You can get butler for free at www.ManyTricks.com/Butler

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Here is a list of just a few things you can do with Butler. To learn more about how to do these tasks visit Many Trick’s customize page

• Launch applications
• Open files
• Access preference panes
• Manage bookmarks
• Search the web
• Run AppleScripts
• Extend the pasteboard
• Enter text snippets
• Simulate keystrokes
• Control iTunes
• Accelerate Spotlight
• Move/copy files

3 Time Savers Using Butler is a post from: The Custom Mac

1. Back up and Stay Updated

The best way to maintain your Mac is to back up often. There are several options for backing up. I recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner (free) to schedule a back up whatever day of the week works best for you. Read more about backing up and Carbon Copy Cloner here.

Updating your Mac should go without saying. This action keeps things running smoothly and if you back your Mac up you won’t need to worry about update problems.

2. Find the CPU/Memory Leeches and Kill Them

Fire up Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor) and take a look at what your programs are sucking up your CPU. You might be surprised at what you will find. If you see some old apps/utilities that run under the hood that you don’t need quit, and remove them.

3. Check Login Items

Over time as you add applications it’s really easy for things to stack up in your startup items. Open System Preferences and go to Accounts > UserName > Login Items tab. From there find the unneeded items and remove them via the (-) button.

4. Clean up that Hard Drive

One of the greatest culprits for OS X running slow is a full or cluttered hard drive. To clean yours up grab a free copy of Grand Perspective and find the Big Unwanted Files. Grant Perspective is a small utility that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system. Find the Big Unwanted Files and remove them.

So you can see from the image below my iPhoto Folder is taking up a good hunk of my drive. So I might back those photos up and delete a few. I also found some old video projects I did for a client and so I deleted those, saving me a couple of GBs.

5. Uninstall Unwanted Applications

Using AppTrap you can remove application and rest assured that it’s related files are gone as well. Once AppTrap has been activated in System Preferences, every time you delete an application with other related files you will be asked if you would like to remove them.

6. Remove non-essential languages

Monolingual is a great utility that removes languages that you don’t want saving you hefty chunks of hard drive space. Do make sure you read to documentation so you don’t trash something you need.

7. Maintenance with Disk Utility

To double check and make sure your disks are working at top notch, open up Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) and select you hard drive and click “Verify disk” (which determine what apps can do what with what files on your Mac) and verify and repair the disk itself. These operations can take some time, but it’s worth it.

8. Back up and Stay Updated

This should go without saying. Backing up keeps

Do you have a maintenance routine? Share them with us!

8 Ways to Speed up Your Mac is a post from: The Custom Mac

The Menu Bar can be a powerful tool and resource for every Mac. Here are 10 of what we think to be the best free Menu Bar applications out there. We would also like to hear which menu bar apps do you use/love?

WeatherBug Alert | Download

WeatherBug Alert for Mac helps you plan your day with confidence by putting severe weather alerts and your live temperature on your desktop in the menu bar.

Alarm Clock | Download

Alarm Clock is a lightweight application for setting iTunes alarms, timers, stopwatches and much more. Automatically wakes up your Mac and offers a slow-wake mode. This one is a must have.

Ejector | Download

Ejector adds an Eject icon to the Mac OS X menu bar. Great for people dealing with multiple disks, such as iPods, CDs, DVDs, USB drives, .dmg’s or hard disks. You can then safely disconnect them from your Mac.

SoundSource | Download

SoundSource is a tiny tool for OS X enabling you to switch your audio input and output sources with a single click, and even adjust their volume settings.

SpiritedAway | Download

Spirited Away checks each running application’s activity, and if an application isn’t active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically. It is, in effect, Spirited Away.

ByteController | Download

ByteController is a small user interface utility for controlling iTunes. ByteController gives you three buttons in your menu bar: Previous Song, Next Song and Play/Pause. Holding the Previous Song and Next Song buttons plays fast forward or rewinds.

ByteController supports hot keys and Growl.

iStat | Download

With 8 separate and highly configurable menu extras, iStat menus will let you know exactly what’s going on inside your Mac.

Deviant | Download

Deviant is a menu extra that allows you to link the current desktop to any folder, effectively swapping the items on your desktop.

Nocture | Download

Nocturne is a simple app for switching a computer to night vision mode, and much more.

MenuPrefs | Download

Hate having to go through two to three steps to change your Mac’s Energy Saver preferences? You can rest easy now, thanks to MenuPrefs. MenuPrefs provides a fast access to Mac OS X’s individual System Preference Panes.

