Category Archives: free & cheap software

tip : Plants vs. Zombies Mac-game for free (Halloween treat)

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As a special treat sponsored by the ADA (American Dental Association), PopCap is giving away licences to their popular Mac&PC-game Plants vs. Zombies for free.

But it’s only until november 11th ! …so be quick !

go here to download :

http://www.stopzombiemouth.com

…and go here to get your promotional code :

http://static-www.ec.popcap.com/misc/zombiemouth/downloads/stop_zombie_mouth_coupons.pdf

Note : officially it’s a “US residents only” promotion…

**********

If you are reading this after November 11th 2012, you won’t be able to get the full game for free, but you can still get some Plants vs Zombies (online) play for free here :

http://chrome.plantsvszombies.com

 

fixed : Flash 11 needed on PowerPC Mac (for BBC iPlayer, Facebook video, etc.)

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Question :

I was a happy user of BBC iPlayer, but it has stopped working on my G4 (or G5) PowerPC Mac, since the new BBC iPlayer version requires Adobe Flash 11, and the latest version of Flash released is version Player 10.1.102.64

Isn’t there any way for me to view Flash 11 content on my PowerPC Mac ?

Answer :

There is an unofficial version of Flash for PowerPC that tells websites it is Flash 11 to enable you to view Flash 11 content. This works for BBC iPlayer, Facebook video, YouTube video, Adobe Kuler and various other web services.

This will enable you to access Flash 11 content on your PowerPC Mac, but please be aware that modern video will still be stuttering on a G4 Mac… even with this trick… for YouTube viewing you might be better of using MacTubes ; go here for more info : https://macmanusnl.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/fixed-watch-yo…wered-g4-ibook/

Installing the unofficial Flash 11 is rather simple, but as always with ‘home-brewed’ software, using it is completely AT YOUR OWN RISK !

– first and foremost : BACKUP your Mac ; make a copy of your entire hard drive before you proceed (use TimeMachine for instance)

– after that, and ONLY after that backup being done, open Safari and download the edited Flash-plugin here :

http://www.steelbin.com/FBforFBPPC

–  then goto the download button in the upper right corner of Safari and click it

– then in the “Downloads” windows that opens, click on the folder named “FPforFBPPC”

– when the Finder opens, click on the alias folder named “Internet Plug-Ins” (this folder can also be found at [your hard drive] –> Library –> Internet Plug-Ins)

– inside that folder, right-click (= CTRL + mouse click) on the file named “Flash Player.plugin”

– in the popup menu that appears, choose “Compress Flash Player.plugin”

– you will now have a file named “Flash Player.plugin.zip”, rename it to “Flash Player(original).plugin.zip”

– then right-click on the file named “Flash Player.plugin” and choose “Move to Trash”

– then quit Safari

– then go back to your downloads folder, click on the folder named “FPforFBPPC” once again, and right-click the file “flash Player.plugin” that’s in there

– from the popup menu choose “Label” and a color that indicates to you that this is not an original file (e.g. red or yellow)

– then drag the file “flash Player.plugin” onto the folder alias named “Internet Plug-Ins” that’s right below it

– then click on the file “READ FIRST.rtf” and read the disclaimer that the maker (called SteelBin) has for you !

– now reopen Safari and goto this website :

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/find-version-flash-player.html

– there you can check if you see the video (at STEP1) and if your Flash Player Version is recognized as 11.1.102.55 (at STEP2)

– if that’s okay, you’re done (don’t bother about STEP3 and STEP4)

(if you get any older version of Flash listed… repeat the procedure, and if that still doesn’t work, follow the instructions below for installing a web browser for PowerPC Macs that’s still being updated)

– Now you’re able to use BBC iPlayer and many other modern sites once again on you ‘old’ Mac !

Enjoy !

