As we mentioned in Flickr, you can download the Brain Monitor background here (without the desktop info of course).

The size is 1,900 x 1,200

For the SuperMac design, we decided to go with a cityscape background and used PhotoShop to create an alley with rundown, broken PC’s. And the Mac to the rescue.  The tools we used to create this look was PhotoShop (for the design), GeekTool, Magnifique (Titanium), and the Moon Phase II Yahoo Widget.
The fonts used are as follows (they can be found at www.dafont.com):
Amsterdam Graffiti for CPU, Uptime and RAM
Graffonti Atomic Bomb for the Day of Week and Day of Month
Graffonti 3d Drop for the Month and Year
Here are the codes used in GeekTool:
CPU
top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}'
UPTIME
uptime | awk '{print "" $3 " " $4 " " $5 }' | sed -e 's/.$//g';
RAM
top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;
Day of Month
date +%d
Day of Week
date +%A
Month
date +%B
Year
date +%Y


To download this image (without my desktop info), click the download button.

Image size 1,280 x 800

Here’s the scenario, you’re in one of your favorite stores, you know, the trendy store that always plays really hip music. You’re humming to the tunes as you’re shopping and hear a tune that you’re familiar with, but you just can’t recall the name of the group who sings it. Fear no more, Shazam is there to save you from wondering all day long, as you’re humming the tune, racking your brain out trying to figure out just who sings that tune. All you have to do is just pull out your iPhone, open up Shazam and let it do its magic.

Here is how Shazam works: when you hear a song that you want to know more about (either from the radio, TV, film, or in a store) just pop out your iPhone, open up Shazam, press the ‘Tag Now’ button, which is in the upper left corner, and hold it toward the location of the music. Keep holding it (for about 10 seconds) until you feel your iPhone vibrate, then, look at your iPhone and you will see the results.

You will be presented with the name of the song, name of artist/group, album name, genre, label and the date you tagged the song. But that isn’t it….you are then given the option to preview or purchase the song via iTunes, view any available videos in YouTube, Tweet your result, send a post card via email, view the Biography of the artist/group, and view the Discography of the artist/group. It gives you a few other options like taking a photo (I guess of the location) of where you are when you tag the song, attach a photo or just delete the song result.

What I really like about Shazam is the clean UI and its accuracy. However, it does have a difficult time identifying some underground or lesser-known artists. I have tried to hum a tune to see if it would work. It didn’t. I think only once or twice it wasn’t able to decipher a tune. But I’ve used it hundreds of times and more often than not, it usually found what I needed. Oh, I forgot to mention, the price of this app…..it’s FREE! Yay!

Technical Info: Shazam was released on July 7, 2008 with a few updates here and there. Made by Shazam Entertainment, Ltd. It is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. It is also available for use with Android and Blackberry phones. To view more information about Shazam, you can visit their website: http://www.shazam.com/music/web/home.html which contains a lot of other information. To download it from iTunes, click on the iTunes App Store button at the bottom or just type ‘Shazam’ from the App Store on your iPhone.

If anybody has used Shazam and wants to share their experiences with Shazam, leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers!

We really like how in the Batman Movie, the Bat symbol is displayed in the spotlight. Really cool. So, we decided to emulate the spotlight with the Apple Logo using PhotoShop on a Cityscape background. Here are the tools we used to tweak the background:
For the time in the top right corner, we used the Gorgy Clock Yahoo Widget.

For the CPU, RAM, and UPTIME, we used GeekTool:
RAM:
top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;


CPU:
top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}'

UPTIME:
uptime | awk '{print "" $3 " " $4 " " $5 }' | sed -e 's/.$//g';
For the calendar, we used Dateline.
The font used in GeekTool and DateLine Calendar is Eurostile Regular.

Here is a download of the wallpaper (without my desktop screen) for all the Batman and Mac fans out there.

The size is 1,900 x 1,200

This wallpaper is for all the Batman and Mac fans out there.

