Friday 02-27-2004

Software Update

Icons/Desktops

REALbasic

Software Update by Scott Chitwood

I'm taking a break from the action today due to a nasty cold that's kicking the you know what out of me, thanks for understanding :) Come Monday I should be back up to speed plus we've got a great software giveaway to kick off the first week of March with. Peace out and have a great weekend!


Send us your press releases!

Icon & Desktop News: by Dan

Icons - Desktops: Yeah! We've got another selection of great icons and desktops to satisfy your hunger for desktop decoration. Starting off with [6] New Desktops, [2] New Icon Sets, and of course, updated "News From Around the Web". Take your time going, and hurry back!

We love promoting your work! So, grab those pixel pencils, and send us your best creations!

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 piece of cake. In case your haven't done so already, don't forget to read our submission guidelines before you start!

• Give your winter weary spirit a lift with a cheerful set of fourteen Flower Icons created by Amanda. These were made using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 and Iconographer.
  
  
• FLCL Icons by Sam Smith features half a dozen characters from the popular Japanese Anime comic. If you want to find out more about the story behind the characters, check out the official website here.
  
  
• Nicely done! Apple by CKIDOW is an awesome Photoshop/3D hybrid desktop that gives the illusion of being underwater. This one comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• One never knows what you might find lying around... Paw Bones by Kerry Lannert snapped this grisly shot, and turned it into a desktop available in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• The good folks over at Digikitten keep on sending us loads of luscious desktops to share with ResExcellence readers. Housing some of the most fantastic digital artists on the globe, you are invited to come by and join them, play some Photoshop Tennis or many of the other digital pixel games they have. Bloodshed by Xprogressx is the next great desktop from this ongoing display, and is available in 1280x resolution.
  
  
• "When Six have risen the end of time will consume us all". The Wraith's Exhibits by K-OSS originates from the Shangri-La and Hell's Pitan Insane Clown Posse artwork, property of ICP. This one comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• I vont to suck your blood... Bite by Manon Michel originates from Andy Warhol's 1974 horror movie "Dracula".
  
  
• I can only assume that many Resexcellence readers will not recognize the famous image presented here by David Samollow titled "Omaha". This Photoshoped image comes from the brutal landing at Omaha beach during World War II. This one comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  

News From Around the Web:

Mandolux announces a new theme titled Antivas (as in Anti-Canvas) and the first fruit is a dual giant monitor desktop set.

MacMonkies features 4 Fabulous New Icon Sets for this Friday's Icon Edition. This week they welcome the works of new contributor Everaldo Coelho, as well as favorites from Flameia Design, Pictures and Adicons, and Robert Luciano. Fill up with Fun this Friday at MacMonkies.com!

Timeoutofmind.com updates with four new Desktops, each in three resolutions.

The Iconfactory is pleased to announce the latest update to our popular system monitoring utility, iPulse. Version 2.0.2 offers up several important additions including motherboard temperature and bandwidth reporting as well as cool support for owners of the Griffin PowerMate.

Bombia Design redesigns the site and updates with a New Icon Set (Apple Hardware Vol. 2)

So what's up WWW? Icons? Desktop Pictures? News? Inform us! We'll post it!
*The desktop and icon archive is updated three times a week. The work is actually done on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings for publishing the following day. If you want a news item posted the same day, try and get it to me before 6 pm on any one of those evenings. THANKS!

