One of the main features that Apple has advertised with their new Macbook Air and Macbook Pro notebooks is the increased capabilities of the trackpad included with the machines.

With the new trackpad applications like iPhoto and Safari received additional navigation capabilities based on gestures conducted on the trackpad.

Safari includes trackpad capabilities that allowed you to touch three fingers to your trackpad and swipe them to the left or right and the browser will move forward or back a page based on your gesture.

Additionally gestures provided ways to zoom in on the screen, rotate pictures or scroll around the page view. Unfortunately, these new gestures do not include commands for all applications. You couldn’t use the same trackpad features to navigate in Firefox that you used in Safari.

That is until Will Henderson released his beta software that he has titled “MultiClutch“.

Multiclutch

MultiClutch is a small program that installs a system preference window that allows you to tie keyboard shortcut commands to your trackpad gestures.

Connecting the gestures to commands within an application is quick and simple:

1. After you’ve downloaded and installed MultiClutch, navigate to the System Preferences on your Mac and click MultiClutch in the “Other” section.
2. Click the ‘+’ to add an application, select the application you’d like to add a gesture command to
3. Select the application in the MultiClutch menu and then click the ‘+’ below the Gesture/Key Command section
4. Select the gesture command you’d like to use and then click the keyboard shortcut and press the keys you’d like to be tied to the trackpad gesture. (To view the keyboard shortcuts for an application, open the app and select the menu items to see what keyboard shortcuts are tied to the various menu commands
5. Close the system preferences, open the application and test the new gesture.

Now with MultiClutch and the new Firefox 3 beta 5 I can add the trackpad gestures I use in Safari to move forward and backwards with the websites I’m viewing.

Note: Currently only applications built with Cocoa are supported. If the gestures are not working there is a high likelihood the application was built in Carbon. Firefox Users should note that the MultiClutch gestures were tested in Firefox 3 beta 5 and worked correctly. They did not work in Firefox 2.

When I purchased my first Mac I quickly transfered over all the media files from my old windows based machine and was excited to finally view the content on an operating system with strong media capabilities.

I opened up Quicktime and found a movie in .avi format that I wanted to open. Unfortunately, Quicktime didn’t know what to do with the file and told me I needed to go and find plugins to open the movie. After I found a plugin that would allow Quicktime to play .avi movies I launched the movie again.

Sure enough the picture came in and I was almost convinced that finding quicktime plugins wasn’t too bad. Then I realized.. the audio for the movie wasn’t playing. Quicktime needed another plugin for the audio portion.

ENTER VLC

If this experience sounds similar to you, fear not! There is a wonderful and small FREE media player out there that has everything built into it to quickly play almost any media format.

After struggling with finding quicktime plugins to play all my media formats I cam across VLC. I download the app, installed it, and opened movie after movie after movie without any trouble.

VLC is a wonderful free application. In addition to having a Mac version, the software also comes in Windows and Linux versions. It plays DVDs, CDs, music and video files, and can even stream video across a network or over the internet.

Give VLC a try and check back here atmaciverse.com with RSS for ways to get the most out of your new free Media Player.

Like Safari and many of the other Apple applications, iChat supports custom plugins that allow you to customize or optimize your iChat experience.

One great plugin for iChat is Chax. Chax is made by the same developer that brought us WARP for Spaces and adds some great features to iChat.

Merge Your iChat Contact Lists

If you’re a user of multiple instant messaging accounts, Chax will automatically create a new merged contact list for you. Once this list is in view feel free to close your iChat contact lists for AIM, .MAC, and Google Talk.

Additional Features

Additional Chax features include:

1. Unified contact list shows all contacts from all accounts in one window
2. Growl notifications for new messages and users changing status
3. Automatically resize the contact list to fit the number of visible users
4. Built-in log viewer
5. Activity log that displays your contacts’ status changes
6. Auto-accept file transfers, AV chats, and screen sharing requests
7. Toggle text status visibility of users
8. Always on top option for contact list, message windows and AV chats
9. Set font of names, status messages, and group separators
10. Option to auto-accept text chats, skipping new message notification window
11. Show status changes directly in the message window
12. Additional unread message notifications in the Dock
13. Automatically go away when the screensaver activates
14. Properly use ICQ accounts without sending text formatting in messages

Chax is a free download and may be just what you need to get the most out of iChat. Installing Chax is a breeze and a great addition to iChat. What iChat plugins do you use?

Apple has just released an update to the Airport Utility and a firmware update to the Airport Extreme base station. This update to the AEBS will enable Time Machine to use disks attached to your base station. In order for this to work you must have the latest version of OS X (10.5.2 as of this writing). Once you update the Airport Utility on your mac, you’ll need to start up the Airport Utility. Depending on how you’ve configured your AEBS, it will notify you that there is new firmware to download and install or you may have to select “check for updates” from the Airport Utility menu.

Once the firmware is installed, you can then plug in your external USB drive to the base station, find your base station in the shared sidebar of finder, then open Time Machine Preferences and Select the drive and you’re done!

In fact, I’m backing up this mac to my AEBS right now. Sometimes it pays to be an early adopter.

PS Remember that you have to have a disk that is formatted (or partitioned) with Apple’s File System (HFS+).

Update

Nine and a half hour later, the first backup from Time Machine completed. My Macbook Pro is a first generation with 802.11g wireless. Your mileage my vary.

One of the greatest enhancements to web browsers over the past few years has been the addition of tabbed browsing. It has helped organize my web browsing experience and allowed me to easily keep track of the sites I was exploring.

But, even though tabbed browsing is a feature I use often in Safari, there are times that I find myself with a number of separate open Safari windows that seem to be taking over my desktop. I’ve often wondered how I could solve this problem after I’ve already created it….

Thanks to Safari no matter how many windows you have open you don’t have to loose hope of keeping control over your browsing experience. Safari lets you retake your desktop from the browser windows!

In just two clicks you can take the endless number of open browser windows and merge them into one. A tab will appear for each website that you had opened in separate windows and you’ll once again have control of your desktop.

To merge the Safari windows into one, select Window from the menu bar and finally select Merge all windows. Then witness the seamless transition as the windows merge into one with a tab set apart for each website.

Interestingly enough, the ability to pull a tab in Safari out to its own window often exists (But who really wants more windows?). To pop out a tab, select Window from the menu bar and then select Move Tab to New Window

The current tab will pop out to a new window and quickly clutter up your desktop!

Check out our other Safari Hints and Tips