I’ll say it right off the mark, I am no gamer, never have been, never will be. I really don’t see the point in playing games, it’s just not me. Last week The Icon Factory released their first Shareware strategy game, Frenzic. At first I passed off the news when I saw it was a game - today, with nothing else to do I was sifting through NewsFire and decided I’d download it to try it out.

Right now, 6 hours later I can say I am officially addicted to Frenzic, it’s one game I wont get tired of playing down to it’s simple game-play, beautiful UI and application design, and online modes leaving you with much to explore.

Learning how to play Frenzic is simple and easy to get the hang of. I was playing the game like a pro (minus the pro..) within minutes of installation.

As colored pie pieces appear in the center, place them in the outer circles to earn points. Pieces can only be placed into circles that have a corresponding open slot. Once all six slots of a circle are filled, the completed pie is cleared from the board. If a piece is not placed before the timer expires, a life is lost.

A quick ten minute stint of this game while staying up late at night working would help keep you awake due to the immensely fast game-play. It’s ideal to keep your mind focused - that’s if addiction doesn’t take over you.

Frenzic offers you a 60 minute game-play demo. After this period, it costs you $14.95 to purchase with unlimited local game-play, and 6 months free use of online play. For $24.95, you receive unlimited local gameplay, and unlimited online play for life.

Check out Frenzic here.

People who have me added to their iChat buddy list will know my trend of signing in, then promptly signing out. I don’t venture into iChat often to have social conversations with people, that’s what Skype’s for. When I’m seen logging on and off iChat, it’s usually to check if someone I’m looking for is on, if they’re not, I log off.

This trend has become more and more noticeable recently, one of the readers to this blog, Smaran Dayal, decided he’d make a term for my log in log out iChat vogue.

Pull A Wolsey
Verb
1. To log in to an instant messaging service for fewer than 10 seconds and abruptly log out, ignoring a barrage of messages from worshippers of your Internet avatar : Haha, I just pulled a wolsey on you!

One of my major gripes about Apple’s iChat is the lack of an “Invisible” status option. It’s such a small feature, yet one with such a great meaning. iChat’s open-source counterpart Adium has had this feature since as far as I can remember, which I’d love to see incorporated into the next version of iChat.

If Apple include an Invisible status option in iChat, I’ll be able to stay online 24/7, eliminating the dreadful “Pull A Wolsey.”

What are your Instant Messaging rules? Do you stay online 24/7 but use different statuses, or do you just log on for a specific reason?

Author of 43Folders, and co-host of MacBreak Weekly, Merlin Mann is finally starting up his own video podcast, on a topic we cant get enough of - productivity.

The show which is titled “The Merlin Show” is set to be launched on Monday, February 26th, at thirty theoretically productive frames per second.

This looks like it could be fun, I don’t know if I can get too much more productive with my time, but this show looks really interesting due to the fact it’s hosted by productivity whiz of the blogosphere, Merlin Mann.

Look out for it Monday morning, I’ve already subscribed in iTunes, awaiting the first episode.

What blogs and podcasts related to productivity or time management do you read/listen to?

Each and every Friday I post a desktop wallpaper for all of you readers to have a change of scene, and get a different perspective of life through your LCD monitor. The image is 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.

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.

Rumors of Apple refreshing the iMac and Mac Pro lines are riding high as of recent, there are some great things about these two machines, but there are a few things I’d like to see changed, revised, and added. to Apple’s top-selling consumer Macintosh, the iMac.

More Space For RAM

The current batch of iMac has two slots for RAM, one can accomodate a 1GB chip, and the other holds a larger, more expensive 2GB chip. It’d be nice to slim the gap between the iMac and the Mac Pro by adding another RAM slot into the iMac, and increasing it’s capacity to 4GB (2×1GB, 1×2GB).

Easily Replaceable Video Cards

The video card is currently hidden behind stacks of wires and curcuit boards in the current iMac’s interior, even trying to open the iMac to upgrade the video card voids warrenty.

