Reader Christian Kuttruff sent me an email a few days back after my post, How Does Your Mac Look?

He wanted to know how my file system was organized on my Mac because he was looking for the perfect way to sort his.

My file system is perfectly organized, I know where everything is, and can bring up anything in seconds using then Finder, let’s take a look with a few screenshots of the folders in my home folder.

Here is my home folder. It’s setup the exact same way as the stock Apple configuration, except my custom “Agua” icon-set by David Lanham.

I created folders inside the documents folder that store my main type’s of documents.

- “Blog” holds files that have something to do with this site.

- “iChats” is the folder created by iChat to store chat logs.

- “Magazines” is for such things as the iLounge buyer guides.

- “School” holds all my essays and reports.

- “Serials” is for applications which store their serial in a specific file (such as The Potion Factory apps)

- “Templates” is for cool WordPress themes I come across.

- “The Crate” is a dumping ground where I put files that I have to sort.

- “Work” is where I store work that I have done for magazine’s like Macguide, and sites such as ProBlogger.

The movies folder is quite simple. The Apple folder is used for keynotes and episodes of shows such as ScreenCastsOnline. My Projects is stuff I have worked on in iMovie. Others is just like “The Crate”, but for video content. Revision 3 is a folder for shows like Diggnation and Pixel Perfect, and TV Shows is for just that.

My Music folder is plan simple. With just two folders, GarageBand and iTunes. Most of the stuff I create in GarageBand gets exported to iTunes, and my iTunes library is currently 33GB in size.

In my pictures library, I have three items. My Aperture library where my image library is stored. My iPhoto library, where I store desktop backgrounds and Photo Booth images, and Photo Booth which is required by the application - I clear the Photo Booth folder each week into iPhoto.

Sorry for the lengthy post which didn’t contain too many tips or tricks, but hopefully it will answer a few of the people who have been emailing me about my file system. Until tomorrow, bye!

Rarely do I come across a piece of software which wow’s me as much as Soulver has. Why has Soulver astounded me? Because of it’s innovation and the way it uses a technology as a feature in a way no other application has before.

Soulver is a new kind of calculator application which allows you to do maths using plain English phrases. Yes, you read that correctly. You can type normal phrases and words into Soulver and it will work your questions out as if you had use mathematic terms and symbols.

Soulver is an insanely smart application. If you look at the screenshot above you will realize that Soulver let’s you enter words and number on the left side of the screen, and it provides the output on the right.

It’s very hard to explain how everything works within Soulver, but essentially it let’s you do things such as one one line, write “iMac = $3855″, and on the next line do something such as “If I buy 5 imac computers, how much will it cost me?” Soulver outputs the answer as $19,275.00 in the left window. Smart? You guessed it.

The Universal Application Soulver 1.4 costs $13.95, and is available from Acqualia Software.

Personally I’m running my digital life off two machines, an Intel iMac and MacBook. The iMac is the 17″ Core Duo model, with the base 160GB HDD, and RAM upgraded to 1.5GB. The MacBook is the bare bones Core Duo model (in white), with no upgraded RAM.

At the moment I’m pretty happy with my setup, apart from the fact that the screen is far too small to be overly productive, and the HDD is running very low. It’d also be nice to have a little extra RAM to help push Aperture along.

Next year I’m going to be looking at replacing my iMac onto something with a larger display, bigger HDD, and more RAM. I’m currently looking at the 24″ iMac with a 500GB HDD and 2GB of RAM, but I’ll wait and see what Apple releases over the next 10 months before making any decisions.

What setup are you kicking, and what will be your next upgrade?

This following tip is so simple and obvious, yet no one that I have talked to ever puts it into action.

I’m the type that has to check his email every time I hear it beep, I cannot leave it there sitting unread. It has to be read the second I receive it, otherwise it bugs me to the point that I end up checking it anyway. But what happens if I dont receive email..? Simple, I get work done.

When I’m trying to get work done the first thing I do is close my Mail application, This way I’m not getting bugged every few minutes with new mail to read. It’s such a simple tip but it works like a charm. Especially if you receive a high volume of email each day.

If you cant part with your Mail, set it to check every 15 minutes, instead of every minute. You’ll at least get some work done before been interrupted.

Many bloggers write a long post on why they are blogging, but I thought I’d do it a little differently and post in the ever so popular list format. Here’s 5 reasons why I blog.

