I don't claim to be a scientist, nor do I think I will ever cure cancer... But I like to believe I am helping out in one way or another. If you feel the same way and if you have oodles of spare CPU power just sitting around doing nothing, why not put it to good use? Folding@home has been around for as long as I can remember. It basically takes any idle processing power from your machine and uses it to perform complex evaluation of data. There are many different 'folding' projects such as Rosetta and SETI. The folding applications work by downloading data sets from the projects servers, performing the calculations on the data and then uploading the results. 

If you are wondering how you would make a difference to the project, well if you can imagine the amount of data that's been collected from countless years of medical research. Now imagine just how much processing time this data is going to need.. Now - if you think there are billions of computers out there, that often have nothing to do...... 

Folding projects generally have hundreds of members, crunching the data for them which is obviously dramatically decreasing the length of time to completion on the folding process. 

I have been folding data now for many years, however my processing has always been hampered by the lack of processing power available to me. I used to fold data from the SETI project, but since getting my mac I have moved to Rosetta. You can read more about Rosetta's research on the projects website.

If you are interested in joining the folding community you may want to check out the system requirements, and once you are happy - download the folding client BOINC

I chose not to fold for any particular team, and instead set up a team for myself. I currently don't have many PC's folding for my team but I aim to change this. So if you want to help the Rosetta project, and join my team you can find details here

This is a whole load easier then opening your FTP client each time and logging in then navigating etc etc etc.

To give you some ideas of what you could use this for, I have a couple of variations.. I use one to upload screenshots to a location on my web server for my blog posts. I also have one for uploading important backups to another FTP location. The download also comes with an example workflow to upload to a dropbox account. Perfect if you like drop box, but don't like the cumbersome dropbox client.

There is also an example which resizes the images before it uploads them!

You can download the add-on from the official homepage. Alternatively download a copy of the XCode source from here.

I guess if you wanted to build on this script, you could even program it to monitor the folder for changes and upload as soon as it happens..? The possibilities are endless.

GarageBuy is an application made by the team over at iwascoding.com, which essentially gives you a native mac interface in which to perform your normal day to day eBay duties. Such as searching, tracking and bidding. What makes GarageBuy better then the eBay site is the amount of work it saves you having to trawl through all those tacky adds, and frankly un-needed pages in order to 'watch' or 'bid' on items.

GarageBuy can be set to search you local site, and features all of the filters available on the normal eBay site. Such as 'Auctions', 'Buy It Now', 'Fixed Price', 'Store Inventory' and 'Classifieds'

Once you have set your required filters, and entered your search criteria a quick search returns you list of products and their details all inside the native app. As you can see from the screenshot below, the interface is far cleaner and less cluttered then the normal eBay site:

The above is the search results for an iPhone 3GS dock. Once you have found a product you are interested in you can drill down into it and read it's description, check out any pictures attached, place a bid or add it to you watched list all from the comfort of the simple right click context menu.

As the application is 'tied' to your eBay account using a security token based system there is no need to go through all the hassle of entering your credentials to do all these tasks.

One other bonus about the application is that when you perform date sensitive tasks around auction items it is also capable of adding reminder information into your 'iCal' ensuring you never miss the end of that important auction again.

Personally I love the app, and think I will be using it for all my future eBay purchases! You can download a copy from the official website.

However, if you are more of an eBay seller then you are a buyer, never feel - as iwascoding.com have also made some other Native interface applications for works at the other side of the eBay table!

GarageSale is a slick, full-featured client application for the eBay online auction system. With GarageSale Mac OS X users can edit, track and manage all their auctions with one single application - easily and fast. 
Use GarageSale's intuitive and reliable interfaceto create eBay auctions conveniently. Stop waiting for eBay to lead you through endless web pages step-by-step.

GarageSale also comes in an iPod\iPhone variant and is available to download from the AppStore

GaragePay lets you download, view, search and archive all your PayPal transactions without having to log into the PayPal website. It handles incoming as well as outgoing money transfers.

There are a few options for locking your machine, i recently blogged about one of the more geeky methods 'AirLock' which uses a bluetooth proximity system to lock you're machine when you are more then a specified distance away. However, as we all know bluetooth sucks power faster then a Dyson vacuum cleaner sucks sand in a desert. So for a less 'power hungry' method you can use the  'Automator' to build a shortcut which locks the screen at the click of your mouse.

This method using a single line of 'shell code':

Which uses the 'fast users' switching method to secure your mac. Not only is this click and simple, but it's also quite cool as the Mac screen will rotate round in a 'cube' like motion.

To turn this line of code into a shortcut you can run, start the Automator application using you're favourite app launcher or click the icon in the Applications folder.

Once launched you will be presented with a choice of templates for your Automator project. For this particular project select the 'Application' template. Once the template has done loading type 'Run' into the search panel on the left. You should see the list filtering away to leave a collection of options. Double click on the 'Run shell script' option. Once done amend the code in the Shell script window so it looks like the following screen shot:

 

Once done, you can either test it using the 'Run' button, or save it to a location of your choice. 

Now all you need to do is click the .App file to lock your machine. 

If you're feeling a bit more adventurous you can use the 'Automator' application to expand the project and add user prompts or logging etc.