This is Tech

This guy has rigged up a Mac Mini to the touch screen on his Toyota Prius. Check out his site for a step by step account of the mod with lots of pictures. Video Here

Back to the Future brings back the best of memories from my childhood, so it made me smile when I saw this description of how to change the Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard to a Delorean. For instructions and to download the icon, visit Zaphu.com.

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As a bonus, here is an embedded YouTube Be Kind Rewind style fan film that I caught last week. Two Back to the Future items in one post. It’s the daily double.

XBMC Finds a Home on Your Mac [Featured Mac Download]: “

Mac OS X only: Whether or not you’ve already transformed your old Xbox into a media center with Xbox Media Center (XBMC), chances are you’ve seen what a killer media center application XBMC is. If you’ve ever wished you could bring the same saucy media center interface to your Mac, your wishes are finally being answered with XBMC for Mac. That’s right, the Unix app for the original Xbox has been ported to Macs, and though it’s only the 0.1 version, it already performs amazingly. If you’re already a Front Row/Apple TV lover, you’re probably wondering what the point of XBMC on your Mac is. Well, the main reasons you may way to run XBMC (lifted from the 9 to 5 Mac interview) are:

• Resolutions up to, including and even surpassing 1080P (AppleTV is currently at 720P)
• DTS/AC3 passthrough (which is great for playing DVD/BluRay/HD-DVD sourced audio). This means if you have a surround receiver you can have it decode multichannel audio
• Almost unlimited video and audio format support since we can play anything ffmpeg supports
• A great virtual file system layer with support for protocols like UPnP
• There is a great looking weather item that puts very useful info in front of your eyes.
• Since it is an open platform, the sky really is the limit, things like Youtube browsers, RSS readers, visualizers, MAME/Other emulators are all being integrated seemlessly. Heck, one could even imagine running an Xbox emulator on my quad-core machine…now that would bring us full circle!

Sound compelling enough? XBMC for Mac is still in its very early stages, but if you’re excited about its potential, it’s definitely worth a download.

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(Via Lifehacker.)

TrueCrypt Now Available for Mac, Too [Featured Download]: “

Windows, Mac and Linux: Our favorite solution for keeping your private files safe, sound, and hidden—TrueCrypt—is now available for Mac as well as Windows and Linux. The just-released version 5.0 of TrueCrypt boasts some impressive features in addition to the Mac version, like a Linux GUI, and the:

Ability to encrypt a system partition/drive (i.e. a partition/drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication. Anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts.

Since Mac’s built-in system encryption feature FileVault didn’t impress me much, TrueCrypt for Mac is very exciting. TrueCrypt is a free download for all three platforms, and if you haven’t tried it yet, here’s how to encrypt your data with TrueCrypt. Thanks, Daniel!

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(Via Lifehacker.)

Learn Cocoa Tutorial Updated for Leopard: “Theocacao: ‘I think it’s probably one of the most gentle, stress-free ways to learn the absolute basics of writing your first Cocoa app. It walks you through setting up a project in Xcode, creating a single window in Interface Builder, and testing out the result.’”

(Via Clippings.)