Born in 1989, TypeIt4Me is still a teenager youthful 20 in human years, yet old & mature in Mac years.

No matter how much you type, I’ll save you wear and tear on those wrists & fingers.

• Never type your full name or email signature again;

• Never hunt around for that standard contract clause;

• Type a short abbreviation and have it expand to a word, a phrase, even several pages worth of text (with pictures, too);

• Trigger AppleScripts with your abbreviations instead of reaching for a menu or pressing obscure keyboard combinations.

Anytime you enter text in your Mac by typing it at the keyboard, TypeIt4Me can help you do it faster and more accurately. First you define a number of abbreviations and the full text entries that they represent, then you watch the Mac expand them on the fly even as you continue typing.

New in version 4.1:

TypeIt4Me 4.1 provides one new feature: a filter field just under the list of clippings in the system prefs panel:

Typing text in it will filter the list of abbreviations to show only those which include the typed text in either the abbreviation or the clipping.

For example:

Gives me:

System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later

System Support:
PPC/Intel

$27.00 Shareware

For more information, visit:
http://ettoresoftware.com/EttoreSoftware/About_TypeIt4Me.hl

[via AppleLink]

The Geneforge saga revolves around the rise and fall of an extremely powerful race of magicians known as Shapers who have the power to create sentient beings to do their bidding. The earlier games in the series deal with the subsequent rebellion as some of the sentient beings were pissed off about the whole being-controlled-by-the-Shapers thing. Geneforge 5 allows you to play as part of the rebellion or an ally of the Shapers. Through your journey, you’ll work with different sects, go on quests, choose sides, as well as learn close-combat, magic, and creature-creating abilities.

Geneforge 5 reminds me of Blizzard’s Diablo series, which divides characters into different class types, features a distant third person isometric perspective, and also tasks the character with hoarding lots of dropped loot in their pursuit of some goal. Of course, holding certain items will encumber you in combat, so you also have to choose what loot you grab carefully.

Real-time adventure mode switches to turn-based combat mode when you encounter enemies, something that happens constantly unless you opt to avoid them. The combat uses a classic system involving items, spells, and creations as your tools of destruction. In a repetitive pattern, you’ll encounter the same poorly animated worms and troll-like creatures in the various dungeons you explore. The AI in the game is challenging and you’ll want to quicksave often because you’ll likely die several times the first time through an area.

The game allows you to use diplomacy and stealth in certain situations, but as any RPG-fan will tell you, the easiest way to gain experience is to level up through combat and quests. That means you’ll get used to seeing that same firebolt animation hundreds of times in a given session playing Geneforge 5.

Various maps let you see which of the dozens of areas you’ve visited in the game’s progress, and a green outline denotes if you’ve cleared an area. The journal feature is also helpful to keep track of your quests, and the item, spell, and weapon menus are easy to use.

Since the mythology of Geneforge is built around the magical Shapers, when selecting a class you’ll want to pick something that has strong shaping abilities. But the Shaper creatures aren’t particularly innovative in terms of gameplay—the pets that you create are similar to ones you’d find in other RPGs. So despite all the in-game text about evolving creatures and perfecting control, the shaped creatures look and feel worn. “Evolving” your creatures involves maxing out their stats as you gain experience, much like you would enhance your spells and weapons. Their appearance, actions, and use don’t alter save on a superficial level. Your “shaping” skills are limited to cookie-cutter creatures like dinosaurs and trolls, and then watch them change color as they get stronger.

I’m new to the Geneforge series, and the story and gameplay took a while for me to get into, as my character kept on going in an out of amnesia and my guide didn’t speak in complete sentences (which was intended to convey she too was just waking up from control by the Shapers). There are multiple paths, sects, and ways to solve a problem and the lack of a linear plot may turn off some players. Simply, there are so many plots, subplots, and characters to keep track of that only dedicated RPG fans won’t be turned off. While the lack of graphical sophistication lends the game to an old school feel, the monotonous environments and unidentifiable characters make it hard to feel attachment to the world. There is plenty of text to get through to get the full experience, so the game feels sluggish coming out of the gates, but rewards players who stick with it.

The game will take you many hours to play, and that’s only with one character. With nine classes, differing sects that open up different maps, and dozens of endings, the complete experience requires an investment not in hours, but days.

Macworld’s buying advice You have to give Spiderweb credit—the Geneforge series goes toe-to-toe with bigger publishers and humbly, but adeptly delivers quality gameplay and story. At $28, it won’t cost you much to check out. The hint book costs an additional $7 through Spiderweb’s online store, which is quite helpful for some of the more difficult puzzles and if you want to learn how to unlock some of the different endings. Geneforge 5: Overthrow is definitely a niche game, and therefore hard to recommend to a wide audience. If you enjoy deep, long RPGs with a complex storyline and love old-school turn-based combat then Geneforge 5 will make you nostalgically satisfied, like watching an old 80s movie would. If you’re a casual gamer, not an RPG fan, or don’t have several days to invest to understanding the Shaper society, then you’ve probably stopped reading this review paragraphs ago.
[via Macworld]

Here I presents you 8 twitter applications for Mac OS X based on popularity, downloads and ratings on MacUpdate, Version Tracker and i use this

Twitterrific ($14.95)

Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or “tweets” to the Twitter community website. The application’s user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac’s desktop.

