"Use PiP to show video from any webcam on your screen, nicely integrated as "Picture in Picture" which makes it ideal for live presentations, screencast recordings and in the educational sector." Or filming your hands…

"In this post, I want to pay tribute to my favorite “games” of 2012 – specific performances, instances, and events that really meant something to me. The list is admittedly idiosyncratic, subjective, and a little self-indulgent. And that’s the way it should be, I feel (um, unless you’re a journalist or something), because games, at their best, are deeply personal affairs. Games generate memories, and I want to share some of mine with you." Doug is smart.

"I think it’s valuable to have an understanding of assembly language. Assembly language is the lowest level of abstraction in computers – the point at which the code is still readable. Assembly language translates directly to the bytes that are executed by your computer’s processor. If you understand how it works, you’ve basically become a computer magician." I don't, and this looks like a lovely way to learn. Also: I think I finally get this. Nine-year-old me sure didn't.

"Porthole streams music from your favorite music player to all your AirPlay speakers, in sync." Slightly cheaper alternative to Airfoil.

"Basically Lion handles .local TLDs differently to Snow Leopard. Whenever I would try to access my phpMyAdmin installation at http://xampp.local/phpMyAdmin, Lion would take a ridiculously long time to resolve the host and it probably has something to do with the Multicast DNS feature of Bonjour." What the hell? That explains a lot.

"I’ve just released a little Mac app I’ve been working on for a while. It’s called Satellite Eyes. It’s pretty simple. It just sits in your menu tray, and changes your desktop wallpaper to the satellite image or map view from overhead." I've had a preview build for a while, and this is just lovely. Well done, Tom.

This fixed the weirdest set of bugs on a fresh install for me.

"The Simplest Screen Recording App For Your Mac. Ever." Looks it. I'm fed up of wrangling things like iShowU, so I might investigate this.

Uh-oh. Hoping I won't have to be looking into this any time soon.

This is working well for me: rapid calendar input, not too big on the menu bar, and yet nice support for multiple calendars and the like. Pretty much meets my calendar-input requirements, and leaves iCal to do the heavy lifting.

"Johann Sebastian Joust! is a no-graphics wiimote dueling game prototype for 3+ players. We developed it at the Nordic Game Jam 2011." Fun: electronically-enabled, no-screen gaming, which in this case is primarily about putting other players off and interfering with their controls.

Node.js/CoffeeScript powered Rack server. Lovely idea, simple configuration; shame it completely takes over port 80. Some of us write applications in things other than Ruby from time to time. Thinking about the best way of hooking it all together.

S3-backed, Mac-specific backup tool. Looks nice, and well-thought-through.

"MockSMTP is a native Mac application that embeds its own SMTP server. It also features an e-mail client browser, enabling instant viewing of both raw content and HTML rendering, so you can see how your mail looks when delivered." What an excellent idea.

"Command line work isn't a separate task that should live on its own—it's an integrated part of your natural workflow. DTerm provides a context-sensitive command line that makes it fast and easy to run commands on the files you're working with and then use the results of those commands." This looks great. Will report back on it.

"This is where I write about social & political stuff, mostly relating to sex. Yes, there's going to be a book. As an ex-sex worker, you can imagine what my bias is. Nevertheless, I am also a scientist, so will do my best to present the evidence base for each post." Brooke's new blog. This looks like it could be good.