There are a few tools that you can use to customize your desktop. Most of the apps in this list are free or free to try. They are fairly easy to use right away and you can find resources on the Internet to make them even better. This list contains apps that are most frequently used by users who customize their desktops. The list includes a link to the site and a brief description.

Adium

http://adium.im/

Adium is an instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. You can even find custom themes to use with Adium. (FREE)
Here are two sites to find xtras for Adium:
http://www.adiumxtras.com/
http://www.deviantart.com/#order=9&q=adium

Bowtie

http://bowtieapp.com/

Bowtie is an application that allows you to control iTunes with customizable shortcuts, it submits your songs to Last.fm with support for Loving and Banning, and sports a very simple, yet powerful, html5 + css + javascript based theming system. You can find themes for Bowtie in a variety of places on the Internet. (FREE)
Here are three sites to find themes for bowtie:
http://www.jackrebel.com/category/bowtie-themes/
http://www.iconpaper.org/bowtie-en/
http://www.deviantart.com/#order=9&q=bowtie+theme

CandyBar

http://iconfactory.com/software/candybar

CandyBar is easy to use and gives you a safe way to customize icons found on your system and application toolbars. You can also customize your apps, folders, clipping icons, locations and more. (Free to try/$12.95 to purchase.)

DragThing

http://www.dragthing.com/

Use DragThing to keep all your documents, folders, and applications a single click away. It is highly flexible, allows multiple docks, each customized to suit your exact needs.
It stores frequently used clippings such as text and pictures, and lets you easily paste them into other applications with just a click. (Free to try/$29.00 single user. Other prices available for multiple users.)

Img2Icns

http://www.img2icnsapp.com/

Img2icns is an application to create icons from images or images from icons, keeping them organized for future use. Creating an icon is as simple as dropping one or more images into Img2icns and choosing an export format. (Free Version and $12.90 for Pro)

Magnifique

(site down)

Magnifique allows you to browse beautifully crafted themes and apply them to your system with ease. The site is currently down. I have found a download at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/30497/magnifique. I do not recall if it comes preinstalled with themes, if not, you would have to download from sites like deviantART or other locales.  (FREE)

GeekTool

http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/

GeekTool is a PrefPane for Mac OS 10.5. It allows you to display different kinds of information on your desktop, provided by 3 default modes:
File mode is used to monitor your MacOS X activity with /var/log/system.log, or any file that you want to follow.
Shell mode is used to launch custom scripts or commands.
Image mode helps you monitor bandwith usage, CPU loads, memory availability of your server, via tools like MRTG, Cacti, or RRD. (FREE)

NerdTool

http://mutablecode.com/apps/nerdtool

NerdTool is a GeekTool like application that displays shell output and more directly on your desktop. Unlike GeekTool, it is run like normal applications.
Nerdtool allows you to display many things directly on top of your desktop; weather reports, headline news, and system vitals are just a few uses. Nerdtool is capable of displaying shell outputs with ANSI escaped formatting, but can also manipulate the final output’s colors, size, and font. If more intricacy is desired, Nerdtool is also capable of displaying images, HTML documents, and other higher forms of media. (FREE)

Overflow

http://stuntsoftware.com/overflow/

Overflow is an application designed to quickly launch applications, open documents, or access folders while reducing the number of items needed in your Dock.
Any item you see in the Finder can be added to the Overflow interface, making it accessible through a few simple mouse clicks or keystrokes. You still have quick access, but now that item is tucked away in Overflow instead of cluttering up your Dock.
The interface is resizable, and fully customizable. Create separate categories for your applications, work files, games, or anything else you want to be able to access quickly. (Free to try/$14.95 to purchase.)

DateLine

http://machinecodex.com/dateline/index.php

DateLine is a small app that displays a linear calendar on your desktop in a transparent window. It provides easy access to iCal by double clicking on a day. The background and text colors are customizable with support for transparency. (Free/Unlock features for $4.95 donationware.)

Rainlendar

http://www.rainlendar.net/cms/index.php

Rainlendar is a feature rich calendar application that is easy to use and doesn’t take much space on your desktop. The application is platform independent so you can run it on all major operating systems: Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
The appearance can be customized with skins and you can even mix different skins together. Many of these skins can be found on http://www.customize.org/rainlendar or find skins at deviantART. (Rainlendar Lite is Free/$13.49 Pro.)

SuperDocker

(site down)

SuperDocker is a free utility that gives you the opportunity to customize some aspects of your system. For example, you can customize your Dock, your Dashboard, and even the Safari progress bar. And because the appearance customization is useless for some people, SuperDocker also brings up the ability to activate some hidden features. SuperDocker site is down but I found a site that has a download: http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/SuperDocker-Download-30474.html (tested and it worked). (FREE)
Here are a few links to download docks:
http://www.deviantart.com/#order=9&q=mac+docks
http://www.leoparddocks.com/Browse_Leopard_Docks_Designs.php
http://www.dockulicious.com/docks/
http://www.jackrebel.com/category/mac-dock/

Secrets

http://secrets.blacktree.com/

Secrets provides handy checkboxes to turn terminal commands on and off, and doubles as a menu of secret settings. A “Top Secrets” entry shows a list of popular options, but many more options for various applications can be selected from the application sidebar.
Clicking on any of the listed features will show you a short description of what it does in the bottom of the window; click on the More Info button for a detailed description. (FREE)

Wallpaper Clocks

http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpaperclock/

Wallpaper Clocks is a desktop wallpaper that refreshes every minute to keep your time and date precise on the desktop. They have many to choose from and you can register to download the better wallpapers. (FREE and the plans are Lifetime for $29.99, 3 Months for $9.99 and 12 months for $19.99)

Yahoo Widgets

http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Yahoo Widgets are sort of like the Dashboard widgets. You can choose from more than 4,000 widgets from the Yahoo widgets site and place them wherever you want on your desktop. (FREE)

Check out the list of sites that consists of fonts, backgrounds and wallpapers, icons, clip art, stock photos, vector images and more in ‘Fantastic Resources For Desktop Customization.’ If you have a useful app you’d like to share, leave a comment with a link. Don’t forget, if you like this article, share it with others.

I have used several applications to keep a Calendar of my daily events. I started out with iCal, which came with my Mac. It is still sufficient but I decided to try other calendars over the years. This list is a compilation of the top 10 calendars I have used the most. I am currently using BusyCal because it has uses the same interface as iCal but has extra features. I am also using MenuCalendarClock, which sits in my menu bar and syncs with my iCal. Continue reading for my top 10 favorites.

ICAL (FREE AS PART OF MAC SYSTEM)

http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/mail-ical-address-book.html

iCal is already pre-installed on your Mac and ready to use out of the box. It has many useful features.

View: there are three different ways to view your calendars in iCal: Day, Week, and month.
Multiple Calendars: You can use several ‘Calendars’ to represent different areas of your life. Don’t forget to color code your calendars so that they don’t become confusing when viewing them all at once.
Sync: with your MobileMe account or to your iPhone through iTunes.
Adding Events: double click on a day you want to add an event and type your event information.
Notifications: set up a notification for either the time of your event or for a certain time period. A pop up will display a screen with details of your event at the time you set the notification. You can also have notifications sent to you by email. These are also known as alarms.
Address Book: is integrated into iCal so that you can send invitations to people from your address book by email and they can respond back to you regarding your invitation.
To Do: allows you to enter items that you need to do but don’t have a set day or time to do it. Click the ‘push pin’ icon in the lower right hand corner and it will display a list of your current To Do items. To add a new item, just right click and select ‘New To Do.’

