Archive for February, 2007

It’s a hard thing to admit, but there are times when I remember features I had on Windows and wish I could use them on my Mac. These are very, very rare times, mind you, but they do exist. One of them is the search in Windows XP. Though it is slow, it can be much more precise than Spotlight when it comes to finding that one little lost file. The good news is that the freeware app Spotlaser exists to bring this kind of focused search and the speed of Spotlight together.

If you own any new Apple laptop, your machine is equipped with sudden motion sensor technology to detect locomotion. Hence, for instance, should you drop your laptop while it is busy writing or reading data , the sensor will instruct the built-in hard drive’s read & write heads to park themselves in a designated safe spot to alleviate data corruption, loss, or failure in mere milliseconds. This innovation occasionally comes with a price. If you carry your laptops around while it is dozing, there will be times when it wakes up on its own without your knowledge due to perhaps strong vibration or juggling. This constitutes a problem. One, it drains your battery and second, the accumulated heat generated while it’s cocooned inside your bag is not a good thing thermally.

There are many apps out there that promise to improve your life in one way or another, but it’s certainly not often that an app actually does so by getting inside your head and fundamentally altering your brainwaves. Relax, this isn’t some crazy brainwashing scheme. It’s the “life coaching” app Pzizz.

I am always salvaging the web for new and cool apps to use. However, I always keep my eye out for apps related to work or school. The Mac can use all the school related applications it can get, and I went out and rounded up the best of the best - the apps I found most useful for school.

1. iFlash (Loopware, $14.95) When it comes to making flash cards, it’s a pain. So why not virtual flash cards? iFlash lets the user create virtual flashcards, store decks, and even upload decks to their online database. You can visit the database and download home made decks by other users, or upload your own. iFlash, if told to, even auto-defines vocabulary words you put on the front of the flash card.

I’m sure many of you have noticed MacApper’s custom blog design, and many have asked about the “Project Grow” banner at the bottom of the site - in this post, we’ll explain a little more about the design. The amount of questions and click-throughs have been quite high according to our friend Teddy Hwang.

I’m here to tell you guys what it’s all about. Project Grow is a concept our friend Teddy Hwang has come up with to help him on his way to becoming a freelance web designer. Teddy has been a great asset to MacApper and we couldn’t have done it without him. He’s been a great asset to the team here and the amount of time and work he’s put into the site astounds us, and is much appreciated.

I was looking around the Software for Starving Students website today (which, by the way, is a great collection of useful free apps for anyone, not limited to starving students) when I came across Bleezer, a desktop blogging app.

For those of you who don’t know, a desktop blogging app is an app that allows you to create and edit a blog post on your computer, before uploading it to the internet and publishing it on your blog or webpage. They usually make things like adding images and hyperlinks easier, as well as offering the convenience of being able to write without an internet connection. I’m writing these very words on a Wordpress post-editing page in my web browser, and while Wordpress is lovely and all, I really like being able to write away from the distractions that a web browser offers.

You love Flickr? Then Sniper is for you! Sniper lets you browse Flickr photos in a native OS X application. What are the advantages? Well, with Sniper, you can drag, drop, and copy pictures, then proceed to browse them in an intuitive scrollable view. It’s faster and a lot easier this way. You like a picture? You can import straight into iPhoto in one click or simply download it. Here are some of the highlighted features in Sniper:

• View and manage your photostream and favorites
• View your contacts’ photos
• View photos from groups
• Download / send to iPhoto

I’m just going to come right out and say it: you need ImageWell. Period. No matter who you are, this app will prove useful at some point. After five minutes of playing with this app, I knew that it was going in my dock and I wished I had it much sooner!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Tetris, I pity you. If you do, you will know that Tetris is awesome but old school. Now, I don’t have a problem with old school, but it doesn’t do the awesome power of the Mac justice. Enter Quinn.

Quinn is beautiful Tetris for your beautiful Mac. But Quinn not only has style, it has functionality. Quinn allows you to play against your friends over Bonjour, and it does so perfectly (I would show a screenshot, but I don’t have many friends willing to play me).

To all of those budding web developers out there: this showdown is for you. Today, I am going to look at 5 HTML editors, and find which one really is the best. The five editors are: TextMate (€39, app. $60), BBEdit ($125), Taco HTML Edit (freeware), SubEthaEdit ($35), and xPad (freeware).

Installation
TextMate: 5/5
The installation for TextMate was very simple. The download took about 30 seconds on my cable internet, but if you have a slower connection, be prepared to wait! Once the download finished, I was presented with a plain DMG with an icon for TextMate, and my Applications folder icon. I dragged the TextMate con into Applications, and boom, I was done.

Who has time to turn down the sound down before restarting your Mac? If you answered “not me” to that statement, then Satsumac Software has a piece of software for you.

Psst can silence the startup sound, or if you really want it can max out the volume as well. This software might fall into the “questionably useful” category, especially when reading the warning on the Satsumac Software page: Important: The method Psst uses to change the volume does not work on every model… .

HandBrake, easily one of the best and most popular open-source apps available for the Mac, is finally getting an update after nearly a year of dormancy thanks to some new blood on the development team.

The no-nonsense DVD-to-MP4 ripper and encoder was originally developed by Eric Petit, also known as “titer.” After getting off to a great start, HandBrake’s production halted when Petit all but disappeared around May of last year. During his absence some contributors to the project decided to take matters into their own hands by creating a development fork of HandBrake, appropriately named MediaFork.

You love your Mac right? Wish for a better system cleaner? Well with OnyX you get a system cleaner, and then some.

After taking OnyX for a test drive, I found that there are many cool features. In total there are eight menus; Parameters, Maintenance, Cleaning, Automation, Log FIles, Unix Utilities, Info, and Preferences. All of them have many sub menus, but we’ll just take a look at the main ones for now. Here’s a quick run down:

I just love my website, and now I don’t need to even open a browser to look at it! Thanks to WebDesktop. WebDesktop has the ability to open any website in a window that layers under your desktop, but over your background.

Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic Software, made the app using WebKit on Mac, so WebDesktop will render exactly how Safari does. When you bring the window on top, it is a fully functional window -you can scroll down and input forms. The preferences all you to change the optimality of the window when it is inactive and for when it is active. Also, the refresh rate of of the window can be adjusted so that you can stay updated.

Frenzic is a new, fast-paced puzzle game from the folks over at Iconfactory. The object of the game is to place wedge-shaped slices into your choice of six circles. It doesn’t sound very fun, but once you give it a try, you will become addicted. You can try to beat your own high score, or play against others online.

I downloaded the free trial, which allows for 60 minutes of gameplay. It’s a fun and addicting game, but I’m not sure it is worth the price of $14.95. You can also add another ten bucks a year to use its online features (or pay $24.95 for lifetime online play). You should definitely give Frenzic a shot. Head over to the site where you can download the trial or view a video of gameplay.