Macsome Audio Editor: as a powerful audio editor freeware, it supports easily and quickly editing MP3 or AAC on Mac OS X. With Macsome AudioEditor, you can quickly cut and trim audio, as well as split files. It works with compressed MP3 and AAC formats to edit without the quality loss caused by other editors. Get perfect quality audio when editing natively in the MP3, AAC formats. You can also use it to make Ringtons for iPhone, or any other phone which support MP3 or AAC file as its ringtone. And you can also use it to remove any unwanted part or ads from audio files. You can add ID Tags for the audio file you saved to disk. ID Tags including Song Name, Artist, Album Name, etc. The most of all , it is a freeware, free to use software, free to upgrade.

DOWNLOAD NOW (1.9 MB)

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

Soundflower is a Mac OS X (10.2 and later) system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. Soundflower is easy to use, it simply presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed. Soundflower is free, open-source, and runs on Mac Intel and PPC computers.

Example: To send audio from iTunes to Max/MSP, open the System Preferences and select Soundflower (2ch) as the device for sound output inside the Sound panel. Then, inside Max/MSP’s DSP Status Window, select Core Soundflower (2ch) as the input device. All output of iTunes should now be sent to Max/MSP’s adc~ object.

DOWNLOAD NOW (181 K)

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

An operating system update like this Friday’s release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard is a perfect time to clean up your computer and start fresh. Let’s prepare your Mac for this weekend’s 10.6 upgrade.

Before You Upgrade, Part 1: Clean Up Your Mac

You don’t want to take those applications you haven’t launched in months, giant log files, superfluous startup items, and even old documents you don’t need anymore into Snow Leopard, so the first thing you want to do is give your Mac the virtual hose-down. Audit your data, applications, and login items; run some maintenance, and give the old hard drive a checkup with Disk Utility. Here are detailed instructions on how to clean up and revive your bloated, sluggish Mac.

Before You Upgrade, Part 2: Back Up Your Data

Before you crack open that pretty Snow Leopard box, get yourself an external FireWire drive and run a full backup of all the important files on your Mac. If you’ve got Leopard now you should already be running Time Machine, so make sure you’ve got a fresh new backup completed. If you’re still on Tiger, here are a gaggle of free Mac backup utilities for you to use. (But seriously, if you don’t already: get a FireWire drive. Back up your Mac. Now.)

Before You Upgrade, Part 3 (The Extra-Paranoid Track): Make a Bootable Backup of Your Mac

Maybe you go through the entire Snow Leopard upgrade process only to realize that your one, essential, company VPN application isn’t yet compatible. Maybe you accidentally lose files or apps in the upgrade process, or you just decide you hate Snow Leopard and want to go back to Leopard stat. One great way to ensure you can go right back to your working Mac’s state before an upgrade is to mirror the current state of your Mac on a bootable external hard drive. Even if you’ve got a Time Machine backup, grab another external drive and clone your Mac’s internal hard drive. With a bootable clone on hand, if anything goes wrong or you just want to boot back up into your old Mac’s environment (settings, apps, data, and all), you can do so by holding down the T key Option key, restarting your Mac, and choosing the clone as your bootup disk.

The Upgrade Path to Snow Leopard

To install Snow Leopard on your Intel-based Mac, Apple recommends you go from Leopard using the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade disc, or go from Tiger using the $169 Mac Box Set. Here’s Apple’s full set of system requirements.

The important thing to know is that you can only install the $29 upgrade on top of an existing Leopard installation. That is, you can’t start with a formatted Mac hard drive and install Snow Leopard only, which is kind of a bummer for geeks who like to do totally fresh, from-scratch installations.

Correction and update: We have confirmed that the preview of Snow Leopard DOES offer a standalone installer that works on a freshly-formatted hard drive without an existing Leopard installation or DVD. While we can’t absolutely say before Friday whether or not the final release will work this way, it’s very possible it will. (Read: The full version of the new Mac OS X may be just $29.) My apologies for the mistake! Thanks to commenters RudolphDer and dark42 for asking!

Choose one of two methods for the upgrade.