• 1. It’s Fun

Blogging is simply fun. I enjoy writing, I enjoy receiving feedback, and I enjoy seeing my work on the web. If blogging wasn’t fun, I’d have nothing to do with it.

• 2. It Keeps Me Busy

Blogging forces discipline on me. Each day that I look at the WordPress calendar and see it’s blank, it creates a false illusion to me that I have to do something to fill the blank space. Blogging keeps me focused and busy to keep creating.

• 3. I Love Comments

I love waking up each morning and seeing new comments on the blog. It’s a great feeling to know your reaching people and they are taking note of your hard work and efforts. Comments are one thing which keeps me coming back for more.

• 4. Job Opportunities

You would be surprised to see how many working opportunities have been presented to myself in the few months I’ve been blogging. There have been a few requests for blogging, writing, and podcasting work. One day blogging might present me with an offer I cant turn down.

• 5. The People

There are many great people to be met in the blogosphere. I have become reasonable good friends with bloggers such as Paul Stamation, Derek Punsalan, Phill Ryu, and dozens of people in the Mac community.

Why do you blog? For money, for fun, to get better at writing, to meet people, or all of the reasons listed? Let me know why you are blogging!

Each and every Friday I’m going to be posting a desktop wallpaper for all the Mac users out there that I have taken using my Canon 350D DSLR. Photography really interests me and this gives me a nice way to showcase some work, while giving readers something for nothing.

The wallpaper is sized at a resoultion of 2560×1600 pixels, big enough to be used on a 30 inch Apple Cinema Display, so no-one will miss out. No watermark has been applied to the image either, so play nice, I’m trust worthy that no one will steal my work.

Today’s desktop theme is: Grass.

Feel free to leave any comments about this wallpaper below, it’d be nice to get a comment or two from people who decide to use it, have a great weekend, and enjoy!

Download it here.

I am so attentive to how my Mac is organized. Everything has a place, and everything must be in place. I can find a file in seconds (yes, even without Spotlight), and there is not one thing out of place, it’s all perfectly in order and sorted. In other words, I have a little OCD to how my Mac looks.

Here’s a little insight to how I operate with my main desktop, my Dashboard, and my tidy Finder.

The only items you ever see on my desktop are hardware icons, such as servers, removable media, and iPod’s. I keep the dock very simple and only leave things in it that I use many times a day.

I like to limit how many widgets I have open because of the system resources they take up. Two widgets I couldn’t live without are iStat Pro, and Mint stats.

I have the popular “Agua” icon set applied by CandyBar to make my icons look attractive. I cant wait to see what Apple does in Leopard in regard to system icons.

So how does your Mac look? Are you like me and have everything in place and organized, or do you just use your desktop as a dumping ground?

As most of you, I have a list of blogs I absoutely love to read, and get excited everytime I see an unread item in one of their feeds in NewsFire.

PhillRyu

Phill Ryu, a well known name in the Mac community. Before his MyDreamApp fame, and after his Menuet fame he began his personal blog, hosting an array of interesting unique articles.

TUAW

If you know Apple, you should know TUAW (short for The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

TUAW is lead by lead blogger Scott McNulty with his crew of over 10 other bloggers delivering up to a dozen posts on everything about the Mac and the iPod daily.

Mike Matas

Although not frequently updated, Mike Matas’s blog provised an ensigntful inside look at what it’s like to work for Apple.

43 Folders

Merlin Mann’s primary blog 43 Folders is a must read for those looking to get their lives, both real and digital sorted. I really enjoy reading his tips to getting yiur email sorted, and from that, my email is now 100% clean and organized.

ProBlogger

If you have a blog, you must check out Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. Darren usually makes around 15 posts a week to the blog, so it’s a leeching ground for great content.

Darren writes about everything to do with blogging, such as tips, tricks, way’s to make more money, and attract more readers. A must read for any blogger.

5ThirtyOne

5ThirtyOne is the online home of designer Derek Punsalan. Derek has many WordPress themes released to the public for free, and his writing is generally about design, gaming, and Apple.

Paul Stamatiou

Yahoo intern Paul Stamatiou’s blog is all about technology, apple, web 2.0, and his personal life. In my opinion if you could only read one tech blog, it should be Paul’s. He manages to cover so many topics yet keep his audience happy by delivering it all in such a way that there’s something for everyone.

