New Feature: Recommended Site of the Week

ByMike Moffit

We are introducing a new weekly feature for Kibbles & Bytes: Recommended Site of the Week. It’s very common for us to recommend websites to our friends, customers, and colleagues. In many cases, these previously-unknown sites become favorites to the people to we’ve recommended them to.{?}

These recommended websites will mostly be Mac and technology-oriented, with an occasional Vermont, dog, or environmental site mixed in as well. Very rarely a totally random (but useful, fun, or innovative) site will be recommended instead.

We already have a huge long list of sites we think you’ll enjoy, so we might double up on recommendations as we initiate this column.

This week, in keeping with the following article (Top 10 Free Mac Apps), I want to recommend AlternativeTo. AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software for Mac, Windows, and Linux. In that regard, AlternativeTo is superficially similar to other websites for finding new Mac software (Versiontracker and MacUpdate are great for this).

However, instead of listing thousands of apps in a list in a category, AlternativeTo makes each application into a category. They say “Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you’re not satisfied with. And the “blog posts” are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes.”

Indeed, this collaboratively generated database has helped me find awesome alternatives to expensive programs. However, it has also helped me find open source programs that have extended the usefulness of commercial apps, such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and even Final Cut Studio.

Check out AlternativeTo by clicking here!

Similar Posts

  • White MacBook Updated!

    Apple has updated the specifications on the base model white MacBook:

    * Processor speed upgraded from 2.0 GHz to 2.13 GHz.

    * RAM bumped from 667 MHz to 800 MHz (same as aluminum MacBooks). “Click to read about this RAM”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/72316

    * Hard drives increased from 120 GB to 160 GB. It’s now possible to custom order a white MacBook with a 500 GB drive. Interestingly, the aluminum MacBook continues to offer a maximum hard drive capacity of 320 GB.

    Apple now advertises battery life of “up to 5 hrs wireless productivity”, up from the previous battery life of 4.5 hours.

    The new MacBook meets the new Energy Star Version 5.0 requirements and is rated EPEAT Gold, compared to a Silver rating on the previous model.

    You can see the updated white MacBook by “clicking here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/73835

    “We now have the previous MacBook on closeout for only $899.99 with free shipping. Click here to see this!”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/73058

  • _Dear Friends,_

    The garden is liking the May showers we are having this week with flood warnings to boot. I was lucky on my long weekend journey to Pine Bush, NY to miss most of the rain. We rode through a couple of showers but the Vision motorcycles keep us pretty dry. I had gone down south to have some performance work done on my engine and gained about 25 HP in the process. We had fun tooling around the Catskills and the Adirondacks.

    We got home Sunday night and picked up the pups, including the mysteriously ill Fantail Shrimp. She had suddenly developed some pain in her abdomen and we were very nervous to leave on our trip, but thanks to Joyce and Fanny’s friend Maggie, she was in good hands. I took her to the vet yesterday and we discovered that she had ingested some copper wires and ultimately needed surgery. It was a good thing, too, because one of the wires had imbedded itself in her gall bladder and that was clearly what was causing her so much pain. She is recovering now and I expect she’ll be back in the office yapping her little head off soon.

    My grandchildren showed up on Memorial Day with one of their friends. The three girls immediately went into the hot tub and within minutes decided to take off their swim suits. Boka, my grandson, looked at them and said “disgusting” and walked away. I went with him and told him that someday… We decided to check out my shop and Boka had to try out each of my tools. At one point, he picked up my soldering iron and asked me about it. I told him it was for melting metal and was very hot. He didn’t believe me, of course, and grabbed the end. Luckily it had just started to get hot, but he believed me about every other tool after that!

    We had a minor update to the low-end MacBook this week and while the new version sports a slightly faster processor and a larger hard drive, we were able to purchase a number of the older versions that will provide some savings if you are interested in the entry-level MacBook. Apple also announced their annual college student back-to-school promotion and will again be giving away an iPod with each Mac sold. This annual promotion is not available, unfortunately, to their loyal independent resellers so we do operate at a competitive disadvantage during the summer for college students.

    It is a great opportunity, however, for my team to show you why buying from Small Dog Electronics makes sense. There are many vendors of the same equipment and most sell for the same price–our job is to give you as many reasons as possible to buy from Small Dog, including our commitment to world-class customer service that is reflected in our slogan “Always By Your Side!”

  • Facebook and Twitter Drawing Winners Announced!

    We are pleased to announce the winners of our Facebook and Twitter drawings! Steve G. from Riverside California was selected from our Facebook friends, while Ali F. from Burlington, Vermont was selected from our Twitter followers.

    Both will receive a Mac/iPod gift pack of fun and useful accessories. Sorry if you weren’t selected, but we will continue to select random winners from Facebook and Twitter every month until at least the end of the year.

    If you’re not already in our Facebook group, you can join here:
    “Small Dog Electronics on Facebook.”:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Small-Dog-Electronics/18904017006

    Not on Facebook? “Sign up here.”:http://www.facebook.com

    Do you use Twitter? We post Mac tips, tricks, news, contests and more on our Twitter feed. “Click here to follow us on Twitter.”:http://twitter.com/hellosmalldog

    Again, congratulations to Ali F. and Steve G.! Perhaps you’ll see your name here next month…

  • We had a couple of frosty nights this week but I think that we are safe now to plant the garden. Grace and I used to have a huge vegetable garden and grew a lot of our own food. We kept chickens for eggs and for several years even had our own cow for milk and cheese as the kids were growing up. We’ve scaled back quite a bit now, but still have a large vegetable garden and grow everything from hops to berries to squash. The apple trees and blueberry bushes were loaded with blossoms so perhaps we’ll have a good year!

    The grands and I built a big scarecrow by the garden, dressing it up with a bunch of old clothes and finishing it off with one of my old Celtics caps. It looked so realistic that Hammerhead barked at the scarecrow and tried to hump its leg.

    Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
    _Don, Kali & Ed_

  • MAC TREAT #87: Silence the Quack

    You’ve probably noticed that when you adjust the audio volume on your Mac, there is a quacking or clicking sound accompanying the action. This sound is intended to confirm that you are indeed changing the volume on your Mac. However, this sound can be annoying, especially when you’re wearing headphones. Fortunately, on most Macs it’s easy to silence the quack: simply hold down your Mac’s *Shift* key while adjusting the volume. Voilà, no quack.

    Note that this might not work with a few third-party keyboards, and if you’ve re-mapped your Mac’s keyboard.

    Bonus tip: by default, your Mac’s volume can be adjusted in 16-step increments (those white squares in the volume window that pops up when the volume is adjusted). If you hold down the *Shift + Option* keys at the same time, you can now adjust the volume in 64-step increments (one quarter step per square). This allows you to fine-tune your Mac’s audio volume output. Perfect for us obsessive-compulsive types!

  • FEATURED SPECIAL | 05/29/09 – 06/05/09

    With the debut of a modestly updated white MacBook this week, we now have the previous MacBook at a closeout price of only $899.99. This MacBook features a speedy 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2GB of memory. It has the new, advanced NVIDIA GeForce 256MB 9400M graphics for great 3D gaming and graphics-processing performance. The closeout white MacBook features a 120GB hard drive and a DVD and CD-burning SuperDrive, and is fully equipped with AirPort Extreme 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and built-in iSight camera.

    “See it here. Specials begin at only $899.99!”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/73058