For the nerd in your life...

It's almost Christmas and you haven't gotten anything for the mac lover in your life. You cringe at the thought of heading out to your local mac retailer, feeling completely inadequate as they ask you questions about what version of OSX you have or if you are using a power pc or an intel based processor, etc, etc.

Well, here are a couple of low cost programs that you can download for your favorite mac geek without having to leave the comfort of your computer chair.


I have always enjoyed journaling on my computer, but I have never liked all the digital clutter of word or other word processing programs. Writeroom is a program that gives you a full screen writing environment, similar to a typewriter. The config is simple. You pick a background color, a page color, and a text color. Nothing else is on the screen. I use a black background, a grey page, and white text. It creates a peaceful writing experience, and it saves on battery life for your laptop.


If you are a very busy person, you couldn't make it without your calendar. Annie and I use the calendar in our kitchen religiously. It's how we keep our week somewhat manageable. The problem with the kitchen calendar is that if I am at work and I need to know what is going on tomorrow night, I have to wait till I get home to find out. Since we switched to mac, I have been trying to convince Annie that we need to go digital and move to iCal, but really that is still a calendar that is centralized in one place; at least that was the case until Spanning Sync. With Spanning Sync, we can view, add, or change our home calendar from anywhere that we have an internet connection. If I need to add an event from work, Annie can instantly see it at School or as home. I can't imagine how useful this would be if we had kids.