January 2010 Software Closet
Helpful Utilities
32- or 64-bit Kernel Startup Mode Selector 1.5
32- or 64-bit Kernel Startup Mode Selector (free) helps you work with older software on newer Macs running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). (Please see accompanying story in Bug Fixes in this month’s newsletter on page 12.) It allows you to force your Mac to start up in 32-bit kernel mode or 64-bit kernel mode, and provides useful information about your Mac:
- Whether you have a 32-bit or a 64-bit processor
- Whether you have a 32-bit or a 64-bit EFI
- Whether the MacOS X Kernel is set to boot in 32-bit or in 64-bit mode
- Whether the MacOS X Kernel is running in 32-bit or in 64-bit mode
- Whether Apple officially supports booting a 64-bit kernel on your Mac
SyncTwoFolders 1.5.4
SyncTwoFolders (free) synchronizes the content of two folders, with some interesting options. For example, you can control whether it replaces newer items with older items, copies only new items, or skips files containing a specified text string. A Simulation mode shows what will happen to the files if you commit to the changes.
Time Machine Editor 2.5.2
Apple’s Time Machine is a great feature in Mac OS X because it makes it easy for anyone to backup and restore their important files. The downside is that Time Machine does its thing every hour without the option to change that interval, which doesn’t fit everyone’s style. Thanks to the resourceful Mac developer community, there is Time Machine Editor, a free utility that adds the ability to change Time Machine’s backup interval to daily, weekly, and monthly. It’s safe to use because all it does is change Time Machine’s preference files.
Actions and Plug-ins
Extract Pages in InDesign
Extract Pages, from Loïc Aigon, is a script that adds a couple of Acrobat-like features to InDesign. From the Scripts panel, double-click the Extract Pages script. Choose which pages to extract from the document, whether or not to delete those pages after extraction, and where to save the extracted pages. The strongest feature of this script is that you can save each page as its own individual file: a quick way to break apart a large document into smaller components.
Kill PasteBoard XT
Markzware’s PasteBoard XT ($29) is tremendously useful when you need to have space above and below your QuarkXPress documents. However, the very first version of it, way back in the QuarkXPress 3 era, wrote code into each document requiring the XTension to be present when re-opening the document. Some of those documents are still floating around, so it’s handy to have Markzware’s free Kill PasteBoard XT for QuarkXPress 6, 7 and 8. With this XTension installed, any document you open that requires PasteBoard will have that requirement removed when you resave the document.
Ultimate Web 2.0 Layer Styles
Deziner Folio’s Ultimate Web 2.0 Layer Styles is a free collection of 131 Photoshop Layer Styles that produce glow, gradient, glass, gel, and other effects popular in consumer websites.
Free Fonts
Just in time for Valentine's Day:
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