While viruses are still having problems entering the Mac world, spam knows no frontier. As long as you're using an email service, you're going to be targeted by spammers, sooner or later, so finding some software to act as antispam for Mac is a must, and today I will help you by pointing my finger at SpamSweep.

Coming as a Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel-based Macs, so with full support for any Mac running Mac OS 10.3 or later, "SpamSweep is an advanced bayesian spam filter with a simple, easy to understand interface. SpamSweep seamlessly combines many filtering technologies, including domain and relay blacklists, sender whitelisting, and a bayesian filter to automatically delete spam messages before they're downloaded by your email client."

The main features of the program, as described by Bains Software, its producers, are these:

- Extremely high accuracy.
- Filters quietly in the background.
- Works with most major email clients.
- Easy to use interface.

Priced at $25, SpamSweep just reached version 1.6.1, so if you're being overwhelmed by emails telling you about various lottery winnings, pills, anatomic enhancements, and so on...you should give this program a try! ;)

If you're using the iPhone to surf the World Wide Web, then most chances are you'll end up using Flickr sooner or later, if you're not one of those crazy about it already. Why use it? Just look at this - "1,715 uploads in the last minute · 6,292 things tagged with fresco · 2.2 million things geotagged this month," and all numbers are rising, of course!

Created by Ludicorp and owned by Yahoo! Inc., Flickr was born in February 2004, and grew up to host more than 3 billion images, and about 40 million unique visitors a month. Considering the impressive numbers above, it's obvious that having good support for iPhone is a must, and that's exactly what just happened...

...since "Yahoo has formally launched an updated version of Flickr optimized for mobile phones and with special formatting friendly to the iPhone, including a newfound ability to watch streaming videos," as AppleInsider reports.

What we have here is not a completely new iPhone Flickr, but a retouched version of Flickr mobile, now able to work flawlessly with all smartphones having Web browsers such as any Firefox, Opera or WebKit variant, but Apple's touchscreen devices(the iPhone and iPod Touch, of course) got special attention from the team behind Flickr.

The new Flickr mobile now has a bunch of finger-sized controls just perfect to be touched, and the best part of it all is that iPhone & Touch users will be able to watch Flickr videos without any worries about the lack of Flash support of their devices!

I don't know how is this iPhone Flickr working for you, so if you want to drop a comment below with your impressions, be sure to do it - I am eager to find out more about your experience with Flickr mobile on Apple's devices!

These days, a lot of European countries are not doing that great, with businesses running from a place to another, factories closing down here and there, and so on. Some call this a crisis, I only call it "cooldown," but - as usual - Apple is swimming against the flow. No, they aren't going to open some new production facility in Germany, but the first Apple German store doesn't sound too bad either, don't you think?

Well, our story about the first Apple German store goes like this - if you remember some news from last June, you may even remember those reports about the 4 story construction to become Apple's first retail store in Germany. To be honest, I don't remember those reports well, but now we have the real thing - this Saturday, you'll be able to attend the opening of Germany's first official Apple Store, on Rosenstraße, in Munich.

Unfortunately, there's no word out yet about commemorative t-shirts("Hallo, Ich Bin Ein Mac," anyone?), and the entire opening ceremony seems to be a myst shrouded mystery.

As a side note, since we talked about the first Apple German store, let's see what's happening in the US, with a quick and interesting rumor - Wal-Mart is expected to sell a special edition 4GB iPhone 3G for only $99, alongside two-year contracts, of course.

Just one more thing - if you happen to arrive at the big opening this Saturday, please try to get a T-Shirt for me, too. Pretty, pretty please! Thanks in advance! ;)

To be honest, I wouldn't risk getting into any MacWorld 2009 predictions yet, and since we're never short on rumors, let's talk about something that seems to be settled - Adobe's withdrawal, one of the sad MacWorld 2009 news I just heard. So... could this be a consequence of the global economic climate? I have no idea, so let's take a closer look at this story, shall we?

Just as a side note - we all know that most graphics designers would rather lose one leg, than using Adobe software on a Windows machine, and it's also known that a lot of sound engineers are using Macs, but today it's sad news mainly for the first category, although Adobe also has some sound processing tools for Mac. What kind of sad news?

Well, this is the story - in a statement given to Macworld, the graphics software giant said "Adobe has decided to shift its focus at the Macworld trade show this year. Macworld is a valuable industry show and we will still be an active part of it with members of our product team involved in Macworld tracks, including a full day of CS4 demo sessions with Adobe evangelists on Wednesday, January 7."

So, instead of having a large booth at the MacWorld 2009 Expo, Adobe will only be involved in some events related to their products, but won't actually "be there," although the Expo would have provided Adobe with a great opportunity to show off its CS4 applications to Mac users attending the show.

Is this a sign of dark times coming to Adobe, or not? What do you think? If you ask me, there's no such thing as a crisis, at least not for them. After all, shifting your focus from offline to the online world is the right thing to do, since costs are much lower, and the number of customers and potential customers you can reach is higher. Well, drop that - not just "higher," MUCH HIGHER!

OK, so you just got an iPhone...or you haven't, but that's not really important. Once you'll get it, most chances are you'll want to turn it from "another iPhone" into "your iPhone," and that's not something out of ordinary, since a lot of people are trying to customize their iPhones in a way or another. Obviously, you will also want to customize your iPhone for free, or as cheap as possible, so - if you ask me - a $20-$30 case won't be enough, since software customization is always more flexible, and iFuntastic is exactly the tool to do that!

Coming from bitSplitâ„¢ Enterprises, iFuntastic is a software for iPhone, iPod Touch and Macintosh selling for $19.95, and allowing you to add the following personal content:

- Custom carrier logo
- Background image
- Movie playing underneath ("through window")
- Changed display order (gaps)
- Hidden (blank) Calendar icon
- Changed Calendar date color
- Hidden application names
- Transformed icons (reflection)
- Custom notification badge

Unfortunately, to use this powerful customization tool built around a file manager for the phone's file system, the device must be jailbroken and unshackled.

Although I can't recommend to anyone jailbreaking their devices, iFuntastic makes it a really tempting action, since its feature list includes a lot of goodies, such as advanced media conversion capabilities, email signatures, or the ability to watermark all graphics on the phone.

iFuntastic 6.2.2b1, the latest version of this handy tool to help you customize your iPhone, is as heavy as 52MB, and works with old PowerPC-based Macs, as well as the new ones, powered by Intel processors. Fortunately, you don't have to buy it at first sight, since a trial version is also available.

As a final note, the latest version adds support for version 2.2 of the firmware for iPhone and iPod Touch, and the only compatibility issue still without a solution is the fact that iFuntastic won't work with iPod Touch 2G, which cannot be jailbroken yet.