Mac Games and More The Blog

This week’s picks are all games again. Hope you enjoy them. They’re here: mac games.

Other new releases:

PDF Counter 1.0 – easy to use PDF page count application.

Renamer 1.0 – an all-in-one power-packed utility to rename files quickly and efficiently.

Ivano 1.0 – helps Mac users to find the price of everything without tax.

Hab.la 1.0 – allows you to easily chat with visitors to your website seamlessly through iChat or Adium.

Jade 1.0 – Improving your digital images has never been so easy.

Darwine 1.0 – allows Darwin and Mac OS X users to run Windows.

HTML Mini 1.0 – a freeware HTML/XHTML editor.

Window Wrangler 1.0 – lets you move and resize your windows with your keyboard.

RadioRocker 1.0.2 – is the simple way to listen to terrestrial radio on your Mac.

Stitches 1.0 – a professional level cross-stitching and charting application.

Quick Links 1.0 – Instantly be on a popular site with only a click. (Free)

PocketMac Tic-Tac-Toe 1.0 – hangman game with the look and feel of a real chalkboard. Try the new Tic Tac Toe too.

Helix Pro 1.0 – ear training tools for engineers and producers.

Inceptdate Radio Screensaver 1.0 – Exploring the Art of Chill.

WebScrub 1.0 – a tool for preparing text for the internet.

Shatner Facts 1.0 – widget for every Captain Kirk, Denny Crane or T.J Hooker fan providing you with 101 facts about William Shatner including his career, personal life, social life, likes and dislikes.

BEATAnalyzer 1.0 - determine the exact BPM (beats per minute) of any song of any genre.

Precipitate 1.0.1 – search for and launch your cloud data from within Spotlight or Google Desktop for Mac.

Séquence 1.0 – capture and save an image or a movie of your screen to your computer’s clipboard or a file (in an image format of your choice).

Shtaggle 1.0 – ag your music by retrieving tags from the last.fm community, or through your own custom tags.

More about it here.

Hello!

This week’s picks are up and they’re all mac games. yay.

Other new items this week:

“It’s About Time to learn iPhone” 1.0 – From setting it up in iTunes, to using every iPhone application, to helpful tips and tricks – you can become an expert and use iPhone to its full potential.

iRemind 1.0 – Freeware utility that at the time fixed by the user calls for attention by a screen-message, or by saying ‘Hello!’ or by playing a piece of music or by a couple of beeps.

Giggles Computer Funtime For Baby: Nursery Rhymes 1.0 – Babies love touching the computer keyboard — Now You Can Let Them! Each curious key press entertains your baby with delightful animated characters in classic Nursery Rhymes.

Fashion Dash 1.0 – Fashion Dash will challenge you with a steady stream of customers willing to pay big bucks for perfectly tailored attire.

GaragePay 1.0 – download, view, search, and archive all your PayPal transactions without having to log into the PayPal website. It lets you organize your transactions in smart groups and can export to CSV files.

PhoneFinger 1.0 – This freeware transforms your Mac’s mouse cursor into a realistic simulated human finger for testing and demoing iPhone applications and websites.

Have a great week.

Picks are here: mac games. Have fun!

Other new items:

Tubular 1.0 – a new way to experience Internet TV.

Resourcery 1.0 – access all of your resources for all of your projects from one integrated window.

Colendar 1.0 – produces colorful PDF calendars in many languages and currently two formats, DIN A4 & US Legal.

iLabel-it CD 1.0 – create and label your own CD/DVD with iLabel-It-CD. Personalize the title, contents and add the date and then output to a PDF template for printing.

AnotherPOS 1.0.4 – easy to use point of sale system for your Mac.

Pencil Check Pro 1.0 – This line testing software is the classic animators’ best friend, sitting next to the animation table for fast and accurate line tests. An easy to use must-have tool for students learning animation principles.

Source Editor 1.0 – Editor for developers. (Free)

Climb to the top of the ladder by answering fun questions from the trivia machine. The game features thousands of trivia questions across 9 categories. The unique game play involves strategy as well as trivia knowledge…it’s challenging and entertaining.

The meat of the 107 minute keynote in just one minute. Here it is. That’s how all keynotes should be!

All mac games this week!

Here are some other new items this week:

VLC – has been updated!

Inspire Me 1.0 – Stores and manages simple text phrases. It can display your phrases, changing them throughout the day, on the desktop, in a floating window, or using Growl. Additional phrase collections can easily be downloaded right from within the application.

Multiuser Pro 1.0 – brings an Avid-like project window to Final Cut Pro. Create multiple Final Cut Pro users within a single Mac OS X user login.

iCal Dupe Deleter 1.0 – Aid the removal of duplicate timed events in iCal under OSX Tiger and Leopard. It allows the selection of individual calendars for testing, shows the number of duplicates found and displays the progress of deletions.

