list useful.

*In the interst in saving time, I’ve collected all the links for these applications and you can find them on my personal blog here.

Sidenote
What Stickies should have been! An unobtrusive notepad that hides just off to the side of the screen…awaiting your mouse to release it. It slides out, allows you to drag and drop…cut and paste…just about anything. Quick…and easy.

Cost: Free

——

Snapz Pro
What can I say about Snapz Pro except this is the Mercedes of screen grab applications. From grabbing small areas to taking movies of the screen…I’ve found no other screen grab app that does as much as Snapz Pro, or works as well.

Cost: $69

——

Chax
Chax adds all the features to iChat that are missing. From tabbed chat windows, to searchable logs. Works with Growl.

Cost: Donationware

——

Chicken of the VNC
A lot of people don’t realize it, but in System Preferences>Apple Remote Desktop is a checkbox for enabling VNC.

This allows you to login to your machine remotely and control the screen. I have a recycled Titanium in my house running as a server. I sometimes need to access it, but since I keep it in the basement rafters, it isn’t easily accessible. Chicken of the VNC is a great free VNC client that allows me to control the Titanium remotely in a Window.

Cost: Free

——

DoubleTake
I take a lot of Panorama shots with my digital camera. DoubleTake is a brilliant little app that lets me drag and drop the images and stitch them together with almost zero effort.

Click Here for Samples

Cost: $16

——

Free Ruler/SmallScreenX
Free Ruler works as a movable screen ruler so you can easily measure any item on the screen. I use it when building web pages, programming applications, and doing graphics.

But perhaps you want to get an idea of what an 800×600 window looks like and if the work you are doing will fit inside it? SmallScreenX does just that by creating a movable box that you can place around anything on the screen to get a better idea of what another screen resolution might be looking at.

Cost: Free

——

HandBrake/MactheRipper
While the MPAA wants the government to believe that ripping movies is a violation of fair-use, shifting legally purchased content from one location to another for your own personal use…is a necessity.

I don’t like having a hundred of my DVDs lying about the house, so I used Mac The Ripper to quickly rip my DVDs to a hard drive, and then HandBrake to later convert them to a smaller video file. This way I can take a 7GB file and get it under a 1GB. I stream these movies to my TV/Laptop using a NAS drive. No clutter…and my movies on demand, 24/7.

Cost: Free

——

DynDNS Updater
I run my own server at home for personal and business use. I also use an internet provider that likes to block web ports and I don’t feel like paying through the nose for a Static IP. Using Dynamic DNS in combination with the DynDNS Updater application and a little router port forwarding magic…I’m able to keep my own server running and accessible to my clients.

Cost: Free

——

Netflix Freak
This app was definitely worth what I paid for it. Instead of spending time using a web browser to work with my two queues, I just use Netflix Freak to manage my movies. I like the simplicity of dragging and dropping and reordering my queue on the fly.

Cost: $15

——

PDFpen
Sometimes you just gotta edit a PDF file…and that’s what PDFpen does. It gives you the power to make changes to pdfs, like adding additional pages and content, or just rearranging the pages.

Cost: $49.95

——

VLC
Every so often, my girlfriend and I like to sit in bed and watch movies. We don’t keep a TV in the bedroom, so I simply fire up VLC on my 17″ and stream them from the NAS drive.

Cost: Free

——

InVisibles
InVisibles is a handy little Applescript that does one thing and one thing only…it turns all the invisible files on your computer visible. If you don’t know why you’d want to do this…you probably don’t need this. But a handy tool nonetheless.

Cost: Free/Donationware

——

IP Scanner
Every once in awhile I need to take a peek at all the IP addresses and machine names on a network. This program scans the current subnet and returns a list within a minute. When you run a dynamic DHCP network, you often run into the need to see what’s going on, and possibly don’t have access to a router to view it’s admin logs.

