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Amadeus II 3.5.4
HairerSoft
OS Compatibility: 9, X; Price: $25
Need a low-cost 2-track audio app for recording and cleaning up cassettes and LPs, or editing files you already have? Look no further than Amadeus II. It supports 16- and 24-bit audio at sampling rates of up to 1000kHz in many formats (including AIFF, Wave, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis). You can easily split albums into tracks and even join several files together. And in addition to built-in effects such as normalization, fading, and sound repair, Amadeus II supports the VST plug-in format—and you can download more than 30 for free from the HairerSoft website.
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Audion X 3.0.2
Panic
OS Compatibility: 9, X; Price: $30
Audion's pleasingly simple interface belies the program's many MP3 applications. Users can encode MP3s singly or in batches, switch between listening to CDS, MP3 playlists or remote audio streams with the click of a button, expand their audio searches to include the Web, and set a time for Audion to begin playing a specific playlist -- handy for those who like their morning routines set to music. Managing playlists occasionally gets cumbersome, and OS X users may be frustrated by trying to install and shuffle Audion's applications and plug-ins to the proper folder, but it's a serviceable MP3 player for OS 9 users whom iTunes left behind.
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Baby Banger 1.1
Paul Suh
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
Parents of small children will appreciate Baby Banger, which provides an outlet for kids' natural predilection to smash keys on mommy's or daddy's Mac at inopportune times. When Baby Banger is running, every key your child smashes causes colorful shapes to appear on the screen, the program can either speak the name and color of the shape or simply beep. You can choose from several different color schemes for the shapes, as well. Worried that your kids will figure out how to hit Command-Q and wreak havoc outside of Baby Banger? Fear not: to exit, you've got to type the child-proof combination Command-Control-Shift-Option-P.
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BarWare Deluxe 2.5
Digital.Fried.Chicken
OS Compatibility: 9, X; Price: $13
Throwing a dinner party but can't remember how to mix up a batch of Smurf Juice? Confused when a friend asks for a Honolulu Hammer? Want to stump your favorite bartender by ordering a Pendennis? BarWare Deluxe comes to the rescue with ingredients and instructions for creating more than 750 mixed drinks. You can search for everything to type of spirit or mixer all the way to garnish (prefer a drink with a lemon slice, twist, or wedge?), and BarWare also includes a Bar Guide with common measurements, a glossary, and a drawing of different glass types.
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BLT 0.2
Braxtech
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
Few things are as annoying as stumbling on the dreaded 404 Not Found error. Full-featured Web authoring programs will check for broken links in your site, but if you rely on a shareware program for coding, BLT can spare your visitors unnecessary frustration. BLT will check files located on your hard drive or on the Web, and BLT will check all the objects on a page (including links embedded in comments–handy if your site contains Java scripts), not just hyperlinks or images. You can check a single file or recursively check all files linked to the starting file.
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charlieX Screen Rulers 3.1
charlieX software factory
OS Compatibility: X; Price: $15
charlieX Screen Rulers is indispensable for graphic artists, Web designers, and software developers who need help measuring or aligning screen objects. It includes five different on-screen rulers and measurement tools. Choose from a transparent screen-edge ruler (which can be set to be the front-most application so it's always visible), a dragging ruler with resizable vertical and horizontal rules, and screen size templates (which display outlines of standard or custom screen sizes, so you can quickly preview how your work will appear at different resolutions). You can also display mouse X-Y coordinates or vertical and horizontal guidelines directly on the screen.
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ColorWrite 1.1
AdaptiveView.com
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
If you've ever agonized over the color choices for your Web site, ColorWrite can help. Not just for Web designers, this tool allows you to select colors using several color models (Web Safe, HSV, RGB, CMY, and CMYK) and preview color combinations in a resizable window. Best of all, ColorWrite can automatically generate color combinations (see the screenshot Color Scheming) for you based on several different kinds of color schemes, including Analogous, Complementary, and Monochromatic. After selecting your palette, you can copy CSS, HTML, or Java code to the clipboard for use in other applications.
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Discus 2.7
Magic Mouse Productions
OS Compatibility: 9, X; Price: $39
Discus helps you create professional looking labels for everything from CDs and DVDs to business cards, VHS tapes, and even audio cassettes (remember those?). Although it features a very non-standard user interface, Discus makes the label creation process painless. After selecting a label type, you then choose the output template (Avery label numbers, etc.), which takes you to the main screen. Here you use five sections (Canvas, Paint, Photo, Text, and Print) to create and output your masterpiece. With over 900 high quality backgrounds available, you'll be amazed at the quality of the labels you can create.
