WWDC is rearing closer as the hours pass, and the speculation is as high as it can go as to what Apple will uncover at the conference. Will Leopard blow our minds with some amazing new features - and will the MacPro blow us right out of the room with it’s speed?

Keep speculating with our first competition, “Guess The MacPro Specs�. The two people who guess the closest to the real MacPro specifications will walk away with a handful of Mac software each. A handful meaning $116.65!

• Wallet from Waterfall Software
• iClip from Inventive Software
• World Of Where from World Of Worlds Software
• Menuet from Specere Software
• AppZapper
• Awaken from Embraceware Software
• OnTheJob from Stunt Software

To enter, simple post your guess in the comments. You will be guessing for the top of the line model. The two winners will be announced on the 8th of August after the unveiling of the Intel PowerMac replacement. Include these in your answer along with any other notes you feel are important:

Machine Name: Name
Processor: Name/Value
Stock RAM: Value
Stock HDD: Value
Case change: Yes/No
Stock Video Card: Name/Value
Blue Ray: Yes/No
HD-DVD: Yes/No

Do you work as a freelance designer or writer and charge by an hourly rate? The pay in my job for Inventive Software is set at a fixed amount per hour, and I need an easy way to keep track of how many hours I’ve worked, how much I’m owed for them, and at the end of the line, easily create and send an invoice to my boss.

OnTheJob was the light I found at the end of the tunnel after weeks of searching for a suitable application to complete the job I needed doing.

The user interface of the application is great, it’s very simple which is one reason I like it so much. It’s easy to look at, easy to use, and 5 minutes after installing it, I knew how to use all the features, it was that easy.

To create a new job, simply press the little “+� button in the sidebar and name your job. At this stage you can click the info button and set your default hourly rate, along with adding any other important notes in the provided space.

Then to create a task under the job, press the little “+� button on the right side of the margin, name it, and press the start button to start tracking your time. When you begin on another task under that job, create another task at the hit of a button.

In the application preferences you have the option of displaying the current time worked on a specific task on top of the dock icon. This is very useful and a nice addition to the feature set. Another wonderful small feature is “idle time deduction�.

If you leave your Mac to take a phone call and dont remember to stop the timer, when you arrive back and sit down, OnTheJob will pop up and ask if you would like to remove your idle time from the billing. It’s features like that which make this application so great, the simple, fine attention to detail that Stunt Software has done so well.

It’s perfect for those budding freelancers out there who are thinking, “There must be a better way…â€? There is, and thats OnTheJob.

One thing I’d love to see in future updates to the application is a Dashboard widget that allows you to quickly start, stop, and pause tasks - and something similar for the menu-bar. These would make it even easier to control the application and track your time.

OnTheJob costs $24.95 to purchase from Stunt Software. There is a free 30 day trial which let’s you use the application with all it’s features. Once the 30 days are up you need to pay to continue using it. Give it a try, you have nothing to lose.

My list of ten widgets that are important in every day use to me. Some help increase my productivity, some tell me important stats, and others, well, they just waste my time…Let’s take a look.

Capture

Take screenshots a lot? Then Apple’s chunky application “Grab� isn’t what you should be using. Go and pick up the widget called “Capture�. Capture allows you to easily take a screenshot of anything happening on your screen. You have the option to take a picture of the selection, full screen, or just the window. Click the expand bar of the widget and you get even more options, such as file type, quality, size, save destination, and the option to save image to your clipboard after taking it.

Capture will save you endless time when you need a quick screenshot taken.

The downside the widget has is it’s not yet Universal, a minor annoyance for the early adapters to the Intel platform.

Download Here

iStat Pro

Are you one of those stat junkies who loves to know what’s going on with the inside of their Mac? If you are, you will love the iStat Pro widget from iSlayer.com

iStat Pro is a well designed stat widget for your Dashboard. You can monitor CPU usage, RAM usage, network, drives, temperatures, battery remaining, and more!

The widget has also been designed so you can easily customize it’s colour scheme, and it offers you a choice of horizontal or vertical alignment.

