Thursday, December 22, 2005

What's in my MACOSX menu bar?



I have always been a fan of apple menus. In order of appearance we have (left from right):
  • BackLight: an amazing desktop utility that allows us to play any ScreenSaver we have (like the great SaveHollywood which allows you to play movies as screen savers) - associating BackLight and SaveHollywood plays movies as desktop backgrounds. Added to that you can of course choose the opacity of the effects. Sweet!
  • ByteController: very sweet iTunes controller. In fact the thing is, I merely use the menu bar options, mais I LOVE the keyboard shortcuts that allow me to control iTunes pause (cmd-alt-space), skip (cmd-right, cmd-left) and volume (cmd-up cmd-down arrows) buttons, while keeping on typing other things
  • SpiritedAway: allowing me to hide idle application automatically and define exceptions
  • Yahoo! Widget Engine: allowing me to have all my Yahoo! data (calendar, notes, address book...) directly on my desktop, keeping my data always up to date.
  • GeekTool: listing on my desktop sets of logs when need be (nice to monitor a webserver, among other things)
  • Stuffit icon (useful)
  • Displays control panel (useful)
  • Sound controller (useful)
  • Applescript icon: to access library scripts quickly (merely used)
  • Users menu: for quick switch
  • MenuCalendarClock: great little utility; I use personnaly the freeware version which is realy enough for my usage
There's a great blog (at hicksdesign) to remain updated and try apple menu programs.

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