REALbasic: A Look at REALbasic 5.5 by Seth Willits

Holy Snot, It's Tux! Yes indeed! REALbasic 5.5 has the capability to build Linux applications! As with Mac OS 9, X, and all flavors of Windows, all you need to do is click a checkbox, and you're done. Amazing. However, as I'm sure you know, there are more varieties of Linux than there are colors in the rainbow on the Lucky Charms box, so naturally only a select few are "supported." At the moment, only x86 Intel boxes (whether that really means Intel and not AMD or simply any of those clones works, I'm not entirely sure) running Red Hat Enterprise or SuSE Linux are king, but other distributions with GTK+ 2.0 and CUPS installed (easy for you to say) should work. Will I ever use Linux? Nah; But it's pretty cool. Remote Debugging This is a very cool addition to RB 5.5 that I've used myself with great success. Hate having to copies applications or projects between computers to test on different machines? No problem! You can now remotely debug applications! Simply build your app on (for example) your Mac, and it'll automatically start running on your Windows machine. Fiddle around with it and whenever you get to a breakpoint or an exception, your Mac will kick into the REALbasic debugger! Very handy. I used it to remotely debug apps on three computers all from the same machine. It actually worked! Lightspeed to Endor! Also new in 5.5 is the ability to compile Mac OS X applications using the Mach-O executable format. Why is this such a big deal? Well, to end users it's really not a big deal, but for us developers, it's a very cool thing. If you get a chance, please send a note to the engineers for putting down their 10ft poles and actually working on Mach buildling because it makes me a very happy man. Even if it is a little buggy at the moment. Some of the cool things you can do with Mach apps include calling into frameworks via declares, and, and... calling into frameworks via declares! I thought that the new plugin SDK would finally allow us to build plugins using Xcode/Project Builder for OS X, but I've yet to build a working Mach plugin. Even the documentation only calls it "theoretically possible." I'm very disappointed with the lack of enthusiasm and interest on the part of RS there, but I guess we've got to be greatful for what we get. Patience is a virtue. REAL Database: From Good To Better Despite its quirks, we all love the REAL Database engine in 5.0 and earlier. (Well, by "all" I mean me and whoever else liked it.) However, one of the biggest complaints about it was its instability. Quite often you would find messages from desparate programmers scrambling to finding the elixir for a corrupted REAL Database. Well my friends, those days are (a.k.a. should be) gone. The RDB engine has been completely rewritten from the ground up in REALbasic 5.5 with greater stability. more features, and better SQL compliance. I definitely look forward to using it in the next app that will need it. Some of the new stuff in RDB is the ability to drop tables and columns and even change column data types all on the fly. No more having to rebuild databases! And if you like the goodies that you get "for free" in REALbasic, you'll be happy to know that with indexing, field filters, and formatting (all new of course), you'll be require write less code to create better front-ends to your databases! How cool is that? Oh yeah, and Oracle 8i and 9i are supported on Windows and mac. Oh, and guess what? The REAL Database engine is now a standard REALbasic feature. That's right. It's not just for "pros!" Wash behind your ears with SOAP! With 5.5 you can now use SOAP to add "standards-based web services" to your applications. I honestly am a bit behind in my web development guru-ness. I know SOAP is a good thing, I know people use it, but I don't know what it is! lol. <sigh> But on another note: XML anyone? This is a very cool feature. Just as we thought the alphas were just bug fixin' releases, REAL pulled this one right out of the hat. I've already made use of XML parsing in a new application I'm writing (along with Mach declares). Although I found it a little oddly structured (for a guy who's never done XML parsing), I did find it pretty easy to shove data in and extract data from XML files. For you XML nuts, REALbasic 5.5 has DOM level 2 support, XPath, XSLT, namespace support, document creating, and event-based parsing. If you need to do stuff with XML in your apps, you'll be very very happy that REALbasic has these capabilities built-in. Console Applications In addition to Linux and Mach-O, 5.5 can now build command-line applications. In Mac OS X, for example, a console application can be written to work as a CGI with Apache. Now if you need to create dynamic images or something for viewing on the web, just write the program in REALbasic! Better Mac OS X Support Without a doubt, Mac OS X is the primary market for REALbasic. Although REAL doesn't pay quite as much attention to OS X as I would like them to (i.e. 100%), they managed to throw some pretty good stuff into this release. RB 5.5 now has the Combo Box control (on all platforms), Address Book support, Rounded Bevel Buttons, Full Keyboard Access support (speak and it will do!) and much improved Listbox and Editfield scrolling. No gripes there! IDE and Language Changes I couldn't begin to compliment the new changes to the IDE and the language. 5.0 brought REALbasic to a new level in programmer-heaven, but 5.5 takes it one step further. Class constants, improved debugging, faster compiles, real control copying, and line continuation just to name a few. The IDE is becoming a dream to work with. My Take on REALbasic 5.5 is that is defintely, definitely worth the upgrade if you're even going to use one of these new features. For new and seasoned developers alike, REALbasic 5.5 is another great upgrade to an already outstanding product. With every release comes much bickering and debate, but in the end you have to realize that REAL Software is excelling at meeting demanding expectaions and is always able to pull a rabit out of the hat to please its users. I just wish I could go to REAL World 2004 to see what's up their sleeve next. Read the latest: REALbasic Tutorial || REALbasic News || Check out REALbasic and Support ResExcellence

