Software
MacHeist III: All Apps Unlocked
Apr 06 2009 09:03 PM
It was another great year for MacHeist. In all, over 67,000
people purchased the bundle, and received almost
$1,000 worth of software (14 applications) for
$39. It did come down to the end, with the final
two applications not being unlocked until today,
but it still would have been worth it even if
those apps weren’t unlocked. You have one more
day to take advantage of this great deal, if you
own a Mac, it’s money well spent.
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MacHeist III is a go
Mar 25 2009 06:00 PM
The MacHeist III bundle
officially launched last night. This year’s
bundle has some nice software in it. The total
value for all of the software in the bundle is
$627, and you can get it all for $39. I
participated in all of the missions before the
launch of the bundle, so I had already earned
$402 worth of additional free applications, plus
I earned $6 off the bundle, so I got a little
over $1000 worth of software for $33; not bad.
This bundle includes LittleSnapper, which is a
great screen capture tool. This application
alone would cost you $39, so it pays for itself
in this bundle. It also includes World of Goo,
which I play on the Wii. You should check it
out, there’s software in there for everyone.
Backblaze
Jan 27 2009 08:47 PM
I started using Backblaze about a month
ago. Backblaze is an offsite backup service.
While I try to back things up to DVD every
couple months, and I have Time Machine running
and backing everything up to an external hard
drive, I still felt it was a good thing to also
have my stuff backed up offsite. This way if
something awful happened, like a robbery, fire
or some natural disaster; my important files
will have been backed up away from my house.
The service is pretty painless to set up. I started with a free trial, and I saw the upload speed was nice, so I went ahead and signed up. It’s $5 a month for unlimited back up, or $50 a year, so you save $10. If the unthinkable happens and you need to restore your files you have the following options.
The back-up was painless, and I got great speed, but that also comes from my having the high speed Comcast internet connection. My biggest problem was remembering to leave the computer on so the back-up could take place. I’m used to putting the machine to sleep when it’s not in use.
The service is pretty painless to set up. I started with a free trial, and I saw the upload speed was nice, so I went ahead and signed up. It’s $5 a month for unlimited back up, or $50 a year, so you save $10. If the unthinkable happens and you need to restore your files you have the following options.
- You can download a zip file, which is the free option. I don’t know how they break up the zips, maybe each file is zipped up; otherwise you’d have a pretty big zip file to download. My initial backup was 46 GB.
- You can have your files sent over night on DVD(s). This option will run you $99.
- You can have your files sent on a 160 GB USB Hard Drive. This option will run you $189.
The back-up was painless, and I got great speed, but that also comes from my having the high speed Comcast internet connection. My biggest problem was remembering to leave the computer on so the back-up could take place. I’m used to putting the machine to sleep when it’s not in use.
Mac Software 3 - Photo
Jan 18 2009 08:38 PM
This is another installment detailing software I use
on the Mac. This post will revolve around software
used for processing, viewing, and printing photos.
iPhoto - $79, or free with your new Mac
iPhoto is part of Apple’s iLife products, which ship with all new Macs. iPhoto ’08 is the current release, with iPhoto ’09 coming out by the end of this month. iPhoto is used for photo management, and has limited photo editing capabilities. One of the newer features of iPhoto ’08 is the ability to group your photos by Event. iPhoto will try and group your photos together by the amount of time between each of the photos taken. For example: a couple weeks ago Paige and I went to the Aquarium in the morning, and the King Tut exhibit in the afternoon, after stopping off for lunch. If I were to load my photo for the day into iPhoto, it would see that all of my aquarium photos were taken over the coarse of a couple hours, without any large gap of time. It would then see that the photos I took while at the King Tut exhibit were taken a couple hours later, so this would be considered a different event. You can tell iPhoto the amount of gap in the preferences. The default is to group everything together by day, you can take this down to an 8 hour gap between photos, or a 2 hour gap, like I use.
iPhoto is great for basic photo management. It gives you one place to organize your photos, perform simple editing (cropping, red-eye, straightening), e-mail photos, design books and calendars, and also upload to your Mobile Me account, if you have one.
Aperture 2 - $199
Aperture is a step up from iPhoto and is useful if you take a lot of photos, and useful if you use an SLR, taking photos in a RAW format. Like iPhoto, Aperture isn’t made for complex photo editing, it’s more for managing massive libraries, tagging and searching, rating, and processing RAW photos. This is where I spend a majority of my time when I work on my photos, and this is the default application I have open when I attach my digital camera. This is similar to Adobe’s Lightroom application, but this one is made by Apple, and takes advantage of Core Graphics, which provides its speed in handling lots of images.
