Software

MacHeist III: All Apps Unlocked

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

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.
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Backblaze

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.

  • 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.
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Mac Software 3 - Photo

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Remote Desktop on the Mac

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.
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Microsoft Validation Application Block

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.
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Fluid

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:

Fluid

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.

Dock

So, now I have the best of both worlds. I have a web application I can use as a desktop application.
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Mac software deal sites

I've found a couple sites that have daily specials on software for the Mac. I've found that a lot of 3rd party software for the Mac is actually pretty good software, compared to a lot of the software I've tried for the Windows platform. A lot of the stuff is actually worth buying.

MacZot

MuPromo
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NetNewsWire

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.
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