Support ResExcellence By Visiting Our Sponsors!

Thursday 02-26-2004

Tools of the Trade

User Contributions

Tools of the Trade by Scott Chitwood

Creating 3d Terrain Maps In Photoshop
by Scott Chitwood
02-26-2004

There are times when the default terrains built into 3d apps don't look natural or maybe you're looking for something different. What to do? Fire up Photoshop and create your own terrain maps! Let's get started.

Create a new document in Photoshop with square dimensions, say 800 x 800 pixels, RGB or Greyscale colorspace is acceptable, you'll do all your work in shades of grey. Remember that dark areas represent low terrain and light colors high terrain.

Do a color fill with a dark grey and then apply the Clouds filter over that using a dark grey/light grey combo. Save it as a PSD, then create a new document in your 3d app, add a terrain object, use the import feature apply your photoshop image to the terrain and you're ready to render!

To obtain a softer look try applying some gaussian blur to your Photoshop file, some nice rolling/choppy water effects can be achieved with that method.

Another thing you should play around with is import any other picture into the terrain editor just to see what happens. Mess around, do a few tweaks and you could have a really unique masterpiece to show off!

You've Got Questions
Where oh where are the download links for Butt_O'sigh's Menu Enhancer 3.0.2 guiKit and the icons shown in the screenshot? The theme itself is on this page at Padma Colors, the link is highlighted in the picture below. The icons are part of mesoption.dmg.part01 file that can be downloaded from this page.

Where can I get those lovely Apple hardware icons in your snapshot for the Pillowtalk Sky theme? Those are from widget:widget, the set is called Power Macs.

JetBlack v1.0 guiKit Kevin Husted's highly anticipated JetBlack is a well crafted dark theme. JB has a consistent look and feel throughout it's interface as would be expected by anything that Swiz puts his skills to work on. Using JB with Photoshop launched is a bit of a challenge but that should be fixed once ShapeShifter goes to version 1.5. The JetBlack download includes a ton of extra goodies including a beautiful set of icons packaged as a Candybar iContainer, loads of desktops, a Mighty Mouse Cursor Set and much more!

JetBlack 1.0 Hit preview to view large image

5555 : Gloomy gravitation guiKit One thing that's cool about this gig is seeing an artist develop their skills with the passage of time. Shiocop's theme work has shown a steady progression of artsitic ability. His latest release, 5555 : Gloomy gravitation, is well worth taking a look at.

5555 : Gloomy gravitation Hit preview to view large image

User Contributions by Scott Chitwood

It's easier than ever to contribute using our Browser Based Upload Page! If you contribute a file to any section of ResExcellence, you could win a PowerMax gift certificate worth FIFTY DOLLARS! It's easy and fun to win, look here to see how it's done!

Our PowerMax Gift Certificate Winner for January 2004 was Steven Wilson for his Safari Blue Ice Buttons v1.0. Congratulations Steven!

First time contributor Sean Glick leads off today's round of user contributions with his Blue Boot Panel.


The lovely Eliza Dushku is featured in this Photoshop 7 Splash Screen by Pat Mills.


Taking inspiration from Max Rudberg's EYLO theme ZachRL created Eylo Politely, a Mighty Mouse Cursor Set.

Support ResExcellence By Visiting Our Sponsors!

Wednesday 02-25-2004

Software Update

Icons/Desktops

REALbasic

Software Update by Scott Chitwood

LaunchBar 3.3 beta 4
LaunchBar is an award winning productivity utility that offers an amazingly intuitive and efficient way to control your computer. It provides instant access to thousands of documents, folders, bookmarks and email addresses, applications and preference panes just by entering short abbreviations of the searched item's name.