1,900 x 1,200

I like reading a variety of articles on the Internet. I admit, I LOVE learning something new. Plus, reading gives me lots of ideas of things to create, things to write about, things to read about (books), things to listen to, etc. You catch the drift. The Internet is FULL of information, and sometimes, it is hard to find what you’re looking for. I ran into an iPhone app a little while ago called Regator and I use it everyday. It is full of a variety of articles on anything you can think of (or almost anything – I don’t’ want to say anything because everything has its faults). Anyways, Regator is a FREE app based on their website.
The only difference between the two is that you don’t have the ability to use the tools available on the web site.

The Regator app contains thousands of blogs from the web, as well as a searchable archive of more than three million posts. You can browse from a large category base of topics, search Regator’s extensive archive, view the most popular blog posts on the web or for your favorite categories, view trends of the latest blog searches, keep up with the latest blog posts (which is updated frequently), read the full text of posts in the original source blog, share posts via email, Facebook, or Twitter, and in each post you read, you will find Related Posts to find more information on a story.

When you first open Regator on your iPhone, you are displayed with a list of All Topics (under the Popular tab). On the first screen, you will see a lime green line with a search button at the top left (where you can search for whatever subject you choose), the name of the app ‘regator.com’ and to the right of the app name, you can change the text size by clicking on the AA button until you achieve a text size of your choice. The next line is a darker green line showing where you are in the directory. So whenever you change the category, that category will show up in the first dark green line. This is sort of like breadcrumb navigation. Under the first dark green line is a lighter green line, which displays the main categories. In your main categories, your choices are: Academics, Arts, Business & Finance, Entertainment, Health, Hobbies, Lifestyle, Local Interest, News, Occupations, Politics, Religion, Society & Culture, Sports, Technology, and What The ?(See the list of subcategories towards the end of this article). To choose from the category list, just slide the titles until you reach a category of your interest. When you choose a category, the dark green tab displays your location in the application.  On the bottom of the screen, there are five tabs:

Popular
This is also the main screen. It displays the popular articles in the category you are in.

New
This section displays the latest blogs/articles for the category you are in.

Trends
This section displays a list of trending subjects for the category you are in.

Directory
This section displays a tree list of all the categories, sub-categories and categories in sub-categories (like the category list displayed below).

Help
This section displays contact information along with the applications FAQ’s.

CATEGORIES/SUB-CATEGORIES
Academics
Anthropology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Biology (Biomedical Research, Cell Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Marine Biology, Paleontology, and Zoology), Chemistry, General Science, Geology, History (Ancient History, Military, US History, and World History), Linguistics (Grammar), Literature, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology

Arts
Art History, Business, Ceramics, Dance, Digital Art, Drawing & Illustration, Fiber Art, General Visual Arts, Graphic Design (PhotoShop, Typography, and Web Design), Museums, Painting, Photography (Digital Photography and Equipment), Sculpture, Theater & Performing Arts, and Writing (Poetry)

Business & Finance
Career & Jobs, Economics (Career Advice, Job Hunting, and Management), Entrepreneurship, Investing (Commodities, Contrarian Investing, and General Market), Marketing (Advertising and Online Marketing), Mortgage & Banking, Personal Finance, Real Estate (Industry News and Local Market), and Venture Capital 

Entertainment
Animation (Anime & Manga), Books, Celebrity, Comic Books, Film (Bollywood, DVDs, Filmmaking, New Releases, and Reviews), Gambling (Casino, Poker, and Track Betting), Genres (Fantasy, Horror, and SciFi), Humor, Music (Blues, Broadway & Stage, Children’s, Classical, Country, Dance & DJ, Folk, Hip Hop & Rap, Indie, Jazz, Metal, Rock & Pop), Pop Culture, Television (Classic and Reality), Toys & Games (Board Games and Role Playing), Video Games, and Web (Web Videos and Webcomics)

