1Password Touch Pro Free in iTunes!

The Agile folks are just giving away their 1Password Touch apps through November. I love 1Password and 1Password Touch Pro, and I paid for both of them and I have no regrets. Just pure love. At any rate, go get your free software!

$50 off Office for Mac Friday through Monday

At Mactopia.

Compare Two Files

If you have two versions of a spreadsheet, text, HTML, or other file that you want to compare line by line, you can use either of two pretty sweet, free programs. They line up the two files side by side, line for line, and highlight the differences. Then they give you some tools for editing and merging and stuff.

• DiffMerge, or
• FileMerge, which is Apple's own Developer utility. You can get all the Developer tools for free from your install DVD, or the latest version of them for free by signing up for the Apple Developer Connection program.

Apple's Black Friday Sale

Apple generically advertises its Black Friday sale, whose exact history supports Boy Genius' supposedly leaked pricing details.

Does anybody know if Apple discounts its education pricing on Black Friday?

Run OS 9 on your Intel Mac

This genius has put together a "Classic OS" download for us Intel Mac users who still have an OS 9 program we would love to run. I have successfully downloaded it and run it and installed StratCon on it and it works just great.

The download is in "Torrent" form, meaning you have to have a special kind of program to download it. I recommend Transmission.

If you have questions or problems using Transmission to download "Classic on Intel", or figuring out how to run "Classic on Intel", I might be willing to help.

[PS: If you need a good web browser to use from within the OS 9 system, I recommend the trial version of iCab, which allows you to not have to use Internet Explorer, and it is still being supported. I hear iCab for iPhone and even iCab for OS X are good too, but I haven't bothered with them.]

Sleek, Useful New Web Browsers

Stainless boasts parallel sessions, meaning you could open up two windows and be logged into two different Facebook (or other) accounts at once, and session- aware bookmarks, meaning when you bookmark your comments feed on your wife's Flickr, Stainless respects that as a different bookmark than when you bookmarked your own Flickr comments feed. Good idea.

Cruz allows multiple pages to be opened in panes within one browser window, and it allows you to control where new links open up. You have to watch the short videos at the bottom of the home page I've linked to to see just how useful this can be. It has some other goodies built into it too.

Office '08 Update Patches Major Vulnerability in Word and Excel

This page explains how to download the critical update to Office 2008 for Mac that was released yesterday. You can download it manually from Microsoft's website, or go to Help -> Check for Updates in any Office application.

The Microsoft Security Bulletin says:

The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

And an additional bulletin says:

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Word file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

LAST DAY: 6 Free Apps + Free VirusBarrier

Today is the last day to nab the MacHeist nanoBundle, which includes 6 free Mac apps. I'd never used any previously, but I like to tinker around with new apps whenever I can. Part of the joy of MacHeist is the aesthetic experience of browsing their website, downloading new apps, and getting to see lots of pretty colors and smooth graphics. At any rate, if you share it on Facebook, they let you have Intego's acclaimed VirusBarrier for free. I've been thinking about paying the $70 or so for VirusBarrier for a long time, and now I don't have to. This alone is far worth the effort.

Logos 4: Feature Parity

Logos 4 just came out and it brings feature parity to the Windows/Mac versions, and it looks slick. The Mac code is officially considered to be in "Alpha", but it will self-update every two weeks or so until it catches up not too long from now. Still I hear it's worth the upgrade price.