If you have a bunch of files you need renamed on your Mac then Name Mangler is where it’s at. You can easily batch rename tons and tons of files just by dragging and dropping them into the application. Name Mangler goes beyond just renaming something from file1 to file2 though, there are many more advanced batch renaming capabilities including:

* Find and Replace (find all instances of Blah in filename_Blah and replace with Wow)
* Number Sequentially (file1, file2, file3)
* Change Case (caps to lowercase, vice versa)
* Set an Extension (make all files .txt or the like)
* Add a Prefix or Suffix (Filename.jpg to Filename-trip.jpg)
* Remove or Insert Characters
* and more in the advanced settings…

Name Mangler is free to download and use. It’s donation wear so if you like it enough, let the developer know with your wallet. Name Mangler was free to use and used to be donation wear, but now the developer is charging $10… thank you to treks for pointing this out. You can still download a free trial though.

Name Mangler developer home
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Have you ever wondered what your mouse is doing when it’s moving around all day as you work?

IOGraph is a really cool program that runs in the background and tracks all of the movements and pauses of your mouse (or trackpad) as you use your Mac. You can then export the mouse tracks into an image file with either the movements overlayed on your desktop workspace or just as an individual tracking graph. It’s most interesting when you launch the app and let it run for hours while you go about your day, coming back to it later to see where your mouse has been most active. The black dots are mouse pauses and grow based on the length of the pause, but you can configure IOGraph’s tracking to not include this in the images it produces if you’d rather not see them.

So other than being cool and producing interesting images, is there a use for IOGraph? I would say yes, particularly for application, web, and GUI developers. Imagine having beta testers run IOGraph over your designs so that you can see how people interact with your app, and what works and what doesn’t? This is made possible across all platforms too, since IOGraph is available not just for Mac OS X, but also for Linux and Windows.

Even if you don’t use IOGraph for anything productive, it’s still fun to play around with, and it’s definitely fun to see what your mouses tracking behavior and movements are in relation to what you do on your Mac throughout the day.

IOGraph developer home
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[ images via Flickr ]

You can easily compare two versions of a Word document using Microsoft Word in Mac OS X.

* Launch the two documents you want to compare within Microsoft Word
* Go to the Tools Menu
* Select Track Changes
* Select Compare Documents
* Select the two documents you want to compare

You’ll be shown a side by side comparison of the files and the changes will be highlighted and easy to spot. If you’re a writer, researcher, or editor, you’ll find this feature very useful! As far as I know this comparison tool is not included within Apple’s Pages application (at least not in version 3.0 that I have), hopefully in a newer version it will be a feature, it is too helpful to not be!

If you’re looking for a more developer orientated version of file comparison, check out FileMerge.

Google Books is a pretty amazing virtual library filled with who knows how many books, magazines, periodicals, and whatever else you might expect to find in a brick and mortar library. Some of the books can be downloaded and saved as a PDF with just a click, others are restricted, but thats where Google Book Downloader comes in. Simply give the program a Google Book URL or Book ID, and Google Book Downloader will generate a PDF of that book (or at least the portion that is accessible via the web). This is so useful for anyone who wants a virtual copy of a book stored locally on their Mac (or iPod Touch, or iPhone, or even the iPad!). This is about as easy as it gets.

So you want to save a Google Book for later? First, find a book on Google Books

Now just paste the URL or book ID into the application and it will start the download:

Your Google Book is now saved as a PDF and it can be read or viewed from anywhere, independent of the web and an internet connection. Awesome! Google Book Downloader is free and open source, so if you feel like poking around the code it’s freely available on the developers site.

HacThePlanet: Google Book Downloader
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There’s no shortage of DNS Server options out there, with Google DNS, OpenDNS, your own ISP’s, and the gazillion of others available to use. The question remains though, which of these DNS servers is going to be fastest for you? And how do you know which is fastest? NameBench is a free application that will run a set of benchmarks based on your web browsing history and tcpdump, and will report back the fastest domain name server for you to use. In some cases, switching to the suggested domain name server can be a considerably speed increase, with noticeably faster page loads. Check it out for yourself.

NameBench home

[via TechCrunch ]

Facebook recently announced that they opened Facebook Chat up to 3rd party instant message clients by using the Jabber protocol, which means you can now use Facebook Chat seamlessly from inside iChat and talk to your Facebook friends without being logged into the Facebook site.

How to setup iChat to use Facebook Chat:

* Launch iChat
* From iChat, select the iChat menu and scroll down to “Preferences”
* Click on the “Accounts” tab icon and click the “+” sign in the corner to add a new account
* In the “Account Type” menu, select “Jabber” to enter information relative to your Facebook account
* Enter your Facebook Username (your username is in your vanity url, facebook.com/your_name), you can find or set your Facebook username by going here on Facebook.com
* Enter the password to your Facebook account
* Now under the “Server Options” settings, enter the server as ‘chat.facebook.com’ and the port as ’5222′ (without quotes obviously)

Facebook has an official Chat page on Facebook.com if you’re confused or need additional help setting up the Facebook IM clients, but the setup procedure is practically identical regardless of what IM client you are using.

Keep in mind you are not limited to iChat, with Jabber support you can actually use Facebook Chat with Adium, iChat, Pidgin, and just about any other multi-use instant messaging client that supports the Jabber XMPP protocol.

I’m a big fan of distraction free writing space, and so far WriteRoom has this market cornered pretty well on Mac OS X. OmmWriter looks like a worthy contender though, it’s got a beautiful unobtrusive interface and is complete with a relaxing background and subtle peaceful sound effects… if that sounds a little cheesy it sort of is, but it’s actually pretty nice to write in! The goal of OmmWriter is ” a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.” and I must say it’s pretty effective at doing this. It’s currently in free beta and well worth checking out if you’re a writer of any sort. Be sure to check out the video below to see it in action.

OmmWriter developer home
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You can delete specific pages from a PDF file with the built-in Mac Preview app, just select/highlight the page you want to delete and then hit the delete key. This is really useful for paring down large PDF documents if you only need a few select pages, this is bound to make any student or researchers life easier when emailing or printing documents.

In the above screenshot example, I have deleted multiple unnecessary pages within a research PDF document before I printed it, my school charges for each page so reducing the printed page count is particularly valuable. You’ll notice that the PDF page numbers don’t change though, which is both good in that you can quickly identify which pages are missing, and bad if you are hoping the pages would reorder themselves after others were deleted.

You can instantly create a Stickies note from anywhere in Mac OS X by highlighting the text or image and hitting the Command+Shift+Y keys. In the screenshot example, I pulled a text snippet from Wikipedia into a new Stickies note instantly by using the key combo. I use this all the time when researching and gathering information for projects, yet another Mac feature that I can’t live without!

If you’ve ever wondered what your Mac Multitouch Trackpad is doing, download this fun little application. It tracks multitouch input and shows you just how sensitive the multitouch surface really is, detecting up to 11 input points, and also knowing the surface area. Not the most useful app in the world it’s certainly a fun way to see what your multitouch is up to and to get a glimpse of the technology behind the scenes of our favorite laptop computing surface. Multitouch trackpad Mac required (works with the Magic Mouse too apparently), and this supposedly works on some 2008 MacBook/Air/Pro models as well but I’m not able to test them specifically.

Lericson Programming: Multitouch on Unibody MacBooks

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