Upgrade Method 1. Install Snow Leopard Directly on Top of Your Existing Leopard Setup (Easy)

If youre already running a relatively clean installation of Leopard, and you want to make this update as easy, fast, and painless as possible, youre just going to pop your Snow Leopard DVD into your Macs drive and go. I did this using the Dev Preview of Snow Leopard on a well-used and cluttered Mac, and things went just fine. This is the upgrade path Apple wants you to take and suits most folks—with a good backup, youve nothing to fear. The only possible disadvantage to this approach is that some old logs and system files you dont need might stick around.

Upgrade Method 2. Wipe Your Mac Clean and Start from Scratch (Advanced)

Serious nerds who want their Snow Leopard installation absolutely pristine (and come from the Windows school of wipe-and-reinstall) can go all-out and format their Mac’s hard drive, reinstall Leopard, upgrade to Snow Leopard,, install Snow Leopard and then restore their data from backup and reinstall all their essential apps.

The one advantage to this approach is that you can take the opportunity to repartition your Mac’s hard drive in the process (though if it’s Boot Camp you want, you can set that up any time, not just when wiping your drive). You’ll also know for sure your Mac is completely cruft-free. The disadvantage to this approach is that it’s tedious and time-consuming. The Snow Leopard installation can take 45 minutes to an hour, then you’ve got to restore your Time Machine backup (depending on how much data we’re talking, this can also take up to an hour) and then you’ve got to reinstall your applications.

If you do decide to go this route on Snow Leopard upgrade day, here are a few notes:

• Only start once you have your Leopard DVD and Snow Leopard DVD in hand, and your data backed up.
• Inventory your Mac’s application list. Command-line lovers can do a simple ls /Applications/ >> appsiuse.txt to get a textual listing of everything in the Applications folder. Otherwise you can just eye your Applications folder and note down its contents. Also check your System Preferences panes for any panels you’ve installed there.
• After you’ve inventoried your applications and backed up your data, insert your Leopard DVD and click on ‘Install Mac OS X.’
• Insert your Snow Leopard DVD and click on ‘Install Mac OS X.’ When you reach the Snow Leopard Installer’s ‘Welcome’ screen, from the Utilities menu, choose ‘Disk Utility…’ From there you can (say a little prayer) and format or repartition your Mac’s internal hard drive. Once that’s done, continue with the installation as usual.

You get a few opportunities to restore your Time Machine backup during the Snow Leopard installation. Even if you pass each time, once Snow Leopard is completely installed, you can get your data out of Time Machine by running the Migration Assistant (located in /Applications/Utilities/).

One important thing to know about restoring a Time Machine backup: you can’t be logged in as the same user name that you’re restoring. That is, if I’m logged in as gina, and my backed-up Time Machine user is also gina, the Migration Assistant either makes you rename the restored user or log in as another (admin) user to do the restore. The Migration Assistant also lets you decide what you restore: which data (in predetermined folders/categories, like Music, Pictures, Documents, etc), all of your Applications (or none), settings, and other files. Here’s what that looks like:

How are you planning to upgrade to Snow Leopard? Are you doing any special Mac prep beforehand? Tell us about it in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, can’t wait to get her paws on the Snow Leopard box. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

(Via Lifehacker.)

Camtasia Studio has long been the best solution for recording and editing screencasts. It is a wonderful tool for creating tutorials, among other things, by recording the activity on a computer screen. Camtasia users have long thumbed their noses at Mac users, as it has only been available for the Windows platform. Until now.

The folks at Techsmith, makers of Camtasia, have let it slip they are going to release a Mac version on August 25. I am one of the lucky folks who have been beta testing Camtasia for Mac for weeks and all I can tell you (due to NDA) is: get it. As soon as it’s available. It is a superb method to record screens and the editor makes it a breeze to pretty things up.

(Via jkOnTheRun.)

Modern Mac users have no excuses for losing data, and yet too many lose irreplaceable digital photographs, home movies, and personal and work documents, due to having a blasé attitude to backing up, or thinking hard drives are somehow immune from technical problems.

But the harsh reality is this: data you’re not backing-up at least once – and preferably twice – is data you don’t care about.

Although backing-up was perhaps once an arcane, laborious process, that’s far from the truth for today’s Mac user.

In Finder, you can burn any folder to disc via the relevant option in the File menu, or create a ‘burn folder’, drag content to it and within minutes have a back-up of important data to file away in a drawer. (iTunes and iPhoto also have user-friendly back-up options for making disc-based copies of media: File > Library > Back Up to Disc… and Share > Burn, respectively.)