BUSYCAL (FREE trial/$49 One User or $79 Family Pack)

http://www.busymac.com/

BusyCal uses the same iCal interface, making it simple to use. There are many other features that make BusyCal very unique. Some of the features you will find in BusyCal are:
Syncing with Bonjour: use Bonjour to sync calendars with others on your local area network.
Syncing with Google Calendar: sync your calendar with your Google Calendar to access from any computer, anywhere, anytime.
Syncing with iPhone: sync calendars with your iPhone through iTunes or MobileMe.
Multi-User: your calendar can be shared and edited with full read-write access and the changes made are synced instantly.
Recurring To Do’s: create repeating To Do’s that display in the calendar view and carry-forward until completed.
List View: customize a list view to sort events by date, event type, calendar, etc.
Live Weather: view live weather forecasts along with sunrise/sunset times, and moon phases right from your calendar.
Sticky Notes: add virtual sticky notes in your calendar and share or sync them with others in your network.
Rich Text: style the events in your calendar with customizable fonts, sizes, styles and colors.

MICROSOFT ENTOURAGE (Part of Microsoft Office:Mac 2008)

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/default.mspx

Entourage is part of the Microsoft Office:Mac 2008 package. The calendar is part of the email, address book, and project management included in Entourage. It is a decent Calendar application but does not sync with iCal or with Google Calendar.
Views: Day, Work Week, Week, and Month views. The default view shows one work week.
Custom Calendar Views: You can filter the settings to create a custom calendar view.
Mini Calendar: see a quick view of the current and upcoming months by clicking on the arrow on the bottom left-hand side of screen.
To Do List: you can view and manage To Do items here.
Color Coding: you can color code events by category or event.

MOZILLA LIGHTNING (THUNDERBIRD) FREE

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/

Lightning is part of an add-on for Mozilla Thunderbirds email client.
Views: include day, week, multi-week, month, and task views.
Tasks: you can add or edit tasks by clicking the task button or just click on the ‘Click to Add a New Task in the Task window (if open). If the Task window isn’t open, click on the ‘Today Pane’ button in the status bar.
Add-Ons: since Thunderbird is a part of Mozilla, and Lightning itself is an add-on for Thunderbird, you can also add other add-ons for use with Lightning.

PREMINDER (FREE during BETA may become Shareware)

http://www.hairyhighlandcow.net/software/PreMinderMain.html

This is a different type of calendar app which uses multiple windows instead of one window. It takes a bit of getting used to, but has many features that would be nice if it were incorporated into iCal like the scrolling views and spans. Since it is currently free, I’d hate to see it go to Shareware status. Also, there is no syncing with Google Calendar.
Views: You can switch between weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, yearly and multi-week views in the calendar window.
Reminders: a reminder for one day is able to show text in different fonts, colors, and sizes. You can even display small images.
iCal Import/Export: Save your calendar to a file in iCal, then import it to PreMinder (you can also import any standard vCalendar file type).
Import Birthdays: Birthdays stored in your Mac OS X address book can be imported directly into PreMinder and create an alarm for them. PreMinder also will calculate people’s ages for you if necessary.
Click and Type: click on a day that you want to add an event and just start typing (you will see the type in the large central field in the Reminders window.
Spans: create multi-day events with a simple drag and drop. Adjust the days by dragging the edges or move around the Calendar window.
Repeating Events: you can define events that repeat over a period of time or indefinitely.
Scrolling View: scroll through the months of the year and show the end of one month at the start of another in your month view. There are also month indicators in the scrollbar to show you where you are and where to scroll to.
Fast Time Travel: jump to any point in time with buttons that let you glide between months or years. Use the scrolling slider at the top of the Calendar to go to any month of the year and push the slider to the edge to scroll into the next year. To return back to today, click on the Target button.

MENUCALENDARCLOCK (menubar calendar) FREE/$19.00

http://www.objectpark.net/mcc.html

This is a very handy application that sits in your menu bar. It has some really cool features, especially adding an event without having to open iCal. They offer a free version which has limited capabilities.
Font: the font, style, and color along with where to display the MenuCalendarClock icon are in the Preferences.
Navigation: navigate between months using left/right arrow keys.
To Do: click on the button that has lines in it next to the ‘X’ to view your To Do items in iCal.
Add New Event: click Control+N and it opens a panel to enter new event information which will then be placed in iCal.
Add New To Do: click Control+K which opens a window to enter a new to do item which is also placed in iCal.
Search: if you want to do a search, click Command+F and it will add a spotlight search bar in the display. Type in your query and it will display the information if available.
Hover: when you hover over the menu bar icon, it will display upcoming events.
NOTE: you will probably want to disable your OS X time/date display through the Date & Time pane in your System Preferences.

GOOGLE CALENDAR (online) FREE

http://www.google.com/calendar/

Out of all the online calendars, I like Google Calendar the most. Especially since I am able to sync with my BusyCal (or iCal) calendars. Not to mention that I use GreaseMonkey and Stylish user scripts to tweak the interface to my liking.
Views: Google Calendar offers Day, Week, Month, 7 Days, and Agenda views.
Create Event: click on the Create Event in upper left-hand corner of the screen. Fill in all the information and Save.
Quick Add: use for quick event entry.
Scrolling: to view other months, scroll up or down to desired month.
Colors: change the colors of the different calendars set up.
Add Other Public Calendars: by going to settings, Browse Interesting Calendars at the bottom of the settings. The next window will display a list of available calendars you can subscribe to.
Tasks: are located on the right side of the screen. If it is not open, click on Tasks from the left hand of the screen and it will open on the right of the main calendar view.
Drag and Drop: move events that you have changed to a different date by dragging and dropping into the new date.
Import/Export: from Settings, then Calendars, you can import/export your Google Calendar.

YAHOO! CALENDAR (online) FREE

http://calendar.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! Calendar is fairly decent but doesn’t have as many features as Google Calendar. It has a bland appearance to me, but others swear by Yahoo! Calendar. So it is all in the preference of the user.
Views: offered in Yahoo! Calendar are Day, Week, Month, Year, Event Lists, and Tasks.
Add Event: click Add Event in upper left-hand corner of screen. Fill in the information in the next window and hit Save or Save and Add Another button.
Add Task: located in upper left-hand corner next to Add Event. Fill in your information and hit Save or Save and Add Another button.
Search: events from the search bar located under Tasks on the left hand of your screen.
Photos: can be added above the mini calendar for inspiration.
Import/Export: to Palm Desktop or Outlook. No syncing with Google Calendar or iCal.
Sharing: with friends or anyone, event sharing private, shown as busy, or public or by sending your URL of your calendar with friends by their Yahoo! ID.
Print: your calendar by clicking on the Printable View in the upper right-hand side of your screen.

WINDOWS LIVE CALENDAR (online) FREE

http://calendar.live.com//calendar/

Fairly decent calendar. Again, I think it could use more though. Also, I am unable to share between my iCal calendars.
Views: offered are Day, Week, Month, Agenda, and To-do List.
Add Event: by clicking on the New button above the calendar, then select ‘Event’ and fill in your information in the pop up window.
Add To-do: by clicking on the New button above the calendar, select ‘To Do’ and fill in your information in the pop up window.
Birthday: added by clicking on the New button above the calendar, select ‘Birthday’ and fill in your information in the pop up window.
New Calendar: by clicking on the New button above the calendar, select ‘Calendar’ and fill in your desired information in the next window provided.
Import/Subscribe: to another calendar by clicking on the Subscribe button above the calendar and fill out the information on the next screen.
Sharing: by clicking on the Sharing button above the calendar and either selecting ‘don’t share this calendar (private)’ or ‘share this calendar.’
Print: by clicking on the printer icon above the calendar.

