I have updated both the Nokia and Blackberry Icon pages so that all the download links are now present and correct. I know that I am missing quite a few different models from these manufacturers, but as you can imagine the list is pretty endless as to those that need creating. So bear with me, it will take a while, but I’ll eventually get there.

Some previews:

Nokia

Blackberry

Also, I have realised that another major flaw is present on the site… you may have noticed a small iPhoto icon next to each phone model that looks like this:

Clicking this mysterious, unexplained link downloads an Automator workflow for your mac which is currently completely undocumented anywhere on the site. Sorry about that! It’s a remnant of the old newformula.org where I had some automator workflows available for download. These will be coming back soon, but in the meantime I managed to forget to explain that random link.

The workflow that is downloaded is designed to grab the currently selected photos in your iPhoto library, convert them to the optimum screen size to that specific mobile and then send them via bluetooth to your phone. Very handy for showing off pics on our phone, using as wallpaper or screensavers. Not so handy that I actually documented it though. Useless! So I will make getting the instructions online for this as a priority - maybe today, if not in the next few days.

Two things:

1. The Sony Ericsson icon page has been fixed. It was showing Garmin icons for the last week. My mistake, won’t do it again.
2. I have decided I won’t be posting any more personal stuff at newformula.org - photos, thoughts etc. will move to their new (old) home at globeriding.com - to be up soon. That way, if you want the geeky stuff, subscribe to the RSS at newformula, if you want the personal stuff, subscribe to the RSS at globeriding. To easy.

Done.

For the uninitiated, Basecamp, from 37 Signals, is a web application aimed at project management. From 37s themselves:

“Basecamp is a unique project collaboration tool. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, or reports, they fail from a lack of communication and collaboration. Basecamp makes it simple to communicate and collaborate on projects.”

At work I have to deal with a lot of small (and some large) pieces of information, questions, to-do items and more being thrown at me every day from around the world. Although not everyone I work with is Basecamp savvy, they know at any time that they can log in and the current status of a job, task, or larger project from our Basecamp account. Plus, it makes me look super organised and efficient - never a bad thing in your bosses eyes! If you want to try it out there is a free plan which let’s you use just one project at a time, or there are one month trials for their other plans - just click the banner below. Trust me, if you work in a role where you are responsible for keeping track of, well pretty much anything, it’s well worth trying out.

Easy access to the flow of information, contacts, tasks etc. is pretty critical when it comes to actually getting work done. Now, Basecamp itself is pretty accessible anyway, but a widget never hurts and makes things that bit easier. This is where I have a confession to make - I work on a windows box. Bummer eh.

Headquarters Basecamp Widget from Clearspan Media

As such, the widget I use most is ‘Headquarters’ from Clear Span Media. This runs under Yahoo Widget Engine (formerly Konfabulator), which has to be installed on your Windows machine first. I think the widget is fairly fresh, and at the minute only gives read-only access to your Basecamp account. This however is a pretty good start, and it’s now permanently embedded on my work desktop. You can drill through to-do’s, contacts, messages and milestones on a per project basis pretty efficiently. I look forward to the time when you can write changes back to your Basecamp account with this - I’d definitely consider paying for it too. Another example of a widget well done - saving time by having a focused purpose.

The Mac still gets some serious Basecamp Widget loving though, with a well rounded widget from Kennedia Consulting. In true Apple Dashboard Style it’s extremely slick looking, again with all the relevant info that you might need close to hand. A former Apple pick of the week, is thoroughly usable and makes accessing simple Basecamp info from your Dashboard dead easy. Thankfully I try to avoid using it as much as possible - it’s Macs at home, Windows at work for me so it doesn’t get used as much as maybe it could.

Mac Basecamp Widget

It’s still read-only from your Basecamp account - so (for now) no editing back to your account without logging in via your Browser. A sneak peek at version 2 bodes well though, offering resizeability and write access - I just wish they would hurry up and release it already.

It looks like I may be using an old version of this widget - or I may just be plain wrong. I’m going to reinstall this one, get it working properly and rewrite this - the Apple Download page seems to think differently to me.

Update: I can’t get this widget working for me any more. It just sits there and does nothing. You may have more success though - give it a try.

Finally we have the Telescope widget (again for Macs). Until recently this was a plain vanilla rss reader widget with some Basecamp orientated design going on (selecting projects from a dropdown for example). When I checked back on it though to write this article I noticed that it was updated in late October to provide some more advanced features, making it a good competitor for OS X Dashboard space to the widget from Kennedia.

Telescope Dashboard Widget

It’s main use is as a quick overview of Basecamp project status. In order to accomplish this it’s a bit of a beast and takes up a fair bit of screen real estate, but I think that’s a bit of a necessity to really accomplish this well. Flicking through projects is quick… and, wait for it… Telescope also offers write access to your account in the form of to-do completion! Super useful for checking off what you have completed in the course of a day’s work without having to dip into Safari or Firefox.

