TrueCrypt 6.0a was just released with a couple of bug fixes on the heels of the 6.0 release on July 4. TrueCrypt is an Open Source multiplatform (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) encryption tool that can create either encrypted container files (which can contain multiple files within it like a virtual disk) or whole-drive encryption.

I'm putting together a Freeware/Open Source security tools for Windows list and TrueCrypt will definitely be on that list.

Google Precipitate is a personal Open Source contributions from a member of the Google Mac team. It lets you search through your Google Bookmarks or Google Docs from the Mac OS X (Tiger or Leopard) Spotlight. You can find the blog item announcing it here...

Precipitate: search your local and online docs

I wrote about the tools I used to create my first podcast for O'Reilly Digital Media Mac Center. You can find it at...

A Newbie Looks at Podcasting Tools: Garageband, Audacity, and Levelator

I have a bunch of screencaps of using Garageband (not freeware but it is available on every new Mac as part of the iLife suite), Audacity (Open Source), and Levelator (freeware).

Let me know if you have any suggestions for podcast topics.

I just noticed that Audacity 1.3.5 (beta) was released on May 12. Audacity is a powerful Open Source multiplatform (Mac, Windows, Linux) audio editor. As you might guess, I'm making another attempt to figure out a fast and easy way to create regular (say weekly) podcasts. Basically, I don't want to work too hard or spend a lot of time creating podcasts. If it is difficult and takes too much time, that will seem more like work than a fun project :-)

I blogged about the Open Source Census project in the O'Reilly Media Inside Port 25 blog earlier this week. The project claims that the tool (written in Ruby) is non-invasive. But, I'm still not comfortable letting an unknown app crawl around my computers. I think I'll try it on a virtual machine that can be tossed out if neeed be.

The GrandPerspective 0.9.12.1 update was releaesd on June 14. This Open Source utility for Mac OS X displays a graphical representation of file space use on a Mac. It seemed a bit sluggish on a Core 2 Duo iMac. It seems better suited to looking at specific folders rather than an entire large disk based on my experience. That aside, it is a very useful tool for checking for files hogging space on your Mac.

PortableApps 1.1 is an Open Source utility for Microsoft Windows that lets you run applications directly from an attached USB storage device such as a USB flash drive or Apple iPod. One obvious but useful example is carrying fully configured versions of Firefox (with your bookmarks, etc.) for web browsing and Thunderbird (with all your accounts configured) for email.

OK, after a long wait, Mozilla's Firefox 3 is out. Firefox 2 became a disappointment for some people (incuding me) because of memory management and stability issues. A lot of hope was placed in...

Mozilla Firefox 3

So, now it's out and I am NOT upgrading my production desktops and notebooks (Windows and Mac) from 2 to 3. Here's why...

The popular Java-based Azureus Open Source bittorrent client has a new name and mission.

Vuze 3.1

...was just released with a social-networking aspecct that lets you share a download with a friend and gives them a Friend Boost to help them download the file faster. I only use torrents to download Linux distros, so I'm probably out of luck. Let me know if you are able to take advantage of this social torrent feature though.

FYI: My long-form (more than a few sentences) overview of the VirtualBox virtualization software I've mentioned here went live on the O'Reilly DigitalMedia Center site. You can find it at...

VirtualBox 1.6.2: Open Source Virtualization for Macs

There's a bunch of screenshots in this blog-article. So, be sure to click on the thumbnails to see the larger images.

I tried Sun's VirtualBox 1.6.2 on an Apple iMac running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) first. So, today, I installed it on an old Athlon-64 PC running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. I downloaded the 64-bit Athlon binary first. However, it told me that I wasn't using the correct platform. I assume that what this version requires running the 64-bit version of Windows XP or Vista (which makes sense). So, I installed the Windows 32-bit version next.

Sun bought the VirtualBox open source virtualization project a while back. The project just released a maintenance update (version 1.6.2) today. It can be found at...

VirtualBox

There are a lot of good secure file transfer utilities for Microsoft Windows. But, over the years, I've found myself mostly using WinSCP. A new beta release just became available a few weeks ago on May 23. You can find it here:

WinSCP 4.1.3 beta

I mentioned the Blender multi-platform Open Source 3D rendering/animation product a week or so ago. You can see an example of what real talent can do with it in this animation work released and available for free download now...

Big Buck Bunny

There are several download formats available. Choose the one that works best with your configuration. The files are large (as you might imagine) and take a while to download but is well worth the wait.

Both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 for Windows Vista have been giving me fits for many months with their respective memory leak issues. Firefox 2 has been a bit more stable on my Mac but blows up there now and then too.

The latest version of the Open Source 3D modeling and animation tool is out...

Blender 2.46

This Open Source tool has binary downloads for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

I just wrote about Google Mac Apps You May NOT Know About for the O'Reilly Mac Center last week and noted that lesser known but interesting Google created applications are available at the Google Mac Playground. The playground introduced another Google created app this week...

vidnik

Transmission is an Open Source Mac (also Linux) BitTorrent client that seems to be getting some buzz. I've never used a BitTorrent client on my Mac (the only place I used it is on my Linux box to download various gigantic Linux ISO files). If you've tried Transmission, let us know how it is working for you.

I'm not a fan of Java or Eclipse. So, I didn't expect much from Sun's recent Java-built IDE release...

NetBeans IDE 6.1