Jing, as an alternative to iShowU ($20)

Jing is a screen-casting program which has come a long way since it first started. Their current version is pretty impressive because it integrates sharing to Screencast.com, Flickr and uploads to any FTP; you’ll automatically get a download link which you can share with your friends (something like Skitch). It does everything iShowU does and it even records from the microphone. The one thing it doesn’t allow me to do is adjust the video output quality. But hey, it’s pretty decent for a free app.

Burn, as an alternative to Roxio’s Toast Titanium ($79.99)

Burn extends Mac’s native burning abilities by adding various options such as creating the regular Data as well as Video and Music disks. It can burn from cue and bin images. It’s not as fully equipped as Toast Titanium with Blu-Ray Disc burning but it does the good ol’ fashion burning job very well.

Cyberduck, as an alternative to Transmit ($29.95)

Both programs are pretty much the same, supporting Quicklook, WebDAV, Secure FTP, Amazon S3, synchronization and Growl notifications. So what’s the difference? Um, the price?

macam, as an alternative to IOExperts Webcam Drivers ($20)

My first Mac was a Mini and like all new Switchers, I was excited about Photo Booth and got myself a USB webcam. Little did I know that Mac has limited drivers for webcams. After extensive research, I was ready to fork out 20 bucks for IOExperts Webcam Drivers just to make my webcam work. Luckily, I managed to find macam in time. The name doesn’t instill a lot of confidence but trust me, it works. And it saved me $20.

Handbrake and MacTheRipper* and VisualHub, as alternatives to Roxio’s Popcorn 3 ($49.99)

Handbrake is a DVD to MPEG4 convertor. Everything is handled with a single-click. It’s a very simple, free program for those without high expectations. For others who require more control, there is MacTheRipper which performs a complete backup of your DVD. With the resulting Video_TS folder, you could use VisualHub to convert it to H.264 which provides high-quality encoding. And since VisualHub is no longer in development, I suspect you could just use it for free.

*MacTheRipper 3.0 is available only to those who donated. Check their forum for more details. You can also find the 3.0 version if you do a Google search.

Switch, as an alternative to EasyWMA ($10)

The thing about Windows Media Audio is it’s a proprietary codec unlike MP3. Hence, converting songs to and from WMA on a Mac isn’t free. For Switchers, this presents as a problem because when using Windows, iTunes recognizes WMA files and plays them without a hiccup. After transferring the iTunes library over to Mac, the songs can’t be played unless they’re converted. If you read my previous article about Migrating iTunes over to Mac, I basically teach you how to avoid this problem. If it’s too late for you and all you want is a WMA to MP3 convertor, there are EasyWMA and Switch. One is free, the other isn’t.

iGTD, as an alternative to Things ($49)

The fast-paced lifestyle most of us lead nowadays has driven notepads and To-Do lists to a whole new level. Getting Things Done (GTD) is now a zen-like teaching. iGTD is apparently the guru of all GTD applications. I’ve covered Things before when I first started writing for MakeUseOf. I would still recommend it but it isn’t free, however there is a free preview available now. So, you might want to get your hands on that while you still can.

My colleague Daniel listed five other GTD applications. Check it out.

WhatSize 10.3.91, as an alternative to WhatSize 4.3.1 ($12.99)

Yes, I realize that they’re both the same application but truthfully, I haven’t found a program which does what WhatSize can do. I’ve tried GrandPerspective but it doesn’t quite tickle my fancy. WhatSize is still easier to use and more pleasant on the eyes. I got pretty upset when it went from freeware to shareware without even a hint of an announcement. So, I did some searching and managed to find the older but more importantly, free version. DiskInventoryX is also worth a try, as an alternative to the alternative.

Dictionary Plugins, as an alternative to TranslateIt! (17€ for a 1-year license)

TranslateIt is a very popular multilingual translator for Mac. Mac’s Dictionary application comes with every Mac OS X. It’s pretty expandable too, because you can add more dictionaries to it if you can find them. Rather than paying close to $25 for a dictionary, you can just spend a little bit of time to download a free dictionary database (which I may have already found for you) and add it to your Mac’s Dictionary.

