Thinking about switching from Windows to Mac? Got a shiny new Mac and you want to learn the ropes quickly after spending years on Windows? Got a friend that just converted and they say the Mac doesn't work like Windows? David Alison's quick guide should help overcome the most common problems new switchers encounter.

A reader writes: I came across a software site and found an excellent FREEware named iskysoft iPod movie converter for mac, I downloaded and tried, it's free (to my disappointment, it has a limit of 50 free conversions), but very powerful ! The product is at: http://www.iskysoft.com/ipod-movieconverter-mac.html.

Apple has confirmed that their Worldwide Developers Conference has sold out for the first time in its history. "Response to this year's WWDC has been off the charts and we are delighted with the show of enthusiasm and support from the developer community for the new iPhone SDK," said Apple spokesman Bill Evans, according to Macworld on Wednesday. Apple wouldn't say how many developers registered for this year's WWDC, although recent WWDC events have attracted about 4,000 developers.

WICHITA, Kan. --05/12/2008-- QuickerTek, the leader in wireless Apple products, announces an extended battery upgrade for the popular Apple MacBook Air. Users gain six to ten hours of additional battery power - beyond the battery life of the built-in battery. This is the only product that charges the MacBook Air while in use, and for only $299.95 USD. read more

CUPERTINO, California--May 13, 2008--Apple today announced that a team of Apple executives, led by CEO Steve Jobs, will kick off the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, June 9, 2008 at San Francisco's Moscone West. This year's WWDC will showcase two revolutionary development platforms, the ground-breaking innovations of OS X Leopard and OS X iPhone, the world's most advanced mobile operating system. read more

BeamYourScreen offers Apple iPhone users the capability to take part in desktop sharing web conferences straight from their handset - putting the users in the right place, first time every time. With desktop sharing capabilities in the palm of their hand, iPhone users are finding themselves in possession of a powerful software solution which is enhancing visual communication, saving time, decreasing travel costs, and obliterating impossible business meeting schedules. read more

South San Francisco, USA - May 12th 2008: Now Mac users can enjoy digital TV with The Tube, regardless of their current location. equinux has released The Tube 2.7, featuring placeshifting, another free update to its innovative TV software that adds live-streaming of content via iChat. The Tube users can share the show they're currently watching with others via iChat, tell friends about their TubeToGo web gallery and subscribe to a podcast of their latest recordings, e.g. on the Apple TV in the living room. The Tube also adds numerous other Leopard-exclusive features. read more

May 13, 2008 -- WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. -- MacTech today released the MacTech Office Scripting Advisor -- a set of guidelines, and questions designed to guide readers to the best scripting options for Microsoft Office. Hot on the heels of today's Microsoft announcement that VBA will be returning to the Mac, the scripting advisor gives any type of script user the answers they need. read more

ResellersPanel, a pioneer in private label reseller hosting, announces that it has introduced major upgrades to its hosting platform in time for its fifth anniversary celebrations, among them a brand new file manager, a multi-currency billing solution and a new multi-store functionality. Beside their default store, the resellers now have the opportunity to create up to three more, entirely independent of each other, free reseller web hosting stores, configured according to their specific marketing strategies. They can get a unique domain name, choose a different website template and activate a separate DNS cluster for each of the stores, which will drive brand recognition and significantly increase their reseller anonymity. read more

David Alison switched from Windows to Macintosh just over three months ago, yet he feels he's become a power user in a short period of time. How? By blogging about his experiences. His latest blog post covers how blogging has helped him learn a lot of information in a very short period of time.

