Monthly Archives: December 2008

Qu-s

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My wife was having a bear of a time with Stickies recently and asked me what I used for quick not taking. As usual, when she says something to me IT-related it sticks (she married her IT support), especially when she wants something. I came across something tonight that I like and I hope she’ll appreciate as well (though I’ll say up front she’s no easy sell when it comes to things IT). What I’ve found is Qu-s.

Qu-s is a very well made, slick app with powerful note-taking capabilities that allows you to quickly save something right to your desktop. It allows one to insert links, check boxes, has a built-in browser, and more. I’m currently enjoying giving it a spin, and I think it’s definitely worth a peek.

It doesn’t fall into my absolute favorite category of free, but when I come across an app this well written I don’t mind paying (and I did). As with most Mac apps, this one is reasonbly priced at just $17. It definitely seems to be more than worth it to me, but judge for yourself by taking more of a peek. ;)

Half Stars For iTunes

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For all of you iTunes for Mac lovers out there who take advantage of being able to rate your songs, podcasts, books, etc., here’s a nice little tidbit I thought you would enjoy.

I used to think certain songs rated half stars as well as stars, but had no way to show it. Well, I StumbledUpon away tonight. I can now rate my songs even more precisely. Check it out for yourself here. ;)

Something Cool

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Hello and belated Merry Christmas to you all. I hope Christmas was as much a blessing to you all as it was for me. Let me add that I hope 2009 will be blessing for you all as well. I sincerely hope and pray for peace. It’s a good thing, and any of you feeling the urge to join me shouldn’t hesitate.

I came across a really neat plugin this morning. The plug-in is called Cooliris.

As their overview page says on their web site:

Cooliris provides a lightning fast, cinematic way to discover the web. Our plug-in takes you to an expansive “3D Wall” that lets you browse thousands of images, videos, and more with ease and speed.

It is pretty cool, and it’s not that shabby in the speed area either. For those of you familiar with Apple’s Front Row software, this will seem awfully familiar.

If you’re not a Mac user, it works with FireFox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Give it a test drive and see for yourself. It’s a free plug-in, so it costs you nothing but a little fun time. I think you’ll be impressed. ;)

Laterz.

I’M Getting Behind the Shield

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You ever see a nice trailer for a nice TV show in the U.S., and head to that TV channels web site only to find you can’t actually watch that show because you live outside of the U.S.? That’s happened to me enough times that I simply gave up bothering. Well, I recently found an app that made doing that a lot easier. The app is called Hotspot Shield.

Hotspot Shield is designed to provide VPN privacy and security through AnchorFree’s gateway, and it does a fine job of that; however, as any IT person worth their salt knows, if you’re using a gateway address in the U.S. then you’re going to appear to be accessing TV stations’ web sites from the U.S. It’s a bit of trickery, but it’s worth it if you want to watch some of your favorite shows the next day.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes for you. ;)

UPDATE

I ran into a little bit of what is probably some not so neat code on the part of the HotSpot Shield folks. The Activity Monitor on my MacBook Pro kept showing repeated incidents of the process”ajaxserver (Not responding)”, which isn’t fun to discover. You always want ALL processes either running or idle instead of not responding. In any case, after doing a bit of snooping around I found out that it was HotSpot Shield that was the culprit. How do I know this for sure? Because after I quit the app — it seems to set itself to start up at login, which is a bit annoying — my problems went away. Now, I don’t want to make it seem like the app’s not worth having, because it definitely is, but I just thought you should be made aware of the problem.

A hearty hat-tip to the smart folks in the Mac Rumors forum. ;)