Machack 1999-The Hacks

Here it is, the html rendering of the best hack ballot. Yoot hacks are marked in blue.

See the press release below.

DotMatrixScript by Eric Roccasecca and Jim Meyer. Makes your laser printer look like a dot matrix (extension) Download
X-Ray by Eric Roccasecca. Transparent Windows (Extension) Download
Altivec Effect by Darrin Cardani. Makes your movie clip look like it's on a jittery TV (Extension) Download
moldyn by George Geller. A represntation of an atom moves in a window in a scientifically accurate manner but it is a sort of disco atom, so it changes colors and leaves a path as it moves along its trajectory. Download
Y2K Fix by Mark Darling. Lets you relive new year's eve. (Extension) Download
Rotato by Simon Fraser. Control panel that messes with mouse direction. Requires ADB. (Control Panel) Download
The Skinner Cubicle by Andy Ihnatko. Hardware to turn any office cubicle into a Skinner Box. (Hardware)
Target Acquisition Manager by Sean Parent and Mike Neil. Acquire targets and throw them away. (Application) Download
Avi's Balloon Previewer by Avi Drissman. Use balloon help to see any graphic file's Quicktime preview. (Extension) Download
The Apple Improvement Showcase by Sean Harper and Jesse Boettcher. Improving upon Apple technology. (Extension) Download
Play Net Poker and Waste Time by Andrew C. Stone and Clifford T. Matthews. A GUI front end for IRC net poker. (Application) Download
Drink Differently by Linda Botez and Shaun Kotlarsky. QT Movie and Photoshop Document. Special thanks to Jerry Kindall and Eric Blomburg for their assistance. (Document)
I-Mac & Macintosh by Rachel Green. I-Mac meets Macintosh, I-Mac swallows Macintosh. (Application) Download
PatchMaker by Paul Baxter. Point and click trap patching including head and tail patches. (Application) Download
Unfinder by Lisa Lippincott. Brings the Finder's user interface up to 1984 standards by enabling the "Undo" command. (Extension) Download
Out of Context Menus by Eric Traut. Adds unusual contextual menus to Finder (Application) Download
The Night Before MacHack by Noah Spies. First Annual MacHack Poetry Contest - First Entry. (Document) Download
The Creep by Ben Furnas. Creep up on your friends. (Applescript) Download
Leave Me Alone... by Mike Cole. Leave me alone, can't you see I'm copying files. (Application) Download
FinderHelper by Jerry Kindall. Alleviates annoyances in Finder. (OneClick) Download
MACNACE by Timothy Knox. Unix command line for MacOS. (Application) Download
CD Namer by Ned Holbrook. Displays name of audio CDs on desktop and downloads track listings (Extension) Download
Prose Posse by Lucius Kwok. Turns text into gibberish. (Application) Download
MacCVS Pro 2.5b1 by Ram Rajadhyaksha, Simon Fraser and others. MacCVS 2.5b1 (Application)
42 by Douglas Clarke and Ben Martz. Useless 240x240 pixel window with Altivec algorithms. (Application) Download
Reader Mouse by Jesse Donaldson, Katherine Smith. Performs OCR on screen bits around the mouse and reads the results aloud. (Application) Download
IR Comm Remote by Jesse Donaldson, Steve Lemke. IR Remote Control + DVD player on Palm OS. (Application) Download
Gestalt Ticker by Toby Rush. Ticket of gestalt values on desktop. (Application) Download
Animated Sprites by Kieran Hartnett. Demonstrates QT's animated sprites features. (Application) Download
FIFO Patent Hack by mark Rustad. Enhancement of a patented FIFO queueing method. (Document) Download
YRTP by P.D. Magnus. Turning Y2K problems into YMCM solutions. (Applications) Download
Disappearing Act by Andy Furnas. Makes icon disappear. (Applescript) Download
MacJive by Ned Holbrook and Jorg Brown. This hack translates all text drawn to the screen into Jive. (Control Panel) Download
The Hack Files by Kiki Plouff and Jeremy Norstad. Drags out picts of people at MacHack 14. (Applescript) Download
Close and Open 1.0 by Eli Lakritz and Jon Hirschberger. (Applescript) Download
Is this a folder? by Matt Linden. For PC users who don't know nuthin. (Application) Download
Live Fast Start Server for Quicktime 3 by Sam Bushell. Captures live video and transmits it as a fast-start movie over the HTTP -- without using any new features of Quicktime 4 or Quicktime Streaming. Download
Altered States by Mark Johns, William MacKay, and Ben Spees. Preview and install filters to StdBits(). (Extensions) Download
MACtive Desktop by Miro Jurisic and Leonard Rosenthal. Active desktop for the Mac. (Extension) Download
PalmEjectorII by Darin Adler, Sanford Selznick, Nevin Liber, Rob Tsuk, and Levi Brown. Eject your CD with you PalmPilot. (Application) Download
Ascii Invaders by Andy Bachorski. Play space invaders while you edit you code. (Extension) Download
Geo Killer by Mark Lilback. closes web popup windows. (Application) Download
Magic 8-Ball by Andy Bachorski. Put a Magic 8-Ball in your Macsbug to aid you with your debugging. (Extension) Download
Desktop Doubler by Ed Wynne. Doubles your desktop by adding a virtual monitor. (Extension) Download
CD-ROM Drive You Crazy by William D. Hubauer. Controls the CD-ROM drive over the network. (Application) Download
Play That Sound by Jay D. Weiss. Plays sound files ('sfil') in the same folder as app. (Application) Download
Carbonized Menus by Jon Rentzsch. Hides the menu bar; puts up its own menus. (Application) Download
HUF by Richard Ford and Warren Magnus. Hotline Users Frustrator. (Network) Download
Blue Box Spy by William Garrison and Eugenio Joarosiewicz. Visually monitor Blue Box from OSX using MacOS 8 TCP/IP daemon. Can monitor any MacOS 8 application on the internet. (Application) Download
ASM-American State Machine by Olof Hellman. Provides OSAXen to support US State unti types in Applescript, and allows addition of states. (Applescript) Download
P1 Preview by Andrew Downs. The world's smallest Finder. (Application) Download
Sound-In-Sane by Shawn Platkus. Cycles through sound input sources. (Application) Download
iKu by Adam Klein. Happy Macintosh, Make Haiku with AppleScript, Stays crunchy in milk. (Applescript) Download

