Easily Spice Up Stacks with Stacks In Da Place
A while back, a set of “drawers” icons spread like wildfire across the internet. The icons, which were meant to make stacks in Leopard’s dock more attractive, looked pretty nifty, but getting them to work properly involved Terminal use and some other tinkering. However, with “Stacks in Da Place” from MacXeagle, getting your stacks looking nice and organized is even easier.
Upon opening, Stacks In Da Place automatically detects your currently set up stacks and shows you the default icon. Adding an icon (such as one of the various “Drawer” icons) is as simple as dragging and dropping. (You can find the “Drawers” here)
Freeware Friday: Anti-Productivity Edition
We have been talking at MacApper for the past few weeks about different weekly “specials†we could do, and one of the ideas that was brought up was a weekly freeware post. This has now evolved into “Freeware Friday,†where every Friday either I or another MacApper contributor will put together a roundup of a few little freeware apps we have been playing around with the past week.
Today, I have put together a list of 4 little applications that will help to kill your productivity (like you even need help with that, right?). They have no productive value, but definitely can get addicting, or are great when you have a little time to kill.
DVD Remaster Pro: Quickly Re-compress your DVD Collection
When it comes to putting DVDs on your Mac, the first application that comes to mind for many is the open-source Handbrake. DVDRemaster Pro, from Metakine, is an application similar to Handbrake. It allows you to re-compress an entire DVD, export a DVD to a device such as an iPod, or rip a raw, uncompressed stream of the DVD to your hard drive.
When you first open DVDRemaster Pro, you have to choose a source. DVDRemaster Pro comes with an application called FairMount, that allows you to mount DVDs like Disk Images.
Mellel: More Competition for Word
If you’ve ever had to use your computer to put words on a page for an essay, a business letter, or that book that you definitely will finish some day, then chances are good that you’ve encountered Word. Once upon a time, Microsoft Word was the standard for any kind of writing work, but now that more and more developers are rising up to challenge Microsoft’s monopoly, Mac-based writers have an increasingly large number of options when choosing a word processor to suit their needs. Among them is Mellel, a surprisingly robust competitor from RedleX.
MacApper Tip: Clean Out Your Menubar Items
With the plethora of apps that offer you instant access to notifications and functions directly from the menubar, things can get pretty crowded pretty fast. However, it’s super easy to get rid of most of the items in your menubar, and it’s only a click and drag away.
On most Apple apps, simply command clicking will allow you to take the icon right off the menubar so that you have some more screen real estate available. You’ll see the familiar “poof” effect once it’s gone.
AppStoreGems Launches: Donating Today’s Revenue to Charities.
Today, a group of iPhone developers has launched a site called “AppStoreGems.†AppStoreGems is the result of a brainstorming session between John Casasanta, and Austin Sarner. They got a few other iPhone devs together, and bought a print ad in Macworld, which came out today. For launch day, the devs of AppStoreGems are donating all of their revenue today to charity.
There are 6 apps that are a part of the AppStoreGems site right now, from 5 developers. The apps are as follows:
Linkinus: IRC Made Easy
IRC is one of the most used, yet oldest forms of Internet chat. Because of this, it is also very simple. So, if IRC is so simple to use, why are the clients sometimes so difficult to figure out? Well, the word “simple” gets a whole new meaning with Linkinus.
OmniFocus: GTD-based Productivity
If you are looking to “get things done” on your Mac, you have plenty of choice when it comes to applications to aid you. Everything from a very minimal to-do list applications like Anxiety, to full blown GTD-based applications like OmniFocus, the application I want to talk about today.
If you are familiar with the GTD concept by David Allen, you will feel right at home with OmniFocus. If you’re not, OmniFocus has a few included actions that will help you get acquainted.
Cocktail: Super Simple Maintenance with Style
Let’s face it — Maintenance is very important. Some people don’t do it merely because they say it’s too hard. Some don’t have enough time. Well, the times have changed; there are now many maintenance apps out there. However, one of them stands out a lot to me — Maintain’s Cocktail.
The first thing you will notice about Cocktail is its super clean interface. It simply looks good. It is the first maintenance app I have seen that looks like someone took time to design. Even though it isn’t an app that you will have open more than once a week, it is still nice to see a great looking interface.
Your Files, Now with Less Pulp! File Juicer Reviewed
About a month ago the fine folks at Echo One updated File Juicer to version 4.9.8. File Juicer is a deceptively simple application that purports to extract, or juice, everything from anything. Simply drop any file onto the running application (or it’s Dock icon) and away it goes. For the most part, File Juicer is file agnostic. It really doesn’t care what you drag onto it. File Juicer examines the file and looks for common formats for images, audio, video, documents, or even plain text files inside.
File Juicer then saves the contents of the file to your desktop or to any other location on your Mac.
Video Review: Smoother Scrolling with Smart Scroll
Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve been missing until you try something new. My first experience at Chick-Fil-A was like that. I ordered the char-grilled chicken club combo with sweet tea and polynesian sauce, and suddenly I don’t want to order another chicken sandwich from anyone else. Smart Scroll is just like the sandwich, but with scrolling.Â
Lighthouse: Port Forwarding Made Easier
Let me put my swami hat on and see if I can make a prediction: You access broadband through a router. If you’re trying to use your computer in some other capacity than checking your email or drudgefoxcnn.com, then you may have had to forward ports using your router’s setup screen. Accessing the succulent features of rolling your own “Back To My Mac” and “Screen Sharing” always amounted to static port forwarding, until now.
Easy, Powerful Time Tracking with OfficeTime
I am not very good about keeping timesheets. When I’m billing clients, I often cut my billable hours short because of gaps in my time tracking. My boss likes to know how many hours I’m spending on projects each week, but I can’t get motivated to use the Excel spreadsheet we have for logging projects. But OfficeTime has had a profound effect on my timekeeping. I started off with the 2-minute quickstart tutorial, and was up to speed in no time. Now I know where my time goes and why. Now I see when my peak-efficiency times are during the day. Now keeping track of my hours is almost fun.
MacGourmet Deluxe: A Chef’s Dream Come True
My Mother had an old, dog-eared copy of The Joy of Cooking in our kitchen when I was growing up. At such a young age the book seemed huge and magical to me. Now, I am cooking my own meals when I have time. I don’t have The Joy of Cooking, but I do have a laptop with MacGourmet Deluxe sitting at-the-ready when my culinary urges strike.
MacGourmet Deluxe combines the robust MacGourmet recipe organizer with the Nutrition, Mealplan, and Cookbook plug-ins. Here is a small list of what you can do with the Deluxe version of MacGourmet:
MPEG Streamclip Goes Where iMovie Can’t
We have all been there: You shot a video on your digital camera; you drag it into iMovie, and then: Rejected! For all its simplicity and “it just works” philosophy, too many video formats are rejected by Apple’s introductory video editing application, causing major headaches for editing novices. So after scouring the depths of Google, I found MPEG Streamclip. With ease, it stepped up to the plate and knocked my video out of the park.