Hutto, Texas - Macgamestore is celebrating its fourth year anniversary with a fantastic giveaway. The popular Mac-only web site has quickly become THE destination for Mac gamers who are looking to purchase hard-core as well as casual games. Today, Macgamestore features nearly 500 Macintosh games and growing. read more

Global Delight Releases Web2 Delight 1.1 UI tweaks to enhance user experience enrich this must-have utility! NEW UDUPI, India, May 12, 2008 ? Global Delight releases minor updates to their must-have utility Web2 Delight. This release includes several UI tweaks as well as size/performance optimizations. Web2 Delight is a video/photo downloader, organizer and viewer for Mac OS. With the rising popularity of video and photo sharing sites, users are increasingly moving towards sharing user-generated videos and photos online. Accessing such content from multiple sites is becoming increasingly cumbersome and Web2 Delight is the first product that acts as a portal for multiple sites. It marries the power and possibilities of Web 2.0 to the simplicity and versatility of the Mac. read more

Ever hit a site with Safari and it says "This web site requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher!". Well, if you don't have IE on your Mac you can at least see what all the fuss is about by tricking the web site into thinking you are on a Windows machine running Internet Explorer. David Alison has a simple tip on how to make this work. Read the warning at the end of the tip though!

Creaceed, the company behind Hydra, Morph Age, and Magnet, today ships brand new version 1.5 of Hydra for easy HDR image creation on Mac OS X Leopard with updated imaging pipeline and Aperture integration. Hydra gives human eye perception to photographs by creating high dynamic range (HDR) images from a series of regular photographs, either from DSLRs or traditional point-and-shoot cameras. read more

Second Gear is pleased to announce the release of Today 1.1, the Mac OS X application for managing iCal events and tasks. Version 1.1 introduces several new features and enhancements based on user feedback. Users can now filter what calendars are visible in Today. Several changes have been made to event and task creation. By default new events are created on the date selected in Today. Users can also assign a location to new events. read more

Apimac has released new versions of Clean Text, a tool dedicated to webmasters, graphic designers and magazine editors to reduce text cleanup time. Clean Text eliminates all text formatting and performs other useful functions, such as removing empty lines, removing unwanted spaces, removing tab characters, converting smart quotes, tabs, returns, and more. read more

Pixelmator Team today released Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman, a second significant update to the revolutionary GPU-powered image editing tool, furnishing users with everything they need to create, edit, and enhance still images. Available today as a free software update, Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman features rulers, guides, grid, snap, color balance, auto enhance, curves, and polygonal lasso tools and much more. "Pixelmator opened the door for all users to explore their imaginative side through image creation, editing, and enhancement," said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. "Now with powerful, but easy-to-use rulers, guides, curves, auto enhance, color balance, and polygonal lasso tools, Pixelmator provides users with an even wider range of creative opportunities."
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TweakerSoft releases VectorDesigner 1.2.0, with video tutorials and smart snap on elements, points and intersections. VectorDesigner is the perfect application for vector drawings, diagrams and illustrations, raster image handling, filtering and color correction. Out of the box, it offers everything users need to create professional level vector artwork, such as posters, brochures, stickers, logos, web design, tshirt production and more. read more

While David Alison's parents are happily using the Windows 98 machine he got for them 9 years ago, his wife reminds him of why getting them a shiny new iMac is probably not a good idea.

David Alison recently decided to learn Ruby on Rails. This article covers the early stages of that learning experience and has some book recommendations that are helping him get started.

David Alison tries adding Ruby on Rails Development to the list of things he has switched to since getting his Mac.

Flashforward2008 opens the nomination process for the 18th Flashforward Film Festival. The festival, now in its ninth year, celebrates the most innovative and compelling projects created with Adobe® Flash™. Nominations Open for submissions to the Flashforward Film Festival, taking place August 20-22, 2008 in San Francisco, with 10 Realigned and Refreshed Categories for all Work Created with Adobe® Flash™. read more

Awaiting AppStore launch, international game developer Simiotica announces immediate availability of the iPhone and iPod Touch game aMaze! via Installer.App. aMaze! is very realistic transition of the classic wooden balance game Labyrinth, where players guide steel ball through a maze avoiding holes, to the iPhone. aMaze! is unique for playing exactly like its real world prototype by tilting device to control the labyrinth attitude thus moving the ball. This is the most intuitive game control because anyone who has ever played original Labyrinth game knows how to play the game. read more

uncomplex has released Mailplane 2.0 Beta for worldwide testing. Acting as a site specific web browser for Google's Gmail, Mailplane is a full fledged Mail client for the Desktop. It fully integrates the Gmail web interface into the Mac experience, offering users the best of both worlds. Beta 2.0 sports many new features, including full Gmail 2 support, new Gmail add-ons and keyboard shortcuts, better account notifications, more ways to create email attachments, plus a new OmniFocus plugin. read more

