You might’ve noticed some extra files with the intended files downloaded via BitTorrent. Two of the extras are the ‘NFO’ and ‘SFV’ files. Contrary to what you may have thought, they aren’t there for no reason.

SFV stands for Simple File Verification and is used to check if you’ve downloaded all the pieces of the files. Apps that open these files will check the checksums of the downloaded files with respect to the checksums in the ‘SFV’ file. If they match, all is fine. If they don’t match, you know which part of the file you need to download again.

SuperSFV - SFV utility for the Mac

SuperSFV’s interface is clean, supports drag and drop and uses very few system resources. When you start to verify an ‘SFV’ file, it’ll check the checksums of all the files downloaded and let you know the stats for the number of files verified, checksums failed and number of errors. SuperSFV can check ‘SFV’ files using CRC32, MD5, or SHA-1 hash functions.

If you use BitTorrent extensively, SuperSFV is a utility that you’ll find handy. It is freeware and can be download from here.

Widescreen monitors have taken the market by storm in the last couple of years. Apple’s entire lineup is widescreen and almost every monitor being sold these days is a widescreen one. So why is Apple Mail still designed to work better with monitors sporting a standard aspect ratio?

Thankfully, the WideMail plugin, developed by Dane Harnett, solves that problem, and brilliantly at that. WideMail not only moves your message viewer to the side but introduces another interface element that formats your message headers in a special “WideMail” column. What you are left with is a clean three column layout that makes full use of your widescreen monitor. 

WideMail also comes with a separate preference pane so that you can customise the whole look to your liking. In the General preferences, you can adjust the spacing between the message cells, have them use alternate colours, and add grids lines to them. You can also quickly move your message viewer back to the bottom, its original place, if you feel like. 

The formatting pane allows you to customise the way the WideMail Column is shown. You can remove elements like date and subject, and even adjust the spacing using one of the many little devices in the cloud. And just so you know, the default settings for all this is configured just right so you don’t even have to customise anything. This guy is certainly taking tips from Apple!

Remember, though, that once you install the plugin, you need to enable the WideMail Column and disable the other columns. To do that, you’ll have to right click on the column bar (immediately above your messages) and deselect the columns like Subject, Date, and Sender, and enable the “WideMail Column”. 

What’s more? You could combine this view with the threaded conversations tip I mentioned earlier to make your entire inbox a sleek and organised place for all your conversations.

The plugin, at version 0.5.1, is a free download and requires Leopard for (who uses Tiger anyway?). If you do use it on a regular basis, consider donating something as your token of appreciation and to support the continued development of the project.

VLC, the popular media player, has been updated to 0.9.2, and brings with it a host of new features—a new UI, fullscreen controller, and simplified settings and dialogs—most of which were already present in the 0.8.6b ‘Leopard’ version.

What’s new?

Here are some highlight of the changes:

I noticed some improvements here and there, like how it behaves while switching to full screen mode, faster and smoother seeking (still no frame preview while doing so though), and better meta data editing options. This version might not bring about any noticeable changes but is worth the update for the small improvements and bug fixes nevertheless.

Everyone and their mother-in-law must have downloaded and reviewed Google Chrome browser by now, except Mac & Linux users. While we wait for the gypsies at Google to release a native version, the folks at Codeweavers have ported it over to Mac and Linux already using their CrossOver emulation technology (yeah, I know, WINE Is Not an Emulator, but I’m not exactly sure what to call it instead). They’re calling it CrossOver Chromium (why such a short name, people!).

Google Chrome on Mac OS X 

This should be used for experimental purposes only and CrossOver developers declare that it’s only “proof of concept, for fun, and to showcase what Wine can do”. CrossOver Chromium is available as a DMG file for free (unlike CrossOver Games or CrossOver Office). All you Safari and Firefox users, feel free to give this a test run and comment here on how good or bad this thing is. I, on the other hand, am completely satisfied with Safari and wouldn’t approach this one with a ten-foot stick.

I’m very wary of the superlatives affixed to software titles. We have StuffIt “Deluxe”, Windows Vista “Ultimate” (ultimate indeed!), Nero “Professional” and Rammohan “Banaaraswaale”! Generally, they all tend to be bloated and resource hogs (except that last one there, perhaps). I prefer applications which are light on the system and cut out the extra fat wherever possible.

The Unarchiver, a small archive unpacker program in Mac OS X, abides by the textbook definition of just such an application. It can open ZIP, RAR, TAR, 7-zip, LhA and StuffIt files as well as those with some other extensions I’ve never even heard of before. It has never failed me so far and has successfully unpacked every single archive I’ve thrown at it till date.

I always like clean and uncluttered interfaces and this one sports one that is simple yet efficient. It exits automatically after the extraction is done and the RAM consumed while unpacking is less than 10 MB. You can also have it automatically delete archives after files have been extracted from them.

