Icon & Desktop News: by Dan

In an ongoing effort to make it easier for you to send us your Icons and Desktops, we've designed a new Browser Based Upload Page for the task. Just follow the easy to use instructions, and you'll find submitting your artwork is a snap!

• In that never ending quest for the perfect Icon motif, Flax Creations keeps on experimenting. Geometrics is a collection of 43 mismatched icons that never quite fit into a coherent series. These individuals have finally found a home, and have been bundled together to make a very attractive set for OSX.
  
  
• Daniel Manley submits a nicely done set of iDisk Folders to dress up your desktop. This grouping includes 8 different commonly used folders, splashed with the familiar star field pattern found on Apple's iDisk Icon.
  
  
• The Iconyard presents a collection of Scooby Doo icons from the upcoming motion picture. The set includes 19 different OSX icons featuring all the main characters.
  
  
• An unknown New York Mets fan sent us this clever iPod Sports desktop. Maybe one of these days you will be able to tune into to your favorite Ball Game with the iPod, while listening to your favorite music at the same time. This limited edition piece comes in 1152x resolution.
  
  
• Matt Crowley continues to expand on his Beatles album desktop series with another excellent shot of John Lennon. Comes in 1280x resolution.
  
  
• Michael Addison of Macalodeon designed a very cool looking desktop to highlight the Makki-X theme by Takashi Izawa. Makki-x Sunset is available in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Using Vue D-esprit 4 for all the modeling and rendering, Snow Chong created a peaceful looking 3-D desktop titled Ocean Front. Comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• The oh so lovely Cameron Diaz makes a star studded appearance on this desktop collage made by Nate Penwell. Comes in 1152x resolution.
  
  
• Springtime by John Rose is a provocative desktop sketch from the master of the female form. This one comes in 1280x resolution. Visit John's Sketchpad for more saucy and less censored drawings.
  
  
• Blue Chrome Deco , designed by Bob Osiin, features two elegant desktops sporting beveled Deco Patterns over an Aqua background. The blue chrome effect was gleaned from Adobe's Action Exchange, and both desktops come in 800x and 1024x resolutions
  
  
• Kevin submits a new set of "Experience Quartz" desktops titled "Silk". This stylish grouping comes in several different colors, and all display at 1024x resolution.

News From Around the Web:

Berserkintosh is to release 45 Mac oriented desktops this weekend. 30 of the desktops have a direct Macintosh theme and the other 15 are just "artsie" desktops that blend well with Aqua. On top of all that Mac goodness they have also released 16 non mac desktops in the portfolio section.

Icons.cx will be out of commission for awhile, due to a cross town move. Congrats on the new house!

DV Graphics as released a new icon set named Switchers. This set is of caricatures based upon the people that appear in the new set of Apple ads.

I just want to inform you that there is a new desktop at http://www.mandolux.com representing a continuation of the Technoisis/Anthraxis theme. The new desktop is called Mini Dragonette. There is also a preview of the upcoming desktops for this Technosis this July.

Ethereal Creations proud to announce that we have added the remarkable fantasy renders of Melissa "Mel" Uptain to our current lineup of atists. If you have a thing for images in the style of Boris Vallejo, then Mel's incredible work is a sight for sore eyes. We have also renumbered our galleries to make the viewing of new images easier on our readers. Currently, galleries 1-4 have new releases in them and we've also added a new Poser background pack in the Downloads section. Come on in, we've got plenty of room for you!

At MacMonkies this week: Icon selections from miXthepiX, Eye9design, Happicon, and Rampant Mac!Of course your Mac would not be complete with out some great desktop works from Bob Spence, EA Design, Rampant Mac, and MacMonkies. Wednesday. MacMonkies. See you there!

Although Rampant Mac bought the proverbial farm some months ago (I'm sure you remember, it was so very sad) the farmer decided he wanted his land back. Not being one to argue with a man who has nimble and deadly control of a pitchfork I decided "What the hey, let's take another shot at glory and fame".

Zensmile.com has released a set of icons, free, for download. The icons were designed in Bryce 5 and then fashioned for OS X (only). There are 7 icons in the set.

Grab your Flash plugin and head over to the newly redesigned CricketBow Design for a bunch of new desktops and other stuff.