MiLife 1.0 – keep a daily journal of notes, ideas, or personal memos. Designed to function as an organic, daily writing tool, it keeps your pages and diaries organized and protected so that you can write what’s on your mind without worry.

Calories 1.0 – Calories lets you record and analyze your daily nutrition with ease.

eMail Broadcaster 1.0 – allows you to easily send a large amount of emails. It is simple to use, and scalable enough to hold and send millions of email addresses. It is a perfect application to use to send our monthly newsletters, or send email a pre-qualified list.

MacTimer 1.0 – An all-purpose timer.

Rollster – A fast, puzzle-style action game, where reflex and quick thought are your allies.

From dumblittleman (i love dumblittleman!):

“RSS is an amazing technology which helps you to read different websites and blogs through your feed reader. It saves you a lot of time because you don’t need to visit your favorite blogs everyday if you are subscribed to them in your feed reader. Apart from saving you time, it also brings in a world of information and knowledge and acquaints you with the latest happenings in your fields of interest. And it does all that at one place – your RSS feed reader.

However, keeping aside the numerous merits of RSS, it could well be addictive too. Yes, when you subscribe to a huge number of RSS feeds, you could easily end up spending hours everyday just reading feeds. And that’s when you conclude that you are a victim of RSS overload and you need to do something about it.

So here are those 8 tips which will help you manage your RSS feeds in a better manner and avoid RSS overload.

Make a ‘ Primary ‘ or ‘ Everyday ‘ Folder
You may have different folders in your feed reader, but I strongly suggest you to create a folder named ‘Primary’ or ‘Everyday’, which will house all those blogs which are your favorites and you have to read them everyday or have to read them first.

Make a ‘ News ‘ Folder
In the list of your favorite blogs/sites, it’s possible that you’ve got NY Times and Techmeme. Put such news feeds in a separate ‘News’ Folder. DO NOT put them in your primary folder. The news related blogs or websites produce tons of posts everyday and it’s better to create a separate folder for them.

Use Keyboard Shortcuts
Most of the feed readers provide keyboard shortcuts. I use Google Reader and it has some excellent keyboard shortcuts which help me wade through feeds quickly. So whichever feed reader you use, just make sure you utilize its keyboard shortcuts feature to read feeds at a good pace.

Track your time
If you think that you are reading too many feeds everyday and are addicted to it, it’s better to set a time frame for reading feeds. You should not compromise your other important tasks by spending hours in reading feeds.

Create an ‘ Unread ‘ Folder
If you come across an article which you would like to read word-by-word later, then instead of marking it as unread, transfer it to a folder named ‘Unread ‘. Then you can set a particular time of the day to read the articles in your unread folder. If you just mark them as unread, then chances are you will miss them later due to the ever increasing new items in your feed reader.

Mark all as read when required
You come back from a vacation and find 1,000+ articles in reader. What do you do ? Start reading them? I think it’s better to mark all of them as read because there are simply too many to read. However before you do that, read the next point.

Search
Before you mark all the feeds as read, you could always search for some specific terms or keywords in your feed reader and get acquainted with the latest happenings in your fields of interest. Most of the feed readers like Google Reader and FeedDemon have nice search features and help you to search through feeds easily.

Analyze once in a while
We come across new blogs, like them and add them to our feed reader. Thats what RSS is for, but once in a while you should also analyze your feed reading habits and check which feeds you are paying attention to and what you need to get rid of. This again depends on your feed reader and what kind of analysis tools it provides. For example FeedDemon has a Reports feature and Google Reader provides Trends. Here is an article which explains how to use the trends feature in Google Reader to manage RSS overload.

I hope the aforementioned tips help you to manage your RSS feed reading habits in a better and effective manner.” [source]

Got this week in a little bit early. I hope you enjoy them here: mac games. BTW, Happy Mother’s Day!!

The other new items that didn’t fit on the mac picks page are:

Times 1.0.2 – news reader for Leopard.

CopyPaste Pro 1.0 – Multiple clip utility.

Bezipped 1.0 – A file compression and archive utility freeware.

Moody 1.0.2 – Plays a mood instead of an album or a genre. Shuffles better in iTunes.

pngweasel 1.0 – Convertis an image to the PNG image format and makes parts of the image’s background transparent. Freeware. See also gifweasel.

m.o.t.e.s. 1.0 – a fun way to kill some time.

WeatherSnitch 1.2.2 – Displays weather information in your menubar. Freeware.

Macnification 1.0 – Enables scientists to organize, find, annotate, analyze, adjust, compare and publish microscopic images.

Viveza 1.0 – Control light and color in photographic images.

Lingo 1.0.1 – A word game where you have to use your vocabulary and deduction skills.

Leech 1.0 – Queue, pause and resume downloads, download from password-protected servers and store your passwords in your system-wide, secure keychain. And you won’t have to worry about downloads that were disrupted by a crashing browser ever again.

