One of my frustrations with iTunes is that it's hard to easily navigate between tracks if iTunes is in the background. Some shareware and freeware options have arrived on the scene recently to help solve this.

SizzlingKeys is freeware and introduces some global hotkeys and can show a transparent status window when changing tunes. [via Tao of Mac]

Synergy is shareware that also adds global hotkeys and a transparent window but also adds some items to your menubar for iTunes navigation. (My girlfriend notes that Synergy was the name of the computer in that old girly cartoon 'Jem and the Holograms.')

MenuTunes is shareware and provides a transparent status menu and a menubar menu with a dropdown (which doesn't make it any more convenient than the iTunes dock right-click menu, IMO).

Are there others that you like? Let us know in the comments!

Incessant popping noise: a few days ago the speakers on my 12" Powerbook started making an incessant popping noise that sounds very much like a spike being sent to them, seemingly at random. For a few seconds it'll be fine, then some popping, then silence, then a pop, then... etc.

Its making this machine completely unusable since the sound is maddening, akin to being subjected to a constant drip of a faucet. Anyone have any idea what might be causing this new-found issue? Anyone at all?

Mono went 1.0. Very cool; download it here. Everything you need to know to get started under OS X: Mono on MacOS X.

Consensus, or at least a broadly shared suspicion, is emerging that Dashboard is not just a new desktop widget technology but the first demo of the next generation of web applications -- or perhaps GUI applications in general. To wit, see these recent posts by:

• Jon Udell
• Jeff Hobbs
• Kevin Schmitt

By now you have, of course, stopped using IE as your browser right? And you're probably not using Firefox because with Safari who needs anything else? Safari's fantastic. In one fell swoop Chris Pederick provides a seriously compelling reason to use Firefox: improving your web development experience through his most excellent Web Developer plugin. It's hard to explain this thing if you haven't seen it in use but basically it sticks a toolbar into Firefox that gives you total, complete access to everything you'd ever want access to as a web developer. I can't begin to list the features here, just head over and read for yourself. One of those few bits of software that's made me go "wow".

Recently it was suggested that OS X was less secure than Windows. In timely fashion MacSecurity notes that Corsaire has published "Securing Mac OS X" [PDF], a whitepaper on just that very topic.