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.
|
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.
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.
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
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.
MacHeist III
Jan 09 2009 07:24 PM Filed in: Apple
Anyone who has read this blog knows that I like to
check out the bundles of Mac OS X software that show
up every once in a while. I find it to be the best
way to find new software, and get software for a
great price. One of the first bundles I ever bought
was from MacHeist. This was a few
years back. I received an e-mail the other day
stating that a new MacHeist bundle is
approaching. Hopefully there is some good
software in this years bundle.
Mac Software 2
Dec 28 2008 05:47 PM Filed in: Apple
This post is a follow up to an earlier post where I
was detailing some of the applications I use
day-to-day on my Mac. This will be split among many
posts due to the number of applications.
Utility Applications (cont.)
XSlimmer has a tag line of ‘Your Mac on a diet’ and this describes it perfectly. XSlimmer has the sole purpose of analyzing an application and determining what can be stripped from the application to make the binary smaller. The way it does this is two fold. First, many applications these days are packaged as Universal Binaries. A Universal Binary is packaged to allow it to run either on an Intel Mac, or on the older PPC Mac platform. This is great because it allows you to not have to worry about finding the correct version of an application, but this also results in your application having a lot of unneeded baggage. The second thing XSlimmer looks at is all of the nationalization’s included with the application. A lot of the applications you download have resources for displaying the UI and all messages and dialogs in the language the user has set up on their machine. A lot of these applications have 18 or so languages, while 99% of the time they will only be used in one language. XSlimmer will get rid of all the unneeded languages and the unneeded platform code, which can significantly cut down the size of the application. I ran it on all of my applications and got back 2.5 GB of space. While hard drive space is cheap these days, it is nice to have it used for important things, instead of stuff that will never be used.
Price: $12.95
Here’s some results from XSlimmer on my machine:
Safari Web Browser started off at 67.1 MB and was slimmed to 8.47 MB, saving 58.6 MB in space.
Mail started off at 289 MB and was slimmed to 24.7 MB, saving 264 MB in space.
Screenshot:
WhatSize is a utility that is helpful at recovering space just like XSlimmer. WhatSize will analyze your machine and will show you the size of a given folder and subfolders within that folder. This will let you see in a glance what is taking up a lot of room on your machine. You may find lots of unused files or applications you totally forgot about that are wasting space. Price: $12.99
Screenshot:
AppZapper is an uninstaller for Mac OS X. One of the great things about the Mac is the drag-and-drop nature of installing and uninstalling applications. To install an application on a Mac you drag it to the Applications folder. To uninstall you drag it to the trash and delete it. The problem with the uninstall is that some applications don’t keep all of their files in the Applications folder, it may store things in a preference file or in a cache file that doesn’t get uninstalled. This is where AppZapper comes into play. You drag the application onto AppZapper and it will search your hard drive for any related files that can be deleted, then you zap the files and delete them. Price: $12.95 with free upgrades for life.
Screenshots:
KeyCue is one of those applications you may look at and go, why would I pay for something like that, but it’s worth it if you are like me and like to use keyboard shortcuts a lot, to stop yourself from having to take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. I’m sure most people know the common keyboard shortcuts you use very often such as Command-C to Copy, Command-V to Paste and Command-Q to quit a program, but what about the more obscure less used commands? In Safari did you know you can use Command-D to bookmark a page, or do you use the mouse to click the bookmark menu item? Did you know if you are on a web page in Safari you can press Command-I and the page will be imported into Mail so you can e-mail it to someone? These are the kinds of things you learn with KeyCue. It’s really handy when you are a developer and you use something complicated like XCode or TextMate, which can have hundreds of commands available through key combinations. KeyCue is simple to use, while you are in an application you can hold down the Command key, and an overlay with a list of the commands will show. It is that easy, and extremely helpful. Price: $19.99
Screenshot:
That’s enough for this time. I realize that you may look at all of these applications and notice that some of them cost a lot. If you were to just add up the price of the applications in this post it would total close to $60. That’s why I tend to buy my applications in the occasional bundle promotion that is found on sites like MacZot, MUPromo and MacHeist. You can sometimes pick up $400+ of software for around $50. Plus MacZot and MUPromo have daily deals too on software. It’s good to keep a watch on these sites.
Utility Applications (cont.)
