The second icon in the menu bar is a blacked-out bird with a green LED on it. That, folks, is the multi-instant messenger client Adium. It allows you to connect to various IM servers such as Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, ICQ, Jabber (including Google Talk), Bonjour (for local LAN chatting), MySpace, and even junk, err, stuff from Lotus and Novell. It’s the Trillian of Mac, basically. Like Trillian, Adium lets you skin your look-n-feel in many, many, ways. I opted to go with the Aqualicious theme which gives me that iChat from Leopard feel. With a slew of other Xtras, such as Emoticons, Sound Sets, Status Icons, Service Icons, Menu Bar Icons, Plugins, and a ton of other stuff, you could lose a lot of time just customizing Adium let alone chatting with your friends. My only wish for Adium is for video conferencing (which as been in the works for over two years.) I’d like Skype chatting, too.
Speaking of Skype, you’ll notice that right next to the Adium icon. The green check mark with the little clock. Known more for its video and audio presentation than for text chatting, Skype brings Mac users into a new world of Voice over IP (VoIP). Allowing anyone with a Mac running Mac OS X or a PC running Windows XP or higher to talk for free, Skype is an incredible application that should be on anyones Menu Bar. If you’re wondering why I use Skype rather than iChat, that would be because of just the better video presentation and audio than iChat could hope to offer over AOL lines. iChat has a great interface, but AOL is its weakest link and thus, Skype is my way of going. You’ll also find Skype to be pretty much the default method for communication in the business world. While Skype does have some rough edges, over all, it is a great way to communicate to millions of people world wide for free.
Next in line on the communication bin is Dialectic. Formally John Phone Tools, Dialectic lets your Mac dial phone numbers for you. The little gear with a phone jack in the center on the Menu Bar lets you enter a phone number by hand or from the clipboard for dialing. You can search your Address Book for numbers as well. A slew of features are easily accessible from the Dialectic icon allowing you to decrease your phone call dialing times. No more “typos” on the keypad and no more tired fingers for your power users. The greatest thing about Dialectic is that it works with major VoIP carriers such as Vonage and Broadvoice. Simply select the number to dial and your phone rings with the connected call. Other dialing methods include sending to a Bluetooth device and even emitting the DMTF tones in your speakers to send to the phones mic. All very cool and very useful.
Last of the communication items is that little bird (between the white check mark and the music note). Birds tweet and so do I. Thus, using Twitterrific is a very helpful tool. Twitterrific keeps you up to date of those you’re following or lets you open the flood gates and shows every new tweet coming in. You can easily respond to tweets and click on embedded links from it’s nicely laid out pop-up (or HUD-like) window. At the bottom of that window, you can also quickly add your 140 characters of thought as well. Fully compatible with Growl, Twitterrific is one sweet tweet!
.Mac Sync keeps pretty much everything in sync between my MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. Sometimes one will wipe out the others address book or something silly but that’s why I back up nightly with SuperDuper, too. 
For most of my purposes, .Mac Sync works but I’d love to see more remote disk space and a little better robust services for weeding out systems and preventing them from stepping on each other.
AppleScripts menu item gives me easy access to my scripts which is nice. I guess I could disable the menu item and just use Quicksilver, but when you have a 30 inch screen, who cares.
Speaking of that 30 inch screen, I really don’t know why I have Spaces on my Menu Bar. I really don’t use it. I guess I figure if it’s there, I’ll end up using it. I never really got into virtual desktops not even back in my X-Windows days on top of SunOS. I’ve tried using it even on my MacBook Pro, but old habits die hard. Maybe someday I’ll use it.
System volume is self explained. It raises and lowers your volume. I keep it up on my Menu Bar so if my music doesn’t play and iTunes is all the way up, I can quickly look at the Menu Bar and see, “Aah, it’s muted!” Sure, I can figure that out by just pressing my volume key on my keyboard, but hey, I’m visual. I’m a guy.
Last, but not least, I use Spotlight. I never really used it until Leopard. With all its added features and neat tricks like performing mathematics (try putting this in: pi/-4), I use it all day long. It finds files fast and has even shown me some things on my hard drive I forgot about! Hopefully Apple will put advanced features in a future release, but for now, I’m happy with it.
So, there’s the gloss over stuff. I’ll be talking about my other menu items in the coming week, so stay tuned!
) To get a closer look of what’s on the bar, click the above image and see it in its 100% pixel glory on our Flikr account.
So, I guess the easiest way to start is to simply go left to right. Thus we start with Remote Buddy. We previously touched on this application in a post before, so you should already be familiar with this groovy application. Basically, Remote Buddy allows you to use a slew of devices, including your iPhone, to remote control your Mac. Remote Buddy allows you to run through a presentation in either PowerPoint, Keynote, NeoOffice, Adobe Reader, or even Preview all from your remote in your hand. Since this is your buddy, it goes even further and allows you to control iTunes, DVD Player, VLC, and more than 100 other applications. Yes, that is not a typo, it is 100. As we stated in our last post on Remote Buddy, you can now watch movies, listen to music, and such all on your iPhone right from your Mac! You can even take a look to see if anyone is sitting at your chair via tapping into your iSight. Slick stuff indeed.