Belo Horizonte, Brazil - Rainer Brockerhoff has announced an update to Quay, a system utility for Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard". Quay extends the Dock's functionality, allowing the user to sort Stack menus in several useful ways, and see extra information for each item. read more

Macgamestore has announced the release of The Scruffs for the Macintosh on its web site. Join the Scruffs on a scavenger hunt that will not only save the day, but will also uncover the secret that will change their lives forever. Developed by Sweet Tooth Games, The Scruffs is an original seek-and-find challenge. read more

plasq has released Comic Life Magiq 1.0 for Mac OS X. This entirely new photo-comic desktop publishing software from plasq empowers users of all ages and skill levels with simple-to-use but eye-catching creative options typically found in professional products. Comic Life Magiq is built from the ground up to leverage the power of Mac OS X 10.5 core technologies, like Core Image and Core Animation resulting in photo-comics with unique visual effects and elegant layout. read more

Version 9.2 introduces a new XML Author edition specially tuned for content authors providing a well designed interface for XML editing by keeping only the relevant authoring features. The major additions in Oxygen XML Editor 9.2 are related to the WYSIWYG-like editing support and in particular to the DITA support. The general visual editing improvements include displaying the resolved content in the editor and navigation through links. With the new DITA features that include a new DITA map editor, actions for inserting conref links, a tight integration of the latest version of the DITA Open Toolkit, Oxygen XML Editor becomes the leading DITA editor and the easiest to use. read more

The Fast Icon has released "Mask Icons", a collection of 4 freeware icons. The Mask Icons was inspired by some great tribal masks and is available for download as standard Mac or Windows icons as well as a handy PNG files for linux, web or blogs on FastIcon website.

TinyPlanet Software is excited to announce Knapsack 1.1, the first update to the personal travel organizer for Mac OS X Leopard. Version 1.1 features two-way iCal synchronization allowing users to take their carefully crafted itineraries and checklists with them on their iPhones or PDAs or publish to .Mac via iCal. Now, any changes made while traveling are automatically reflected in Knapsack after syncing with iCal. Calendar synchronization builds upon Knapsack's original goal of offering users the tools to plan, organize, and relive their travel adventures. This version also expands Knapsack's exporting capabilities by allowing one-way export to iCal in addition to two-way sync. read more

David Alison had over 77,000 e-mail messages sitting in an Outlook PST file - over 10 years of valuable e-mail. Once he switched to Mac he needed to find a way to get those messages on to his Mac's Mail application. His blog post for today covers how he did that.

VMware has released the first beta of Fusion 2.0 for the Mac, now available as a free download. VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 brings support for multiple displays, tools for even easier switching to VMware Fusion, experimental support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 3D acceleration, and more! read more

David Alison mentioned on his blog the other day that he was looking for a replacement for Visio since he made the switch from Windows to Mac. A bunch of people recommended that David try out OmniGraffle - a native Mac application for creating flow charts, org charts, screens, etc. It looks like David found his replacement.

The Digital Lifestyle today launched a new page featuring quick (one minute or less) independent video reviews of all of the currently available iPod games from the iTunes music store. The reviews mark a branching out into portable gaming for the site. The Digital Lifestyle will also review as many iPhone games and applications as possible. read more

Though there are a number of ZIP utilities out there, and OS X natively supports the ZIP format, it requires that the ZIP file be extracted completely before it can be viewed and it has problems on older ZIP file formats. David Alison talks about how Zipeg, a free utility, makes this an easy task. Zipeg also supports ZIP, RAR, ARJ, LHA/LZH, 7z, TAR, GZ, TGZ, BZIP2, CPIO, RPM, ISO, CHM, Z, CBR, CBZ, WAR, EAR... lots of formats.

