superwick.com

Real quick… I just got my laptop for school, and now I have three computers at my home desk (my Mac mini, my SuSe Linux 9.3 box, and now my little 13″ Windows XP laptop). I don’t have a KVM switch (nor do I really want one), but I still wanted to find a way to share my one keyboard and mouse with all 3 machines when I’m at my desk.

I found this KILLER little program called Synergy. It allows me to actually share my keyboard and mouse between the 3 screens at my desk. Just by moving my mouse cursor off one screen, it automatically appears on the next display/ monitor over, allowing me to use the mouse and keyboard on that machine, until I move it off the edge of that screen to the next. Confused? Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
(Quicktime format - right-click and “save as”, please)
Synergy example 1
Synergy example 2

These were shot using my little camera phone, so the quality ain’t all that great (and it only allows me to shoot 15-second clips), but it works in a pinch… Hopefully you can see what I’m doing in these shots… basically moving from screen to screen without effort!

The other super SUPER handy feature is the ability to carry over clipboard contents from screen to screen as you switch! I’m seriously amazed by this program. It was a little work (actually not too hard really) getting it set-up on my Mac to act as a “server”, but after configuring it, it works like a charm. I even setup a little Automator app to start and stop it at will on my Mac. Love it!

Now if only I could drag and drop between screens/systems, that would be the King King of features…

If you have more than one computer at your desk, give it a shot: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

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For quite some time now, there has been an open-source, free, and feature-rich alternative to Adobe Photoshop, called The GIMP. I have only recently started using it, and my biggest complaint was the interface was so much different from Photoshop’s, which I was used to and thought was pretty nice.

Now, Scott Moschella has created a version of the GIMP to look a bit more like Photoshop users are accustomed to. His version is currently Mac-only. However, YuMDaP.net has created a Windows version as well. Get it. It’s free, baby!

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