Okay I’ll admit it, I don’t use screensavers - if I’m not using my computer, I want my screen dimmed and my battery preserved. However, some people swear by them, and for them I recommend a new screensaver for OSX called SoundStream.

Soundstream works by listening to your Mac’s built in microphone, and then visually responding to the ambient noise around, or whatever is coming from your speakers. Its much simpler to see than to explain with words, so check the demo. The effect is very fun to play with, so you can get the screensaver here.

Thanks to Digg.

I’ve always wondered what the best way to send files from one person to another is. There are a whole lot of  options out there - yousendit, rapidshare, sendspace - but none of them compare to MediaFire.

Literally, all you have to do is click Browse, find the file, and click Upload. The upload progress is displayed very well, and the result provides you with a link, the html code for the link, and the VB code. With file transfer services like this, speed and ease is key, and this is probably the easiest and fastest service out there. Its free to boot! The only limitation is that the file size has to be less than 100mb, but thats not too restrictive, and your files currently will not be removed at any point.

If you need to transfer large files, I highly suggest you use MediaFire.

In Windows, you can rename multiple files quickly (and much quicker than in OSX). In order to do this, follow these steps:

• Highlight the files you want to rename. (Use Ctrl or Shift to highlight multiple files at once)
• Right-Click the first file in the series, click Rename.
• Only the file you’ve right clicked will be highlighted. That’s OK. Change the file name, the extension will be kept.
• Hit the enter key to commit your change. Your files will be named “file (1).jpg”, “file (2).jpg”, etc..

This little trick comes courtesy of LifeHacker, and can be very convinient especially if you have a lot of files to work with. Try it out. And for all of you Mac users, you can do the same thing with Automator, though its a little more drawn out.

iPhoto is great. Even with my 14,000 photos, and over 400 different keywords, its still speedy. However, great is the day when I find out something new about a program I already love. Although the day I found this was a while ago, my good friend Mike the other day asked me whether it was possible to browse the photographs on a digital camera in iPhoto prior to importing them, and I remembered this great tip.

If you want to browse your camera photographs, just plug in your camera into your Mac, (iPhoto should open automatically in import mode), and instead of clicking import, press the return key on your keyboard twice quickly. This will let you see all of your photographs on your camera, and on some (probably most) cameras, you can drag and drop into your iPhoto library.

This is a cool little trick courtesy of MacOSXHints. If you want to find out more, I highly suggest you visit their incredibly helpful site.

Recently I developed a new obsession - The West Wing. I have watched almost 4 seasons in about 2 months, and its utterly amazing. I bought all 7 seasons on DVD, which I would watch at home or on my computer when I was on winter break. However, now that I’m back at school, watching is a little more complicated, since I’m not always home and rarely have my DVDs with me. What I do always have with me is my 5G Video iPod, which rarely leaves my side.

I’ve never been one for DVD ripping, since in the early days of DVD ripping were slow and unreliable. However, with processors as fast as they are now, and programs as simple as ever, DVD ripping has now become painless, fast, and easy. The program that I currently use is called Handbrake, which lets you start ripping your dvds in seconds, only requiring a few configuration steps. Handbrake by itself lets you rip your dvds to both iPod format and not, using either the ffmpeg or h.264 plugin at any combination of frame rate and resolution. However, the simplest way to rip your dvds to iPod is to use a simplified version of Handbrake called Instant Handbrake. Instant Handbrake (same site) has you ripping your DVDs to iPod format in seconds.

The interesting part writing about this right now is that development for Handbrake has almost completely stopped. The program works well and has very few bugs, but no new features have been added in a long time. However, several new developers have picked up where the Handbrake developers left off, with a new program called MediaFork. MediaFork has several new features that Handbrake does not (and will never) offer, but it is currently in beta.

If you are interested in backing up your DVDs either to your harddrive, iPod, or both, I highly recommend you use Handbrake and keep an eye on MediaFork. For those of you who already use HandBrake, what configuration settings have you found that produce the best results?