by Victoria Maciulski

Panther Cache Cleaner

from Northern Softworks Download it at: http://www.northernsoftworks.com/
I love this one because it has saved my bacon a few times. If your computer is freezing, crashing, running slowly or acting strange, I suggest trying this one. It lets you do most of the things you do with Disk Utility, plus many other things that Disk Utility doesn’t cover. I use Panther Cache Cleaner to repair permissions, run the maintenance scripts, clean the caches (full of temp files that sometimes get corrupted) and rebuild prebindings.

The reason I like Panther Cache Cleaner so much better than Disk Utility is that you don’t have to dig out your OS X install CD and start up from it in order to repair permissions. I keep it as part of my troubleshooting tools, along with Tech Tool Pro 4, Disk Warrior and Norton Utilities. Panther Cache Cleaner needs a minimum of OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) to run. As the name indicates, it runs under 10.3 (Panther), too.

Little Snitch

from Object Development Download it at: http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/
This is a cool little program (application supervisor) that helps you control whether or not the various apps on your computer can open up communication ports and “phone home.” Every time you launch a program that tells you a newer version is available, that’s what it did. It automatically logged on to the internet and checked at its home website.

That may be harmless most of the time, but that’s what viruses, worms and trojan horses can do, too. They can go into your address book and send stuff out to everyone in there, thus spreading their evil code. Little Snitch stops all that. It won’t automatically open the port to send. It will ask you first. It tells you that a certain app is trying to open a port to communicate. When you install it, Little Snitch is a start-up item that oversees your other activities. It is available through the System Preferences (in “Other”) for you to make changes in the settings, such as dis-allow connection to a particular web site or server.

Business Card Composer 2

from BeLight Software Download it at: http://www.belightsoft.com/
This is the greatest little one-trick pony I know of. It lets you design GREAT, professional looking business cards. It has dozens of templates, hundreds of graphics, and the ability to customize to your heart’s delight. It accesses your address book to automatically fill in the fields you have chosen for your card.

In addition, it lets you really tweak your print output for your printer, so that if you are printing on those pre-perforated business cards (I use the ones that are 10 to a page.), you can make sure they print in the right place on each card. It needs OS X 10.2 Jaguar as a minimum to run.

(c) copyright 2004 Victoria Maciulski Conejo Ventura Mac User Group (CVMUG) Ventura, CA. Re-printed by permission

MACinations August 04