Have you always wanted to win an Apple Design Award? The cool little illuminated cube is something I've coveted for a while now, but since I don't actually produce any hardware or software for any Apple products, I think my chances of winning one are pretty lousy.

The Iconfactory's Craig Hockenberry was awarded an Apple Design Award at WWDC 2008 for Twitterrific for the iPhone. The award has travelled to North Carolina where the rest of the Iconfactory gang could enjoy it before it went back to Craig's house in Laguna Beach.

The factory workers in NC grew so attached to the award that they decided to create a doppleganger out of a square glass, some clay, some touch lights and, the handyman's secret weapon...duct tape. Throw in some spray paint and some nice penmanship and you have a do-it-yourself Apple Design Award that probably fooled Craig for 10 seconds but put a smile on his face.

The building process has been documented on an Iconfactory Flickr set so that maybe you can pretend to be a ADA winner.

Blambot's FREE font for July 2008 is called Sanitarium. It's got sharp, irregular serifs and varied letter heights to give it a manic, unstable look. Designed as a perfect logo and title font, the OpenType version is equipped with autoligatures to give your type a random element and so that no two consecutive letters look the same.

I must admit, I have an irrational fear of firmware updates.

The Time Capsule and AirPort Base Station (802.11n) Firmware 7.3.2 update requires that you already have AirPort Utility 5.3.2 installed (versions for Leopard, Tiger and Windows are available).

What does it do? Well, let's see what Apple has to say...

The Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n* Firmware 7.3.2 updates include bug fixes.

Hmm...bug fixes. That should take care of anyone who found the write ups on the other updates too exhaustive but it doesn't ease my fears.

Apple doesn't want Tiger users to feel left out of the day's updating fun. They've released a special Safari 3.1.2 for Tiger update.

It's sole purpose appears to be a WebKit update that prevents an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution while visiting a maliciously crafted website.

Whew! That's a relief!

Now Mac OS X 10.4.11 users can visit all their favorite maliciously crafted websites again!

If you can keep up with the frenetic pace, Deke McClelland will teach you over 101 Photoshop Tips in Five Minutes... seriously. Most of the tips are key-command explanations but there are indeed a few gems hidden in amongst the rest.

Evidently, the only thing keeping some users of Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger from using the Spore Creature Creator Demo is that the application is coded to look for and only accept Mac OS X 10.5.3.

An anonymous user over at Mac OS X Hints has posted instructions on how to easily alter a plist in the game's package contents to have it check for a slightly older operating system. Voila! Now, as the editor at Mac OS X Hints notes:

System requirements are typically based on features in a given level of the OS, so there may be unknown issues if you use this hint to run the demo on an earlier version of the OS. Maybe this will work for the full version too...

[ Via Mac OS X Hints ]

The new version of 1Password (2.6.5) offers support for both Firefox 3, the Safari 4 Developer Preview, DEVONagent 2.3.1, OmniWeb Sneaky Peeks, and Flock 2. This update is free to all paid 1Password customers.

1Password is an excellent password manager for Mac OS X with integrated anti-phishing technology, and a database to keep track of logins, secure notes, identities, credit cards, bank accounts, and software registration information.

A single-user license for 1Password costs USD$34.95 and a family license is available for USD$49.95.

It's easy to forget about OS X's Unix core, but did you realize there is a slew of useful utilities buried behind the command line?

Have you ever wanted easy access to utilities that discipline resource hogging applications, compare files or performed maintenance on your Mac?

In today's Freeloader Friday we'll pull some useful Unix utilities out from behind the Terminal and on to the desktop. Join me!