Hit Command-Space to bring LaunchBar's input window to front, enter an arbitrary abbreviation, and as soon as you start typing LaunchBar displays the best matching choices, ready to be opened immediately.

LaunchBar 3.3 beta 4 adds phone number support, user interface refinements and improved Panther compatibility.



Portraits & Prints and Template Exchange Updated
Econ Technologies updates Portraits & Prints to version 1.3.3 and adds free mask templates to the Template Exchange. The new version includes new keyboard commands, automatic image cache management, over 10 bug fixes, and some minor enhancements. For a detailed list of what’s new in version 1.3.3 and to download a copy, go to Econ Techologies.

Visit the Template Exchange anytime to download free templates. Look for new templates each month including Birthday Cards, Birth Announcements, Graduation Cards, Sports Cards, Holiday Cards, and many more. All are free and all easy to use!

Send us your press releases!

REALbasic: News by Seth Willits

REALbasic 5.5 ships! Cancel that Last Command! REALbasic 5.5 has shipped! This Saturday I'll have a full report on what's new in 5.5. I've been waiting so long for 5.5 to be released so I can start showing you guys the cool new things in it! Stay tuned in the coming updates. It'll be fun! REALbasic 5.5 just made Final Candidate 2! - Please sir, May I have some more? Hooray! In other 5.5 news, an updated Plugin SDK was released which now supports Linux and "theoretically" Mach-O. I've yet to make it work, but I'm not the only one. ;^) REALbasic Word Processor - Tech Eye for a Small Fry Joshua Coventry sent us a word processor he wrote in REALbasic. It supports font, size, style, color, alignment (sans Justify, darn REALbasic!), and tabbing. Among the other items on his webpage are 3D masterpieces created in Bryce, inside looks at some consumer electronics, and more. Check out Josh's website or download his word processor. SQLitePluginPro 1.0.4 - The Sequel to 1.0.4. Get it? SQL... Sequel? I kill myself... The fine folks at SQLabs released SQLitePluginPro version 1.0.4. SQLitePluginPro utilizes REALbasic's built-in database API allowing seamless transitions from another database engine and the same ease of use. The plugin uses SQLite as the database backend for its speed and stability and is fully cross-platform. The databases themselves can even be opened on Windows, Linux, Solaris, Irix, and any other OS that supports SQLite. Version 1.0.4 updates zlib (a compression library used in the plugin) to 1.2.1, makes the internal Base64 implementation endian safe, and adds numerous bug fixes and enhancements. An SQLitePluginPro single-user license is $119. Company and redistribution licenses are also available. For more information, visit the SQLabs website. XMLDictionary 1.2 - Radically cool way to save dicts to files! Due to request, Kevin Ballard of Tilde Software added plist support to XMLDictionary, a module (which requires RB 5.5!) which can read and write the contents of a REALbasic Dictionary instance to an XML files. New in 1.2 is the ability to read plists transparently, and, with the addition of an optional boolean, write them out bearing in mind that plists can't support the <file> or <null/> tags. I really hope you guys use this because for every time you download it I get $0.10! No, just kidding :) It's pretty cool though and think about how useful it is! RealXML Parser 3.0 Preview - XML parsing anyone? Well, REALbasic 5.5 