Mac: When you work on multiple projects, tracking your time can be essential. TimeLog 4.3.7 ensures that you always stay productive, by monitoring the exact amount of time spent on multiple projects. The timeline-like interface and simple controls make it easy to manage multiple time logs. TimeLog also features an automatic timer and billing and lets you create smart lists. If you work with a number of Apple programs you’ll also find it interacts well with these.

Windows: There are many audio players you can choose from to enjoy your favorite music on the PC, but Winamp 5.54 is undoubtedly one of the most popular ones. This last version includes new exciting features such as expanded Flash video support, dynamic song recommendations, full iPod syncing support and more.

Pocket PC: If you have one of those Pocket PCs where it’s really fiddly to change the volume then have a look at SetVolume. This touch-friendly app allows you to control the loudness of your device simply by swiping your finger around the dial. You can even mute your PDA or set it to vibrate mode simply by clicking on the middle button.

Windows: so you just got an iPhone and you’re desperately looking for a video? Koyote Free Video Converter is what you need: a free, easy video converter with support for all multimedia portable devices (PSP, Zune, iPod, iPhone…) so that you can enjoy your favorite movies on the go without struggling with a complicated converting tool.

Mac: You may have gotten used to Spotlight and set up your Dock with your favorite apps and folders, but are you still finding it hard to keep your Mac organized? Together quickly and easily stores anything and lets you keep files organized thanks to smart lists, labels, groups and notes. You can drag and drop elements between folders and make use of Spotlight at any time. Use it too much and you might not need the Finder ever again!

Symbian/Java phones: Bored of the same old default ringtones on your mobile phone? Then do something about it by using Create-Ringtone to make your own melodies. The software lets you change any of your WMA, MP3, WAV or Ogg files into a tone for your phone. You can make unlimited ringtones using Create-Ringtone!

Windows: There’s a huge trend at the moment for programs and applications that bring together content from several sites to save you the hassle of visiting them all. That’s exactly what Shiki Video Downloader attempts to do bringing together content from sites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, GoogleVideo and Metacafe. You can then watch the videos directly on your desktop.

Mac: Anybody serious with file sharing knows that newsgroups is where it’s at. UseNeXt 4.81 is a client that allows you to handle all your downloads and uploads from your desktop. It features a chat section where you can engage with other people on the same newsgroups as you. File transfers are usually very fast and the anonymity that comes from them makes them much more attractive.

Symbian:  If you’re a fan of puzzle games and are bored of the same old formats then Hexxagon Labs may make for a refreshing change. Kind-of an Othello with hexagons, Hexxagon Labs sees you tackle a series of mind-boggling quests over a series of complex levels. The aim of the game is to fill as many of the spaces on the board as possible by moving around strategically and capturing enemy pieces.

What are the best ways to get your MacBook to run faster? You could always buy extra RAM, but that means spending a few extra bucks and can be a bit hazardous if you don’t know how to do it right. There are the obvious tricks of stopping important processes in your Activity Monitor, cleaning the trash and removing unnecessary applications, but those will probably not result in noticeable changes.

GeekMalaya came up with six much more effective ways of improving the performance of your MacBook. You can start out by cleaning up your desktop and placing files where they should be. The more files you have on your desktop, the more things your system has to index and create a thumbnail, wasting time at start up.

Just as we explained a few weeks back, you can also remove start up applications that you do not need. See what programs are opened when you launch your Mac and keep the ones that are only essential.

Disabling the Dashboard is also very effective, albeit obviously not something you want to do if you use widgets often. To disable it, open Terminal and type in:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

Then reboot your MacBook or type in the following in your Terminal:

killall Dock

Another sensible thing to do is kill all the system preferences that you don’t use. It could be Bluetooth, Modem, Wifi or any other process that shows up in your menu bar.

If you have an Intel MacBook, reboot it and press CMD + Option + P + R until you hear the startup sound three times. This is known as”zapping the PRAM”.

