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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps Apps
At times, I will run hints here which are pointers to third-party apps that seem to do interesting things. The decision as to whether to run such a hint is purely subjective; if it seems like the program does something interesting, then I'll usually run it. If it's open source, the odds are even higher, as perhaps someone will learn something by looking at the source. And almost always, these apps will be from small one-person shops, who typically have trouble getting the word out about their programs.

On the other hand, I don't want macosxhints to turn into a software update and release announcement site, so I'd rather not have such hints be the majority of our content. So it's a fine balancing point between providing useful information to the community and straying too far from the site's real mission of providing OS X hints.

Over the last week or so, I've received quite a few such "this app does XYZ" type of hints. Instead of running each as a separate "hint," I thought I'd just post them here as a collection of potentially interesting free apps. Note that I have not necessarily tested any of these; I just thought some portion of the community might find them of interest. All of them are free, and some include source.
  • TrashGnome - Organizes items you place in the trash into dated folders, making it easier to go back in time to find that file you really want back. Also includes a Delete Immediately folder for those things that you want to truly delete right now.
  • MacLoJack - Register your computer, and if it's ever stolen, you can login and report it stolen. MacLoJack will then attempt to send all sorts of interesting data to their server every 60 seconds, hopefully enabling you to recover the stolen laptop.
  • Menu Utilities Collection - An assortment of 13 different menubar icons, giving you easy access to information such as free hard drive space, free RAM, CPU utilization, IP information, and more. Note that these are PowerPC code, though they seemed to run fine on under Rosetta on my Intel Mac.
  • FlickrBooth - A plug-in for Photo Booth that enabled automatic uploading of Photo Booth images to Flickr.
As noted, I haven't tested all of these, but felt they were at least worth mentioning. Please let me know (via the comments) whether you like this sort of information on hints or not. The response will help me decide whether I do this again in the future, or just relegate all such hints to the Links section of the site.
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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: terceiro on Dec 20, '06 09:44:57AM

first, I always like a pointer to an unique, interesting, free little app. So you can keep these coming. Secondly, FlickrBooth makes Photo Booth a much more interesting little toy itself. I've had a lot of fun with my kids, putting up their photos online. Makes more sense than keeping them either a) in Photo Booth or b) gunking up my iPhoto with them.



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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: CatMac on Dec 20, '06 11:58:52AM

Keep 'em coming!



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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: stjernstrom on Dec 20, '06 01:16:24PM

Yeah, love these little apps that you have never heard of but that makes your life better, had to create an account just to make this comment ;-)

Thanks.



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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: tyip on Dec 20, '06 05:08:00PM

I also say keep them coming. You're doing a great job.



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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: XplodingBoy on Dec 21, '06 12:00:38PM
I would rather do without posting applications as "hints." I look to macosxhints.com for how to do something on a Mac, how to do something better on a Mac, or how to fix something on a Mac. If I want an application to do something on a Mac, I turn to macupdate.com or versiontracker.com.

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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: FiremanAndy on Dec 21, '06 03:00:44PM

They need to combine Photobooth with MacLoJack, as soon as your mac is opened up it snaps a pic and sends it to a your e-mail, then you have a picture of the thief! ;-)

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Why 'plate of shrimp'?
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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: cgoodwin on Dec 22, '06 09:22:55AM

Beware installing MacLoJack.

After I installed, even after deactivating 'Theft mode' a number of times, MacLoJack kept trying - every 60 seconds - to access a remote site owned by the programmer, presumably to report info about my NOT stolen computer. It's possible I did not install correctly - the installation instructions are very unclear - but even after installing and registering my computer and, as I say, deactivating theft mode a number of times, the - dangerous - problem persisted.

Also deinstalling - unless you know what you're doing in Terminal - is impossible.

The other problem is that no support is offered.

Nor is it clear how the information about one's 'stolen' - or in my case not stolen - computer is used once collected. How does one gain access to it? How does one use that to alert law enforcement?

Until these problems are sorted out I would STRONGLY advise against using this software.

Beware!

By the way, I did the programmer the courtesy of running these comments/ problems by him before posting here. This was his response:

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Clearly you are not experenced. Nor am I concerned with your inability to figure it out. Feel free to post your tripe on the board, perhas it will keep the fools away.

--

So now you know!



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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: tinker on Dec 23, '06 02:12:50PM
For those of you, like me, who install the program and can't find that it provides any tangible benefits, the commands you'll want to use to de-install it in the Terminal are

sudo rm /etc/maclojack.cfg
sudo rm /library/launchdaemons/maclojack.plist
sudo rm /usr/libexec/isightcapture
sudo rm /usr/libexec/lojackd


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MacLoJack
Authored by: dkulp on Dec 23, '06 10:20:31PM

Good grief. It works as advertised. I tested it. Sheesh.

When not "stolen", your mac makes a simple HTTP request every six minutes (not every 60 seconds). When it is marked stolen, then it sends data to his website every 60 seconds. The author's website provides a URL on the site to access the files that are uploaded from your "stolen" mac. These files can be used by you or law enforcement.

The privacy risks are twofold.

1. An http request every six minutes provides a log of your IP addresses and time online.

2. If your computer is marked as stolen, then much personal information is shared, including screenshots. The author makes no promises about how he'll use the data that you send. But if it's stolen, then that's just the data that you would like to obtain.