Digital Photography School

If you are wanting to get into and learn more about digital photography, this blog must be added to your RSS reader.

Leah Culver just got herself a brand new 15 inch MacBook Pro, with a 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 3 GB RAM, and a 200 GB Hard Drive, for free! How’d she manage it? Let’s take a look.

Above is a picture of Leah’s new MacBook Pro. A few months ago she created a website explaining her need for a new computer. She had been running off an iMac G3 for the past three years, and it was time for an upgrade when she realized she couldn’t even install the new iTunes, because she needed the new OS for that, but she couldn’t even update the OS because her hardware was too old, she needed to upgrade.

So the site was created, selling ad space on her new laptop. The ad space cost $150 per square inch and she quickly got dozens of companies signed up such as Digg, Valley Wag, Zoomr, Ask, and Revision3.

Once she had sold enough ad space to pay for the laptop, she bought it and using a laser etching machine, she etched the advertisements onto the lid of the laptop. Check out the video of it all happening here.

Smart girl, she now has a brand new maxed out MacBook Pro, and she got it for nothing. What do you think of laser etched laptops?

Cha-Ching, the application for managing your personal finances has been updated to beta version 0.3. It has many more improved, enhanced, and new features over the previous 0.2 release.

Here is an overview of the new features:

.Mac Backup

You can now backup your Cha-Ching library to your .Mac account and revert to previous backups. This is a great feature for those who are obsessed with having a backup of all their data, and will be a lifesaver in not only preventing loss of data, but moving your finances between computers while on holiday.

Budgets

Stying to stick to a certain budget so you can save money for Christmas shopping? With Cha-Ching 0.3, now you can set a budget and attempt to keep to it. No more guessing games, Cha-Ching does everything for you and tell’s you when you need to stop spending money.

Attachments

For an example, I did the copywriting for MainMenu 1.7 recently and added the transaction into my Cha-Ching library. If I was adding that today, now I could attach the document to the transaction to keep myself organized better.

Password Protection

Tired of snoopers? Enable the “require password at launch” option.

The UI has also had a fantastic redesign, check it out below:

Download version 0.3 here.

Today an article I wrote for friend Darren Rowse of ProBlogger went live. The article I wrote entitled “5 Essential OSX Blogging Tools” covers the full process of blogging and which apps come in handy for each task.

The tasks are Collect News, Compose, Resize Images, and Announce.

Check out the article here.

Want to find out how many songs you can cram onto your new shuffle, or how many songs encoded in pristine AIFF format you can put onto your brand new 80GB iPod? Well stop guessing, a new widget called iPodage will let you easily calculate how many songs your iPod can hold.

You choose your iPod model, the iPod’s size, the average length of your songs, and the bitrate you encode in, and iPodage does the rest of the work for you.

Get it here.

Technorati Tags: widget

We all know the feeling. We wake up, jump on the computer and open Mail, where we see 43 new emails, many needing action to be made. Then we open our favorite RSS reader (in my case NewsFire), and have over 400 unread items waiting for our attention, even when we have sorted through all of these we have over 50 items flagged of interest to check out.

By the time we’ve even checked a few of these, the mailman turns up with three new magazines, and the newspaper. Your almost ready to scream, so many unread things, not enough time in the day. What can you do!?

The answer is pretty straight forward. Unsubscribe!

Really, do you need that Macworld magazine when you could, and are finding out the exact same information by reading your RSS reader daily?

What about your RSS feeds? Go through each and every one and see if they are all still relevant to your interests. If there hasn’t been anything on a feed which has interested you for more than a couple of weeks, chances are there will be nothing in the future, so unsubscribe. If something really greats gets posted you’ll find out about it elsewhere. You dont need to be the first to know everything!

For instance this morning I woke up and had 12 new email messages, 442 unread RSS items, 12 blog comments to moderate, last months D-Photo magazine, and 15 articles still to read that I had bookmarked to del.icio.us the previous day.

Unsubscribe from anything you can. Here’s a quick check list:

• RSS feeds, delete ones which have become off-topic
• Emails, unsubscribe from mailing lists & install a good spam filter.
• Haven’t read a magazine you received more than 3 weeks ago? Unsubscribe, it cant be that important to have left it that long.

