MacApper » James Bayliss

Remote Buddy: Remote Programming for your Mac

James Bayliss — Mon, 07 May 2007 13:30:47 +0000

Ever wanted to you use your remote for something other than just front row? Say maybe a Powerpoint presenation or maybe even a remote for Photobooth? Well, now there is a solution!

Remote Buddy, from IOSpirit, does everything you’ve always wanted your remote to do, and includes support for the Nintendo Wii remote as well. Simply create your own controls using the built in action factory, open your favorite app and press away. Me and my sister had a great time playing with it in Photobooth, and it works with most OS X applications including iPhoto, Safari, Virtual Keyboard, Garage Band and loads more.

Remote Buddy is currently running at a 50% discount and sells for a reasonable $9.99. There is also a generous 60 day trial to see if this utility is something you might find useful. Download yourself a copy today from their home page and give Remote Buddy a shot.

Pulp Motion: Professional Video Production Made Easy

James Bayliss — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:30:49 +0000

Pulp Motion allows you to place your photos and movie into pre-made templates, designed and made by professionals. People will think its a video produced in Final Cut Pro. Pulp Motion works seamlessly with iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie, just like all the other iLife applications. There is a choice of 25 themes, but aquafadas the creators of pulp-motion, are trying to make new themes every week. Here is an example of what it can do.

It uses the same drag and drop method as in all the other iLife applications, so you you can export your movie in the same way as you can from iMovie. Best of all is the fact that you can export in the MP4 file format for easy transparency between your iPod video or other portables.

Pulp Motion is trialware and licenses run $29.95.

Das Boot: Convert an iPod into a Mac Repair Station

James Bayliss — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 10:00:44 +0000

Software that enables you to turn a hard drive into a repair depot is pretty expensive. But this isn't the idea with SubRosaSoft.com's Das Boot. Eseentially Das Boot allows you to turn any storage device into a Mac OS X diagnostic, repair, and maintenance tool.

Using Das Boot is very simple and easy enough for even the noobs out there. You select the drive you want to copy your applications and documents to, and Das Boot does everything for you. When you need to boot from your repair drive you will see a special launcher, which gives you full access to all the applications you have installed. Amazingly handy for helping with the neighbors broken Mac.

So if you haven’t already guessed, yes you can use your iPod as a repair drive! You don't even have to reformat it, just use it as a normal drive and all your data should coexist nicely. This then allows you to run Diskwarrior and other apps onto it, and if needed you can format your drive from the finder. Nice.

Das Boot is freeware and you can get yourself a copy right here.

Cocktail: Swig your Mac into Shape

James Bayliss — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:00:27 +0000

Cocktail, simply put, is an easy way to tweak your mac to attain its optimum performance. It uses unix commands to change things that in most cases you couldn't do without the command line. It can do jobs such as clearing caches for your system, by user or browser and of-course, which can be selected individually. Pilot is the scheduler portion of Cocktail which lets you clean your system on action script to make sure that it gets done regularly and efficiently.

Ever wanted to view logs from an installation of a specific application? Cocktail lets you view, rotate, delete, and save logs to different locations. You can modify sleeping profiles that you have on your mac. You can create symbolic links to another disk and also lock files. You can tweak your network to some really geeky settings like speed, duplex and MTU. Find the .DS folders really annoying? Cocktail can delete them for you. What I liked best about Cocktail is it allows for customizing ExposÃƒ© and can reveal some hidden settings of Mail, Safari and other applications. There really is a lot it can do, for a full list please see their website. Cocktail is priced to move at just $14.95.

iHome: Wake and Sleep to your iPod

James Bayliss — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:35:42 +0000

Sleep and wake to your iPod with the iH5 iHome. The iHome is one of the only alarm clocks that I know off that wakes you up to your iPod, radio and other input devices. What’s more, it supports all iPods including the new 2nd gen iPod nano’s. The tiny iPod shuffle is supported via the aux input on the rear of the iHome.

How does she sound you ask? The best part is the sound quality is amazingly clear for such a small device, with crystal clear highs and lows. They didn’t skimp on the bass either. No no! Reason8 sound chamber technology minimizes vibration significantly, which means distortion free music all around. It comes with a small remote thats easily used and fits nicely in my pocket to boot. Rock on.

Ghost Action: Organize your life in style.

James Bayliss — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:35:14 +0000

Get yourself up to date and keep your life organized with Ghost Action from Ghost Park Software. Organize your todo’s into diffrent categories according to how you want to operate. You can create multiple tasks and projects, as well as create alerts to tell when they need to be done. If you’re a fan of iCal, you can use Ghost Action with iCal to create the calenders that you have set up in iCal already, and then sync them with your iPod or even your cellphone.

Dot Matrix: Another Way To Enjoy Your iSight

James Bayliss — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:00:35 +0000

Want to have even more fun with your iSight camera or any kind of image? Take a peep at Dot Matrix, Its a nifty little program that allows you to create funky pop like images. You don’t have to be skilled to use it, my mother could use it. Just takeÃ‚ a picture of yourself with your iSight or using a JPG, view, edit and look wonderful with the crazy effects.