Download Here

Bitsticks

Have you taken up the latest technological revolution since Napster, bittorrent? Bitsticks is your all in one bittorrent client foe the Dashboard, so you no longer need a bittorrent application getting in your way while working, you can download torrents in the background.

To download a torrent file simply drag and drop a torrent file onto the widget, and it will begin to download. Want to download more than one torrent at once? No sweat, just click the “+� button and another copy of the widget opens, allowing you to drag and drop another torrent file onto it.

Download Here

iClip lite 2

Annoyed by Tiger’s limitation of only storing one clipboard pasting at once? iClip extends this to 25 so you will never lose important data again.

iClip does away with your “one copy only” conventional clipboard, this wonderful widget allows you to copy up to 25 items at once before you need to worry about pasting! The widget will improve your efficiency and productivity to allow you more time to do important things.

When you install and launch the widget, the first thing you will notice is it’s sleek interface, designed by the talented GUI artist, Piotr Gajos. Gajos has worked extremely hard on the graphical and animation side of the widget to give the best possible user interface.

iClip is simple to use. Copy something and the item is saved to your clipboard on the Dashboard, allowing you to continue copying up to 24 more items before you loose anything.

Download Here

Flipcount

Counting down to a birthday, deadline, or important event in your life? Flipcount makes it easy, and fun.

The widget is designed to look like an airport styled check-in board, where the numbers flip over as the time goes down.
Very handy for keeping track of deadlines.

Download Here

Wikipedia

Do you use the largest human built encyclopedia online, Wikipedia? Then quicken your access to the database of millions of articles by searching and browsing right in Dashboard.

Thats all that needs to be said about the Wikipedia widget, try it out yourself to see how powerful it really is!

Download Here

Sing That iTune

Want to sing along to your favorite tunes, then sync the lyrics to your iPod? Sing That iTunes makes this task as simple as 1,2,3.
This widget displays the lyric for iTunes current track along with its artwork. The lyrics are saved in “Documents/Sing that iTune!� folder and you can also add your self-made lyrics in there. Sync the folder with iPods Notes folder to bring the lyrics with you on the go.

Download Here

Sunlit Earth

Are you like me and often get confused at what time it is overseas? If you are, then Sunlit Earth is the perfect Dashboard companion for you.

Is displays a shadow over the world map where it is dark, and light where it is, well, light. It also shows the position of the sun in the sky.

Very helpful if you want to iChat with distant buddies but dont want 10 world clock widgets running in Dashboard to keep track of time zones.

Download Here

iTunes Stats

iTunes Stats is something for fact-loving geeks who just have to know as much info about their music collections as possible.

The widget shows you how many songs you have, but it also shows the number of artworks, playlists, number of songs played, number of songs unplayed as well as many more fascinating facts about your listening habits.

Download Here

NotePad

Is your Dashboard rendered useless by rows of stickies? Have you ever accidentally lost all of them? Ever felt the need to print a sticky or two? Or perhaps you’ve wished for something a bit larger (or smaller)?

NotePad is your solution. Presenting the ultimate widgetized notepad, with built in search, print, and resize functions. And now, with 2.0, you can sync notes your iPod, use several themes, lock your NotePad for privacy, doodle sketches, make lists, and more!

NotePad also won second prize for best Dashboard widget in the 2006 MacGeneration awards.

Download Here

Austin Sarner is the developer of the popular application AppZapper I had time to catch up with him and talk about how AppZapper has been taken up by the public, and what’s in store for the future.

Where did the idea of AppZapper originate?

AppZapper was originally a feature in a much larger application idea Brian Ball and I were fleshing out. Once we realized that the ability to zap apps was so cool by itself, we branched it off into its own project and AppZapper is the result. Brian had previously worked as the shareware submission manager for MacWorld, so he had to deal with downloading and trying tons of apps. To keep his system in tune he would have to perform clean installs regularly, which is why he felt something for completely removing apps was a necessary addition.

