Category: Software

Review: Minitube Demo

This morning while performing my daily internet news gathering I came across an update to an interesting program. Minitube is a You Tube downloader/player. One of the major points the author makes is it doesn’t use the Flash player. In my opinion this makes it fairly fast. This program is available in four forms, Mac, Windows, Linux (32bit binary), and source code. The Mac and Windows versions have demos. I would guess the Linux and source code versions are the…

Pwn2Own competition 2011: 1’st day (A third hand report)

The annual Pwn2Own competition has had it’s first day results come in. The idea behind the competition is to present some “hackers” with a series of web browsers on various machines. These machines are configured by various software manufacturers. The first hacker to generate a remote exploit on a particular machine gets to keep the machine plus $15,000. Although armed with 62 last minute patches, Safari was the first to go down. It took only five seconds. Next to go…

Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 Release Cadidate

The Mozilla Organization has released the first Release Candidate fo their new Firefox 4 Internet Browser.  The new browser has come about after a number of delays in the program which initially had the release of the completed browser in February.  However, the program itself is feature rich, with a cleaner and easier to use interface. The new Release candidate should lead the way to a release within a short time frame, however, Mozilla has offered no details on the…

Write Applesoft Basic in Virtual Basic

A new way of writing Applesoft Basic programs has been created by Andres Lozano, known in the Apple ][ world as Loz.  Virtual Basic is a complete BASIC with all of the same operators and commands as Applesoft, except that it is written in a style much like other high level languages of the modern era. The entire system for Virtual Basic is a series of python scripts.   If you are writing Virtual Basic programs, they can written using…

Leadlight Adventure Version 1.2 Released

Wade Clarke has released an update for his Leadlight Adventure. The game itself is quite the adventure.  Your are playing a girl Belinda who’s world is slowly falling apart.  According to the Leadlight website, “15-year-old Belinda Nettle is studying at Linville Girls High School in Australia’s Blue Mountains. After falling asleep in the library one afternoon, she wakes from her mundane existence into a nightmare. Her classmates are transformed, nameless terrors seek her out across the schoolgrounds, and traps and…

Roxio Toast 11.0 Released

Rovi Corporation announced the release of their latest version of the Roxio Toast DVD burning software.   Version 11.0 which is now available on the Roxio website, with the pro version 11.0 including such new features as: Adobe® PhotoShop® Elements 9 – the latest, full-featured version of the #1 selling consumer photo-editing software for the Mac. The application delivers powerful options that make it easy to create extraordinary photos, quickly share your memories in online albums and unique print creations, and…

FAA Approves iPad as paper map replacement

The FAA has approved the iPad as a replacement for paper maps in the cockpits of commercial aircraft.  Traditionally, airline pilots have carried reams of the maps of the airports they were flying into and out of, in a specialized flight suitcase.  Now they will really only need their iPad complete with the appropriate maps application such as the one from Jeppesen. According to an article in Bloomberg (http://bloom.bg/fFwLkH), Delta Airlines is one of the major players in the push…

Apple Announces Garageband for the iPad

Apple announced their new Garageband App for the iPad.  Complete with Touch instruments, recording studio and and Smart Instruments, the app not only makes the iPad a complete musical instrument but also gives musicians the ability to work on their tracks while they are on the go. The program features Drums, Drum machines, Synthesizers, and Keyboards as well as Guitars and other modern musical instruments.  The multi-touch ability allows the iPad to be played as if playing the original instrument,…

Opera web browser for ages 17+?

This morning I was dismayed to find that the Opera web browser download was causing a warning when downloading the browser from the Apple website (http://www.apple.com).  Restricted — Ages 17+.  I didn’t want to believe it but it’s true folks and quite frankly it seemed totally inappropriate. Visiting the Apple App Store even as I write this shows the warning is still there. The warning made me wonder at first they decided this particular application needs to be restricted? Pornographic…

Brutal Deluxe Releases MountIt ver. 1.4

Brutal Deluxe Software has released an updated version of their Apple IIgs volume mounting software, MountIt.  This updated version contains a number of upgrades aimed at making mounting image volumes much easier on your Apple IIgs computer.  Antoine Vignau and Oliver Zardini’s posting follows: Mount your disk image files files directly under GS/OS, just like another volume. MountIt 1.4 is a new Permanent Init File devoted to handling different disk image files (.DSK, .PO and .2MG) of any size (from…