30 BOXES (online) FREE

http://30boxes.com/

This is a cool online calendar which has some cool features added in. I like that it allows you to share your calendar with Buddies and the ability to incorporate social networking. Add this to the Google Calendar and it would be awesome.
View: 30 boxes in view which can be changed to 4, 5, 6, or 8 weeks. You would still see 4 weeks on the screen but you would scroll down to see the other 4 weeks. You can also change views by clicking on the View button in the left hand side of screen and scroll down to View and select either Day, Week, Agenda, Webtop, or Map.
To Do: Click the check box in the upper left hand corner of the screen and start typing out your to do list. It will then show a number in the top right corner of the icon indicating how many to do items you have in the list.
Messages: There is a little box next to the check mark which indicates if you have any messages waiting.
Buddies: you can add buddies to share your calendar with and this icon will display if any of your buddies have made any updates.
Facebook: icon allows you to update your information with your facebook account.
Find: button gives you a search bar to find people.
Share: gives you a multitude of ways to share your 30 boxes with others.
Overall, this online application has lots of cool features. I of course still use BusyCal the most out of all the items listed.

As you can see, there are many calendar applications to choose from. These of course are the ones that I have used more frequently over the years. They share some common features and others have features that would be great with iCal. I especially like the Google Calendar syncing, the scrolling through the month views, the span views, birthdays from your address book, use of sticky notes, syncing between Mac and a few others. If you have a calendar application that you use that isn’t on the list, feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.

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Times is the latest newsreader that I fiddled with. It is different than the usual mail styled RSS readers. Times uses an interface to try to give the reader a newspaper reading experience.  The only drawback is that you would have to carefully choose which feed subscriptions to place on each ‘page.’ This makes it a little bit of work for someone who would like a reader to automatically add feeds imported. But hey, this makes it ‘your’ personal feed reader with your own personalization. I currently have nine pages on my ‘personal newspaper.’

Lets dive in to see how to set up Times.

USING TIMES PAGES

Your chosen feed subscriptions are displayed on ‘Pages.’ Each page has three panels to drag your chosen subscription to and you can have multiple feeds in each section except for the top section. Resize your sections and move feeds around by dragging the separator line. You can add or remove pages when your interests change.

To add a page, click on File<New Page in the menu bar (or Shift+Command+N) and type in your desired page name.

To remove a page, select the page you want to remove, click on Page<Delete Selected Page… from the menu bar (or right-click and select Delete Page).

To rename a page, select the page you want to rename, then double click its title and rename the page (or go to Page<Rename Selected Page…from the menu bar), and hit enter when done renaming.

To reorder pages, click and hold down title of the page you want to reorder and drag it to where you want it to appear.

ADDING FEEDS

After you have created your own personal pages, start adding feeds by opening the feed drawer (click the pencil icon in the top-right corner). Find the feed you want to add and drag it from the feed drawer to any area on the page chosen.

To add a new feed, select ‘New Feed’ from the menu bar and either enter a feed URL directly or a site URL and Times will try to find your feed.
You can also add feeds from the Feed Drawer by clicking on the ‘+’ sign in the upper left-hand corner.

Times also allows importing of feeds from either Mail, Safari, NetNewsWire, or OPML.

To export feeds, click File<Export Feeds…from the menu bar. The feeds will be exported to an OPML file with your chosen name and location.

FEED DRAWER

When you add a feed, it will appear in the feed drawer. Here is where you can search for certain feeds, add feeds to pages by dragging to your desired page, and editing the feeds. To access the Feed Drawer, click on the pencil icon in the upper right-hand corner of your Times reader.

VIEWING FEEDS

Once you have added your desired feed subscriptions and added them to your pages from the Feed Drawer, content will be displayed on your pages. NOTE: The more feeds you add to an area, the less articles for that subscription will be displayed. You can always hit the ‘Show More’ button at the end of the section.
If you decide that you no longer want a certain feed in a section, you can remove the feed by clicking the pencil icon and then clicking the ‘X’ button on the left hand corner of the subscription area. NOTE: The feed will still be in your feed drawer. This only removes it from the page.
You can use your arrow keys on your keyboard to toggle through your different pages. (It would be nice if this feature was available to toggle through the feeds within the pages, maybe in a future update.)

If you have a feed that doesn’t contain lots of text, Times will try to download the full story from that feed’s website.

While in an article, to return to the main page, just hit the ‘enter’ key (or click on the page).

USING THE SHELF

Let’s say you find an article that you really want to read, but don’t have the time to read it. Other RSS readers use a ‘Star’ or ‘Flag’ system for saving articles to read later. Times uses a cool wood-grained shelf that you can drag and drop an article to for later reading. This is a really cool feature that is similar to the Mac dock stacks.

You can access the shelf by either clicking on the shelf button on the upper right-hand corner or by hitting the space bar.

There are four available spaces on the shelf for articles to be placed. Once the four spaces are taken, then the shelf will start creating a stack. You can also create your own stacks by dragging similar items on top of one another and rearrange your articles.  To expand the stack (if a stack has been created), hover your mouse over the location of the stack. To read an article from your shelf, just click on the desired article.

To add an article to your Shelf, just start dragging the desired article and the Shelf will appear. Continue dragging until it is on the Shelf. You could also click your space bar and it will stay open until you hit the space bar again. There is also a shelf icon next to an article that you may be reading. To add an article to your Shelf from within an article, just click on the icon next to the article name and it will turn an blue color. When you close out of the article, your Shelf count will change. The latest article will automatically be in the first column of your Shelf.

To remove an article from your Shelf, manually drag the article from the Shelf and you will here the ‘poof’ sound similar to removing an application from your dock. If you are reading an article that exists in the shelf and you decide you no longer want to keep it in the shelf, just click the shelf icon next to the article title.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND EMAIL

You can share an article with a friend through Facebook, Digg and Delicious. While reading the article, click on File<Share and choose either Facebook, Digg or Delicious from the menu bar. This will then open you default browser.
An easier way is to choose the article from the page the article is on, right-click on the article title and you will be given the same sharing options.

To use Twitter to tweet about an interesting article, from the page the article you want to tweet about is on (it takes a little more steps from within the article), right-click on the article title and select Post to Twitter… which then opens a pop up window with the information to tweet (if you haven’t set up your Twitter information in the preferences, the pop up will display a window for you to enter your Twitter username and password). Times includes an URL shortening for use with Twitter.

To email an article of interest, from the main page the article is on, right-click and choose Mail This Article from the menu bar. Your default mail application will open with the information you want to send.

Times also offers the ability to drag an article to another application. I dragged an article to OmniFocus and it pasted the article link. All you do is just drag and drop (wait until you see the ‘+’ sign to know that it is working).

TIME PREFERENCES

General Tab: Read articles inline in times or open in Firefox, how to open Firefox, the article interface (slide or page curl),  how often to clear shelf items, and the option to automatically check for new versions.