Health
Addiction (Alcohol and Drug), Aging, Alternative Medicine (Hypnosis and Reiki), Disabilities, Diseases & Conditions (ADHD, Alzheimer’s Disease, Asthma, Cancer, Diabetes, Heart Disease, HIV & Aids, Migraine Headaches, and Multiple Sclerosis), Ears & Hearing, Epidemiology, Fertility & Reproductive Health, Fitness (Hiking, Running and Yoga), Men’s Health, Mental Health(Bipolar Disorder, Depression, and Postpartum Depression), Nutrition, Pregnancy, Stress, Toxicology, and Weight Loss

Hobbies
Aviation, Beekeeping, Birding, Camping, Chess, Collecting (Currency, Stamps, Toys, and Trading Cards), Crafts, Fishing, Gardening, Hunting, Knitting, Model Rail, Origami, Quilting, Robotics, and Scrapbooking

Lifestyle
Beauty (Cosmetics, Nails and Perfume), Etiquette, Fashion (Bags, Glasses, and Men’s), Food & Drink (Beer, Cooking, Fine Dining, Recipes, Restaurant Reviews, Tea, Vegetarian, and Wine), House & Home (Home Improvement and Interior Design), Parenting (Fatherhood, Infants, and Special Needs), Pets & Animals (Alpacas, Birds, Cats, Dogs, Horses, and Rabbits), Productivity (Happiness), Relationships (Dating, Divorce, and Weddings), Shopping, Travel (Asia, Cruises, Europe, Family, Hotels, and  North America), and Vehicles (Aircraft, Boats, Cars, Industry News, and RV)

Local Interest
Africa (Cape Town), Antarctica, Australia (Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney), Austria, Azeroth, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Canada (Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver), China (Shanghai), Cuba, France (Paris), Germany (Berlin), India, Ireland, Japan (Tokyo), Malaysia, New Zealand (Auckland), Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates (Dubai), United Kingdom (Grimsby, London, and Scotland), and United States (Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Scranton, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington D.C.)

News
Crime, Independent, and International Affairs

Occupations
Agriculture, Construction (Architecture), Customer Service (Food Service), Education (Education Tech, ESL/EFL, Learning, Library & Research, News & Policy, and Students With Disabilities), Entertainment, Law, Manufacturing, Media (Accuracy and Ethics, Industry News, New Media, Publishing, Sports Media, and Television), Medical (Pharmaceutical), Military (Australia, Defense Industry, Iraq War, United Kingdom, United States, and War Journals), Public Safety (EMS, Fire Protection, and Law Enforcement), Retail, Tourism, Transportation (Commercial Aviation and Railway & Trains), and Utilities (Communication)

Politics
Conservative, International (Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, United Kingdom, and Wales), Liberal, Libertarian, Other Parties, and US Elections

Religion
Atheism, Buddhism, Catholic, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism

Society & Culture
Age Groups (Baby Boomers and Seniors), Environment & Nature (Climate Change, Environmentalism, Green Living, and Nature), Ethnicity & Race (African American, Asian American, and Latino), Expats (Americans Abroad), Issues & Causes (Animal Rights & Welfare, Feminism, Pro Choice, and Pro Life), Lifestyle Choices (Goths, Hipsters, and Survivalists), Men’s Interest, Paranormal (Ghosts & Hauntings and Psychic), Sexuality (Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered), and Skepticism

Sports
American Football (College and NFL), Baseball (MLB), Basketball (NBA and NCAA), Cheerleading, College, Cricket, Extreme (Climbing, Dirt Biking, Paintball, and Skateboarding), Golf, Hockey, Martial Arts (Aikido, Judo, Karate, and MMA & UFC), Motorsport, NASCAR, Olympics, Rugby (Womens), Soccer, Tennis, Water (Sailing, Surfing, Swimming, and Windsurfing), Weightlifting, and Winter (Curling, Skating, Skiing, and Snowboarding)

Technology
Gadgets, Hardware, Industry News (Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Start Ups), Internet (Blogging, File Sharing, SEO, Social Media, and Usability), Mobile (Apps), and Programming (Business Application, Database, Linux, Macintosh, Mobile, Open Source, Web, and Windows)

What the ?
Variety of Miscellaneous Blogs/Articles.