For MacBook Pro and Air owners you can clear the Power Management Unit. Turn off your Mac, remove the power adapter and battery, press and hold the power button 5 seconds, release, then reconnect the power sources and restart your Mac. This will kill all ‘non-volatile’ RAM.

Another very effective trick that was not mentioned is to kill Spotlight, which can slow down your Mac with its continuous indexing of items. Check out our tip to know how to do this.

Try out a few of these tricks, or better still all of them, and you should see a notable increase in the speed of your MacBook.

If you were to ask me to name one good reason to ditch MSN Messenger it wouldn’t be too difficult to come up with an answer. Adium. Time and time again, the open source chat client has proved to be the friendliest, more feature complete and flexible IM client for Mac. It looks good too and is heavily customizable. And did I fail to mention that the Adium developers very frequently deliver updates of the app?

The latest version, 1.3, comes with a number of significant improvements which should end up convincing you. The Contact Inspector, where all your contacts are stored, including those from your Apple Address Book, is fitted with a newly designed interface. Because Adium is a multi-protocol client, you could quickly drown in the endless lists of contacts. Luckily, there is now a search field in the contact list, making it easier to find contacts. Just press CMD+F to activate it. What you often get too is the same contacts but repeated in different networks. Their profiles are now shown in a uniformed way and you can easily expand them in the contact list to see their contents.

Facebook Chat, as expected, can now be used with Adium. Note though that logging into it will log you out of your Facebook account. MobileMe is also now handled by Adium.

In terms of user experience, you’ll now be able to see a ‘typing’ message when contacts are typing without a chat window open. Adium will also now let you drag and drop urls from your browser and tracks from your iTunes to send as file transfers.

There is now support for a number of AppleScripts relating to contact management, such as re-ordering, blocking or deleting.

These are but the most impressive of the new features, but a whole lot more have been added, not including all the bugs that have been fixed. Give it a try and see for yourself why I say it’s the best IM client for Mac.

You probably have never changed your cursor settings on your Mac. These are located in Keyboard & Mouse in your System Preferences. You can normally change the size of the cursor and the speed at which it is moved around. But that’s pretty much it. We’ve found five different applications that allow you to add extra features to your cursor, from cosmetic changes to added actions.

• SteerMouse - This driver for both USB and Bluetooth mice lets you customize all aspect of the device, from the wheel to the clicks and movements. You’ll be able to set cursor speed and acceleration and have it placed at a particular location when certain windows are opened up. SteerMouse also lets you customize cursor actions depending on the application.
• Mighty Mouse - Working tightly with Application Enhancer, Mighty Mouse gives you full control over your cursor, from scaling it to the desired size to select a new one from a wide choice of over 200 options. If you’re feeling creative, Mighty Mouse also lets you create and import your own cursors.
• iCursor - Visual effects might really be your thing. In this case, you’ll probably like iCursor. This program allows you to choose from 20 different effects to accompany your cursor activity. These go from sparks to fire, bubbles, a shower of stars or more. The effects are well designed yet you might want to turn them off after a while, as they tend wear you out a little.
• Wraparound - This ingenious little program literally lets you wrap your cursor around multiple screens, as the name obviously suggest.Those of you who work with multiple monitors will know the pain of dragging the cursor on large spaces. With Wraparound, all you need to do is approach it to one side of your screen to switch to that one. A real lifesaver.
• OmniDazzle - Similar to iCursor, this little plugin adds effects to your mouse movements. It can be both entertaining and practical as it’s also an original way to highlight movements and actions with your cursor. You can easily change colors and sizes of elements according to what needs to be revelaled on your screen.