To increase the product life on the iMac it’d be nice to have easy access to an area on the iMac where custom video cards could be inserted and installed at the users will.

Removing The Chin

One thing which looks rather out of place on the current batch of iMac’s, and has since the G5 iMac, is the chin below the screen. I’d love to see the 2-3 inches removed from this area, and I think Apple are quite capable of making this change especially in the 24″ iMac, due to it’s sheer size.

The iMac could be a killer desktop with a few of these changes made, mainly on that form of expandability. Give us more options Apple!

What are you hoping Apple includes in updated iMac’s?

Over the past year I’ve seen many start blogs, and give up after a couple of months, if not weeks, because of the lack of daily visitors and traffic streaming through the tubes.

My advice for the first 6 months of running your blog, is to forget about the readership statistics, and focus on creating and posting stacks of quality content to help build up your archives.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set goals, if you haven’t already, now’s the time to set some goals and be prepared to review them at the end of the year.

To begin this process, goal setting is in order. I personally like to set goals at the start of every year, and look them over each month to track current progress. Whatever date you read this post, make it a task to check over them each month for the next 12 months - the goals you will be setting are over a one year period.

Here are a few goals you should set, along with a few of your own.

Set a value for each of these goals, and make a comment on this article so you have a little push and drive to achieve these goals. In 12 months time, I’ll follow up to this article so you can see if you achieved your goals.

Goals are important. Without goals you are just going with the flow, with goals, you have something to work towards, something lying up ahead in the future to aim at.

What are your blogging goals for this year?

8apps is a new startup company which is aimed at productive people, or people trying to become productive via their suite of online applications, which will help you to work better.

Currently three applications out of the planned eight are live. Handshake, Orchestrate, and Blueprint.

Handshake allows you to connect with friends and buddies, to open up a world of collaborative functionality. You can join groups, and discuss topics with people with similar interests, and send private messages to your buddies.

Orchestrate is a full functional to-do list manager. The way Orchestrate is laid out with the use of Ajax is very innovative and clean looking. Create a new to-do list in one click, and add items to it in another. To display a certain to-do list, simply click on it in the sidebar, and it will appear in the main area of the page. You can open as many to-do lists as you want at once, and there’s a nice visual notification when you check off a completed task.

Blueprint is a way to collaborate and brainstorm together with friends, business partners, or clients. It makes it easy for both parties to get ideas of our your heads and onto a white board, where the information is all collected and can easily be browsed.

Overall I’ve found 8apps very useful so far, and I’m busy incorporating it into my daily workflow to further see if it works for me. I cant wait to see what the other apps do, but for now, I give it a strong rating, you should definitely check it out.

I have 15 invites to give away to the exclusive Invite Only 8apps, if you want in, simply leave a comment below.

Introducing Milk, the most innovative and perfect office desk in the world. It has a built in fish tank, pen holder, garbage bin, file cabinets, height adjuster & the box to hold all of your cable clutter. This is the most amazing, beautiful, stylish, and simplistic desk I have ever laid my eyes on.

Though prospective buyers from around the globe should prepare to be disappointed. The desk is currently only available in Denmark, with no date or even plans set for a worldwide release.

Yes I’ll say it again. This really is the most innovative and stylish desk I’ve ever seen. I’d love to have everything I need to complete my day and get work done an arms reach away, including the trash can and stationary, with no cable clutter in sight.

The only downside is the desks support is in the middle, right where many like to put their legs. If this desk had four legs for support, two on each side, I dont think anyone could pick a negative point up on it.

If this was available to ship worldwide anytime soon, I’d be the first on the list to have one. It really is the ultimate desk, for any Mac user.

What do you think of the Milk desk? Would it be an improvement over your current one?

Gravatar, the extremely popular globally recognized avatar system is back online after been down for months, and causing some users to think it might have died a silent web death.