A big thanks to SteelBin for creating this, please donate to him if you wish to thank him for doing so…

…and a special thanks to Telford Moore for testing the BBC iPlayer with this trick

NOTE :

– if you have trouble using a website or web service because you still get an error that your browser is too old, start using a web browser for PowerPC Macs that is still being updated. You have two options :

Camino :

http://caminobrowser.org

OmniWeb :

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/overview/

Note : even though it is suggested elsewhere on the web to combine the use of the unofficial Flash 11 plugin with the TenFourFox web browser, I would advice to not hack TenFourFox to do so… 

Yes, the big advantage of TenFourFox is that it is the closest you can get to the modern day Firefox, but the flipside is that it has plugins (like Flash and QuickTime) completely disabled for security reasons… they’re waiting for HTML5 to make plugins obsolete…

http://code.google.com/p/tenfourfox/wiki/PluginsNoLongerSupported

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fixed : add sound to Screen Sharing

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Question :

I am using OSX’s built-in Screen Sharing option to control the Mac in our living room, when I am in another room with my MacBook – it’s great !

But sometimes I would like to listen to a video or a music track that I’m playing on my ‘living room Mac’ and Screen Sharing doesn’t support that…

What can I do ?

 

Answer :

There’s a simple and FREE utility that will help you out on this one : Soundfly

Just download and install Soundfly on both Macs and then run “Soundfly” on the ‘sound sending Mac’, and “Soundfly Receiver” on the ‘listening Mac’… it’s that simple…

You can download Soundfly here :

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26855/soundfly

UPDATE : the latest version can be downloaded here :

http://www.abyssoft.com/software/soundfly/

 

Thanks to Graham Johnstone for this updated link 😉

fixed : watch YouTube on an ‘underpowered’ G4 iBook

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Question :

I am (still) using an iBook G4 and I very content with it most of the things I use it for. (Even in this day & age of OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” and Intel-Macs, I’m still happily using MacOSX 10.5.8 “Leopard” on a PowerPC-Mac…)

And even though Safari 5.0.6 is still doing great for me for regular web browsing, it chokes on YouTube…

How can I fix this ?

Answer :

The iBook G4’s graphics card performance is rather ‘underpowered’ compared to current Macs…

Just install MacTubes, it’s a FREE dedicated application that will run current YouTube-video’s far more smooth than YouTube.com in Safari :

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/28608/mactubes

fixed : iCloud Photo Stream from business iPhone to family Mac

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Question :

My iPhone is a business device, so I want to sync my ‘business life’ including Contacts, Calendars, Mail, Documents & Data, etc to my MacBook Pro… but I want my upload/sync the photo’s I’ve made with this ‘business’ iPhone to our shared ‘family’ Mac which holds our family’s entire iPhoto-database. iCloud doesn’t seem to enable me to do so… what can I do ?

Answer :

Even though you can setup a secondary iCloud account on your iPhone, you cannot do what you would like to do, because :

1- Photostream is only supported for your primary iCloud account (*)

(*) UPDATE d.d. September 20th 2012: only when running iPhoto 9.4 or newer on OSX 10.8.2 or newer, you have the option to subscribe to a ‘Shared’ Photo Stream besides your primary iCloud account’s Photo Stream

If you want to this ‘Shared Photo Stream’ feature on an older, officially unsupported Intel-Mac, you could consider installing a patched version of OSX 10.8 – for more info, look here :

fixed : install OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion on unsupported Macs

 

2- Documents & Data syncing is only supported for your primary iCloud account

…so using iCloud you will never be able to make the logical split between Documents & Data sync (which is strictly ‘business’) and Photostream (which is mainly ‘family’)…

The only solution at this moment is to find an alternative to Photostream… and I’ve found (only) one : Eye-Fi does the trick !

And… Eye-Fi is free (free account, free iOS-app & free Mac-app ; by SanDisk)

download it here for OSX :

http://support.eye.fi/downloads/center/

and download the iOS-app here :

http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/eye-fi/id306011124?mt=8

the only thing you need to beware of is that the Eye-Fi App needs to be running/open on your iPhone/iPad and on your Mac both Eye-Fi Center and iPhoto need to be running/open…

…so it still feels a little more ‘manual’ than iCloud Photostream, since you need not forget to open the Eye-Fi App…

…but that’s a small price to pay, since you get 3 things that iCloud doesn’t give you :

– auto-transfer of your video recordings into iPhoto

– a free online gallery (like the one we lost when ‘upgrading’ from MobileMe to iCloud)

– separation of your ‘photostream’ from your primary iCloud-account

Note :

even though using DropBox might seem to be a valid alternative to iCloud’s Photostream also, since it does auto-upload of iPad/iPhone pictures to ‘the cloud’… it is not really useful in the end, as it does not provide auto-import into iPhoto…

tip : put a OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” installer on a USB-stick

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If you just have one Mac you want to install OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” on, you can just (buy and) download the installer from the Mac App Store.

