Do you like to keep an eye on your Mac's system resources? Well the in built Activity Monitor may give you a load of information, however it does take up an amount of screen real estate. If you want to see your resources in the menu bar then there is a solution, check out Menu Meters.
Its a very customisable piece of software, you can choose the refresh rate and choose which metrics are displayed and there are even options for each metric. The order which they are displayed can be changed by holding down command and dragging each item.
Have you seen Minority Report? Well it features Tom Cruise using a pretty futuristic user interface on a curved glass transparent computer screen. This is often referred to as the future of computing technology, but what if the future was even cooler? What if you don't need to where a weird glove with two finger nodes and thumb node to control the PC? Well now you're talking.
Introducing Leap Motion, the most futuristic computer interface since voice recognition and Microsoft's Kinect. It's been showcased on their site for quite sometime, but the shipping date has now been publised as Early 2013, and with the new year just days away it's getting difficult not to pre-order this! It's priced at $69.99 plus shipping. The video speaks for it self, this looks like incredible technology and will no doubt inspire new applications dedicated to this interface.
Currently compatibility is with Mac and PC, so it should keep most users happy!
f.lux is a small utility program that changes the colour temperature of your monitor to suit the lighting conditions in your room. You will notice less eye-strain when using your monitor at night as the screen is tinted a light orange. This helps your body keep it's natural rhythm by not exposing your eyes to bright white/blue light in the evening.
What is colour temperature? Colour temperature is expressed in Kelvin and if something is orangey red looking than it has a lower value and if it's broad daylight, with a bright white light, it has a higher value (approx 6500K).
So how does flux work? Fluorescent lighting is around 4100K so it has a slight orangey look, this was often highlighted on early digital cameras. Your eye does a great job of compensating for colours and you barely notice it after a while. Until, that is, you put your computer on with it's bright screen. This is why people using a PC at night often have a blueish glow on them, because these colours are not provided by the surrounding lights. With f.lux installed you can compensate for these lighting environments and the program is customisable to your lighting colour temperature. And to make life easier, f.lux knows when sunrise and sunset occur and automatically adjust the screen colours for you.
This is a really small app and it does exactly what it says on the tin, check it out today! Rating 4/5 Price - Free Developer - http://stereopsis.com/flux
AutoCAD WS is a FREE online CAD editing tool from Autodesk - and it's received an exciting set of updates. There are limitations though, but that is to be expected from a free web based app. This really shows the power of web 2.0. You can modify and amend your drawings almost anywhere, which is a new and novel idea in the CAD industry. The main feature lacking is full support for 3D across all the various AutoCAD WS platforms. For more casual users Google SketchUp's free version is the way to go, it's support for 3D drawing and quick textures is ideal for home use.
Autodesk are market leaders in Computer Aided Design (CAD) Software and their flagship product, AutoCAD, is probably the standard for engineering, architecture and manufacturing. AutoCAD typically runs on a specific computer and any work that needed doing to a specific drawing would have to take place on that computer. For those that aren't aware of AutoCAD you could draw parallels from Adobe's Photoshop suite:
So AutoCAD WS is a web based product that allows you to view and edit your drawing files online and on the go. Just like Adobe's Photoshop Express iPhone app there is an AutoCAD WS smart phone / tablet app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The latest features include the ability to manipulate layers within a drawing. You can also enter lines at a specific length which was a particularly big downfall of the original 2010 release of AutoCAD WS. Another new feature of AutoCAD WS is that you can connect it to your existing online storage solutions such as box.net. Here's a short video showing off these new features:
There is also now a Mac App which works with the online service and also provides support for offline editing. The AutoCAD WS Mac App can be downloaded for free from here.
AutoCAD WS is also fully integrated into the latest version of AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012.