XSlimmer has a tag line of ‘Your Mac on a diet’ and this describes it perfectly. XSlimmer has the sole purpose of analyzing an application and determining what can be stripped from the application to make the binary smaller. The way it does this is two fold. First, many applications these days are packaged as Universal Binaries. A Universal Binary is packaged to allow it to run either on an Intel Mac, or on the older PPC Mac platform. This is great because it allows you to not have to worry about finding the correct version of an application, but this also results in your application having a lot of unneeded baggage. The second thing XSlimmer looks at is all of the nationalization’s included with the application. A lot of the applications you download have resources for displaying the UI and all messages and dialogs in the language the user has set up on their machine. A lot of these applications have 18 or so languages, while 99% of the time they will only be used in one language. XSlimmer will get rid of all the unneeded languages and the unneeded platform code, which can significantly cut down the size of the application. I ran it on all of my applications and got back 2.5 GB of space. While hard drive space is cheap these days, it is nice to have it used for important things, instead of stuff that will never be used.
Price: $12.95
Here’s some results from XSlimmer on my machine:
Safari Web Browser started off at 67.1 MB and was slimmed to 8.47 MB, saving 58.6 MB in space.
Mail started off at 289 MB and was slimmed to 24.7 MB, saving 264 MB in space.
Screenshot:
WhatSize is a utility that is helpful at recovering space just like XSlimmer. WhatSize will analyze your machine and will show you the size of a given folder and subfolders within that folder. This will let you see in a glance what is taking up a lot of room on your machine. You may find lots of unused files or applications you totally forgot about that are wasting space. Price: $12.99
Screenshot:
AppZapper is an uninstaller for Mac OS X. One of the great things about the Mac is the drag-and-drop nature of installing and uninstalling applications. To install an application on a Mac you drag it to the Applications folder. To uninstall you drag it to the trash and delete it. The problem with the uninstall is that some applications don’t keep all of their files in the Applications folder, it may store things in a preference file or in a cache file that doesn’t get uninstalled. This is where AppZapper comes into play. You drag the application onto AppZapper and it will search your hard drive for any related files that can be deleted, then you zap the files and delete them. Price: $12.95 with free upgrades for life.
Screenshots:
KeyCue is one of those applications you may look at and go, why would I pay for something like that, but it’s worth it if you are like me and like to use keyboard shortcuts a lot, to stop yourself from having to take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. I’m sure most people know the common keyboard shortcuts you use very often such as Command-C to Copy, Command-V to Paste and Command-Q to quit a program, but what about the more obscure less used commands? In Safari did you know you can use Command-D to bookmark a page, or do you use the mouse to click the bookmark menu item? Did you know if you are on a web page in Safari you can press Command-I and the page will be imported into Mail so you can e-mail it to someone? These are the kinds of things you learn with KeyCue. It’s really handy when you are a developer and you use something complicated like XCode or TextMate, which can have hundreds of commands available through key combinations. KeyCue is simple to use, while you are in an application you can hold down the Command key, and an overlay with a list of the commands will show. It is that easy, and extremely helpful. Price: $19.99
Screenshot:
That’s enough for this time. I realize that you may look at all of these applications and notice that some of them cost a lot. If you were to just add up the price of the applications in this post it would total close to $60. That’s why I tend to buy my applications in the occasional bundle promotion that is found on sites like MacZot, MUPromo and MacHeist. You can sometimes pick up $400+ of software for around $50. Plus MacZot and MUPromo have daily deals too on software. It’s good to keep a watch on these sites.
Mac Software
Dec 23 2008 06:15 PM Filed in: Apple
There are a lot of people at my place of employment
that are joining the world of Apple, and they often
ask me what application I use to do such-and-such. I
figured I would go through the applications I have
installed on my Mac and tell a little about them,
that way they can see what I use.
Utility Applications
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It lets applications send you notifications. You know those annoying little balloon pop-up windows that come from the task bar in Windows, letting you know stuff like wireless networks are available, or your Exchange e-mail isn’t working; growl is something along those lines, but a lot nicer looking, and less obtrusive. Price: Free.
Screenshot
IStat Menus is an application for those computer geeks that like to know what’s going on with their system. It lets you add up to 8 separate menus to your menu bar. These menus will tell you about your CPU and Memory, Network Traffic, Fan Speed, Hard Drive, Temperature, etc. Price: Free (donations encouraged).
