If you’re unfamiliar with Hawk Wings, it’s a great website, run by Tim Gaden. Tim discusses all things mail… Apples’s mail.app that is.
Tim offers a lot of great tips. I’ve been a reader for a while now, but I do most of my reading through rss. I haven’t been to the site in a while, so I totally missed the fact that Tim has posted a very comprehensive list of “120+ plugins, add-ons, scripts and helpful apps”. Nice going, Tim… it’s appreciated!
Have you ever liked one of your screensavers so much that you wished you could save it as a movie? Well, now you can, with SaverLab.
SaverLab allows you to run your Mac OS X screensavers within a standalone window. From there you can save out individual frames or full-motion QuickTime movies. It’s pretty cool… and it’s free!
tip: By default, SaverLab plays the screensaver in a 320×240 window. You can change the default size in the prefs. Also, the window dowsn’t have the standard ‘handle’ in the lower right corner of the window, but you can still change the size just by dragging that corner.
Speedtest.net allows you to check you internet connection speed by pinging different servers around the world. I’ve seen other sites that do this, but this is definitely the coolest looking one.
found via Steve Garfiled
If you live in San Francisco, and have an interest in web applications, you may want to attend the “Future of Web Apps” summit on September 13th & 14th, 2006.
“This is an exceptional opportunity to discover how the web’s most successful sites and applications were built, plus you’ll get expert practical advice from the best in the business on creating your own web app. Whether you’re a developer, business owner or entrepreneur, join us for this exclusive two-day audience with the biggest names in web development.”
They aren’t kidding about those names. Check out the list on the site. If it were free, I would go in a second. Although it’s not too expensive ($295 US), I can’t justify it, as I don’t make web apps. It would just be cool to hear what those people have to say about how they got started.
Sex in advertising is nothing new. Advertisers have continually pushed the bounds of what they can and can’t get away with, riding the line between advertising, and pornography.
A French clothing company, Shaiwear, has recently decided to stop riding that line. Instead, they drove right over it, and then stopped and kicked it a few times. Their new online advertising campaign leaves nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, to the imagination. This is how they describe it:
“This interactive catalog includes X-rated pornographic content intended for adults. These catalogs can be downloaded for private use only, and in no case should be transmitted to non-consenting individuals or to minors.”
I’ve never seen a ‘mainstream’ company go this far with their advertising. Leave it to the French to be the first.
Here is the link to their online interactive catalogs. WARNING: this is for 18+, and is most definitely not safe for work… unless you work in a porn studio.
I’m fairly liberal about such things, so this doesn’t really bother me. What do you think… have advertisers finally gone to far, or is it about time we got some real sex, in our ‘sex in advertising’?
found via Productdose
UPDATE (12/17/2008): It looks like the websites originally written about in this post have been removed from the internet.
Back in March I told you about BackityMac, a great utility for backing up your mail.app or Entourage email (among other things). It’s an awesome application, but it has one drawback… you can’t automate or schedule backups. You have to actually launch BackityMac, and do the backup manually.
Today I came across Email Backup, a utility specifically designed to do one thing… automate your email backups. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of BackityMac, but, you never have to worry about forgetting to backup your email.
I think Email Backup is a nice little application, but it does have some room for improvement. The biggest issue I have with the app, is it doesn’t have a way to actually restore the files if you were to have an email failure. You have to just manually drag the backups back to their proper location in your system. This can be a bit of a problem if you don’t know where they are supposed to go (there’s a lot of files).
Another thing I don’t quite like is it runs completely in the background. It doesn’t give you any indication that it’s running. Some may like this, but I personally would prefer a progress bar, letting me know what it’s doing.
These issues aside, Email Backup is a nice little app, with a lot of potential. Best of all, it’s Free!
Of course, if you are a .Mac subscriber, you can just use Apple’s Backup utility to do the same thing.
found via Hawk Wings
This tip is just for locals. I live south of market (soma) here in San Francisco. My auto registration was due for renewal, and I needed to get a smog test. Most testing centers in the area charge $60-$80 for the test. But, there is an auto repair place on Russ St., called T-H Auto that does it for less. Their base price is $39.95. There’s also an $8.25 certificate charge, and $3 electronic filing charge, bringing the total up to $51.20… but you’ll still end up at less than the other guys.
Have you been thinking about buying an iPod? Why buy new when you can save big on Apple certified refurbished models?
Right now there are some great deals to be had. Apple’s certified refurbished iPods come with the exact same warranty as new ones, but they cost a whole lot less. A couple of weeks ago I bought a 4GB Nano. A new one will run you $249, but I bought mine for $169, with free shipping. It looks brand new, not a scratch on it, and I haven’t had a single problem. The only difference I can see between mine and a new one is mine came in a different box. I don’t know about you, but for me… the box isn’t worth paying another $80.
To check out the current offerings, just go to the online Apple store, and then click on the red tag (right side of the page, near the bottom). If you want to help support this site, use my link below. I’ll get a small commission for sending you.
Link: Apple Store