Registration is now open for the new 2.0 Public Beta. Previously registered members don’t need to sign up for a new account and can continue using their existing login details.

For those who don’t know what Gravatar does, it simply allows you to upload an 80×80 pixel avatar image to your account. When you post a comment on Gravatar enabled sites or blogs, the avatar will automatically show up without you having to complete any further steps.

What kind of image do you use as your global avatar, or do you have separate ones for different sites and forums?

Each and every Friday I post a desktop wallpaper for all of you readers to have a change of scene, and get a different perspective of life through your LCD monitor. The image is 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. If you’re not lucky enough to own a 30″ Cinema Display, use the “Stretch to fill screen” option in Mac OSX.

Today’s desktop caption is: Purple

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.

If you’re looking to purchase a MacBook Pro to add to your computing realm in the near future, but aren’t too sure which one should take the center-place inside your Shopping Cart, there are a few thing you need to go over when choosing which model to buy.

I assume since you’ve chosen to buy a MacBook Pro you will be utilizing it’s enhanced features over the MacBook, whether it’s the extra screen resolution, HD speed/space, RAM limit, or better video card. Now you have to make a decision on 3 different MacBook Pro models, which one should you get, and which is best value?

First step is to choose how larger display you want, if you want the 17″, then your decision making process stops here, go and order it. If you want to stick with the more portable and realistic 15″ model, you have two different further options.

The low range 15″ MacBook Pro features a 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, 120GB HDD, and the ATI Radeon X1600 128MB video card.

The top range 15″ MacBook Pro features a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 120GB HDD, and the ATI Radeon X1600 256MB video card.

The difference in the two machines being the slightly faster processor, an extra GB of RAM, and a video card twice as powerful. Is this worth the $500 price increase over the low range model?

In my person opinion, for the tasks I use my Mac for, yes. If you are going to be using the machine for usage with any of Apple’s Pro production applications including Final Cut, Aperture, and Motion, get the top range 15″ model. But if you are not using any of these pro apps, and will be sticking to the iLife suite to complete these tasks, the low range model will suit you fine, and save you some cash while you’re at it.

The verdict:

Using Apple’s Pro Apps: Top Range 15″ MBP
Using iLife Suite: Low Range 15″ MBP

What laptop are you using, and what were the deciding factors when you bought it?

In the 21st century, not having a backup of your valuable data is almost like placing your computer in the middle of the highway and waiting for it to be destroyed. Thats why I purchased a LaCie Porsche 250GB external hard-drive to use as a back-up drive. Because I value my data.

Design

I had the option to buy a Maxtor 300GB drive $30 cheaper than the LaCie, but chose the LaCie over it for one main reason. It’s style.

The Porsche series cannot be beaten with it’s stylish aluminum inclosure, matching almost any Macintosh setup. It’s nice and clean looking, and there’s an option to stack up to four drives on top of each other if you want to create a huge storage stack.

LaCie has included a glowing status light on the front of the drive to indicate what the drive is doing. When it’s a solid orange, you know the drive is idle, and not currently being accessed.

Speed

I suggest you opt for the FireWire version over the cheaper USB 2.0 model. The speed difference is tremendous. After completing a few benchmarks in store while testing the drive out, and the FireWire model was continuously 3 times faster than the USB one.

Here’s a quick speed test, the applications Mail, Safari, iTunes, Handbrake, and SuperDuper when open at time of test.

Transferring 60MB File To LaCie: 3.3 Seconds
Transferring 60MB File From LaCie: 3.6 Seconds

Heat

One thing the LaCie Porsche drive lacks is a cooling fan. Usually it’s not a good thought when you mix a hardware object which will be connected to a machine all day long, with no fan - but the Porsche drives (lack of) heat when moving files will leave you with a cool head when you knock off at night - knowing your data is safe.

