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Cyberduck 3

The freeware FTP client of choice here at thriftmac has hit version 3 with some spiffy new features. The two we like the most are increased speed and Quick Look. There are no claims for better speed, but connecting to a server with the SFTP protocol seemed a lot faster. Quick Look is one of the gems of Leopard and it’s good to see it integrated into Cyberduck. The only catch is that the previews aren’t quite as quick as they are in the Finder. Still, it’s nice to have.

One thing that will take some getting used to is the removal of the side drawer for bookmarks. Instead they appear in a way similar to the method used by Safari. You click on the Bookmarks icon and the entire interface switches to your list of bookmarks. I’m not sure whether I like it or not. If anything had to be integrated, why not the Activity Window? I find that it often gets lost among all the other windows I have open. If it was built into the rest of the interface, it would be easier to find.

Also new in Cyberduck 3 is support for the Amazon S3 and WebDAV protocols. Plus, there is the ability to open the corresponding web URL of a selected file in your web browser. In limited testing, though, this feature turned up a bunch of Not Found messages.

Overall, Cyberduck is a worthy upgrade. A tip of a the hat goes to developer David V. Kocher for continuing to maintain this essential freeware program. And don’t forget to send in those donations.

[ Posted May 14, 2008 in ]

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The mystery of AOL Desktop

Infinite Loop reviews the newly released AOL Desktop for Mac, and tries to puzzle out why it was ever created. They say they want to “re-engage” with Mac users. It’s nice of them to try, at least.

[ Posted May 12, 2008 in ]

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Mac games in the fastlane

PC Fastlane, a technology blog, lists its top 20 Mac freeware games. Most of them can be found here at thriftmac, but there are so many great games out there that it would be nigh on impossible to list them all. So check these out.

[ Posted May 8, 2008 in ]

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OpenOffice shakes off X11

OpenOffice has long been offered as a free alternative for those needing a combo of word processing, spreadsheets, presentation and all that. But to get it working, it has been necessary to fire up the X11 (Unix windowing software) that comes with your Mac. I don’t mind doing this for something quick and dirty like testing a website on the Windows version of Internet Explorer, but it seems a bit much to have to do it for an office suite. Especially so when there is yet another free alternative called NeoOffice, which has by and large received good reviews.

Anyhoo, all this has been a particularly long-winded way of letting you know that OpenOffice 3 is now available as a public beta for your downloading pleasure and testing. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s another step toward freedom from the domination of You Know Who.

[ Posted May 8, 2008 in ]

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Phun with physics

Is it a drawing program? Animation? A game? Maybe it’s all three. Phun is described as a 2D physics sandbox, but it really must be seen for any sort of comprehension to sink in. Create your own weird and wacky world, and watch it follow the real-world laws of physics — which just makes it seem all the stranger. Watch the Phun movie, then download if you dare.

[ Posted May 7, 2008 in ]

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End of the road for mini$

A simple little program for money management called mini$ has been updated to version 2.6. So what? Well, it turns out this is the final release. Check it out, and if you like it, rest assured that this is as good as it gets. Here at thriftmac we use an even simpler money management program — it’s called never-spend-more-money-than-you-have-in-your-bank-account. Works great.

[ Posted May 3, 2008 in ]

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NetNewsWire looks to the future

Ars Technica has some details on upcoming releases of the now-freeware NetNewsWire, many of which are aimed at making it easier to sort through huge volumes of news feeds. While this general geekiness may be appealing to some, we were much more impressed with a new news reader called Times. It breaks away from the read-the-news-like-email paradigm and presents it in a layout somewhat like a newspaper. You can even “turn” the pages. Unfortunately, it’s not freeware, but you may find it worth the $30 they’re charging.

[ Posted May 2, 2008 in ]

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Apps in the dock

Macworld’s Mac Gems column has so much cool freeware that you might as well just subscribe to the feed. The latest is called AppMenuBoy, a tiny app that sits in the dock for easy access to all your programs. Why not just put your applications folder in the dock? You could, but the problem is that you get all the files and documents that come with it. With AppMenuBoy, it the apps and only the apps.

[ Posted May 2, 2008 in ]

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Measuring pixels

We recently had a request for a freeware utility that can be used to measure pixels on the screen. This can be especially handy for web design, but no doubt there are also other uses.

The first thing that came to mind was Free Ruler, an app that works like a ruler in the real world. Place it horizontally, vertically, or both and get your measurement. Moving your cursor along the ruler allows for some precision.

It turns out, though, that many people prefer PixelStick, which uses a more sophisticated Cartesian co-ordinate system. It not only measures distances, but also angles — and it does it more akin to what you might imagine in the digital world.

Here at thriftmac headquarters, we’ll stick with Free Ruler for now, but it’s good to know there are options, and it reinforces our view that the Mac truly is blessed with an abundance of freeware.

[ Posted May 1, 2008 in ]

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Yet another Bean fan

The freeware word processor Bean has been getting a lot of traction lately. Likely it’s because, contrary to what you might think, there aren’t very many free word processors out there for the Mac. The only other ones that come to mind are the minimalist TextEdit, which comes free with your Mac, and AbiWord, which attempts to match the features (and unfortunately some of the bloat) of Microsoft Word. Bean throws in some extras, but manages to remain svelte. And besides, it reminds us of coffee and Mr. Bean — how cool is that!

[ Posted Apr 30, 2008 in ]

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