As you can see, this app has a plethora of information, tons of categories to choose from, and even more articles in each category you choose. And it is really useful when researching a subject along with the related posts in a story you are reading. I like that function and I like the fact that I can share the information via email, Facebook or Twitter.

If you would like to download the Regator iPhone app, click on the iTunes App Store button to be directed to their location in iTunes, otherwise, you can search under Regator on your iPhone App Store. I know that I really like this app and if anybody out there has tried the Regator iPhone app or the Regator web site, feel free to leave comments about your experience with the app, share the wealth with our fellow readers!

Another customization tool that I have seen being searched on the Internet is Cacti.

This is another tool that I do not know very much about. Again, I went directly to the source (http://www.cacti.net/index.php) to obtain information about it. The information below is from the Cacti web site.

Cacti is a complete frontend to RRDTool, it stores all of the necessary information to create graphs and populate them with data in a MySQL database. The frontend is completely PHP driven. Along with being able to maintain Graphs, Data Sources, and Round Robin Archives in a database, cacti handles the data gathering. There is also SNMP support for those used to creating traffic graphs with MRTG.

Cacti’s features consist of graphs, data sources, data gathering, templates, graph displays, and user management. The latest version of Cacti is 0.8.7e

LINKS:

Below is a list of links from the Cacti website.

Additional scripts for use with Cacti here: http://www.cacti.net/additional_scripts.php

The Cacti Manual

Cacti Documentation Site

Installation Guide For Unix/Linux

Upgrade Guide

Cacti Forum

FAQ

To download Cacti:  http://www.cacti.net/download_cacti.php

Spine (formerly Cactid) is a poller for Cacti. It is written in native C, makes use of POSIX threads, and is linked directly against the net-snmp library for minimal SNMP polling overhead. It is a replacement for the default cmd.php poller so it must be decided if using Spine makes sense for your installation.
For more information about Spine, go to this link: http://www.cacti.net/spine_info.php

To download Spine (Cactid): http://www.cacti.net/spine_download.php

This concludes this article about Cacti. This is another tool that I myself am not too familiar with. I am however considering trying out this tool to use with tracking the usage on this web site. We shall see. When I do finally work up the nerve to try it out, I will be sure to post an update as to my experience with this amazing tool. If there is anybody reading this who has expertise or has tried this tool and wants to share their experiences and tips, feel free to leave a comment and spread the wealth with our fellow readers!

Last week (10-23-09 Friday), NASA released an app for the iPhone. This app is perfect for those who are space fanatics – including me. I have downloaded the app and I must say, it is impressive. Especially for a FREE app. The first screen of the app provides up-to-the-minute current and future NASA missions directly from NASA resources. On the bottom of the screen are buttons for missions, images (which contains a HUGE database of photos) that you can email or save to your iPhone, videos (obtained from NASA TV consisting of science updates, mission activity, rocket launches and other activities), and updates (from @NASA twitter feeds). The app also allows you to search for any specific mission, and find information, images or videos for whatever you search. You can also access countdown clocks, image of the day, astronomy image of the day, online videos, NASA’s twitter feeds, and more. Not only that, you can track where the International Space Station is at any moment, as well as other spacecraft orbiting the planet, all in three different views (maps with labels/borders, available visible imagery of satellites, and satellite positions overlaid on maps with country labels/borders). Overall, I really like what NASA has done with this app. It is extremely informative. To download the app on your iPhone, you can click the iTunes App Store Button or search on your iPhone (NASA). If anybody has tried this app and find it useful, comment below to share the wealth with our fellow readers!

