Perian v1.0

Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. They’ve just released version 1.0, go get it. Use it alongside NicePlayer to get full-screen video on your Mac without shelling out for QuickTime Pro. If VLC‘s not your bag, that is.

Optimising Mail.app for low bandwidth usage

Update: Turns out the reason Mail.app was downloading everything was due to to an malfunctioning plugin (JunkMatcher). Uninstalling this fixed it all, thankfully! (more…)

Tip to speed up Mail.app

Everyone’s talking about this [tip to speed up Mail.app](http://www.friday.com/bbum/2007/03/02/vacuuming-mails-envelope-index-to-make-mail-faster/). I’ve linked to Bbum’s article as he provides a better overview of what to do and how it works. It’s surprisingly effective!

MPlayer OS X and MEncoder binaries

Update (2009-12-22): New binaries, including mencoder x264 support (hopefully) and a link to the MPlayer Extended frontend.

Update: I’ve overhauled this article to reflect the various changes that have happened since its creation. I’ve also finally re-added the binary downloads (built from the trunk as of 2008-09-08), please leave a comment letting me know if they work for you (or not)!

If you’re a Mac user, like me, at some point you’ll probably have had the misfortune to trying to play Windows Media Videos (WMVs). You’ll have discovered that the options are limited: there’s the “official” choice of Microsoft’s awful Windows Media Player for Mac, which they’ve now stopped developing, or its successor in the limited-but-free Flip4Mac components, which work through Quicktime. so by default won’t play full-screen thanks to Apple’s cheap-ass decision to cripple its media player. (Seriously, what is up with that? You’ve just spent a large chunk of money on a machine and they won’t let you play a movie full-screen easily without shelling out more cash? Sheesh.)
However, there is a better way…

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