Cost: Free/$25

Speed up Parallels [MacOSXHints]
MacOSXHints offers some Parallels tuning advice, specifically how to update Parallel’s caching strategy to improve performance. PD Tweaker is an Application Enhancer plugin that makes Parallels use better caching.

Google’s Ad Supported Videos [Google]
New to Google Videos you can watch ad-supported “free” videos including episodes of Mr. Magoo and Rocky & Bullwinkle. This week is supported by Burger King. Values range from 30 cents (for Music News) to $4.95 (for Wrestling Titans).

Jajah Offers Free Calls World-Wide [Jajah]
Jajah announced a free global calling plan for all registered Jajah users in the United States; Canada; China; Hong Kong; Singapore and Taiwan (mobile and land line) and Australia; UK; Germany; France; Italy and most other European nations (land line only). Both caller and recipient need to be registered Jajah members. With Jajah, you place calls over the net but you use your normal landline or cellphone handsets to talk. (Jajah rings the handset and then places the call.) Users must adhere to their “Fair Use” policy which basically says users won’t abuse the privilege: “The Jajah “Fair Use ” policy asks our users to “play fair” and behave in a manner that best serves our greater calling community. We ask that you limit your free hours to about an hour a day, five hours a week,or about 1.000 minutes per month. If you use it more than that, we ask that you also use some paid JAJAH services such as text messaging (or scheduled calling?) We can only offer the free service if enough people also use some paid services.”

Are You A Bad Customer? [MSN Money]
Liz Pulliam Weston discusses how some companies are using customer databases to target corporate resources towards “good customers” and leave “bad customers” on hold and in the cold.

VisualHub: The Universal Video Converter for Mac [TechSpansion]
I haven’t had a chance to play extensively with this yet, but I was already very impressed by their iSquint product. VisualHub advertises itself as the Universal Mac Video Converter–any format to any other format. Well worth a look.

Free Video Streaming [Strieamick]
Another wacky free video service. I found it an interesting concept but pretty much unwatchable on my DSL connection.

$1.99 at the iTMS–should it be ad-free? [ArsTechnica]
Looks like Apple’s been adding adverts to some of those $1.99 ad-free videos. Kevin Khandjian requested his money back–and got it. Ars Technica has the whole story.

G6 iPods Delayed [CNN Money]
CNN reports that the next generation of iPods may not hit the shelves until Q4 2006 or even Q1 2007.

iWork “Numbers” Spreadsheet? [MacsimumNews]
MacsimumNews reports that papers filed with the US Patent and Trademark office may indicate that the Apple “Numbers” software will appear in future versions of iWork.

The iTMS got updated a little late yesterday. So without further ado:

US: Suzie by Boy Kill Boy
Feisty Londoners Boy Kill Boy make it through the pop music filter by knowing precisely how to stretch their wandering romantic spirit over nervous, spiky backdrops. Jumpy, immediate, and a bit like the offspring of the Smiths and Franz Ferdinand, our Single of the Week, “Suzie,” is probably your new favorite song.

US: Concerto for 2 Violins, Strings, and Continuo in D minor, BWV 1043: I. Vivace by Akiko Suwanai, Chamber Orchestra Of Europe & Volkhard Steude
Violinist Akiko Suwanai has earned a tremendous amount of praise and respect for her technique and interpretations as both a soloist and recitalist. (She’s performed with the Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles Philharmonics.) A list of her numerous awards can’t compare to listening to her, as our free Discovery Download, the “Vivace” from Bach’s Concerto for 2 Violins, attests.

Australia: Spotlight In the Sun by The Sunpilots
Born into the Australian rock scene but schooled in the Caranatic music of Sri Lanka, Raj Siva-Rajah was a child caught between two cultures. Over time, Raj mastered the 72 basic scales of the classical music of Sri Lanka . . . while also falling in love with the gritty angst that was the grunge era. The move to Sydney in early 2005 saw the music evolve into something more; and the soaring sound of the Sunpilots was born. Our Single Of The Week, their stunning debut “Spotlight in the Sun” is an anthem for anyone who has ever felt like a deer caught in the headlights.