We’ve been pretty busy trying to figure out how to create unique desktops. Also, the current trend seems to be minimalistic, but it is hard to figure out. There are tons of different styles of desktops on the Internet. We decided to create a simple desktop + since we like the iPhone and its apps, we decided to be creative and make a ‘Brain Monitor’ app. LOL. The concept is simple. When you think of an Apple (or any other computer), you often hear the term “brain” of the computer. Hence, we found a brain on Google and hooked it up to the iPhone to create the app using PhotoShop. We used GeekTool for the Macs top processes, but made it look as if it were an actual app reading the ‘brain.’
P.S. We set up an account with Flickr so that readers can submit their designs and start a discussion on topics like GeekTool, Rainlendar, SuperDocker, anything that pertains to creating awesome desktops. This can be a useful tool for readers to share ideas and learn from one another. Click the icon to be directed to the Appleviews Flickr group.

I have noticed that some of my readers have shown interest in iCalBuddy and have probably came to the site to see how to use it. I have to admit, I emailed the creator to get help and he responded with information as to how to use it. As you can see on my second mac desktop design, I used it with no problem. So here is an article about what iCalBuddy does along with links from the web site to help those of you interested in it. I am no longer using iCalBuddy because I have upgraded GeekTool to the latest version.

Here is a brief summary from the web site:
iCalBuddy is a command line utility that can be used to get a list of items (events, tasks, todos) from the Mac OS X calendar (iCal).
Ali Rantakari, the creator of iCalBuddy, suggests that if you are going to use iCalBuddy with GeekTool, to try his custom build of GeekTool, which includes features, like ANSI escape sequence formatting support (like colors, bolding, underlining, etc.) and Unicode (UTF-8) support (used for displaying non-ASCII characters like umlauts, Arabic or Hebrew).

To download the iCalBuddy GeekTool 2.2.1 unofficial hasseg build, click here. There is also more information about the features you may find useful.
Note: There are two versions.
2.2.0 requires Leopard.
2.2.1 requires Leopard OS X 10.5+

In order to install it, do the following: (from iCalBuddy web site)
1. Extract the files from the zip archive by double-clicking on it in Finder
2. Double-click on the GeekTool.prefPane file icon in Finder to install it
3. If you already had GeekTool installed, System Preferences will ask if you want to replace it. Select “Replace”, quit and restart System Preferences and open the GeekTool preference pane, verifying that the version label now says “unofficial hasseg.org build.”
4. Unselect the “Enable GeekTool” checkbox in order to kill the old version’s background process, and then select it again in order to run the updated one.

Below are documentation links from the iCalBuddy website. It is filled with information. And if you have any questions, you may contact Ali Rantakari (which I have done when I first used iCalBuddy) and he will respond to your inquiries (or at least he responded to mine).

iCalBuddy Manual Reference Page

iCalBuddy Config Manual Page

iCalBuddy Localization Manual Page

FAQ Page

Here is the email that I sent to iCalBuddy:

iCalBuddy Response:

I hope that this article helps you understand a little bit more about iCalBuddy and know that I’ve been there with the frustration of trying to figure a tool out. If any of my readers have used iCalBuddy and have any tips or experiences with it, please, feel free to leave a comment and spread the wealth!
-TINA

Another tool that I have seen requested via Google is MRTG. Again, I decided to look up the information and there is a wide array of information on the Internet. I went directly to the MRTG website to see what it is about. As mentioned in another article, I am not as technologically savvy as some of my readers so I do not have the authority to speak about this subject. Here is a basic summary from what I read at the MRTG website:
MRTG is short for Multi Router Traffic Grapher. Created by Tobi Oetiker. The MRTG monitors SNMP network devices and draws pretty pictures (graphs) showing how much traffic has passed through each interface. MRTG is written in Perl and works on Unix/Linux as well as Windows and even Netware systems. It is free software licensed under the Gnu GPL.
Below is a list along with a snippet of information from the MRTG website.