TwitterPod (Free)

TwitterPod is a Twitter client with message store capability. The messages by your friends and by yourself will all be stored and displayed on an easy-to-navigate window.

Twucket (Free)

Twucket is a new Twitter client for Mac OS X Leopard. It’s designed to use a minimal amount of screen real estate, so you can keep an eye on your Twitter feed in a window small enough to leave open all the time.

Tototl (Free)

Tototl is aimed to provide a lightweight and easy to use desktop client for the Twitter Service on the Mac OSX Platform.

twhirl (Free)

twhirl is a desktop client for the popular microblogging platform Twitter that builds on the very cool Adobe AIR runtime. AIR allows desktop software development using popular web techniques like XHTML/CSS or Flash/Flex. twhirl requires the most recent version of AIR (beta 3) to be installed on the client computer.

NatsuLion (Free)

NatsuLion is a simple Twitter client for Mac OSX Leopard.

Its goals are the follows:

• Be simple
• Feature icons
• Easy to use for Twitter light users

Jetwit (Free)

Jetwit is a simple application for posting messages to Twitter, Facebook and displaying them as a Skype mood text.

Syrinx (Free)

Syrinx is a free, customizable Twitter client with a strong, efficient workflow. Experience your tweets in color by customizing the background colors or using the built in themes. Keep track of unread tweets using the intuitive new bookmarking system. Search your tweets to find what you missed. Now with Growl support, and a new Friends window.

Xylescope not only helps in understanding and utilizing web standards, it also uses web standards to achieve its magic. Xylescope’s source views are taking advantage of Safari’s rendering engine to achieve their unique formatting.

While Xylescope transparently converts source code into richly structured HTML, the formatting of the source views is completely governed by style sheets that can be modified by the user! Every single detail of the way source code is presented is completely under your control. This might seem mind-boggling at first but you will soon become familiar with the new power it provides.

Review by MacApper

Cultured Code’s Xyle scope retails for $19.95 and you can download a free trial from their site. It is a wonderful tool for anyone learning CSS, or anyone who just wants to see how others do CSS, wishing to improve their own. It is not, however, a CSS editor and should not be compared to one. For actual editing purposes, it is mainly only used to do the finishing touches of Web pages.

Read the full review here

More info and purchase Xyle Scope

3D support is one of the major upgrades you’ll find in this version of After Effects. Of course, After Effects has been creating 3D environments for years, but the individual elements making up those environments were actually 2D, simply animated in a 3D space. The new After Effects, however, can import true 3D objects contained in the PSD files created by Adobe Photoshop Extended. A 3D object—a car, a plane, a gun, a purse, or whatever—will keep its 3D depth as you animate a camera around it, apply lights, and other effects. One caveat: After Effects can’t model in 3D, and it doesn’t apply advanced lighting effects, such as interactive reflections or specular highlights, to objects. These features are still the realm of dedicated 3D modeling/rendering programs, but After Effects’ 3D approach will still pay off handsomely for tons of different projects, letting animators skip the learning curve and hassle of using dedicated 3D software.

After Effects CS4 also offers much-improved motion tracking—for example, you can place a 2D image on a moving surface, such as a billboard on the side of a truck. Motion tracking isn’t new to After Effects, but while its earlier rendition worked fine for simple projects, it could fall apart in a few scenarios. If tracked pixels moved out of the camera’s frame, for instance, or if they got blurry, lost contrast, or became distorted as your tracking subject or the camera changed orientation, motion tracking could lose its effectiveness. The new After Effects, on the other hand, includes a standalone program called Mocha that handles many of those tracking challenges in stride. Mocha does this by using better edge detection technology and also by letting you draw multipoint mattes around objects that are important in the scene, helping Mocha determine where to focus its attention. The end result is that many tough tracking projects can now be accomplished in a few minutes, but the drawback to Mocha is that it requires you to learn a new interface and import your tracking data back into After Effects. Mocha isn’t rocket science, however, and going through a couple of tutorials will be enough to get you up to speed.

Another set of new features in After Effects helps you stay organized and efficient as you work with large, complex projects. A QuickSearch text box now appears in your Project and Composition panels, giving you a fast Spotlight-style keyword search that encompasses every element in your project. Begin typing the partial name of a composition in your Project window, and you’ll see everything else disappear but your matches. Type a layer name into the Composition panel, and you’ll see that layer showcased on the Timeline. Type in the name of an effect or a property, such as rotation or position, and you’ll see only the layers using that criteria, along with their relevant keyframes. What’s more, a new flowchart view can show all your nested compositions flowing into their parent compositions, helping you visualize how your project is organized.