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iChatStatus 1.1
David Remahl
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
iChatStatus uses an undocumented feature of OS X (the one used by Jaguar's iChat menu item) to constantly update the status bar of your iChat session. By default, all your buddies will see what song is playing in iTunes, but you can customize iChatStatus via AppleScript to display just about anything, including the Application you're currently using, the temperature outside—just about anything you can think of.
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iSleep 2.3
FlyMac
OS Compatibility: X; Price: $8
iSleep adds a sleep function to iTunes and Apple DVD Player—set a timer, and when the countdown reaches zero, your music or movie fades out and then stops. You can also choose to put your Mac to sleep, log out of your account, or shut down at the end of the timer. (In the case of a DVD, iSleep can wait until the movie is actually finished.) iSleep can even act as an alarm clock, waking up your Mac at a certain time and then playing your favorite music in iTunes. The interface is a bit quirky, but the functionality is top-notch.
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iStorm 2.0
Math Game House
OS Compatibility: X; Price: $20
Need to brainstorm with someone in the next office, or the next building? iStorm lets multiple users collaborate on documents simultaneously in real time (depending on your connection) over a local area network. iStorm uses Rendezvous, so no network configuration is required. Starting a collaboration session is easy: Create a new document, click Host, and everyone on your LAN can join in. Edit text documents (which can include pictures, QuickTime files, and links), draw on a chalkboard, and chat. The program also includes a calculator and a TeX equation interface for doing serious math. Export files to Rich Text format or text.
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iWork 1.2
IGG Software
OS Compatibility: X; Price: $20
iWork is a timing, billing, and invoicing application perfect for anyone who's self-employed. Track work hours with timed events using the built-in timer and add flat rate and quantity-based items (like expenses). iWork integrates with Address Book (just add your clients to an iWork group and they automatically appear in iWork) as well as iCal (you can turn a deadline into a To Do). A Project Manager organizes all of your projects and lets you check whether or not they have been completed and paid. When you're finished with your project, create an invoice with your logo and custom formatting.
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Kung-Tunes 2.1
Adriaan Tijsseling
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
Some people are intensely private while others enjoy living their lives in public. If writing a weblog of your personal thoughts isn't enough, consider these ingenious utilities. Kung-Tunes lets you update your web site with the name of the track you're currently listening to in iTunes (as well as a list of recently-played tracks). It features customizable templates and the ability to upload your files to a remote server via FTP.
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MacJournal 2.1
Dan Schimpf Software
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
If you keep a journal—or a diary, log, notebook, or scrapbook—MacJournal can help you organize your thoughts. Sure, you could use TextEdit or Microsoft Word, but if you created many entries in one long document—or a new document for each entry—they would be unwieldy to edit, organize, and search. Create multiple journals in MacJournal, each with any number of entries that can be sorted by date, topic, or the first few words of text. Encrypt and password protect your work to keep it safe from snoops. You can export your entries as text, RTF or HTML.
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Meteorologist 1.2
HEAT Software
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
There are a surprising number of OS X programs that look up current weather data on the Web and place the results in your menu bar. Although we like Glucose Software's $8 WeatherPop (3.5 mice, November 2002), Meteorologist is about as good, offers a few unique features, and is completely free. In addition to displaying the current temperature and weather conditions in your menu bar (with a drop-down menu featuring an extended forecast), Meteorologist can display weather data in the Dock and display data for multiple cities at once. You can also customize Meteorologist to a remarkable extent from a simple tabbed preference window.
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MorphX 2.5.2
Martin Wennerberg
OS Compatibility: X; Price:
MorphX allows you to change one image (your cat) into another (your dog) over time, via a series of blended images. MorphX uses a simple two-pane interface, with the ‘start' and ‘end' images in each pane. After using lines to identify similar areas in each photo, you set MorphX to work. After a while (calculating the images can take some time), a series of intermediate transitional images is created. If you have QuickTime Pro, you can save the series of images as a QuickTime movie, thereby animating your morph and making it suitable for sharing with others.
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MovieHouse 3.4
David Ahmed
OS Compatibility: X; Price: $15
The MovieHouse movie player lets you organize QuickTime movies into multiple playlists, so you can arrange your own set of videos or preview clips before editing them in iMovie. You can play the movies in sequence, loop them, or click the Jumble button to play them in random order. After creating your movie list, MovieHouse can burn your collection to a CD. It boasts one unique feature not found in any other movie player: a 3D movie gallery. A frame from each movie is displayed on a wall of your virtual gallery, which you navigate with the arrow keys. As you approach each movie, the movie begins to play.
