SHAREWARE NEWS
March 1997
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This month's Free Sample Shareware is no longer available. Please see the current month.
As of MacOS 7.6, Powertalk is dead. Cyberdog becomes Apple's supported email client. Before switching to MacOS 7.6, you can use AppleMail to Cyberdog to save your AppleMail letters into one or more Eudora mailbox files. Each Eudora mailbox file can be converted to a Cyberdog mail tray using Cyberdog's Import Eudora Mail command. AppleMail to Cyberdog requires MacOS 7.5.5 with PowerTalk and AppleScript enabled. Free.
AppSizer is a control panel (cdev) that allows you to modify an application's MultiFinder partition size as you launch it. To do this, you simply hold down the control key as you launch the application and AppSizer brings up a dialog that lets you specify the application's partition size. $19.95
Playing Fly Swatter is pretty simple. Select New Game from the File menu, and a fly appears on your screen. Your job is to use the mouse cursor to swat it. Just move the cursor over the fly and press the mouse button to swat the fly, and a new fly will appear. If you don't swat the fly after one second has passed, the fly leaves and another one appears. Your score is displayed in the lower-left hand corner of the window. If you hit the fly, you score a point; if the fly moves on before you swat it, you lose a point. Fly Swatter should run on most any Macintosh, running System 6.04 or higher. Free
NeXTish is a color scheme for Kaleidoscope, the interface swapper from Greg Landweber. As the name implies, NeXTish is similar to the interface of the NeXTstep OS. With all the buzz surrounding Apple's acquisition of NeXT, the time for idolizing Be is over (for the moment) and the time for learning about NeXT has come. Free
Persian Rug is a control panel that generates a new random background at your request. It is not very likely that you will see the same pattern twice. The settings allow you to change the current background if you find it unesthetic, and they allow you to set a special key to make this change without having to bring up the control panel. You can also turn Persian Rug off if it's bugging you or one of your other programs. Power Mac only. Postcardware.
Snapz Pro is a control panel that allows you to quickly and easily capture any portion of your screen to disk as an editable image file. A single keystroke brings up the Snapz Pro palette, which allows you to capture, trim, crop, scale, and dither any portion of your screen in the blink of an eye. Simply click on a monitor, window, or menu and Snapz Pro will automatically isolate, trim, and crop it&emdash;no more tedious pixel editing to prepare your screen captures for publication. Snapz Pro also allows you to use a free-form selection to grab whatever portion of the screen you wish, for maximum flexibility. Any image you capture can be scaled anywhere from 10% all the way up to 400%, as well as dithered to a wide range of color palettes. Snapz Pro offers over a dozen different PICT file types to choose from, so the captured image is immediately ready to be edited in your program of choice. To save you time, Snapz Pro helps organize your screen captures by storing them in a special Screen Snapz folder, which is easily accessible from the Apple menu. Snapz Pro also allows you to create project folders, to logically group your screen captures, keeping them organized and easily reached. No more searching through your hard drive for lost images. From Ambrosia Software, $20.00
SystemNOTE is a great way to help remind yourself of things. This control panel displays a message (and even a picture) during your computer's startup and will even delay itself so you don't miss the message. If you prefer to remind yourself of something as you turn your computer off, SystemNOTE can handle that too. Many aspects of the operation of SystemNOTE can be adjusted through the new interface. $10.00
UltraFind treats your Mac or network as an information-rich file and text searchable database and provides options for finding every conceivable type of Macintosh file. Its extremely fast text search even includes a built-in Thesaurus, allowing you to find documents related to a particular topic you are looking for, on your hard disks, in text indexes, and also on the World Wide Web and Newsgroups. $39.95
MacOrganize, written by Jeff Quade, allows the user to lock-down the hard drive, with no way to unlock the drive. If you see it, don't use it! It is an old program which he is sending around again for some nutty reason.
If you are having annoying crashes while on the internet, it may NOT be your system. It may be your ISP. Check out an article in http://www.macintouch.com/tcpcrashes.html
Mac OS 7.6 and Connectix Speed Doubler are not compatible! No crash - but Find File will not display all information. Update to versions 1.3.2 or 2.0.1 of Speed Doubler at the end of January.
Remember, when you install Mac OS 7.6, RE-install OT 1.1.2. The new OS installs OT 1.1.1. Speed Doubler will not work properly with OT 1.1.1. Also, installing 7.6 turns on Virtual Memory. Conflicts with Ram Doubler.
Check out MacFixit at http://www.macfixit.com. It is a great source for troubleshooting.
I'm talking here MAJOR disruption to your work. The Bomb. The frozen cursor. The gargage screen. In all likelihood, the only way to continue doing anything is to restart.