Canada: Skinny Boy by Amy Millan
On her solo release, Honey from the Tombs, Amy Millan — she of indie poppers Stars and Broken Social Scene — emerges as the lush, romantic-tinged vocalist she was always on the verge of becoming. “Skinny Boy” is one of the album’s dreamier numbers, and when Millan lets loose the line “you’ve got lips I could spend a day with,” you can be sure a thousand boys somewhere do an Internet search on “Atkins diet.”

UK: All I Want by The Freelance Hellraiser
The mash-up maestro known as the Freelance Hailraiser is also the man who originally saw the genius behind mixing up the Strokes and Christina Aguilera. Now he’s dealing less with legal documents and more with his own emotionally-rapt electronic rhythms and melodic tunes. “All I Want” is definitely one of the latter, with a stirring guest vocal from Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody. The track is our free Single of the Week.

France: Mayra Andrade - Mana
Avec Navega, Mayra Andrade offre un régal d’album qui n’a rien d’une production pharaonique, misant au contraire sur la simplicité, le tout acoustique, et où elle affirme farouchement sa liberté. Elle puise certes à 93 % dans la langue patrimoniale de son archipel natal, mais c’est le disque d’une Capverdienne urbaine, et qui plus est, parisienne. Notre Single de la semaine, « Mana », est extrait de ce premier disque.

Apple released OS X 10.4.7 yesterday, 66MB of update goodies for your Mac. Tim Gaden has already checked out what’s new for Mail. There are also fixes and updates for iChat, iSync (including .Mac sync), Finder, iCal, TextEdit, and other apps.

This update for Automator might be useful for some folks: “Automator supports more websites that require cookies and sessions, specifically those where the authentication is passed along with the URLs, in the Get Image URLs for Webpage, and Get Link URLs from Webpages actions.”

Elsewhere, Microsoft has purchased iView Multimedia. If you’ve never tried iView, you’ve missed out. Before iPhoto came along, there was no better way to organise large libraries of images and other media; indeed, a lot of pro users stick with iView MediaPro because of its superior feature set and superb support for many file formats and associated metadata.

Now, of course, with iPhoto, Adobe Bridge, Aperture and others, there media management category is booming and people have a lot more choice. It’s good to see that iView won’t abandon its many Mac customers and will offer upgrade pricing to them on any future products that “may be available” (see the FAQ).

In other news…

VoodooPad 3 Final candidate 1 is released for the taking. Get it while it’s hot.

Did you know that Apple’s extensive list of mailing lists is also available as a pile o’ RSS feeds? Well, you do now.

BuildFactory 1.0 was released last week. It automatically builds projects, has Subversion built-in, and talks to a variety of editors.

From Apple: How to use iWeb to publish to a .Mac account from more than one computer.

Check out Desmond’s demo of a new scrolling tabs idea for Camino.

I’ve been using FotoMagico since the very early days it was called “unnamed app.” This robust application enables you to build slideshows easily with professional transitions. The ease of use is important because you’re able to spend your time thinking about your project, not about the software itself.

I’ve been running the latest Universal Binary version on a MacBook Pro, which can handle this sort of work without even breaking a sweat (even though my legs tend to get a bit toasty during the process.) A lot of people have asked me why I prefer FotoMagico to iPhoto 6 for slideshows. Quite honestly, FotoMagico makes better transitions. And since my iPhoto library shows up in the FotoMagico media pane, it’s quite seamless.

Earlier this year, I had conversions with Boinx Software who make FotoMagico, and they became sponsors of my The Digital Story site. They wanted me to run a slideshow showcase featuring tips and techniques for producing interesting movies. I thought this was a great idea too, and I’ve just posted the finalists to the FotoMagico Slideshow Showcase. One of the movies featured is my own 30 Miles East of LA, which documents an early 80’s garage band that I co-founded — complete with original music restored from 20 year-old tapes that were beginning to fade. I tell the story of how I made the movie in this week’s TDS podcast The Making of 30 Miles East of LA.

