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As many of you have probably noticed, FreeMacWare.com and FreeMacBlog.com have become too popular for their own good. (How many of us had friends like that in high school?)

It seems that our daily visitors have been too much for our current hosting company. I assure you that we are working on the issues so we ask for your patience as we make some changes. Meanwhile, the site may not load at certain times. We’ll be stable again soon. If you visit and find that the site is not loading, take the chance to play with all the great freeware you’ve found so far. Or better yet, take the time to develop some new freeware to share with the rest of us.

When I ordered by new iPod, I got it mostly because it could play video. My plan from the beginning was to convert all my collected TV shows to be iPod ready. So far, I have successfully converted all episodes from The Office and Scrubs. The shows look and sound great. To convert them I used a couple of the great free programs available. (e.g., iSquint)

My next project will be a big one. I have every episode from the ten years of Friends. This one is more difficult though, and I’m hoping someone else will have some good suggestions on how it can be improved. You see, all of my episodes are OGM files. None of the free converters for iPods will convert OGM files. (VLC is the only player I found that can even play them.)

My current process works, but is quite drawn out. Here are the steps (in case others are looking to do the same thing.)

1. Use D-Vision to demux the OGM file. (My episodes are split into AVI and OGG files.)
2. Again, use D-Vision to convert the OGG file to MP3.
3. Using Quicktime Pro, I open the AVI file in one window and the freshly converted MP3 in another window.
4. Select all of the MP3 and Copy it to the clipboard.
5. Select the window with the AVI and choose Edit >Add To Movie.
6. Export the movie to iPod.

That is a lot of steps to something that could surely be more simple. In my searching, I was able to find some ways to do it quickly on a PC (here), but no easy way to do it on a Mac.(<–Did I just write that? Ouch.)

We added the Toronto Apple store and the 3 UK stores to our Google Maps mash-up of the Apple retail stores.

Over the few months that FreeMacWare.com has been online, we have had a few people write in and ask for us to have the links open in a separate window so that they can check out the developer’s site, then easily return to the blog to find more freeware. But I think that more people dislike “open in a new window” then like it, so we haven’t made the change. Each time, we have returned their emails suggesting that they use tabbed browsing in Safari. I have been surprised how few of them had heard of “tabbed browsing”. Tabbed browsing is always one of the first things that I enable when setting up Macs. It makes surfing the internet so much more organized and effective.

For those of you unfamiliar with tabbed browsing, it enables you to keep all of your web windows in just one window. When you hold the command key and click on a link, the new site will open up in a tab in the same window. Clicking on the different tabs will let you jump from window to window. Perhaps a real world scenario will help.

When I search on ebay, I usually find any number of interesting products. Rather then click to a product then go back to click on another one, I will hold down the command key and click on all the products I want to see. That way, I just go thru the tabs and keep the ones that are good. You can do the same thing while searching on Google. Or, go through the Archives of FreeMacWare.com and open all potentially interesting freeware in tabs and then go thru them one by one.

To enable tabbed browsing in Safari, go to Safari>Preferences and select the “Tabs” icon. Just select the first box as follows. (You will also see some intructions on how to use it.)

This tip will be “day one” stuff to some readers, but surprisingly there are alot of Mac users that don’t know about it. Am I the only one that worships the day that tabbed browsing was released? At any one time I can have 100 or so tabs open.

Whenever I travel, I like to visit the Apple stores in the area. So far, my travel log includes 16 stores. My poor wife doesn’t understand why she has to take my picture in front of each one.

A while back I thought it would sure be convenient to have all of the stores mapped out so I can see just how far I am from the stores when I’m somewhere new. Naturally, Google Maps would be ideal for this so Richard did a little work and turned out a great map of all the Apple Stores in the US. It sure has been convenient for my travels. It’s also interesting to see where Apple spreads the retail love.

We have now made it publicly available for the rest of the Apple Store fans. We’re hoping that 1) it can make it easier for you to find a store when traveling and 2) you’ll help us keep up-to-date with new stores.

So check it out: all Apple Retail Stores on a Google Map. And please tell me I’m not the only one that likes to visit all the Apple Retail Stores.

Welcome to FreeMacBlog.com. We decided to create this blog to coincide with our popular FreeMacWare.com blog. We’re happy that so many of you enjoy that blog. You’ve sent in great freeware to look at and it’s fun reviewing them. We are nearing half a million page loads in just under 3 months.

Why this blog? When we write reviews on FreeMacWare.com we mostly try to keep it about the great freeware. But at times we find ourselves wanting to share tips and other things we do that are Mac related. In an effort to keep FreeMacWare.com focused on the freeware, we decided to launch this site for the other stuff. We hope the two will compliment one another.

We don’t intend to keep up with every bit of Apple news, TUAW.com does a great job at that. Nor will we attempt to replace the great Think Secret rumor site. We mostly want to share tips, tricks, and thoughts on any Mac related subject We hope that you’ll throw us into your RSS reader and check back often. (RSS link here)