Mac OSX Software Threads

Mac Software Reviews

Parallel Desktop vs. VMWare Fusion
VMWare Fusion vs. Parallel Desktop : Which is Faster?

Verdict: I would choose VMWare Fusion over Parallel for it's stability and performance over the years even though Parallel Desktop is the first virtualization software for Mac OSX. I had tried VMWare Fusion and the overall installation and ease of use is great.

Mac Software Links:
Mac Software Ultimate Thread - WarezBB

iWork '09 - WarezBB [Alternative]
SplashID - WarezBB
VMWare Fusion - WarezBB

XBMC Advanced Configuration (Ext Player, DSPlayer..)

XBMC Advanced Configuration

Note: For my own reference only:

Compiling XBMC with DSPlayer
A. Preparing the downloads
1. Download the source files here.
2. Download Visual C++ 2010 Express.
3. Download Direct X SDK June Edition.
4. Extract the tibet20-xbmc-xxxxx download from step 1.
5. Go to projects\BuildDependencies.
6. Run DownloadBuildDeps.bat and DownloadMingwBuildEnv.bat.
7. Wait for it to complete download.

B. Compile the solution using VS2010 Express
1. Go to project\VS2010Express
2. Open XBMC for Windows.sln. If nothing happen when double click right click on it and select VS2010.
3. On the menu bar, select Release (Direct X).
4. Click the Play icon or right click on the Solution Explorer and select Build Solution (F7).

C. Final Build - Building .EXE
1. Go to project\Win32BuildSetup
2. Open BuildSetup.bat. Select 2 when asked.
3. After finished, an .exe file will be created under the same directory. Can also launch by going to project\Win32BuildSetup\BUILD_WIN32\Xbmc\XBMC.exe.

Troubleshooting
* If got libmicrohttpd-5.dll error, copy \Program Files\XBMC\system\webserver from existing working one.

* If there is error when running BuildSetup.bat in Section C, download Nullsoft scriptable install system here.

Can also get the final build for XBMC with DSPlayer here.

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Wiki
HOW TO compile XBMC from source code
HOW TO use an External Player for media playback (use MPC-HC to play video instead of internal XBMC codec)
HOW TO use DSPlayer (associating media files with filters, declaring filters, etc.)
HOW TO use Advancedsettings.xml (created under username\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\)
Setting up bitstreaming for XBMC using DSPlayer
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TV Shows Naming
Custom Directory Structure for TV Shows Naming

Forum Threads
Internal Directshow Based Player (DSPlayer)
Internal Directshow Based Player (User Support Thread) (includes tips and tricks)

Resource
Momogram Graph Studio (used to get GUID for the filters)

iPad Apps that Enrich My Daily Life

So you just found out that Apple will reveal their successor for the iPad on March 2nd. For those that had already gotten their iPad recently, you might felt dismayed and regret for purchasing one yourself? Fret not as the iPad 2 won't be as revolutionary as the original iPad. As rumored, the following are among the bumps up features that might be introduced:

- Upgraded from 256MB to 512MB of RAM
- Dual Core Processor (Apple A5?)
- Front and rear camera
- Lighter and takes a shape form similar to iPhone 4

In fact, I myself just purchased an iPad several weeks ago and it had served its purpose well for my reading and entertainment purposes. Ever since the day of purchase, I had been reading more as I feel more natural reading on the device compared to reading on the screen. Regarding the upgrade, I feel that there is simply no need for the upgrade as the current hardware is more than capable for daily chores.

Below list down the apps that I used the most daily to enrich my daily life:

1. Reading PDF, Office docs
Good Reader
A very versatile app that is able to read almost any documents that you 'throw' at it. This is a great app to read PDF or any documents with fast rendering speed. Personally I like the annotation features in which you can highlight, adding notes, adding markups, drawing shapes and so on. When adding annotation, you can either save it in the original PDF file or save it in another copy. Opening large PDF files with huge picture contents (>100MB) is also very fast.

Worth mentioning: PDFReader Pro, FastPDF+, QuickOffice, Office2 HD

2. Reading comics
iComic
One thing that make it outstanding than other competitors is the ability to view double pages in landscape mode. Although it does not have the eye-candy bookshelves as featured in ComicZeal4, this feature simply outweights it. You can even customize the tap operation when you click on any position while reading. The password feature is another good feature to prevent anyone from reading your protected comics.

Worth mentioning: ComicZeal4

3. RSS Reader
Reeder - RSS reader for my Google Reader RSS feeds.

Worth mentioning: River of News, Go Reader

4. Video Streaming
Air Video - Well you might probably heard of it already as I think it is the best video streaming apps. I had been using it ever since last year.

5. Remote Desktop
TeamViewer HD - Official app from Team Viewer.

6. Organizing Contacts
ContactsP - I used this to organize my contacts into groups. Then I can easily send out messages to a particular group at the same time. Useful when sending emails to a group of colleagues in a college assignment or a department.