Obviously I’ve been using FotoMagico a lot, and I truly like this software. But for the kind of movies I like to make — with both a music track and voiceover — I have to use additional software. I’ve found that exporting a 720×480 QuickTime file out of FotoMagico and importing it into iMovie HD was the perfect merging of tools. Once in iMovie, I could create and tweak my audio tracks to sync perfectly with the video. I don’t think iMovie is quite as strong for creating the video slideshow track as FotoMagico, but it’s a nice place to pull everything together.

All of this is interesting to me because I think many of us don’t get the mileage out of our digital photos that we could. Making the occasional print or posting a web page only scratches the surface of what’s possible these days. My experiences with QuickTime Pro, FotoMagico, iMovie HD, iPhoto 6, and Audio Hijack Pro have left me very thankful that I have such great, affordable tools for creativity.

As reported all over creation, Google Earth recently launched a new beta version, which I had the opportunity to download and try out. Overall, an okay experience, mostly subtle improvements over the latest stable release.

They’re in the middle of UI changes, though, and removed at least one keyboard shortcut (to the paths/ruler palette) that I depend on constantly whilst plotting bicycling training routes. Unfortunately, due to the type of app Google Earth is, it isn’t as easy as editing nib files, and none of my poking and prodding of various files under the app bundle’s resources produced a way to re-add it.

I’ve submitted a feature request asking they put the shortcuts back in, or better yet, give us the ability to customize our own.

And yes, this is an example of one reason why open source is often better. ;) To their credit, however, Google has seemed to be responsive to requests in the past. “Do no evil” apparently also covers “Paying attention.”

Any readers have unique or cool uses for Google Earth?

A while ago, I posted about the excitement I felt when Google Calendar was announced, although I also expressed some privacy concerns at that time. Well, I’ve been able to try out Google’s approach to organizing my life, and it’s been pretty sweet so far.

The interface is remarkably like iCal, very responsive, and generally not any more cumbersome than I found iCal to be. I was able to import all of my iCal calendars directly into Google Calendar without any hiccups, and if I ever decide to bail, I can export them right back out and load them into iCal. (This might be handy if I know in advance that I’ll be offline for some extended period of time, which does occur from time to time.) And to my surprise, Google renders you a nice PDF of the day, weekly, and monthly views so you can have a more traditional style print out if you find those handy.

O’Reilly has just published a new PDF edocument, Your Life in Web Apps, written by yours truly.

In it, I outline how we reached the point we’re at now - with some web apps so good that people have enough confidence in them to ditch equivalent desktop software completely - and what the risks and pitfalls of using webapps are.

There’s also several pages exploring the current state of the web apps landscape, looking at what’s available in various categories.

I also detail what happened when I took the plunge and tried to spend an entire day working solely in my browser. A lot of things worked - but some things didn’t.

This edocument (I’m reluctant to call it an ebook - it’s only 22 pages) is not for people who already have Google Calendar set up to remind them to check del.icio.us/tag/webapps every morning; it’s for people who’ve heard all the buzz but not had the time or inclination to go exploring for themselves. It’s for people who like the idea of using some web apps, but don’t want to risk their time or their data without being sure that the investment is worthwhile.

So if you, your boss, your spouse or your neighbour have ever pondered on the benefits (and drawbacks) of switching to Gmail or getting hold of a Backpack account, you might find it useful reading.

Your Life in Web Apps is available from O’Reilly PDFs and costs $5.99 or £3.99. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I’d be delighted to hear your feedback.

Thousands of AirTran customers spent hours in line at Atlanta’s airport and flights went out nearly empty due to a balky new computer system. Guess what OS it runs?

