First two major Torrent Tracking sites, IsoHunt's TorrentBox and Podtropolis sites were banned from traffic in the USA. And now it seems that Demonoid, the second largest torrent tracker site, is at least temporarily shut down.

Here's more information from TorrentFreak.

iPhoto Buddy is an application which lets you effortlessly create, use, and manage multiple iPhoto libraries. It works with the new iPhoto in iLife 08.

What is iPhoto Buddy?iPhoto Buddy is a Mac OS X application (Universal) that allows you to easily create, manage, and switch between multiple iPhoto Libraries. The advantages of splitting your One Huge Photo Library into multiple, smaller ones include improved iPhoto performance, increased flexibility in organizing your digital photo collection, and a consistency with most other Mac applications that allow their respective data to be stored in as many documents (in this case, "Libraries") as you like.iPhoto Buddy uses a simple, streamlined interface that was inspired by iPhoto itself. Anyone that has used iPhoto will immediately feel right at home using iPhoto Buddy. It truly is a companion application--a real buddy!

Mahjong involves skill, strategy, and calculation, as well as a certain degree of luck. Depending on the variation which is played, luck can be anything from a minor to a dominant factor in success. In Asia, mahjong is also popular as gambling or computer games.

The object of the game is to build complete suits - or melds - usually of threes, from either 13 or 16 tiles. The first person to achieve this goal wins the game. The winning tile completes the player's set of either 14 or 17 tiles.

Mahjong games can be fun, unfortunately most of them are not free.

MyMahj is well rated over at MacUpdate, and is... Free!

I read a very interesting article over at the International Herald Tribune which talked about how Apple may have squandered a huge opportunity for the Mac.

snippet:

The Mac was seemingly well positioned for the moment in many ways. The transition to Intel microprocessors was complete. The OS X Tiger was a sleek, feature-rich, polished operating system. Leopard, the next iteration, is scheduled to be released in October.

Read the full article here.

If you bought your iPhone before August 22, you may be eligible for an instant $100 electronic credit toward the purchase of products at the Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. See the terms and conditions below for more details.

Full details available here.

Rogue Amoeba has come out with a free utility to make your own iPhone ring tones.

I'm of the opinion that it would be an overall better idea to use your shiny new iPhone with AT&T, but hey I'm not the one deciding for everybody am I.

If you've decided that a hacked iPhone to work outside the World AT&T is just your cup'of'tea then you'll be pleased to know that a new GUI unlocking tool is now available from the iPhone Dev Team. If you must have, a quick search should yield satisfying results.

I learned how IBM got behind LINUX in a big way when I read the book Wikinomics, which was a good but not great book in my opinion.

It looks like IBM is now getting into backing open source movements again as it starts to lend it's muscle, might, and money to the OpenOffice group.

This is fantastic news, and comes on the heals of the OpenDocument Format winning out over Microsoft. It certainly looks like the Open community is gaining ground in the Office environment. I for one am damn glad to see this happen.

More details on this news story available here from Yahoo.

Well now they've gone and done it, open source iPhone unlocking.

More details here on Engadget.

Could Adobe be making the important first move into the world of online video and image applications, much the same way Google Doc's has for office type applications?

Adobe has confirmed that they are working on Photoshop Express, a free online edition of Photoshop. No this isn't full blown Photoshop, but is most likely going to be powerful enough for many users. Adobe has already got Premiere Express, but Photoshop Express is likely to be a much bigger hit.

I'll remain a little skeptical of this until I can try it, on my iMac I'm more than happy using SeaShore, an Aqua implementation of Gimp. I far prefer standard applications to online applications. However, I must say there can be great benefits to online applications, such as your data being retrievable from any place with internet access, and the ability to share and collaborate with others online, this can be very powerful.

Photoshop Express:

Premiere Express:

LaunchBar, a fantastic application that I've talked about many time. It was just recently upgraded and is now on sale for today only at MacZot.

LaunchBar will help you launch your applications fast, find documents and files in a snap, assist your internet searches, control itunes, launch your emails, and so much more.

This is a steal at $10 today.

Growl is a great notification system, I feel that Apple should integrate it into OS X.

It's been a long time since the last update, but Growl was updated today.

What are Notifications?

Notifications are a way for your applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you're already in.

What's new in version 1.1?

* There is now a global positioning system built into Growl (took 2 years to make!).
* There are now close buttons available on notifications when you mouse over them.
* Multiple performance enhancements/memory leaks fixed up. The only problem at this point should be webkit message views.
* Totally redesigned applications tab.
* There is now a sound option available per notification.
* Application level positioning. #657

I have my iMac set to put the monitor into sleep mode after 2 hours. There are times when I want to put it to sleep on demand. Back when I had a freestanding monitor I could just hit the power button, but with an iMac the monitor is integrated into the computer - I can't turn off just the display.

Thankfully LineStreet come up with a drop dead simple Widget that you can press from Dashboard and it will put your monitor to sleep. Very handy.

And if you're not fond of Widgets, it is available as an Application too.

If you have a beautiful new iMac, you know how nice and bright the screen is. Thing is...sometimes a bright screen isn't what you're going for. Enter this widget. It allows you to IMMEDIATELY sleep just your display so that you can continue running your background jobs. It doesn't permanently affect your energy settings, so when you start working again, your monitor will not sleep immediately. It's a simple widget, but it solves an annoying problem.