Pixelmator - $59
I have talked about Pixelmator before. I was part of the beta testing for this application, so I have been using it from the beginning. Pixelmator is a powerful image editor built specifically for Mac OS X. It has most of the features of Photoshop that I ever used, and costs a fraction of the price. The user interface is beautiful, and it takes advantage of Core Graphics to use the GPU to process photo edits in real time. What does this mean? In Photoshop, when you apply a blur, or some other effect, you will see a preview window, showing a small portion of your photo, letting you see what the effect will do. When you are satisfied you click OK and the effect is applied. In Pixelmator, the effect is applied in real time to the entire photo, letting you see instantly what is happening. It does this because it uses your graphics card (GPU) to process the effect, not your CPU. I think the newest version of Photoshop may do this now, but I am not certain. Unless you are just tied to Photoshop because you own a lot of plug-ins or you have used it forever and are just super comfortable with it, Pixelmator should more than meet your photo editing requirements.
LiveQuartz - Free
LiveQuartz is a free, simple photo retouching tool. It’s very powerful for performing composites, and also comes with a nice library of effects and filters you can apply to your images. All of this is done in a non-destructive manner, meaning the original photo is never tampered with.
FotoMagico - $49
FotoMagico is an application designed to make it easy to produce powerful photo presentations. While a lot of photo software comes with the ability to perform a simple slideshow, FotoMagico gives you the tools to create a great slideshow, with music and transitions, and you can target different screen resolutions, even hi-definition. My mother is still on dial-up, so it is hard for her to hop on the internet and look at all of the vacation photos I’ve taken. I used FotoMagico to create a slideshow of all of my photos, and I added music to set the mood, then I burned it to DVD and sent it to her. It was simple and it turned out great.
Photonic - $25
I started using Flickr a while back, right before Yahoo! purchased it. I like the simple interface, and I am a pro user, so for $20 a year I can host an unlimited amount of photos, and download them in their original size. Flickr is great until you have a lot of photos to upload, then you find the web interface to be a pain. While Flickr does provide you with an uploader, it’s very unstable and doesn’t work all that well. This is where Photonic comes in handy. With Photonic you can connect to your Flickr library and upload a large amount of photos. You can also add your tags and comments at the time of upload, and choose to create a new set, or add to an existing set. Photonic also acts a a client for Flickr. You can use it to look at photos on Flickr without having to open your web browser and go to the Flickr site.
Snapshot - $24.95
Well, we’ve looked at software for importing and managing your photos, for editing, for creating slideshows, and for uploading to the web. The other big thing to do with photos is print them. This is where Snapshot comes into play. Snapshot is like a photo lab for your Mac. You have full control over the print size, cropping, borders, etc. It allows you to crop your photos in a non-destructive manner, so you can crop a photo just for that printing, and it doesn’t affect the original photo. It also integrates with photo software like iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom, so you can print photos from your libraries.
iPhoto - $79, or free with your new Mac
iPhoto is part of Apple’s iLife products, which ship with all new Macs. iPhoto ’08 is the current release, with iPhoto ’09 coming out by the end of this month. iPhoto is used for photo management, and has limited photo editing capabilities. One of the newer features of iPhoto ’08 is the ability to group your photos by Event. iPhoto will try and group your photos together by the amount of time between each of the photos taken. For example: a couple weeks ago Paige and I went to the Aquarium in the morning, and the King Tut exhibit in the afternoon, after stopping off for lunch. If I were to load my photo for the day into iPhoto, it would see that all of my aquarium photos were taken over the coarse of a couple hours, without any large gap of time. It would then see that the photos I took while at the King Tut exhibit were taken a couple hours later, so this would be considered a different event. You can tell iPhoto the amount of gap in the preferences. The default is to group everything together by day, you can take this down to an 8 hour gap between photos, or a 2 hour gap, like I use.
iPhoto is great for basic photo management. It gives you one place to organize your photos, perform simple editing (cropping, red-eye, straightening), e-mail photos, design books and calendars, and also upload to your Mobile Me account, if you have one.
Aperture 2 - $199
Aperture is a step up from iPhoto and is useful if you take a lot of photos, and useful if you use an SLR, taking photos in a RAW format. Like iPhoto, Aperture isn’t made for complex photo editing, it’s more for managing massive libraries, tagging and searching, rating, and processing RAW photos. This is where I spend a majority of my time when I work on my photos, and this is the default application I have open when I attach my digital camera. This is similar to Adobe’s Lightroom application, but this one is made by Apple, and takes advantage of Core Graphics, which provides its speed in handling lots of images.