Just a shout out to let you all know that http://mac.axonz.com is back up and sporting a new face, after being down for almost a week!!!

IconsTree updates every day this week.

Live Pencil updates with new wall papers, animations, and loads of other fun!

So what's up WWW? Icons? Desktop pictures? News? Inform us! We'll post it!

Internet Cleanup

Tools of the Trade by Michael Coyle

Want to get your hands on over a dozen new Mozilla splash screens? The first site is Gallery Cheap, with a wide variety of beautiful screens. The second, LoTekk.net also has some fine screens, many of which feature the Mozilla dragon.

A very clever Steven Burr was the man to finally put a GUI on the old command line Fink package manager. His program, FinkCommander sure beats the heck out of trying to scroll through a dselect terminal window. If you have installed Fink so you could have an X11 window manager, take a look this utility and enjoy how easy it makes maintaining your packages.

Japan: 2, USA: 1

Is this the final score from a recent World Cup game? No, it's something much more important - the number of MacOS X Appearance Themes we are posting today!

First point is scored by the home team! Adam Betts sent Pez (featured image). Adam thinks it's perfect for ResEx readers since the color scheme is similar to this site.

Then Butt_O'sigh from desktopper.net follows with dxb, his interpretation of the old Drawing Board mockup theme!

In the final minutes of regulation play, Takashi Izawa used his head and knocked in a winner with a blue/grey version of his previously released MakkiX (the yellow/orange theme). By adding the stunning Maggra 1.0 theme, the country of Japan wins this round, but the USA is regouping and is confident a rematch will yield different results!

Terminal Commands: Changing Ownership.

In MacOS X, every file has an owner. The owner can decide who has the right to read, modify, or execute any document or program which are his. While this is generally a great feature of Unix based operating systems, it can become quite a pain in the beginning for long time Mac users reorganizing files and folders while booted into Classic MacOS or as 'root' in MacOS X..

For example, as part of my move to MacOS X, I consolidated all my documents from all my applications into my home Documents folder. I did this while booted as 'root' in MacOS X.

As a result, many of the documents in my /Users/coyle/Documents directory were not owned by coyle. I couldn't edit them!

One such folder contained all my Quicken documents from the past eight years. If I were a loser without a life, I could open the "Get Info" window on every file and change the owner to coyle, but the White Sox are due to get beat by the Twins this evening, so I have places to go!

The solution for changing ownership on a single file or an entire folder is with the terminal command: chown. Let's look at the example below.

In the first image below, the file "INSTALLING README.rtf" is owned by root, not coyle. This means coyle cannot edit, move, and most importantly, delete this file.

To change the ownership to coyle, I typed the following:

• sudo chown coyle "INSTALLING README.rtf"

Let's breakdown this command.

• sudo - will prompt you for the root password and authorize the change
• chown - the "change owner" terminal program
• coyle - the name of the new owner
• "INSTALLING README.rtf" - the name of the program to be acted upon.

User Contributed Splash Screens. by Michael Coyle

It's easier than ever to contribute using the new Browser Based Upload Page! If you contribute a file to any section of ResExcellence, you could win a PowerMax gift certificate worth $50 ! (How?)

• Conrad sent a nice Boot Panel of Buzz on the Moon. No, not Buzz Lightyear, I'm talking about the original Buzz - Buzz Aldrin!
  
  
• This simple iTunes skin by Falkaholics will add a camouflaged backdrop to the MP3 player.
  
  
• The anime dragon Draco-Z is featured in this MOSS and ATM set from VoodooKilla.
  
  
• An old 128 Macintosh computer says "Boing" in this MOSS that is Conrad's second submission on the day.
  
  

Snapshots by Jeremy Hoesly

Tuesday’s snapshots are in sight:

• This two-part snapshot from an anonymous contributor features the author’s system setup both in OS 9 and OS X. It’s interesting to note that both desktops are remarkably similar.
  
  
• A custom desktop picture and Takashi Izawa’s DSX Theme debut in this submission from Badidea. MacAmp Lite is cranking out songs in the upper left. Icons by Hein Mevissen reside in the dock.
  