Bono in Africa, with Brian Williams
An inside look at U2’s Bono and his mission of hope in Africa

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 1, “Underage Drinking” Episode
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a half-hour comedy that focuses on four friends who own and operate a bar in South Philadelphia and try to maintain the balance of power between their business and friendship. In the show’s first season, the gang tries to prove Charlie is not a racist; a girl from Charlie’s past reveals that he is a father; they relive their high school years; the gang learns Charlie might have cancer; the guys buy a gun; Mac and Dennis get close to a dead man’s granddaughter; and their gym teacher has been accused of molestation.

Making of the Sunny Pilot
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, behind the scenes.

Best of Sunny Funnies
The funniest moments from Season 1 and 2.

Superman Returns: Exclusive Premiere Scene
In the press room of the Daily Planet, Clark Kent receives a distress message from Lois Lane. With no phone booth in sight, Clark quickly ducks into an elevator to make the change to Superman.

US: Rollin’ With Bob Saget
MTV’s Blowin’ Up follows actor Jamie Kennedy and his sidekick Stu Stone. Their debut music video, “Rollin’ With Saget” features none other than comedian Bob Saget on the mike.

US: Invader Zip (Episode 1) on Nickelodeon
The Irken armada is poised to conquer the universe, but it would be a lot easier without Invader Zim! Thickheaded, brash, and overzealous, Zim has been banished into food service for wrecking the Irken home planet. He begs the Almighty Tallest for a second chance to reclaim his honor. Zim is sent on a “secret” mission to a planet far away on the edge of the universe – Earth. Now Earth’s only hope rests with a young UFO-hunting paranormal enthusiast named Dib. Seeing through Zim’s human disguise, Dib makes it his sole mission to defend our planet from this fiendish alien menace.

Kyle XY (Pilot)
Discover this summer’s biggest mystery, Kyle XY. Download the new ABC Family Original Series, and experience the incredible story of a boy with no family, no past and no belly button. Found wandering naked and disoriented, Kyle is taken in by the Trager Family. To their surprise, he develops amazing abilities and astonishing intelligence. But more shocking are the secrets of his origins that even Kyle doesn’t understand. Who is Kyle XY? Find out now.

Apple is moving in the wrong direction. Closing access to the OS X kernel on Intel processing architecture is not a good idea, it will only cost Apple more time and money to get a good kernel for their processor. Why did they move to FreeBSD in the first place if they are going to make the kernel source on Intel proprietary? What a waste of potential, what a waste of time, what a missed opportunity. Without the ability to modify kernel source serious developers will not touch the Apple platform, maybe that is why the OS X server is not making significant inroads into the server community. Apple has probably shipped tens of thousands of X Server machines, but surely not one hundred thousand. They will never see the growth numbers that linux sees in the server market.

In the end this may be fine, Apple is really a consumer electronics company, but the next killer app lurks out there and while it will surely be platform-independent, what with all the virtualization these days, I bet it will be developed on linux, depriving Apple of an opportunity to profit and innovate.

Perhaps the question is ‘will Apple have enough innovation to maintain a pipeline of consumer products to remain vital?’ On the computing side, they only have a limited number of tricks left to pull out of their sleeve, switching to AMD is likely not one of them.

Reader “Hal” asks: “Is it possible to save an iDVD theme as a QT file, such that it can then be imported into iMovie and used as ‘bumper’?”

Unfortunately, unlike iMovie’s new Quartz themes, most of iDVD’s themes seem to remain in the old Oxygene format (pox folders, containing Oxygene patches and the media that support them). You can hack out a few of the pieces, but it ain’t pretty and it ain’t trivial. Probably your best bets are: 1. use the new iMovie 6 themes instead, 2. wait for iDVD 7 which will probably be ported to Quartz or 3. build ‘em yourself in Quartz Composer.

Other more hacky approaches include using Snapz Pro to capture the video as it plays in iDVD or to grab the MPEG-encoded video from a DVD disk image produced by iDVD. Be aware that you’ll probably need to pay Apple for an MPEG-2 license to be able to edit and use MPEG-2 source in iMovie.