It’s not quite as beautiful as the widget from Kennedia, but it’s still nice and otherwise it does a good job. The best thing about all of these widgets is that they are currently free, so you can quite happily run all three if you so desire - there’s nothing stopping you.

A final, honorable mention goes to Sundial, a Dashboard widget designed specifically for time tracking within Basecamp. I haven’t signed up for a high enough plan for time tracking, so I can’t really evalute it’s functionality - it sure looks nice though!

Sundial Dashboard Widget, image courtesy Clearwired.com

If you’re a Basecamp user already I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve looked for something like these already. If you haven’t fallen under the spell of Basecamp already, get stuck in and get organised.

In a new series of posts I’m going to give a quick rundown of my favourite widgets for the OS X Dashboard.

The Snow Report Widget is one of the stock widgets that apple supply with OS 10.4, yet I recently rediscovered as winter, and ski trips, beckon.

Quite simply it’s just brilliant - all the info about your chosen resort, a nice UI, and with a very focused task. Basically, just what a widget should be. Waiting for winter just got a bit more exciting :)

I’m not a big gamer. At the age of about 10 I was given an original GameBoy - I think I used it for about a year or two, off and on, and got all of about 5 extra games, and then it fell by the wayside (probably to bigger and better computers - I would imagine about the time I gave it up would have been about the time I first got into Macs). One summer holiday a couple of years later I discovered the original Gran Turismo on the PS1 at my friends house. Now that’s a way to kill a summer. Since then, my gaming has been limited to the occasional bit of Playstation 2 at friends places when it first came out, a lot of Dreamcast Virtua Tennis action at Uni and Japanese PSP grey import (this one I actually bought out of my own money - the first) which I sold after a year as I couldn’t justify its ownership.

So, I’m not particularly qualified to talk about gaming and games, console rivalries or anything like that. However… I am a freak about getting things to work my Macs. So, with the anticipation of the girlfriend leaving me for a couple of weeks (to help the poor in Guatemala, damn selfish if you ask me) I went to Game in Camden Town and bought me a slimline PS2 and Gran Turismo 4 to help me relive those early PS1 days.

Now, this isn’t a post on how great (or not) either the PS2 or Gran Turismo 4 may be. Yes, they are great, but that’s not the point. After a couple of days of playtime, as the PS2 was sitting right by Mac Mini under the TV, I started wondering if they might talk to each other… I mean, the Mac’s a friendly guy, he’s all open and waiting to chat with anything and anyone that comes his way - after all, via PSPware, the PSP and he were great buddies. The PS2 though is a bit of a hardcase - a rather private guy and a tough nut to crack, and no obvious way of making the Mac and him live in harmony.

What follows is a brief list of ways, off the top of my head and some googling, that you can bring some Apple love into your Playstation 2’s closed life. They’re pretty round the houses and often a bit ambiguous, but it’s the best I could come up with!

Charge your iPod!

The PSP has 2 USB ports for plugging in thumb drives and other accessories. USB provides the necessary power to juice your iPod… so, with the cable, a ready made iPod charger! One caveat - the newer, slimline PS2’s won’t charge anything but an iPod shuffle it would seem. Bummer, I think sony has disabled power to the USB ports unless they are actually being accessed for a game or what have you. However, the older fat PS2’s are reported to work well charging up your iPod Photo, Video or Nano. As far as I can tell, slotting the shuffle into the Slimline PS2’s USB port also gives juice to the shuffle, I’m guessing because it is accessing the hard drive.

Play multiplayer games across the net by plugging the PS2 into the back of your Mac!

Grab yourself an ethernet cable and plug into the back of the Mac Mini and back of the Playstation 2. Next, think ah that was easy, let’s go get me some multiplayer action! Erm… not so fast. Man, I hate networking issues, especially since Telewest decided to completely lock me down on my broadband options. However, following, this setup, I think there’s no reason why you can’t use the Internet Sharing feature on your Mac to get some network action on your PS2. Just dedicate some time and patience to getting it set up and you’ll be there.

I couldn’t actually get this working - but then I didn’t have the patience or will to try, and only spent about 15 mins on it. It seems doable though!

The other option for multiplayer gaming via the internet, is to use the Kai gaming network and a super juicy app called Amaryllis from the makers of PSPware. Again, through a bit of long-winded setup (but with a higher chance of success it would seem), you can connect to a free network of gamers worldwide to play against. Amaryllis acts as the gateway on your Mac to the Kai network.

Some links to help you out:

• Amaryllis
• XLink Kai Network
• XLink Mac Forum

Use your Shuffle as a hard drive for data transfer!

So, Sony weren’t nice when making the Playstation. Wanting some of that memory card profit, you can’t just save games for easy transportation, sharing or otherwise to a thumb drive connected via USB. However… some games, such as Gran Turismo 4 for example, let you do “fun” things like take photos of your cars in action or in situe at various world landmarks. These can be saved to a usb drive, and what’s the iPod shuffle’s main second use? Yup, as a USB thumb drive.