I was able to transfer over 100GB of files straight to the drive without it heating up too much, sure, it was warm to the touch, but nothing excessively due to the tasks I was running. 15 minutes later the drive was cool and quiet once again.

If you’re buying a drive without a cooling fan, make sure the capacity of the drive is not too high. If you need over 500GB of storage space - skip the Porsche drive as it’s far to much of a risk to take for the price you pay should anything go wrong. For the small form factor, and the great price, the LaCie Porsche performs well without the need for a fan.

Noise

Due to it’s lack of a cooling fan, I expected the drive to be relitavely noisy even when not being accessed, but to my surprise, after a few days of moving files back and forth and having the drive sitting idle for hours on end, I’m very happy with the (lack of) noise the drive makes.

I recommend you go into System Preferences, Energy Saver, and check “Sleep Hard Drives When Possible”. It’s virtually silent when idle - and whisper quiet when in use.

Overall, a great purchase to keep your data safe. If you haven’t already got an external hard-drive, the LaCie Porsche is the way to go.

It hasn’t been plain sailing for the Disco development team over the recent months leading up the the big 1.0 release of the disk burning application Disco. However, all aside, they’ve come out on top with a top quality release of one of the most visually pleasing applications of 2007.

Some of the new features this release incorporates over the previous betas include full smoke support on almost any Mac - yes, that means MacBook users can now play with the smoke, one of Disco’s many fun UI features. A completely rewritten Discography database engine, brand new naming functionality, and over 30 other improvements and fixes.

If you’re planning to purchase Disco, I have a coupon code for you to save 25% off your order - therefore lowering the Disco price to just $11.21.

Coupon Code: glennwolsey

Get version 1.0 of Disco here, the free trial allows you to burn up to 7 CD’s before having to buy it.

Contest: I have two copies of Disco to give away thanks to Austin Sarner. To enter the draw, simply make a comment on this post to enter the draw.

Update: Congratulations to the two winners, Aleks and Sumeet Singh. Your serials are on the way.

Apple have announced that the first official Apple retail store is coming soon to Melbourne, Australia. The store is part of a $200 million redevelopment the city is currently undergoing.

The store will feature a glass atrium ceiling, and will be adjacent to a hotel and shopping complex connected by a clear, circular-panel walkway.

I’m really excited about seeing Apple expand further across the globe with their first store in Oceania. It’s exciting news seeing something from Apple this close to home (okay, 2000KM is not that close).

Now Apple, where’s an Apple Store for Auckland City, New Zealand? I’ll be first in-line for the opening with money in hand.

Have you even been to an Apple store, and if so, what one/s?

Blogging is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Sure, writing content might seem simple, and even enjoyable, but what about all the other stressful tasks a blogger must complete? Such as SEO, monetizing, and gaining readers? These four blogs will help you out with all of the tasks listed above, and more.

ProBlogger

ProBlogger is written by professional blogger Darren Rowse. ProBlogger is the most popular blog about blogging on the web. Darren typically makes around 25 top quality posts each and every week, on a range of topics including attracting readers to your blog, improving your writing skills, and earning money.

John Chow

John Chow’s personal blog covers many different topics, but primarily monetizing your blog. He provides many insightful posts full of tips on how to make money from your blog using different services including Google Adsense, Text Link Ad’s, and ReviewMe.

Daily Blog Tips

Daily Blog Tips is a blog updated daily full of short posts full of great information to help your blogging. There are many posts on how to design a great blog, lots of links to other blogs which will take you even further with your career, and more. Daily Blog Tips is in my RSS reader because it’s updated daily, and the entries are short, helpful, and to the point.

Instigator Blog

Instigator Blog is mainly compromised of posts teaching you how to market your blog, and how to blog for businesses. The posts are mainly longer than you will see on the other blogs listed in this list, and they are packed with detail. Instigator Blog has been running since April 2006, and has since built up a large archive of handy posts full of tips and tricks.