Hidden away among a bunch of Automator Action Packs released by Automated Workflows there are some very special gems.

But while most of the Action Packs cost some money (prices vary), the one I like best is free for the taking.

The System Action Pack includes just two actions, but they’re things I’ve been wanting to see in Automator since the day it first appeared alongside Tiger: “Get Clipboard Contents” and “Type Keystroke”.

Finally, easy access to the clipboard within workflows!

For most of Allan Odgaard’s screencast demonstrating the new blogging bundle in TextMate, what you see is more of the same clever innovation and smart thinking we’ve all come to expect from Macromates.

But round about the seven minute mark comes the bit that made me break out in a delighted grin, because that’s the moment where Allan drags an image into a TextMate blog file and boom - the image is uploaded to the right place on the right server, and a reference to it automatically created in the document. In Markdown. Amazing.

The blogging bundle, maintained by Brad Choate, works with Movable Type, Wordpress, Drupal and Typo weblogs.

US: Sailed On by Landon Pigg
Like any self-respecting songwriter-on-the-rise should know, if you can’t cut a plaintive piano ballad that stirs up the heart and mind, you might as well back out of the game right now. Luckily, newcomer Landon Pigg hits it immediately with “Sailed On,” a pebble of a tune that quickly gathers moss and rolls into Rufus Wainwright or Coldplay territory by the end.

US: Do Right By You by Elan
Elan has a strong roots-reggae style that comes through loud and clear on “Do Right By You,” so it’s no surprise that Aston “Family Man” Barrett chose him to be the new frontman for the Wailers. Our free Single of the Week comes from Elan’s first solo release, Together As One, an album that showcases the emerging vocalist’s ability to mix up roots reggae and dancehall.

US: Rollin’ With Bob Saget
MTV’s Blowin’ Up follows actor Jamie Kennedy and his sidekick Stu Stone. Their debut music video, “Rollin’ With Saget” features none other than comedian Bob Saget on the mike.

US: Invader Zip (Episode 1) on Nickelodeon
The Irken armada is poised to conquer the universe, but it would be a lot easier without Invader Zim! Thickheaded, brash, and overzealous, Zim has been banished into food service for wrecking the Irken home planet. He begs the Almighty Tallest for a second chance to reclaim his honor. Zim is sent on a “secret” mission to a planet far away on the edge of the universe – Earth. Now Earth’s only hope rests with a young UFO-hunting paranormal enthusiast named Dib. Seeing through Zim’s human disguise, Dib makes it his sole mission to defend our planet from this fiendish alien menace.

Australia: Diamond Bike by Offcutts
Offcutts are Australia’s freshest proponents of progressive blues rock, funk-a-fied in a way that only they know how. Returning from some marathon studio sessions and working with talented US-based producer David Bianco (Teenage Fanclub and the Posies), Offcutts are now set to deliver their highly-anticipated debut album, What Happened Don’t Lie, featuring the single “Diamond Bike”. We’ve chosen this great track to be our free Single of the Week.

Canada: Put Your Records On (Acoustic) by Corinne Bailey Rae
The reflective summertime soul of “Put Your Records On” gets even more personal when Corrine Bailey Rae sits down with an acoustic guitar for our free Single of the Week. Back in the UK, Rae’s self-titled debut entered the charts at number one. The British sensation’s success makes sense: her organic take on pop and soul feels like it flows effortlessly from her.

UK: Waves by Adem
Once upon a time, Adem played bass in the band Fridge, whose elliptical instrumentals were among the brief moments of brilliance to come from the post-rock sound of the late ’90s. Fridge’s fragmented vision extends to the solo work of member Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet); Adem has also ventured out beyond the band, but this time he’s armed with an acoustic guitar. The cosmic folk of “Waves” is our free Single of the Week.