BEST HACK CONTEST RESULTS FROM MACHACK '99
The MacHax(tm) Group announces the results from the
Thirteenth Annual Best Hack Contest at MacHack '99.

In its fourteenth year, MacHack convened one minute after midnight on June
24 for another solid 72 hours of sleep deprivation, hacking, networking,
and other worthy (and highly caffeinated) endeavors. The conference opened at
midnight with a keynote from Andy Ihnatko, the self proclaimed
"America's 42nd most-beloved industry personality" (our thanks to
Andy for providing that oft-copied-and-pasted piece of text). Hacking
was observed during his highly entertaining, inspirational, and
wide-ranging journey into the mind of a strangely-creative and
twisted individual. Hacking continued unabated until well past
midnight two nights later.

MacHack attendees show their interesting, unusual, unexpected, and
often entertaining software at the Hack Show. This year's Hack Show
began at midnight and lasted until 4:30 AM.

After each show, the contest sponsors (that would be us crazy folks
at The MacHax Group) stay up the rest of the night to put together a
ballot so conference attendees can vote for their favorite hacks just
a few hours later at lunch. This year's ballot listed 52 hacks. As
we put together the ballot, we enjoyed the all-night company of
MindVision as they prepared and duplicated the conference CD so
conference attendees could go home with a CD full of hacks, papers,
and other conference memorabilia.

After tabulating the votes and making a quick trip to Duke's Hardware
(the official hardware store of the Best Hack Contest) for prizes,
The MacHax Group hands out awards at the Hack Awards.

A number of hacks drew special mention (meaning we found some good
junk at Duke's that seemed to be somewhat related), including
Sound-In_Sane, P1 Preview, Blue Box Spy, Altered States, Live Fast
Start Server for QuickTime 3, YRTP, Play Net Poker And Waste Time,
and Prose Posse. See the end of this announcement for a link to the
Best Hack Contest Ballot.

Each year we enjoy the hacking participation of "yoots", and this
year was no exception as we witnessed the record-breaking entry of a
seven year old, the youngest hacker ever to submit a hack.

Now to the awards...

Fifth place went to "PatchMaker" by Paul Baxter. PatchMaker generates
source code for point-and-click trap patching (that's the magic stuff
that hacks are made of).

In fourth place, MacJive translates all text drawn to the screen into
jive. Authors Ned Holbrook and Jorg Brown took home a delectable 12
pound frozen Butterball turkey (admittedly not from Duke's). Rumors
that the turkey went cross-country via UPS Ground to the contest
sponsors are not entirely true.

Ed Wynne wowed the crowd with Desktop Doubler, a hack to double your
desktop by adding a "real" virtual monitor. Duke's had just the
prize for Ed's fine hack - a package of "Screen Patches".

"Out of Context Menus" by Eric Traut took second place. If contextual
menus are such a good idea, someone had to find out what would happen
with out-of-context menus, and Eric was just the one to find out.
His hack added some familiar yet rather unusual Photoshop-like items
to Finder contextual menus. You haven't used the Finder until you've
used a Gaussian-blurred Finder window.

The moniker of "Best Hack" and the coveted Victor A-Trap trophy went to
"Unfinder", the hands-down favorite hack. As Lisa Lippincott quietly
deadpanned her presentation, she "accidentally" dropped a bunch of
things she was dragging into one of a long list of folders. As we
all know, that's a sure way to spend a while trying to figure out
where things went. Mere seconds later, however, the crowd jumped to
its feet and gave Lisa a sustained standing ovation. Why? With
Unfinder, she simply selected the Finder's now-enabled Undo menu item
and all the files reappeared in their former location. As Lisa said,
Unfinder brings the Macintosh "up to 1984 standards".

Some of the previous winners include NetBunny, RearWindow, VideoBeep,
ColorFinder, IRMan, Oscar the Grouch, BillBoot, Practical Joke
Protocol, Fez, and AsciiMac. Several of these have gone on to become
products, system software, features in products, or the targets of
threats and intimidation from uninformed universities and aggressive
corporations.

Many of the hacks will be on the MacHack '99 conference CD. Please
be forewarned - hacks are generally not "production quality"
software; use them at your own risk. For more information on the CD
and the MacHack conference, please visit http://www.machack.com. To
see this year's ballot, drop by http://www.hax.com/HackContest.

The MacHax Group has been a purveyor of high technology products and
productions since 1985.

Macintosh, Mac, QuickTime, and Apple are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
MacHax is a trademark of The MacHax Group. MacHack is a trademark of
Expotech, Inc. The MacHax Group is not affiliated with Expotech (MacHack
conference organizers), and somehow we've been having fun together for years.
Other trademarks belong to those who own them, including, most likely,
Pong, Windows 95, Duke's Hardware, and Victor.