Did you think there would be a market for the application at the outset?

When you look into making a shareware app you have to consider that whatever market you are going to appeal to has to be a subset of the “shareware downloader” market, the demographic of people visiting MacUpdate and reading MacMinute. With AppZapper, we’re targeting general shareware users. That is, whether or not you are in the market for system utilities, text editors, or any other kind of shareware, AppZapper can still (we hope) appeal to you.

When did AppZapper really take off and begin to be noticed?

We wanted to catch on the MacWorld Expo buzz bandwagon, so we released right before the event. By getting dugg and posted on various news sites our initial press coverage was immensely satisfying, and we partnered up with the iClip and Menuet developers for a promotion that went on during the expo called MacGrab. Perhaps the coolest part of the whole launch was when MacGrab (which we bought a dedicated server for that week) crashed due to the level of traffic it was getting.

MacZOT has also played a large part in distrubuting AppZapper. How did the first BlogZOT effect AppZapper?

BlogZOT, just like MacGrab, was certainly non traditional from any software marketing perspective, but it proved to be immensely beneficial. Our goal from the start has been to get as many people using and (hopefully) liking AppZapper as possible, and then relying on word of mouth to grow our user base. BlogZOT effectively took that model and blew it up within a day. We gave out 5,000 copies of AppZapper thanks to a community effort that resulted in nearly 1,000 blog posts about MacZOT and AppZapper.

What would your estimate be of the percentage of Mac users using AppZapper worldwide?

I would estimate that a fraction of a fraction of a percent of all Mac users are using AppZapper, and that we have a long but exciting path ahead of us to reach a more mainstream audience.

What do you have planned for AppZapper in the future?

We have a lot of great things planned for the next major AppZapper releases and we’re not quite ready to reveal too much, but we are definitely going to be rethinking nearly ever aspect of the app to make it an even more streamlined and slick experience. Bear in mind that as we continue to add new things to AppZapper, we will never “bloat” it up. Even though we’ve more than doubled the feature set since 1.0, the app still sports the same minimal drag and drop interface.

Do you have any other projects you are/planing to work on aside from AppZapper?

Yes, actually. Jasper Hauser (the designer we worked with on AppZapper) has been working with us on a new software project. He has released a few previews on his blog that are certainly worth checking out. We promise to release some more concrete information about the project in the near future.

Thanks for your time! Good luck in the future

Thanks a bunch for the interview, Glenn.

We have 5 copies of AppZapper to give away. The best 5 comments on this article during the next 24 hours (Judged by Austin Sarner) will be receiving a free copy of AppZapper.

When the time comes to get some serious work done on your Mac, you want to get it completed quickly with high efficiency, so you can spend your time doing better things - like adding artwork to your perpetually growing iTunes collection…

What applications can you install and use to reduce the time taken on everyday tasks? How can you make them simpler, and complete them more swiftly? Let us look at the top 10 time saving applications, which will save you valuable time…to play with PhotoBooth.

1. NetNewsWire

Don’t you hate the daily grunge, checking website after website each and every morning, on your slow dial-up Internet connection, checking for updates to your favourite sites, when nothing has changed on them at all?

NetNewsWire is an application, which stores and downloads all of your RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication). Most sites these days have RSS feeds, which let you subscribe to them in an RSS reader of your choice, and when any updates are made to the site, you will be notified in NetNewsWire.

This is a huge time saving application, as each morning, you only need to click one button to open the application, and all site updates are downloaded, ready for you to read the latest news.

Time Save Rating: 9/10

2. Wallet

How many times have you wasted time looking for a serial number to an application that you wrote on a piece of paper? How many times have you wasted time resetting your password on a forum, because you forgot the password? The answer is, too many times!

Wallet is your ultimate secure, password and serial number database. When you open the application, you are prompted for your password, so you will be the only one able to access your information.

This is an absolute must have application for any forgetful Mac user!

