We have been quite excited with the success that FreeMacWare and FreeMacBlog have seen. After just four months , we are nearing one million page loads. Many developers have written and told us of the incredible amount of traffic that their sites see when we post about their freeware. We’re glad to see that they are enjoying the success along with us. We hope that this will encourage other developers to inform us on their freeware work as well. We also hope that all of the readers will continue to stop by and take advantage of the great freeware that we review. It’s fun to run a site where everyone benefits.

And now, what we did with freeware, we are going to do with music. Announcing FreeMacMusic.com, a new blog for great music. See you there.

One of the other blogs that I write at is called “Life In The Office” and it keeps up with NBC’s hit show “The Office.” Today, we began a contest and the winner will get to download all episodes of “The Office” from iTunes for free.

So, while not directly related to Macs…it does have to do with iTunes and I think there will be interested readers. You can enter the contest here.

Last week, as I waited in line to enter the Steve Jobs Keynote at Macworld, it was sure fun to people watch and eavesdrop on the conversations happening around me. I realized just how much all of us Mac users visit the same sites and read the same posts. Since we were all waiting for what would be revealed at the keynote, all the conversations were about different rumors and guesses they have read. I smiled knowing that it was quite possible that someone was quoting a blog post that was written by someone else in that same room.

The one thing that really was interesting to me was just how much the Mac conversations sound like the comments and discussions that are online. The conversations were peppered with cliches and phrases that we see everywhere online.

With that intro, I present:

The Five Most Overused Phrases on the Mac Web

1. “we’ll just have to wait and see“
2. “Today, Apple quietly…“- Whenever I read this, I wonder what people expect when little things are released. Maybe “Today, Apple lined up their engineers to wear banana hammocks and do backflips around the Infinite Loop so we are all aware that iCal has been updated to 2.1.”
3. “my two cents“
4. “In a daring move, Steve Jobs…“- At what point do the moves change from daring to wise? His track record has been pretty good lately.
5. “take it with a grain of salt“

Any more to add to this list?

I was playing with iWeb this morning and I thought that I’d take a cruise through the Apple Discussions to see what other people have learned from the app already. I found an incredibly useful discussion about the way photos look in iWeb. It seems I wasn’t the only one that didn’t like the way the pictures looked when they were clicked on. It used that old brushed metal look that has been on .Mac forever.

Well, I’m glad I read this discussion because someone has created a way to use flash on the photos. Perhaps, it would be eaier to just show an example. Uwe Hoffman gives an example here. (Just click on a picture to see)

It seems all you have to do is replace the “SlideShow_assets” folder after you export your site from iWeb to a folder. You can download the new folder settings here.

We’re excited to be in San Francisco this week for Macworld!

Steve Jobs’s keynote will be Tuesday morning, so we’ve talked about hanging around the Moscone center Monday to see if any information gets leaked. Not likely, for sure, but probably worth a shot. Even Jason from Foxtrot wants to find out what will be announced. Maybe we’ll try his tactic at a local Apple store tomorrow.

(Click to enlarge. From www.ucomics.com.)

It has been rumored a few times in the past Apple was talking with XM or Sirius about satellite radio in the iPod. Who knows if that will ever happen. Personally, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I have owned about ten iPods, but I always end up getting rid of them because I never use them. The majority of my time is spent near a computer or in my truck so music is always available if I want it. But, I will tell you what I’d like to see happen.

Wouldn’t it be great if XM gave each subscriber a channel of their own? They should be able to link your channel to your radio id number. Then, with your own channel, you could stream your itunes collection to their servers and they can send the signal to your receiver. I’d love to have a channel of all James Taylor, all the time. I wouldn’t expect to control the music, just to know that any time I turn to the station it would be my favorites.

The nice thing about this is that XM probably wouldn’t even have to make a deal with Apple. They could probably do this on their own. Just enable a server to accept streaming and then people can stream from iTunes using something like Dot-Tunes, or they could stream from any other type of media player. Personally, I would love this.