Back in time

Users of Leopard also have access to Time Machine. This application can back-up your documents in the background, even keeping multiple copies of your work, so you can retrieve accidentally deleted items.

To get started with Time Machine, all you need to do is plug in an external hard drive – preferably one that has 50% more storage than your Mac’s internal drive. (1TB drives are now available for as little as £70, and so if you can afford a Mac, you can afford a back-up drive.) A dialog box will appear and once you click ‘Use as Backup Disk’, Time Machine will get on with backing-up.

Be mindful, though, that Time Machine is not a solution that creates a bootable back-up. In the event of a hard-drive failure, you’ll need your Mac OS X installation disc along with the back-up drive to restore your system. If you feel that’s too slow for recovery, applications exist to create a clone of your Mac’s drive, enabling you to get up and running extremely quickly.

Send in the clones

A hard-drive clone is an exact copy of your Mac’s internal drive. Should your Mac’s drive keel over, you can restart, hold Option, select the clone and boot from it. Your down-time is however long that process takes – perhaps a minute or two – although you’ll of course lack files created or amended since the last back-up. If your data is critical, we recommend backing up with Time Machine to one drive and also creating a clone, for the best of both worlds.

One final note: Macs happily read to and write from various hard drive formats, but most drives initially arrive in a format intended for Windows, which may not result in a bootable Mac drive when cloned to. Therefore, when you buy your new external hard drive, reformat it. Connect it to your Mac, launch Disk Utility, click the ‘Partition’ tab, select ‘1 Partition’ from ‘Volume Scheme’, and from the ‘Options’ button, select ‘GUID Partition Table’ if you’ve an Intel Mac or ‘Apple Partition Map’ if you’ve a PowerPC Mac.

MAC FRIENDLY: Reformat new hard drives if they come with a partition scheme that’s more suitable for Windows

The Mac OS X back-up top five

1. Time Machine (part of Mac OS X, £83)

If you’ve got Leopard, you should be using Time Machine. The app costs nothing, works fairly well, and can provide access to previously deleted documents.

2. SuperDuper! ($27.95)

Utterly dependable, SuperDuper! is a first-rate cloning solution that works on any Tiger or Leopard Mac system.

Read TechRadar’s SuperDuper! review.

>

3. Carbon Copy Cloner (donationware)

A strong rival to SuperDuper!, Carbon Copy Cloner is actually superior for scheduling and partial drive copies (such as cloning folder to folder), and has versions that work on Mac OS X 10.2+.

Read TechRadar’s Carbon Copy Cloner review.

4. Twin (about £42)

Newcomer Twin offers plenty of flexibility, enabling you to copy a disk or folder to a local volume, FTP or Amazon S3.

Read TechRadar’s Twin review.

5. Carbonite ($55 per year)

For the truly cautious, off-site back-up provides an extra layer of security. Carbonite is a top offering in this field, providing an automated and Mac-like experience.

Read TechRadar’s Carbonite review.

(Via TechRadar: All latest feeds.)

ScreenRecycler allows you to use your other computer as a second monitor.

Many Mac users have a second computer sitting right next to their main computer on their desk including a nice display. ScreenRecycler now enables you to use this spare computer as second display for your Mac. You can even use an idle machine for that purpose.

It’s like a dual monitor setup without the need to buy an additional monitor.

Just start ScreenRecycler on your Mac then connect to ScreenRecycler via VNC from your second machine.

Recycle your old Mac and Windows machines !

DOWNLOAD NOW (2MB)

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

VideoK a new innovative video Player for Mac Users implementing a new breakthrough technology that will enable you to optimize space without losing out on performance.

This unique easy to use player will allow you to convert any video file to the new codec JPDMovie (JPDM independent pre-filter to H.264) enhancing your picture definition saving up to 30% on memory space (on the actual H264 standard).

Video Format: Mov and m4v QuickTime compatible (JPDM, independent pre-filter to H.264). JPDM vs. Lossy video format: 30% reduction with improved image quality.

Features:

• Drag and Drop
• QuickLook
• Growl support
• Sparkle updater
• And a new component for QuickTime

DOWNLOAD NOW (10′MB)

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

Tweetdeck, one of the most popular Twitter clients, has raised $2 million in a previously undisclosed round of funding, according to angel investor John Borthwick. He revealed the funding at TechCrunch’s Real-Time Stream CrunchUp, during a panel discussion bewteen Michael Arrington, and investor Ron Conway.

