Last week I wrote an article about bringing life into your old macs. This weekend we are gonna go a step further. Many of you may know that linux distros are perhaps some of the least demanding when it comes to hardware, so, here are the top 3 Linux distros that can put the power back into your PPC mac.

1. openSUSE – openSUSE 11.0, which is sponsored by Novell, is a linux distro that is aimed at the average computer user. It comes with both KDE 4.0 and GNOME 2.22 (Graphical User Interfaces) as included options. However, if you are using openSUSE on a computer more then a few years old you may want to look into installing less demanding, more lightweight UI’s such as Xfce.
2. Fedora – Fedora offers a more demanding and cutting edge experience as compared to other distros. It is full of unique an intuitive applications and lots of new features that may not show up in other operating systems for many months. Fedora offers a very powerful and elegant interface that is a breeze to both use and learn. Fedora is a very powerful and flexible system with close to two million users worldwide.
3. Ubuntu – Ubuntu is a very popular distro that gained its fame through its ease of use. Its popularity makes finding support as well as applications very easy. The bad news however is that Ubuntu recently stopped releasing PPC versions of its distro. April of 2008 was when Ubuntu released Hardy Heron (8.04), the last version that supported PPC processors.

With Macworld ’09 just around the corner, its time to start the rumor wagon once again. A fittingly vague report from MacX.cn briefs us about reported talks between LG and Apple regarding touchscreen LCDs for implementation in Apple’s next revision of the iMac.

This sounds great but if it has any possibility of being implemented, the price is gonna have to be great. With a market like today’s, I can’t expect Apple to raise prices or cut profit in order to add this feature to the iMac.

If you are interested in the original article you can find it here. MacX.cn

Since it’s inception earlier this year, the iTunes App Store has largely been regarded as a big win for both Apple and independent developers. Like most things though, the App Store is not without it’s criticisms, one of the larger of which is the general lack of organization.

While the Apps are organized in a general way, it is very difficult to browse through the store and discover new apps without prior knowledge. We’ll Apple has set out to remedy this situation by launching a new site, “iPhone Your Life.”

This new section to the Apple Web site, provides a nice place to browse and find information on Apps without having to dig through the impossibly dense App store. Overall, it’s just nice to see Apple addressing some of the issues with App stores, and also showing support for 3rd party developers.

With over 10 million sold, the iPhone is becoming a bigger and bigger opportunity for hackers. While the iPhone has yet to see a malicious hack, you can bet there are people out there trying. MacX.cn has a an article on this as well, but it all sounds like speculation to me.

Should you worry? Probably not. People have been saying this same thing about OS X for the last 5 years. They keep saying OS X is gonna be a target soon. Well, let me tell you something, 22-24 million users seems like alot of incentive to me, and if we haven’t seen anything yet, I wouldn’t expect anything anytime soon. OS X seems fool proof to me. Only time will tell, but if the past can tell us anything about the future, I think you’re safe for now.

Think your 733MHz Powermac G4, your 700MHz Blueberry iMac, or your 800MHz iBook are useless? Think again.

Here are five ways to put your old mac back to work.

1. Arcade - Run NES(Nestopia), SNES(Snes9X) and Gamboy Advance(Boycott Advance) games on your mac. I suggest you pick up a USB controller if you don’t already have one, as playing the games on a keyboard can be quite frustrating. I also suggest getting the Emulation Enhancer.
2. NAS – All you need to turn your mac into a Network Attached Storage device is a router and an ethernet cable. Set up file sharing on your mac and you’ve got access to all of your files anywhere in your network.
   
3. File Server – If you’re looking to store/host files that you want to access on the net, I suggest you give Papaya a try. Papaya allows you to turn any computer connected to the net into a file server with a dedicated address.
   
4. Media Center – Media Central by Equinux is a great replacement for non Frontrow equipped macs. Media Central is essentially a front end for servering up the media on your mac. If you have an new HD TV an old Powermac G4 could make a killer Media Center. (1GHz+)
   

Not so long ago I wrote about changing the login screen on OS X.  It was a detailed post about navigating through system folders and some copying and pasting and such. But today I bring you a better and more powerful way to customize your login experience. Introducing Visage.

