Here’s Friday’s serving of snapshots:

• This OS X submission from Kevin Knopp features his Sosomi Theme, a work still in progress. OmniWeb is surfing the web in Cocoa style.
  
  
• This snapshot from Jon Martin touts Arlo Rose’s Onyx K-Scheme. iTunes, retooled with a custom skin, is pumping out soundwaves near the bottom.
  
  
• Oddball sends this OS X contribution sporting my “Inner Planets” desktop picture, available in the Desktop Archive. iTunes is churning out selections in the upper left.
  
  
• It’s time to hit the beach… er ’burg in this snapshot from Phixer64 featuring a custom Antarctic desktop picture and Maury McCown’s AquaX III K-Scheme. Cool, very cool.

What’s your Mac look like? Send a snapshot for all the Mac world to see.

Tools of the Trade. by Michael Coyle

Is all this XFree/MacGimp stuff too much voodoo for you? Then Dan Steffen recommends Photoline. While shareware and not free, it's a pretty full featured graphics program that supports layers. There is a version for Classic and MacOS X.

If you have a Nokia wireless phone (as I do) then take a look at this clever hack that Nicholas Francisco tipped me off to. It allows you to change the startup name of the phone and provides access to other secret settings.

Hey Linux users, Ben Herrenschmidt has issued an "All Points Bulletin" for users of his yaboot application. He has discovered a serious bug that can affect the memory mappings. So grab the new version and be safe!

User Contributed Splash Screens. by Michael Coyle

Win a PowerMax gift certificate worth $50 by having the most popular contribution in the selected category! (How?)

• Here is a double-dose of MOSS and ATM from Ahmedghe. If you have a G4 tower, then you should have no trouble picking between the dark and light versions!
  
  
• Yikes! Another anime Rei splash from Channy Loeum! This one is for Netscape.
  
  
• It has been a while since we had a new AIM splash. Take a look at this one by Dhruv Kalra.
  
  
• Concave is the name of the newest iTunes skin from Jon Martin.
  
  

Snapshots by Jeremy Hoesly

NOTE:Dan is taking the day off.
Please enjoy his previous post listed below.

Icon & Desktop News: by Dan

Icons - Desktops: We've got (6) excellent Desktops and (1) awesome new Icon Set for OSX to spiff up your desktop. All on display for today's update! Here's a note from your editor: I will be heading out of town during the coming week for a few days of R&R. Consequently, this section will not be updated again till Friday Aug. 10th. Check back then for the newest batch of Icons and Desktops.

• Flax Creations detours from desktop design and dives headlong into the brave new world of creating Icons for OSX. "Techno Folders Vol.3" is the third set in the series to be released exclusively on ResExcellence, and includes 13 different hi-tech looking folders. Volume one and two are also available here.
  
  
• We have great good fortune to be featuring another of Chris Kiss's amazing 3-D generated Startup Screens. Starring Marvel Comic's Spiderman, just drop the Pict into your System Folder and reboot, where it will be displayed during the next startup.
  
  
• "MacOS Desktop" by Ted Pearson Jr. is a nicely done variation on the Mac logo we all know and love. This backdrop comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Agrapha Design sends in a great series of Sci-fi desktops titled "2001 A Mac Odyssey". Those Damn dirty apes! Evolution steps forward with the discovery of the big aqua X in five different resolutions
  
  
• Thomas Gianardi submits an interesting and a bit strange set of three different 3-D rendered desktops titled "iMacwoman". Check out this artificial life form in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Fifteen year old Natan Soria does a great job with his first attempt at desktop making. The stylish "AquaX" is the result of his endeavor, and comes in 1280x resolution.
  
  
• Tom Hastings whips up a couple of desktops featuring the image of "Aki" from the latest Final Fantasy movie. The download includes two different variations on the theme, both coming in 1024x resolution.
  

MacMonkies updates with 3 new pics - two new 3-D and one desktop - as well as the weekly news update.

Mac.axonz.com is sporting a slick new face lift! Now easier to use, more features, better organized, faster and did we mention cooler!!! Come check it out!

Mikkel Madsen opens the doors to Mmicons.com, where you will find over1.000 cool mac icons only for Mac OS X.

Mando Gomez wants to inform you that there are 40 new desktops at http://www.mandolux.com. These new desktops are all Mexican money - the title of these uploads is "Mas Dinero."

MacuserX.com has been updated with 1 new desktop "naughty girl" and three new icon sets! They also now have two T-shirt designs!

Yoshihiro Kondo of Chillyday announces the release of a new icon set and 6 desktop pictures.

Tray's Trove updates July 29, 2001 with eight new desktop designs.

Mando wants you know that there are 40 new desktops at http://www.mandolux.com. These new desktops are all Brazilian bills and they are sure are pretty.

