Posts Tagged ‘Top 5’

Now that Memorial Day is near and we can safely declare the arrival of summer, its time for a change of icons.. Here are some fun sets to make your computer feel like a sunny day,

Butterflies

All of these are from Pixelgirl Presents, a really great place to find icon sets for all occasions:

Butterflies

Butterfly Beauties

Flutter

Papillion

Food

Nothing says ‘summer’ like a nice picnic or grilling outside. Again, these are from Pixelgirl Presents.

Just Fruits

Summertime Snacks

Tomatoes

Outdoors

When you can’t be outside this summer, there’s no reason you can’t enjoy nature at your computer with these outdoorsy sets from Pixelgirl Presents.

Beach

Hemmingway

Take a Hike

Bugs

Nothing says summer like a bee sting or mosquito bite, Pixelgirl Presents brings us these fabulous bug sets to brighten our time in front of the computer.

Bugs N Sweet Stuff

Informal Insects

xBugs

And, just because we’re geeky:

Star Trek

The Icon Factory has the OFFICIAL icon set of the new Star Trek movie.

It’s a summer film, right?

Check out more articles on changing icons.

Back in March, Apple announced iPhone 3.0 software which will, again, revolutionize the way people use mobile devices. Here are 5 of the 100 new features that have us all going bananas over the new software:

1. Cut, Copy and Paste – FINALLY, the ability to copy and paste text and images is coming to the iPhone.  This is, in this monkey’s opinion, one of the key features that’s been missing from the beginning and we’re going ape over the potential for using it.

2. Send photos, contacts, audio files, and location via MMS – OMG, its like Christmas is Monkeytown!  One of the biggest things we had to give up by joining the iPhone revolution (which we did gladly btw) was MMS.  Not being able to send pictures or voice memos via text was really frustrating, but now its coming!  Now, if texting only worked in landscape mode.  (Note:  Because of the difference in networks, 2G iPhones will apparently not be getting this feature.  Time to pony up for a new phone!)

3. Email and Text Messaging in Landscape – No amount of flung poop can possibly describe the excitement this has generated here in B4A HQ.  We love the visual keyboard, but some monkeys, and I won’t name names (Dr. Zaius) have big gorilla fingers and using the keyboard in landscape mode is a much more comfortable solution.

4. Peer to Peer Connectivity – Want to play a game with a friend over the network?  Want to transfer a file across the room to another iPhone?  Now you’ll be able to with 3.0’s Peer to Peer connectivity.

5. In-App Stores – The multitude of ebook readers are very cool as well as the ability to purchase expanded versions of free or limited games.  Going out of the App, back to the App Store, finding the game or book you want, downloading it and coming all the way back is not.  In-App stores will provide the ability for Apps to sell upgrades and/or additional content right in the App without having to back out of it.  There’s also talk of Apple allowing ‘micropayments’ (payments under $.99) which might make upgrades even more appealing.

You can watch Apple’s full presentation online to see the features in action.  All in all, it looks like a HUGE win for owners of the iPhone 3G AGAIN!

1. Make Ringtones for your iPhone – That’s right!  You don’t necessarily have to go to the iTunes store and pay the extra money to have awesome, personalized ringtones on your iPhone, you can use any DRM-Free music you have and make it yourself.  When you open GarageBand 09 there are a few choices for what kind of project you want to start; in the left sidebar, select iPhone Ringtone and click Choose.  GarageBand will set up the whole project for you, all you need to do is pull a song from your iTunes library using the media browser, trim it up and send it back to iTunes as a ringtone using Share>Send Ringtone to iTunes!  EASY!

2. Sync up the soundtrack for your iPhoto slideshow – There are a lot of times where it would be nice if the music in an iPhoto slideshow would sync up with the picture to help evoke mood or to help establish different chapters, but when adding music in iPhoto you can’t trim or edit the music at all; not true in GarageBand!  To make awesome soundtracks for your Slideshow, skip the music in iPhoto and use File>Export>Slideshow to send it to the Media Browser.  Jump to Garageband, use Track>Show Movie Track to make a track for the video and then use the Media Browser to pull the movie in.  Now you can use additional tracks to carefully craft your soundtrack and clip, fade and overlap songs as you like.  You can see the video in the Movie Track, so you’ll know how to get the pieces lined up.  Awesome!

3. Create a soundtrack for your short film.  You can use the same technique coming out of iMovie to make a really polished soundtrack for your short film as well.  Add sound effects using the Sound Effect Library in the Podcast section of the Loop Browser and put theme music on the beginning and end and you’ve got a short that’s ready for Sundance.

4. Print sheet music – Yes, you can actually print the sheet music for the super-cool song you just wrote, even if you only used Loops to write it!  Once your song is complete, just go to the Menu Bar and select File>Print, its that easy!

5. Add Chapter Markers to a DVD – Once you’ve finished up in iMovie, take a moment to share the project to GarageBand.  Using Edit>Add Marker, you can add chapters to your movie.  Use the Movie Markers section of the Track Editor to name them properly and then send the project to iDVD.  iDVD sees the chapter markers and will set up a menu for them with thumbnails and everything using the titles you gave them in GarageBand.  FANCY!

Sometimes, you just NEED a new font and since adding new fonts to your Mac is so simple, why not?  The only problem now is, where to find them!  Here are our favorite places to find free fonts on the web:

DaFont – With simple categories and easy interface, this is the #1 stop for font browsing.

Urban Fonts – In addition to the great selection of fonts, we love the mouse-over previews.

1001 Fonts – A staggering collection of free fonts.  If you can’t find it here, you might be in trouble.

Blambot – Generally more comic book oriented, this site offers both free and pro (not free) fonts.  Sometimes fancy, sometimes spacey, ALWAYS unique!

Acid Fonts – A classic source of fonts, Acid Font has been around for years and years.  We return here time and time again for the selection of grunge fonts.