There are so many burning programs out there, that it can be tough to separate the wheat from the chaff. To be honest though, the quality and speed at which you burn CDs or DVDs almost wholly depends on your optical drive. I like how easy it is to burn discs on a Mac, but I still prefer to use a third party application, simply because they offer more features to work with. Here is a roundup of the best five burning programs for your Mac:

•  BurnAgain DVD - A good choice if working with CDRs,CDRWs or DVDRWs. As the name suggests this app is specialized at burning data on discs already containing material. What’s more it works in an incremental way, comparing what is on the disc with what you want to copy and only saving new material. Note that BurnAgain DVD preserves you profiles and configurations to make future burns faster.
• Roxio Toast Titanium - A full suite which allows you to burn, recover and backup data. Roxio Toast Titanium includes both TiVo and Blu-Ray support, making it a good choice if you want to make use of the latest technology. Thanks to a streamlined interface you’ll find the burning and backup processes to be relatively straightforward.
• ffmpegX - One of the best all time open source applications for Mac, ffmpegX is an excellent choice for ripping DVDs or CDs and converting them into any video format you want. It’s quick and reliable, handles subtitles and includes advanced settings so you can adjust video and audio parameters.
• MacTheRipper - Another excellent open source alternative, MacTheRipper is fast and reliable. It’s a very popular choice when ripping DVDs. One of my favorite bits with it is that you can precisely select what you want to keep or remove from the DVD.
• Disco - Not only those it have a great interface (just look at the smoke effect when it’s running), but Disco is also very efficient. Drag and drop your files, choose a destination, and let Disco do the wor. The application is unintrusive and burns discs quickly. A nice little detail is that, thanks to motion sensor, it can alert you if your Mac is moved around in a way that could mess up your burning session.

The Terminal isn’t known to be the most exciting application on your Mac, even though if you know how to use it it can be a pretty powerful one. Now most people that make use of it will probably not really worry about the way it looks as long as it works and lets them enter their commands the way they want. That shouldn’t stop you from wanting to spice up your Terminal a bit.

I’ve found a great application, iTerm, which gives a proper Cocoa styled interface to the Terminal. Not only does it add a proper menu bar with buttons for the most important functions, like opening a new Terminal window, closing it or viewing extra information. iTerm also lets you add specific bookmarks and expecially features an execute bar, which is great for launching those all important commands. Overall to, it feels much nicer than the boring old Terminal window.

Another great tip I found, from Hongkiat, allows you to add any sort of custom greeting message in your Terminal window. Launch the Terminal then type sudo pico /etc/motd and enter your password. Type in your own MOTD (Message Of The Day) and press Control X to save. The custom message will appear at Terminal startup. You can change it any time you want.

Ok, so we’re still in the middle of summer, so why would I want to talk about research papers? True, it’s not the most exciting of topics at this time of the year, but unfortunately it’s what many scholars around the world are working on right now. You may have a deadline and the important thing is to reach it with your paper completed.

Although you’ll probably find less specialized applications on Mac than on Windows, I’ve noticed three excellent applications that not only help you handle your references, but also search and organize your papers and journals. These are, in no particular order, Sente, Papers and Reference Tracker. For those of you looking for quality Mac applications to help you out on your research paper, here is a look at each application’s notable features:

• Sente - I really like this reference manager. It has an iTunes-like structure to store and organize your papers in smart folders. The search function lets you reach numerous university library catalogs, PubMed and the Web of Knowledge. Sente also lets you download and search PDFs and has a great tool to insert citations into any word processor.
• Papers - Very similar to Sente, in that it offers the same sort of interface and structure. Papers lets you search through dozens of specified search engines for scholars such as ACS Portal or Citeseer. The multi-tabbed interface is great to keep more than one journals open at once and you have quick access to discussion panels from the right of the interface.
• Reference Tracker - Probably not as complete as the other two, Reference Tracker is still a very good program to handle your references.  The app keeps all your citations stored in the Harvard formatted list style and includes ISBN lookup and Amazon search. Handy if you are starting to lose count of all the references for your research paper.

Windows: There’s nothing better than a good old Flash game to play over the weekend. Actually there is, it’s 80 in 1 Best Flash Games. All of them are free and you can play games in any category, from action to puzzles, racing or arcade. You can get playing really quickly too as the collection requires no installation. Simply copy the file on your hard drive. Good fun and lots of playing time.