It works like this - 1. take photo as required. 2. Save to ‘USB’ on the playstation. 3. Extract shuffle, plug into mac, and you’ll see a folder conveniently named GT4 with your images on! Use how you see fit. Kidding aside, the quality is actually quite nice, and some will be thoroughly usable as desktops if cars are your thing. It’s worth a few minutes of your time experimenting anyway.

Access your movies, music and photos on your Mac via your PS2!

I have to be kidding, right? The PS3 is meant to be the daddy of media centre action from Sony, surely? Well, according to a product called Medio, I think made by Broadq, the PS2 can get in on the action too, viewing media from your Mac or PC’s hard drive on your TV via your PS2 over the network. Details are sketchy, and in my internet travels I haven’t come across anyone claiming to use one, but it would appear that this baby can do just that, albeit with a few limitations.

From the Medio Website:
What media can I play?
Music/Audio – MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AC3 (video only)
Movies/Video – MPEG 1, 2, 4, DivX 3.11, 4.X, 5.X, OGM
Pictures/Images – JPEG, PNG

At €29 from their online store it’s not going to break the bank, and if it works as claimed then you should be able to view any video up to 420p on your TV. For those of you who can’t afford a Mac Mini or the forthcoming iTV, it may be worth checking out.

Well, I warned you the list may be pushing it a bit. The PS2, understandably as it was released in 2000, is a very closed system and this was about the best I could come up with. If you have any other ideas or success stories, leave them in the comments. For me at least, it looks like the PS2 will remain very much unloved by my Apple gear.

I’ve been beavering away adding the icon downloads to the site - restoring what I had on the old pages originally, and adding a host of new content. So far I have put back the PC Card Readers, Sony Ericsson Mobile Phones and Sandisk Thumb Drives. New are the Western Digital Icons, with most editions of the My Book range and the Silver and Black Passport Drives too.

I also have the major updates to the Sony Ericsson range online, with models like the M600, W900, P990 - basically anything bluetoothable is there. Finally, the neat Sandisk Cruzer Crossfire range been added to the Sandisk Cruzer Icons I had up before. Check out the previews below for more. The last bit of (shocking) news is that all of these are also now available as zip of Windows .ico files too - these are untested though, as I don’t have a windows machine at my disposal.

Icon Previews

Western Digital

Sony Ericsson

Sandisk Thumb Drives

PC Card Readers

Enjoy. Please, if you download these and use them regularly consider donating to help fund the time and bandwidth this site takes. I’ll add a paypal link to the site soon, but until then - my email is keith @ thisdomainname . If you don’t want to donate in cold hard cash, a quick email to say thanks is just as appreciated.

The ‘upgrade’ is coming along smoothly. I have moved all written content that’s worth keeping across from the old site, which you can now find under http://newformula.org/words/

The downloads section is the next to be tackled. As all of the icons that I have made aren’t quite complete yet, I am weighing up whether to either do the icons page in stages or keep nothing on it and release it all in one hit. As Sony Ericsson and Motorola Icons are pretty much complete I might get them online first and then add to them later. We’ll see.

I also wrote up a new overview of a great little program in beta called teleport, which is perfect for those who have multiple macs and want to control them from just one keyboard and mouse.

Teleport, which is still in beta and from abyss software, is a genius little app. It’s aimed at mac users who have more than one machine and want to use one without switching to the other machines keyboard or mouse, i.e. those with a desktop and laptop side by side at work.

You specify one side of the screen on the machine which a keyboard and mouse or trackpad is connected, and when you move your mouse across that boundary, it ‘teleports’ the cursor control across to the other mac, and makes keyboard functionality transfer too.

Read on…

Right, I know I haven’t added anything new or blogged about anything in ages. That’s going to change soon.

Tonight the blog is moving over to wordpress, please ignore any funny issues on the site. Then, over the next few weeks I’ll be adding a slew of new downloads. I have icons for pretty much every semi-advanced phone from major manufacturers completed, ready for download in windows and mac format. I am in the final stages of getting this into downloadable and usable formats, and then we’ll have some more content again on the site…. and how many times have I said that!

As I’m in a posting mood, I might as well give you some previews of the icons I have made which will be on the downloads page in the next couple of weeks. I am planning a matrix of pretty much every relevant cell phone on the market, with a downloadable icon for each model in windows and mac format. There will also be an Automator workflow for each model, which lets you pull photos from iPhoto to your cell via bluetooth at the right resolution. Great for wallpaper, MMS or screensavers.

Sony Ericsson K800i in Silver / Black

Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, LG all coming soon, as well as new thumb drives from Sandisk and hard drives from Western Digital. Stay tuned!

Things are getting tweaked and moved around about every 2 minutes now - plugins added to wordpress, then shifted in the sidebar, pages made and destroyed. It will start to settle down soon.

So far I think I have finished moving the Photos page and sorting out the feeds. There’s no need to update your feed reader to keep subscribed, I’m still running of feedburner. Next - more customisation and fiddling, then I’ll get onto getting that new downloads page online.

Thanks for your continued readership.