features integrated XML support, but for those of you interested in parsing XML files from within REALbasic in version prior to 5.5 or those who already use RealXML, you should have a look at the "sneak preview" of version 3.0 of RealXML Parser. New features include better Unicode support, more flexible handling of the root item and many smaller improvements. This is still "alpha"-quality software. You shouldn't use this for serious projects, but Sascha it might be worth a look. RB Gobot - Where in the World is Gobot? Terry Finlay has posted his second announcement for RB Gobot, but they're so vague, I haven't even bothered to look at it. Here's the announcement for version 1.1 in its entirety: "RB Gobot makes it easy to search the REALbasic NUG Archives, REALgurus Forum, and REALbasic Garage. Version 1.1 addresses some interface issues." Vague, no? On top of that, there wasn't even a link to it! So what is it? Where can you get it? I HAVE NO CLUE. Let this be a lesson to you all that being descriptive about what you're release is a very good thing. I looked all over and couldn't find it. Honestly I didn't as hard as I did to track down an old friend (of the female persuasion) who moved away along time ago (never did send her a letter...), but I looked hard enough. I love to tell the world about your stuff but you have to give me the juice! Frequency 1.6 - Easily update your weblogs! Brad Rhine today released version 1.6 of Frequency, his program for easily updating weblogs. Frequency reduces the time it takes to update weblogs by eliminating the need to access a web-based update system. The new version adds the much-requested ability to save posts as drafts for later editing and posting, the ability to choose custom fonts for editing and previewing, support for three more weblog systems (b2evo, Nucleus, and WordPress), a find and replace feature, and one-click access to even more HTML elements. A demo version of Brad Rhine’s Frequency is available as a free download from his web site. Frequency is $9 shareware. Version 1.6 is a free upgrade for already registered users. If you're on the NUG, email him and you get a discount! Wahoo! dbrGraphics 1.0a1 - PDFs? Freakin' awesome! Ok, now this is cool. Using the same API for drawing to screen or printing, you can now create PDFs in REALbasic! Although the first alpha (thus not yet fully functional), this thing is pretty darn cool. Right now here's a break down of what's what: What works: - The entire API should work properly for drawing to standard Graphics objects. - Creates a PDF and can draw lines, rects, rounded rects, ovals, and strings. - Multiple page PDFs What doesn't work (yet): - TextFonts can only be Times (Times Roman/Times New Roman) or Helvetica. (regular, bold, italic, boldItalic) - Polygons - 2D Objects - Images including the Stop/Note/Caution Icon methods - PDF optimizations dbrGraphics unfortunately will be a commercial product. (Good luck to Aaron Bratcher on this!) This alpha will expire after March 31, 2004. If you do find it useful in it's current state, you can purchase a serial and it won't expire. A serial number for dbrGraphics costs $49.95. Little pricey for a smaller developers, but if you need PDF, you simply can't beat it. Hmm... One of these days maybe I should write my own, make it for free, and put him out of buisness!!.... Naw. Too much like Microsoft. ;^) Read the latest: REALbasic Tutorial || REALbasic News || Check out REALbasic and Support ResExcellence