Just wanted to let you know that there are eight fresh & funky flavors of desktop pictures over at KCz Custom Desktops.

This is just to inform you that "FranksSecondCorner" has been updated with 10 new DesktopPictures.

Mike Davidson's Mac File Library has been updated to include 60 16x16 desktop patterns, using the colors in Apple's Crayon Picker. Download them now to add color variety behind your transparent desktop pictures.

Hansworks.com decides to call it quits after two years on the web and posts a final update featuring a Final Fantasy Movie icons set for Mac OS 7 to X.

Continuing a nearly one month tradition, Dome-O-Rama offers it's next monthly Desktop Calendar! AUGUST 2001!

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

Need more workspace? Get Virtual Desktop!

Today's News by Cletus™ ^{It's a coming!}

Once again ResExcellence offers you a great chance to win free software. For the next week you can enter to win one of three free registrations for StickyBrain. StickyBrain by Chronos is a personal productivity application that incorporates a "sticky note" interface. But that's where the similarity to the standard Stickies program ends. StickyBrain is the ultimate information storehouse. It helps users organize all of the miscellaneous information that clutters their lives and desktops. Now is your chance to see what Stickies were really meant to be! Check the contest page for full guidelines for the StickyBrain Contest.

Stephane Madrau has posted version 2.5.2 of SwitchRes. SwitchRes is an extension that allows you to control the resolutions of all your displays. Included is a Control Panel, which lets you change its preferences, a Control Strip Module, a Location Manager Module, and a Contextual Menu extension are bundled in the package. This version is only a maintenance release. There seems to be a minor problem with the main link, so use this alternate link. It addresses the two following issues:

• SwitchRes no longer displays the "1x1" resolution in the list
  
  
• Solved a bug with MacPortrait driven monitors
  

Iconizer Pro 1.4.9 is a maintenance release fixing a registration problem when in the Classic mode of Mac OS X.

NetDICT 2.5 provides quick access to online dictionary databases in system 8.5 through Mac OS X. From the ReadMe: "NetDICT is a client for the RFC2229 Internet dictionary (DICT) protocol. Use NetDICT to send queries to DICT database servers on the Internet. NetDICT accesses a number of Internet dictionary databases, including Webster's Revised Unabridged, the U.S. Gazetter, several computing dictionaries and several Bible dictionaries."

X File Permissions 1.02b is a little program that lets you to get and change the new File Permissions in OS X without using the terminal. Changes in this beta release include:

• Support now includes Drag & Drop in the main window
  
  
• Change permissions via batch processing
  
  
• Authentication based on the Mac OS X mechanism
  
  
• Window administration is available.
  
  
• Animated Dock icon now shows a file counter.
  
  
• Bug fix at the presentation of file permissions.
  

SoftwareManager X 1.0.1 displays all running foreground and background applications.

• Lists all the running applications foreground and background
  
  
• Displays Applications Creator, Size, and info
  
  
• Shows where the application is in the Finder
  
  
• Allows you to close the application and releases the memory used.

Informational: Apple has posted the following notice at its KidSafe web page:

"We regret that we are discontinuing the KidSafe service due to low customer usage. Please follow the instructions below to quickly and easily remove KidSafe from your computer system. It will only take a few minutes."

James Thomson has a notice about a problem getting to some of his web pages:

If you are trying to reach the TLA Systems or PCalc web sites this weekend, it seems there is a technical problem with the server - hopefully the folks at macos.net will fix things soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. Perhaps of even more interest is this: The small DragThing release I was talking about seems to have grown a little larger in scope than first intended - there's something really cool I've got working now, which I think you will like. More news soon!

Scheme News:

You have four more days left to enjoy the calm before the storm! What am I talking about? A little birdie (and I do not mean golf) landed on my shoulder and whispered in my ear to keep alert to the rumbling noise you hear over at the NAUS! The little birdie said nothing more!

Submit Software and General News Suggestions!

Calendar & Appointment Scheduler for Mac OS X

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Polling Place. by Michael Coyle

The majority of Mac users are the same page as Apple when comparing the PowerPC chip to the Pentium. What I find most interesting about the debate is remembering back to the introduction of the 601 PowerPC chip. Every Mac site displayed their version of a chart showing the PowerPC trouncing the x86 chips and predicting the demise of Intel. This was back when PPC chips were running at 60 Hhz and a Pentium screamed along at 90Mhz. Well guess what, those engineers at Intel weren't so stupid after all and thanks to leaps in manufacturing and design, both chips continue to battle it out. But the chip is only a small part of the equation as Michael Wheeler points out:

I agree there is a gross misunderstanding of how clock speed affects the performance of a computer but I don't agree completely with Apple's assertion that their PPC chips are always faster than Intel's. It depends on many things. Such as the compiler, the task at hand and the architecture of the CPU itself just to name a few.

