MacKits

I noticed last fall that the developers of AudioExpress by Real Mac Software decided to discontinue work on the project so they can devote more time to RapidWeaver. Dan posted this:

‘I just wanted to make everyone aware that we are no longer distributing or selling AudioExpress and ButtonBuilder.

We really loved these apps, but feel we just can’t devote enough time to keep them up-to-date. For anyone who has already purchased either app, we will of course continue to offer help & support until the end of the year.’

The good news is I saw in their forum they have decided to release the serial number for AudioExpress and allow people to use the app for free. And we all like the smell of free don’t we?

AudioExpress is a dead simple sound recorder for Mac that allows you to record via the built-in mic or an iSight. It does what it was designed to do quite well and interfaces nicely with iTunes or your iPod.

Anyways I figured someone out there could use the serial code and download link as they are not published anywhere obvious. Download AudioExpress. Happily plug in the free serial:

Serial Number: ADOXPRS000-300E-B7C4-9E1G-2QNA-0649

Enjoy

Files today are constantly getting bigger and your iTunes Library is no exception. Ever since the introduction of videos to the iTunes Store, people's hard drives are getting filled with full length feature films, Television Shows, and Video Podcasts. Not to mention getting your DVD stash onto your Apple TV or iPod. If you are running out of space on your computer's hard drive, this is the article for you. All you need is a FireWire hard drive and some time to import movies.

Step 1: Finding the right hard drive

Videos encoded for iPods take up about 300 MB per hour. Not to mention the space it takes for full quality on your Apple TV. If you plan on running your iTunes Library off of an external drive, firewire is definitely required. A 250GB hard drive can hold around 560 videos in iPod format if each of your videos were around an hour and a half. The more videos you have, the bigger the hard drive and price tag.

Step 2: Moving your already imported videos and music to your hard drive

First, open up iTunes and go to the iTunes menu, then Preferences. Traverse to the Advanced tab and locate the section titled “iTunes Music folder location?. This is the path iTunes uses to save and organize your library. The default path is (Macintosh HD/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music). Using the Finder, navigate to your iTunes folder. Once there, go to the iTunes Music folder, then the Movies folder. Here is where your already encoded videos are stored. Get back into the iTunes Preferences window with the Advanced tab highlighted. Click the “Change? button. Locate your external hard drive and create a new folder in its main directory. This can be called anything but we’ll call it “iTunes?. Hit the “Choose? button and press okay to the up-and-coming dialog box asking you if you would like to keep your Library organized. Relaunch iTunes. Don't worry, your library isn't gone. iTunes is just focusing toward your external hard drive.

Switch back into the finder and find your movies folder which we located earlier. Select all of you movies (Apple + A) and drag them onto the “Movies? section of iTunes located in the top left corner. Once iTunes has finished importing your videos, feel free to import your music library as well. iTunes organizes your music in folders with the names of the artists. Import your music by dragging your files in and organizing them into playlists. Right now you are just making a copy of your library on your external hard drive. Once you have it just the way you like it, move on to the next step to learn how to import your DVD collection.

Step 3: Importing your DVD collection

There are multiple ways to do this however I found that the most effective way to do this is to use MediaFork. MediaFork is designed for importing your DVDs into QuickTime files. You can find MediaFork here. Once you have MediaFork in your Applications folder (or wherever you put it), Open it up and insert your first DVD. Choose to access your DVD and not a folder. Wait until MediaFork scans your DVD for the titles and tracks.

MediaFork automatically finds the longest title and selects it with all of the chapters included. The longest title is usually your feature length film. Under this section is the Destination section. Here you can tell MediaFork were to put your video. To make things easier, export it into a new folder in the root directory of your external hard drive. Simply exporting and encoding to your “Movies? folder doesn't work. Once you've named and chosen a location for your movie, go down to the Output Settings section. Make sure the File format is “MP4 file?. This goes a lot quicker however, it takes up more space. Codecs should be set to “MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio?. Now comes the part where you have to decide whether you are importing your video for your iPod, or importing your video for your Apple TV.

