Well, apparently you could do this before the new iTunes 8 release yesterday, but now it’s an official iTunes feature instead of an add-on. I have to admit that I’d never ever turned on the iTunes vizualizer before today (you can toggle it using command+T), but I’m certainly going to use it now.

It’s absolutely mesmerizing.

Using hotkeys, that is. By default the hotkeys for toggling the language input is set as Command+Space. But since Spotlight’s default hotkey is also set as Command+Space, that leaves the language-togglin’ hotkey essential disabled. We need to go into system preferences and change that.

Fluid is a ‘Mac’-only application that allows you to create “site-specific browsers“ to bring web apps more concretely onto your desktop. So, you can make individual apps for your Mac - which are small in size, and fast - for web services such as Facebook, Facebook Chat, Flickr, Last.fm, Google Reader, Google Docs, G-Cal, Gmail, Hahlo, Blogger, MySpace, eBay, and hundreds of others.

It’s so simple  to make your own app (once you have Fluid) that you can do it in just…

One of the hidden beauties of owning an Apple Mac is the wealth of effectively free ‘tech support’ offered up by fellow users.

Not only is this support free, it is well organized - across a few key forums and discussion groups, which I shall review below - and is dished out freely by Mac experts who often reply to new queries (or cries for help!) within hours of the original post.

What do such Mac users in these forums get in…

As much as one might like to be a polyglot, freely conversing in a number of the world’s gorgeous languages, most of us are steadfastly mono- or bi-lingual.

Many applications on your Mac, however, come bundled with an array of ‘localizations’ so that one release of a company’s app can suit the needs of practically all of their global users. But that represents a waste of valuable disk space for 99.9% of people who use their apps in just one language,…

Leopard’s Text-to-Speech capabilities are great for visually impaired users. Highlight some text, click the designated trigger key, and your Mac will read the text to you in one of it’s many different voices. The default is Alex.

But I prefer Zarvox. Off the record, I believe Zarvox is just a cover name. I suspect it’s really Soundwave, who having been excluded from the Transformers movie was snatched up from the unemployment line by Apple.

While I really like speech capabilities in Mac OSX, I have to say I’m a little disappointed with the speech recognition. I got very excited when I thought about the prospects of eating macaroni and chess on the sofa and yelling chess notation at my Macbook. I know, I know… Who wouldn’t?

Like with any operating system, you likely don’t utilize all the features that you potentially could. Heck, some of the features, you probably didn’t even know they existed. Or maybe you just didn’t bother to enable them.

That’s likely the case with Mac OS X’s Active Corners feature, which is a neat little tool that helps you do many different tasks just a little bit quicker.