Both of these concerns are mitigated by installing your own MacLoJack server on a trusted host. Patching the Perl code in /usr/libexec/lojackd to use a personal server is trivial. The server itself is also an easy-to-read perl CGI.

The author provides accurate deinstallation instructions on the website.

The whole thing is trivially disabled by a savvy hacker, but the chance that a thief will know to disable an obscure daemon is low.



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cgoodwin got it wrong on MacLoJack - An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: iwantgizmos on Apr 24, '08 02:53:02PM

i was looking up postings on maclojack and found this old discussion message thread here.

cgoodwin got it wrong here because he is clearly inexperienced by his inability to understand maclojack at the time in the past when he was using it.

the maclojack on the macbook always calls the server whether or not it is activated as stolen or not stolen. maclojack has to call the server to find out if you have made the settings on the server to report your macbook stolen or not. how else will maclojack know that the macbook that it is installed on is stolen or not? the server doesn't call the macbook. it is the maclojack that you install on your macbook that calls the server. that's the way it works.

this is how other tracker services work where the tracker software on the laptop calls in to a server to report its IP address on a constant repetitive basis.

the difference with MacLoJack is that MacLoJack calls in to check to see if on the server if you reported your macbook as stolen or not on a constant repetitive basis and if you report it as stolen on the server, then the server tells MacLoJack on the macbook to do some extra things. If you do report your macbook as stolen, you can only do that by logging onto the server to report the theft. If your macbook is stolen, well, you don't have your macbook to use to get onto the internet to report the theft. You have to use another computer to get onto the internet, you log into the server, report the theft, and then the next time that your macbook gets connected to the internet, the MacLoJack software on the macbook connects to the server and finds out that you said that it was stolen and then the MacLoJack sends the IP address, the screenshots, and the iSight snapshots of the crook who stole your macbook to your account on the server. Meanwhile, while you are at your other computer logged into the server, you click on the link for the special specific folder where all of this information is being sent to on the server, and you give the specific URL for that folder to the police when you file the police report about your stolen macbook and the police can monitor everything from there. It's a self-service system where you do the work of installing the software on your macbook, and you do the reporting to the police.

As for uninstalling MacLoJack, go look it up on google. You have to do this in Terminal and it's NOT HARD to do but you have to know your admin password. Unfortunately for people who have never dealt with a command line interface where you have to type in text commands at a prompt, it can get confusing. If you think it's hard to do, then if you are the real owner then be thankful that most crooks who steal laptops may also find it difficult also and will give up on trying to uninstall it also but the crooks will most likely not even know that there is any tracking software on the macbook at all and may be dumber than the typical non-technical mac user to even know what to do.

If you don't trust using the freebie MacLoJack service on your macbook, then you can always pay for Orbicule Undercover which does the same thing and the Orbicule Undercover people will give you the hand-holding support if you are like cgoodwin who needs it. Or you can get MacPhoneHome but MacPhoneHome sends emails to you with your macbook's current IP address. Some people have posted messages complaining about MacPhoneHome support, but it seems like they don't realize they have to pay for the software first to get the support and they have to FILE A POLICE REPORT first if they are to get any retrieval recovery support at all. One thing good about MacPhoneHome is that in their instructions, they do tell you how to set up the firmware password on your mac to help prevent the typical non-mac not-always-technical bad guys from formatting wiping your harddrive clean.

With the tracker services, particularly those that you pay for, do not be surprised if you get no support at all if you are asking for removal of the software from the laptop because the tracking service company will probably assume that you are the crook who stole the laptop if you are not contacting them from the account that you originally signed up with, if you don't provide the police report that the owner is expected to file when the laptop is stolen.

(But for the freebie MacLoJack, which is really a tiny daemon where you go into the unix part of the macbook, since it is free then that you do everything yourself without any handholding support; you just have go back to the site server and follow the instructions but if it's too much for you then you should have read everything beforehand and not have installed it in the first place.)

There are lots more trackers for windows laptops and only maybe five different trackers that I know of for mac. And as far as I know, they all do the constant calling home to a tracking server.



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Maclojack Server Setup
Authored by: jepler on Apr 14, '09 11:20:33AM

I would like to run the backend Maclojack tracking server myself. Does anyone know where I can find the SQL instructions needed to create the Maclojack database host tables? The cgi post script would be nice, too. Thanks.

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J Epler
San Diego, CA



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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: zebostoneleigh on Jan 08, '07 10:30:59AM

cgoodwin's "tripe" as you put it, addresses a serious problem... Software which claims to do something but without advanced knowledge of the innanrds of the Terminal and MacOS and lacking support - it fails to perform as expected.

I've been on Mac since 128k Mac in 1984. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty experienced, and I've found similar difficulty getting Maclojack to perform appropriately. People considering said software will want to know what they're getting into before trying.



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An assortment of potentially interesting free apps
Authored by: TallDwarf on Jan 08, '07 06:44:17PM
While I love people trying to share useful apps, that is now what I feel macosxhints is about.

For a much more robust list of freeware apps with descriptions I have subscribed to www.freemacware.com which has daily additions. I have found some real gems there.

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