Adobe has given After Effects many more nips and tucks as well. You’ll get a few more effects filters, such as Cartoon. There’s also metadata support, letting you search through metadata that came with your original media and then add your own. And now you can export your compositions to Flash, keeping layers and keyframes intact. The list of tweaks is long. Suffice to say that there are plenty of new tricks to interest long-time users in an upgrade.

Bottom Line

After Effects may be mature, but it’s hardly showing its age. Thanks to smart, relevant new features and upgrades, After Effects remains the gold standard for Mac motion graphics and compositing.

COMPANY: Adobe Systems, Inc.
CONTACT: www.adobe.com
PRICE: $999; $299 upgrade
REQUIREMENTS: Multicore Intel processor; Mac OS 10.4.11 or later

[via MacLife]

Find Any File 1.0.2 is a free program for Mac OS 10.4 and later that lets you search for files on your disks, primarily on HFS formatted ones.

Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver’s fast search operations.

This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content (use Spotlight for that)!
Find Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn’t, e.g. those inside bundles and packages and in inside folders that are excluded from Spotlight search (i.e. system files), and Find Any File is fast. Not always as fast as Spotlight, but faster than other, similar file search tools you might find for the Mac.

Features

Find Any File has a few hidden gems:

1. If you hold the Option key down while choosing Find, you are asked for an administrator password – and then Find Any File will restart with root permissions, being able to find really any file on your Mac’s volumes (something that Spotlight won’t do).

2. It sports a new hierarchical view for the found items. You can switch to it using Command-2 or click on the right little icon at the top of the results window.

3. You can save your entered searches to files (they’ll have the extension “.faf”). You can later open them again from within the Find Any File application, or you can double click them in the Finder – in the latter case the search will automatically start, unless you hold down the Option key while Find Any File opens the document.

Limitations

This tool’s design was inspired by the Classic Mac OS’ Find File application, hence its UI design might look a little old fashioned. And the Icons aren’t snazzy, either.

Using this tool on volumes that are not Mac (HFS, HFS+) formatted, including network volumes, may not work well – or even not at all. You’ll notice. This won’t change – it’s the nature of this program to depend on the efficient search operations designed for HFS volumes.

The user interface of this app gets sluggish when it’s performing a search. This is mostly out of my control, as this app is written in REALbasic, which has a rather unsatisfying multi-threading implementation.

Key Features:
• Can search as root user
• Saveable queries
• Folder view for results

New in version 1.0.2:
Move to Trash works now; volume selection is observed with root search and saved searches; results update after moving items.

System requirements:
Mac 10.4 or later

Freeware

For more information, visit:
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/

Button Builder is designed to make all of your buttons, whether it’s for a web site or an application for the Mac, quickly and easily. Every aspect of the app is tailored so that you can get in, make your buttons, and get out. The user interface is simple and streamlined so that you only need to focus on your results.

You can read full review here

Battle for Wesnoth 1.5.7 is a free, fantasy based strategy game designed for OS X, that has been downloaded over 2.9 Million times! Build up a great army, gradually turning raw recruits into hardened veterans. In later games, recall your toughest warriors and form a deadly host. You can choose units from a large pool of specialists, and hand-pick a force with the right strengths to fight on different terrains. You can also create your own custom units, compose your own maps or create your own full blown campaigns.

There are also versions available for Windows, GNU, Linux and Solaris.

Note: This is a beta release.

FEATURES

• 3 Bug Fixes Corrected (New)
• Translations Updated (New)
• Play With Up To 8 Friends
• Over 200 Unit Types
• Custom Designed Maps
• Unlimited Random Maps
• Hundreds Of Campaign Scenarios Available For Download
• Make Your Own Maps, Factions Or Campaigns
• Supports 42 Languages
• Much More

More information and downloads the game at developer’s website

CosmoPod is almost universal. It will work on most sites broadcasting video content.

CosmoPod lounges in Safari’s address bar and activates whenever a video is detected on the website you’re on.
In a single click, the video is downloaded and converted to a friendly video format, and added to your iTunes Library so it’s ready for your next iPod / iPhone / AppleTV sync.

Take YouTube, Google Video, Daily Motion, and many more … with you, everywhere.

- Play against the computer or a friend.
- Five difficulty levels for the computer opponent: from novice to expert.
- Unlimited undo of your moves.
- Highlighting of legal moves (optional).
- Highlighting of the last piece placed (optional).
- Move suggestions.
- Automatic saving of the current game when you quit.

Reversi requires OS X 10.3.9 or later, and works on both Intel and PowerPC Macs.

New in Version 1.1.0:
– Added a menu item to immediately start a new game with unchanged settings.
- The position of the board (spin and tilt) can be locked in place.
- The spin and tilt settings are now saved between sessions, so you can position the board how you like it, and it will stay that way.
- Added a preference for faster piece flipping animation.
- The board is drawn larger to better fill the window.

Download