Mac: Do you have multiple blogs? The best way to keep with them is to have a desktop publishing application like MarsEdit. Not only does it offer all the editing tools you need, but it also makes it ridiculously easy to add media, like videos, audio tracks or pictures and preview your posts in a browser. MarsEdit works with most blog publishing platforms like Wordpress, Drupal or TypePad.

Smartphone: If you love gambling but hate losing all your money, then perhaps you should install Frutakia on your Windows Mobile phone. The game takes the casino slot machine idea and turns it into an original puzzle game. The aim of the game is to make groups of 3 or more same fruits/items at any direction! There are 5 different fruits and 2 different items.

The release of Apple’s MobileMe service, which was meant to replace .Mac, has been pretty disappointing and is still not up to the standards you’d expect from an Apple product. To keep its users quiet, Apple have therefore decided to offer a free 60 day extension of the service. This will only be available to those that had a MobileMe account as of August 19th 2008. Users that have recently purchased an upgrade, plan to buy an upgrade or whose trial period is set to expire soon will also benefit from the 60 day extension.

This is not the first free extension offered by Apple for shortcomings in the MobileMe service. On July 15th, Apple already handed out a free 30 day extension to MobileMe users. It now looks like they’ll be needing a bit more time to bring MobileMe to a level that Mac users expect. The free extension will unfortunately likely mean that you will still have to put up with syncing errors, downtimes and trouble accessing email and contacts. Apple have set up a thorough troubleshooting page for solving simple issues with syncing in MobileMe.

In an internal memo to Apple employees, which Ars Technica published a few weeks back, Steve Jobs recognized that MobileMe had been released too early and that it was a mistake to launch it simultaneously with the iPhone 3G, the 2.0 Software Update and App Store. He also stated that the team should have introduced every new application of MobileMe (Mail, Calendar…) in 30 days intervals so as to make sure each one worked properly.

If you really can’t wait for MobileMe to be properly up and running, check out one of our previous posts giving you a choice of alternative syncing tools for Mac. If you’re eligible for the 60 day extension I’d still make use of it though. Once Apple put they’re mind to fixing something, you can normally guarantee that they’ll be true to their word.

Mac Tricks And Tips have published a list of top 100 essential programs for Mac. It’s pretty often I come upon this type of post when looking for Mac news to give out. While the majority of them are often very similar, some differ on a few applications, depending on the writer’s interests and knowledge. This list, as you’ll find, is divided into six sections: computer files, internet, tools, little apps, multimedia and work. It would be hard to really pick out clear favorites in each category, but let me try out.

In computer files I’d single out the Quicksilver productivity app, because of its intuitiveness, UnRar X, because it is so precious when opening up archive files and AppZapper because it allows you to fully uninstall all associated files of a program.

My favorite Mac internet apps would definitely be the Transmission BitTorrent client, Adium for chatting on any IM service, Cyberduck to upload and download files and Unison to handle newsgroups.

Out of multimedia I’d single out the ultra versatile VLC player, Aperture for professional image editing, Google Earth for its originality and Pixelmator as an enjoyable alternative to Photoshop.

Of the so called little apps the only one that really stands out for me is iAlertU, an ingenious program for keeping thieves away from your Mac.

Moving on to tools, Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent and free backup solution in case you don’t have Time Machine, Coconut Battery is great to monitor your battery, and Growl is an essential tool to receive updates. Also check out Monolingual for translations and either Parallels or VMWare for virtualizations.

Last but not least, the best work tools for Mac are iWork as an office suite, Quicken for personal finance and Filemaker to organize your folders.

First time Mac users probably do not realize how easy it is to work with multiple languages on their computer, and even to toggle with multiple users working with different languages. As you’ll see, not only can you change the language in which everything is displayed, you can also set the keyboard input to your favorite language. Let’s see how it all works.

To start out, you need to go into System Preferences and select International (easy, it’s the one at the top with the UN flag) You’ll see three tabs: Languages, Formats and Input Menu. The first one lets you order languages according to their importance. Make sure the top one is your main language, but don’t forget to also select other languages that you might end up using and try to place them according to their importance in the list. I usually set up English first, then French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. If you have multiple users on your Mac, make sure each one sets up his own list of languages he prefers to work with.

