I have been playing with Google's new "web application service":http://code.google.com/appengine/, which allows you to host your own projects on their servers. It's not bad, but I have some reservations about this service, especially regarding the privacy of the data. Also, currently there's a big collection of crapware on their "Application Gallery":http://appgallery.appspot.com/ including lame "We want PHP!" apps posted by some kids who can't be bothered to learn a new language. PHP is cool and all that, but i don't see how it suits to this particular service which is very much unlike anything else before. Anyway, my _hello world_ application is called "Linkius":http://m.linkius.net/ and it's a simple bookmark manager suitable for quickly posting urls which you can then access through your mobile. This have been an itch for me for a while and is now scrached {:)} You can use "http://m.linkius.net/":http://m.linkius.net/ or "http://mob.linkius.net/":http://mob.linkius.net/ to access the page, the latter is redirecting to my appspot sub-domain instead, just in case you are in China and ghs.google.com is blocked for you. And while you are here, have a look at Santora Media: Webseitenerstellung und Webdesign für mittelständische Unternehmen sowie den Gesundheitssektor.

The most used application on my Mac must be Jumpcut. It's a no frills clipboard extension which saves your last x clipboards, where x is a user defined value (mine's at 40). There are two interfaces to your clipboard history, one in the menu bar through a drop down menu and one pop-up activated through a hot-key. 

If you are an happy macbook or macbook pro user, read on - this may save your hard drive!

Remember your old iBook or Powerbook? You closed the lid, tossed the laptop into your bag and off you went to somewhere else. Do you still have this habit with your shiny new Apple hardware? WRONG! You can't do that! It will seriously bork up your hard drive, as for example discussed in this thread.

Here's the reason: On newer hardware, Apple enabled that fancy SafeSleep option per default. It will not immediately put your mac to sleep, but will first make a back up of your ram onto the hard drive, to protect your session in case your battery runs flat during sleep. It's a good thing to have, however the write process may take up to several minutes if you have a lot of ram (i have four gigs and it takes _quite_ a while). Apple's "manual":http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBookPro_15and17-inch_Core2Duo_UserGuide.pdf mentions this:

"*NOTICE:* Wait a few seconds until the sleep indicator light starts pulsing (indicating that the computer is in sleep and the hard disk has stopped spinning) before moving your MacBook Pro. Moving your computer while the disk is spinning can damage the hard disk, causing loss of data or the inability to start up from the hard disk."

Good that nobody of us reads manuals. And really, who will stare at their lights to figure out if it's flashing, one is having hallucinations, or if it's lighted up continuously?

All experts agree, moving your Laptop during excessive write progress is not an good idea, and tossing your laptop into your bag during that time will seriously cause you several days of ache.

Luckily there's an easy way to fix this, without having to give up SafeSleep: SmartSleep

"SmartSleep let's you select each select sleep state. Additionaly the new SmartSleep state lets your notebook just sleep while the battery has a high level. If the battery level drops below a certain point ( default is less then 20% or 20 minutes ) it will switch to sleep and hibernate. So you have the best of both worlds."

That means you can close the lid, toss your laptop into the bag, and go home again, just like in the good old times. Should you forget your laptop somewhere over the weekend, your logged-in session is still save.

There was always one feature from Gnome that i missed in Mac OS X, the ability to quickly lock your Mac with a shortcut and go for lunch. Sure, there's that option to lock your mac every time your screensaver goes on, but the problem with that is that I do not want to enter my password every time. At home for example, there is no need to lock my Macbook. Besides this function has a lot of issues when waking up from sleep; Sometimes I would have to wait for a minute until i get a login box. After a long hunt on macosxhints.com, I found a command to show the fast user switching login box without actually having to enable fast user switching:

/System/Library/CoreServices/"Menu Extras"/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend

There are several convenient ways to execute it:

• Create an Automator action which executes a shell script (slow to execute)
  
• Create an AppleScript Application and put it in your Dock:
  do shell script "/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend"
• Run the shell script/ AppleScript from Quicksilver
• Run the AppleScript in Launchbar:
  Put the AppleScript (.scpt) from above in ~/Library/Scripts and enable Home Library scripts in the Launchbar Configuration (I found this to be the fastest option)
  

Finally, if you have no idea what I am talking about, but you need this functionality, check out Lock My Mac.

I have somewhat given up fighting msn messenger, since everybody's life seems to depend on it. But if you need any more reasons why msn messenger sucks, this is it:

Live messenger is censoring more or less silently any messages containing any of the following strings:

• .info
• profile.php?
• download.php?
• gallery.php
• pics.php
• ListAllTopics.php
• .scr
• .pif

Users of older messengers get no notification at all about their messages getting dropped which can lead to amusing conversations. Microsoft's latest entry in their censorship list is ".info" preventing links to any of dot info websites being sent. The censorship is not only affecting links, since sentences with.information, .screensaver or java snipplets like java.awt.ScrollPane will get blocked too, so mind your dots. For more .information visit this thread at Worse than failure.

If you are looking for alternatives to msn messenger, i have been recommending google talk to anyone who cared. It works on Windows and any platform with a jabber client [pidgin, adium] including mobile phones [nimbuzz, gotalkmobile, fring, talkonaut] and web browsers.

Update: Internet wide outrage [digg, slashdot]. Let's see if Microsoft will get their shit together and fix their software instead of blocking random words. :-)