Today's News by Cletus™

Alrighty then. There has been one snafu after another trying to get the snapshots up from the contest. All do to unavoidable e-mail problems that exist still. I will put you out of your misery (and ours too) and announce that I am closing the contest. The winners have already been announced.

Quickly becoming one of my favorite programs, Memory Usage Getter was just bumped to version 2.0.1. Graphically displays memory usage for open processes. Changes in this version include:

• Fixed CPU hogging bug when Memory Usage Getter is idle
  
  
• Added user preferences to specify exactly what goes into the "Other User Processes" pane
  
  
• Added a notification to show the user exactly when refreshing/displaying is done
  
  
• Fixed incompatibility with AppleScript 1.8.2
  
  

Simply dragging an application onto Pseudo, it will allow you to open the app. as an administrator. Updates include:

• works with Virtual PC 5 and other Mac OS X CFM bundled applications
  
  
• Keychain integration (optional)
  
  
• Launch documents to enable 'single click' launching of an application with privileges. Can optionally quit Pseudo after application is launched.
  
  

Dockprefs has been updated to version 1.2. It is a Dockling to easily open preference panes from the Dock.

• Added different sorting options. Fixed problem with some preference panes being represented as CFBundleName.
  
  
• All menus should now be sorted properly by language.
  

XMonitor 1.4 monitors just about everything running on Mac OS X. Described as a real-time system and email monitoring application for Mac OS X. Version 1.4 lists a ton of updates and fixes. These can all be found on the homepage.

iconCompo 1.4 allows you to compose an icon from two images. iconCompo" requires Mac OS X  and a 32-bit display with color depth set to 'thousands of colors' or higher.

• Image adjustment possibilities (size, direction, transformation, etc.)
  
  
• Save composite images in several formats or attach them to existing files/folders
  
  
• Drag&drop start-up / automatic attachment in saved custom setting
  
  
• Make previews of image files (incl. GIF animations & QT movies)
  
  
• Remove custom icons, etc.
  
  

AppleScript Central has added several cool scripts to their archive. Stop over and see if you find any of them useful!

O'Grady's PowerPage has an interesting article on the security options, or lack there of in Mac OS X. The article is called: "The OS X Files - Lack of Easy-to-Use Strong Security Preventing Adoption."

Every now and then you have one of those days. I was switching something with the Dock in Mac OS X and my System Preferences "Unexpectedly Quit" leaving other applications untouched! Um— not really. System Preferences never would start up again. I could never get access to anything under System Preferences. Which meant I could not select another partition to start up under. I was able to hold the Option key down at start up to select another system. I tried numerous things to repair my problems, to no avail. In the end I went back and began the long update process from 10.0 onward. Advice? Backup! First and foremost I had just done this. Second, do not believe for a moment that crashes are unimportant, nonexistent or safer under Mac OS X.

How about this— open my iBook after sleeping or after being put to sleep and I get a screen artifact. The screen comes up, flashes once and comes up again leaving this artifact. It is in the LCD screen and not the desktop picture. What is this? It started about two weeks ago under 10.1.2. It continues after reinstall under 10.1.3. It is sporadic. Sometimes it does not appear. It is not connected to ethernet, power supply, resolution, Energy settings (it seems) or whether an application is open or not. It appeared in earlier releases, and cleared up after Apple released an update for artifacts on the screen. Is it from a third party program running in background? I am using FruitMenu, WindowShade, MenuCalendar and TypeIt4Me X.

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