Fruux, as an alternative to Spanning Sync ($65)

Spanning Sync is a very well-known commercial app which allows synchronization of Google Calendar with iCal and Google Contacts with Address Book. It can also sync calendars and contacts between several Macs. Fruux is a very fresh and free preference pane which will also allow you to sync your iCal, Address Book, Bookmarks and Task between Macs. It lacks the Google Calendar and Contact syncing, though. It’s possible to set that up yourself, with a bit of manual labour. I ain’t spendin’ $65 for that.

That concludes the second part of my Free Alternatives to 10 (now 20) Commercial Mac Applications. I hope you enjoyed it and managed to save the money you would’ve spent if you hadn’t read this post.

Are there any other applications you paid for? Share with us in the comments, maybe we’re able to find a free alternative for it!

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time medical student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.

New subscriber? Get your freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

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John Borthwick, who heads up the Betaworks incubator/"business acceleration platform" (investments in Twitter, Tumblr, someecards, etc.) sent out his own memo out to his portfolio companies Saturday afternoon. The following is an abbreviated version (John suggested we use the art to the right):

----------------

Out east, a downturn has been evident for a while, and most of you have already started to make adjustments to your plan. But two things did change this week:

(a) The credit crisis and the crisis of confidence in our markets got way worse.
(b) Silicon Valley woke up to the fact that something had changed.

The first point is the one to focus on. The second is a distraction.

You need to think about things differently. Things have changed and your priorities should change. I broke up our thinking into two blocks. The first is what you should be thinking about in terms of your business. The second outlines some thoughts on what this means for the market.

#1. Priorities for you and your business:

Things look ugly, but with distress comes opportunities. Scarcity drives innovation. Always has, always will. Do more with less: A trite one liner that you need to make part of your companies DNA.

There will be more emphasis on user value, more ways to make money from that value. We will finally fess up to the fact that many of the ad models of web 2.0 don't yield results, and we will invent ones that do. All around there will be more innovation.

It's counterintuitive, but during an up cycle people accept conventional wisdom, and during a down cycle people challenge it. That's good. Very good. And the cycle will winnow competition.

Follow the money
Many of you are running your businesses very cheaply right now and break-even is within reach. Get there.

One of the headline shifts that is taking place is that people (partners, investors, the market) are going to shift focus from audience + revenue to just revenue. This happened in the last downturn and a lot of entrepreneurs didn't adapt to the shift till it was too late. Cash is king. Cash gives you flexibility and options. Once you get to break-even the whole world will look different.

Making money, like everything you do, takes work, time and attention. It will take longer than you expect and it happens in ways you can't plan. Start working on it now. If you have just raised money or are raising, get it closed. The cost of capital is going up. Think runway, cash and revenue.

Watch your spend, make necessary cuts now
If you think a piece of your product needs two developers to build it, do it with one. Be excessively creative in thinking about revenues and trying those ideas. Rethink *all* your projections, looking at how reductions in cost and accelerations in revenue strategies affect the numbers. Then redo them again. You'll be stronger.

Face reality as it is, not as you wish it was. Change the mix of sales and performance-based employees. Think about what you can outsource -- and how you can distribute your costs. It's hard and it requires different workflow, but when it works it can change your whole business makeup.

And if you need to make cuts, make them now. Don't cut 10% now and then another 10% early next year -- make the change in one fell swoop. Piecemealing your way through change kills momentum, hurts culture and the team and is a chickenshit way to run a business. Figure out what your runway looks like and do more with less. Figure out how to extend your runway till you get to break-even.

Know your data
You have heard me rant about this before, but you have to know what's going on. Know your data really really well. Financial data, your burn, your cash flow, revenues, runway and site usage data. There are a lot of things you can do to improve everything from burn to traffic. But first you need to know where you stand. So every week you have a picture of your position. Make this a habit.

I used to hate to do this, but once you make it a habit it becomes a tool. During an up cycle you can follow instinct, and usually your raw instinct is what you should follow. But during a down cycle your instinct can lead you far astray.

Compete
Take the offensive. Many of your competitors are not as well positioned as you. This is an opportunity to take share. These points are in order of priority -- once you know where you stand, where you are making money, what your burn is -- think aggressively about growth and market share.