CPU is only one part of the equation anyway. I am a system administrator for all of the mainframes on campus at Tennessee Tech University and even though any one of the CPUs in our mainframes are slower than either Intel's or Apple's best -- our mainframes will smoke either of them in many ways because the rest of the computer is "up to snuff" unlike PCs and Macs which focus too much on CPU performance and neglect the rest of the system. It's all about I/O or data throughput.

I love Macs! That's what I use at home. I've been a president of our local Mac User's group for years but the truth is Apple has the most anemic data throughput (especially in terms of its file system) of any computer out there but that's still ok for doing most general purpose work because you usually aren't constrained by that limit but for short periods at a time. Of course that's not true for all tasks.

This week's Polling Place question is for anyone using a multiuser operating system: MacOS X, Linux, or even a workstation version of Windows. We all know the safest, most secure way to use our computers is to log in as a regular user and then become a superuser when needed. This way, we can't accidentally change important settings or delete critical files, but how many of us are too lazy. How many of us live dangerously. This week's question asks, "Do you normally log in as 'root'?"

XDarwin and MacGimp

Click for full sized image

Tools of the Trade. by Michael Coyle

Under Linux, the king of the graphic apps is Gimp. I love its ability to tear off menus. Apple should incorporate this. I have been following the work of the MacGimp group, which is bringing Gimp to MacOS X, and I thought I'd give it a try.

MacGimp.com sells a CD containing everything you need for $29.99 or if you have the bandwidth, you can download the required files:

• XFree86 for Darwin
• XDarwin (to run X and Aqua)
• MacGimp (190M!)

Install the files in the order listed above and you'll find two new icons in the MacOS X Applications folder: XDarwin and RunMacGimp. Double clicking either of these launches Gimp. MacGimp behaves exactly the same as the Linux version, but you can forget about cut and paste between Aqua and XFree86. The two window mangers are not on speaking terms.

Second and third mouse buttons are emulated with option-click and command-click. If you choose to run XDarwin in full screen mode on another virtual desktop, option-command-a toggles between the two screens.

While it's interesting to have Gimp running on the same desktop as Aqua, I think it's more consistent to have a virtual XFree desktop with its own window and file managers. Towards that goal, I plan to install AfterStep with MacGimp and on Wednesday I'll let you know the results.

Hats-off to the XDarwin and MacGimp groups. It's obvious they have put a lot of work into the moving target called MacOS X. For readers who cannot afford to purchase a commercial graphics application, MacGimp is a great alternative.

User Contributed Splash Screens. by Michael Coyle

Win a PowerMax gift certificate worth $50 by having the most popular contribution in the selected category! (How?)

• If you liked George Krueger's Industrial iTunes skin, be sure to try the matching A-Dock skin. His web site has matching Industrial desktops.
  
  
• Sharon Alvarez contributes another Sci-Fi series of splashes. This cool green set contains a MOSS, ATM, and Entourage splashes.
  
  
• Continuing his Christian themed contributions, Daniel Mosley sent an iTunes skin.
  
  
• I envy Patrick Gerrity. He has an Audi TT Roadster and I don't. At least he was nice enough to create a MacOS X Poof of his car zooming off into the distance!
  
  
• Another one for anime Rei lovers! Channy Loeum sends a splash for Outlook Express.
  
  

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Click here to learn more about Toast 6 Titanium

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NOTE: Jeremy and Dan are taking the day off.
Please enjoy their previous posts listed below.

Snapshots by Jeremy Hoesly

As the week winds down, one final installment of this week’s snapshots is released:

• The “Japanese Tiger” desktop picture and William Neidlow’s Sienna Tech K-Scheme debut in this submission from Christian Elmendorf. Audion, outfitted with Rudluph’s Dragon Ring 2 face, is dishing out tunes in the lower right.
  
  
• OS X’s Unix underpinnings are once again apparent in this screenshot from Torin Essex featuring an EndEffect desktop picture and the Gnome desktop environment with the Sawfish window manager.
  
  
• Sean King sends this OS X contribution featuring a custom desktop picture. Icon Factory’s World of Aqua collection resides in the dock.
  
  
• George Wacker submits this OS X snapshot sporting a “Robocop” desktop picture from Scifi. iTunes is kicking out selections from his band along the right edge. Icons from Xicons are nestled in the dock.

What’s your Mac look like? Send a snapshot for all the Mac world to see.