mrtg
What Is MRTG?
The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor the traffic load on network links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing PNG images which provide a LIVE visual representation of this traffic. Check http://www.stat.ee.ethz.ch/mrtg/ to see what it does. Go to http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg for all the details about mrtg.

mrtg-unix-guide
The mrtg 2.16.2 Linux/Unix Installation Guide
MRTG comes to you in Source Code. This means that you have to compile parts of it before you can use it on a Unix machine. These instructions help you to do so.

mrtg-nt-guide
The MRTG 2.16.2 Windows Installation Guide
Installing MRTG on a Windows box is not quite as “click and point” as some might want it to be. But then again, it is not all that difficult if you follow the instructions below.

mrtg-nw-guide
MRTG For NetWare
This guide is intended to aid in the installation and configuration of MRTG on a NetWare server.

Mrtg-reference
MRTG 2.16.2 Configuration Reference
The runtime behaviour of MRTG is governed by a configuration file. Run-of-the-mill configuration files can be generated with cfgmaker. (Checkcfgmaker). But for more elaborate configurations some hand-tuning is required.
This document describes all the configuration options understood by the mrtg software.

cfgmaker
Creates mrtg.cfg Files (for mrtg-2.16.2)
cfgmaker [options] [community@]router [[options] [community@]router …]

indexmaker
Creates Index Files For mrtg web sites (mrtg-2.16.2)
indexmaker [options] mrtg.cfg [other.cfg ...]

mrtg-contrib
Contribution Guidelines For MRTG
If you have written an extension to mrtg or created a bug fix, please consider contributing it to the project. As I get quite a number of contributions every week, here are a few guidelines which explain how to contribute so that I can use the contribution without too much additional work.

mrtg-faq
How To Get Help If You Have Problems With MRTG
MRTG seems to raise a lot of questions. There are a number of resources apart from the documentation where you can find help for mrtg.

mrtg-ipv6
IPv6 Support In MRTG
MRTG and cfgmaker support SNMP over IPv6. IPv6 targets can be specified by hostname or IPv6 address, and if the required libraries are present (see below), queries will use IPv6.

mrtg-logfile
Description Of The mrtg-2 Logfile Format
This document provides a description of the contents of the mrtg-2 logfile.

mrtg-mibhelp
A Table of Some interesting OIDs
This File Contains a collection of interesting MIB Entries … mrtg knows about their names … depending on the ASN.1 Syntax you may have to put gauge into the Options[]: parameter.
For information about how to create a Target[]: parameter which references these MIB entries, please consult mrtg-reference.

mrtg-rrd
How to use RRDtool with MRTG
After using MRTG for some time you may find some limitations, mostly in the areas of performance and graphing flexibility. These are exactly the areas addressed by RRDtool. To learn more about RRDtool check out its website on http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool

mrtg-webserver
Hints for Web Server Configuration
If you want people to actually see the results of your network monitoring efforts you will need a webserver.
This document lists some configuration hints for webservers. Contributions welcome.

mrtg-traffic-sum
Builds Monthly Traffic Summary From mrtg Log Files
mrtg-traffic-sum [options...] config-file

3^rd Party Docs
MRTG Companion Sites
A variety of compantion sites consisting of:
MRTG Comunities and Portals
Setup Instructions and Installer
Config Builders
MRTG Add-Ons
Monitoring Special Devices and Applications

Support
Interactive Help for MRTG Users
There is a lot of written documentation for mrtg, but nevertheless you may have a problem where you can’t find the solution. In this case some Human Help may be necessary. With MRTG there are several ways to get Humans to help you.

I hope that these links will be beneficial to those of you interested in this amazing tool. Because I don’t have the authority to write about such a subject, I felt that the next best thing would be to compile the information from the MRTG website where you could get more information.  If you have experience with MRTG and would like to give your expert opinion on it, please, feel free to comment and share the wealth with other readers!
-TINA