Archive for July, 2008

Ever since Apple announced the full SDK for iPhone back in March, there have been many questions about details and procedures regarding development of iPhone applications and the App Store distribution model that have gone unanswered. Due to a non-disclosure clause in the SDK license agreement, developers were unable to answer specific questions about the development and acceptance process to users, and Apple has been even more tight-lipped. Even after the App Store opened to the public on July 10, the NDA was not lifted, and there are still tons of questions from developers and end users alike. Even though we still don’t have any official solutions, bits and pieces of information are beginning to leak out, and long-standing questions are being answered.

At this moment there are many RSS readers for Mac. Most of them are even free, but none of them are quite like Headline. Headline is the first application from Doseido Software.

If you ever have to work with a team on some code or a paper, you know how important it is to be on the same page as everyone. You need to know what your partners did, so you can approve. This is why things like Microsoft Word, and Pages have text change trackers. But what if you don’t want to open your word processor every time you need to approve? Or if you don’t even have one of those or they don’t support the file format you are working with? Well, that is where Changes comes in.

Back in December we mentioned an application called Timeline, from Bee Documents. Timeline is an application that allows you to create (you guessed it) timelines. The version of Timeline mentioned back in December was the 2D version, and today I would like to take a look at the 3D version.

At WWDC this past June, Timeline 3D was awarded runner up in “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application” at the Apple Design Awards ceremony. This should give you an idea of the quality of Timeline 3D. It is very similar to the 2D version, except for a few key differences (one of which I’m sure you have picked out).

Ogio makes all kinds of bags ranging from computer to sports. They are best known for their laptop, school, and skate bags, and I have been using the Metroid laptop bag for about six months now for my MacBook Pro.

The Metroid has become my every-day bag for work and school. In addition to my 15″ MacBook Pro, the bag has plenty of pockets for accessories such as the power adapter, a mouse, and my iPod. Even with all those things, the main compartment still has enough room to allow me to hold a few textbooks.

This last year has been chock full of Mac shareware promotions. First, you have your mega-bundles from MacHeist and MacUpdate, then discounts like MacSanta, and-build-your-own-bundle promo Give Good Food to your Mac. A few weeks ago, a splash page was put up advertising the Mac Mix Promo, which told us to “get ready for something totally new.”

Of course, with the Give Good Food to your Mac promo, the build-your-own-bundle idea is nothing new. The selection of apps for the Mac Mix Promo though, makes it worth looking at. A list of the participating applications and details after the jump.

Most likely, you’ve run into this problem in the last two hours. You’ve copied some text, pasted it into a document, copied some other text, pasted it, gone back to the first text block and copied it again. The problem with cutting/copying and pasting is its inability to multitask. Now I’m not one to clutter up your menu bar, but this free app is worth the real estate.

Jumpcut, a free minimalist clipboard buffering application, is a great way to keep track of your clipboard history. Once you start Jumpcut, it “listens” for your text clipboard entries and remembers them. These text clippings can be accessed through the menu:

There are plenty of options out there for folder synchronization on your mac. Sure, you can run various menubar applications, use your terminal magic skillz, or you could use an application that you’ve been using all along to do something a little different. In an attempt to streamline your processor activity, Cyberduck can not only satisfy your FTP, SFTP and Amazon S3 browsing needs, but also synchronize folders over these connections as well.

First, you’ll need to identify a folder to sync with on your remote host. Then, bust open your file menu and select Synchronize.

Before reading this post, you may want to make a promise to yourself. You will clean up your inbox. You will keep it organized and finally actualize those “my weakness is perfectionism” claims you made in your job interview. So go ahead, build a tiny altar to GTD, and click the jump for some free life-changing inbox organization.

In-Dev software, the developers of MailTags, have a sweet little Mail.app add on for those of us who are phasing out the mouse. Mail Act-On for Leopard is a free app that lets you move, flag, color, and set due dates for messages you receive in your Inbox. All it takes is a little set up:

Screen recording can come is useful at many different times. The only problem is that until now most screen recording applications are very complicated. You need to change every little thing before starting the recording. They can also be a bit expensive. Sequence, from app4mac, fixes this. Sequence is very easy to use, and comes at a cheap price too.

Along with the birth of Firefox 3.0 came the unfortunate death of Google Browser Sync, the incredibly popular Firefox extension that allowed users to keep their bookmarks in sync across computers. While this is still possible with .mac and Safari, the space for a new cross platform solution is vast. (As a side note, I know that you can use Safari on Windows, but it still hardly has any marketshare compared to Firefox and IE). But the lack of a major browser sync tool for Firefox 3.0 may finally have a solution; it’s called Weave and it’s straight out of the Mozilla Labs.

The first thing that my teacher tells us to do when we start a project, is to create a “mind map.” Being a student in the technology age, I like to try and use my Mac for as much of my schoolwork as I can.

Usually, to create a mind map on my Mac, I open up Pages, go into “Page Layout” and join text boxes and pictures together with lines. This method works fine for simple mind maps, but re-arranging boxes is a pain, and it can get difficult to add a little style to the page without making it a mess. OmniGraffle, from the OmniGroup, however, is an application focused on creating diagrams, process charts and more.

A few weeks ago I reviewed an application called Today, the amazing, lighweight, menu bar app that sync events and to-dos with iCal. We had a 5 license giveaway, and the winners are:

Perfect Star
Nick
macpug
Stefan
Steve

If you won, you should have gotten an email.

Thank you to everyone who entered, and remember, if you really like Today it only costs $15 from Second Gear LLC

If you’ve ever done a crossword puzzle, you know how annoying it is if you fill in a word wrong with a pen, or if you rip or even lose the actual puzzle. Sure, you could go to the newspaper’s web page; the only problem is that these usually look bad, and they are nearly impossible to save. Some of them even use Flash, which will severely slow down your computer. Well, Red Sweater’s Black Ink has finally brought crossword puzzles into the 21st century, and onto your Mac.

With the introduction of iWeb in the latest versions of Apple’s iLife suite of media/lifestyle applications, making and publishing your own website has never been easier. The incredibly straightforward design tools offer a true WYSIWYG web-creator tool, and a highly customizable one at that. iWeb does, however, have its limitations and lacks some capabilities that many people would like to see available. Enter iTweak, a nifty freeware app from Guimkie, that offers a handful of powerful and useful features that can help make your iWeb site that much better.