RSS Tab is where you set how often to check for new articles, how to handle the new articles, etc.

Sharing Tab is where you enter your Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, and Digg username and password along with adding other sharing options.

Times is definitely different from the other newsreaders out there. There are some things that I think would make this much better, and maybe will be added in future releases. I’d like to see better use of the social networking without having to go to an external browser. It unfortunately doesn’t sync with Google Reader. Also, it had crashed on me a couple of times during the trial run, so I am not sure if I would want to fork out the $30.00 without seeing a few tweaks in its future releases. I still prefer using NetNewsWire, as it has not crashed on me and gathers all my feeds perfectly to date, along with syncing with my iPhone and Google Reader. Overall, Times is still new and it is definitely a different experience. It took me a little while to get it to work to my liking. Give it a try and see if it suits your needs. You can click on the icon at the end of the article to be directed to the Times web site for more information and the free trial download. If you have used Times and would like to share your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.

I had previously wrote about the top three RSS newsreaders for Mac. Gruml is another full featured reader that is on the top of RSS readers available for Mac. It is still in Beta phase and seems to be continually updated. Let’s dive in and see what Gruml has to offer.

The Interface

The interface is similar to Mail. The left panel contains the list of subscribed RSS feeds, the right panel contains the feed article title with a little summary of the feed, depending on the feed, some will show more of what you would see in their actual web site. If you have a feed that you would like to read more about (usually the feeds that display only a summary), hit your return key and it will open the article in the built-in browser. Unread news are bold and in the left panel, there will be small icons with numbers next to the folders for unread items. Gruml supports Growl notifications as well.

Layout

Gruml offers two different layout styles.
The 3-column style has the feed subscription on the left, the feed item with summary in the middle, and the feed article on the right.
The Preview Below Article style has the feed subscription on the left, the feed headline with summary on the top-right, and the feed article on the bottom-right.
I prefer using the 3-column style as it is easier for me to read my feeds on a smaller screen.

Styles

Gruml gives you 7 styles to choose from.
Graphite which contains a blue feed title and smaller fonts.
Greyed (default) which has a shiny black feed title and a larger font.
Lucidr has an aqua on white feed title and lucida sans style font.
Simple Sans which has a black on white feed title and sans style font.
Simple Serif has black on white all caps feed title with sans style font.
Vanilla (which I use) has black on white feed title and smaller fonts.
Write Type which has black on white all caps feed title and courier style font.
It would be nice if there were a way to add your own styles (like in NetNewsWire), but currently, there is no option to do this.

Feed List (Left Panel)

Your Stuff
All Items, when selected, displays all of your feed items.
All unread, when selected, displays your unread feed items.
Starred Items, when selected, display your starred items.
Liked Items, display items you have marked ‘liked.’
Shared Items, display items you are sharing.
Notes display any notes associated with a shared item. To add a note to a feed item, click on the note icon with the ‘+’ sign and enter a note.
Comments display feeds that have comments.
People You Follow will display a list of feeds from people you follow.
Search is where the search results are displayed when searching from search bar in the toolbar.
Feeds
This is where the list of your feed subscriptions are displayed.
Folders
A list containing folders created either in Gruml or in your Google Reader account.
Tags
A list containing articles that have been tagged in Gruml or in your Google Reader account.
To add a new folder, just click on the + sign in the lower left-hand corner, which in turn opens a window for you to name the new folder. Click the arrow button in the window to add it to a certain folder if needed.
To remove a folder, click on the – sign in the lower left-hand corner to remove the selected folder you want to remove.

The Built-In Browser

Gruml has an integrated Safari style browser, which is very useful for reading feeds that only contain text summaries. It is also useful when using the “Send Article To…” option.

Google Reader Sync and Integration

Gruml syncs any changes you do with Google Reader promptly. This includes syncing of starred items, shared, items, favorites, etc.

Adding Feeds

In preferences from the menu bar, you can enter your Google information that you want to sync with. You can also manually enter a new feed by clicking on Feed<Add Feed To Your Subscriptions from the menu bar,  which then opens a new window for you to enter the feed information. You can also remove feeds by clicking on Feed<Remove Feed From Your Subscriptions from the menu bar.

To rename a feed, select the feed to rename and either right-click and select Rename Subscription or click on Feed<Rename Subscription from the menu bar.

To rename a folder, select the folder to rename and either right-click and select Rename Folder or click on Feed<Rename Folder from the menu bar.

Send Article To…

This is a nice feature of Gruml. It allows you to share your feed with a variety of social networks and blogging platforms.

As to date, you can share your information with Twitter (using the included URL shortener included in Gruml), Facebook, and Myspace.

If you want to save an article for later reading, you can add the item to your Instapaper or ReadItLater.

To send the article to a blogging platform, your options are tumblr or posterous.

The bookmarking platforms for sharing are delicious, digg, reddit, and stumbleupon.

To ping the information, you can use ping.fm. You can also email or print a selected article.
To use the Send Article To…, right-click from your selected article and choose the service you want to use from the Send Article To menu. If you customize your toolbar, you can add your preferred services to the toolbar as well. Or, use the keyboard shortcuts: Delicious (Shift+E), Digg (Shift+D), Facebook (Shift+F), Instapaper (Shift+I), MySpace (Shift+M), ping.fm (Shift+G), Posterous (Shift+P), ReadItLater (Shift+L), Reddit (Shift+R), StumbleUpon (Shift+U), Tumblr (Shift+B), and Twitter (Shift+T).

Preferences

There are a few preferences offered in Gruml.
General Tab is where you would enter your Google account information.
Social Accounts Tab only allows the input for your Twitter, Instapaper, and ReadItLater account information. It also gives you options for URL shortening (is.gd, bit.ly, tr.im, cli.gs, u.nu, and .tk).
Appearance Tab allows you to change the fonts for the article list and sidebar.
Advanced Tab is where you would change the menu bar and icon, URL handling, Update/notification, feed behavior, and caching behavior.

Menu Bar Notification

Gruml offers a menu bar icon which will display the number of unread articles. Not only that, when you click on the icon, it displays a HUD interface displaying the articles that are available with the name of the article item and the title. If you double-click on an item,  the article will open within Gruml’s integrated browser.

Blogging Options

If you find an article that you would like to integrate into your own blog. Click on Article<Blog With…(display will show available blogging applications in your system) from your menu bar. You would need an application like BlogThing, Ecto, MarsEdit, or Xjournal.
Once you click on the application you have, Gruml opens your application and integrates the feed item into your blogging panel.

I have noticed a few quirks in the program. It crashed on me one time and it is a little sluggish at times. It is however quick to refresh, sometimes too quick for my liking. When I unstarred, unshared, or unliked an item, there was no visual cue the change had taken place, the feed still showed in my list, so this would be a nice item to fix. Maybe showing the toolbar item change color or something of that nature. Also, there were times when an article or item list that I have marked all as read would still be shown in the list, even after checking the Mark All As Read in the menu. It would be nice to see Gruml integrate with apps like Things, OmniFocus, or Evernote. Also, Gruml lacks the AppleScript dictionary. Another important item missing in Gruml is some form of Help. When you click on the Help menu bar item, it displays “Help isn’t available for Gruml.” Hopefully, in the future, this will be integrated for people who need help with Gruml.