But if you need to install OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” on multiple Macs, the fact that the download process regularly is very slow, will make you want to skip the downloading if possible.

You can do so easily by creating a dedicated USB-stick with the OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” installer on it, which is quite easy :

– get yourself a brand-new 8GB USB-stick

– buy & download OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” from the Mac App Store, but… you need to make sure the installer will not be ‘cleaned up’ (= deleted) after the installation has finished : the easiest way to do so is to wait for the download to complete, and then when the installer window pops up, do not start to install right away ; first, go to the Finder and into the Applications folder, then right-click on the “Install OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion” application, and select “Compress “Install OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion””… then wait for the compression to complete… when that’s done, you can continue to the installer window and install OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion”

[ if you’ve already installed OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” and the installer has already been ‘cleaned up’ (= deleted), you need to re-download OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” from the Mac App Store ]

– download the “Lion DiskMaker” app from here :

http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/

– then double-click on the .zip-version that is now/still in your Applications folder ; that will place the original installer application back

– then run the “Lion DiskMaker” app, and follow the instructions given

…it’s that easy

Note :

– additional instructions can be found on the page that you’ve downloaded “Lion DiskMaker” from

– reformatting of the 8GB USB-stick will be done by the “Lion DiskMaker” app also

– it is highly recommended to create the installer on a dedicated USB-stick ; even though it is possible to burn the installer to a DVD, do not do so, since that will be extremely slow to startup from during installation – also, do not put the installer on a (partition of) a external drive that has other data on it… it might wreck your data if things mess up during creation, and it’s not as practical for actual use…

tip : OSX’s built in password generator

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Question :

It seems like I have to come up with a new password for each new device and each new  web service I’m using. My inspiration for new passwords has dried up. Can you help me ?

Answer :

————– UPDATED ANSWER —————

an updated answer to this question can be found in this post :
fixed : easily generate a new random password in macOS

————– ORIGINAL ANSWER —————

There is a random password generator already built into OSX that is free for you to use.

It’s called Password Assistant and you can access it by opening the Keychain Access app and clicking on the ‘+’-icon in the lower menu bar, then in the pulldown window that appears, click on the ‘black key’-icon ; that will open up the password generator window of Password Assistant.

In Password Assistant, you can choose from 5 types of passwords : Manual, Memorable, Letters & Numbers, Numbers Only, Random or FIPS-181 compliant. Then it will tell you the quality (strenght) of your password in a colored status bar, and if your not satisfied with the suggested password, you can click on the ‘black triangle’-icon and you will be shown some alternative suggestions.

If you’ve found your ‘ideal’ password, select it and copy (press ‘CDM’+’C’) and paste it onto the desired location.

When you’re done, click the CANCEL-button to exit and close Keychain Manager.

but… since this very helpful function is rather hidden within OSX, someone called CodePoet has written a FREE launch script (back in 2006) that you can install and use just like a regular application. Too bad that for some reason CodePoet’s website has stopped working, so all download links you will find will get you nowhere.

Luckily, a Dutch website called appletips.nl is hosting a mirror of the download (and they’ve added Dutch language support) – Thank you apple tips.nl ! Since there was no icon, I’ve added one myself and renamed it into OSX Password Assistant Launcher, a name that better suits what the script actually does (but you can change that yourself if you don’t agree). And now you can download it here also :

OSX-Password-Assistant-Launcher-zip

Note : the file will have a .zip.doc-extension after you’ve downloaded it, please change that into a regular .zip-extension manually and then unZIP the file