Importing Videos to your iPod

If you are importing your DVD to your iPod, make sure the Average bit rate is between 400 and 700. To find out if it is or not, click on the “Video? tab and go to the “Quality? section. The higher the bit rate, the better looking your video, but the longer it takes to encode. Also make sure that the Encoder is “FFmpeg?.

Click on the “Picture Settings? button. If you plan on using your iPod to show video on a television, check the “Keep aspect ration? box and change the width to 720. If you are just going to watch the video on the iPod's screen, check he “Keep aspect ratio? button and make the width 320. All that's left to do is click the big “Rip? button.

Importing Videos to your Apple TV

To import videos for the Apple TV, you do the same exact thing except this time you probably want to make the video at least 720 by 400. A smaller video will end up even more pixelated and unwatchable. Apple TV does support the 720p high-definition standard however there isn't any video available at the moment.

Once you've imported your videos, simply drag them onto the “Movies? section in the top left corner.

Tada! Now you can sync your iPod/Apple TV and get rid of the previous library freeing tons of space on your internal hard drive.

Dave Watanabe has just announced the v40 update to his popular torrent client Xtorrent, including hints at a bundle of features to be released down the road. As of this version, Xtorrent Pro includes support for per-torrent bandwidth limits and the Azureus/utorrent compatible peer exchange – which should apparently help increase some transfer speeds.

Watanabe has also announced a bounty of features to be released in future versions: selective file downloading, encryption, and torrentcast auto-downloading (I’d like to point out Xtorrent can already subscribe to RSS feeds, just not auto-download yet). These featured were announced on the basis of absolutely on track for future releases, so we’ll just have to wait.

You can grab the new release from the main Xtorrent site.

Although we reported today on the new XTorrent release, I just noticed their main competition Transmission quietly launched a new site design along with a fresh 0.7 release. It has been nearly a year since the latest update and the app also gets a shiny new speed inducing icon for your dock. Nice eh?

You can check out the official release note but the features that stand out for me are: Automatic port mapping (NAT-PMP and UPnP IGD), Peer exchange (PEX) compatible with Azureus and uTorrent, Multitracker support, Automatic tracker scraping, Cache connected peers, Individual torrent bandwidth limits, and a Filter and Search bar. Still no encryption for guys like me who’s ISP throttles P2P packets? Coming soon I hope.

If you’re not familiar with Transmission, from their website: ‘Transmission has been designed to be a versatile and multi-platform BitTorrent client, focusing on being lightweight, yet feature-filled.‘ It does a really good job of this, and it’s free to boot.

Grab Transmission 0.7 and give it a test drive today.

Hello. My name is Jordan, and I’m a snorer.

“Hi, Jordan.”

Phew, I’m glad I got that off my chest. It wouldn’t be a problem that I snore, except I snore so loudly that I keep my girlfriend up at night, that is, I used to until we discovered Noise.

Noise is another one of those tiny applications that does one thing very well. It generates two different ‘colors’ of noise. Thanks to the miracle that is Wikipedia, I can tell you that White Noise is “noise signal in the spatial domain which has an autocorrelation which can be represented by a delta function over the relevant space dimensions.” Noise will also generate Pink Noise if you’re feeling colorful. Got all that? When you run Noise, you have a very simple window with a volume bar, and an on/off button. This should be self explanatory.

When Noise is turned on, it generates what can best be described as static. It might jar you for a moment (my dog runs when I turn it on) but after about 30 seconds you hardly notice it’s there. When you run a white noise generator, it raises the noise floor of the room, causing any other sound to seem softer to your ears because your brain adjusts your hearing to compensate for the background noise. This helps some people sleep, some people concentrate, and some people relax. It’s the same idea as noise cancelling headphones.

We set Noise up as we’re going to bed, and we both sleep great. Download your own copy and start sleeping better tonight!

The concept of a Media Center app has been around for ages on the Windows and Linux side. However, not many developers have created Media Center apps for the Mac.

Within the past year, Mac Media Center apps have been showing up like popups in Internet Explorer. There are some that are fully developed, some that are in their alpha stages, and some that are complete, but don’t have many features. Today, we’re going to compare these apps to see which one reigns supreme.