France: Take It From Me (The Weepies)
Les Weepies, le duo californien de folk-pop nous offrent avec « Take It from Me » un mélange de richesse et d’accessibilité mélodique. Le morceau présente une qualité limpide estivale avec une tristesse sous-jacente qui offre une pause pour réfléchir. Imaginez l’équivalent musical d’un nounours qui plonge sa tête dans un four. Téléchargez gratuitement « Take It from Me », notre Single de la semaine.

Is your Windows clock getting confused by rebooting? Over at the Apple Discussions board, they’ve found a solution for messed-up Macteltosh clocks during the Windows boot process.

The problem with the Windows clock being off is because the hardware clock (the one on your actual motherboard) is being set to “Universal” time, or GMT, when you shut down your MacOS bootup. When you boot Windows, Windows assumes your clock is set to your local timezone because that’s what Windows does by default. This explains why the people who set their MacOS clock to GMT got the right time in Windows… If the hardware clock is being set to “GMT,” when it’s actually the local time, Windows will pick this setting up as local time as it did before.

To fix the problem you’ll need to edit your registry, so proceed very carefully. Full instructions here

.

Photo stitching app Doubletake has been updated to version 2.0, and boasts some nice new features introduced since the last time I mentioned it here.

Most obvious is better performance. Everything the app does is now noticeably faster, which makes it all the more fun to use.

But there’s also some new edit functions; iPhoto-style head-up panels for adjusting images, and better still adjusting their geometric placement within the stitched final result. With the geometry controls, you can rescale, tilt and rotate images in situ; this is a huge help when it comes to fine-tuning the stitching of one image to another.

What’s a little confusing is that there’s plain old version 2.0, but also a newly-released version 2.0b17 - I’ve managed to get both of them side-by-side in my Applications folder without intending to. The beta has some separate release notes which detail even more new stuff; the Free Perspective mode looks particularly fun, and there’s also Exposure matching and QTVR export too. Lots of stuff to play with.

Doubletake 2.0 is a free upgrade to existing license holders; a fresh license is only $16. The new version requires OS X 10.4.

I had a rush video job this weekend and used iMovie and iDVD to get the project out the door. The upshot? I completed the entire job in less than 6 hours.

I’ve been an iMovie fan since its early days. And yes, I’ve endured its quirks along the way. Even with the latest version (that’s part of iLife ‘06), there are a few gremlins that leave me scratching my head. But when I need to finish a simple video project *right now*, iMovie is the racehorse I want to ride.

My client wanted a 4-minute video demonstrating a craft project using their materials. I shot the movie with a Canon Optura 40, SV hot lights, and an Audio Technica shotgun mic. We finished the filming in just a couple hours. They were very well prepared and familiar with this craft project.

I opted to use iMovie on my MacBook Pro 17″ because I knew that there wasn’t going to be much editing. The video recording was clean, so I didn’t have to apply any corrections. The audio was good too, just a little bit of ambient noise. The Audio FX panel in iMovie has some excellent controls, including a very nice noise reducer filter (click on the Editing tab, then click on Audio FX and choose Noise Reducer). I selected my audio tracks, applied the filter, and like magic, no more ambient noise.

We reviewed the rushes right there on the MacBook Pro. I made a few adjustments based on client feedback, then sent the job to iDVD. Twenty minutes later I had a final product to hand over.

We watched the DVD on 3 different TV monitors, and it looked great on all of them. The disc went out via FedEx Monday morning. The client liked the finished product so much she’s already ordered duplicate discs.

iMovie and its brethren in the iLife ‘06 suite take the notion of “easy to use” and transcend it to “work real fast and make good stuff.” It sure saved my bacon this time.

Swinging and Missing at an AM iPod Add-On [Playlist Mag]
Playlist asks why the iPod can support FM reception but not AM reception. Me? I went out to Target and bought a $5 AM/FM transistor radio. Sure it’s another gadget, but at least I can listen to the AM stations.

Microsoft To Take On iTunes [Smarthouse]
Is Microsoft ready to wage war against the iPod? Sources suggest that the Evil Empire is already demonstrating its super secret digital music player to third party vendors.