Go crazy, unsubscribe from so much stuff that you begin to start to feeling lonely. Your stress will go down because of it.

Have you ever wanted to take a screenshot of a page on the internet, but don’t like the quality of a normal capture, using an application like “Grab?

Have you ever wanted to take a screenshot, but found the page is longer than your screen real-estate? Then the application Paparazzi is for you!

After you install and boot up the program, you enter the URL of the site you want to “grab�. Set the width and height in pixels you are wanting to capture, then hit the capture button! As easy as that!

The application will process the web page and then beep once it is done (usually under five seconds). After you look at the image to make sure you are happy with it, press the save image as key and save it to the destination of your choice.

Paparazzi is great for web designers or people who work in the graphics industry. One great use is for creating web portfolios. If you designed a site you can use this application to take a full screenshot of the page for you to post on your design site.

Overall, a handy program that may be used a few times a week. Useful to have in your application folder for the rare occurrences.

As many of you know from this post, I’ve taken the plunge on a Canon 350D DSLR recently. After I’d been taking shots for the first couple of days iPhoto just didn’t seem to cut it for editing photos anymore. I had moved up from the consumer Sony CyberShot to a professional Canon DSLR, so why not the software too?

I promptly downloaded the Aperture 30 day free trial, installed it, and moved my iPhoto library over (which I must ad was very simple and swift, thumbs up Apple!)

What do I like about Aperture that iPhoto doesn’t offer?

• Versioning

I love the ability to create as many versions of any image without effecting the original image.

• Stacks

Now I have the DSLR I can take up to 3 frames per second, stacks are a great way to manage these images taken in rapid succession.

• Advanced Editing Tools

I love the ability to edit RAW images with super attention to fine details, Aperture allows me to edit images 50 times more powerfully that iPhoto.

• Edge Sharpening

Ah, this falls under the advanced editing tools, but edge sharpening is a life saving tools. What I have images of the sky I dont want the whole thing sharpened, just the foreground, otherwise the image looks grainy.

Aperture 1.5 is avaliable for a free 30 day trial here. IF you like it and decide to purchase, you will be able to download the 1.5.1 update which includes many enhanced features on common tools such as the loupe, plus a slightly enhanced application speed.

Regarding performance? I’m running an iMac 17″ Intel Core Duo 1.83Ghz with 1.5GB of RAM, and Aperture runs super smooth.

Overall, I’m very happy with Aperture, expect a more in-depth review, and lots of posts with Aperture tips. Maybe even a little series of video podcasts in the future, along with a review of the Canon EOS 350D.

What do you use to manage your digital images, and why do you like it?

Blogs can be a great hobby, but they are even more fun to write when you are getting rewarded with cash. It can give you that extra little edge and push to write great content, keep you focused, and keep you blogging for longer periods of time.

ReviewMe has made that goal achievable for every blogger in the world now, thanks to their great new service.

The basic concept of ReviewMe is simple. Bloggers are paid to write sponsored posts in return for a payment from advertisers. The payment is judged based on different stat rankings of your blog such as Technorati rank, Alexa rank and number of subscribers to it’s RSS feed.

If you are an advertiser and want to purchase a review of your product/service, simple. Just browse around looking for a site your interested in having the review on and click the “Add to Cart” button.

ReviewMe does have a few rules that bloggers do need to follow. For example, each review must be at least 200 words, and you must disclose that your review is a sponsored one.

Looking forward to seeing how this effects the blogging universe. What are your thoughts? let me know.

Disclosure: I will be receiving $30 for this post.

Dont want to run a full blown application or install a menu-bar item to run maintenance scripts on your Mac? Well you dont need to - introducing Maintidget, the one and only maintenance widget for OSX.

Maintidget provides the following functions:

• Display the last time the daily, weekly, and monthly OS X Maintenance Scripts were run
• Run the OS X Maintenance Scripts on demand from your Dashboard

This will be handy for those who dont want to use MainMenu - which uses a considerable amount of system resources than Maintidget does, or someone who doesn’t like opening a full blown application to run a simple task.

Get it here.

Technorati Tags: dashboard, widget

That’s right, if you couldn’t tell from the title I’ve finally taken the plunge on a DSLR after all of your advice and help. What did I chose? The Canon EOS 350D.