Time Save Rating: 4/10

3. Flickr iPhoto Plug-in

Flickr was one of the best ideas on the Internet in 2005. Flickr is developing at an astonishingly quick rate, and will be one of the largest growing sites in 2006; you can hold me to that prediction!

After a long day out with your camera, shooting hundreds of marvelous shots, you arrive home, connect the camera to your Mac, upload the pictures into iPhoto, and stare in awe at your beautiful shots; only wishing you could share them with others, so they could experience the same feeling as you. With Flickr, you can.

Flickr is an online photo service where you can upload your images, and show them off to the world. Nevertheless, the uploading process can be a slow nightmare if you have dozens of shots to post. The Flickr iPhoto plug-in turns this process into a dream.

Simply click on a photo you which to upload to your Flickr album, click on the Upload button, add in your title, description, and tags, and hit upload. The photo is now online; and your artistic side is ready to be discovered.

Time Save Rating: 6/10

4. Quicksilver

Quicksilver is just like a brother to Spotlight, except, Quicksilver’s speciality is application access.

When Apple released Tiger, they stated that Spotlight would be a lightening fast, displaying results as fast as you can type into the search system. If Apple can pronounce that about Spotlight, it is fair to say Quicksilver is a lightening+thunder fast search system. It is amazingly speedy; a noticeable amount faster than Spotlight.

Time Save Rating: 6/10

5. Dashboard

Dashboard is one of the ultimate time savers on the Macintosh. The time saving possibilities are endless, even with the included, pre-installed Apple widgets.

Check the weather with the weather widget, instead of logging onto a website, fending through all the advertising, and finding the forecast for tomorrow.

Use the Flight Tracker widget to see if the plane is on time, instead of going to the airlines website and customising a search; only then discovering the plane isn’t being tracked on there website.

Use the calculator widget instead of opening up the application. Use the Dictionary widget instead of going to dictionary.com. Use the Currency Converter instead of going through a slow, bank website. I think you catch my drift; Dashboard makes finding information fast, and fun!

Time Save Rating: 10/10

6. Spotlight

Spotlight is in my opinion, the biggest time saver on the Mac, and what’s better, is it’s bundled with Tiger!

Spotlight will save you hours searching, finding, and accessing documents, applications, and emails. Just click on the stylish glass magnifying glass icon in your menu bar, type your search term, and watch the results appear right before your eyes.

Spotlight will make your file access experience a breeze.

Time Save Rating: 9/10

7. Menuet

Menuet is a simple yet efficient iTunes menu-bar controller. It displays a next track, previous track, and pause buttons for iTunes, in the menu-bar. You can change tracks, or pause music no matter where you are, or what you are doing on your computer.

Menuet saves you time, from switching back and forth from iTunes, whenever you want to change a track. It also includes support for Last.fm uploading, and has an album art downloader built in.

Time Save Rating: 4/10

8. MainMenu

System maintenance can be a long, boring process of moving your cursor around the Finder, dragging and dropping old applications, preference files, caches, and documents to the trash. MainMenu can make this process painless.

MainMenu has dozens of different clean-up options, ranging from cleaning the cache, deleting log files, cleaning browser history, and even rebuilding the Spotlight database, for speedier search results.

Time Save Rating: 7/10

9. Sherlock

Sherlock is another great application that Apple bundles with its Macintosh machines. Sherlock is like a maxi Dashboard.

Check movie times, stock prices, eBay auctions, Flight times, the dictionary, and even translate text into different languages!

Sherlock is great to use if you need more advanced information than Dashboard would give you, but you still want to save time browsing around sites.

Time Save Rating: 4/10

10. MacPro…

Imagine if you could go ahead to WWDC and get a new MacPro; could think how much faster you could complete everything? The only problem is, the MacPro’s will cost a lot of money, so you better put some of these time saving tips into action; so you can work more, and afford that new MacPro with a 30� Apple Cinema display…

Looking for a reliable host for your website? ExtendMac has many hosting plans available, each amazingly cheap prices.

I talked to Brian Amerige, the founder of ExtendMac about his hosting company, and exactly where it is heading and what is in the future.

