Prepare for a new addiction: Angry Birds Rio is available to download for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. The sequel to Angry Birds brings 60 new levels and is bound to be just as highly addictive and fun, so now is a good time to start setting aside some mandatory procrastination gaming time.

Download Angry Birds Rio from the App Stores

• Angry Birds Rio for Mac (Mac App Store)
• Angry Birds Rio for iPhone (iTunes Store Link)
• Angry Birds Rio HD for iPad (iTunes Store Link

The game is $4.99 on the Mac App Store, $2.99 for iPad, and $0.99 for iPhone & iPod touch. There are new characters and new level designs, as you can see in the screenshots:
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Generally if you kill the Mac OS X Finder it will automatically restart itself. Generally. When the Finder doesn’t auto relaunch, you can manually launch it by using the Terminal and the following command:

open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

The Finder will open and things should be back to normal again. If the Finder still doesn’t launch, you may need to reboot your Mac to get everything back in order.

LetterBox is a very popular plugin for Mac OS X Mail.app that gives you a nice widescreen interface. Unfortunately it seems like every other Mac OS X system update screws up LetterBox compatibility, and 10.6.7 is no different. Thankfully the LetterBox developer is quick to react, and a fixed version for Mac OS X 10.6.7 is out:

Download LetterBox for Mac OS X 10.6.7

• Get LetterBox fixed for 10.6.7 fix now (direct link to DMG file)

If you’d rather fix it yourself, you can do so using the existing version of LetterBox:

Manually Fix LetterBox for Mac OS X 10.6.7:
This is a bit more advanced than just downloading the new plugin, but you can follow the instructions to fix LetterBox for 10.6.5 and then add the following UUID’s:

9049EF7D-5873-4F54-A447-51D722009310
1C58722D-AFBD-464E-81BB-0E05C108BE06

Thanks to Vincent for 10.6.7 UUID fix!

A Macs startup drive can be changed during system boot by holding down the OPTION key, this will bring up the boot drive manager. Selecting a boot drive from this menu will not change your default drive, this is a one-time only choice of which drive to start from.

I use this to change my boot OS from Mac OS X 10.6 to 10.7, but I set my default startup drive to 10.6 for stability reasons. You can read how I setup a dual boot Lion & Snow Leopard installation for more on this.

Mac OS X 10.6.7 is now available for all to download! If you aren’t automatically notified, launch Software Update to download and install the latest Snow Leopard update that includes bug fixes, security updates, and performance updates.

If you don’t want to use Software Update, you can also download the 10.6.7 updater .dmg files directly from Apple as either the standard updater or a combo update

Mac OS X 10.6.7 Direct Download Links

These are direct download links to DMG files hosted by Apple:

• Mac OS X 10.6.7 Update (475 MB)
• Mac OS X 10.6.7 Combo Update (1.12 GB)

The easiest method for most users to install is using Software Update.

Here are the full release notes for 10.6.7:

This update is recommended for all versions of Mac OS X v10.6 through 10.6.6 Snow Leopard, and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac; including fixes that:

Improve the reliability of Back to My Mac.

Resolve an issue when transferring files to certain SMB servers.

Address various minor Mac App Store issues.

Additional improvements

Includes all the improvements in the previous Mac OS X v10.6.1, 10.6.2, 10.6.3, 10.6.4, 10.6.5, and 10.6.6 updates.

Includes Safari 5.0.4.

Includes RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras.

For information about the security content of this update, please visit article HT1222.

Resolves a window resizing issue with X-Plane 9 on Macs with ATI graphics

Addresses an issue with MacBook Air (Mid 2010) computers that could cause a kernel panic.

Address issues in the AirPort driver for certain devices.

Improves brightness on external displays and projectors.

Addresses an issue where DVD Player may display black video on some Macs using the 64-bit kernel.

Addresses an issue with some NEC displays in which the screen may appear black when connected to a Mac Pro (Mid 2010).

Resolves an issue in which some Multiple Master (MM) fonts were missing from Mac Pro (Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (15-inch & 17-inch Mid 2010), and iMac (Mid 2010) computers.

Addresses various issues with MacBook Air (Mid 2010) computer performance.

Resolves an issue in which clicking the Updates tab in the Mac App Store could cause the Mac App Store to become unresponsive.

Fixes a problem opening an afp:// URL that points to a file, and changes the AFP mount path to conform to previous Mac OS X releases. For details, see article HT4538.

Includes the ability to repair certain issues that may prevent hardware RAID volumes from mounting. For more information, see article TS3631.