1) iTheater

iTheater began as a concept back in January of 2005. With the Mac mini being announced at MacWorld SF, student Ed Wolf wanted to turn this tiny machine into a media powerhouse. He created an open source project called iTheater. Currently, iTheater is at version 0.1.3, so there aren’t many features, and it’s got more bugs than any other media center app out there. It’s features are basic so far. iTheater can play songs from your iTunes library, can flip through your iPhoto collection (at random), can show movies, and can display the weather.

Pros: This app has great potential in the future. As development continues, iTheater will bloom into a great media center.

Cons: Buggy, still alpha, can’t choose what iPhoto collections to display (displays photo collection at random), not many features.

Link: iTheater

2) CenterStage

CenterStage is yet another open source Media Center app which is not completely finished. CenterStage is currently at version 0.6.1, which the team still considers being alpha. With the latest release, the team took out the music module, but revampled the UI a bit. CenterStage has a movie management app that it relies on to display what movies a user has, BackStage.

Pros: BackStage will turn into a great movie manager, not just for iTheater, but for other media players. CenterStage, like iTheater, is open source, so anyone can contribute to the app.

Cons: No music module, still in alpha phase, no updates since October 2006.

Link: CenterStage

3) MediaCentral

MediaCentral is the most developed and worked on Media Center app for OS X. Developed by equinux, MediaCentral is worked on by professional coders daily and has new releases constantly. The app is also packed with features, such as games, IPTV, games, movies, music, photos, and videos, and much more.

Pros: Developed by professional coders, packed with features, support for?? Dolby? Digital Surround (when using the DVD feature), as well as support for Skype, and an impressive UI.

Cons: Slow startup, takes a long time to get around menus, and has a price tag ($29.95)

Link: MediaCentral

4) Front Row

Front Row is a media center app developed by Apple. It includes basic features, such as Photos, Music, Videos, and DVDs. Front Row is integrated into OS X and only works with newer Macs. Front Row has a great Apple designed UI.

Pros: Incredible interface, fast, basic but most needed features.

Cons: Only works on newer Macs, is just a frontend for iTunes, iPhoto, DVD Player, and QuickTime, no TV support.

Link: Front Row

Conclusion: Go with Front Row. It’s built right into OS X, is free, and does the job. However, if you have an older Mac, go with MediaCentral, as Front Row isn’t an option. Or just wait until these apps grow to their full potential.

Update: While writing this article, I was questioning myself about whether I should throw in Andrew Escobar’s solution for Front Row on older Macs, as it is not supported by Apple. However, since it is a solution and it does work, I will mention that you can get Front Row running on older Macs at andrewescobar.com/frontrow/. This solution requires a bit of tweaking, but it gets Front Row up and running on older Macs.

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Earlier today Apple seeded new builds of both iTunes and QuickTime for OS X and Windows. The QuickTime update mainly addresses bugs and a security flaw or two, but iTunes 7.1 brings AppleTV support to the table, as well as a new version of Cover Flow that fills the entire screen.

These updates are all but essential, so run Software Update or download iTunes 7.1 (which includes the QuickTime update) here.

Apple’s renowned music application is used universally today. However, with massive amounts of music, iTunes can become a messy and hectic place. Today I’m going to show you how to clean up and organize your iTunes.

I have about 4000 songs. That’s a lot to go though every day, yet alone look at when iTunes pops up. I have about five artists that I listen to regularly, but I have to go through my library or search for them when I want to listen to their songs. iTunes doesn’t allow the user to just add favourite artists to a specified list, so we’ll just use the playlist area instead.

1. Create a new folder. iTunes folders are great for storing different types of playlists. To do this, go to the File menu, and then hit New Folder. This will bring up a new folder in the playlists area. Rename it to Artists or something similar. We’re going to store all of our favourite artists here.

2. Once you’ve renamed the folder, go to the File menu again and this time hit New Smart Playlist. In the window that pops up, make sure “Artist contains” is selected. In the empty box, type the artist’s name. Then hit OK, and drag your newly created playlist into the “Artists” folder. You’ve just made a playlist for one of your favourite artists. Repeat this step until all of the artists you want are in the folder.

