Mac OS X ONLY – Ever since switching the Mac over a year ago, the one thing I have missed is an equivalent to MSPaint. If you fall in the same boat, rejoice! Paintbrush is your new best friend.

Paintbrush is a Cocoa-based paint program for Mac OS X, similar to Microsoft Paint and the now-defunct MacPaint. The project’s ultimate goal is to recreate the basic functionality of Microsoft Paint, which has been noticeably absent from Mac OS X for years. Paintbrush can open and save to most major image formats, including BMP, PNG, JPEG, and GIF.

What’s wrong with Photoshop, you ask? Besides the fact I don’t have Photoshop, there are occasions when Photoshop is overkill (like cropping a screenshot for this site). Paintbrush is designed fill the need for a basic, streamlined editor for those times when you just feel the need to doodle. Paintbrush is 100% free, and is Mac OS X only.

Paintbrush

Let’s talk monitors today. What do you know about ‘em? Well, uh, you can see things. But are you seeing them the way they were intended? You can find out with Screen Check.

Screen Check displays two bars, one white-to-black for adjusting tone and the other covers the red/green/blue spectrum for adjusting color. Just follow the Screen Check instructions and Viola! You’re enjoying full color.

This is a great little tool to fix those setting you played with or to fix that monitor that’s never been right. It just takes minute to do and is well worth it.

Screen Check [via Lifehacker]

The internet can sometimes be a drag. Sites are slow or won’t load. Your ISP says it’s the site, the site says it’s your ISP. What are you to do? Figure out the problem yourself.

Thankfully, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux all have a command line built in. In Mac OS X and Linux, open terminal. In Windows, go to Start >> Run >> Type “CMD” (without quotes). You now have a command line.

In these command lines are two tools, Ping and Traceroute that can be used to troubleshoot your network. More info after the break. READ MORE »

Yes, it’s Monday once again. To help you out of your long winter’s nap, the best in tech news this week.

- Last.fm has freed the music. Don’t the RIAA.
- While we’re at it, Pirate Bay is already Guilty!
- Pownce is now invite free- be sure to friend me.
- Comcast is still getting crap over bandwidth throttling.
- Speaking of crap, that’s where Palm is going. They’re shutting down the retail stores.
- Google still wants a piece of the 700MHz spectrum. Here’s why.
- Mac OS X Leopard is now easy to put on your Hackintosh.
- NBC and iTunes just might be ready to kiss and make up.
- Oh, the MacBook Airs go on sale Wednesday. Time to clear the wallet!
- Wanna be cool? Give your presentation like Steve Jobs.
- And Finally, the Internet was crap in 1996. This site was crap in 2005; But all is better now.

That’s this week’s Manic Monday. Just to forewarn, this site is going to slow down a bit due to some other things going on. I will still try for 6 post a week, but that may not happen. Thanks for understanding. Enjoy the week!

For once, a hack that I use. At my desk, I, of course, have my MacBook. I also like to keep all the cables put away- hidden and off the floor. But with my MacBook, it just doesn’t work in the power cord department. I came up with a neat little way to keep way to keep my power cord and adapter tucked away and off the floor. This works with any MacBook, MacBook Pro, iBook- pretty much any device with a power adapter that has the prongs to wrap the cable around. READ MORE »

Since this is Wired For Gadgets, we must talk about gadgets. This gadget could possibly be your new best friend.

I’m talking about the iMono 80-in-1 High Speed Card Reader. It supports the latest card types, including SDHC, MMC4.2, CF4.0, micro SDHC and mini SDHC. It also had an average read speed of 32.6MB/s and an average write speed of 24.4MB/s when tested with a Sandisk Extreme IV. It’s only 4″ x 1″ x .5″ (making it very portable), and supports both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0.

The iMono 80-in-1 Card Reader comes in both black and white and will only throw you back $17. As I said, your new best friend.

Product Page [Link and Image via Gizmodo]

Given the whole new iPod/MacWorld thing, I’ve avoided Apple stuff. Today I’m breaking that spell with a Mac Tip that will expand your printing horizons. As you all know, the normal print dialog looks like this:

When you hit the blue arrow, you get this:

Wouldn’t it be nice if Mac OS X did this by default? It is possible to do, and all you need is some comfort with terminal. Just enter:

defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE

… And boom, you’ve got expand print by default. Wanna switch back? Just change TRUE to FALSE. That’s all there is- expanding was never so easy.

Use the Expanded Print Dialog By Default [MacTips.org]

WINDOWS ONLY – Every once in while, you come across that file online that happens to be a weird zip extension. Windows can’t read it by default, and the tools you need to use are at a premium. That’s where IZArc comes in.

IZArc is the ultimate freeware archive utility supporting many archive formats like: 7-ZIP, ARC, BH, BIN, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GZ, IMG, ISO, JAR, LIB, LZH, MBF, RAR, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, and so many more that I’ve never heard of. You can also open CD image files like ISO, BIN, CDI and NRG and covert them.

The best part about IZArc? It’s 100% Free. IZArc is Windows Only, but it does work with Vista (always a plus).

IZArc.org

I guess good ol’ Uncle Steve forgot to mention one thing at week’s Keynote. As of this morning, the iPod Nano with Video now has another flavor: Pink.

Nothing else has changed. Still the same ol’ two-inch display, new improved interface with Cover Flow, powerful battery with up to 24 hours of audio playback or five hours of video playback on a single charge, and anodized aluminum top, now with new color choice.

The pink version, just like the other colors, only comes in 8GB, and is available for $199 “immediately” (or so they say). The silver 4GB is still $149.

iPod Nano Product Page [Apple]

As you may recall, I damn near pissed my pants when I blogged about iPodBank, which found high quality album art from iTunes. Shortly after I blogged it, the site stopped working (probably in part from Apple). I have found the replacement, AlbumArt.org.

The site couldn’t be simpler to use. Just type the name of a CD/DVD or artist and in seconds you’ll have lots of high quality CD and DVD covers. Perfect for when can’t find the artwork otherwise.

A quick test on a few searches has told me most of the artwork comes from Amazon, but this is faster. Keep AlbumArt.org in your bookmarks- you never know when you’ll need it. And just so you know, You can tune a Piano, but you can’t Tuna Fish.

AlbumArt.org [via Lifehacker]