Fixes a rare issue in Mac OS X v10.6.5 that could cause user accounts to disappear from the Login window and System Preferences after putting the system to sleep.

Improves the reliability of dragging files or folders to the Trash when using an NFS home directory.

If we find anything interesting that isn’t listed, we’ll let you know.

Mac OS X 10.6.7 edges closer to the next major revision of Mac OS X, 10.7 Lion, which is due for release this summer.

For security reasons, it’s always a good idea to lock your Mac screen when you step away from the keyboard. On the other hand, there are times where you’ll be away from your Mac but you don’t want to have to re-enter your password to login, or you just don’t want your screensaver activating or your Mac sleeping.

Here’s three ways to temporarily prevent Mac OS X from sleeping or activating the screensaver:

1) Caffeine – Caffeine is a free menu bar utility that is available through the Mac App Store, it sits in your menubar and when you click on the cup of coffee, it prevents your Mac from going to sleep for a preset amount of time: from indefinitely to 5 minutes. I use Caffeine often and have it set to an hour, this is a really useful app. Grab Caffeine from the Mac App Store (App Store link).

2) pmset – If you don’t want to install another app, you can mimic the effects of Caffeine by using a command line utility called pmset. Launch the Terminal and type:

pmset noidle

This will prevent your Mac from sleeping indefinitely until pmset is no longer running. You can stop pmset from running by hitting Control+C in the same Terminal window. pmset is a power management utility that you can use to set sleep and wake times, but the noidle flag just provides a single use sleep prevention method.

3) Screen Saver Hot Corners – Another option is to set a screen saver Hot Corner from System Preferences > Screen Savers > Hot Corners. Just specify a corner and set it to “Disable Screen Saver” and anytime you slide the mouse into that corner, the screensaver will not enable. This does not prevent the system from sleeping though.
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If you’ve ever needed to reboot in the middle of an iChat conversation you know how distracting it can be to your train of thought, plus it’s also a huge interruption to the flow of conversation. An easy solution to this is to set iChat to keep track of your last messages:

• Open iChat Preferences from the iChat menu
• Click on the “Messages” tab
• Click the checkbox next to “Save chat transcripts to:” to enable the option underneath
• Select the checkbox next to “In new chat windows, show:” and then select how far back you want to display

Now anytime you open iChat the specified number of messages will be shown in the window, allowing you to quickly get back on track and resume your conversation.

The default iOS water droplets wallpaper is beautiful, but it doesn’t easily stretch to a desktop resolution. No big deal, some crafty Photoshop work from DeviantArt has created this massive 2560×1440 version that closely resembles the default background on new iPhones and iPads.

Click the image above or here for the full image. You can also get the full wallpaper pack in a 17mb zip file from DeviantArt, look for the “Download File” link on the right side of the page. The full pack includes different aspect ratios and resolutions for both desktops and smartphones.

Want some more nice backgrounds? Here’s two from Mac OS X 10.7 Lion:

• Mac OS X Lion Space Wallpaper
• Mac OS X Lion Fuji Mountain Wallpaper

The water drops wallpaper was found via FruitBytes.

What do Star Wars Legos, an iPhone, and Steve Jobs have in common? Absolutely nothing outside of this picture. I have no idea where this is from or what the context is, but this is just one of many goofy things that end up in our inbox. Thanks for the submission Andy!

Oh and if you’re suddenly on a Star Wars kick, you can watch “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” entirely in ASCII using the command line (nerd alert).

Want a world class education on iPhone and iOS development? Check out Stanford Universities iOS & iPhone Development course CS193p, the class has been taught several times now and each one has been uploaded to iTunes as a free video podcast. In addition to the free video lessons, you also get complete access to all class slides, tutorials, and assignments.

The classes assume you have some experience with development concepts and Object Oriented Programming, although the first lesson does a quick overview of object oriented principles and vocabulary. If you’re totally new to programming, you might want to grab a beginners book before jumping into the Stanford lessons.

iTunes: iPhone Application Development – Winter 2010

iTunes: Developing Apps for iOS – Fall 2010

Stanford: Assignment & lectures for Winter 2010

Stanford: Assignment & lecture slides for Fall 2010

The classes require you to have Xcode installed, which you can either install Xcode 3 from an existing Mac OS X 10.6 installation DVD and then install the iOS SDK, or you can get Xcode 4 from the Mac App Store for $5. Registered iOS developers can always download Xcode 4 for free as part of their membership.

FWIW, tuition at Stanford University starts at a whopping $38,000 a year, so being able to watch their courses online is a pretty great deal.