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The music FontanaMixer creates is random, interesting and unexpectedly delightful.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
T h e R o a d L e s s T r a v e l e d
Great finds worth a download or two
May 18, 2005
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard
It's download day again. Here are three of my latest favorites.
We are an OS X family. We do all our computing on Macs in our house. They're networked with both Ethernet cable and wireless connections. A lonely Windows PC stands ready to play Windows games, but we wouldn't dream of doing normal computing on such an unsafe and unreliable computer.
We're well connected - in most ways. But my wife and I have been wishing for months that we could easily share the same calendar and address book.
I'd given up on the idea. Not even Entourage, the slick personal information manager and e-mail program that comes with Office 2004, was able to let us share calendars easily.
But a new program called Address-O-Matic has taken us part way to our goal. It's a $20 shareware program that lets you share your address book on a network. You can choose to share all of your addresses or just selected ones. You don't need to configure the network sharing details; they work through Bonjour, Apple's new name for its self-discovering and self-configuring network system formerly called Rendezvous.
Address-O-Matic was written by Massimiliano Ribuoli and Marco Stefani. You can get it from Version Tracker, the best OS X freeware and shareware site I've ever come across. Go to www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23635.
Another great find is a free virtual desktop utility called Desktop Manager, by Rich Wareham and Jon Rentzsch. It gives OS X users the ability to switch to a new desktop with the press of a key or the quick click of the mouse.
Desktop Manager lets you have from two to 200 virtual desktops.(You'd normally choose four or six.) Programs running on one desktop ordinarily get shuffled out of sight when you page into another desktop, but you can quickly tell the program to "Show this window on all desktops" when you have something you'd always like to be able to view, such as a weather-reporting window or a chat program.
The software is so new you'll surely find a few bugs - on my G4, trying to switch desktops too rapidly caused a mighty lockup - but don't let that keep you from trying it out. Virtual desktops are common on modern Linux computers and were superbly done on the operating system that gets my vote for the best ever designed, BeOS. You'll have fun discovering what Linux and BeOS users have been enjoying all these years.
I use the "rotating cube" effect for paging desktops in and out, but I also liked many other choices. Fading desktops in and out looks particularly good, although you'll impress more friends if you stick with the cube effect.
Desktop Manager is also available from Version Tracker. Go to www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21594.
Finally, I've become fond of a bizarre music generator called FontanaMixer, written by Karlheinz Essl and available free from www.essl.at/software.html. FontanaMixer was inspired by "Fontana Mix," a freeform piece by American composer John Cage. The music FontanaMixer creates is random, interesting and unexpectedly delightful.
You'll also be able to listen to and order, on CD, audio performances of Essl's music from www.essl.at/sounds.html. I found them fascinating.
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