I've worked with artist Adam Betts in the past, namely on MacThemes, and he is pretty much one of the top icon artists out there. One of his creations, of course, is the now pretty iconic Adium duck, and he was happy to sit down for a bit and chat about its history, and its future. Thanks again to Adam, and enjoy! Continue reading...

It's been a long time coming, but the Adium team has finally reached the first major milestone to 1.0. You can download Adium 1.0 b1 on the beta page. The update features vastly improved support for the chat protocols, including working file transfer for AIM, pretty significant UI enhancements, an Xtras manager, and much much more. Kudos to the dev team, and look out for the promised "Pimp Your App" for Adium soon!

I've tried HandBrake in the past, but never got through importing a single full movie due to painfully slow encoding times. Waiting 5-6 hours to rip a movie wasn't my idea of fun, and as a result, it's been sitting in the "cool but not ready yet" list of apps for a while. Plus, the crazy pineapple icon (pictured in its full glory on left) was yet another reason to trash it as soon as possible. Seriously. And by the way, anyone know why the hell the icon is a pineapple and mixed drink anyway?

Anyway, HandBrake has since been upgraded to "sweet app that now sits in my Dock" status, and I've been happily ripping movies over the past week. What made me change my mind? Two things.

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