Recently, I started using the Vienna client on OSX, which looks good but it’s a pain to manage the feed listings in two places– Google Reader, and local Vienna.  Yes, you can import your Google Reader OPML into Vienna, but to have them synced, you need to import it often.

But that’s a manual sync and not very useful.

If Vienna’s user forums are any indication, the automatic synchronization between Google Reader and Vienna is among the top requested features, and I can understand why.

Well, I won’t be waiting for Vienna anymore, as the Adobe AIR Google Reader client is here, and it works like a charm!

The interface is very Mac OSX like, very clean and nifty. Just set up your Google email and password:

And you are ready to roll. Of course, it doesn’t (yet) have the functionality to tweak font sizes or flag important items or share — i.e., a complete desktop alternative to Vienna or Google Reader, but this is a fantastic start.

The best part is the live collaboration that Google or the likes of Zoho have made possible. Online collaboration among team members was something in which Microsoft has also dabbled, but in its typical manner of releasing “Enterprise” features. No surprise that that has never really become the norm outside some corporate microcosms.

Today, Google has upped the ante in the war for online document editing by launching the templates. Simple addition to their rapidly growing arsenal, but a shape of things to come. From wedding invites to business letters, it’s an easily expandable service. The API and “open source” extensibility thinking of Google will make sure that you or I can contribute our own templates to the gallery. Nifty.

1. MainMenu. Free. Superlative. Creates a neat little menu item on the top bar. Better than most other tools I have tried for this purpose, especially in its clean interface. Sometimes, if you have the pleasure of experiencing a situation when the Trash won’t clean because OSX says that the “Application is still in use” but you’re sure you quit it and it’s not live anyway, MainMenu’s “Force Empty Trash” is a fabulous tool to have at your fingertips.
   
2. Little Snitch: Tells you everytime some program on your machine wants to “call home” and connect to some server. Great flexibility in allowing the program to connect to a server, a port, or in general. Allow (or Deny) it to connect only once, or until the application quits, or Forever.
   
3. RCDefaultApp: Just as it is on any OS from Windows to Ubuntu, it often happens that you would like to associate certain file types with certain applications. On Mac OSX, we do have the same right-click contextual menu as Windows that allows “Open with [Application]” and “Make this the default application”, but for some reason this doesn’t always work, and occasionally doesn’t even show up as an option. No matter. RCDefaultApp is the application that allows you to do that superbly, and then some.
   
4. Butler: Another small utility with a negligible footprint that allows for some nifty shortcuts to stuff already on your machine.
   
5. Perian: No Mac should be without this. This pretty much explains itself. There’s a nice video tutorial here that shows how easy it is to install and then forget it. Suddenly your Quicktime (and iTunes) will be able to play a whole raft of video formats. If you want to be really equipped, get the Divx codec, the 3ivx, and Flip4Mac which plays wmv (Windows Media Player) files on your Mac. Of course if you get really frustrated there’s always the tried and tested VLC Player.
6. CleanApp: The best application uninstaller out there, hands down. Don’t believe for a minute when the OSX manuals tell you that on a Mac all you need to do is drag the application into the Trash and you’re done. BS. Many applications (think Adobe) install several things in several locations. CleanApp 3 tells you all the associated trappings of these applications and allows you to uninstall them all together.CleanApp is not free, alas (there is always a poor man’s AppCleaner, which does some basic stuff) but it allows for much more granular control. The best part: CleanApp has a “Logging” service that keeps track of whatever you install, and then knows in granular detail everything that you need to uninstall later; you can enable and disable this logging service at will, so it is useful to keep it generally off and only switch it on before you are undertaking a serious install of software, such as Final Cut Pro from Apple for example.
7. TinkerTools: To modify the many system preferences in your OSX that should have been made tinker-able but are not. Us Windows switchers are used to modding everything, so this is a fabulous tool.
8. Transmission: The best torrent client for OSX. Very simple, no-nonsense, and yet pretty interface. BitRocket is all google-juiced as it has been around longer, but it went down more often than Paris Hilton’s pants.  Limewire now has an OSX version too, but I am done with crashing and slow download speeds unless you cough up a few dollars.
   
9. Candy Bar: If you really, really want to modify your icons. Panic is one of the better software developers for the OSX platform. Their Unison tool, a native OSX Usenet client is pure code poetry. There’s a lot of iconography available at their partner website IconFactory. CandyBar is not free though. If you are short on cash, you can always try the somewhat barebones LiteIcon.
10. Vienna: The best and most elegant RSS reader client for OSX at the moment. Now if only they could sync it with Google Reader, Bob might be my uncle. How long has the Google API been out now!?
11. Chicken of the VNC: The best VNC client out there, connects without problems to Windows VNC servers too.
    

    

12. OmniDiskSweeper: As you start using your OSX, and installing applications and such, your hard disk usage keeps mounting (no pun intended). The fast, small footprint OmniDiskSweeper does this job faster than anything else on the market, including the somewhat visually prettier WhatSize.
    
13. Monolingual: Like Windows, OSX also comes with about a gazillion languages preinstalled, which take several gigabytes on your hard disk. Likewise, OSX the operating system also comes with a number of architectures such as PowerPC even if you have an Intel system, because the same OS needs to support older Apple hardware. Anyone who has bought a new system with Intel’s architectures (the latest Macbooks or iMacs) can safely get rid of the other architectures. Monolingual is a simple, free utility that does exactly that.
    
14. Tech Tools Pro: Explanation coming soon.

For instance, I do not want *.png files opening up with Adobe Fireworks just because I use the software to create new ones.