Related Resources

Are you looking to work at home business? Well, you have many available options in the form of PPC advertising. For this all you need is a website. Start with domain name registration and then purchase web hosting. Many web hosting companies sell domain names also. Decide about windows or Linux hosting according to your requirements and launch your website globally. Next step is directory submission for making your site popular and bring some extra traffic to your website. If you start a shopping website then the best option for you will be ebay affiliate as they have strong market reputation.

Each and every Friday I post a desktop wallpaper for all of you readers to have a change of scene, and get a different perspective of life through your LCD monitor. The image is 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 caption is: Vivid 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.

Tony Hung, a guest poster on Darren Rowse’s popular blog ProBlogger has written an article entitled “5 Prerequisites For Blogging Success”.

Tony covers 5 highly detailed tips on what you can do to get the most from your blog. These are no short easy tips, if you’re looking to become a successful blogger it’ll take some time and great effort, Tony highlights the exact way you can go about it in the article.

If you have time on your hands, are not worried about hard work, and are looking to become a successful blogger, check out his post while you’re waiting for my upcoming series, Blogging 202. If you have any suggestions on what you want to get out of Blogging 202, let me know!

The prestigious 9rules blog network (in which I am a member of) is based around 9 main rules. I decided to take the 9rules and apply them to things you can all relate to; things which will help you improve your life and become a better person.

1. Love What You Do.

No matter what you are doing you need to enjoy it to be any good at it. Start to enjoy what you do, don’t just do it for the sake of it. Immerse yourself in the task in hand and take any opportunity you get.

2. Never Stop Learning.

People learn from their mistakes, and in turn learn from experience. Take note of these things, if you find out a certain type of post is working well on your blog, note it down. If you are at work, or school and are really not enjoying what you are doing, read rule one and start making the most of your time and opportunities.

3. Form Works With Function.

Make sure things in your life and house serve a function, and serve that function well. Don’t furnish your home based on what looks the best, research and furnish it to work well for how you live your life. Keep the two balanced.

4. Simple Is Beautiful.

Things dont need to be over complicated, keep them simple. If you are assigned a task to do, if it takes less than a few minutes do it right away. Keep your life and routine simple, dont take on too much at once, but do your absolute best and put in as much effort to what you have on your plate.

5. Work Hard, Play Hard.

Dont spend all your time focusing on work, mix up work time and play time, and make sure they are defined well. When you are doing one, you are only doing that.

“Zone” out and keep at one task at a time, dont mix homework with TV, complete one, then move into the other once you are completed.

6. You Get What You Pay For.

Dont go buying a cheap DVD player and be overly disappointed when it stops working 3 months later, if you want top quality, you will have to pay top notch for it. Dont go thinking you can skimp short and still receive something top quality.

Pay a reasonable price, and you should receive a good or service of reasonable quality. This goes for buyers and sellers.

7. When You Talk, We Listen.

Talking, writing, or blogging, no matter what it is, do it for a reason, with intent, and with passion. Be confident, people will take notice.

8. Must Constantly Improve.

Keep working and striving for improvement. You might be the best cook in the world, the best tennis player in your city, or the best blogger in your niche, there are always things you can improve on. Dont stop at success, find things you can work on to keep striving for improvement.

9. Respect Your Inspiration.

If you stumble across a cool idea, make it known where it was found. Dont just stop there, improve on that idea to make it your own. Even better than that, set your own trends, and watch others follow.

Resizing images is something you need to do at some stage during a day at the computer, no matter what working field you’re in. There are many different applications you can use to resize images, but nothing beats using Automator, an application bundled with OSX.

Why is Automator so great? Because it allows you to install a plugin, meaning when you right click on a file in the Finder, you are presented with a contextual menu, leaving you one click away from resizing an image.

The first step is to open Automator. Once it’s open, click on “Preview”, and drag the “Scale Images” action to the main window.