Cyberhome DVD Recorders Seized [Twice.com]
Cyberhome didn’t pay their licensing fees to Philips. Apparently they owe a “multimillion amount of dollars”. No wonder they’ve been able to keep prices so low.

iTunes Movies by the End of the Year? [Apple Insder]
Apple Insider reports that the iTMS may soon debut its feature film service. A $9.99 flat price per movie already seems to have been ruled out.

The “Mac Look” for PCs [SF Gate]
It’s the rage. Mac-imposter PCs. The San Francisco Chronicle takes a look at four wannabe not-Macs.

Matt Ronge and co-conspirators are working on an open-source email client called Kiwi. Progress is being made but even early release versions are still some way off.

I contacted Matt recently to ask how things are going, (heh, so did Tim Gaden), and his reply was encouraging.

What he’s most keen to get, though, is feedback from potential users regarding what features they’d like to see:

“I’d love to get feedback on what people want to see in an e-mail client. The first release is going to be very basic, but we have to start somewhere, and I’d love to find out what features users eventually want to see.”

Aha, something close to my heart. I’d like to see lightning-fast searching of IMAP mailboxes, excellent threading, simple single-key shortcuts (’a’ to archive, ‘r’ to reply, and so on), proper quoting, plain text for composing and decent display of HTML messages (cos people are going to keep sending them, whether I like them or not); and finally, maybe, sync-to-Gmail would be nice too.

TextMate developer Allan Odgaard has been devising his own email wishlist too. How about you? What would you like to see from Kiwi?

I got a chuckle this morning from the SciFi Channel Battlestar webpage.

Hacking Yojimbo bookmarklets so that new items are added with flags. A nice tip from Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings.

There’s some juicy newness from NeoOffice for the downloading.

Mori, formerly Hog Bay Notebook, has been updated to version 1.2. New stuff includes new prefs, new keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to create a new child note by dragging text or a file on to an existing note.

Cocoa Booklet turns PDFs into booklet foldables.

Kip looks very interesting. Think of it as iPhoto for your PDFs - it helps you store, tag, search and view PDFs. Has anyone else noticed that there are a lot of PDF-related apps for OS X, no doubt largely due to PDF creation and viewing being built into the OS. iPapers is another PDF manager, but one aimed at academics keeping track of research papers. It also has an iPhoto-ish design; note the Source list on the left, and the browse panel at the top.

Spammers don’t need to use clever (or unclever) web-scraping techniques when they can just harvest e-mail addresses by brute force. There’s just no other way to explain the correlation between the fury of suspicious, blank messages I’ve gotten lately along with the dramatic increase in offers for great sex-pills, “insider” stock info, and deals on vacations that are just too good to be true.

Parallels released the production version of their virtualization software for Intel-based Macs. I downloaded it this evening and took it for a test drive using a Windows XP SP2 Guest OS I installed under the earlier Release Candidate 2 version. It worked fine as expected. For those of you who have not seen Parallels Desktop for Mac shift between a window on top of Mac OS X to full-screen mode, I created a short video to show you what it looks like.

It is no secret that I spend most of my time doing what I enjoy most: public relations and communication. In many ways, working in this field is a blessing: things change quickly so you never get to bore yourself and, provided your chose your clients and partners with care, you are given an opportunity to introduce genuinely interesting products and services to the public. Yet, some of the tactics of a handful of companies scare me. I had a prime example today.

Bootcamp vs Parallels [NotebookReview]
Parallels announced today that their Desktop for Mac virtualization software has emerged from beta. Pick up a copy for 50 bucks. So? Apple’s Boot Camp or Parallel’s Virtual Machine? As far as I’m concerned, it’s Boot Camp for speed and true Windows performance and virtual machines (any implementation, not just this one) for data sharing and interaction. The Notebook Review article is a nice summary.

Free iPods for Factory Workers [Ars Technica]
Communicate with your workers via podcasts? National Semiconductor is buying $2.2 million of iPod