So far I’ve taken around 100 test shots, the DSLR gives me immensive control over what I’m shooting. I’ve already done some comparisons to my Sony P&S and it wasn’t even worth my time, the 350D blew the Sony away in image quality.

Current kit: Canon EOS 350D Body, 18-55 Kit Lens.
Coming Soon: 2GB CF Card, 50mm 1.8 Lens, 75-300 Lens.

Keep an eye on my Flickr account for photos!

Technorati Tags: camera, photography

Time for another “reader feedback” post as I’d like to get a feel for what you guys like to read about, and equally, what you dont like reading about.

Dont like me posting about design, or blogging? Or absolutely love my visual application reviews? Let me know so I can adapt and give you all what you want!

I’m looking forward to hearing from you (as for the lurkers, here’s a chance to have your say and de-lurk yourself), have a great day guys and girls!

Technorati Tags: blogging

Derek Punsalan, a freelance web designer behind 5ThirtyOne has just released yet another amazing WordPress theme to the public free of charge.

The new theme, Widgetized October Special is a newer version of his great theme Pink For October (which was also made available for free).

The theme is a widgetized release which allows users to manipulate sidebar content - both top and bottom - using convenient drag ‘n drop “widgets� within the Presentations Dashboard preferences pane.

Support Derek and download it here.

I woke up this morning, and checked my RSS feeds as normal. But one thing I do different when checking my RSS feeds is I actually click through to the site if I want to read something of interest.

Macworld UK was one of those sites this morning, I clicked through on a news piece that interested me and was pleasantly surprised at the modernized design of the site.

I have no idea how long it’s been up, but it’s a well needed fresh coat of paint for Macworld and I’m really enjoying it so far.

From the people who brought you My Dream App comes the next big thing in Mac software.

You might have seen other sites talking about MacHeist, but unlike everyone else in our little corner of the internet, we actually know what MacHeist is all about.Here’s what we know:

* The eventual product of the site will be a deeply discounted software bundle only made available to users. I’ve had a look at the contents of the bundle as they stand so far, and they are, as those crazy kids say “killer dude”

* Dozens of Mac developers have signed up to participate in MacHeist

* Throughout the event, users can participate in mysterious “heists” to gain an even deeper discount on the bundle as well as special freebies.

* The event will be invitation only, at least for the first couple of weeks, with users selected out of those who signed up on the MacHeist or My Dream App sites.

TUAW Exclusive: MacHeist details

This looks great, I’m looking forward to this starting. MDA was such a success I’m interested to see how this turns out.

If you own an Intel Macintosh and are using Universal Applications then space is been wasted on your hard-drive in the form of un-necessary code.

Most application are coded in Universal Binary. This means it contains the code to run on both Intel and PPC Mac’s natively. But why would you need to keep the PPC code if your on Intel? Simple, you dont.

Xslimmer is a new application (currently in beta) which strips out the PPC code from your applications to compress the size of the application, and increase it’s performance overall.

To use simply open the application, and you are presented with this window:

Now drag the application/s you want to “xslim” onto the applications icon, and you will be presented with this window:

Now all you need to do is click “Slim!” and it will automatically strip all the un-needed code out of the application. All you need to do now is enjoy the snappy speed of your slimmed applications.

Get your copy of the beta trial here. The trial restrictions are limited to 50MB of code stripping, however if you like it you can purchase it for $9.95.

Congratulations to Mark Z who is the winner of our “Comment to win Disco” competition.

Mark, your copy of Disco will be there soon, to all other participants, thanks for entering. It wont be the last contest you see.

Technorati Tags: burning, cd, notes, software

Sick of web adverts on site’s such as Digg, TUAW, or iLounge? There’s a simple solution to make sure you will never see an advert again, here it is:

1. Download this CSS file.
2. Place it somewhere on your Mac. (I recommend in the ~/Library/Safari folder.)
3. Launch Safari and then open the “Advanced” section of the preferences.
4. From the “Style Sheet” drop-down select “Other” and then browse to the CSS file you just downloaded.
5. Click OK and you’re done!

Now you should never see an advert on a site again, if you want to disable the ad blocking for any reason, simply go back into Safari’s preferences and disable the CSS style-sheet.

Just keep in mine that it’s my sponsors that keep this blog going, so play nicely *winks*

Thanks Sam!