Support ResExcellence By Visiting Our Sponsors!

Tuesday 02-24-2004

Tools of the Trade

User Contributions

Tools of the Trade by Scott Chitwood

Reader Help Desk
Larry Naukam writes: I read this site religiously; well, maybe not THAT seriously, but 4 or 5 times a week. And I have a question for you which maybe you can find an answer for.

I would like to find a (current) Mac version of this: years ago, I had an Apple II GS, and one of the New Desk Accessories I had running was an item which looked like a naval sonar/radar screen. You could have multiple "windows" - they were tiny, less than a fingernail across each - and showed blinking lights impersonating a computer that looked like it was doing something important. It was great fun, looked as if you were working, and impressed the clueless! But none of us old timers can remember what the name of the thing was, to even search for it or a mention of it. And - has anyone written a similar useless but lovable thing for the Mac?



American Chopper Desktops
The Discovery Channel Fansite for American Chopper: The Series has desktops of Paul Sr. and the boys posing with their tricked out custom choppers.

In The Forum
Here's a great topic that's had a bit of discussion but it may have hit a dead end. The basic question is how does one get a small image to tile itself within a Finder window. We know the options don't exist at the gui level but is there any reason why that couldn't be modified from the command line?

What we're looking for here is something similar to the command used to create double scroll arrows;

defaults write 'Apple Global Domain' AppleScrollBarVariant "DoubleBoth"

TiSkin 1.0.1 guiKit Raymond Sepulveda's TiSkin theme is quite slick, it's easy to see that a lot of thought and effort was put into creating an overall consistent look and feel, which in turn gives TiSkin a high usability factor. You'll find a nice Finder window background image in the extras folder along with a makeover kit for Safari and several desktop pictures.	TiSkin 1.0.1 Hit preview to view large image
Pillowtalk-Sky 2.2 Theme Package Laine Lee's signature theme, Pillowtalk-Sky, has been bumped to version 2.2. Pillowtalk-Sky is uses an installer package to replace System elements and includes an Aqua Restore installer package too. If I had four thumbs they would all be up in favor of Laine's unique metal texture, very cool.	Pillowtalk-Sky 2.2 Hit preview to view large image
Menu Enhancer 3.0.2 guiKit Butt_O'sigh has re-emerged in his new digs at Padma Colors and has posted an update to his Menu Enhancer 3.0.2 guiKit. MES was formerly known as 'dxb'.	Menu Enhancer 3.0.2 Hit preview to view large image

User Contributions by Scott Chitwood

It's easier than ever to contribute using our Browser Based Upload Page! If you contribute a file to any section of ResExcellence, you could win a PowerMax gift certificate worth FIFTY DOLLARS! It's easy and fun to win, look here to see how it's done!

Our PowerMax Gift Certificate Winner for January 2004 was Steven Wilson for his Safari Blue Ice Buttons v1.0. Congratulations Steven!

Applemacpunk's Kickin Boot Panel is based on the Panther Default and tells just exactly how he feel about Windows XP.


I honestly don't know if Sadako Remembers Her Cat is supposed to be a Boot Panel or some other gui element - it's a little undersized, but for some reason I filed it away with other submitted Boot Panels so that's where it will stay unless the author tells me different.


Chris Button submits another unique Splash Screen for Photoshop CS that is composed from a picture in Apple's Forest ScreenSaver and Mushrooms from a photo he took while out in the woods a while back.


Tim's Mighty Mouse Cursor Set, RGB-Sync, uses a nicely done blue iSync throbber for the wait.


Daisuke Yamashita's way cool NEOS iTunes Skin 1.0 has been added to our archive.

Support ResExcellence By Visiting Our Sponsors!

Software Update by Scott Chitwood

Ack, is it Monday already? Do you think there's any chance of extending the weekend 'til early June or so :)


CodeServant Software Releases PrefsMenu v1.2.4
PrefsMenu is a handy little app that adds a menu to right side of your menubar allowing easy access to System Preferences. The menu can be sorted alphabetically or by group.

DiscBlaze 3.0.3 Released : Bug fixes
Radical Breeze has released DiscBlaze 3.0.3, a free update to their popular CD/DVD burning burning utility for MacOS X which includes a number of bug fixes.

What's new in DiscBlaze 3.0.3...
- Burn Lists now better handle file names with extended characters.
- Fixed a problem where DiscBlaze wouldn't handle errors correctly with Burn Lists opened via dragging them to the DiscBlaze icon.
- New Burn List format. Burn Lists saved with DiscBlaze 3.0.3 are only readable by 3.0.3 and later. Burn Lists saved in DiscBlaze 2.0.3 (or later) can still be opened and will be automatically converted when saved.
- Better notification of burn verification failures.
- Fixed a crash on launch some users were seeing.



Send us your press releases!

Polling Place by Scott Chitwood

The question was, How many Mac related sites do you visit on a daily basis?

I never would have thought that sixty-two percent of you visit six or less Mac related news sites per day. Even before taking over the helm here at ResEx I was all over the place looking for Mac news and opinions. There was a time when there were a lot more sites with unique Mac related news content/editorials so my surfing isn't nearly as much as it used to be.

Here's my daily list...

• This place of course for several reasons; did what I write last night make any sense the next morning; what did Dan, Jeremy and Seth write/post; what's happening in the forum.
• As The Apple Turns
• MacMinute
• MacCentral
• MacAddict; in the forum plus a quick look at the front page.
• MacUpdate
• The GUI Customization forum at MacNN
• The Iconfactory
• RAILhead Design
• Software update page at Apple
• MacMonkies
• Xicons
  
  

Here we are, three weeks into the Pepsi iTunes Music Giveaway and the only real buzz I've noticed storywise is the one that has people avoiding losing bottles by tipping the bottle to read what's under the cap. Good luck with that one boys and girls - that requires more eye skill than I posses. Some areas seem to have an abundance of yellow capped bottles while others have none at all - the only ones I've seen have been exclusive to Diet Pepsi.

