Nothing but the newest free additions for Mac

Jun 22, 2008 18:15 GMT  ·  By

Hey there. Sorry for the delay, it's been a busy week. But, even so, we can't let down those interested to see and try out new Mac software. This time around we have an app that lets you control iTunes on a Mac with your iPhone, and two more additions to make your day-to-day activities less stressful. So, browse through and take your pick ? everything is free!

wifiTunes 0.9

wifiTunes, developed by Urs Kofmel for iPhone and iPod touch users, is a very cool free app that enables you to control iTunes via Safari (other browsers are supported, too) on your portable device. It does this by building a "bridge" between iTunes and the web browser through an embedded web server. This way you can even switch between remote (AirTunes) speakers and toggle shuffled playback on/off, as your device suddenly becomes a media remote.

You will be able to control iTunes with almost any modern browser on every computer that can reach your Mac running iTunes on the network. wifiTunes is not limited by walls and will work anywhere in the house, since it is based on wireless LAN technology. You will notice that the user interface looks and feels a lot like Apple's iPod.

wifiTunes provides access to all your playlists including Smart Playlists, Podcasts, Movies and TV Shows. You can select any track for playback within the selected playlist, while wifiTunes displays elapsed and remaining time of the current track and allows you to set the volume using a two finger gesture. wifiTunes will even show the same artwork iTunes does when selecting a track.

Now, although wifiTunes is a free application, it does have some limitations, especially in terms of the number of tracks shown in the track list and when it comes to using multiple browsers at a time. The number of tracks that will be shown in the track list on your Apple iPhone or iPod touch is limited to 500. wifiTunes is limited to 500 tracks for two reasons: 1 - processing a large iTunes playlist in Apple Script takes very long and 2 - 500 is already too high a number of songs for scrolling on your iPhone / iPod touch screen. As for the second limitation, if you use multiple browsers at the same time to control iTunes via wifiTunes, the first click after using another client might have no effect.

If you want to uninstal wifiTunes, you must follow a few steps. First off you need to make sure wifiTunes is stopped. Open the wifiTunes preference pane in system preferences and press the "Stop" button, if wifiTunes is running. Then hit "Show all", right click (ctrl click) on the wifiTunes icon and select the option to "Remove 'wifiTunes' Preference Pane." Open a Finder window, press ??G and enter ~/Library/LaunchAgents/. Last, delete the File groovework.wifiTunes.plist. This method is supposed to uninstall the app completely.

wifiTunes is available HERE (Leopard-only, Universal Binary). The developer claims future releases might incorporate a search feature. We'll make sure you get it the minute it's released.

Password Builder 1.0

This free password generator for Mac OS X Leopard can build strong random passwords of up to 40 characters each. While anyone can type in a succession of 40 characters in less than 10 seconds, Password Builder comes in quite handy if you wish to have passwords based on user-set criteria, using low case letters, upper case letters, numbers and special characters. The app even lets you omit the special characters and ambiguous ones when it is generating a strong password for you.

Character Types

Upper case (A-Z) Lower case (a-z) Numeric (0-9) Misc / Special (! " * $ % and ' () * +,-./:; ? ` [] ^ _ ` {|} ~)

Paolo di Leo's free Password Builder is extremely simple to use. As soon as you're done choosing your password, copy it to the clipboard or paste it in Mac OS X TextEdit and save it wherever you wish. As noted above, it has multiple types of passwords to cover all your needs, four of them to be precise.

Choosing Automatic, Password Builder generates passwords (up to 40 characters) using low case letters, upper case letters, numbers and special characters. With this feature you can also choose to omit the special characters and ambiguous ones ? making it easy for you to set passwords for a certain type of app or login that doesn't allow certain characters ? or the ones that simply don't appeal to you.

However, if you need a password based on a certain word, you can choose Semi-Auto and the app will generate a password that includes the characters found in that word. It also adds new ones, to strengthen it as a password.

Preset is probably the simplest way to get a low security password in an instant. You can, however, use this option to generate a strong password too, by selecting "High Security Password."

Last, but probably the most useful option to generate a password, is Phonemic. As its name implies, this option lets you generate a simple password based on a succession of letters that are easy to remember phonetically. The "word" will have no meaning whatsoever, but it will have the construction of an actual word, putting consonants and vocals at fair distances of one another.

Take this word for instance: "HUFABROS." It doesn't mean a thing. Not even Google can bring anything up on it at this point in time. But you can, nonetheless, pronounce it as a word, with no difficulty at all.

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So, if you rely on passwords in your day to day activities, but don't want to clog up your memory with dozens of complicated combinations containing strange characters that are easy to forget or mistype, Password Builder is exactly what you need.

NOTE: Password Builder is currently in beta. No help is available from the developer. The developer's blog is, however, constantly updated.

This free utility App for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is available right HERE.

Firefox-Mac-PDF 0.9.7

A new addition for Mac this week is a plug-in for Firefox 3.0 users, which allows PDF-viewing right from within the browser. Firefox-Mac-PDF also lets you save a page in PDF format (so this feature hasn't gone anywhere), but the ability to view it as PDF in a new tab in the web browser saves precious time, especially if you need this feature quite often.

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Before having this new plug-in as option, the only way Firefox users could view a page in PDF format was by saving it to their computer's hard drive. Not anymore. With this new plug-in, specifically designed for Mac, Firefox users can view pages as PDFs with one click, right within the browser. Saving the PDF to your computer is equally simple ? just hit CMD + S and you'll be prompted to select a name and save location for your PDF.

First of all, you need Firefox 3.0 or later to use this new add-on. Since the extension works only with the latest version of Mozilla's popular web browser, Firefox 3, you must follow these exact steps to be able to use it:

1- download the Firefox-Mac-PDF from the link provided above;

2- open the Add-ons pane in Tools -> Add-ons;

3- drag in the Firefox-Mac-PDF (.xpi file);

4- answer yes to install the Firefox-Mac-PDF plug-in;

5- restart Firefox.

All done! You should now be able to view PDFs right from within Firefox.

The add-on also supports the same keyboard shortcuts. You also get the standard Mac OS PDF contextual menu when you control-click on a displayed PDF.

Note: - Firefox-Mac-PDF uses PDFKit to display PDFs in the browser. - Aside from Firefox 3.0, Firefox-Mac-PDF also requires that you run Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later. Download Firefox-Mac-PDF HERE.

Leave your impressions below and don't forget to meet us again next week.

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