OS X Freeware of the Day: Masq iChat Group Chat Program

Looking to find some friendly Mac users to chat it up with using your iChat accounts? Miss the old days of AOL chat rooms where you could have flame wars until 3 in the morning? Then you might enjoy Masq, which is a new program that allows you to utilize your iChat account to participate in group chats with other Mac users. Masq requires you to register a separate Masq account, but the chatting is actually done through your iChat account, so people will know you by that identity.

Installing Masq is a cinch. Just drag to your preferred location and check out the documentation if you're into that sort of thing.

Once you've gone through the Masq sign-up process to get your Masq account, you can login to the program. Again, this account will be different than your iChat account.

Now that you're logged in, you can see the main chat interface. You'll automatically be included in the default chat room and there may be others available when you log on. The list of chatrooms should grow as more users log on to the service.

Inside the program, you can set some basic profile information so that others can know a little more about you. Examples include location, gender, birthday, etc.

Go here to download Masq for free.

OS X Freeware of the Day: DTV Free Internet TV Program

DTV is an open source program for easily watching and subscribing to video programs that can be downloaded freely over the Internet. The program uses RSS enclosure technology, which most people know as "podcasts," but focuses only on those podcasts that provide video. The program provides a very intuitive interface for viewing the videos available from a particular source, and manages the videos once they are downloaded.

DTV is in rapid development and each new release provides more stability and better features than the next. For the moment, DTV is only available for OS X (how often does that happen?) but is in development for all your Windoze friends.

Using DTV is as simple as opening the program to see the main interface, with various channels and a channel guide on the left. Once clicked, any of these options will show you a list of programs on the right.

You have the ability to download any video of your choosing with a single click. Once downloaded, the video will appear as such both in the channel listing and in your "My Collection" section, which contains all of the videos you've downloaded.

DTV also serves as it's own video player, with standard playing controls you can use to fast forward, pause, and stop your videos.

DTV can be downloaded for free here.