This video is showing how to access/show the hidden smilies that can be used with Skype.
The background music is from the game Spy vs. Spy back in the days of the Commodore C64.

Looks like I have fallen victim to a bug in Apple Mail 3



on my MacBook running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8.



This is what happened:

I tried sending a larger file (33 MB) through my GMail (Google Mail) Account. I have my GMail account setup to utilize IMAP functionality.

I received a dialog box from Apple Mail telling me that the file was too large after trying to upload it. Later I found out that GMail comes with a 25MB sending limit.

I didn't give it much of a thought and sent the 33MB file through my alternative personal account.

Every time I started Apple Mail I received an error message saying it has problems with my Gmail account I tried sending that 33MB file through.



Basically my GMail account was not working anymore within Apple Mail.

Trying to find a solution I came to the conclusion that it seems to be in fact an Apple Mail bug and not a GMail problem.

What seems to have happened is that Apple Mail kept trying to send the 33MB email and was stuck in a loop, ending up with an error dialog box.

This is basically what I did to fix this problem:

1) Logged into my GMail account and disabled IMAP functionality.
2) Signed out of GMail.
3) Went into Apple Mail and deleted the GMail account.
4) Closed Apple Mail.
5) Logged back into GMail and enabled IMAP functionality again.
6) Started Apple Mail and added the GMail account again.
7) Checked for mail.

Everything seems to be working as expected again. The GMail account synchronized properly and this seemed to have fixed the problem.

Hope this will help people with the same problem trying to find a solution.

This video is a demonstration on how people cheat in Bejeweled Blitz, the online version of this game for Facebook.

I am all for getting rid of clutter. New to me was that a Mac desktop application admits to clutter my Application folder and offers me to move it.

Check out the following screenshot from Socialite 1.0.2



This doesn't really help remove the clutter, does it :).
Definitely a keeper!

In my office I use a Mac Pro with two 30 inch Dell displays. When I am going home I only take my 13 inch Unibody MacBook with me. I just love the mobility and power of it.

I have the office Mac Pro setup in a way that I can access it from home, with my MacBook.

For the remote control task I am currently using the Apple Remote Desktop 3.2 (ARD) application.
Once I connect to my office Mac Pro I am presented with both 30 inch screens displayed on my 13 inch MacBook.



Even in full screen mode it is virtually unreadable on the MacBook. I end up using one screen at a time.





Trying to work with this setup on a 13 inch MacBook is a pain. Within ARD I have to toggle back and forth between both 30 inch displays since the windows are scattered between both monitors.

One solution was to put both monitors in mirror mode and reduce the resolution. I would rather prefer to disable one monitor without having to physically disconnect the second display every time I leave the office. Disabling a monitor attached to the Mac doesn't seem possible without the use of additional software. I was looking around for quite some time until I finally came across an application named SwitchResX.



The only application that seems to be able to disable displays and seamlessly adjust resolution under Mac OSX Leopard. It is a System Preferences panel addition with quite a view settings. Once the daemon is running it appears in form of a monitor icon in the launch bar.

Information about MarsEdit

Developer: Red Sweater Software
Website: http://www.red-sweater.com
Version: 2.3.3

Description

Powerful Blog Publishing For Your Mac.
Write, preview, and publish without a web browser.

Why Blog From Your Mac?
Browser-based interfaces are slow, clumsy, and require you to be online to use them. While your blog's web interface struggles to perform the simplest of tasks, MarsEdit uses the power of your Mac to provide an amazing blog editing experience. MarsEdit is a desktop blog editor, so you can write a blog without giving up the comforts of your Mac.

15 Minutes of MarsEdit Testing

ExpressionEngine is the engine behind this blog. Personally I am not a friend of creating new entries online, especially blog posts that usually take a bit more time. If you experience internet problems that usually meant the loss of the entry unless you kept saving it. When I am writing a blog entry I don't think about saving it all the time. I guess what I am saying is after checking out Blogo (http://pixelgrinch.com/blog/archive/deal_breaker_of_blogo_is_its_html_weirdness) I even lost hope for desktop applications trying to help making posting to my blog easy.

I recently came across MarsEdit and tested it for 15 minutes. These 15 minutes included the installation and setup to enable MarsEdit to talk to my blog.
Once setup, it worked like a charm. I have complete control of the HTML code. A media browser makes it easy to upload files to the blog server and add the associated links to the post. I can define up to 4 custom fields which is more than sufficient for my blog. If you need to update your post, even that is possible.
I am quite thrilled that I have finally found a desktop Application that I can use to post my blog entries. I can create them offline, add to it as I go and once I am finished with the blog entry I can just upload it.
What a great product!