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NoteTaker 1.0
AquaMinds
OS Compatibility: X; Price: $70
NoteTaker creates a super-enhanced electronic version of the old-fashioned spiral-bound notebook. Using an onscreen spiral notebook, you can create pages of text, sound (including voice notes), images, URLs, and anything else you'd care to categorize. Notebooks can have sections to help organize your thoughts, and you can work with any number of notebooks at once. Items in each notebook can be assigned categories and given priorities, and you can create a special to do section for task management. NoteTaker has many additional features to manage your random data streams, and its unique interface makes it easy to use.
NOTE: Visit AquaMinds' website to download the software. It requires a trial key and also the version of your Mac OS.
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PorDiBle 2.1
Rura Penthe
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free.
Palm handhelds can be pretty cool devices for reading documents on the go. Unfortunately, it can be a bear to convert files on your Mac into Palm-compatible Doc/PDB format. PorDiBle converts text and HTML files to DOC files by a simple drag-and-drop operation, then all you need to do is install it on your Palm and use a Doc reader such as TealDoc or AportisDoc to read it. Likewise, you can convert a PDB file into a text file by dragging it on PorDiBle's icon.
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Redraw Classic XTension 1.1
InfoLogic
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
If you use QuarkXPress (versions 3.3 through 4.1) in Classic mode, you've likely encountered its redraw problem. This annoying bug leaves ghost images in your document when you switch back and forth between OS X windows and XPress. You can fix the problem by tediously collapsing or resizing the window each time it happens—or better yet, download Infologic's free RedrawClassic XTension. This XTension (which works for English, Japanese, and Korean versions of XPress, as well as Quark Passport) automatically locates and installs the program in any version of XPress on your system and runs invisibly in the background. In our tests, RedrawClassic eliminated the redraw problem once and for all.
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SETI@home 3.0
SETI@home Project
OS Compatibility: 9, X; Price: free.
SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has been a trailblazer in the use of distributed computing techniques. SETI@home, which is available in both screen saver and command-line versions, uses your Mac's spare processing power to search a vast collection of radio-telescope data for signs of alien intelligence. Once you've processed a batch of data, you send that information back to the SETI servers and pick up a new batch. The idea is that, by pooling the processing power of millions of computers, SETI will be able to process data quickly and maybe, just maybe, figure out if there's someone else out there. Clever OS X add-on SETI Menu 4.5 (perso.wanadoo.fr/vigan/aksoft/) lets you control the command-line version unobtrusively from the menu bar.
NOTE: SETI@Home can be downloaded only from the organization's website.
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Synergy 0.9
Wincent Colaiuta
OS Compatibility: X; Price: $5
There are many iTunes controllers and information displays out there, but none do it all as well as Synergy, which integrates the best features of other utilities and adds a few of its own. It places playback controls in the menu bar (including a menu listing recent tracks and playlists), provides system-wide hotkeys for playback and volume control, and adds a snazzy, translucent informational display that fades in and out at the start of each track (or at your command). You get full control of iTunes no matter what you're doing.
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VLC media player 0.5
VideoLAN
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
VLC media player picks up where Apple's built-in multimedia technology leaves off, especially welcome if you've ever had problems playing files your PC friends handle with ease. VLC is the most versatile video player available on the Mac, allowing you to watch files such as DivX and MPEG-1, 2, and 4 movies without a hitch—something QuickTime can't easily do. And unlike Apple's DVD Player, VLC supports multichannel output, meaning that with the right hardware, you can experience the full audio glory of surround sound DVDs using a Mac. Although the interface leaves a bit to be desired, VLC is a godsend for anyone wanted to play many of today's more popular video formats.
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X-Tunes 1.2
Pierre-Olivier Latour
OS Compatibility: X; Price: free
X-Tunes is a remote controller for iTunes that allows you to control iTunes without resorting to finding its window or using the dock menus. X-Tunes installs as a preference pane, and activates with a user-definable key combo. When you hit the key combo (and hold it down), a semi-transparent window appears onscreen, listing the current song info, and providing controls for things such as fast forward, previous/next song, and volume. Make changes with the mouse, release the key combo, and return to what you were working on without ever having to go hunting for the iTunes window.
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