Screenshot
Hazel is one of those applications I got as part of a software bundle that runs every so often. When I first installed it, I didn’t really think much of it, but the more I used it, the more I saw its worth. Hazel lets you set rules on folders to take certain actions. For example, it comes with built in rules for your Downloads folder. If the file you download is a music file, after the file download is complete, the file will be moved from your Downloads folder, to your Music folder in your home directory. Same goes for Movies. Hazel will also monitor your trash can and automatically empty it after a file has been in there for a certain amount of time. Hazel will apply colors to the labels of folders, if there are files in it you haven’t accessed in a while. Price: $21.95.
Screenshot
Default Folder X is a great application that makes the Mac OS X save and open dialogs easy and fast to work with. It’s hard to explain what Default Folder X has to offer, so if you want to know more visit the website. Price: $34.95
Screenshot
Perian is called the swiss-army knife for Quicktime. It’s a free, open source Quicktime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. What that boils down to is Perian lets you use Quicktime to play videos other than the ones natively supported by Quicktime. This is handy when you don’t want to have multiple media players on your computer to handle all of the different video formats out there. Price: Free.
Caffeine is a simple application that stops your Mac from going to sleep. Don’t you hate it when you are on your Mac and in the middle of reading something, or perhaps giving a presentation, and the screen dims because you haven’t typed or moved the mouse? Caffeine will stop the screen from dimming and keep the Mac from going to sleep. Price: Free.
1Password is a password manager and automatic form filler. With all of the web sites out there that request for you to sign in, it’s pretty much necessary to have a password manager these days to keep track of it all. 1Password is nice because it will not only store your password, but can also generate a password for you. 1Password will also integrate itself into your browser, and automatically fill in the information for you when you visit a site. Price: $39.95.
Speed Download is a download manager. Download managers keep track of all your downloads, and will let you resume a download later, if for some reason your download doesn’t complete. Speed Download 5 is spectacular and worth the money. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
Fetch is an easy to use FTP and SFTP client. While there are free FTP clients for the Mac, Fetch is the first FTP client I’ve used that doesn’t have a crowded, hard to use interface. Fetch has all its functionality in one simple window. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
That’s enough for now, I will post about more applications in another post at a later time.
Utility Applications
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It lets applications send you notifications. You know those annoying little balloon pop-up windows that come from the task bar in Windows, letting you know stuff like wireless networks are available, or your Exchange e-mail isn’t working; growl is something along those lines, but a lot nicer looking, and less obtrusive. Price: Free.
Screenshot
IStat Menus is an application for those computer geeks that like to know what’s going on with their system. It lets you add up to 8 separate menus to your menu bar. These menus will tell you about your CPU and Memory, Network Traffic, Fan Speed, Hard Drive, Temperature, etc. Price: Free (donations encouraged).
Screenshot
Hazel is one of those applications I got as part of a software bundle that runs every so often. When I first installed it, I didn’t really think much of it, but the more I used it, the more I saw its worth. Hazel lets you set rules on folders to take certain actions. For example, it comes with built in rules for your Downloads folder. If the file you download is a music file, after the file download is complete, the file will be moved from your Downloads folder, to your Music folder in your home directory. Same goes for Movies. Hazel will also monitor your trash can and automatically empty it after a file has been in there for a certain amount of time. Hazel will apply colors to the labels of folders, if there are files in it you haven’t accessed in a while. Price: $21.95.
Screenshot
Default Folder X is a great application that makes the Mac OS X save and open dialogs easy and fast to work with. It’s hard to explain what Default Folder X has to offer, so if you want to know more visit the website. Price: $34.95
Screenshot
Perian is called the swiss-army knife for Quicktime. It’s a free, open source Quicktime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. What that boils down to is Perian lets you use Quicktime to play videos other than the ones natively supported by Quicktime. This is handy when you don’t want to have multiple media players on your computer to handle all of the different video formats out there. Price: Free.
Caffeine is a simple application that stops your Mac from going to sleep. Don’t you hate it when you are on your Mac and in the middle of reading something, or perhaps giving a presentation, and the screen dims because you haven’t typed or moved the mouse? Caffeine will stop the screen from dimming and keep the Mac from going to sleep. Price: Free.
1Password is a password manager and automatic form filler. With all of the web sites out there that request for you to sign in, it’s pretty much necessary to have a password manager these days to keep track of it all. 1Password is nice because it will not only store your password, but can also generate a password for you. 1Password will also integrate itself into your browser, and automatically fill in the information for you when you visit a site. Price: $39.95.