When did you launch ExtendMac?

Well, as a company, we started in March of this year or so. However, the group of passionate and dedicated people who help make Extendmac possible have been making great things since May 2005, when we were originally focused on our Mac-forum, called Macin-Talk.

Why did you decide to get into the hosting business? Did you feel you could offer something others cant?

That’s exactly it. Around April or so, when we were looking into hosting solutions for ourselves, we found lots of faults in the hosting industry that we said “well that just doesn’t seem right.” So, we looked into it, and it turned out we could really make this happen–so we took a chance–and we went for it.

Are the sites hosted exclusively on the Mac?

Well, we certainly try to focus and market our hosting and upcoming products for the Mac platform, we’re certainly not going to turn away other customers simply because of their platform. After all, a few years ago, even I was on the PC!

As a company, what is your vision. What’s your aims? What are your goals?

To quote our about page, “we’re all about creating fun, beautiful and enjoyable products for our customers to utilize to improve their lives. At Extendmac, maintaining, enhancing, and focusing “the vision” is one of our most important goals. It’s not just software and hosting to us. It’s the redefinition of passion, it’s the essence of belief. This is what we love to do, and put pure and simple, that’s why we’re doing it.

Has ExtendMac been as popular as you hoped it would be when you launched?

Well, with any new company, it’s really hard to tell where a company is headed as far as the generic term of “success.” To us, making one customers day better is enough for us to say we’re successful. That theory, has gotten us to where we are today, and we’re very satisfied with our growth, and look forward to a very bright future.

What one thing are you offering customers that none of the large companies can?
As a new company with a highly focused vision, we’re not going to let ourselves lose the forest for the trees. We’ve seen that happen all too much, where over-confidence makes successful people think they can’t lose. As a passion-driven company, we’re not like that. Product-wise, as far as our hosting goes, one of our favorite features is the flexibility and control we can give our customer using our Plesk Control Panels.

What’s to come in the future for ExtendMac?
Well, as I’ve mentioned a bit on in the past–at our core, we’re a software company. We’re currently building an application called Edge–which is going to revolutionize the Mac FTP, Web Authoring/Management, and Blogging worlds. That’s first on our to-do list–but we’ve got more planned. We’re taking our time in building our first release of Edge, because as any good “producer” knows, there’s a certain honest quality that one is always out to get–and we’re determined to have that on Edge’s first public appearance.

So Edge will take on Transmit and MarsEdit in ONE application?

Edge is set to take on Transmit, MarsEdit, and even Ecto–in one, beautifully integrated application.

When can we expect to see Edge?

Well, we’re not going to give any dates–those are dangerous. I think it’s safe to say that Edge will meet the world when it’s primed and ready, and at the current rate of development, it will come exactly when the Mac World needs it most.

Any exclusive information for readers to this blog?

Well, I can’t talk about specific things, or screenshots–but I can tell you this–it’s going to make not only building a website easier, but it’s going to totally change the way you perceived managing a website to be. As for the blogging end, we think we really take blogging up to classic-Mac intuitiveness’ level–where it belongs.

Thanks for your time, and good luck with the venture!

You’re very welcome! Happy hosting!

Writing can be extremely rewarding at times, but are you finding it hard sitting down with your Mac and actually getting the words out of your head and onto the digital paper? Here are 5 things that have worked for me and made my writing more productive.

5. Music

Pop open iTunes and play an album you like, it is much easier to work with familiar sounds around you. Don’t listen to fast pumping music like pop, heavy rock, or techno. Settle down to some soft or piano rock, like the Postal Service, The Fray, Mae, or Waking Ashland. Their music is all very slow paced making it calming to work to.

4. No chatting or browsing

Close down Safari, and quit iChat and Adium. The last thing you need when you have been writing for 25 minutes, churning out words and feeling in the zone, is your friend sending you an IM with a link to a video on YouTube, it will be a distraction and possibly put you off your line of thoughts, ruining the next paragraph you had figured out in your head from getting down on paper. Quit any applications that have internet connectivity, or even better, turn your AirPort internet off completely!