Gruml, however is still in Beta phase and is constantly updating. I still like the overall feel of Gruml, and will continue using it as a backup to my preferred NetNewsWire. I’d like to see how Gruml will be in a few months after more updates. To give Gruml a try, click the icon at the end of this article to be directed to their web site. If you use Gruml or have used it and would like to share your experience with other readers, please leave a comment and share the wealth with us.

Vienna is another RSS feed reader that I’ve seen many people using. It is fairly simple, but does not sync with Google Reader. I personally use Vienna (version 2.5.0.2500.1507) for news only. I only want to read the news once a day so I easily set it up to check for new feeds every six hours. This way, I am not bogged with feeds and I can read them when I have the time, which is usually in the morning with my coffee. So here is some information about Vienna.

Vienna is a free open source news reader. It is simple, clutter free and has a clean user interface. You’ll see your feeds on the left and feed items on the right. If you are using the condensed layout (pictured above), hitting the return key opens the actual web site of the feed in Vienna’s built in browser.

Smart folders and folder groups is a nice feature of Vienna. Smart folders are similar to the iTunes smart folders allowing you to tweak folders the way you want. You do this from File<New Smart Folder in the menu bar and enter a name for the folder along with conditions to be met.
To create a Group Folder, go to File<New Group Folder in the menu bar and enter a name for your new group folder. Creating group folders make it easy to organize your feeds when you collect so many that it is hard to keep up with. Once you’ve created your folders, you can drag your feed items to a desired group folder for a cleaner layout, making your feeds easier to find. And if you need to find a certain feed, you could do so from the Search bar in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

So, how do you retrieve your Google Reader feed items? All you do when in Google Reader: is go to Manage Subscriptions, then to Import/Export and once you’re in the Import/Export screen, click on “Export your subscriptions as an OPML file,” and hit Save File. Once you’ve done that, go back to Vienna and click File<Import Subscriptions from the menu bar. This will open Finder so that you can grab your OPML file. That’s all there is to it.

Want to personalize Vienna? You can download Styles or learn how to create them from the Vienna web forums. There are also a few Styles already preloaded. Just click on View<Style in the menu bar and click on a style you want to use. Unfortunately, there is no preview of the styles, so you just have to click on each style until you find one that suits your needs. Plug-ins are also supported (see more information in the Vienna forums about plug-ins).

Change the way you view Vienna by going to View<Layout in the menu bar and choose either Report (feed item on top – feed article on bottom), Condensed (feed item in middle – feed article on right), or Unified (feed items all together).

Sorting your articles is just a click away. Click on View<Sort By in the menu bar and choose either Read, Flagged, Enclosure, Subject, Folder, Date, or Author. I personally just sort by date since there are days that I may not use Vienna. Sorting by date sorts by date in descending order. To sort by ascending order, just click on “Headlines” in the feed list and it changes it for you.

Filtering your articles is just as simple. Just click on View<Filter By in the menu bar, choose either All Articles, Unread Articles, Last Refresh, Today, or Flagged.

Flagging articles help keep them for future reference and keeps them in the “Marked Articles” smart folder (which is included in the download). To flag an article, just click Article<Mark Flagged from the menu bar. That’s it, now you will see your saved article in the “Marked Articles” folder.

Want to share an article with friends on Facebook, Twitter, or Evernote? All you do is click on Article in the menu bar and choose whether to share by Facebook, Evernote, or Twitter. It takes you to the built in browser for you to sign in and the rest is self explanatory.
To send a link via email, click on Article<Send Link in the menu bar and it opens your default mail handling application with the information ready to go.

Blogging about articles you read is handled through either Blogo or MarsEdit (I’m not sure if this is just based on whatever blogging application you may have on your Mac or if it is bundled with Vienna). To blog about an article, click on Article<Blog With in the menu bar and choose your desired blogging platform. It then opens your chosen application with the entire article ready for you to use.

Vienna does much more than I described in this article and is always being updated. Overall, it is easy to set up, use and has lots of potential. To find out more about Vienna, click on the icon at the end of the article to go to their website which has the download link, forums, styles to download, information about plugins, and more. It’s worth trying out. As usual, if you have used Vienna and want to tell others about your experiences with it, please feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.

NewsFire 1.6 (v84) is a FREE newsreader application by David Watanabe. It is an easy to use, simple, minimalistic newsreader for Mac OS X Leopard. To download NewsFire, go to http://www.newsfirerss.com/. The site gives a snippet of information about NewsFire along with the download button, but no support or FAQs are offered.

When you first open NewsFire, your feeds are on the left panel and a blank screen on the right. Just click on one of your feeds in the list on the left and the right will display the items in the feed. Mouse to a feed item you want to read and the list disappears and shows the item only. You can use your left and right arrow keys to navigate to the previous or next feed or use your mouse to click the arrows in the top right hand corner. Clicking on the feed heading will open the actual article in your default browser. You can also hit the Next button. I’m not sure what the purpose is of having the Next button along side the arrows.

Adding a feed is simple. Click on the ‘+’ sign in the bottome left hand corner and a popup window will give you the option to enter the URL address, a name for the feed, and if you want to add it to a group. Click ‘Add’ and its in your list.
If you have an OPML file of feeds, you can import them into NewsFire by clicking File<Import and the Finder window opens for you to find the file.
NOTE: To create an OPML file of your Google Reader feeds, just click on Manage Subscriptions in Google Reader, then Import/Export tab and select ‘Export your subscriptions as an OPML file. Once the file is saved to your desired location, change the .xml to .opml in order to import your feeds into NewsFire. Once you do this, NewsFire will display a popup window displaying the feeds found. Select the feeds you want to import and click ‘Add’.

One of the features of NewsFire is groups. All you do is click on the ‘+’ sign and click on ‘Group’ tab in the popup window. Name the group and hit OK. Then, just drag the feeds into the folder.

If you want to create a Smart Feed, click on the ‘+’ sign and click the ‘Smart Feed’ tab. Enter a name for the Smart Feed, choose your desired custom rules (similar to Finder and iTunes smart folders) and click on ‘Add’.

In order to decide how often to refresh a feed, just double click the feed from your list on the left and a popup window will display how often to refresh, how long to keep the item, and to only show current options.

Another is the ability to download podcast from your RSS feeds into your iTunes library.

Need to know the URL of the current site your viewing? You are able to do so in NewsFire by hovering your mouse over the feed title and in the status bar, you will see the URL for that feed.

Want to search for a certain term, say ‘Apple?’ Just type in the term in the search bar on the bottom right and NewsFire will display feed items that contain the term your searching.

NewsFire also allows you to sort your feeds. You can sort by number of new items (F1), or by most recent new items (F2), or by name (F3).

If you want to post an article you read in your feed, just click on the little communication bubble next to the left/right arrows in the upper right hand and it will give you a Twitter box with the information you want to tweet about with the URL shortened via bit.ly and how many characters you have left to use.

You can flag items to save by going to the menu bar, click on Items<Flag Current Item or use the keyboard shortcut keys Command + L. You would probably want to make a Smart Feed containing only Flagged Items. I am not sure how else you would find your Flagged Feeds.

CUSTOMIZING NEWSFIRE

In NewsFire Preferences, the Interaction tab allows the options of the functions used. Options like what pressing the space bar will do, what you want to happen when clicking on a list item, opening the web browser, etc.

The Appearance tab allows you to choose the appearance of the feed list, appearance of the item list, the mouse highlight color, content font size and if you want the dock icon to show the number of unread items.