Speed Download is a download manager. Download managers keep track of all your downloads, and will let you resume a download later, if for some reason your download doesn’t complete. Speed Download 5 is spectacular and worth the money. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
Fetch is an easy to use FTP and SFTP client. While there are free FTP clients for the Mac, Fetch is the first FTP client I’ve used that doesn’t have a crowded, hard to use interface. Fetch has all its functionality in one simple window. Price: $25.00.
Screenshot
That’s enough for now, I will post about more applications in another post at a later time.
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.
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.
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:
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.
AppFresh
Feb 16 2008 01:23 PM Filed in: Apple
If you have a Mac I recommend an application called
"AppFresh". It's a pretty
simple, but very helpful application. AppFresh
scans your computer to find all the applications
you have installed. Then it checks those
applications against various web sites to see if
the version on your computer is up to date. If
it's not up to date it will provide information
about the update and allow you to download and
install from within the application. With the
recent upgrade to Leopard there are a lot of
applications that are putting out new releases
to provide compatibility. It's a free
application I highly recommend.
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.
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.
Mac Software
Jan 26 2008 04:19 PM Filed in: Apple
I did a post a little over a
year ago detailing some of the software I enjoy
using on my Mac. Since the time I wrote that
posting I have started using other software on
my Mac too, so that's what I'm writing about in
this post. I recently purchased a bundle from
Macheist in their second
annual bundle offering. It's pretty nice, they
offer a bundle of software, usually valued at a
couple hundred dollars, for around $49, and part
of the proceeds go to charity. I purchased a
bundle last year, and purchased another this
year. Even if there is one or two applications
in the bundle you like, it's usually cheaper to
purchase the bundle than to purchase those
applications separately. You also get the
benefit of trying out new software you may have
never thought of trying before. There were a
couple applications in this years bundle that I
already owned, Pixelmator and AppZapper, but I
have a friend that has a Mac that I will gladly
pass those along to. Some of the applications I
got this year that I have started using are
Vector Designer - this is a vector graphic program, similar to Adobe Illustrator. I currently use an application called Intaglio which I received with last years bundle. I'm always up for trying another application to see if I like it better, so I went ahead and installed it and will be trying it out.
1Password - in todays world you probably have a lot of web sites you visit that require you to register to be a user. Most of us probably get to the point where we use the same username/password at each site, that way we have a lot less chance of forgetting it. 1Password is an application that not only keeps track of your username/password and can automatically fill it in for you, but you can also use it to generate a strong password for you. This is a great feature, as long as you plan on visiting that site from a computer that has 1Password installed on it, since you don't know the password it creates for you. You can also use 1Password to help fill out forms for you. You can create a profile, and within that profile enter your name, address, e-mail, etc. Then, once you are on a form asking for that information you can have 1Password fill the form out for you. All of your data is stored encrypted on your computer, which uses a master password to unlock.
Speed Download - this is a download manager on steroids. You can have Speed Download integrate itself into all the browsers on your computer, plus it's supported in some other software, such as iTunes and Growl. A download manager is a nice tool to have. It sets itself up to communicate with the site you are downloading from, which allows you to resume a download which may have been interrupted earlier. Speed Download can also be used for basic FTP tasks, allowing you to download/upload to your FTP server.
CSSEdit - if you do any sort of web development these days I certainly hope you have hopped on the CSS bandwagon, so you are now separating your styling from your presentation. CSSEdit is an application that helps you with real-time CSS styling. You can make a CSS change and see it automatically without having to save and upload the changes.
Cha-Ching - I currently use money management software called iBank. I've been pretty happy with it, I use it to track my Checking, Savings, Roth IRA, Sharebuilder and Credit Card accounts; but, like with the vector graphics software above, I am always up for trying another application to see if it provides a nicer way to accomplish what I currently do in the current software.
Taskpaper - this is what is commonly referred to as GTD (Get Things Done) software. It has a simple task and it does it well. You create projects, and for those projects you create tasks. Once you complete a task you can cross it off your list. This is very similar to the web application I am creating with RoR, which I have been detailing in a couple blog posts. I am a big fan of working in the GTD fashion. I like breaking a project down into manageable, trackable tasks. I like being able to look at a list and see what I have left to accomplish. I also like being able to cross off a task when I'm done. It adds a finality to the task, makes you feel like you accomplished something throughout the day when you can look at your list and see stuff crossed out.
