Great site for free Mac software

Brian, besides being a great photographer and contributor over at the Unofficial Apple Weblog, put together a great site with some killer Mac software. It's all free too! Check 'em out:
Freemacware.com

Google's IM in Adium/iChat

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has the story on getting set up...

Google is apparently really, really releasing an IM client. Unfortunately it's only a PC client. But using the instructions above you too can experience Google Talk.

Here's the original scoop on the client:
Google Talk review

Yes, I did it, and that's yours truly chatting with none other than the infamous C.K. Sample.

Woot! As they say.

An even easier way to change screencap format...

So I just posted up how to do it in Terminal and then I find this:

SCIT 1.0 does just what I wanted as a little app, and I don't have to log out or reboot. Awesome. I am constantly amazed by those lone developers out there...

How To Tuesday: Change the default screen capture filetype

OK, I always forget how to do this. If you use Cmd-Shift-3 you'll take a pic of your entire screen. Using Cmd-Shift-4 and you get some crosshairs, which allow you to select a region of the screen to capture.

In previous versions of OS X the captured screenshot was saved as a PDF, onto the desktop, in a doc titled "Picture 1" (and then Picture 2, etc.).

In Tiger the default screencap file format mysteriously changed to PNG. Maybe because that's what Widgets use? I dunno.

However, for my blogging over at Download Squad I have to use JPEGs. So I used to take a screenshot, pull it into Photoshop, do my thang, and save it for the web as a JPEG. Ack. Photoshop don't run too good on my dinky iBook...

So what if I could save out the screencap as a JPEG? You can, in fact, switch the default screencap format to whatever you like (within reason). PNG, PDF, JPG, and more... How?

Go into terminal, and type this:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

This will write a little change into a config file, changing the format from PNG to JPG (see that on the end?)...
Pretty snazzy. Except you'll have to log out and back in (or reboot) for the changes to stick.

Works for me!

99% less whining, 100% more usefulness

OK folks. I've officially moved all my ranting and raving to my sister blog, Armchair CEO. If you want to explore the dark side of tech, and how snarky I can really get, go there.

Also, I'm starting to post again on my creativity blog, DaVinci Notebooks. It used to support a podcast, but I haven't the time for podcasting anymore, and even if I did, I'd probably only do it for Download Squad. That's where my overall daily blogging has gone to...

Yet another blog is superpixel subscripts where I ruminate on the tech world. Not only that, but my freshest ideas will probably bubble up over there. When I'm in a good mood I can come up with some pretty neat stuff. My latest idea: geeks vs. gawks. Go there and check it out.

So what's to become of Solution Spheres? It will rise again!

Actually, I plan to keep blogging away on tips, tricks, and stuff exclusively for the Macintosh platform. In particular, how you can use Macs in a small business (preferrably SOHO), or at home to do really cool stuff.

Does saving money and time sound good? Great, you're at the right blog. I'm researching stuff like GTD, Mac-friendly web services and offline services, Mac business resources, etc. The ultimate goal is to create a series of extensible and configurable "Solution Spheres" for biz and home. I might have said this before, but it's not as easy as it sounds. There are a TON of resources on the 'net, and making sense of them for a switcher or even a Mac expert can be daunting. So I'm working on Mac-based ecosystems...

I like that so I'll repeat it again: Mac-based ecosystems. That's what Solution Spheres are all about.

Stay tuned.