Art La Flamme

Here’s what I use most often. I’d made a couple of additions, at the bottom. They are worth looking at, too.

Apimac timer * No kidding, I use it when I do laundry.
Audacity * I’m more comfortable with it than garage band.
Caffeine * It keeps your laptop from going to sleep or powering down. Perfect when you’re working at a desk or are powered up.
Cyberduck * FTP program
Firefox * Web browser.
Flickr Uploadr * It, uh…. yeah.
Gimp * Open Source Photoshop.
Google Earth * Mmmmm, satellite imagery and geospatial goodies.
Google Updater * Keeps all the Google software up to date.
Handbrake * Converts DVD’s to Xvid or Quicktime, in one step.
iChat * uses AIM and Jabber / Google Talk protocals.
iScrobbler * Works with last.fm and iTunes
iSquint * Video converter. Makes anything into Quicktime format in AppleTV or iPhone / iTouch size.
iTunes Alarm * An Alarm that plays iTunes. Versatile.
Open Office * Open source office suite
Parallels * Windows emulator. NOT FREE.
Picasa Web Albums Uploader * Bulk upload to Picasa.
Skype * Video teleconference, and phone calls out (if you pay).
Symantec AV, because the Army gives it to us free.
Time Machine. OS X back up program. I got a 250GB from the PX, 2.5″ that is powered via USB.
Toast 9. Not free. DVD / CD authoring.
Twhirl (runs on Adobe Air) * For twitter.
UnRarX * Handles all kinds of compression formats.
VLC (MUST!!!) * open course media player.
Vuze * For torrents
What’s Keeping Me * Helps ID when something is wrong.
Wireshark * But I’m trying some alternatives right now.

Updated:
TubeTV. Download flash videos (YouTube, Google Video) as Quicktime, formatted for iTunes. (Thanks, Chris)
Quicksilver. String together commands into a user-defined keyboard stroke. (Thanks, Chris)
Adium — for all your instant messaging needs. AIM, MSN, Jabber / Google Talk, Yahoo, and more. (And again, thanks, Chris)
Great list here, with links. VirtualBox is probably the best of the bunch — but then again, I paid for Parallels. And I looooove GIMP.

Also, if you’re getting into Mac, you might want to get smart on iTunes magic. I wrote about it a couple of times, and it’s all clumped here.

I bought a new toy.

And right about now, my wife is saying, “Oh, crap.”

I bought an EyeTV Hybrid today, when we were at the Apple store up in Atlanta. I came home, loaded the software, plugged in the little USB Adapter, and then my cable TV cable into that. Poof, not just TV on my PC, but my MacBook Pro is now a DVR that spits things back out (automatically) in iPhone format.

I rule. I totally rule.

Always on the cutting edge, I downloaded iTunes 8. What caught my eye was the new Genius feature.

The idea is that you pick a song, and iTunes will comb through your music library and build a playlist for you around that song. If you like X, you’ll like Y and Z and so on .

So, it’s a fake Last.FM just in iTunes instead.

I decided to throw it a fastball — no kids stuff to get it going. I picked something I got from the iTunes store, but something off of the beaten path. I picked Rebel Never Gets Old by David Bowie and Go Home Productions.

Why? Genius is going to use anonymous user data to figure out what the music relationships are. Basically, they are starting at zero on this when others, like last.fm, have years worth of data on this already archived.

So what did it come up with? It made a very weird list. “Genius” might be a bit strong of a word, though with time I am sure it’ll get better.

Revolution – Eric Clapton * Back Home
Black Math – The White Stripes * Elephant
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – Devo * Greatest Hits
The Walk – The Cure * Japanese Whispers
Personality Crisis – New York Dolls * New York Dolls
Two Hearts Beat As One – U2 * War
Straight To Hell – The Clash * Combat Rock
The Cutter (GHP remix) – Echo & The Bunnymen * GHP Complete – CD10 Unofficial Remixes Vol1
I’m Free – The Who * Tommy
Route 66 – Depeche Mode * Behind the Wheel/Route 66
Search And Destroy – The Stooges * Raw Power
You Really Got Me – The Kinks * Kinks (The Ultimate Collection)
Not All Me – Alanis Morissette * So-Called Chaos
Clampdown – The Clash * London Calling
Strange Brew – Cream * Strange Brew: The Very Best of Cream
Mellow Yellow – Donovan * Mellow Yellow
Blue Orchid – The White Stripes * Get Behind Me Satan
Myriad Harbour – The New Pornographers * Challengers
Is This It? – The Strokes * Is This It?
Sweet Jane – Lou Reed * The Best of Lou Reed
Tell Her Tonight – Franz Ferdinand * Franz Ferdinand
Do You Wanna Hold Me? – Bow Wow Wow * Totally 80′s
Happy Jack – The Who * 30 Years of Maximum R&B
I Will Dare – The Replacements * Let It Be

Depeche Mode, and then The Stooges? Uh, wow. Not what I would have picked, and back to back songs that don’t actually work.

Oh, the other feature is that iTunes will also recommend other music from the iTunes store, you know, just in case you think you need more stuff. Always with the business angle, Apple see this (I think) as a means to show you things you’d actually be interesting in buying. We’ll see if it works; I have a lot of music already, thank you, and I am no happy with Apple’s DRM or their “install 5 times only” policy for iTunes.

[UPDATE: I've been reading other write ups on the web, and this is the best one I've seen. Best, as in most descriptive, not nicest.]

I’ve had this crazy idea for a while now, and for some unknown reason, I started working on it tonight.

I want to be able to surf around YouTube, find a video that I like, mark it in some way (probably as a favorite), and have it magically show up in my iTunes, ready to synch to my iPhone.

I’ve figured out a bit of this using Yahoo Pipes. I can grab my YouTube favorites page, and can sift through it some using the Pipes tools. I’m trying to find how to pull from it just the URL’s for the pages of the videos I have marked as favorite.

I want to be able to then take those URL’s, one at a time, and push them back through the Pipes again, and ID just the .flv

Really, I just want it to work. That’d be awesome. I can envision the concept, I am just unsure if my Code Monkey skills are there or not.

Know what I really want for my iPhone? Batch files.

I want a pretty button on my main screen that, when I hit it, toggles on/off WiFi and Bluetooth, and then updates / synchs with iTunes (to include updates to apps); synchs mail, calendars, etc with my Mac; and then plays a nice little jingle when it’s all done, so I can press the button again and go back into battery-saving mode.

Surely, I can’t be the only one with these kinds of wants – more than just this combo, but this capability.

Why can’t we have this?