Pixelmator - $59
I have talked about Pixelmator before. I was part of the beta testing for this application, so I have been using it from the beginning. Pixelmator is a powerful image editor built specifically for Mac OS X. It has most of the features of Photoshop that I ever used, and costs a fraction of the price. The user interface is beautiful, and it takes advantage of Core Graphics to use the GPU to process photo edits in real time. What does this mean? In Photoshop, when you apply a blur, or some other effect, you will see a preview window, showing a small portion of your photo, letting you see what the effect will do. When you are satisfied you click OK and the effect is applied. In Pixelmator, the effect is applied in real time to the entire photo, letting you see instantly what is happening. It does this because it uses your graphics card (GPU) to process the effect, not your CPU. I think the newest version of Photoshop may do this now, but I am not certain. Unless you are just tied to Photoshop because you own a lot of plug-ins or you have used it forever and are just super comfortable with it, Pixelmator should more than meet your photo editing requirements.
LiveQuartz - Free
LiveQuartz is a free, simple photo retouching tool. It’s very powerful for performing composites, and also comes with a nice library of effects and filters you can apply to your images. All of this is done in a non-destructive manner, meaning the original photo is never tampered with.
FotoMagico - $49
FotoMagico is an application designed to make it easy to produce powerful photo presentations. While a lot of photo software comes with the ability to perform a simple slideshow, FotoMagico gives you the tools to create a great slideshow, with music and transitions, and you can target different screen resolutions, even hi-definition. My mother is still on dial-up, so it is hard for her to hop on the internet and look at all of the vacation photos I’ve taken. I used FotoMagico to create a slideshow of all of my photos, and I added music to set the mood, then I burned it to DVD and sent it to her. It was simple and it turned out great.
Photonic - $25
I started using Flickr a while back, right before Yahoo! purchased it. I like the simple interface, and I am a pro user, so for $20 a year I can host an unlimited amount of photos, and download them in their original size. Flickr is great until you have a lot of photos to upload, then you find the web interface to be a pain. While Flickr does provide you with an uploader, it’s very unstable and doesn’t work all that well. This is where Photonic comes in handy. With Photonic you can connect to your Flickr library and upload a large amount of photos. You can also add your tags and comments at the time of upload, and choose to create a new set, or add to an existing set. Photonic also acts a a client for Flickr. You can use it to look at photos on Flickr without having to open your web browser and go to the Flickr site.
Snapshot - $24.95
Well, we’ve looked at software for importing and managing your photos, for editing, for creating slideshows, and for uploading to the web. The other big thing to do with photos is print them. This is where Snapshot comes into play. Snapshot is like a photo lab for your Mac. You have full control over the print size, cropping, borders, etc. It allows you to crop your photos in a non-destructive manner, so you can crop a photo just for that printing, and it doesn’t affect the original photo. It also integrates with photo software like iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom, so you can print photos from your libraries.
Remote Desktop on the Mac
Jul 22 2008 09:01 AM
I ran into some issues this past week using VMWare
Fusion, it wasn’t issues with VMWare, it was an issue
with our companies security software and an expired
certificate I couldn’t get to install due to a script
never running when I logged on using VMWare. To
resolve this issue I have stopped using VMWare for
the time being and have decided to remote into my
work machine. Microsoft makes a version of their
remote desktop client for
the Mac, so I decided to give that a try. The
lag on the connection was awful. I would be
typing and the letters were always a step
behind. This is tolerable for a quick task, but
not to sit there all day coding. I decided to
check out other options and came upon a free
tool called CoRD, which works great.
Connecting to my work machine is fast, and even
though there is the occasional lag, it was
nothing near what I was experiencing on
Microsoft RDC. I spent all day yesterday coding
with no issue. I highly recommend CoRD for
anyone needing to remote into a Windows machine.
Microsoft Validation Application Block
Jun 27 2008 04:40 PM
I first used one of the Microsoft Application Blocks
a few years ago, and needless to say, I wasn’t all
that impressed. We tried to use the caching
application block. It was more a pain than it was
worth. Because of this I was a little reluctant to
use any of the application blocks again, but after
seeing a quick presentation on the Validation
Application Block from a co-worker, I decided to give
it a shot. The application blocks have come a long
way. The code is a lot cleaner now, and it feels like
the overall design is better. I guess it’s like a lot
of Microsoft applications; version 1 sucks, but it
slowly gets better with each subsequent version.
