The R Project for Statistical Computing is a free multi-platform Open Source statistical and graphical programming platform. It provides a Mac friendly R Console for all the statistical and graphical work you can throw at it. Version 2.7.1 was released earlier this week.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac users can finally read those DOCX, XLSX and other "X" files created by Microsoft Office 2007 (for Windows) and 2008 (for Mac). Office 2008 for Mac gets its own giant 12.1.1 update with a bunch of fixes (some related to the previous SP1 update).

VectorDesigner 1.3 is a low-cost vector drawing application that looks like a good tool for even design challenged people like me. I took a photo and a hand drawn sketch through the bitmap to vector conversion process and got what seems like good starting points for a new project of mine.

VirtualBox 1.6.2 is an Open Source virtualization hypervisor that runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. I tested it by installing Windows 2000 and Fedora 9 on my iMac. It doesn't have all the features of VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop. But, the price is right and it does a pretty decent job. Read on for more impressions from my testing...

Adobe AIR applications turned out to be a lot more interesting that I originally thought they would be. So far, I'm finding and using AIR apps in the way I thought I would use Dashboard Widgets when Tiger came out. Dashboard never really captured my attention after trying out a few widgets. AIR apps have become part of my daily use toolkit. Read on to see why...

Here's what I looked at last week: Great Blender generated animation - Big Buck Bunny, Rescue Kit for Mac OS X Lite (?), Zoho Creator pricing, Google spreadsheet vs. Google Gears, and I'm tech tweeting.

Twitter is probably the most beloved unreliable web-service on the net. That said, if it is running (even with some features turned off), I tend to be using it. Here are some Mac clients I've been using with it instead of the default web interface.

Here's what I looked at last week: Disqus, TwitPic, Blender, and Tabs/Ajax vs. browser memory management.

Believe it or not, Microsoft has useful tools (many free) for Mac users. I cover a bunch of them in here: Silverlight, MSN Messenger 7, Remote Desktop Connection Client, Flip4Mac WMV, SkyDrive, and the Microsoft Memory Mouse 8000.

Here's what I looked at last week: My City: Facebook Silverlight App/Game, Snackr: Adobe AIR based RSS Scrolling Ticker, Google vidnik: Record with iSight Then Post to YouTube, and Google Search Blacklisting Mystery.