Pith Helmet
Those of you who use Safari may be annoyed by the plethora of ads on the internet. And if you prefer Safari's superior speed to Firefox's adblocking capabilities, well, you needn't worry about ad banners any more. Originally I was using this to block unwanted ads, but unfortunately, that style sheet can't discriminate between good java and bad java. Certain actions (like viewing the exif data on Photobucket) just wouldn't work. Well, I'm not sure how I missed this before, but Pith Helmet seems to be be absolutely perfect. (Although I'm not entirely certain about how much it is. It's considered Shareware which usually means you get 30 days to try it out or something but I haven't gotten a warning that I need to pay up at any time.)
Pith Helmet's preferences are nearly identical to Firefox's adblocker. You can choose whose images will be blocked and if you know a site that hosts only ads, an asterisk after the ".com/" will block all content from that site. The window above is accessed either by the Pith Helmet menu or through the shortcut "shift + apple + E" (or "option + apple + ," if you want to see the preferences for a specific site).
Conversely, if you know of a site you can trust whose content might accidentally be blocked, a simple control click on the page will pull up the typical context menu, but with the addition of a "don't block" feature which creates a list of safe sites.
Blah blah blah...words and diagrams...blah blah blah....Where are the results?
Well, I went around to some of the ad-heaviest sites I could think of. Here's what I saw:
See how much more empty myspace is now?
(Sorry. I spilled coffee on faceook and the text smeared.)
The missing ads are much more evident on myspace. (Just goes to show you how much of your space is actually advertisements.) Anyway, I recommend trying it out. If it turns out I need to pay for it, I'm probably going to end up doing it.
EDIT: Pith Helmet gives you a java alert (the irony is burning my fingertips) every 1000 sites it blocks asking you to donate money. IE: It's free. :)
Voice Candy
Simply. Amazing. Unfortunately this one does come with only a 15 day trial before they make you pay, but do what you need to in that time and I'm sure you'll have a blast. Anyway, you can see what voices they have (not all of them are much fun; "soar throat" = fucking stupid).
Hear for yourself: [warning] [public service announcement]
And of course... [download]
Soundstream
This one is basically useless, but hey, it's pretty and we all like pretty. Unfortunately I can't really take a screenshot of my screensaver and even if I could it really wouldn't do it justice. Basically, it's the same as the "Flurry" screensaver except that it reacts to ambient sound and the little swirling balls of light get brighter. You can choose how big/bright they get, how fast they move and even how many of them there are. Basically it's just fun to show off, so by all means, show off.
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