This is my favorite slide from the Sequoia deck (link to the deck is below):

#2. Big, broad changes.
With the economy heading into the worst setback most of you -- most of us -- have ever seen, it's time to think about big, broad changes. It's been a long week, but let me try to anticipate a few.

Momentum and change
Some of our business is based on momentum. That's taken a turn for the worse. You have to adjust fast -- that's your job. As humans we accept change as something that someone else needs to adapt to. But that's not true for your business: You have to change, not someone else. And remember a Welsch maxim: Control your own destiny or someone else will. Change before you have to.

Cost of capital
The cost of capital has gone way up. Don't panic, just make sure you realize the rules have changed.

Advertising
There will be a flight to quality; this always happens. But this time I think it's going to be more than that. For TV and print this has been an unusual year: The shift to online has been stemmed first by the Olympics and second by the election. But year-over-year growth in ad spend has been down across the board (see slide 32 of the sequoia deck, linked below). Expect the next year to be ugly and different. I think spend will move online, very fast, and print may right downhill. And people will look for ROI -- real measurable results. Monetizing social media is hard. Much to do here, much money/share to make/take.

Beyond advertising
Much of Web 2.0 was about advertising to the tail -- the wonders of Google and AdSense. The truth that most people haven't spoken up much about is that (a) neither Google or Yahoo did a great job of monetizing much outside of search and (b) the Google business is still mostly in the head of the curve, not the tail.

The scale focus on auction-based ad buying has distracted us from other business models. This week I had a bite with the CEO of Hi Media (who bought Fotolog): They are an ad network, but they are now making a lot of money on payments. And a significant chunk is via "microfame" payments -- Fotolog users voting each other up in popularity based boards. In September, some users spent more than $2k each voting on these boards. Many of our companies are experimenting with payment models -- Tipjoy, Ideeli, IILWY, Covestor, SomeEcards ... there is money to be made here -- from payments to item sales to t shirts. Businesses to be built.

The elephants will dance
Pieces are going to move on the chess board. Big pieces. This shouldn't be your focus, but things are going to have change around your business, and they might affect you. Yahoo is going to be sold or bought. Ebay will either be sold or bought or broken up. Facebook is going to have to change (cut spending, focus on revenue) or it will be bought. Same for Linked in. Microsoft, News Corp. TWX and other media companies will be buyers. What does Google do in this cycle -- freeze or be bold? The newspapers -- do they act out of fear or freeze up? Telco's and cell cos; cable cos -- do they jump upstream?

Why should you care? Because as these pieces move around the chess board, they may well affect your future. So watch carefully. If Paypal -- which by some estimates is now 50% of the value of Ebay -- gets spun out of ebay, then they will accelerate services beyond advertising. Etc. etc. So consider the moves the elephants make. The equation for them, public or private, has changed.

Openness
I think this cycle is going to drive another significant shift in how open and interconnected the Web is. This is good news for you, and this is bad news for the Facebooks of the world, who tried to replicate the walled garden strategy of Web 1.0.

Think about what happened through the last cycle. Start with AWS. In the 1990s, Internet companies had to own everything top to tail. Today you can use Amazon and other services to pop up a new box for hundreds of dollars, if that. Thats a huge shift, and it's also a shift towards interdependency.

We are all now dependent on the Amazon's of the world for parts of our infrastructure. I think this turn of the cycle is going to drive a lot more openness. This in turn ties to the market figuring out how to rapidly establish bottoms-up standards. This is about working with others and figuring out how to do things without having to do all the work.

betaday

Next week at betaday [Betaworks' portfolio companies presenting to investors] will be a great opportunity to present your companies to many potential business partners. These partners now more than ever will want to know how your business scales, earns revenues and profits. Take this opportunity to have clear responses to these questions. There will be a greater emphasis now on this, so be prepared to specifically and persuasively answer these questions -- before they get asked. Think about your burn, how you can do more with less. Think three years out, not six months.

At yesterdays launch, each social network on Ning offers over 25 OpenSocial applications from which to choose, including file sharing from Box.net, poll creation from Polldaddy and e-commerce from Shopit.

Google announced this support yesterday on their OpenSocial blog.