  
• Adam Betts submits this sneak peek of the “simple and subtle” Pez Theme still in development along with a matching custom desktop picture. Awesome!
  
  
• A “Milky Way Galaxy” desktop picture and Xthemination’s Iridium Quicksilver Theme are showcased in this contribution from Todd Mitchell. Celestial icons from Pixeljerk’s Solar System 2 collection roam the desktop along with Samuel Krueger’s XButtons.

See just how easy it is to contribute to ResExcellence! Give our browser-based submission upload page a whirl.

REALbasic News by Erick Tejkowski

This week in REALbasic news:

• Last Chance for Cheap Subscriptions!
• Cross-Platform HELP Module for Your REALbasic Applications!
• REALbasic Gains ODBC Network Connection
• Two offerings from the Fish Tank
• Sambucus 2.0.2

StuffIt - The Complete Compression Solution

Today's News by Cletus™

I have randomly selected the winners of the StickyBrain contest. First, we would like to thank all those who entered the giveaway. Second, congratulations go out to the winners from Chronos and ResExcellence:

• Douglas M. Creel
  
• Dave Ulrich
  
• Hasan Diwan
  
  

CharlesSoft has released the next beta of DockDisks— 1.0b4. It is a hack that makes disks appear in your Dock after you insert them,. Talk about a great space saver, especially when you do not normally use the desktop (as I have been trying to do more and more).

The popular PixelNhance1.5.9 by Caffeine Software, Inc. has been updated to allow for PICT image opening. Additionally, one image can't be opened more than once simultaneously in this version. Try out this great freeware. It's an easy to use realtime image processing application. Your image appears in a unique split-screen window with the original settings on one side and the settings that you currently have in the Controls window on the other side. As you adjust the settings in the Controls window, the effects are immediately visible on the image.

The next alpha version of Trash It! is available if you wish to get involved and test it. This is an AppleScript that forces stubborn Trash items to delete.

The muli-purpose hot key, macro builder, and launcher program Keyboard Maestro has gone to version 1.1.2. The PR states it is a bug fix for a problem which prevented hot key preferences from being saved if the user's home directory was on a different volume as the system folder. This program has become very popular.

The MacChampion Team sent me a blurb on their updated release of PinPoint to version 1.31. This cursor focusing program improves interaction with Classic applications, adds Internet version checking, and a deactivation option in Classic applications.

The application ChangeDesktop 2.1 is now available. The release is primarily to fix problems that cropped up with the German localization.

Launch Items X has a nice contextual menu that shows all the possible applications that can open a file. This update allows opening the Favorites folder from the Launch Items Editor.

ZiskoCalc 1.61 is a fairly unique, small desktop tool that lets you convert values from many number systems into others like hex, oct, bin, dec. It calculates and decodes Cisco™ Router Configuration Registers, and easily setup the config-registers with some simple Mouse-Clicks. The Conversion also works from Hex (reverse direction).

Have a Press Release? Software or General News? Submit it here: Suggestions!

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Polling Place by Michael Coyle

Hmmm... about half of ResEx readers regularly use the terminal command line, and a whopping 21% never use it! Because MacOS X is a true multiuser OS, every file is strictly owned by a user. In most cases, only the owner can modify his/her files. (Of course 'root' can modify anything!).

My most common use of the command line is changing these ownerships as I move files and folders to desired locations. Tomorrow's Tools of the Trade will cover ownership and the command line in more detail.

Two powerhouses in Macintosh software development, Adobe and Macromedia are pulling out of the Macworld New York convention. I have attended the New York show twice, and while it is fun, it's not nearly as big as the January San Francisco show. Given all this, maybe it's time for Apple to focus all its energy on a single show in January. What do you think? This week's Polling Place asks, "Should Apple do away with Macworld NY?

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Icon & Desktop News: by Dan

Icons - Desktops: We have an excellent line up for you to begin the week, starting with (8) New Desktops, (3) New Icon Sets, and of course, updated "News From Around the Web". All on display for today's update.

In an ongoing effort to make it easier for you to send us your Icons and Desktops, we've designed a new Browser Based Upload Page for the task. Just follow the easy to use instructions, and you'll find submitting your artwork is a snap!