Times is a different kind of newsreader that will change how you read news. Instead of treating news like email (as most RSS readers do), Times presents you with headlines and photos from a variety of sources all in one place, letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. Like your own personal newspaper, you can put feeds into separate areas, create pages for different subjects, and more. read more

David Alison switched from Windows to Mac three months ago and has been blogging nearly every day about the switch. Today's entry covers the key Mac applications David is using now on his Mac.

The iPhone SeeJacket Crystal is a clear, hard plastic case for the iPhone that offers complete protection while allowing full access to the iPhone. A model for the iPod Touch is also available. read more

Karelia Software announced the release of version 1.1 of the Karelia iMedia Browser, a free utility that adds the familiar "media browser" experience to just about any Mac application. Version 1.1 adds Adobe Lightroom support and vastly improved movie thumbnail generation. The new release also includes a useful online Help feature. read more

CUPERTINO, California--May 1, 2008--Apple today announced that new movie releases from major film studios and premier independent studios are available for purchase on the iTunes Store (itunes.com) on the same day as their DVD release. New releases and catalog titles will be available from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios. Movies purchased from iTunes can be viewed on an iPod with video, iPhone, Mac or PC or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV, with new releases priced at $14.99 and most catalog titles at $9.99. read more

New York, May 1, 2008 -- ooVoo, an innovator in the way people communicate online, today announced the launch of a Mac version of its high quality video chat solution. The ooVoo Mac release is one of the most advanced and feature rich video communication programs available to Mac users and allows people to connect with both Mac and PC users anywhere in the world for free. The ooVoo software can be downloaded from http://www.ooVoo.com today. read more

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- Thursday, May 1, 2008 -- Mozy, Inc., part of the Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division of EMC, today announced the release of http://www.mozy.com/mac MozyHome for Mac, the industry's first unlimited online backup service for the Mac. Mac users in the home can now safely and cost-effectively back up all of their digital information over the Internet. With more than 700,000 total users worldwide and 6.2 billion files backed up, Mozy is the leading online backup service of choice for consumers and small businesses. read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- May 1, 2008 -- Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced the Open Screen Project, supported by a group of industry leaders, including ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless. The project is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Also supporting the Open Screen Project are leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to reliably deliver rich Web and video experiences live and on-demand across a variety of devices. read more

David Alison created a quick keyboard map for recent Windows to Mac switchers that helps people that do a lot of text editing. He also has links to other keyboard short cuts for Mac OS X.

Fast Icon has released CreatureCutes, which contains 12 freeware icons of funny creatures. This icon collection is available for download for Mac OS X, Windows Vista as well as a handy PNG files for Linux, web or blogs in the FastIcon Website.

There have been rumors of the iPhone coming to Canada almost from the beginning, but now Rogers has confirmed that it will be available some time this year, although no date was specified. Rogers' First Quarter Financial Statement contains the following item: Wireless announced it had reached an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. Information regarding device availability and service plans will be announced at a later date.

Today is your last chance to buy the MacUpdate Bundle, consisting of 10 applications for $64.99 (total value $474.66). read more

Recommending that someone switch to Mac from Windows is something that should be approached with caution. David Alison's latest blog post covers why convincing someone to switch could backfire on you if they're not ready.

Exactly 5 years ago today, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, which has revolutionized the way music is sold. In those five years, iTunes has become the largest and most successful online music retailer as their competitors failed. What Apple did right and where the others failed was having a simple price structure, not requiring a monthly subscription fee, letting you keep the music you buy, letting you play the music you buy on multiple computers or other devices, and letting you burn the music to CDs.

Apple® today updated its all-in-one iMac® line with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors and the most powerful graphics ever available in an iMac. With prices starting at just $1,199, iMac includes faster processors with 6MB L2 cache and a faster 1066 MHz front-side bus across the entire line, and 2GB of memory standard in most models. The 24-inch iMac now offers a 3.06 GHz Intel processor and the high-performance NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics as options, extending iMac?s lead as the ultimate all-in-one desktop computer for both consumers and professionals. read more