I had some additional input from the Sean Lindo, the community manager from box.net : “Box.net is one of the applications Ning users will be able to use on their profile pages, allowing them to post and share all kinds of content stored on Box.net. Our mission is to make it easy for people to access their content wherever they are, on any platform, device and application, ultimately. So, having this kind of partnership with Ning, as well as other companies like Facebook will certainly help in this mission.”

It would appear that ning keeps making great strides and has become one of the unsung social network heros. It is the social network platform you most likely never heard about, that is growing like crazy and is quite powerful and easy for individuals or companies to set up. It is founded by netscape founder and visionary Marc Andreason.

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WARNING : BEFORE making any changes to the Windows registry, it is highly recommended to make a backup in case anything goes wrong. To backup your Windows registry, tap your Windows key on the keyboard and “R”. When the Run box comes up, type regedit. When the Registry box comes up, go to ‘File’ then ‘Export’. Save the resulting file to your hard drive.

Lets get started!

Become Your Own Computer Manufacturer

It is common for computers to come with information about the manufacturer in Start Menu under the “Run” entry. Wouldn’t it be cool, though, to be your own computer manufacturer?

Well, it is possible with Windows! Let’s do it then:

1. Open Notepad (”Start,” “Run,” notepad.exe)

2. Copy the following into it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}]
@=”TITLE HERE”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\DefaultIcon]
@=”ICON HERE”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,73,00,68,00,\
64,00,6f,00,63,00,76,00,77,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
“ThreadingModel”=”Apartment”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\Instance]
“CLSID”=”{3f454f0e-42ae-4d7c-8ea3-328250d6e272}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\Instance\InitPropertyBag]
“CLSID”=”{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}”
“method”=”ShellExecute”
“Command”=”TITLE HERE”
“Param1″=”FUNCTION HERE”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}]
@=”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex\MayChangeDefaultMenu]
@=”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\ShellFolder]
“Attributes”=dword:00000000

3. Change the following values to whatever you like:

TITLE HERE - Add the text that you want to be shows, ex. John’s PC

ICON HERE - The image that is used as a brand logo. It must be a .ico and 24×24. (E.g. C:\\mylogo.ico. The \ has to be replaced by two \\’s.)

FUNCTION HERE - This should be replaced with the function that will be used when clicked. (E.g. A website, a windows executable, etc. http://google.com will redirect to Google when clicked.)

4. Save the file as brand.reg and double-click it. Now, simply log off and back on and you should have your own branded version of Windows!

 

Create Your Own Run Command

I talk a lot about Windows, and using the “Run” command is a large part of it. It is a simple and easy method of accessing applications quickly. If you happen to want to make a shortcut to an application your own way, guess what, you can! Let’s do it:

1. Go to “Start,” “Run,” (Told you we use it a lot) and type regedit.
2. Navigate to the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Apps Path
3. Create a new folder/key under Apps Path. (Right-Click Apps Path and click “New,” “Key.”)
4. Title the new folder/key the name of the application, e.g. firefox.exe.
5. Right-Click the default string value (the thing automatically created in your new folder) and click Modify.
6. Change the value to the path of the executable you are attempting to run. E.g. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe.
7. Create a new “String Value” by right-clicking under the default value (the thing we just edited) and select “New,” “String Value.” Name it Path and enter the value as the same path you previously entered.
8. Done! Now, all you need to do is go to “Start,” “Run,” and type the name of your command!

Change Menu Delay

The MenuShowDelay registry key sets a delay for different menus. This registry key is one of the most useless keys in Windows. If, for some reason, you want your start menu to delay for 900 milli-seconds, then you do not need to mess with this at all. If you do, though, want to speed up your computer just a little more then here is how you lower the menu delay:

1. Go to “Start,” “Run,” and type regedit.
2. Navigate to the following:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. Find the key labeled “MenuShowDelay” and right-click, then click Modify.
4. Change the value to whatever you like. (The range is 0-999 in milliseconds.)

Hope these tweaks helped you get closer to a nearly perfectly tweaked computer!

(By) Will Mueller is a computer nerd and geek that has been working with computers for far too long. He currently works on one of his blogs at FirefoxGeeks.

New subscriber? Get your freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

Tags:customize, registry, windows tips, XP

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