• Straight from an old fashioned flower garden, Gary Politzer snapped a couple of digital photographs of a blooming morning glory vine, and turned them into two Heavenly Blue Icons. These two lovelies were made using the new Export Icon plug in, which now comes with Photoshop 7.
  
  
• Build your own little city with this small set of Building Icons made by Kevin. The set includes 7 different structures, and were all designed for OSX.
  
  
• Nils Raab put together a clean looking trio of X Men Icons to decorate your desktop with. The first is a center-transparent red X. Second if the famed uniform version of the X, with a nice 3-D look thanks to lighting effects. Last is an attempt to capture the logo from the movie, with a more textured look. All Icons were created from scratch in Photoshop Elements with the final icon compiling done in Iconographer X.
  
  
• Our Landscape II is the sixth of many new desktops to be displayed here by Alan Sherwood of EA Design. This one is described by Alan as having a brooding atmosphere, and an air of dread. The piece is supposed to communicate the fact that we can hardly ever say what we really think or let alone even think it. Comes in 800x and 1024x resolutions.
  
  
• The founding member of EA Design, Ed Allen, submits an energetic and kinetic looking desktop titled Design Easy Travel 2. This is the second member of an ongoing series, and is available in 800x and 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Do your patriotic duty by displaying any of the six Proud to be a Mac desktops made by Scott Peters. Each one features one of your favorite Mac configurations along side the stars and stripes, and are all available in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink"... from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Conrad photographed and scanned this minimalist image of an old style "Water Fountain", and turned it into an interesting desktop image. Comes in 1024x and 800x resolutions.
  
  
• The excitement builds as we get closer to the next release of Apple's OSX Jaguar update. Erick designed this wild thing desktop not to promote pirated software, but to promote the anticipation of the Next Best Thing™. This desktop is available in 5 different resolutions.
  
  
• Mac 15 combines a brushed metal background and the Aqua Foam texture into a stylish looking backdrop titled "Aqua iapps". This one comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• From the vivid imagination of Marc Kuder comes another new desktop titled "Code Monkey". So what's a code monkey you ask?. According to a casual Google search, this is a person only capable of grinding out computer code, but is unable to perform the higher-primate tasks of software architecture, analysis, and design... If you fit the profile, then this one is in your honor, and is available in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• SMG 3 is the final experimental desktop we have on hand from Tampa digital artist Keaner. This wallpaper features the sometimes lovely Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Geller, and comes in 1024x resolution. Many thanks to Keaner for the number of great submissions, and we hope to see more of them in the future.

News From Around the Web:

Although Rampant Mac bought the proverbial farm some months ago (I'm sure you remember, it was so very sad) the farmer decided he wanted his land back. Not being one to argue with a man who has nimble and deadly control of a pitchfork I decided "What the hey, let's take another shot at glory and fame".

Mando would like to inform you that there are several new desktops at mandolux.com. , a new expansion to the Giant/Dual Monitor Series: Giant Petals. The names of these new desktops are Annelise, Britta, and Dana.

Zensmile.com has released a set of icons, free, for download. The icons were designed in Bryce 5 and then fashioned for OS X (only). There are 7 icons in the set.

Grab your Flash plugin and head over to the newly redesigned CricketBow Design for a bunch of new desktops and other stuff.

Just a shout out to let you all know that http://mac.axonz.com is back up and sporting a new face, after being down for almost a week!!!

IconsTree updates every day this week.

Ethereal Creations is pleased to announce a number of site updates and changes. In addition to seven new images for your viewing enjoyment, our Downloads and Screensavers sections are also open. Also, our artists now have their own individual galleries and we even found some time to add another artist profile to the mix. Drop in and make yourselves at home!

Live Pencil updates with new wall papers, animations, and loads of other fun!

MacMonkies rolls out another barrel of GUI goodies. Icons include outstanding material from EMK Design, DV Graphics, Pixel Jerk, and MacMonkies' latest contributor, Hein Mevissen of miX the piX!

Tray's Trove updated 6-16-02 with eight new desktop designs.

John's Sketchpad has been updated with nine more Desktops, several sketches and a new portfolio page.

DV Graphics closes the week with a new icon set called "Signs".

So what's up WWW? Icons? Desktop pictures? News? Inform us! We'll post it!

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