3. Environment

You should know the places in the world that make you feel relaxed, and those which you feel uncomfortable in, so take your laptop to one of those places that makes you feel relaxed and at ease.

Places like busy cafe’s and noisy parks should be avoided. But if you like the beach, a quiet back street cafe, or even a ball game, then take your laptop along and get writing. Your best writing will always be done when you are felling relaxed and your enjoying yourself.

2. Goals And Rewards

Set yourself goals, and when you reach them reward yourself. Give yourself a goal such as “write 1000 words this morning”, and when you reach it reward yourself with some chocolate, 15 minutes on Flickr or something else you enjoy.

1. WriteRoom

Some people believe the latest application from HogBaySoftware is a joke. Believe me, it’s not. WriteRoom is the single best thing that has ever happened to my writing. Didn’t you use to love that typewriter environment where there was only you and your text, with no distractions to keep you from writing a masterpiece. WriteRoom brings that environment right onto your Mac in full screen typewriter view, it will keep you from all other distractions and get you writing feature articles in no time!

We all love a great looking setup, thats one of the reasons why are using the Mac, right? Some of us have even been known to buy accessories for one pathetic reason, “It matches the concept of the Mac so nicely”. I know I’ve done it before, and I will again. Let’s explore the top five accessories to compliment your Mac setup!

JBL Creature 2.1 Speaker System

Let me guess, the first thing you thought to yourself upon laying your eyes on these speakers were aliens from out of space. Am I correct? Because thats what I thought the first time I saw JBL’s distinctively bold Creature 2.1 speaker system.

This speaker system is unique from all others. It includes a subwoofer and two small sized speakers, and is available in black, white, or silver. White being the obvious choice for the Mac fan’s.

Sound quality is supreme for such a great priced product according to iLounge’s review.

The subwoofer is the most interesting part of the package, it’s very hard to describe in words just what it looks like, so transcribe it yourself below!

Griffin PowerMate

The PowerMate from Griffin Technology is that glowing blue accessory we see popping up in setups a lot, but no one knows exactly what it is, or what it does. Here’s the answer: the PowerMate can be programmed to do almost anything you want it to do!

It comes with a handy software package which helps you set it up. You can use it to control applications. For example, turning the wheel could scroll up or down in iTunes, clicking the top of it might open a new page in Safari, and you can even use it to scroll quickly through your iPhoto library, clicking the button when you see a photo you want to be opened.

The IconFactory’s application iPulse even allows you to use the PowerMate as a CPU usage indicator, which will blink a bright blue light on the PowerMate at different speeds depending on the CPU usage. Smart? You guessed it.

Griffin iCurve

Do you have an Apple laptop? Chances are if you do it gets excessively hot while in use, and the laptop is not at a suitable height for your eyes when using it on a desk.

The iCurve is a stand for your Apple notebook made from clear-durable plastic. It will raise the notebook to a suitable height for your eyes and it looks stunning!

This will be popular with people who use a notebook with an external display, or those with an iMac + MacBook who want to use both at once.

LaCie “Brick� External HDD

Remember when you were young and used to play with Lego bricks for hours on end to keep yourself entertained? LaCie has bought that old day and age back into the 21st century with their latest external HDD range, the “brick�.

The brick HDD looks just like a large Lego brick, except it can hold up to 500GB of your most important data inside. You can even stack these drives on top of each other to hold “stacks� of data across multiple drives.

The product is available in white, black, blue, and red. Storing data and having fun, what more could you ask for from a hard-drive?

Ikea “Skruvsta� Swivel Chair

This computer chair will go down well with those who like to keep the colour of their setup matched, in the Apple universe, white.

I dont have much to say about this chair, apart from it looks so dang good!

So there you have it, 5 accessories that will look great and integrate seamlessly with your Mac! Do you have any of them or plan on purchasing them? If so, let me know how you enjoy your new accessories!