Fluid
Jun 27 2008 04:17 PM
Do you have a favorite website and often wish that,
while you enjoy it as a web site, it would be cool if
there was a way to have it as a desktop application;
that way you can just double-click the icon to start
the application, and there it would be. Instead, you
have to start up your web browser and navigate to the
page. I have a couple web sites I feel that way
about, one of them being Google Reader.
I enjoy using Google Reader as my RSS Feed aggregator, but I tend to use NetNewsWire on the Mac. The reason being, I like that I can leave the application open and it will let me know when new news feeds are available. Like Mail on the Mac, it will show you the number of new messages over the icon in the dock. If I didn’t use NetNewsWire, I would have to occasionally navigate to the Google Reader site to check for new items.
Well, now you have a way, if you have a Mac. There’s this great free application called ‘Fluid’. What Fluid does is it lets you set up a web site as an application. It’s known as a site specific browser. You can read more about it and download it from here. Once you download the small 3 MB file, unzip it and copy the application to your Applications directory. When you launch Fluid you are presented with the following screen:
All you have to do is type in the URL, give the application a Name, and choose if you want to use the Favicon of the site, or a custom icon. You can find custom icons in the Flickr icon pool located here. Once that is filled out just click Create and it will create the application for you.
I created one for Google Reader, using a Google Reader icon from the above mentioned Flickr pool. The great thing about it is it actually shows the number of unread items I have in the Dock, as you can see here.
So, now I have the best of both worlds. I have a web application I can use as a desktop application.
I enjoy using Google Reader as my RSS Feed aggregator, but I tend to use NetNewsWire on the Mac. The reason being, I like that I can leave the application open and it will let me know when new news feeds are available. Like Mail on the Mac, it will show you the number of new messages over the icon in the dock. If I didn’t use NetNewsWire, I would have to occasionally navigate to the Google Reader site to check for new items.
Well, now you have a way, if you have a Mac. There’s this great free application called ‘Fluid’. What Fluid does is it lets you set up a web site as an application. It’s known as a site specific browser. You can read more about it and download it from here. Once you download the small 3 MB file, unzip it and copy the application to your Applications directory. When you launch Fluid you are presented with the following screen:
All you have to do is type in the URL, give the application a Name, and choose if you want to use the Favicon of the site, or a custom icon. You can find custom icons in the Flickr icon pool located here. Once that is filled out just click Create and it will create the application for you.
I created one for Google Reader, using a Google Reader icon from the above mentioned Flickr pool. The great thing about it is it actually shows the number of unread items I have in the Dock, as you can see here.
So, now I have the best of both worlds. I have a web application I can use as a desktop application.
Mac software deal sites
May 29 2008 09:58 PM
NetNewsWire
Jan 30 2008 08:39 PM
Like most everyone else in the modern world I
subscribe to RSS Feeds and use an RSS Aggregator to
gather all of those feeds and present them in a nice
manner. Unlike most people I use a desktop
application to read my subscriptions instead of an
online application like Bloglines or Google Reader. I tried
both of those services, but in the end I always
enjoyed using a desktop application. For a while
now, on the Mac, I have been using NewsFire. I
received it with one of those bundles of
software I've purchased. It works nice, but I'm
always on the outlook for new software to try
out. Recently another RSS Reader was brought to
my attention through some blogs I read. It's
called NetNewsWire. This
software used to cost money, but a few weeks ago
the developers released it as a free download. I
downloaded it and gave it a try, and now it's my
new RSS Reader. Here's what sold me on it
1. It has a built in web browser interface, so if you click on a link in a post you aren't taken out of your feed reader into your web browser.
2. It has an online counterpart, NewsGator, which is also free, and it keeps in sync with your desktop application. That way you can view postings on your local machine or from another machine on the web, and everything keeps in sync. I don't read blog postings at work because they tend to take up my time, but this would allow me to hop on at lunch and check out what's going on.
3. It has a nice interface for saving posts or clippings from posts.
The company has a Windows application called FeedDemon. I can't speak for how nice it works, but if it's anything like NetNewsWire it's worth checking out.
1. It has a built in web browser interface, so if you click on a link in a post you aren't taken out of your feed reader into your web browser.
2. It has an online counterpart, NewsGator, which is also free, and it keeps in sync with your desktop application. That way you can view postings on your local machine or from another machine on the web, and everything keeps in sync. I don't read blog postings at work because they tend to take up my time, but this would allow me to hop on at lunch and check out what's going on.
3. It has a nice interface for saving posts or clippings from posts.
The company has a Windows application called FeedDemon. I can't speak for how nice it works, but if it's anything like NetNewsWire it's worth checking out.