The Feeds tab allows you to choose how often to refresh tweets, if you want to bounce the dock icon or play a sound when new items appear, when to delete items, and if you want to use Spotlight to index your content.

The Twitter tab is where you enter your Twitter username/password. Also, clicking on Join Twitter opens up your browser to join Twitter if you don’t have an account.

Overall, NewsFire is good for those of you who want simplicity. It is fairly easy to use right away and has a nice interface. I prefer using a newsreader that gives me more control over my feeds along with the ability to sync with Google Reader. If anyone uses NewsFire and would like to share their experience or frustrations about it, feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.

I use Google Reader for all of my RSS feeds. I have decided to venture outside of the usual browser and check out the various desktop newsreaders available. So, this week, I am focusing on some of the best readers.
Starting the list is NetNewsWire 3.1.7 by NewsGator (NNW for short). This is a really good reader, in fact it is top on the list. It has an easy-to-use interface and syncs with Google Reader.

PREFERENCES

General:

Reading Tab: Here is where you would decide if you want to show unread count on your Dock icon, choose how to display Updated items, like Mark as unread or Highlight differences. Also, you can decide if you want to collapse new items in Combined View layout or choose how many items to show per page.

Archiving Tab: You would choose to save news items as HTML files on your disk from here and decide how long to keep new items in NetNewsWire.

Browsing:

Behavior Tab: This is where you choose to open links. Your default browser or the NetNewsWire browser, among other items (see image).

News Items Tab: You can enable plug-ins, java, and JavaScript from here and choose your style sheet.
Web Pages Tab:  Again, you can choose to enable plug-ins, Java and JavaScript along with using a custom style sheet.

Colors:

You can change the colors in this section. It’s pretty self explanatory.

Fonts:

General Tab: Here is where you change the subscription, headlines, summaries, datelines and combined view title fonts.
News Items Tab: Choose the standard and fixed-width fonts and the minimum font size here.
Web Pages Tab: Again, you can change the standard and fixed-width fonts along with the minimum font size.

Posting:

This is where you change your settings to post to your weblog and Delicious. For posting to a weblog, you can choose your own application. For posting to Delicious, it offers you the choice to pick from the default browser, NetNewsWire, Cocoalicious, Postr, Pukka, or WebnoteHappy.

Downloading:

Feeds Tab: Change how often to refresh all subscriptions and concurrent downloads.
Enclosures Tab: Decide if you want to automatically download podcasts and add to the iTunes library or other enclosure settings in this tab.
Adding to iTunes Tab: You decide how your audio enclosure will be added to your iTunes library from here.
Downloads Folder Tab: This is where you set the folder for downloads to be sent.

Syncing:

Have NetNewsWire Sync with Google Reader by entering your Google Username/Password and merge the subscriptions.

ADDING FEED SUBSCRIPTIONS

If NetNewsWire is your default RSS reader, you can add a feed by clicking on the RSS icon in the address bar. You can add feeds to NetNewsWire by clicking on the RSS icon in the web site. Another way is to copy the link in your browsers address bar and click the ‘+’ (Subscribe) button in NetNewsWire to add the desired feed.

SPECIAL SUBSCRIPTIONS

NetNewsWire gives you the option to add Special Subscriptions. Your options are Search Engine, Tag, Local File, or Script. (I only tried out the Search Engine and Tag subscriptions.) Here is how it worked for me:

I clicked on File<New Subscription<Search Engine and typed in Apple and chose Yahoo from the choices offered (Blogdigger, Twitter, or Yahoo) and hit Subscribe. NetNewsWire brought up News articles about Apple from Yahoo and saved it as its own feed.
Then, I clicked on File<New Subscription<Tag and typed in geektool and selected from the choiced offered (Delicious, Flickr, and Technorati) and hit subscribe. NetNewsWire brought up all pictures with geektool as a tag and saved it as its own feed. Pretty cool.

PODCASTS

If you subscribe to feeds that contain podcasts, NetNewsWire allows you to either download the podcast to iTunes or to your designated download folder (to play on your own player). Here are a few of the sites that I get podcast feeds from:

http://www.podcastalley.com/
http://www.jordomedia.com/
http://www.podfeed.net/
http://podcast.com/

You would subscribe to these feeds just like you would a normal feed.

VIEWING YOUR RSS FEEDS

When you first open NetNewsWire, you will see the feeds displayed in a list on the left, along with the number of unread articles displayed next to each feed. When you select a feed, the panel to the right displays the articles in that feed. By default, the unread articles will appear bold. When you select an article, you will see either a summary, then entire article, or nothing (depending on the feed) in the panel to the right which is your preview area.

READING ARTICLES

When you double click on an article, it will open the full article on the feed’s Web site, which you can view in either your preferred browser or within NetNewsWire’s build in web browser. (You can decide which browser to use in the preferences.) You will also see tabs that can appear at either the top of the browsing area or as a thumbnail on the right side of the window, depending on your personal preference.
Another nice feature is the ability to use your keyboard’s arrow keys to browse your feeds. The left and right arrows move between the subscription and article lists. The up and down arrows are used to select a subscription or an article. Pressing return opens the selected article.

VIEWING FEEDS AVAILABLE FROM THE DOCK

When you right click on the dock icon, you be given a view of the unread count at the top, the option to Refresh All News, Mark All News as Read, Subscribe…, View items inside your Feed Folders, among the usual dock options. When you highlight a folder, the feeds available will be displayed. Hit your return key and it will open the item in the NetNewsWire browser (unless you have your preferred browser as default).

INLINE SUMMARIES AND DATELINES

You can choose to show summaries and datelines in the headlines to make going through your feeds faster. To do this, simply go to the menu bar and click on View<Layout and you can choose to show Summaries In-Line, Show Summaries Below Title or Show Datelines.

VERSATILE HEADLINE LIST

You can add date, subject, and creator columns to the headlines list and sort them however you choose. To do this, just go to the menu bar and click on View<Columns and choose from Source, Date, Subject, Creator or all of them. It’s your reader, so you can tweak it to suit your needs.

SORTING

You have a variety of sorting options.
To sort your list, you go to View<Sort By and then your options are Date, Source, Subject, Creator, Title or Arrival Order.
You also have the option to sort your subscriptions. You do this by choosing View<Sort Subscriptions By and then your choices are Name, Unread Count, Attention, Last Update, Manual Order or Sort Inside Folders Only.

SMART LISTS

Using smart lists are similar to your Finders Smart Folders or the Smart Playlists in iTunes. To create a Smart List, just click on the cog wheel located on the bottom left hand corner, you will then see a menu. Scroll up and click on ‘New Smart List.‘  A window will pop up for you to start creating your own Smart List. First, type in a name for you Smart List. Then you will go to the first drop down menu and choose from the following options: “Title, Description, or Summary,” “Title,” “Description,” “Summary,” “Link,” “Permalink,” “Creator,” “Subject,” “Comments URL,” “Flagged Status,” “Read Status,” “Followed Status,” “Subscription Name,” “Subscription Feed URL,” “Subscription Home URL,” “Enclosure URL,” “Enclosure Type,” and “Group Name.” After you choose the setting you desire, you will go to the next drop down menu and choose from the following: contains, does not contain, is, is not, starts with, or ends with. Then, if you want, you can add more settings by clicking the ‘+’ sign and go through the same drop down menus until you have the Smart List you desire. NOTE: You can also create a new Smart List by going to File<New Smart List or use the keyboard shortcut Option+Command+N.

