WriteRoom is a text-editor like product by Hogbay Software designed to make sure you focus on writing. If you haven’t tried it, it’s definitely worth a shot - below is a short, albeit, half serious review of it.

Just to warn you, you may need to squint to read the text…apologies.

Thanks to Todd at Fluidapp.com us Mac users are able to use virtually any app in our menu bars.

The benefits of this, for me at least, are plain to see…Dock space, quick access and genuinely cool. As i mentioned, it works with any site. All you need to do is follow the instructions in Todd’s video which takes literally 2 minutes and you’re done.

My favorite sites for this to work with are:

Google Reader:

Pownce:

FriendFeed:

Twitter

Plurk:

Google recently unveiled the release of the Google Toolbox for Mac source code, joining the ranks of Google Data APIs Object-C Library of open source materials available from the internet services giant. The development team calls the collection eclectic, containing apps that are required for most every day tasks. Eventually, the Google Mac Team hopes to have additional utilities, with “more interesting and complex classes”.

Google + osx = floats my boat.

After a fairly confusing and in some cases blatantly incorrect post by Trent who originally wrote this post and who I will ensure doesn’t write any hardware related posts again(!) - this post has been updated & rewritten by the comments of one of our readers Alex.

There are two kinds of memory- long term memory which goes on your hard drive; which is where documents are stored. This isn’t usually referred to as ‘memory’ but rather ‘hard disk’, ‘drive’ or simply ’space’. Hard drive space limits how much stuff like music you can hold and store.

Then there is the short term memory; which is usually what is meant by the word ‘memory’. This is ‘volitile’ that is, it’s all lost when you turn off your computer. It is used to hold temporary data, like the programs you are working on, pictures you’re looking at etcetera or the music iTunes will be playing in the next 10 minutes.

The size of ‘memory’ is what defines how much multi-tasking you can do: and the ‘memory’ in both versions is the same- 2GB, which is probably more than enough for most of the things you’re likely to want to do on a laptop.

The ‘hard-drive’ is what differs between models.

• The cheaper version is *larger*- 80GB; and is made of moving parts, similar to a CD drive locked in a case. This option uses the same hard drive as a large iPod (the ones you can hear clicking and whirring).

• The more expensive version is highly unusual- it uses ’solid state’ memory; with no moving parts. The upside is it’s more reliable, uses less power, and is smaller and lighter. It’s also faster to read and write from- this means that ”memory” and CPU intensive things like image manipulating wont be much different, but reading, moving, deleting, downloading large documents will be faster.

• The downside is it’s a lot more expensive, and the more expensive model is actually smaller (64GB). This is the same memory as in use in the iPod nanos.

Apple speculate you will use the time machine function to store most of your data on an external drive (or home desktop) ; and you’ll only store current documents on your laptop (or you’ll use online facilities like Google Docs).

Thank you for much better, clearer & in fact - correct explanation Alex. Trent, you’re fired.

Update
For a thorough technical comparison of the two, have a read of this from Ars Technica

Now, this is something which I have found useful recently and I thought i’d share with you just in case you weren’t aware of it.

Firstly, you should know you can search any site with quicksilver simply by visiting the site (with Safari), typing “***” (without the “) into the search space on the site and then bookmarking the results page with whatever name you want to type in quicksilver to search the site.

For example, to search amazon.com:

1. Visit Amazon.com with Safari and search for ***

2. The results page should be this

3. Then bookmark this page and call it Amazon Search.

4. Now bring up Quicksilver and ensure you rescan your catalog. Give it 20-30 secs or so and then type “Amazon Search”, press tab, then tab again and type “.” (without the “) to allow you to type what you’re wanting to search for and search for “AnyItemOnAmazon”.

5. Voila.

_______________________________

NOW TO SEARCH GMAIL…it’s a little more tricky as you’ll find that gmail doesn’t change it’s url when you search for anything inside it.

So, you’ll need to do the following (if you’re using gmail.com):

1. Type : http://mail.google.com/mail/?search=query&view=tl&start=0&init=1&fs=1&q=*** into Safari

2. Bookmark the results page and call it something like “Gmail Search”

3. Bring up Quicksilver using your launch shortcut - rescan your catalogue

4. Type “Gmail Search” (without the “), press tab, tab again and then “.” to enable the text space and type whatever it is you’re wanting to search for.

5. Done Diddy

ps. If you’re using google apps for your domain, this is the url you need to bookmark:

mail.google.com/a/XYZ.COM/?search=query&view=tl&start=0&init=1&fs=1&q=***

A couple of small but pretty useful tips for expose on the mac.

1. If you use f9 or f10 for expose frequently & you also happen to have a number of different applications appear, you can scroll through each individual application on your desktop by clicking ‘tab’.

2. Another useful tip is to click on f9 or f10, either will work and then press command-tab to bring up the application switcher. This will then give you the opportunity to bring to the front the application’s window that you’re looking to get to.

The two tips come in particularly useful if you’re a) primarily a keyboard user b) tend to have multiple applications open on one desktop ’space’.

These may be familiar to an old school mac user, but to relative newbies I hope this is of some help. Ciao for now.