Saturn Fighter Wing – Red Zone 1.0 – “Red Zone” is the code name for the Saturn Test and Training Range (STTR). You are required to collect all green and red gems in the area avoiding missiles, bullets and mines.

Travel Tips for Globetrotting Geeks – Guide to mastering the art of high tech travel.

The picks are up right now and all are games except for one book recommendation. Check it out here: mac games

There were lots of new releases, so here are some that didn’t fit in the week’s picks:

Fossi 1.0 – Send your documents straight from your print dialog.

MovingPhotos 1.0 – A screen saver that sends your photos flying around the screen.

Coccinella 0.96.8 – A freeware chat client with a built-in whiteboard for improved collaboration with other people.

Cents 1.0 – A menubar app that will help you keep track of your little spendings and show you how much you’ve spent.

CreatureCutes Icons 1.0 – 12 freeware icons of funny creatures.

Mysteryville 1.0 – Solve a town’s mystery.

Syncman 1.0 – Synchronizes your Mac’s built-in Address Book with your Gmail contacts.

How to Touch Up Your Pics – Tips to get you to tweak your pics so they look great.

Very cute purse, isn’t it? Well. It only holds ONE apple. So, it’s not really a purse but an apple case with a knife. I like the design but it’s too small! Could Apple make a case as cute as Hermès’ apple purse?

Wonder what the Mac versus PC ads were like across the giant pond? (If you ARE across the pond, that is.) Well, wonder no more.

Watch the ads from the UK

Check them out here: mac games

Hope you like ‘em.

From consumerist:

“A tech support supervisor, from what we figure to be Apple, has stepped forward to break down some behind-the-scenes workings with his underlings who sometimes make both his and consumer’s lives difficult. For instance, one of the reasons you might be on hold so long is agents using fake work codes to avoid taking calls. Also, we know that metrics rule the call centers, but, in one of the confessions, he talks about how not only is it important to not go over your average handle time, you also can’t go too far under. Just strive to be perfectly average, and you’ll go far…

“I am a tech support supervisor for a very well known computer company. (If you must know, this company is notoriously secretive. I think that’s a big enough clue.) I felt the need to respond to the “7 Confessions Of A Verizon DSL Tech Support Rep” article you ran with some insights of my own.

I also started near the beginning of a new call center that was supporting three different product lines for said computer company. Customer service was stressed over and over and over again. I’ve been with the call center for about 5 months, but I’ve worked in other non-call center positions with the company since 2002. I thought someone needed to shed light on the fact that the seven confessions are not the exception to the rule — they ARE the rule in most cases when it comes to tech support call centers.

This particular call center is all “Tier” (or Level) one support. Within this center, we have Quality Assurance to monitor the agent calls in-house. If necessary, these Tier 1 agents escalate difficult calls to Tier 2 — which can be anywhere in the world. It will almost never be the same person twice.

You’re not going to speak to someone’s actual supervisor
There is a specific, direct queue line to “Supervisor Requests” for our agents. I don’t know why most people think they will actually speak to the support agent’s actual supervisor. We’re too…”

Full article

OMG You need one of these:

Watch the video

Picks are up here: mac games

Something I missed that’s new is:

Tradewinds Legends is a strategy game where you must build a flotilla of ships armed with weaponry, both man-made and magic. Sail into the sky to discover new ports and engage in aerial combat with other magical sky ships. Check it out.

Download it now

Another Mac Documentary! Don’t miss this if you’re in Wisconsin on April 6, where it will premiere. Check out the movie trailer here.

More info about it

From Science Daily:

“Whether you are a Mac person or a PC person, even the briefest exposure to the Apple logo may make you behave more creatively, according to recent research from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the University of Waterloo, Canada.

In work to be published in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, Professors Gavan Fitzsimons and Tanya Chartrand of Duke, and Gráinne Fitzsimons of Waterloo, found that even the briefest exposure to well-known brands can cause people to behave in ways that mirror those brands’ traits.
“Each of us is exposed to thousands of brand images every day, most of which are not related to paid advertising,” said Gavan Fitzsimons. “We assume that incidental brand exposures do not affect us, but our work demonstrates that even fleeting glimpses of logos can affect us quite dramatically.”
To assess the effects of brands on behavior, the researchers selected two competing brands, both well respected by consumers, with distinct and well-defined brand personalities. “Apple has worked for many years to develop a brand character associated with nonconformity, innovation and creativity,” said Chartrand, “and IBM is viewed by consumers as traditional, smart and responsible.”
The team conducted an experiment in which 341 university students completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a wall.

People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more…”

Read the article

Picks are up: click here: mac games!

Though it started already on the 21st, it’s still not too late to head over to the biggest demo scene event in Europe. (read here for info about what demo parties). Sorry, I was a bit late to post about this.

It’s held in Bingen am Rhein, Germany and for more info, check out the Breakpoint 2008 website.