FLAGGED ITEMS

You can flag items in several different ways. One way is to have the article you want to flag open. You can either go to the menu bar and click on News<Mark<As Flagged OR use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command+L OR right click on the article in the article list and click on ‘Mark as Flagged’ OR customize the toolbar and place the Flag in the toolbar for one-click access.
What is cool about flagging items is that they stay forever or can be removed once you mark them as unflagged.

CLIPPINGS

Clippings provide special folders for ‘storing’ articles you want to read later. When you’re viewing an article that you want to clip, just click on the Add To Clippings button (if it isn’t in your toolbar, you can add it by customizing your toolbar), or by pressing Command+Option+S. or just drag the article to the Clippings folder.

LAYOUTS

You can view your feeds articles in either the Traditional view where the preview area appears below the article list (sort of like Mail’s email preview), Widescreen view where the preview is on the right, and finally, a Combined view, which display each article below its title in a scrolling list.

TABS

When viewing articles in tab view, you can choose to have vertical tabs with the thumbnails or the horizontal tabs (no thumbnails).

STYLES

You can choose from dozens of visual themes that determine how articles are displayed within NetNewsWire from fonts and font sizes, layouts, colors, and more.

POSTING TO WEBLOG

NetNewsWire makes it easy to post to a weblog. The first thing you would want to do is choose which weblog you prefer to use. You do this in the Preferences under Posting. You can either use MarsEdit or you can choose whatever desktop weblog application you have. Then, after making sure your settings are the way you want it, choose the article you want to write about by hitting the return key to open the article in the browser and then you click on the Post to Weblog button in the toolbar. From your weblog application, you can make changes as necessary. If you just click on add to weblog without opening the article, it will open the link along with the summary in your weblog application.

SYNCING

The selling point for NetNewsWire is the ability to sync with Google Reader. Not to mention, that if you have NetNewsWire on your iPhone/iPod Touch, you can sync with those as well.

TRACKING CHANGES

NetNewsWire has the ability to track changes when articles are updated. If a site creates a new version of an article, any deletions are displayed with a red strikethrough type and the new additions are displayed in green.

REPORTS

You can view reports that show how much time you give to a feed and which feeds haven’t been updated (which you can decide the timeframe for the report), to help you decide which feeds are worth keeping and which are out the door. To do this, you go to Window and click on either Dinosaurs, Most Attention, Least Attention or Bandwidth Stats (they are all in the same pop up window). Once the (Dinosaur tab) window is displayed, you can change the number of days for feeds that haven’t been updated by just typing in a number. To view the most/least attention, just click on the Attention tab and then you can sort the list by clicking on the Score column (with the arrow on it).In the Bandwidth Stats tab, you can view the results any way you want by clicking on any of the column headers. At the bottom of all the tabbed windows, you have the option to Open Home Page, Reveal in Subscriptions or Unsubscribe.

SCRIPTING

If you know how to create a script (AppleScript, Perl, Python, or shell) that generates an RSS feed, a Script subscription will periodically run the script and display its results. I am unfortunately not that script-savvy so I do not know how this function works.

AD-FREE VERSION OR FREE

You can pay for an ad-free version (which I believe is $14.95) or try NetNewsWire for free which has all the features as the paid version with the exception of a small ad on in the lower left side corner of your screen. You can get your copy by clicking on the icon or go to http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/ for the download and more information.

IPHONE APPLICATION

There are two versions for the iPhone. The paid version, which is $4.99 or the FREE version (which I use).

I have compiled a table of the keyboard shortcuts available for download. Click the PDF icon to download.

Even though NetNewsWire has a few things to learn about, it is a really useful tool. My favorite features are that it syncs with both Google Reader and my iPhone, I like that I can use my keyboard throughout the interface, it has many useful tools like setting up folders, along with the smart folders and much more. This is by far my favorite desktop reader application. If anybody out there wants to share their experiences and tips about NetNewsWire, please leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.

I use my MacBook most of the time and I seem to use the max amount of hard drive space. So, I tend to backup everything to clear some space. Sometimes, more than once. I occasionally forget if I had done a backup or not, so I backup the same things, just in case. I decided to search the Internet to see if there were any programs that would allow me to see what I had backed up, to avoid backing up the same data over and over again. I wanted the program to display the information I needed to know, such as the name of the item backed up, a picture of what was backed up, etc. and found the application DiskLibrary. I had checked out a couple of other applications, but this one does everything I need. If you have lots of files on external disks (like I do), and want an easy way to search for your data, along with visual cues of thumbnails, this application does it!

So, what does DiskLibrary do?

DiskLibrary helps you organize your images, movies, PDFs, music, and many other types of files you have stored on external media (see below for a list of the main supported file types).

Adobe Illustrator (AI) – thumbnail and metadata
Adobe Photoshop (8bps, psd) – thumbnail and metadata
BMP (bmp, bmpf) – thumbnail and metadata
GIF (gif) – thumbnail and metadata
HTML (html) – thumbnail only
JPEG (jpeg, jpg) – thumbnail and metadata
Mac Icon (icn, icns) – thumbnail only
Microsoft Word (doc, rtf) – metadata only
PDF (pdf) – thumbnail and metadata
Picture (pct, pic, pict) – thumbnail and metadata
PNG (png, pngf) – thumbnail and metadata
Postscript (EPSF, EPSP, EPS, PS) – thumbnail and metadata
QuickTime Image (qti, qtif) – thumbnail and metadata
RTF Rich Text Format (rtf, rtfd)
TIFF (tif, tiff) – thumbnail and metadata

DiskLibrary indexes the file structure of your CD, DVD, network volumes, USB flash drive or internal/external hard drives.

DiskLibrary also has the ability to create thumbnails for your image files along with thumbnails for album artwork for your AAC/MP3 files (see below for a list of the main supported file types).

AMF Movie Importer (m4a, m4b, m4p) – thumbnail and metadata
MP3 (mp3) – thumbnail and metadata
Windows Media Audio (WMA) – metadata only

When importing files, DiskLibrary gathers metadata for you (see below for a list of the main supported file types). NOTE: Perian plugin required for some formats.

AMF movie importer (m4v) – thumbnail and metadata
AVI (vfw) – thumbnail and metadata
DivX Movie (avi, divx) – thumbnail and metadata
Flash Macromedia (swf, swfl, flv) – thumbnail and metadata
MPEG (mpg, mpeg) – thumbnail and metadata
MPEG-4 (mp4, mp4g) – thumbnail and metadata
QuickTime Movie (mov) – thumbnail and metadata
Windows Media Video (wmv, wmp) – thumbnail only

Once you have data imported, you can use the Smart Catalog function to store your search results, like you would in Finder.

Let’s say you have imported .zip or .rar files. DiskLibrary creates an archive view for these file types.

If you need to search for a specific item, you can use the Advanced Search to search in all your imported catalogs based on the file name, data, category, metadata, or file.

Another cool feature of DiskLibrary is the ability to use the Space bar to preview an item. NOTE: this Quick Look function is only available in Mac OS X 10.5.

What if you don’t like the thumbnail image that DiskLibrary created? You have the option to change it by using drag and dropping to create a thumbnail you desire.

DiskLibrary gives you the option to import third party databases. Some of the applications allowed for importing are CDFinder, DiskTracker, DiskCatalogMaker X, and FileFinder.

System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later and 150 MB free hard disk space along with Universal Binary for PowerPC (G4) & Intel processors.

