Show your Scrimpy love
Scrimpy the worm, our thriftmac mascot, is such an endearing character that I thought I’d try putting him on a T-shirt. I’ve opened up a store over at Printfection with T-shirts in three styles. One style ($18.99 shown above) features the thriftmac logo and Scrimpy discreetly placed in pocket position. The second style (at the same price) is similar except that the logo and worm are emblazoned across the chest area. The third ($21.99) has thriftmac on the front in pocket position and an extra big Scrimpy on the back.
Printfection has a good reputation, and offers a 30-day money back guarantee, so it’s hard to see how you can go wrong. Just to make sure everything is running smoothly, I ordered the first style for myself and I’m quite happy with the product. The print blends in nicely with the material, leaving no rough edges. The quality of the cloth itself is comparable to what you’d find in a souvenir store selling T-shirts.
Posted Friday, August 8, 2008 in Site-News
Magnifique
We’re back from Quebec City and can’t say enough good things about it. With its wealth of history, Quebec City is a wonderful place to visit any time. But with the 400th anniversary celebrations, it’s even better. Le moulin à images is a massive show projected onto the sides of grain silos in the harbour. And the Musée des beaux arts has three galleries full of items borrowed from the Louvre in Paris.
What about Mac freeware? Nothing to report on that front, but we were annoyed from time to time by crashing Windows software used to run the movies on the airplanes.
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2008 in Site-News
Adieu
The thriftmac team is off to celebrate Quebec City’s 400th anniversary. We will be back in about a week with more blog entries, more additions to the collection, and — if all goes well — a new feature that we think is kinda cool.
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008 in Site-News
Random and recommended
We’ve got two new features we’re testing for thriftmac, both of which are designed to give you more ways to get into our vast and growing freeware collection. In the sidebar at right you’ll notice two new lists called Random Picks and Recommended.
Random Picks are just what you would expect. The Textpattern system running this site randomly picks for apps for you to check out. It also does this in each of the sections. So, for example, if you’re browsing the Games section, you see four random game picks.
The Recommended list is based on a new function you can find if you click on the links to individual articles for any of the apps. You’ll be asked if you recommend the program, and have the choice of clicking on Yes or No. Textpattern takes the ratio of Yesses and Noes and comes up with a ranking. The top four are placed in the Recommended list. It’s still in the early stages, so we’re not sure yet how things will shake out. There is not yet a way of doing this for the various section.
Anyway, the idea is to make your visit here more fun and interesting. And of course we welcome any comments.
Posted Friday, July 18, 2008 in Site-News
Yum is not a game
Yum is a recipe organizer that has been hanging on to the list of most-popular apps here at thriftmac. Since most of the other popular programs are games, it makes us wonder if people are clicking on the link in the mistaken belief that Yum also is a game. There was indeed a board game created in the ’50s called Yum, described by one wag as “so close to Yahtzee, I’m not sure why this was made.” As it turns out there is no Mac freeware version of the game Yum that we know of, but there are freeware versions of Yahtzee — so try these.
Posted Monday, July 14, 2008 in Site-News
New and popular
An old feature is back and a new one is on the go. You can now see lists of new and popular freeware in the sidebar on the right. On the front page they show all the new and popular apps, but in the various sections you can see what’s new and popular in games, graphics, iPod and so on. It’s a lot of fun — and sometimes surprising — to see what’s clicking.
Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 in Site-News
It was more like hours
There may be a few kinks to work out here and there, but it looks like thriftmac is up and running with its bold new look.
There are a couple of new things you may have noticed: First, the blog categories are listed on the left side for you convenience. Second, recent comments are also listed — not just for the blog but also for the various freeware sections. When I first made the switch, I was appalled to discover that all the recent comments were spam. I’ll have to keep an eye on this.
A listing of new freeware is missing for now because with the switch we had to start from zero. The list will reappear as new freeware is added. A new feature we hope to add is popular freeware. This list will be determined by clicks, but we need to build up a few before they can be presented.
The one carry-over from the old thriftmac is our good, old friend, Scrimpy, who now enjoys a place of prominence at the top. If you hover your cursor over him, he tells you his name.
In the course of designing the site, I stuck with modern standards as closely as possible. Unfortunately for users of Internet Explorer 6, this means some of the spiffy stuff is missing. For example, Scrimpy’s hover effect will not work. I also used transparent PNGs in some places because they look nicer. You won’t see them in IE6, so the site might seem a little plain. There was no intention to hurt anyone’s feelings. I just wanted to move on and not have limitations on the design.
If you notice any problems, please let me know and I’ll fix them ASAP. Other than that, I’m curious to know what you think of the design in general.
Posted Saturday, June 28, 2008 in Site-News
Deleting AppDelete
Reggie Ashworth has decided to require a donation of at least $5 after a few uses of AppDelete. It’s a shame, because it made a nice freeware alternative to the $12.95 AppZapper. But, as always, we support the right of developers to put bread on the table, and we hope you do too. Unfortunately, it does mean AppDelete will be deleted from the thriftmac collection.
Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 in Site-News
Freeware redefined
We’re still not sure whether it was a flash of genius or mere foolishness, but — at least according to The Big Word Project — freeware now has a new definition: thriftmac. If you haven’t heard of the project, Wired has a pretty good writeup. Basically, you can purchase a word for a dollar a letter. It is then displayed alphabetically with a link you provide. Some of the links are, ahem, self-serving. Others make a statement: check out the definition of “idiot,” for example. So why did we sign up? Well, what the hey, it was fun and it only cost $8 . . .
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2008 in Site-News
Bye-bye, Memoires
I was just about to link to a review of the journaling app Memoires when I checked to see if it was already listed at thriftmac. Indeed it was, but with a comment from a reader noting that it is not actually freeware. So what made me think it was freeware in the first place? I’m not sure, but Macworld UK, which has the review, also lists it as free. In any case, everything at thriftmac must be really, truly free — so Memoires is no longer listed here.
Posted Friday, December 28, 2007 in Site-News
