Some of you may have remembered the mysterious project I was working on a little over a year ago. It was a fun side project, but sadly came and went, after a lack of interest and time. I've decided to put some screenshots of it up on my Flickr account. Here is a little preview of the app you'll probably never see:



Flashlight was an app to guard your Mac using an iSight camera. Using motion detection, it snapped screenshots of intruders as they passed by; if they attempted to use the computer, an alarm would go off if the correct passcode was not entered within the right amount of time.

One day, maybe, this idea will find its way back into my side projects list. As far as I'm concerned though, the app in its current form will never be released.

There is way too much cool stuff coming out this year...

The new album from Arcade Fire, Neon Bible, is out. If you're a fan of Arcade Fire, I think it's their best album to date. With all of the terrible pop music people listen to today, Neon Bible reminds me that good music still exists. It's a really amazing album.

On Saturday I saw the much anticipated 300. There's nothing to say about this movie except that it is really, really cool. Like Sin City before it, it has great artistic direction and use of colour. The reason they could do this is because the entire film was shot against blue screens - all of the backgrounds and special effects were added in via computers. It is definitely a movie that is experienced, not just seen, so go check it out at your closest movie theatre or IMAX. And prepare to walk out with a huge feeling of satisfaction.

Apple today released iTunes 7.1, a solid update to the already-awesome iTunes 7. The best new feature, however, is one that doesn't even function yet. In the Parental tab of iTunes' Preferences window, you can now restrict ratings for different countries. This popup button, which didn't exist before, now contains: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States.

What does this mean? It means undoubtedly that you'll soon be able to buy and download movies from the iTunes Store in all of these countries, previously only possible in the United States. I've had a US account on the iTunes Store for a while, and I can say that the experience of buying/downloading movies is unrivaled. Coupled with the TV, it will be even better.

When will we see these updates? It's tough to say, but it could be as soon as tomorrow, which is iTunes Tuesday. I can't wait.

I tend to not use a lot of third party apps on my Mac, simply because the Mac OS X default apps are excellent and fulfill 80% of my needs. The best apps are the ones that just fit in. However, there are a few really nice apps out there for Mac OS X that I use a lot. These ones are all "dock worthy."

And yes, I've worked on a few of these; but that's why developers write apps, right?















Am I missing anything? What 3rd party apps can you not live without?