Here’s a mighty useful app that allows you to set the default applications for file extensions, or mime type, or most common uses (such as “Email”, “Browsing”) etc. It sits snugly within the “System Preferences” and is quite easy to access.

How it looks:

Click on the image to go to the developer’s website.

It’s called Audion: get it here.

It’s now a FREE software. Just use the free serial provided:

RNL07P0-030HWMV-4MAGDS3-4U17REX

Works perfectly.

Apple is on to some exciting things. After the iPhone and the new eagerly awaited of the Max OSX, it even announced Safari 3 Beta for Windows!

The install was painless. Especially if you choose the no-Quicktime option (which Apple has no qualms about plugging shamelessly with almost every download it offers). I was also asked during the installation for ‘Bonjour‘ — a tool that supposedly allows better sharing of things such as printers.

The immediate uninstall

When I started the browser, it came up in some weird language. Greek, or Russian, or a specific kind of Celt. Who knows. I tried to reinstall, and it insisted on removing Safari first, which is ok, but it also required me to close Firefox, SecureCRT (for SSH) and WinSCP (for SFTP). I like my browsers to be independent of each other thank you. Opera never bothers with what else I am using.

The second and final uninstall

After the re-install, it showed up yet again in the strange language. Nowhere on my system is this language set up. All my browsers are set up to show only English, but support Japanese and Chinese. I guess it’s “beta” for a reason. It surely has a long way to go if it wants to be anywhere near decent contention to FF and Opera. Below’s a snapshot of what this gunk looks like on my machine:

Turns out these junk characters are not really a language at all. When I try to type something in the location bar, it comes up in this junk lingo. I try and rummage through these nonsensical options to see if one of the menus or submenus may have “English” as an option, but no luck.

Conclusion

This mutt is off my PC before it could even bark. So long, Safari, and thanks for all the fish.

There’s no dearth of freeware tools available for video conversion these days, with sporadic levels of success. Download.com is your friend with the search keyword “video converter“.

But you need to download them, feed them the video you wish to convert (which means you need to have downloaded the video on your computer — I use the excellent VideoDownloader extension on Firefox when I must do this), and wait for the converted video to be created on your desktop. Altogether a cycle that requires the presence of several bits of software on your machine.

This is why I like the Cruxy Mux Video Converter. As you’ll see in the immensely exciting screenshot below, you only need to specify the URL of your video (Youtube, Google Video, and such URLs are welcome), specify one of the formats available (all necessary ones are), and press Submit. Voila. It’ll send you an email when it’s done.

I promptly went and gave it a shot with the Burusu Wirrisu video on Youtube (Japanese Bruce Willis look-alike). I had the email in less than five minutes. Nice.

Nifty Feature: Second Life Mux!

To sweeten the deal, there’s the Second Life Mux that will result in a URL “that can be used by land owners as their parcel’s media stream for one day”. Brilliant.

Here’s a nifty little utility that allows you to set most often-used folders on your PC and access them quickly from a FILE OPEN dialogue box.

FileBox Extender

These little icons appear in all the File –> Open boxes in Windows. Which is very handy. Among the several customizations you can make to this oft-used file dialog box is the ability to automatically sort the file names by name, date, size, or type, and the ability to see the file names in Details or Thumbnails views. (Btw, the skin you see in that screenshot above is from Flyakiteosx).

How to Change FbX Button Images

You can tell a utility is well coded if you can customize it to your tastes. I have changed the icons that come with the tool as default (which are somewhat Win3.1-ish). This is simple. In the folder where you installed FileBox eXtender, there’s a sub-folder named ICONS. Inside that are several standard format Windows icon files (with the extension .ICO). Copy a pair of these files into the main program folder, and then rename them to FAVORITE.ICO and RECENT.ICO. Now exit and restart FileBox eXtender. (In some cases you will have to reboot your machine—exiting and restarting the program may not be enough to effect the change). That’s it. Your new icons should now appear.

Firewalls are dime a dozen these days. When the concept of a firewall first became important on home computers, with the advent of real high-speed broadband, Tiny Personal Firewall was the best. It even had the approval of experts. Unfortunately, CA stepped in and gobbled up the company.

Zone Alarm was already a strong contender, but with Tiny gone, it soon became the de-facto firewall on the machine of users who knew better than to let this computer flounder under the bloatware of Mcafee or Symantec.

Unfortunately, of late, Zone Alarm has been a bit of a hog on my machine. It’s a Core2Duo, which means software such as Zone Alarm should cheerfully work in parallel with no fuss. AVG for instance scans my entire machine for an hour without my so much as bothering about it.

It is in this context that I came across Comodo Firewall, one that is recommended by more than a few techies. Being a born tinkerer, I was off in a jiffy to download the thing. And short story: it rocks.

Below’s a screenshot. It looks more professional than even Zone Alarm Pro. There are more options, explained more clearly.

Google is full of tools and utilities that allow MKV to AVI conversion. Many of them are shareware. You download them free but then you have to cough up $29.99.

I have found the FREE tool, All2AVI ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/alltoavi/ ) does the job and does it superbly. It’s fast, free, and the conversion from MKV and other formats to AVI happens pretty efficiently and reliably.

If you’re on OSX, you can use VisualHub or Submerge, but both of them are a bit unreliable. VisualHub in particular is a fantastic way to do any conversion on Mac OSX, but if it collapses with a cryptic “Sorry, could not convert for some reason”, then you may wish to use AlltoAVI inside an XP virtual machine.