Tiki Magic Mini Golf - yes, this is a game, something I don't have many of on my computer. I installed it and gave it a try. It's actually pretty fun. Think of it as putt-putt golf on your computer. My laptop handles the 3D graphics pretty well, I have it run at 1280x1024 and a high graphic setting and I don't receive any sort of frame delay or flickering. It's something I will fire up every once in a while.
There are a couple other applications that were included with the MacHeist bundle: SnapzProX, Coversutra, iStopMotion, Awaken, and Wingnuts 2, but I haven't installed them at this time, so I can't speak for how I like them, but will definitely review them if I install them in the future.
There are a couple other pieces of software I have been using that I got separate from this bundle.
iSquint - once NBC decided to take their shows off iTunes I started downloading the shows from the web. These shows are generally in DivX AVI format, which doesn't natively play on my Apple TV or Video iPod. iSquint takes care of this. Drop the video on iSquint and it will convert it into the format needed to work with Apple TV / iPod, and can also import the video into iTunes once it's done with the conversion. This way I still get to enjoy the shows out on my big screen TV.
Yummy Soup - strange name, but a great program. I like to cook. I don't do it often enough, but I do enjoy it when I get around to doing it. Yummy Soup is a recipe manager. It comes preloaded with a lot of recipes and can import recipes from a couple different web sites.
Calorie King - I purchased this software to help me keep track of what I put into my body every day, so I can see what I need to cut out to lose weight. It has a huge database of food and you can add your own custom food to the database too. When I first started using this it let me see that even though I was never going above my daily allotment of calories, I was going way above my fat and carb allotment.
Vector Designer - this is a vector graphic program, similar to Adobe Illustrator. I currently use an application called Intaglio which I received with last years bundle. I'm always up for trying another application to see if I like it better, so I went ahead and installed it and will be trying it out.
1Password - in todays world you probably have a lot of web sites you visit that require you to register to be a user. Most of us probably get to the point where we use the same username/password at each site, that way we have a lot less chance of forgetting it. 1Password is an application that not only keeps track of your username/password and can automatically fill it in for you, but you can also use it to generate a strong password for you. This is a great feature, as long as you plan on visiting that site from a computer that has 1Password installed on it, since you don't know the password it creates for you. You can also use 1Password to help fill out forms for you. You can create a profile, and within that profile enter your name, address, e-mail, etc. Then, once you are on a form asking for that information you can have 1Password fill the form out for you. All of your data is stored encrypted on your computer, which uses a master password to unlock.
Speed Download - this is a download manager on steroids. You can have Speed Download integrate itself into all the browsers on your computer, plus it's supported in some other software, such as iTunes and Growl. A download manager is a nice tool to have. It sets itself up to communicate with the site you are downloading from, which allows you to resume a download which may have been interrupted earlier. Speed Download can also be used for basic FTP tasks, allowing you to download/upload to your FTP server.
CSSEdit - if you do any sort of web development these days I certainly hope you have hopped on the CSS bandwagon, so you are now separating your styling from your presentation. CSSEdit is an application that helps you with real-time CSS styling. You can make a CSS change and see it automatically without having to save and upload the changes.
Cha-Ching - I currently use money management software called iBank. I've been pretty happy with it, I use it to track my Checking, Savings, Roth IRA, Sharebuilder and Credit Card accounts; but, like with the vector graphics software above, I am always up for trying another application to see if it provides a nicer way to accomplish what I currently do in the current software.
Taskpaper - this is what is commonly referred to as GTD (Get Things Done) software. It has a simple task and it does it well. You create projects, and for those projects you create tasks. Once you complete a task you can cross it off your list. This is very similar to the web application I am creating with RoR, which I have been detailing in a couple blog posts. I am a big fan of working in the GTD fashion. I like breaking a project down into manageable, trackable tasks. I like being able to look at a list and see what I have left to accomplish. I also like being able to cross off a task when I'm done. It adds a finality to the task, makes you feel like you accomplished something throughout the day when you can look at your list and see stuff crossed out.
Tiki Magic Mini Golf - yes, this is a game, something I don't have many of on my computer. I installed it and gave it a try. It's actually pretty fun. Think of it as putt-putt golf on your computer. My laptop handles the 3D graphics pretty well, I have it run at 1280x1024 and a high graphic setting and I don't receive any sort of frame delay or flickering. It's something I will fire up every once in a while.