The one thing I'm not doing is going overboard by downing bottle after bottle just to score a song. But since I almost always have a cold one to get my morning going (after a proper dose of milk-soaked grains) my list of free songs has gotten off to a decent start.

The question is, Have you won any songs in the Pepsi iTunes Music Giveaway?



Do you have an idea for poll question that you'd like to see us ask? Send it my way!

Icon & Desktop News: by Dan

• Here we go again! GANT 2 Vol. 4 by Paul Davey is the next entry in this great series inspired by the hatred of the mechanical way in which his Umicons where produced and the redundancy thereof. This grouping includes sixty six system, file and misc. icons
  
  
• So many great icons... I have to apologize for not posting Steve Smith's awesome set of Iced System Icons sooner. They got tucked away in a corner of my hard drive by mistake. I hopefully will redeem myself by presenting to you the second installment in the series: Iced System Vol. 2. As there are so many icons in this series, I had to break it down into several downloads. Volume two contains ninety two different icons with a cool metallic style.
  
  
• It's the real deal gang! Powerbook G4 Desktop by Wade Moline began a photograph he took of his G4 PowerBook using a Sony DSC-F707 digital camera with a 4x macro lens added on. He imported the photo into Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 and added the text using the Hoefler Text font. The metal and drop shadow look was added using Elements layer styles. This one comes in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• A-4 Ambusher Desktop by FreeFrog Designs is an original Timeon Rizer Strarship, one of many goodies found on FreeFrogs very cool website
  
  
• The good folks over at Digikitten keep on sending us loads of luscious desktops to share with ResExcellence readers. Housing some of the most fantastic digital artists on the globe, you are invited to come by and join them, play some Photoshop Tennis or many of the other digital pixel games they have. Contemplation by Kitsune99 is the next great desktop from this ongoing display, and is available in 1024x resolution.
  
  
• Bradford Wiles of Macmonkies sends us a most excellent desktop tribute to the Gui hack masters of ResExcellence Brad says that this piece was a rather fun one to rework, as Bryce letter placement for Logo design is rather a bugger to work with. And with most of the work already in place, it turned out to be a spiffy little design. This one comes in 1024x and 1280x resolution.
  
  
• Feed that need for speed with this handsome X Serve Raid desktop created by Joerg Schneider. Comes in 1024x and 1280x resolutions.
  
  
• Decepti Desktops by Marty is a nice looking five picture set of desktops featuring the Decepticon logo, property of the Hasbro Company. These are available in 1024x resolution.
  
  

News From Around the Web:

Timeoutofmind.com updates with four new Desktops, each in three resolutions.

mandolux has issued a new desktop titled Hastings as part of my Pets theme. Hastings is a black cat and the composition of the photograph making this a fun desktop to have. A special thanks to Steve Janssen of www.steevil.com for helping him with Hastings.

The Iconfactory is pleased to announce the latest update to our popular system monitoring utility, iPulse. Version 2.0.2 offers up several important additions including motherboard temperature and bandwidth reporting as well as cool support for owners of the Griffin PowerMate.

MacMonkies shares the GUI love this Friday with 3 New Icon sets! grnluvbug, Robert Luciano, and Pictures and Adicons. And if that's not enough, grab the News and a Smile to wind up your week this Friday at MacMonkies.com!

Bombia Design redesigns the site and updates with a New Icon Set (Apple Hardware Vol. 2)

Six new desktops have been posted at www.peterjsucy.com. The theme for this week's selection of six new desktops is Nature Textures.

So what's up WWW? Icons? Desktop Pictures? News? Inform us! We'll post it!
*The desktop and icon archive is updated three times a week. The work is actually done on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings for publishing the following day. If you want a news item posted the same day, try and get it to me before 6 pm on any one of those evenings. THANKS!

Support ResExcellence By Visiting Our Sponsors!