Here’s a scary article detailing the unsafe security practices of Comcast’s cable modem setup software. Definitely worth a read if you have or plan to set up cable internet through Comcast. I’m glad I’ve always insisted on just calling them up after receiving the cable modem and simply reading off the serial number and MAC address off the bottom of the modem.

Setting up an internet connection really shouldn’t require anything complicated, much less software that poses a significant security threat to your computer. If Macs do eventually end up with viruses and trojans and all that mess, it will be because of serious oversights like this on the part of other companies, not bugs within OS itself. That said, I’ve been quite happy with the speed of Comcast’s service, that’s for sure.

I’m working on a new weblog about music and audio, which I’ll surely plug here on Command-Tab once it’s up and running. I’ll be linking to the iTunes Music Store quite often, so I decided to use the grey buttons found all over the store. I wanted to use my own button titles, though, and there was no option that allowed me to easily create the buttons with custom text. I went for the next best option — Photoshop them!

I think this Photoshop post may win the award for smallest attachment, as the image dimensions are quite tiny (”impossibly small,” you might say). Included in the Photoshop files are the disabled, default, and click states of both the large and small iTMS buttons, along with type layers using an “engraved” text style nearly identical to the original. The buttons are also masked such that you can use them on any color, although light shades look best. Now you can create your own iTunes Music Store buttons with any text you like, and they’ll come out looking like the real thing. Get them here!

I may have mentioned them in comments before, but I felt that following their recent upgrades, I should point out these two Mac gems: PodWorks and Cocoalicious. Both applications come from Sci-Fi Hi-Fi, Buzz Anderson’s one-man software company.

PodWorks is a utility for recovering (or just copying) songs from your iPod. It does so by reading the iPod’s semi-hidden music database and allowing you to choose songs to import back to your computer. I can imagine if Apple had their say, this feature would be in iTunes, however the music industry likely pressured them to disable the ability to copy songs from iPods to prevent the average user from stealing tons of music en masse. An issue arises, though, when you happen to irreversibly delete songs from your computer, your hard drive croaks, or some other catastrophe befalls your Mac — your songs then only exist on your iPod, and there’s no Apple-provided solution for restoring your ripped or purchased music. Both represent a valuable investment, be it time, money, or both. PodWorks will quickly scan attached iPods and present you with an iTunes-style list, from which you can copy any song, group, or playlist back to your computer, even straight to iTunes if you so choose. There are a number of utilities in the Mac world that do such a thing, but none do it with the speed and ease that PodWorks offers. For this reason, PodWorks is my favorite iPod tool out there.

The second utility from Sci-Fi Hi-Fi that I use and love is Cocoalicious. A Cocoa interface for the popular social bookmarking site del.icio.us, Cocoalicious provides a fantastic way to add, edit, and search through saved items. Among it’s notable features, the one I enjoy the most is full-text searching. Cocoalicios can search through bookmark titles, web addresses, tags, and *actual content* from the bookmarked site. If tagging makes finding items simple, then Cocoalicious makes it idiot-proof.

If there’s one thing I like more than good software, it’s good Mac software. Small, quick, and to-the-point programs like those above are what the Mac is really about.

Apple recently upgraded their .Mac service to include 1 GB of storage for email and iDisk, possibly trying to compete with Gmail’s now 2.5 GB of free storage. They also posted a new version of their Backup application, which backs up any files or settings you choose to your iDisk or other media. The new version also offers incremental backups, which only store the changes since the previous one, as opposed to copying volumes of data all over again and eating up more space than necessary.

Apple must do some analysis as to when the majority of .Mac accounts are up for renewal and time thier marketing push right before that, as my subscription expires in early October. I was, reluctantly, one of the free iTools to paid .Mac switchers, and I’m guessing many others were, too. I think they’re right on with the new additions, though — it looks like I’ll be renewing .Mac again this year.