mdworker (visible in Activity Monitor) is the Spotlight indexing process (active even though the process is not visible in the spotlight menu).

We had a situation where movie files from a mobile phone (file ending .3gp) caused problems, as the indexer didn't seem to get past them. Using up 99% and more percent CPU which caused the fan to go crazy. Removing the files resolved this CPU madness.

You may find which files could be the problem if in Activity Monitor you click on the mdworker process and the click "inspect" in the menu, then choose "Open Files and Ports".

Google offers an iPhone Google Calendar App to synchronize Google calendars and introduces CalDAV sync for iCal and Sunbird.

See here: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99355

and here: http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html

Also from Andy Halford comes a smart app and plugin for validating website code: Total Validator. Nice one.

Finally took a moment to find a solution to sort my bookmarks in Firefox. I found a quick and good solution in
SortPlaces 1.4.0 by Andy Halford. What a relief! All sorted with one click. Thanks Andy!

To acces The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) Administration on Mac OS X, type this address in your Web Browser:
http://127.0.0.1:631/

About CUPS

CUPS provides a portable printing layer for UNIX®-based operating systems. It is developed and maintained by Apple Inc. to promote a standard printing solution. CUPS is the standard printing system used on MacOS® X and most Linux® distributions.

CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol ("IPP") as the basis for managing print jobs and queues and adds network printer browsing and PostScript Printer Description ("PPD") based printing options to support real-world printing.

If you need to test your RAM, Microsoft offer a free tool called windiag. The tool has its own loader, so it works autonomously for Intel or AMD processors, this means it works for Intel Macs or Linux Systems just as well as for Windows machines. You can download the ISO file here, burn a bootable CD and boot your computer from the CD. That's it.

Go here for the German windiag website.

And here's a reminder on how to burn an ISO disc image in Mac OS X:

1. Insert a blank disc.
2. Start Disk Utility.
3. From the File menu, choose Open Disk Image and select the ISO to be burned.
4. In the list of volumes, you will now see an item representing the ISO file. Select it.
5. Click the Burn button and follow the instructions.

This reminder is courtesy of vocaro on macosxhints.com. Thanks!

Easy Crop is a lightweight drag&drop utility to crop images, supporting various image formats. Drag an image you want to resize/crop into Easy Crop, select the required size and drag the result into the application you want it in, e.g. Ecto or Mail. No steps like saving in between. Nice!
What I use it for most of all, is rotating portrait pictures, this never really seems to work from Preview and many other photo apps...

Especially as a companion for the blogging tool Ecto, Easy Crop comes in very handy. Regarding Ecto this function should be built in really. But it isn't. It is no freeware, but the price I think is OK at $15.00 for a family pack.

www.yellowmug.com

Mail Status Control is a nice little app for OS X, that indicates new mail with an icon in the menu bar. it also lets you set a keyboard shortcut to create a new mail message without having to switch to the mail app first. Cool!

Download from the developer's website

Warning: banal content! Apple's remote control that comes with all new Macs was fun to fiddle with ONCE. Then it lay there getting ever more dusty. Working at my desk today i listened to iTunes on shuffle mode and often I'd move my cursor to the iTunes Dock icon, pause a little and select "next" to skip to a better song. It just seemed like too much effort, too much distraction from work. So I tried the remote, wondering if it works without the Front Row app running - and it does! And it reacts instantly. So the next track is now one push of the button away. Nice! Now PLEASE get back to work ;)