Next you’ll want to go to the Formats tab. This is more important than you might think as it’ll allow you to decide what currency, time format, region and calendar are being used. These don’t necessarily need to match the language, so you can have your menus displayed in Swedish, yet use the Yen as main currency and set up the American date format.

The last tab, Input Menu is where you’ll select keyboard languages. These are normally indicated thanks to a small flag on the top right of your menu bar. This may sound futile, but you’ll probably end up using it more than you think. For example, if you’ve bought your Mac in Spain, you’ll end up with a Spanish keyboard, right? What if you are accustomed to working with a British keyboard though? Just select the British layout in the Input Menu. From the top right you’ll be able to toggle between layouts. I also suggest checking the Keyboard Viewer option, which shows the keyboard in the selected language.

If you’ve set up Fast User Switching in Account Preferences, then you’ll find it’s very easy to switch between users. Just click on the user name at the top right of your menu bar and select the user you want to work with. If your users are configured in different languages, it also means these setups are only a click away.

Adobe Labs, never the sort of developer to take a proper break, has released version 10 of their ubiquitous Flash Player. Although the application is still in development, you can still give it a try by downloading it from the Adobe Labs page. Flash Payer 10, code named “Astro”, comes with a number of major enhancements.

In a bid to keep programmers away from Microsoft’s Silverlight, Adobe have added many customization features.  For one, you can create your own filters and effects and share them on the Adobe Exchange site with other users. It’s worth taking a look at this site as there are already a lot of excellent elements available. If you have the Pixel Bender Toolkit set up, you’ll be glad to know that you can still use it to create your own graphics and effects.

Another way of keeping the developer crowd happy is by integrating a number of APIs for 3D effects, drawing, and sound. Adobe claims 3D effects will be “fast, lightweight and native” and that, thanks to the APIs, even more advanced effects will be easier to create by anyone. As for drawing, the most notable feature is that you’ll be able to draw “sophisticated shapes” directly instead of painfully coding them. Last but not least, audio enhancements will come with the use of both Pixel Bender and ActionScript, which should let you carry out “application-level audio mixing”. Looking into the release notes, I’ve also noticed a new Speex Audio Codec and dynamic streaming.

But enough words, the best way to really experience the new features in Flash Player 10 is to install it, and watch the demo video created by Adobe.

The web is an amazing space, with truly endless possibilities. Yet if you have young children it can also be a pretty dangerous place. It’s clear that there is a lot of undesirable content, and unfortunately most of it is only a few clicks away, from all the spam you get in your inbox everyday to simply what comes up in search engine results, ads in pages, links in web pages or badly intentioned people lurking around. It’s simply too risky to let your kids surf the web without any sort of monitoring, until they are old enough to conciously decide what to look at.

With Leopard, Apple has introduced some settings to help parents protect their children while they use the computer. Parental Controls, found in System Preferences, let you adjust a content filter, set safe browsing times during the day, and give login in keys to each one of your children. Set up is simple, doesn’t take much time, and ensures that your children never end up on the wrong kind of websites.

Those of you who haven’t made the jump to Leopard will probably deplore the lack of Parental Controls in their Mac. However, you can still monitor your kids’ use of the computer with a few other very effective applications. Here is a quick roundup of three useful programs.

CutX for Safari is an add-on that will only work with Apple’s browser, so if you use Firefox, then it won’t work. Safari users however will like how it lets you set up simple lists of banned words and sites, select sites to authorize and block downloads. You can even prevent access to the Safari preferences as an extra precautionary measure.

Mac Minder is not tied to any browser and not only lets you block what you don’t want your kids seeing on the internet but also lets you monitor their usage, logins and logouts. You can also schedule specific usage times and block certain users at certain hours.

Last but not least, ContentBarrier lets you create custom profiles for each one of your kids, giving different logins, access times and privileges. You can block offensive and undesirable content from the web and closely monitor what your children have been up to on your Mac.