Well, it’s finally here.
Google Chrome for Mac. In beta.
Give it a whirl here.
Canto Pod finds lyrics for your iTunes library December 6, 2009
Looking for lyrics for your iTunes library so you can sing along when they’re playing on your iPod/iPhone?
Tired of visiting lyric websites and copying and pasting lyrics for each individual track into the ‘Get info’ section in Tunes?
Canto Pod has a solution. It’s a free Mac Widget that automatically finds the lyrics to the song you’re currently listening to and copies it directly into iTunes with one click.
Don’t despair Windows users, there’s also a Windows app.
Download Canto Pod for free.
How healthy is your Mac’s battery? coconutBattery tells all. December 2, 2009
A health check for your Mac's battery
My MacBook’s battery took a turn for the worse last week. Luckily Apple has already sent me a new one (even though I only had 26 days left on my warranty – Apple customer service FTW).
While I waited for the new battery to arrive I played around with coconutBattery, a free download from coconut-flavour.com, which showed me the health of my battery (it weirdly fluctuated throughout the day from 96% to 54%), how much charge I had left and the number of full charge cycles it had been through.
Of course the latter two snippets of info can be found from the ‘About this Mac’ facility, but coconutBattery does more and all in one place. It tells you the original maximum capacity of your battery on day one, lets you save information about the maximum capacity of the battery at any given time and even how long you’ve owned your beloved Mac.
It will also tell you if your battery is currently charging and apparently even warns you if you’ve plugged in the wrong charger. Although how that could happen is a little beyond me.
coconutBattery can be downloaded for free from http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery.
Even more GoogleWave invites. Want one? December 1, 2009
Wow. I must have done something good in a former life because I have just received another 30 Wave invites.
If you’d like to try the Wave just leave a message in the comments.
And if you’re still wondering what it’s all about or how to use it once you’ve got it, check out the Complete Guide to Google Wave.
Happy waving 
Nomad.NET: a tabbed file manager for Windows 7 November 26, 2009
I am still mourning the loss of QTTabbar which no longer works since I made the switch to Windows 7.
Once you’ve become used to using tabs to browse your files and folders, there’s no turning back. Productivity dives.
So, I’ve found an alternative: Nomad.NET.
It’s not as pretty as QTTabbar and doesn’t do things quite as intuitively either, and there are certainly a couple of glitches when trying to open the downloads folders from Chrome. But it certainly beats using windows explorer.
If you’re a tab fan, give it a try. It’s free and can be downloaded from: http://www.nomad-net.info/downloads
How to stream media to your PlayStation 3 November 23, 2009
I have been away for a couple of weeks, but couldn’t wait to get back to play on my shiny new PlayStation 3.
The main reason I bought it was not for the games but to stream movies from my MacBook and Windows 7 PC to the TV. I had been using an old laptop with its screen removed for this, but it looked pretty ugly and didn’t play nice with the wifi in the house.
So, if you’re looking for a way to do this on your Mac try PS3 Media Server, which is also available for Windows. However, for Windows I prefer TVersity which does so much more than simply stream your own media, it also gives you the ability, for example, to stream podcasts.
Both are free (there’s a pro version of TVersity for ‘premium internet content’).
What do you use for streaming your media?
Google Wave invite, anyone? November 4, 2009
I have Google Wave invites, people. Need one?
To get yours, leave your details in the comments and I’ll pull 5 names out of a hat…
EDIT: Since only 5 people wanted an invite, you all got one! Thanks for playing and see you in a Wave maybe…
Jailbreak and unlock your iPhone 3GS with Blackra1n and Blacksn0w November 3, 2009
Well, I did it. I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS using blackra1n (RC3) and unlocked it with geohot’s blacksn0w.
Used the super clear and concise tutorial on www.iphoneincanada.ca.
Mostly seems to be working OK so far – especially Skype over 3G, using VoIPover3G, which is the main reason I took the plunge.
Plus the fact that I’ll be in the UK soon and can’t wait to see if the unlocking worked.
Only thing right now, is I don’t seem to be able to send text messages…come on, Rogers, give me a break, I’ve got unlimited texts/ MMS anyway. Jeez.
UPDATE: Text messages now working – took about 30 minutes for the Rogers network (Canada) to play nice. No more red exclamation points. Woo hoo.
Also, visual voicemail wasn’t working at first, but I called myself, left a voicemail and once it came through (about 10 minutes later) all my visual voicemail data was there.
DisplayFusion rocks your dual monitor set up November 2, 2009
If you have dual monitors, there’s probably a couple of things you wish you could do. Like set one picture as your background to span both monitors. Or drag a window to the other screen without minimising it first.
DisplayFusion lets you do this and more. My favourite feature is that it lets you add a button to your taskbar to automatically maximise the current window and move it to the other monitor, with just one click. My productivity just shot up!
There’s a free version that does all I need it to do, but for more functionality, like adding more buttons to the task bar, there’s also a pro version (currently CAD$ 25), which you can try for free for a month.
Know what the locals know: ResidentVisitor.com October 31, 2009
A free website, with a social focus, for planning your travels: residentvisitor.com
A place to share info about the places you love and find places that others recommend.
Check out Pemberton, BC, the homeland of the site’s creators…