There are a couple other applications that were included with the MacHeist bundle: SnapzProX, Coversutra, iStopMotion, Awaken, and Wingnuts 2, but I haven't installed them at this time, so I can't speak for how I like them, but will definitely review them if I install them in the future.
There are a couple other pieces of software I have been using that I got separate from this bundle.
iSquint - once NBC decided to take their shows off iTunes I started downloading the shows from the web. These shows are generally in DivX AVI format, which doesn't natively play on my Apple TV or Video iPod. iSquint takes care of this. Drop the video on iSquint and it will convert it into the format needed to work with Apple TV / iPod, and can also import the video into iTunes once it's done with the conversion. This way I still get to enjoy the shows out on my big screen TV.
Yummy Soup - strange name, but a great program. I like to cook. I don't do it often enough, but I do enjoy it when I get around to doing it. Yummy Soup is a recipe manager. It comes preloaded with a lot of recipes and can import recipes from a couple different web sites.
Calorie King - I purchased this software to help me keep track of what I put into my body every day, so I can see what I need to cut out to lose weight. It has a huge database of food and you can add your own custom food to the database too. When I first started using this it let me see that even though I was never going above my daily allotment of calories, I was going way above my fat and carb allotment.
iWork
I haven't ever really been big on office productivity
software. It's the one category of software I always
find I spend more time battling the software than
getting any particular use out of it. In my
day-to-day job I open the occasional Word document or
Excel spreadsheet, but it's very rare for me to
create one myself, unless I am throwing together a
design document, which I find Word an awful tool for,
but it's what we're provided. At home it's pretty
much the same, not much use for office software, but
I do like to use a spreadsheet every once in a while,
so I broke down the other day and purchased iWork.
Now I know I could use the free OpenOffice.org, or
the NeoOffice version for the Mac, but I find them to
be rather bloated and providing the same hindrance
that I find with Microsoft Office. There is a version
of Microsoft Office for the Mac, a new version comes
out next week, but it costs over $300, plus it's
pretty much the same version as on Windows, which I'm
not a fan of. Instead, I decided to try out Apple's
office suite, and I actually find that I like it. It
costs $79, and it contains a Word Processor called
'Pages', a Spreadsheet application called 'Numbers'
and presentation software called 'Keynote'.
Pages has two different modes, 'Word Processor' or 'Page Layout'. I like the separation, so you have the tools available that you expect when you are doing each mode. It's fully compatible with .doc and .docx, being able to open and save in those formats, so you can still exist in a Microsoft world.
Numbers is pretty amazing. Never thought I'd be a fan of spreadsheet software, but I threw together a budget spreadsheet in no time; it even has a graph. To create a comparable paige in Excel I'd have to have the help file open or do web searches. It's just very straight forward in Numbers. Again, like Pages, it supports .xls and .xlsx formats, so it can be used at work.
Keynote is what Steve Jobs uses for his MacWorld presentations, and they always turn out great, so I know it's a great piece of software. I don't find myself doing many presentations, but if I get the chance to I will definitely use Keynote.
Overall, I am satisfied with my purchase. Office suites have been around for a while, and they've become behemoths, with little new innovation coming out, so it's nice to see Apple throw in some new features and new takes on how to do things.
Pages has two different modes, 'Word Processor' or 'Page Layout'. I like the separation, so you have the tools available that you expect when you are doing each mode. It's fully compatible with .doc and .docx, being able to open and save in those formats, so you can still exist in a Microsoft world.
Numbers is pretty amazing. Never thought I'd be a fan of spreadsheet software, but I threw together a budget spreadsheet in no time; it even has a graph. To create a comparable paige in Excel I'd have to have the help file open or do web searches. It's just very straight forward in Numbers. Again, like Pages, it supports .xls and .xlsx formats, so it can be used at work.
Keynote is what Steve Jobs uses for his MacWorld presentations, and they always turn out great, so I know it's a great piece of software. I don't find myself doing many presentations, but if I get the chance to I will definitely use Keynote.
Overall, I am satisfied with my purchase. Office suites have been around for a while, and they've become behemoths, with little new innovation coming out, so it's nice to see Apple throw in some new features and new takes on how to do things.