Mega Xmas App

Well, it seems the grandaddy of all the xmas apps has just been updated - Treetop Lights. There are tons of options, including what kind of things you hang on your tree, bulb type for the screen lighting, as well as a weird snowman that comes across your screen when you hit click-command on the tree or at weird intervals. You can also adjust bulb blink pattern, brightness, as well as the tree size. There's also a way to send an xmas greeting through Mail. 

The only bug I've found is that the countdown day keeps appearing on the tree, even after you turn that option off. Weird.

 

Happy Holidays!

Santa Snaps rocks! :-) 

Robots Gone Yuletide Mad!

Whoa! Have a look at this video.

Otaku fever! 

Holiday Cocoa Duel

I've had a bad day. Damn train stopped on my way to work for 15 minutes, someone stole lab gear from my teaching lab, there's no snow here, only drunken ojisan's falling on me on the train, my wife's got mastitis again (complete with 103° fever), and the baby has decided to start blowing snot all over me.

But this really made me smile a bit - the Holiday Cocoa Duel . Developers have volunteered to make holiday themed apps, and if you like them you donate something to charity.

Some are pretty cool - Snowy gives you two penguins walking across your screen with snow falling and some snowmen (some decapitated) scattered about.

Santa Snaps is a hoiday themed photobooth that overlays holiday regalia over your images.

Santa's Gizmo is a gift tracker, allowing the ultimate consumer to track and organize the gifts he buys. (I'm not going to run the gift rat race this year - so not for me.)

Snowplane is apparently the current winner in donations, but it doesnt' seem to do much. Can't figure it out.

Anyway, check 'em out.

MacZot GiftZot: A Good Deal

 MacZot ran a "GiftZot" last week with several mystery apps for $20. I got it as my Birthday Zot last, and bought another one for a friend. The value of the package increased over the days it was offerred, as a few apps were added. Although licenses were a bit slow in coming, I have to say that after seeing the app list this was a pretty good deal if even two of the apps are useful.

Apps included are two games (Diner Dash 2 and Faeries), MenuCalendarClock, Tubular, PhotoStickies, LOOPS WaterPack, xSlimmer, and $10 credit on iStockPhoto. Games are nice, but I have little time for them. MenuCalendarClock looks useful - puts your iCal in the menubar. Very handy on my PB I think. Tubular is quite appealing - allows us to browse, search, and play YouTube vids. It's a 'presell' - so not yet there. I wish it would allow me to save vids to disk - that makes it easier for me to play vids in to students in lecture when there isn't an available internet connection. PhotoStickies let's you leave photos (and webcams) on your desktop. Great for displaying my baby photos (until everyone is sick of them). The Loops Water Pack is a series of high res screen savers with a water theme. These might be interesting if I get tired of my current screensaver called LotsaWater. The best app of the bunch seems to be xSlimmer that removes the FAT from Universal apps. I've had my eye on this for a while, and hope to save lotsa space PowerPC Macs. :-)

I also think that MacZot is offering better apps recently. FreezeFrame, Spyder, Cocktail (woohoo!), and a Devon app, Desktop Transporter, were all offered in the last week. If you balked at paying $15 for Cocktail - you could have had it for $7.45. This is an indispensible utility for many Mac Diehards.

Let's hope they pull in some equally cool deals in the future.

Ultrathin 12" MacBook Pro on the way?

MacScoop is reporting the likelihood of a ultrathin form-factor MacBook Pro, perhaps coming in the spring, and in the $1700-1800 price range, featuring Core 2 Duos and optical drives. Woohoo! (Betcha it can't be this cheap though...)

This is pretty cool, but ABOUT FREAKIN' TIME.

What I thought was funny or ludicrous was the negative reaction to such a product from several commentors over at ArsTechnica. Naysayers were claiming that it can't be manufactured. Typical sheep comment from someone who hasn't seen the Windows ultraportables with similar stats already on the market. A couple people even complained about a thin laptop, said they wouldn't want one, and Apple has no business making one. WTF! I guess these guys haven't had the pleasure of hauling their laptops for hours while commuting by train, bus, or bike. Are these the same morons who think that 5 lbs is acceptable for a laptop in a world of Intel laptops much less than that? I just don't understand why these people wouldn't want Apple to expand their product line. Unbelievable MacSheep nonsense.

But it's still only a rumor. Try. Not. To. Hope. Too. Much.