The Menu Item basically gives you quick access for pairing devices and configuration of Remote Buddy. It’s also a nice reminder that it is running and you are in control of your Mac…from afar.
RateMe! is very basic in what it does, but it does it so well that it just will not disappoint. Simply displaying five spots on your menu bar, you click on one of the five positions to transform the small white square into a star. Right click on it and you can select from the pop-up Increase or Decrease which will do so in half-star increments. Yes, half-stars are here baby! Man, I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted this feature in iTunes and now here it is. Your half ratings will also appear in the iTunes interface as well. Sweet!
RateMe! lets you play, pause, mute, loop the current track, and perform other minor tasks. It also displays the track name and artist for a brief moment at the start of each song. SvenOnTech confirmed with RateMe! author Michael Markert via email this morning that this feature will be configurable to show longer or toggle in an upcoming release.
RateMe! is freeware but Market would appreciate any donations from you elated users. Give it a try and do thank him for his work if you continue to use RateMe!
Ergonis Software has announced today that it has updated KeyCue for Leopard, the next generation of OSX due to release early next month by Apple, Inc. If you’re not already familiar with KeyCue, then you’ve been missing short cuts. Ergonis has created a delightful application that is a menu shortcut cheat sheet of sorts. Simply by holding down your Command key for a few seconds, you’ll be soon presented with a menu displaying all the possible keyboard shortcuts for the application you are currently in. If you’re like me, I’d rather keep my hand on my new aluminum keyboard then have to take my right hand off and move it to the mouse for some screen navigation. It’s all about saving time, folks. But don’t worry, if you like using your mouse, new in 4.0 is the ability to click on menu shortcut in the display and off is the command executed. Best of both worlds. I know.
“KeyCue is for menu shortcuts what PopChar is for special characters. A simple and unobtrusive utility that makes your daily work easier and automatically enhances your productivity,” Christoph Reichenberger, founder and CEO of Ergonis Software, told SvenOnTech. “With the new version we are happy to deliver the number one customer-requested feature and to take the productivity boost to the next level.”
Take it from me a long time user of KeyCue. This is a great program and now the power of clickable menu, you’ll easily be able to find unforeseen menu items that are easily lost in the dizzy of drop-downs from above!
Users that have purchased this in the last two years receive a free upgrade to 4.0. New users can pick it up for EUR 19.99 (about $25 USD).
Sonic Solutions today introduced Scenarist(R) Designer PS 2.0, a major advance in menu-design workflow for high-definition formats. Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 automates the conversion of Adobe Photoshop graphics into standardized interactive menu components suitable for authoring for both Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD DVD format in Sonic Scenarist. Extending the efficiency and precision of automated menu generation to designers on all Photoshop-supported platforms, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 handles the advanced content modes of both high-definition formats and is now available for both Macintosh and Windows platforms.
Designing menus for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles is very different from DVD-Video. Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is unique in that it returns the control of menu component creation to the professional graphic designer who can create menus for high-definition titles using the industry-standard Adobe Photoshop. By basing the menu-design process on familiar concepts such as using layer sets to group button elements, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 lets designers stay focused on the visual aspects of their work without worrying about the details of conversion for various output formats. Once a menu’s background and button-state graphics are defined, the export from Photoshop of a compatible menu for one or more target formats is handled automatically via the Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 plug-in, saving hours of authoring work for each project. Offering flexible control and customization of dithering options for HDMV’s RGBA palettes, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 ensures that menu graphics are of the highest-image quality.
“Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is a huge step forward for us, as it seamlessly bridges the workflow gap between the environment preferred by our graphic designers and the authoring tools that we depend on to create compelling titles for both BD and HD DVD,” said Ole Lutjens, Creative Director, of MX Production Services in San Francisco, California. “Once we’ve achieved just the right look for our menus, it’s now a quick, painless task to bring them into Scenarist with all the elements appearing exactly where they’re supposed to be. And, the menus never look different after they’ve been multiplexed, which is a problem we have seen with many other systems. This simplifies our work tremendously, especially for projects that are to be released in more than one high-definition format.”
Depending on the selected output formats, Scenarist Designer PS will output all components required to automatically reconstruct a menu in either Scenarist BD or Scenarist HD DVD authoring workstations, including button positioning information and graphics for each button state (dithered to associated RGBA palettes if needed for HDMV menus in BD projects). The menus are then completely ready for assignment of navigation commands by authoring specialists, either directly in the Scenarist environment (for Blu-ray’s HDMV and BD-J modes) or in a simple text editor (for HD DVD’s HDi mode).
“Scenarist Designer PS is a massive value proposition for menu designers and graphic artists who are grappling with the vast complexities that HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc introduce,” said Rolf Hartley, senior vice president and general manager of Sonic’s Professional Products Group. “By working within their graphics’ platform of choice, Designer PS enables these artists to save a significant amount of time by outputting not only the art but also the BD data structures and the HDi markup required all from within the same job.”