Solving a Mac annoyance – Ejecting Volumes with Open Files

August 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

whats-openEver try and eject a disk on you Mac and can’t because it says there’s a file open?

You close everything that seems obvious and then try again and you still can eject the darn thing?

At this point you either give up, restart or just throw caution to the wind and pull out the plug on the disk.

With this small free utility you don’t have to get frustrated– WhatsOpen will tell you what files are open on the  volume you’re trying to eject and allow you to close them so that the disk will eject. Simple.

Download WhatsOpen install and rid yourself of one of those frustrations that makes you want to toss you Mac out the door.
whatsopen-screen

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Filed Under: freeware, Mac, Utilities Tagged With: , , , ,

Google Chrome for Mac is so cool, now finish it!

June 8, 2009 By 1 Comment

The Chrome team has released a developers copy of the browser for Mac and Linux, so far Google Chrome has just been available for Windows.

While to call me a developer would be a gross misuse of the term, I’ve been using the browser ever since it was released last week.  It is so cool.  Well actually so fast!

The team admits it’s far from finished.  Among other things, it doesn’t print, it doesn’t display YouTube-like videos and there seems to be not much in the way of bookmark management.  So let’s give it a number and say it’s 75% done. What it does well is render a web page really fast and when I’m digging around the web that’s what’s most important to me.

The Chronium Blog warns you not to download this version unless “take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software.

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won’t yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.”

It hasn’t crashed for me in about 20 hours of use.  The only gotcha for me was when checking a blog post and panicking when I couldn’t see the YouTube video, but I had been warned.

mac_chrome_screen

Anway, if you live life on the bleeding edge and are so Type A that anything faster is better, download the browser and give it a try on Mac or Linux.

As for me?  I’ll probably use it for most of my work on my slight aging Macbook because it just makes the experience so darn fast!

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Filed Under: browsers, Google Chrome, Linux, Mac, Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Netflix Promises to Keep for the Mac [News]

October 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

netflix_logo.jpg Netflix, the online DVD rental site, has a very nice feature of allowing many of their movies to be streamed instantly from their site. They say they more than 12,000 movies are available this way for their members. Typically Netflix subscribers pay for a certain number of “slots” of DVD rentals per month to be mailed to them. Return a movie get another movie.

The streaming movies do not count against the “slots”, so you can have your 3 DVDs at home and still stream as many movies as you like to your PC. Ooops — I did say PC, as in Windows. Unfortunately this great Netflix member benefit hasn’t been available to Mac users.

Netflix announced today that they are using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology to bring this streaming service to users of the newer Intel-based Macintosh computers. Netflix claims that Intel-based Macs “currently account for roughly three-fourths of Mac units operated by Netflix subscribers.

The service is to be rolled out to all subscribers by the end of the year. If you are a current Netflix subscriber and use a PC, give it a try now.

netflix-mac-msg.jpg

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Filed Under: Mac, Technology, Video Tagged With: , , ,

WavePad — Audio Editing for Mac, Windows and Linux

August 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

NCH Software LogoWavePad is a free sound editor that will also allow you to rip CDs and create MP3s. The tool has many features but can also be easily used by the casual user for light chores like creating a ring tone from a full song MP3 file, editing songs to use as background for a business presentation or a home video. WavePad is also a great way to record and edit voice — you can use it to narrate voice overs or send recordings via email.

WavePad is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. You can purchase the WavePad Master’s Edition if you need more capabilities, but you’re going find free edition more than powerful enough for most users.

WavePad Screen Shot

WavePad [via lifehacker]

Filed Under: Audio, Desktop applications, Mac, Windows Tagged With: , , , ,

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