7. Audio Streaming
PlugPlayer - I use this since I'm using foobar2k as my media player.

8. Income/Expense Tracker
iExpenseIt - Too bad there is no iPad version for this. It features the ability to export your report in PDF file and create highly detailed graphs based on your criteria (monthly, weekly, yearly, range of date, etc..). It is definitely worth the price tag.

As for game, you can always go to TouchArcade for the latest discussion and news.

Blog Update: Added Live Traffic Feed

Hi guys, just a quick update. I had just added a Live Traffic Feed just at the bottom of the Chat Box to keep track on who is visiting this blog :)

Anyway if you have any question or articles that you would like me to share, feel free to drop your comment in the chat box or sent it to dsync89@yahoo.com.

Synthesizing artist vocal using VOCALOID

Recently I had found a great software for synthesizing artist vocal by entering your own lyrics - Vocaloid

If you are wondering what this software does, kindly check out the video below:
Canon Rocks

Vocaloid Wiki

There are various artist that you can synthesized the voice with (mostly Japanese).

The software can be downloaded in the following site:
Link

If you wish for video tutorial, check out the video below:
A 6 parts video tutorial

There's even a series of albums that is released using Vocaloid:
Link

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In addition, you can even creating your own anime dancing model by using a software called Miku Miku Dance. For lip synchronization, you may use the .vsq file that you may create by using the Vocaloid software.

Link for Miku Miku Dance
Tutorial for Miku Miku Dance

Unleash your creative imagination now ~

My Astro - 天天好天 (2011) [FLAC]

Just uploaded a FLAC lossless album for 2011 CNY album by My Astro - Tian Tian Hao Tian. Enjoy the lossless quality~

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Album Title: My Astro - Tian Tian Hao Tian (天天好天)

Released Year: 2011

Log File included.
No Cover Art (Will upload soon when got scanner)

Disc #: 1
Total Tracks: 10

Track List:

01. 福气
02. 万鼓迎春到
03. 炮竹一声大地春+欢迎新年到
04. 又是一个好新年(福建)
05. 天天好天
06. 恭喜发财
07. 新年童趣
08. 欢乐年年+恭喜你(广东)
09. 大拜年+拜天公+庆元宵
10. 大家恭喜

Links:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=77FMT5EA
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DA4RSM8O
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XDMW7940

Enjoy! Lyrics will be uploaded upon request.

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Purchasing a SSD?

When it comes to bottleneck, most often the major cause of it is your hard drive. Many people are still relunctant or doesn't see the point of upgrading their mechanical hard disc to Solid State Drive (SSD). One of the concern is the performance degration over time. There's been a concept in most of our mind that SSD doesn't last long in the long run. However, SSD had improved over time and you would have an outdated SSD or might even purchased a new one when the existing one started to perform poorly.

The second on the list if of course, the price per GB. SSD might still be considered expensive. But why would you need a bigger size? With larger capacity, you will probably just hoard every files in it without doing any housekeeping. With this being said, lesser capacity makes you make use of it and deleting those files that you might not probably need. And if you do store a lot of archive, movies, pictures, musics, etc, you wouldn't store it in your SSD would you? You might as well store those in a slower, mechanical hard disc as you didn't frequently access those files and those certainly doesn't required fast seeking time. A cheap 1TB external hard disc would do the job. What you should store in your SSD is the OS and applications. The changes are significant.

Quoted from an article here:
In spite of the foregoing, dedicating an ordinary solid state drive to your Mac
system and applications is generally fine, so long as you’re not using it for a
scratch volume or other data intensive work. That’s because once written, system
and applications are mostly read, not written, and reading does not degrade
performance. This special report shows what you can expect, and you can choose
for yourself, eyes wide open.

In short, SSD had improved much due to :
- TRIM support by OS

And with SSD, you don't need to:
- Defrag your hard disk as the reading speed across all sectors are equally same

Below are a few links regarding SSD that is worth reading before you make a purchase. And when you did purchase one, you would be glad you do and probably wondering why didn't you do it at the first place:

Lifehacker
How to take full advantage of your SSD
Why the limitations of SSDs are actually good
Enabling TRIM in Windows 7

More Reading
Mac Performance Guide: SPECIAL REPORT: Real World SSD Performance

Cool RSS Site

Here's a pretty cool site that collect popular RSS from various sites and list it in a user friendly format. Use it if you wanted to know what's hot and popular in the shortest time possible.

Monitoring SMS/Phone Call Logs

If you ever wanted to monitor any SMS or phone calls that your children or anyone that you wishes to monitor, why not give MobileNanny a try?

You can check out their demo site here by using the login: DemoUser and password: DemoUser.

Simply One of the Best Online RSS Reader - Good Noows

If you are searching high and low for a good RSS reader, yet is still unable to find it. Why not give Good Noows (sounds like Good News) a try? It featured multiple layout (around 9) so it sure to be one that suit your visual craving. I myself especially fond with the default 'Wall' layout view. :-)

P/S: You will need to link to either Twitter, Facebook or other supported social sites in order to use it.