Remember to let us know what application you think should be on this list.

The 10 Best Free Menu Bar Applications for the Mac is a post from: The Custom Mac

1. Loginox: Custom Login Wallpaper

If all you want to do is change the login wallpaper than Loginox is the app for you. Rather than using a manual hack just drag and drop your new image into a well and you are done.

2. Visage Login: Login Icon, Name, Text and more

If changing the login wallpaper is not enough than Visage Login should float your boat. As you can see from the image below Visage Login gives you multiple options to modify you login page such as custom text and the date and time etc.

2 Tools For Customizing Leopard’s Login Window is a post from: The Custom Mac

Sadly there is a mindset that Macs are invincible and immune to all viral attacks. This is definitely not the case. We are not attack as much as Windows users because we are the minority (so far). With that said here are tips and tools to securing your Mac.

1. Configure Build in Security Settings

Locking your screen and turning on the built in firewall are great ways to secure your Mac. Watch the video below to see how this can easily be done.

(See Video)

2. Use a Mac Car Alarm

Yes you heard me right… A car alarm. Go out and download your free copy of iAlertU. This great utility can enable an alarm triggered when your laptop moves. It also harnesses the Apple Remote so you can use it like you would your car keys. Check out the video to see iAlertU in action.

(See Video)

3. Back Up Your Mac

One of the best ways to secure you Mac is to secure your data. Read this post on how to back up your Mac using free Software.

What Do You Use?

What software, techniques and apps do you use to secure your Mac?

Securing Your Mac is a post from: The Custom Mac

The Automator application is probably the least used app on most Macs. This is mostly because most people haven’t tried using it or just don’t see its potential and power it holds.

Here are 4 great websites with tons of Automator actions, tasks, scripts and much more to help you rekindle the power of your Automator:
Automator World

Mac Scripter

Automator.us

Apple Downloads – Automator

Enjoy! Let me know if you know of Automator resources you love to use.

4 of the Best Automator Actions and Scripts Sites is a post from: The Custom Mac

UPDATE: The following was posted by the creators of Magnifique:

“WARNING: DO NOT use Magnifique on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It’s almost certain that it will mess up your system beyond repair. We are planning a complete rewrite of Magnifique once Snow Leopard is released. Thanks for everyone’s support”

Since ShapeShifter never made its appearance on Leopard many of us have let our Macs remain themeless. But no more. Thanks to this application we can now easily change and customize theme once again. Here is a quick video I made showing off Magnifique.

Find Themes Here

Find the Application Here (ITS FREE)

Themes for Leopard Are Here! is a post from: The Custom Mac

1. Self Control

Self Control is a very simple application that allows you to set a “self control” timer. During the time frame you choose Self Control blocks you from predefined sites. I block twitter, facebook, and my other blogs while working.

2. Spirited Away

Spirited Away checks each running application’s activity, and if an application isn’t active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically.

3. A Reminding Wallpaper

When I have a big long work day ahead of me I make sure the first thing I do is set this image as my wallpaper:

What tools and/or techniques do you use to stay on task?

3 Tools to Keep You and Your Mac on Task is a post from: The Custom Mac

You can download Right Zoom from BlazingTools here

How to Make Windows Go Full Screen on a Mac is a post from: The Custom Mac

UPDATE (6-10-2009) Safari 4 have been updated for Snow Leopard and no longer has the tabs on the top.

Safari 4 Has some problems. We know this but at the same time Safari 4 offers us some more speed and flexibility. So rather than go back to previous versions here are 3 ways to bring back functionality from v3 but keep the speed and search-ability of v4.

Resources Mentioned in Video: Safari 4 Buddy – Free application Secret Safari 4 Menu – Menu File for Safari 4   Terminal Commands: 1. Move Tabs to bottom

$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

2. Loading Bars & Circle When both set to NO it restores the blue loading bar behind the URL. Also puts a page loading spinner in the tab itself, which looks odd with the new tabs:
 

$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO
$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO

        3. Switch off the new URL autocomplete menu and go back to the original one

$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -bool NO

4. Turn off the new Google suggest menu

$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool NO

5. Remove CoverFlow from the Bookmarks view entirely        

$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool NO

        6. Disable the dimming when clicking on a Top Site

$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot -bool NO

7. Disable Top Sites feature completely

$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool NO

8. Undoing changes Just run the defaults command with the delete flag for the appropriate key you wish to delete.

$ defaults delete com.apple.Safari <key>

Video: Restoring Safari 4 Using Custom Hidden Settings is a post from: The Custom Mac