I’m guessing that there are a lot of Mac OS X Leopard users visiting Fruit Bytes and you may even have a WordPress blog of your own. How cool would it be to have a Leopard style WP Admin Panel to replace the default one which is, well, a little bit bland and boring shall we say? Enter Leopard Admin.

It’s the easiest thing to get up and running. Simply download the plugin, upload to your /wp-contents/plugins/ folder in your WordPress installation, activate and voila, a sexy new look to your Admin Panel that will make you want to spend more time blogging, which has got to be a good thing.

Thanks to @chris24 for tweeting this.

For around two years I have been a Camino user on my Mac. It didn’t start out this way when I got my first Mac three years ago - I was very much a Safari girl. However, I started running into annoying issues where I was being beachballed and had to Force Quit on a regular basis.

I then switched to Firefox for the Mac but it’s distinct Mac-look-lack was a turn off for me and then I heard about Camino which is Mozilla power with Mac Style. It wasn’t long before this became my browser of choice and I’ve used it pretty much exclusively since. There are occasions when websites won’t work correctly in Camino such as my online banking or the o2 website which throws an annoying pop-up at me which repeatedly tells me that my browser is out of date, so for these occasions I almost always use Firefox.

I downloaded Firefox 3 last week on release day to help break the Guinness World Record for most downloaded software in 24 hours. I used it briefly but one thing I noticed was how fast it was. Blazingly so, even compared to Camino 1.6. I was also impressed with it’s slick Mac look. I’m glad it’s finally been updated to at least look like a Mac browser. But, I don’t think it’s one that I could switch over to completely. It’s useful for the sites that won’t play ball in my browser, however.

The problem now is the choice: Camino, Firefox, Safari. I *want* to go back to using Safari as it’s much more stable now and I do like the fact that it’s Apple’s own and has a gorgeous UI (fangirl alert!). Plus on testing it out again today I have found it is MUCH faster than Camino. Of course, the other great thing about switching back to Safari on the iMac and PowerBook will be the ability to sync bookmarks across machines with .Mac/MobileMe. So, looks like I’ll be letting Safari back into my affections…

So, what’s your favourite browser?

This is how chaotic things get in the Fruit Bytes HQ some days.

Created with iStopMotion 2 which is very addictive and a lot of fun. This is the first time-lapse video I created a couple of days ago.

Last weekend I was browsing the Apple Store looking for a way of watching/recording TV on my iMac. I found the Elgato EyeTV range which I have heard others talking about over the past 6 months. After asking around for the best model to go for, I ordered the EyeTV for DTT Stick on Monday for £38.95. The features sounded perfect for what I needed, with the extra bonus of being able to access my recordings via Wi-Fi on my iPod touch.

This morning it arrived so once unwrapped I plugged it into my iMac, stood the antenna on the desk, installed the EyeTV software and let it search for channels. After the first scan it turned up 6 channels, all of which were very flaky. I tried moving the antenna in various positions but it didn’t help with the signal at all. I read through the reviews on the Apple store and pretty much everyone said that the antenna supplied is next to useless. They had to either opt for a digital indoor aerial or attach it to their existing roof aerial. We have three Freeview boxes scattered about the house at the moment, two which are connected to the outdoor aerial but the bedroom one is connected to an indoor aerial which has always provided a pretty strong signal. I didn’t expect to have any issues with the EyeTV antenna.

So, since paying someone to clamber all over the roof would be the last restort, I headed to Argos and bought a Digital Amplified Antenna for just £12.99. I did an extensive search through the channels after attaching it and it found around 120 channels with the signal strength being very strong. It’s a great piece of software - and I’m rather liking the TV Guide provided by tvtv which gives me the schedule for the next two weeks. I like being able to plan ahead and used to be a subscriber to DigiGuide when I was a PC user. However, I cancelled my subscription when I switched to the Mac and they (rather rudely) told me that they had no plans to develop the software for Mac.

At the moment I am recording Futurama on SKY Three, courtesy of EyeTV. The recording process is extremely simple - bring up the tvtv guide, click the red dot next to the programme listing. Done. My next purchase will be Roxio Toast 9 Titanium so I can burn my ‘creations’ to DVD and watch on my TV (unless anyone knows of a cheaper alternative, haha!). Currently we don’t record any TV shows via any other hardware. We have a VCR but we never got around to tuning that in so we can record…and to be honest it seems old skool buying VHS tapes anymore. We never got into DVD recorders but I have looked at set-top boxes with built-in hard drives as an easier alternative - and of course AppleTV which is on my to-buy list for later in the year. One of the cheapest HD recorders I’ve seen is an 80GB for around £85. Since I have near 200GB left on my iMac then a £38-95 device sounded much more fun to play with.

If you’re looking for a TV recording solution then I would recommend the Elgato EyeTV, but would also suggest you look into purchasing an alternative to the supplied antenna. I just wish I’d bought this earlier as I could have recorded the new series of Family Guy on BBC Three which started airing a few weeks back.

I’ve been making a little list of software I plan on buying soon. I figured that if Uncle Steve (Jobs) doesn’t release anything I want (or more importantly can afford, haha) this Tuesday at Macworld 2008 then that leaves the door open for me to concentrate on getting myself some much wanted apps. One of those I plan on buying is iWork 08. It’s priced at £55 on the Apple Store UK but only £44.99 on Play.com. I think I know who I’ll be buying that from!

I am also keeping a very close eye on the MacHeist bundle. 11 apps for just $49 when ordinarily it would cost $368. The great thing about this bundle is 25% of each purchase is donated to charity. I wouldn’t say that I am keen on all the apps, but the one catching my eye is Pixelmator, which by itself would ordinarily cost $59! This app (along with Snapz Pro X) is currently locked until they reach a specific sales goal. When that one does get unlocked then I’ll be reaching into PayPal for $49