Steve is clearly aiming for some good karma here.

Open iPhone Letter from his Steveness here.

September 2007 Keynote Address: Everybody has seen all the news on todays Apple Event going over the refreshed iPod line and the new killer $399 price on the 8GB iPhone.

Huge stuff. Not just the new iPod's but the pricing on the Nano blew me away, significantly cheaper than before. I think Apple is keeping the heat on the competition. Sure we can nitpick, where is FM tuning on iPods (no, really, where is it?), where is the ability to record to your iPod using a high quality microphone or other low level source, etc. But in general, these are really impressive devices at very reasonable prices.

I am not, however, interested in upgrading my trusty iPod RED Nano 4GB that I got for Christmas last year, still love it, and plan to continue using it for the the foreseen future. The new Nano is cool and all, but my Nano suits my needs very well.

DAMN, $399 for the 8GB iPhone which was previously selling very well at $599, that's going to tempt a lot of people who were on the fence. And it has already pissed off a lot of people who paid $599 for the same phone. Come on Apple, the least you can do is credit those people with $200 in their iTunes account.

Check it all out, Apple has now posted a decent resolution video of todays event (480x270).

This Corsair memory will work in computers like your Intel iMac and Intel MacBook, check for other Mac's.

On sale at Newegg. CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Notebook Memory - Retail

While I understand that people who were entrenched with iMovie HD 06 feel short-changed with timelines and audio capabilities in iMovie 08 being less robust or missing. However, I think most people will prefer to do their home movies and short movie projects with iMovie 08 over iMovie HD 06. And come on, if you really like iMovie HD 06 that much, it's still there for you to use it.

Here's a note from MacSeven reader Mark in Toronto regarding his personal experience with iMovie 08.

I finally took iMovie 8 out for a serious ride. This weekend I did 2 of the 3 HD video tapes from last months trip to Los Angeles, I made these into movies using iMovie HD 06 a few weeks ago, and now I'm redoing the videos in iMovie 08 for a direct comparison.

I have to say, I really love it.

iMovie 08 doesn’t have all the bells and whistles (where is the audio fade out that the end of a clip?), but it also doesn’t have the idiosyncrasy’s that iMovie HD 06 has. For example, have you ever reviewed your movie, and decided to drop a piece in, or trim a piece of footage in the start or middle only to have all the audio un-sync on the 20 clips that follow? (yes, I know about the “lock audio at playhead” setting, but this still happens). This morning before work I needed to tightened up a little spot on the PCHwy Scenery video. There were at least 30 clips after this edit point, as well as 2 and sometimes 3 audio tracks (with sound effects, music, track audio, etc) of sync’d video. I wanted to set it up to render while I’m at work, but I had to do this tweak, so I figure this would be a good test as I had 5 minute MAX to do everything. I sparked it up, found the 3 or 4 clips I wanted to modify and applied my deletes/changes. To my amazement, the entire rest of the video popped right into place instantly. We’re talking all the transitions, titling, audio… everything! I did a couple quick tests to verify, the hit “Share” and loaded my H.264 presets and began the render. The important thing is the working time on the project: Start time 7:25am, end time 7:30am.

Well done Cupertino

I'm glad to see that Microsoft doesn't look to be monopolizing the new "open office" document format standards, in my opinion it should be with a group like the OpenDocument Foundation, not Microsoft. Mark one up for a good practice.

From the International Herald Tribune: The fight over the standard, while technically arcane, is commercially important because more and more governments are demanding interchangeable "open" document formats for their vast amounts of records. Currently, the only standardized format available to government purchasers is OpenDocument Format, developed by a consortium led by International Business Machines, which the ISO approved in May 2006.

Full Story from IHT

The great developers over at Objective Development make two of my favorite and most used utilities for my Mac, LaunchBar and Little Snitch.

Little Snitch is an application that is akin to a reverse firewall, it notifies you of any outgoing network activity from your computer, you can authorize and set rules for recurring traffic. When you first start using Little Snitch you will be answering the dialog box frequently setting rules, but after a short time you won't see the dialog box too often so don't worry it isn't really a bother at all.

You can read on the website about all the updates and improvements from 1.2.4. In short, Little Snitch now alerts you to far more network activity than it used to, I think this is great, more protection and awareness of what traffic leaves your computer.

There is also a network monitor which you can show all the time, or configure to show only when there is activity, or not show it at all. This is a slick addition.

All in all I find this to be a very nice upgrade, even though it is in Beta.

Roxio Toast Titanium 8 is a fabulous application. I am a registered user and I love it. However, another pretty impressive application is the freeware Burn. Think of it as the free version of Toast. It isn't as slick or as well tricked out, but it does work pretty damned well, and it's hard to argue with the price. So if you don't do a lot of burning, creating video or audio dvds and cds, then Burn may just be the ticket for you.

Burn is actively developed and updated, the most recent version 1.71U saw some nice improvements.

Burn can burn data discs in a variety of formats, it can create redbook and mp3 discs, it can re-encode your video into all video disc formats, mount images, and more.

Not long ago I talked about how nice iStat Menu's is, actually getting to me uninstall MenuMeters and run iStat Menus as my full time Menu bar info provider. It has received an update, great stuff check it out. Peep here for a full list of updates to the new version 1.1.