Brutal Deluxe adds more Cassettes

Antoine Vignau, curator and creator of the Brutal Deluxe Apple cassette project has announced that there are more cassettes added to the project this week.  According to his announcement: Thanks to some recent purchases on eBay, I have received the following cassettes: – Program Design Incorporated: memory builder / concentration, analogies iq-builder, story builder / word master – Programma International: Echo, Magic squares, Match wits The manual of those cassettes are now online on brutaldeluxe.fr, I need more time to…

Alternative Software: iTerm

Programmers are always looking for tools to make things easier. The Terminal program included with OS X is adequate. This alternative makes things a little less spartan. According to the documentation this is an active project where the author implements features from other shells. One thing I find useful is the use of the scrollwheel as the middle mouse button for copy and pasting selected text. It also uses PC (Linux) keybindings such as <Home> (beginning of the line) and…

Notorius Hacker Saltine Donates Collection to MacGui

A post on CSA2 this morning mentioned the donation of the entire collection of disks from famed Apple ][ hacker, The Saltine.  The collection has been converted and is available on the MacGui.com website.  Release from D. Finnigan follows: “Notorious Apple II cracker, The Saltine, perhaps best known for his  single-disk crack of Prince of Persia, has donated his disk collection, some  140 5.25” disks, to Mac GUI Vault to be archived. Now the Apple II world has access to…

Programmers Tools: Four FREE text editors for OS X

Apple and the BSD folks have included two of the four editors as part of the base install packages. The first goes by two names and is accessed via the terminal (Applications –> Utilities –> Terminal). They are either pico or nano (note the lowercase). These are almost as basic as one can get and still refer to them as full screen editors. The other editor included by Apple is Textedit. This is entirely accessed by the GUI. It has…

iPhone App of the Month

The A.P.P.L.E.  iPhone app of the month is the program Mailroom.  (http://www.usemailroom.com/) For those of you who have used the Mailplane app, this program will look quite familiar.  This program allows the user of the app to control a number of GMail accounts at the same time. While the developers are different, there has been a cooperation between the authors of the two programs in order to make the iPhone based Mailroom just as good as the Mac based Mailplane…

How To: Set up a Mac to store files for another computer

The reason why people would want to set up one computer to store files for another computer are varied. For example I backed up my Linux box (PC) to a Mac before the power supply died. In my case the choice of a Mac comes down to two reasons. Ease of set up and stability. A common access method is to use ftp (file transfer protocol – note the lowercase letters). In OS X go to the System Preferences and…

5th Release of Applewin-NTSC Available

The latest version of Applewin-NTSC from Sheldon Simms is available for download.  This version of the program is now in its 5th release. The latest version of the program includes the following improvements: You can download the program from the Applewin-NTSC website at: http://wsxyz.net/applewin.html Sheldon also has mentioned the source code being on Berlios Soon

Brutal Deluxe adds Don Fudge’s Hi-Res Secrets

Brutal Deluxe has once again provided a golden item from the Apple ][ era to its website.  Don Fudge’s Hi-Res Secrets is available for download from the site, complete with Manual and Disk images. You can download the program at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/documentation/

Update to ActiveGS submitted to App Store by FTA

For those who downloaded the now famous ActiveGS “Best of the FTA” iPhone Application this week, there is a piece of good news that all will appreciate.  Oliver Goguel, the author of ActiveGS has already submitted version 1.21 to the App Store for approval. According to the post on the FTA Group on Facebook, “version 1.21 (build 3.3.298) being submitted to the Appstore : CRT display (as in the desktop version), 60FPS support on iPhone4 & iPad, and runtime option…

FTA’s ActiveGS Emulator now on iTunes App Store

After 1.5 years of development and numerous rejections by Apple, the Free Tools Association (FTA) has finally broken through and had the Best of the FTA ActiveGS emulator approved by Apple.  The emulator is an Apple IIgs emulator with apps produced by the FTA during the 1980’s and 1990’s.  Further development of the app is ongoing and the new enhancements should be available soon in the App store. The Best of the FTA App is available for free download at:…