Icon & Desktop News: by Dan

Icons - Desktops: We've got (6) excellent Desktops and (1) awesome new Icon Set for OSX to spiff up your desktop. All on display for today's update! Here's a note from your editor: I will be heading out of town during the coming week for a few days of R&R. Consequently, this section will not be updated again till Friday Aug. 10th. Check back then for the newest batch of Icons and Desktops.

• Flax Creations detours from desktop design and dives headlong into the brave new world of creating Icons for OSX. "Techno Folders Vol.3" is the third set in the series to be released exclusively on ResExcellence, and includes 13 different hi-tech looking folders. Volume one and two are also available here.
  
  
• We have great good fortune to be featuring another of Chris Kiss's amazing 3-D generated Startup Screens. Starring Marvel Comic's Spiderman, just drop the Pict into your System Folder and reboot, where it will be displayed during the next startup.
  
  
• "MacOS Desktop" by Ted Pearson Jr. is a nicely done variation on the Mac logo we all know and love. This backdrop comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Agrapha Design sends in a great series of Sci-fi desktops titled "2001 A Mac Odyssey". Those Damn dirty apes! Evolution steps forward with the discovery of the big aqua X in five different resolutions
  
  
• Thomas Gianardi submits an interesting and a bit strange set of three different 3-D rendered desktops titled "iMacwoman". Check out this artificial life form in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Fifteen year old Natan Soria does a great job with his first attempt at desktop making. The stylish "AquaX" is the result of his endeavor, and comes in 1280x resolution.
  
  
• Tom Hastings whips up a couple of desktops featuring the image of "Aki" from the latest Final Fantasy movie. The download includes two different variations on the theme, both coming in 1024x resolution.
  

News From Around the Web:

MacMonkies updates with 3 new pics - two new 3-D and one desktop - as well as the weekly news update.

Mac.axonz.com is sporting a slick new face lift! Now easier to use, more features, better organized, faster and did we mention cooler!!! Come check it out!

Mikkel Madsen opens the doors to Mmicons.com, where you will find over1.000 cool mac icons only for Mac OS X.

Mando Gomez wants to inform you that there are 40 new desktops at http://www.mandolux.com. These new desktops are all Mexican money - the title of these uploads is "Mas Dinero."

MacuserX.com has been updated with 1 new desktop "naughty girl" and three new icon sets! They also now have two T-shirt designs!

Yoshihiro Kondo of Chillyday announces the release of a new icon set and 6 desktop pictures.

Tray's Trove updates July 29, 2001 with eight new desktop designs.

Mando wants you know that there are 40 new desktops at http://www.mandolux.com. These new desktops are all Brazilian bills and they are sure are pretty.

Just wanted to let you know that there are eight fresh & funky flavors of desktop pictures over at KCz Custom Desktops.

This is just to inform you that "FranksSecondCorner" has been updated with 10 new DesktopPictures.

Mike Davidson's Mac File Library has been updated to include 60 16x16 desktop patterns, using the colors in Apple's Crayon Picker. Download them now to add color variety behind your transparent desktop pictures.

Hansworks.com decides to call it quits after two years on the web and posts a final update featuring a Final Fantasy Movie icons set for Mac OS 7 to X.

Continuing a nearly one month tradition, Dome-O-Rama offers it's next monthly Desktop Calendar! AUGUST 2001!

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

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Visit the Mac Experts!

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Previous News Page...

You can now upload your contributions (include a READ ME) to the ResExcellence
ftp drop box, and let us know with an email. Be sure to read the Submission Policy

8/7/01

Snapshots by Jeremy Hoesly

After an unexpected hiatus due to ISP problems, I’m good and ready to start dishing out snapshots again. Heads up for Tuesday’s installment:

• OS X’s Unix foundation is once again apparent in this screenshot from Torin Essex sporting a DigiFox desktop picture. XDarwin, an X-Window environment, is configured with the Blackbox window manager. Fink, an open-source software development tool, is compiling code along the left edge.
  
  
• This screenshot from Graham touts the “AquaAgain” desktop picture. iTunes, outfitted with George Krueger’s Graphite skin, is churning out music near the bottom. A smorgesbord of icons from Icon Factory, Mendelini, and our Icon Archive are scattered throughout.
  
  
• Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 7 operating system is the star in this contribution from Michael Holve. The Gnome desktop environment, configured with the Sawfish window manager, mimics OS X with the AquaGraphite GTK+ theme and Aquafied Sawfish theme. Xmms, equipped with the Aqua X skin, is kicking out soundwaves along the top.
  
  
• An awesome desktop picture and Akio’s BIG Graphite K-Scheme debut in this submission from Charlie Smith. Audion, overhauled with Akio’s SlickCorner Graphite face, is dishing out tunes in the lower left. Selections from icons.cx’s Spiffy Apps collection reside in the menubar.

What’s your Mac look like? Send a snapshot for all the Mac world to see.