Visage allows you to edit the login panel and the login background. It also brings the ability to enable desktop effects to your finger tips. Just install the Preference pane and you are good to go. Simplicity is always good.

Customizing my mac has always been a good way to make your computer more personal. You’ll know what I am talking about next time you start up your mac and look are newly customized mac.

Hit up keakaj.com/visage for the download link. OS X 10.1+

At the time of release this app is still limited to participants of the GrandCentral beta. Bummer huh.

Vocito is essentially a quick dialer that lets you dial your phone directly from your desktop. Vocito is also integrated into Address Book, QuickSilver, and Automator, and is fully AppleScriptable. The AppleScript connection makes it easy to have Vocito automatically dial your phone from just about any application that supports scripting or Automator actions. For example, you can easily set up your iCal meeting appointment to automatically dial the conference call for you at the correct time.

You can find the whole story here: Google Mac Blog

While still very fresh, it seems as though once this program takes of it will be very popular and simplify many aspects of our lives.

We all live and work in an extremely busy world, and I am always looking for smart, convenient ways to speed up my Mac.

Today I bring you one of my smaller, yet still efficient tips, customizing your tool bar. Customizing your tool bar gives you one click access to many commands, locations, and actions. To customize the items in your tool bar, just Command-Option-click the little white pill-shaped button at the top right of your window’s title bar, and the Customize Toolbar dialog will appear right there in your window. Now you can just drag-and-drop icons that you want to use onto the tool bar.

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Again I apologize for my deviation from the ever so elegant world of Apple. However, I feel I must bring you some news.

A recent Sound and Vision mag article states that Blu-ray is preferred over Video On Demand by a factor of 10 to 1. I have been fighting a war for awhile trying to convince people of this. Some agree, however others believe streaming/downloadable content is king. The fact that Netflix could deliver a Blu-ray quality movie faster than most could download it proves my point.

Blu-ray movie from netflix = 24hrs

Downloading 25GB Blu-ray movie @8mbps (mega bits per second) = 31hrs.

Keep in mind that average is said to be a slower 5mbps.

You can find the original story here: sondandvisionmag.com

It’s that giving time of the year again, well, almost. You may as well get to it though. It has a tendency to sneak up on us. So, without further delay…

5 gifts to get a Mac Geek.

1. 1 TB Time Capsule $419 -Back up a lifetime’s worth of memories with the all-new Time Capsule, a wireless hard drive that works seamlessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard. It’s also a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station.
2. OS X Icon Pillows $29 ea. $149 Set – Bring OS X to life with this creative collection of 6 fleece pillows derived from the Finder, iTunes, iChat, Photobooth, iPhoto, Dashboard, and iMovie
3. MacWorld/MacLife Magazine $19.95/$19.95 – We do live in age age of digital media and on demand content, but for me, getting a magazine in the mail every month is alot more fun and entertaiing then just reading the stuff online. $20 for 12 issues is a great price as well.
4. Airport Express W/Air Tunes $59.99 – The main reason this one made the list was becuase of the Air Tunes Support. Air Tunes allows you to wirelesly stream your music to your home sound system. It also triples it usage by being a wireless base station as well as a wireless print server. All in one little box for $59.99
5. Cables, lots of cables. $5-150 – If you use a Mac anything like I use a Mac, you need a lot of cables. I am constantly on the move with my Mac, and constantly needing to hook it up to stuff. I carry 6 cable with me. (DVI to HDMI, DVI to DVI, Optical Toslink, Cat5, FireWire 400/800, and USB 2.0) If you were to buy all of these cables at a store like BestBuy you would pay well over $200. If you shop at monoprice.com, you can get all of these for under $60

Season of the shows FireFly, Star Trek, and Entourage also make good gifts. have fun and enjoy the Holidays!