How to start using DiskLibrary

Once you have installed DiskLibrary onto your Mac, open the application, then insert the CD, DVD, USB flash drive and click on the ‘File’ located in the menu bar and go to ‘Add Catalog.’ Or you can just use your keyboard and hit Command+N. A window will pop up and you just click on ‘Import.’ If you want to create thumbnail images, make sure to check the ‘Catalog Media’ box. Now DiskLibrary will scan through the volume’s file structure and create thumbnails. This may take several minutes depending on the number of thumbnails being generated.

Once you have a catalog, you can rename it by double clicking on the name, not the image, and enter a new name. You can also edit the catalog by going to ‘Edit’ and scroll down to ‘Edit Catalog,’ or just hit Command+I.  From here, you can change the name, media type, location (where  the item is at physically), change the category, and add notes.

To manage your categories, just click on ‘DiskLibrary’ in the menu bar, scroll down to ‘Preferences,’ or click on Command+, (comma), and go to the ‘Categories’ tab. Just hit the ‘+’ sign to add a new category and the ‘-‘ sign to remove a category.

There is much more information at the Obvious Matter website regarding DiskLibrary. You can download a trial version of DiskLibrary 1.9.4 or you can purchase for $39 (USD) from the Obvious Matter website (or click on the icon to be directed to their website).

I don’t know how I survived without DiskLibrary. It has helped me keep all of my external files in order and keeps me from creating duplicates. If anybody has used this application and would like to share their experiences or has questions about it, leave a comment and share the wealth.

I really like trying out new apps when I read about them. Most of the time, I try apps that offer free trials or the ones that are completely free. I LOVE FREE. Anyways, I started seeing more articles about apps that use Adobe AIR. There are many AIR applications to choose from through the Adobe AIR Marketplace. And you can find many articles on the web about AIR apps. So, I decided to show you what AIR apps are currently my favorite and that I have on my Mac. Trust me, I have a lot more, but these are my favorite AIR apps that I use most often. The AIR apps that I have are all FREE. (To be directed to the AIR app website, simply click on its icon next to the title. To view the screenshot larger, click on the thumbnail on the right of the descriptions.) So let’s get going….

ADOBE SHORTCUT
I find Adobe Shortcut to be a really useful app for those times when you’re in, let’s say… PhotoShop and you’re tired of manually clicking in the menu bar for tools or actions when you can use shortcuts. But, what are the shortcuts? How can one remember every shortcut available? No need to do that when you have this app. Just open it up and look for what you need and Voila! there’s a shortcut for practically everything! What’s even cooler is you can save the ones you most frequently use in the ‘My Favorites’ tab for quicker access! Yay! This app literally saves time and energy.

clDESKTOP
I love shopping. I especially love shopping when I can save moolah! So, that’s where CraigsList comes in. Of course you can always use CraigsList on the web, but the clDesktop has a much nicer interface. All you do is type in your location (which can be saved), select a category (I normally check For Sale), then whatever your interest is (i.e. furniture, music instruments, housewares, etc….you get the drift) and it displays a list. Sort of like the web site…cleaner and with better pictures. You can even have the option to save certain types of searches. I have Music Instruments as one of my saved searches.

EBAY DESKTOP
As mentioned above, I love getting deals whenever I shop. Just like CraigsList, I also like checking out eBay for great deals. When I check out eBay, I use the eBay Desktop. This app has a nice user interface and I usually do searches and check my eBay account. I like how simple it is to use. Just type in a search and it displays the results and you can click on little radial buttons to narrow the search. It’s really quick and gives the same information as if you were on the eBay web site. There are many other functions, but you’ll have to check it out for yourself.

FACEDESK
I like using Facebook, but I don’t always like how the site works. This app is quick and it also saves your login information so you don’t always have to login. You can do all the pokes, updates, etc. as you do on the web site in this app also. It’s really nice when you don’t want to open your browser.

FLICKROOM
Lately, I’ve been using Flickr a lot. I’ve been posting new desktops, checking out new entries in the Appleviews pool, and checking out designs that aren’t in the pool. What I love about Flickroom is the nice interface. It is super clean and easy to use. It has the same functions as Flickr and offers other useful features like the ability to tweet about an image, upload multiple images by dragging them from your desktop, chat with other Flickroom users, view recent uploads of your contacts, etc.

READEFINE
I read Google Reader everyday. But, I read it in Readefine, which is an AIR app which uses Flex 4, creating a really nice, clean layout for your RSS feeds, text or HTML content. It displays multiple columns for easier reading and you can adjust the text size, line height, column width, etc. to your liking.
This app uses Flex 4 and creates a nice layout for your RSS feeds, Text and HTML content by displaying multiple columns for easier reading. It can read content from the web, a file on your computer (by copying and pasting), or Google Reader content. It also allows you to tweak settings like the justification, column width to your liking.

SHIFD
I used to bookmark EVERYTHING that I’d find on the Internet in my bookmarks (wish lists, sites to read later, reviews, etc.), only to forget where I bookmarked it, what the bookmark is, etc. Then, I found Shifd.  Now I just add a description and copy and paste the web site URL and add a tag as to what the information is for. I have a WISHLIST tag and a READ tag at the moment. Now I can find what I need in my bookmarks. Yay! There are many other ways to use this app, but you’d have to decide for yourself if this is an app that you’d like.

SNACKR
Sometimes, I don’t have a lot of time to read my RSS feeds in Google. When I don’t read them, they pile up and then I end up having hundreds to read. This app displays your RSS feeds in a ticker like style either on the top, bottom, left or right side. If you see an article that catches your eye, you can click on it and it brings out a little window with a snippet of information and you can read the full article by clicking on the ‘View Post’ button on the bottom right corner, which opens the web site where the article resides.

TWEETDECK
I use TweetDeck to check out what’s going on with all my friends on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. All in one app! You can adjust what you want to see. You can update your Twitter, Facebook or MySpace – all from within TweetDeck. I am currently tracking All Friends in 2 of my Twitter accounts, Full News Feed in my Facebook account and Friends Activities on MySpace. I love the idea that I can check everything in one place!

I only listed the top 9 AIR apps that I use more than any other. I have many more; but, again, this is just a small list. Anyways, if anybody uses AIR apps and has a suggestion or an app they’d like to suggest, feel free to leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers!

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!

While I was surfing the Internet looking at a variety of Adobe Air applications for an article, I ran into this nifty program, Livebrush. This Adobe Air application provides the tools to bring out your creativity. The Lite version is Free and provides different brush styles and decorations. The Pro version give you more options, like vector export, canvas sizes, and more styles/decorations, and costs $10.00. The brush styles allow you to control the way the brushes react and its outputs. The decorations (the graphics) can be stamped onto the screen or added to a line. You can create your own decorations, control different functions of Livebrush, use single colors or use a variety when creating your lines, draw with more than one brush, export or import styles (limited in the free version), export or import other graphics (limited in the free version), edit your lines, transform items you imported, and many other features. I’m not as creatively blessed as my husband (as you can see in the picture). He volunteers his time to create designs for me. To check it out, go to http://www.livebrush.com.
UPDATE:
Just received a comment from Livebrush on the difference between the free version and the paid version. You have the same awesome functions as the paid version, you just don’t have the export vector and canvas size luxuries. For the $10.00, you can have those functions. Either way, this is a really cool and fun application. Thanks David for the correction.
-TINA