The Unarchiver is a must have for every Mac OS X user out there who has to deal with archives other than those of the ZIP variety. After all, why spend $80 on a “deluxe” app when you can get the same basic functionality for free and cut out all the unwanted bloat!

The night angels were working hard and just as the sun rays hit the land of the rising sun, Adium 1.3 was unleashed upon the face of this earth.

This point update is a big one. It features a complete interface overhaul, specially with regard to the contact manager, which combines all your contacts in one window. It also eliminates duplicate contacts across different services.

Another addition to the list of extensive services is Facebook. Just a few days back we reviewed an early beta of Gabtastik. I guess we can forget about that for now since Adium is going to do that and much more.

Contact search has also been added to the standard contact list window. And since we cannot possibly mention the rest of the extensive list of changes here, we will go ahead and just say, major performance improvements and millions of bug fixes.

So if you a heavy IM user, don’t hesitate in downloading this 22MB update from the Adium website.

Did you know that there are three hundred different ways to control iTunes without even accessing its window? Well, maybe not three hundred exactly, but I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere close to that (and by “pretty sure”, I mean I just pulled that figure out of my hat). Although most of these methods require third party tools collectively referred to as iTunes extenders, there are some that are built right into the system.

iTunes, by default, neither has a menu bar item nor does it provide any keyboard shortcuts for pause/play/skip. But lest you forget, you are running Mac OS X Leopard, which is so powerful it could launch a missile that could effectively destroy Bill Gates’s house! So controlling iTunes should be a trivial task, right? With the post on how to target Gates’s house saved for a later time, let’s do something productive. 

First, I’m going to demonstrate how you can control the system without using any third party applications at all.

AppleScripts.
Mac OS X ships with built-in support for AppleScripts. You don’t have to learn any language to use them. Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes will give you more than your required dose of AppleScripts that you can use to do various things with iTunes. Continue Reading »

Facebook has taken the world by storm. Almost everyone who is on the Internet has a Facebook account. And for good reason. Google’s Orkut is just left behind, trying to imitate its features, like applications and the other crazy whatnot that Facebook is famous for.

One of those features is the Live Chat that was introduced recently. However, unlike something like Gmail chat, which can be used with a Google Talk client or any other Jabber based client, Facebook’s online chat was restricted to the online browser. 

In comes Gabtastik, the desktop client which provides for a much better chat experience with your Facebook buddies than the web based interface. It is actually just an application which loads the Facebook page via the Safari webkit engine, something we have seen happening in other applications in recent times. However, with badge notifications on the Dock icon and the look and feel of most native desktop clients, this app is a surefire winner. Gabtastik also promises Google Talk and Meebo integration, which pretty much sums up all there is to it.

Unfortunately, in my tests, the replies were not registered during the chat. However, given that it is in its early stages of development (ver 0.3), I’m willing to let that slide for now. Grab Grabtastic for Mac by clicking here, or if you belong to the other side, you can get the Windows version as well.

[Ed note: For what it’s worth, Adium’s latest beta version also supports Facebook Chat.]

I bear great news for Safari users. Cooliris (previously, PicLens) is now fully Safari 3.1 compatible! The previous release only supported Firefox on the Mac and Safari users had to make do with a rather outdated version. According to the developers, Safari didn’t have market share enough to warrant them making a new release specifically for it—I guess times have changed now. However, it’s worth nothing that this is a beta version and should only be used in non-mission critical environments.

Cooliris, if you don’t know what it is, is a Flash plugin that offers an alternative way of browsing YouTube, Flickr, Amazon and others such Web 2.0 applications/websites. And, by alternative, I mean that this is completely different from the ways you’ve been used to so far.

Cooliris puts you in a fullscreen 3D workspace, using Flash, and lets you browse sites in a stunning ‘3D wall’, much like the flowing thumbnails in the Apple TV ad. You have to see it to believe it! There’s also a filmstrip view, but I tend to stick to the 3D Wall myself, which is just too spectacular to bother with anything else. Check out their guided tour to see what the fuss is all about.

It also automatically detects when you are on a CoolIris compatible page like, say, Flickr, and puts a little play icon next to the image to immediately jump into fullscreen mode. The experience is nothing short of stunning!

In a bid to promote this plugin, the Cooliris team will be giving all readers of Smoking Apples a stunning discount of 40% off the full price of absolutely free. So, in effect, you are saving almost Rs. 0 just by reading Smoking Apples! Hurry, though, because this offer is valid only, like, forever. Go, grab it already.

The fine folks at iPresentee are offering 100 high quality objects which can be used in Pages, Keynote or Microsoft Office. Each object can be customized—the sizes can be altered, they can be rotated, have any level of transparency, outfitted with shadows or even overlapped with one another to create extra effects.

These objects are beautiful enough to be used as icons in your web projects, blogs, websites or as icons on your Mac.

[Via Lifehacker]