When you drag the workflow into Automator it will create two actions. You only want the first action in your workflow, so click the little close button in the top right hand corner of the first action to remove it.

Now click File, Save As Plug In.

Type in a name for your plugin. It’s important you use something that is descriptive for what you will be using it for, as this is what appears in the Finders Automator menu.

Time to resize your image/s. Click on a single image or highlight a bunch, right click, then move the mouse down to Automator, and click on the plugin you just made. Automator will automatically run in the background, and resize your images for you.

Creating an installing plug-ins for various websites and blogs I write for has been a huge time saver, now when I was to resize a bunch of images I’m one click away.

I spend around two hours each and every day in my RSS reader, what do I gain from this? I get the latest news in my favorite industries, and a few good articles to read, but nothing more. The time spent in my RSS reader is wasted in my opinion, the less time I’m behind NewsFire, the more work I can complete.

I recently just sat down and cleared out my RSS reader, removing over 200 feeds to a new count of under 50. In the past I woke up to around 500 new RSS items, now it’s around 100. The time it takes to clear the new items has decreased ten fold, doing wonders for my productivity.

How did I choose what to remove and what to keep? Firstly, I went through all the blogs which are updated more than 10 times daily, and choose which ones were important to me, TUAW was the only one.

Next I went through blogs which hadn’t updated for more than a month, and un-subscribed from all of those. The final step was to go through and pick out 30 of my favorite blog feeds - ones which I always get excited when I see the unread icon next to. I kept all of these blogs and removed the others which I was less fussed about.

The result? 50 feeds, less updates, less time in RSS, and more free time to blog.

Download my OPML file.

I’ve been wanting to start a blog based around Macintosh applications for a long time, as no other blog has covered this niche too well in the past. With MacApper, myself along with my crew of contributing authors aim to fill that niche, and offer top quality Mac software reviews, previews, interviews, tips and giveaways to the Mac community.

To mark the launch of MacApper we have published our first interview with Dustin MacDonald, developer of the popular password management application Wallet. We are giving three readers the chance to win a copy of Wallet on the blog - all you have to do is leave a comment on the interview to be in the draw.

Finally, a niche site dedicated to Mac Applications. Get ready to fill your applications folder, as we have many app reviews, interviews, and contests up our sleeve.

Each and every Friday I post a desktop wallpaper for all of you readers to have a change of scene, and get a different perspective of life through your LCD monitor. The image is 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 caption is: Flax Bushes. I have had so many Flickr, blog, and email requests for this wallpaper in the past I decided it was time to release the wallpaper that resides on my Mac 99% of the time.

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.

Want an application which will help you track and remember any password you enter on sites? 1Passwd is a program that keeps track of all your passwords and automatically fills them in when you visit a site.

Safari does this task well, but it’s not the best if you have hundreds of different passwords for sites, including multiple logins for web searches such as Gmail or Hotmail.

1Passwd works seamlessly Safari, OmniWeb, DEVONagent, FireFox, Camino, and Flock! Best of all, 1Passwd stores all your information into the built-in Keychain allowing you top access the same passwords from anywhere, meaning you can switch between various browsers without having to worry about a certain browser not having your login details stored for a certain website.

The interface of the application is really organized and layed out nicely. It’s very simple to browse through your passwords, web forms, and secure notes.

1Passwd allows you to automatically generate strong passwords at the click of a button - handy for making strong passwords.

There are a few things that could be improved with 1Passwd, every time you visit a site you have to enter your master password for 1Passwd into a pop-up window. After a few hours this gets very annoying. An option to change this preference would be a great addition to a helpful application, I would like to be able to set it to ask for my master password when i wake up my machine each morning - not every site I visit.

Overall 1Passwd is a helpful application if you are tracking hundreds of web logins, and continually switching between browsers.

Do you use Safari’s built in password and form filler, or do you use a separate application for the task of auto-filling passwords and forms?

Disclosure: This is a ReviewMe powered post.