Tweetdeck, which recently launched a TechCrunch-branded version, raised a small round of angel funding in January, estimated at $300,000. TweetDeck is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, it just requires Adobe AIR. The company has been working on getting more services integrated into its client. Last week, it launched an iPhone app that has been gaining popularity quickly.

(Via TechCrunch.)

Have you ever noticed that no matter which Best Buy you go into, you end up seeing the same people working there? That’s because there are seven types of people that work at every single Best Buy, with no exceptions.

A little known fact about me is that I worked at Best Buy for a couple of years in high school before getting fired for badly, badly abusing the employee discount system. But while there I learned a lot about the types of people that work in such an establishment, and I’ve noticed the same people in other Best Buys that I’ve been to since. So here are my list of the seven types of people you’ll find there, from a former employee’s perspective.

Next time you go to Best Buy, be on the lookout. I promise you’ll see at least a couple of these characters.

Illustrations by the illustrious Dan Meth, the artist behind such gems as the Pop Culture Charts and the animated Phone Sex Fetishes.

Want to ditch this gallery format and see everything on one page? Click here.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Car Audio Thug
You’ll find this guy in the car audio department. He’s got a big plug earring in each ear, some form of facial hair out of a late-90’s R&B video and tattoos on his forearms. He tears into the parking lot every day, tires squealing, bass blasting, in a late-model Civic that he’s dumped thousands of dollars into. You suspect that if he didn’t have a job selling car stereos, he’d be stealing them.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Marginally Cute Customer Service Girl
This girl works at the customer service desk or as a cashier. She’s maybe 17 years old and is kind of cute, but only when compared to the chubby piles of sadness she’s surrounded with. Because of this, she’s constantly hit on/sexually harassed by the guys who stock CDs and DVDs. She manages to take this in stride somehow and is almost infuriatingly perky and chipper. The chances of her having hooked up with the car audio thug are very high.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Grizzled Old Home Theater/Computer Sales Lifer
This guy has seen some shit. He’s a refugee from Lechmere or Tweeter or some other now-defunct retail outlet. He knows the most about the products he sells, which is why all the part-time high school employees send customers with actual questions his way. He’s got an air of resigned acceptance about his life, and while he’s all-business with customers, he’s got no filter with fellow employees. He tells inappropriate jokes and talks vulgarly about the managers behind their back. He has a strictly regimented cigarette break every 2.5 hours that he never, ever misses.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Pervy Geek Squad Guy
This guy searches every computer that’s in for service for porn, collecting everything he finds on an external HDD that he keeps in the back. He talks in graphic terms about what he’d do to women who he sees enter the store, but when he talks to them he’s totally professional. You suspect that he pleasures himself behind the plastic curtains, but you don’t want to confirm this. He’s got a level 80 World of Warcraft character. Somehow, he and the grizzled old sales guy are buddies and eat lunch together.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Sad Department Manager
This guy went to college then, after graduation, moved back home with his parents to save money. He ended up getting a job at Best Buy while he ‘figured stuff out.’ It’s 10 years later and he still lives in the town he went to high school in, is balding, gained 15 pounds and is the manager of the digital cameras department. He’s perfectly adequate at his job, but talking to him for more than 5 minutes just makes you so damned sad.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Slick Careerist Manager
This guy wants to go right to the top. He runs team meetings, irons his blue polos, and gets a hard-on when talking about accessory sales and service-plan attach rates. He’s climbing the ladder with everything he’s got, and he spews corporate nonsense with the passion of a true believer. You’ve never seen him have an actual human interaction with someone, and you wonder if he even has any furniture in his apartment. He may be a robot.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Terrifying Loss-Prevention Guy
This guy is either an ex-con, an ex-cop or a vet. He is jacked yet forced to wear a yellow polo shirt, which creates a false sense of levity when dealing with him. He may seem friendly on the outside, but if you cross him he will snap your neck. He legitimately thinks that it’s unfair that Best Buy security guys aren’t allowed to carry sidearms. He has so much rage bottled up inside him that you know to just say hello and smile and otherwise steer clear.

(Via Gizmodo.)