Post Category → menubar

Menubar Apps – Caffeine

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Continuing my sort-of-regular posts about my favorite menubar applications, I direct you attention to the hot steaming cup of java in my menubar ….

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Caffeine!
Caffeine has the same effect on your Mac that it has on your body. It keeps things awake. This small freeware application has a tiny memory footprint and sits by idly until you activate it with a click. It then keeps everything awake. I find this most helpful when I’m watching video or sharing my screen with someone. Just today I was sharing a timeline on my screen with a client (you all remember how much I like timelines, right?). Anyway, I clicked on caffeine and had no pesky dark screens while I did my thing. Best of all, it is a lot cheaper than Starbucks. Indeed, it is freeware. Try it out yourself.

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MenuBar Apps – iStat menus

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Continuing my tour of favorite MenuBar applications, I thought I’d write a bit about iSlayer’s excellent iStat menus. This application creates a preference pane that allows you to put a variety of tools in your menubar. It allows you to keep on top of memory, drive space, processors, fans, and other geeky details.

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As you can see, iStat is loaded with options and can quickly hog up your Menubar. For giggles I turned them all on and filled half of the Menubar on my 17″ widescreen MacBook Pro. Oops.
Trying to bring order back to chaos I reset the key stats to give vertical bars and I am good to go. It takes a minimum of space but provides all the information I need.

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MenuBar Apps – dotMac Menu

This is my second entry into my series of favorite MenuBar applications. You can read my prior entries here: JumpCut.
The MenuBar application that Apple provides in the .Mac preference pane just isn’t up to the task in my opinion. It tells you your last sync and provides you a click to the preference pane but that is it.

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Where are the clicks to all those rich features Apple keeps emailing me about? What if I want easy access to my webmail or iDisk? It just simply isn’t there. The wizards over at infinite nexus must have felt my pain when they developed dotMac Menu. This is an excellent donationware little application that gives you access to the entirety of your dotMac goodness.

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Using this little application, I can immediately get access to all of the dotMac features (including a few I don’t even use). It even tells me when Apple will come knocking on my door asking me to pony up for another year. You can customize the level of detail and even if you want it to use the graphite or aqua look. You can download it right here.

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MenuBar Apps – Jumpcut

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I’m going to do a series of posts on some of my favorite menubar applications. I thought I’d start with Jumpcut. Jumpcut is an application that provides “clipboard buffering” — that is, access to text that you’ve cut or copied, even if you’ve subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut’s interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard’s history.
In addition to pulling your text snippets off the menubar, it also can pop them up inside your document with a bezel activated by CNTRL-Option-V.
This app is really helpful when writing just about anything and free! Check it out.

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