3. Now we’re going to repeat step one, but instead of calling the folder “Artists”, we’re going to call it “Genres”.

4. Go to the File menu, and hit New Smart Playlist. Change “Artist” to “Genre” and “contains” to “is”. Then type the genre name into the blank box. Hit OK, and drag your newly created playlist to the “Genre” folder. Repeat until all your favourite genres are in the folder.

5. Create a new folder called “Apple” or something similar. We’re going to drag the Apple created smart playlists into this folder.

6. You should now have three folders with a bunch of playlists in them. But there’s one more thing to do. In each of your artist’s playlists, switch the view from List View to Album View. To do this, go to the View menu and click Album View. This will allow you to see all of the artist’s albums seperated into songs and corresponding album, including album art. This will also allow you to easily browse through your individual artist’s music.

You’ve now organized the playlist area, but what about the actual library? Here are some tips to cleaning the main library.

A. Keep basic genres. If something is Alternative Punk, just call it Alternative. It will give you less genres to sort through and will clean up the genre section of your playlist area, as well as the genre list in the browse mode.

B. No “Featuring” in the Artist metadata. If an album has songs that feature other artists, make sure to add that information in the song name metadata, not the artist metadata. That way your album will only have a single artist name, the artist metadata list will look cleaner, and it will be easier to manage your albums.

C. Fix songs without (proper) metadata. All songs should be easy to find and identify. Adding correct metadata will help you find songs quicker and easier.

Enjoy your newly organized iTunes.

This week, Apple released a new build to the Mac OS 10.6.5 development. Build 10H555 was release to a section of the their development community for testing, following the same two week release of the previous build.

Like the last build, there has been no mention of known issues with the software from Apple. Also, the build asks users to concentrate their testing on printing, QuickTime, Time Machine, graphics and USB devices. With Apple again not posting any known issues with the software, OS 10.6.5 seems to be on its way from earning the golden-master label and hit Apple servers for a public release.

Cupertino will more than likely get that out as soon as possible as they are ready to introduce the world to their next big cat: Mac OS 10.7, with the highly speculated codename Lion?. The Back to the Mac? event is scheduled for next week Wednesday at 10PM Pacific Standard Time. A public launch date for the software is expected to be announced at the event.

Apple Releases Logic Pro and Logic Express 9.1.2

With the release of the new Mac OS X software this week, Apple also released a coupled update to their lineup of multimedia creation software. Logic and Logic Express new update brings compatibility to Apple new line up of Mac Pros as well as several enhancements to the software including:

Issues addressed with 9.1.2 include:

- Improved compatibility with 6 and 12-core Mac Pro systems
- Support for iOS control surface apps that utilize the OSC protocol
- REX files now supported in 64-bit mode
- Improved compatibility with select Audio Unit plug-ins

Full details of the new additions and fixes of the software can be found on apple.com. The update requires Mac OS 10.5.8 or later.

Pass the salt, please. The Los Angeles Times has gotten word that Mark Zuckerberg, founder, chairman and CEO of Facebook, recently made a visit to the home of the founder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs, in Palo Alto, California. The two had a conversation about Apple’s new music social network Ping and how the two companies can work together on developing it over dinner and while on a stroll.

They are two of Silicon Valley’s most famous founders: Jobs created the world’s must-have gadgets, Zuckerberg the world’s most popular social networking service. These days they are often mentioned in the same breath. Now apparently the two also recently broke bread.

Apparently Jobs invited Zuckerberg for dinner at his house to talk about Ping two weeks ago. That’s when a tipster spotted them on a stroll in Palo Alto.

At the debut of Ping in the iTunes 10 release, Facebook Connect was incorporated into the service for a very short period of time before Facebook disable the feature. As a result, Apple decked to pull the feature from the final cut of Ping altogether. Apparently, Facebook and Apple have been in discussion to bring Facebook integration to the Ping network for a year and a half. At some point in the deliberations, the two companies hit a stalemate. SJ said that the stall was due to some “onerous terms” and discussions are still commencing. Facebook Connect allows users to find people on the world’s most used social network that are involved in another service or community, such as Ping.

Even though an official agreement has been made yet, signs are pointing to a hearty handshake for both companies. One member of Facebook HQ said that they are “very confident” that Facebook and Apple will come to an agreement and Facebook Connect will make an appearance on Ping again.