The latest version of OpenOffice is now a native OS X application, meaning no more launching Apple’s X11 to get it running.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 officially released
Download OpenOffice 3.0 for Mac OS X (Intel)

I’ve just put my Elgato EyeTV Hybrid on eBay since I rarely use it these days… check it out if you fancy a bargain - no reserve

EyeTV Hybrid Analog/Digital TV Tuner for Mac on eBay, also TV Cards, Graphics, Video TV Cards, Desktop PC Components, Computing (end time 12-Oct-08 21:02:02 BST)

The new beta version of OmniPlan imports Microsoft Project 2007 files:

The Omni Group - OmniPlan - Beta

A classic example of an application that started off performing a simple, useful task (i.e. displaying PDF documents) and has grown to an overly complex, slow, hulking beast of an application.

I got scared off by the 251Mb disk space the installer claims that it needs:

I’ll stick to Apple’s Preview.app, thanks.

Useless Mac Applications #1 : Sherlock

Okay, so there are not really any Mac specific virus threats, but there are tonnes for Windows… and you don’t want to be passing these on to your PC owning friends right? Best be safe…

• Download and install ClamXav
• Launch ClamXav application
• Go into preferences and click the Folder Sentry tab
• Drag your Downloads folder from the Finder to the Folders Being Watched pane
• Check the Launch ClamXav Sentry when you log in to this computer option
• Log out and log back in to your account and you will see a new item in your menu bar indicating that Sentry is monitoring your Downloads folder
• The Sentry uses Growl notifications if it finds anything suspicious

Good deal from Mac Heist: get Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac, half price. Be quick, offer ends today!

Mac Heist

Using Firefox 3 is really a different experience from using OS X. It’s not Windows, it’s not OS X and it’s not Linux. It’s something else.

• Firefox 3 brings Ugliness to the Mac
• Firefox 3 download

PEAR was removed by Apple from 10.5 for one reason or another. Here’s how to get it back:

Pre-requisties

Make sure you have a php.ini file in /etc/. This isn’t available by default. To create one enter the following:

sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini

PEAR Install

• cd
• curl -O http://pear.php.net/go-pear
• sudo php go-pear

This starts the interactive install script.

• Press Enter to start install
• Press Enter to use no HTTP proxy
• Type 1 and press Enter
• Enter /usr/local/pear as the path and press Enter
• Press Enter to confirm the install directories
• Press Enter to install PEAR_Frontend_Web-beta,
  PEAR_Frontend_Gtk2, MDB2 by default

The installer will also alter the include_path in your php.ini file to include the new installation directory, so just press Enter when prompted

The PEAR Package Manager

To make using the command line tool easier, we are going to modify our shell path. Add the following line to the end of your ~/.profile file:

export PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/pear/bin"

After saving your .profile file, log into a new terminal and type the following to confirm that everything is working

pear version

If all is well, you should see the following output (or similar):

PEAR Version: 1.7.2
PHP Version: 5.2.5
Zend Engine Version: 2.2.0
Running on: Darwin glen-scotts-macbook.local 9.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.3.0: Fri May 23 00:49:16 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.18~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

For more information on using the manager to install and maintain packages, see the PEAR manual for the command line installer.

Clean up

rm go-pear

Inquisitor is a fantastic search add-on for Safari, and it’s recently been updated to version 3. Basically, it enhances the Safari search box by suggesting results and allowing searches on sites other than Google. Pretty essential, I would say.

Inquisitor

Bundled with Mac OS 8.5 - 10.4, the Sherlock search tool became less and less useful as time went by. Apple claimed that Sherlock was “dramatically better than standard web browsers at retrieving and displaying some of the most practical and useful information available on the internet” without ever explaining why. The US-centric content was pretty much useless, and so it always remained a curiosity. That it even made it to OS X was a surprise, it was finally made obsolete by Spotlight and Dashboard and removed completely from 10.5 Leopard. Good riddance!