Try Command-Option-Escape. You should get a dialog asking to Quit or Cancel. Quit. If this works (the dialog goes away) quit everything else, saving all the work you can, then restart the mac. If it fails, hit the reset button - your work is toast.
Actually, a restart may correct most or all of your problem. The startup routine checks for poorly closed files and other fragments and will leave your system in good shape. Nevertheless, try all the following, in order, until you are satisfied there is no more problem.
If problems STILL persist, you have to narrow it down to the specific piece of software, and replace it. Do all the above again. Too much work? Maybe. But I don't like repeat crashes. I do a lot of funny things on my mac, and sometimes it chokes. It takes work to keep it healthy.
FYI: Memory Related Error Codes - Steve Costa, MacWorld Online
ID-25 Memory Full Error: This generally means you have run
out of
RAM.
ID-28 Stack Ran into Heap: Another ID error that generally
means you
have run out of RAM. In this case it can mean the System has run out
of
RAM.
-87 prWrErr parameter RAM written didn't read-verify. This
can
mean your PRAM is corrupted or even damaged.
-108 memFullErr Ran out of memory [not enough room in
heap
zone] Another out of RAM error. Not seen very often but when you
are
booting up or using software that interacts with the System and
Finder. You
may see this error instead of an ID-25.
My choices, only. These do NOT include beta releases. You might check out Version Tracker for more.
APPLE
FYI: As of MacOS 7.6, Powertalk is dead. Cyberdog becomes Apple's supported email client.
Color StyleWriter 1500 & 2500 2.2.1
Location Manager 1.0, which allows canned setups for moving powerbooks to different environments
Mac OS Runtime for Java 1.0 (MRJ)(PPC only so far)
OpenDoc 1.1.2 - PowerMacs only
PowerBook 1400 HD Updater 1.0 and PowerBook 1400 PMU Updater 1.0.1
QuickTime MPEG Extension 1.0 and QuickTime Plugin 1.1
Video Software Install 1.5.1 - NOTE: installs Apple Guide v 2.0.2, not the most recent.
MAE 3.0 Update 1 and 2, also
Adobe After Effects 1.7 Multiprocessing Plug-in
FWB CD-ROM ToolKit 2.0.5T (compatibility with Mac OS 7.6)
Digital Comet CometPage 1.0 and CometSite 1.0
Aladdin CyberFinder 2.1 (bookmark manager - full version or update)
Enigma 2.6.1 DES encryption
Eudora Pro 3.0.2 updater and Eudora Lite 3.0.2 updater
FastFontMenu 1.1 (speeds font-menu building on all applications)
Finder Windows 1.2.1 (adds a "window" menu to the finder)
SoftArc FirstClass Client 3.5.1
Font Box 2.1(automatically corrects font-related problems)
Frontier 4.2 (also some late fixes, same source)
Adobe Illustrator 6.0.2 updater
HP LaserJet 1.0 (8.3.1 driver and PPD's for the whole line)
FogCity LetterRip 1.0.1 (mailing list server)
LEXI 1.0.4 (a spelling checker for OpenDoc and Cyberdog)
MooVer 1.42 (creates QuickTime movies from picts)
NetPresenz 4.1 (FTP, WWW, or Gopher server )
Symantec Norton Disk Doctor 3.2.4 updater
Adobe Photoshop 4.0
Adobe Premiere MP Plug-in 1.0.1
Realmz 4.2 - the greatest shareware RPG in existence!
Symantec SAM Virus Definitions for Feb.
SimpleText Color Menu 2.2.1 (no link, yet)
Ambrosia Snapz Pro 1.0.1(editable screen captures)(see the Disk of the Month)
MacroMedia SoundEdit 16 2.0.4
Connectix Speed Doubler 2.0.1 and soon Speed Doubler 1.3.2 - both Mac OS 7.6 compatibility updates
Aladdin StuffIt InstallerMaker 4.0
Allegiant SuperCard 3.0.1
TurboFind 2.2.2 - the third revision in a week!
FWB Turbo ToolKit 1.0.1 updater
Adobe Type Reunion Deluxe 2.0
UltraFind 2.5.2 (warp speed text & file search)
February's Virex Virus definitions
Web Warrior 1.0.3 - Frontier scriptable Web editor
Corel WordPerfect 3.5.3
I am getting tired of these huge lists. Takes a lot of maintenance. Unless you request something, I am going to limit future lists to only my favorites. You know whom to call.
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other sources credited where known. Trademark credits, where omitted, remain with their owners - updated 20 Jan 98 |
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