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iLyric is a free program from End Productions that gets the lyrics to the songs in your iTunes collection.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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4 great freeware programs for OS X Macs


August 13, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   I'm excited about more great freeware for Mac OS X this week.
   As a writer, I've been making good use of WordNet, described by its developers as an "online lexical reference system." It's like a combination dictionary, thesaurus and word encyclopedia on steroids.
   William Tayson created a Mac OS X version (specifically, a "front end") for WordNet. All the explanations in the world won't tell you what this marvelous database is all about; you simply have to try it. It's free.
   Get the OS X version of WordNet from Version Tracker at www.versiontracker.com. Be sure to choose the Mac OS X section and type WORDNET as the search. You'll probably have to follow the instructions (as of August 2003) to download a separate local copy of the WordNet database.
   Despite my serviceable knowledge of Unix, I still get frustrated when OS X's Unix roots get in my way when I am simply trying to clean out the trash. A program called Force Empty Trash came to my rescue a few weeks ago and I've been using it ever since.
   Force Empty Trash is a simple program designed just for that one task. It works only on the main disk you booted from, not on any extra drives mounted on your desktop. (That's not a problem, since the "stuck trash" syndrome usually happens on the main drive anyway.)
   Force Empty Trash was written by A. Brody (no first name given) and can be downloaded from his site, www.macmaps.com. Click the "software" link in the upper right section of the page. It's free.
   Proof that the iTunes is the sweetest software on the planet is easy to find, of course, especially if you've upgraded to the latest version so you can buy newly released albums at the Apple music store. iTunes is simply delightful.
   But it's even better than that if you have iLyric, a free program from End Productions that gets the lyrics to all the songs in your iTunes collection -- or as many as it can find on the Internet. You can also tell it to get just the lyrics for selected songs.
   This is more than cool. It's enlightening. I've discovered that I've been singing some Bob Dylan songs all wrong, for example.
   Get iLyric from MacUpdate at www.macupdate.com. Search for ILYRIC.
   I love good screen savers, but what's the point if you can only view them one at a time? SaverLab lets you try out (and play with) as many as you can fit in large or small windows plastered all over your screen.
   Some screen savers seem to trip up the way SaverLab reduces them to a window, but most of the hundreds I've collected work perfectly. And SaverLab will impress your Windows friends when you show them how much more modern your Mac's processor is than the Intel and AMD chips in Windows PCs; your Mac OS X computer will be able to run a dozen or more animated screen savers at the same time, each in its own window. (I had more than 100 running before I gave up, using my dual-processor G4.)
   Get SaverLab from www.versiontracker.com. Get it from the Mac OS X section, using SAVERLAB as the search term. SaverLab is free.