MacHeist is running just another AMAZING heist! The MacHeist nanoBundle!



Pretty much for the next three days get the following applications for Mac, FREE !!!!

ShoveBox

ShoveBox catches all those little scraps of information that you can't act on now but would rather not forget. It sits up in your menubar, waiting for you to drag in text, images, URLs, and more.
It also provides a sensible interface to sort everything you shoved. It's all about spending less time processing and more time actually working on the things that matter.

WriteRoom

For people who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a distraction free writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you're used to, WriteRoom lets you focus on writing.

Twitterrific

Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or "tweets" to the Twitter community website. The application's user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac's desktop.

TinyGrab

TinyGrab is a simple yet extremely powerful utility for Mac OS X and Windows. Harnessing the power of pre-existing and new OS screenshot taking capabilities, TinyGrab instantly uploads and allows you to share with a small URL— all in under thirty-seconds.

Hordes of Orcs

Hordes of Orcs is a “Tower Defense” game in which you must build walls and lethal towers to defend your village from the Orcs emerging from, what the village elders call, “The Glowing Portal of Really Bad Things That We Should Have Bricked-Up a Long Time Ago.” Sadly, the Portal is un-bricked and the Orcs are very, very hungry. If 20 Orcs make it to your village, you’re toast.

Mariner Write

Mariner Write is a powerful, yet streamlined word processor for Mac OS X. Boasting an elegant interface, as well as hundreds of intuitive features such as the ability to read Microsoft Word documents and produce customizable headers, footers, endnotes, and footnotes, Mariner Write has everything you need to turn out great-looking documents.
Whether you're a professional writer, educator, student, or an average user, Mariner Write has the functionality to be your go-to writing tool.

With the event of Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe ImageReady has been merged into Adobe Photoshop CS3. Well not quite! Adobe took out the ability to open animated GIF files within Adobe Photoshop CS3. All you will be able to get is the first frame of the animation.
I figured out a way to import animated GIF files under Windows but not on a Mac.
For Windows you just click on the FILE menu then IMPORT -> VIDEO FRAMES TO LAYERS ... Photoshop CS3 doesn't give you the option to select GIF files, a workaround is to define the following as file name: *.* and you will be able to select animated GIF files as well.
For Mac, this solution does not work. So I tried to rename the GIF extension to one that is supported for import, ex. MOV, but to no avail.
Why put full blown animation capabilities and animated GIF creation into Adobe Photoshop CS3 if you can not open animated GIF files? Other than monetary reasons I have no idea why Adobe did this.
Adobe offers Adobe Fireworks CS3 to open animated GIF files. What is the hook you might ask? Adobe Fireworks comes with a price tag of $299. Paying $299 just to open animated GIF files is a bit hefty in my opinion. The process of creating animated GIF files within Adobe Photoshop is quite intuitive and fun. Creating animated GIF files within Adobe Fireworks is quite frustrating. Adobe Photoshop CS4 is out for quite some time now but it acts identical to Adobe Photoshop CS3 in regards of animated GIF files.
Personally, I am quite disappointed about this and hope Adobe is going to shape up and fix this issue.

Apple seemed to have forgotten to add the QuickLook feature for the EPS file format.
Face it, a major part of Mac owners are graphic designers. I personally work with EPS files on a daily basis. Every time I tried to view files on demand I would have to either double click it or launch an additional image browser. The double click option will make you dizzy after trying to open a view EPS files. Working with Adobe Bridge as an image browser turns into a nightmare, the more images you go through. It is slow, gives me the beach ball on a regular basis and blesses me with regular freezes.
I recently came across EPSQuickLookPlugIn by Eternal Storms Software which gets rid of the annoyance and adds EPS icon previews to the Finder.
Thanks, Matthias Gansrigler, for this great Plug-In.

Every time I launched Adium (currently used version: Adium 1.3.6) I was greeted by several pop up dialogs, letting me know about a buddy list synchronization issue. Even after choosing the answers to add the contacts in question it still kept coming up every time I launched Adium.
Finally after months I was tired of this problem and tried to find a solution.

Deleting the file blist.xml in /User/YOURMACUSER/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/libpurple/ solved this problem for me without any side effects so far.