The point of Flickery is to move all of the functionality of Flickr to your desktop. So, of course, you can upload photos with it. All you do is go to the Upload item in the sidebar, and either drag some photos onto the window, or use the Make Screenshot button to create and upload a screenshot. You can also click the Open button to choose some files to upload. These can be either pictures or videos. But, to make things even simpler, you can record a movie to upload directly from Flickery. Once you have chosen some images and/or videos, you can then add titles, descriptions and tags to them. However, from this screen, you can’t choose what photoset it will go into when uploaded.

Once a picture or video has been uploaded, you can still edit its information just by clicking Edit Info. To add a photo to a photoset, you just have to click the Add to Set button, and then choose one or more photosets. However, the sets it is already in don’t appeared as checked (in the window that pops up), so you can’t really tell if it’s already in one. This also makes it hard to delete it from a photoset, because you can’t uncheck the box. You can also show comments, tags and descriptions of anyones photos by clicking the Show Details button when a photo is selected. I really like the crumpled paper look of this screen, but it really doesn’t match the rest of the UI, so it seems a little awkward. To view a larger size of an image, you just double click on it. Or, you can click the Fullscreen button to view the image in fullscreen.

Flickery also supports easy downloading of any picture or video. If you’ve ever browsed on Flickr.com, you know it’s always annoying to download an image or video. But Flickery makes it just the click of a button away. You just select an image or video, and hit Download. A downloads window will then appear, allowing you to manage multiple downloads. Along with this, you can also add any photo to your iPhone library (not Aperture though). You just click the Add to iPhoto library. I’m not sure why you’d want to add someone else’s image to your library, but you can.

Like Flickr.com, Flickery allows you to Explore. Exploring is just a cool way to find all images that were taken on a certain day. You can also perform and save searches right in Flickery, which is really cool. You can also see all of your contacts and their photostreams by just clicking on their name in the sidebar. However, you cannot manage contacts directly from Flickery. I assume this is an issue with the Flickr API, and not the app though.

Flickery is a great desktop version of Flickr.com. It has almost all the features the Website has and a couple extra. You can buy it for about $20, and download a 15-day free trial from their site. Anyone who uses Flickr frequently, or who wants a better image search engine should definitely try out Flickery.

The first thing to be said about Postage is how good it looks. It has an amazing UI, and it is no wonder that in won an Apple Design Award this year. But it’s not just the UI that’s nice-looking, it’s the postcards you create as well that look great. And they’re easy to make It just takes a couple of steps.

The first step is to choose the style for the postcard. As of now, there are over 55 styles in 10 different categories, which is more than enough. In the preview of each style, it shows you exactly where the picture will go, and where the text will go too. After you have chosen a style, you can choose a picture from your iPhone’s photo library. It would be great if you could see a preview with the picture as you were browsing photos, but I think that is an issue of Apple not allowing direct access to photos, you must use the list. After you have selected a picture, you can add one of 7 effects, or keep it as-is. More effects would be nice, and maybe even sliders for exposure, and saturation. But, this is supposed to be a simple app that allows you to make a postcard in just a minute, so it is not a necessity.

The next step is text. With Postage, not only can you choose what it says, but you can also choose a font, text style and text color. There are 9 different fonts to choose from, all of which are very different. If they added more, some would look alike, and you might end up spending minutes trying to figure out which one looks best. So, maybe you should be happy there aren’t more. The styles are normal text styles: left, center or right-alligned and normal or bold. I’m surprised that italics are not in there though, but for a simple message, I’m not sure you’d usually need them.

The final step, but most important one, is the addresses. You can choose someone from your contacts, or just enter someone’s email address. And, you can choose any email address that it will be marked as being from. So, if you want to surprise them, but down a random email address. You can also choose to add the postcard to your photo library, so you can keep track of all the ones you send. I would have never thought of doing this, but it is a great idea. Then, once you have finished everything (and you can go back to the previous step at any point), you must click Send, and your postcard is complete.

Just as easy as Actually easier than Mailing an actual postcard and you can choose your own image, style and text style and it arrives almost instantly. All this for the (normal) price of ($4.99) about 8-10 postcards (with postage), and this allows you to send unlimited postcards. But as this is being written, Postage is 40% off, or just the price of ($2.99) 5-6 postcards (with postage). So, if you’re on vacation, or going on vacation soon, Postage can assure that you don’t have any angry relatives for not sending postcards What’s not to like? It’s available in the App Store through This link for only $2.99 as of now.

In previous versions of Baseline, you had to delete files separately, which could be a tedious process when freeing up space. Now, Baseline allows you to select and delete multiple files at a time, making it much easier to get rid of large files. No more select and delete, select and delete… This is a pretty important feature though, but at least it now is in Baseline’s feature-set.

Along with that, Baseline also now supports multiple levels of undo, meaning you can easy undo many deletions. Again, this seems like it maybe should have already been there, because it’s very important in preventing data loss. Nonetheless, it is there now.

Another major-ish new feature is Baseline’s use of zip to compress files. This means, when you select some files, and go to File>Compress, these files will be put into a zip archive: The preferred archive type.

Along with this new features are stability fixes and minor memory fixes. I had never noticed memory issues with Baseline before, so it seems it was very minor. It may have also speed up the time it takes to scan your hard drive, which was already very fast.

As always, you can download a free 14-day trial from it’s site, and buy it for $20.00. Now that OmniDiskSweeper is free (which was one of Baseline’s major competitors), you may want to check it out too. It has a few less features, but it is also free. So, if you don’t need some of Baseline’s features, it may be perfect for you.

The first thing you will notice about Snowtape is its amazing interface. It uses a completely custom UI that really works for the app. It also includes a mini-comtroller (just like iTunes) that is also unbelievably good-looking. It doesn’t just have a good UI though, it is very easy to use. There is a directory where you can search for stations, and there is also a repository of recorded tracks that you can edit and send to iTunes. It’s very simple.

In the directory, Snowtape sorts all stations by genres. Each station can have many genres, so some may appear all over the place. With the recent 1.1 update, Snowtape now has 700+ stations built-in, so you may never have to add your own. If you ever do, though, you just go to File>Import URL… if you have the URL of the playlist (for the station) or File>Import File… if you have the actual playlist file. You can sort stations by title, description, genre, number of streams, quality and popularity. The streams usually range from 320 kbps to about 16 kbps with most at about 128 kbps.

Snowtape’s main purpose is to record internet radio. And this is very simple to do. When you are listening to a stream, simply click the record button, and until you click the button again, everything will be recorded. Once you have recorded what you want, you can go to the Last Recorded section and see what you have. Your recording will be split into tracks based on the song that was playing. However, the track data from internet streams doesn’t always change exactly when the song changes, so you may have to do some editing. But, if some of the song gets cut out, you are out of luck. Although you can cut a track, you can’t add from one track to another. Luckily, you can decide for Snowtape to not cut it into tracks by going to the Recording tab of Preferences and deselecting the Enable automatic cut at track boundaries checkbox. Using that feature comes at a cost.

Once you have finished editing a track, you can get artwork for it by simply clicking the Get Album Artwork button. You can then choose from the images it shows you. And once you have done that, you can export to iTunes. The track info will already be filled in, and if you choose artwork, it will be there too. Recording in Snowtape could not be simpler.

One thing that may be overlooked by some users of Snowtape is RadioURL.com. This is a service provided with Snowtape that allows you to share what you are currently listening to to other Snowtape users. When you are listening to a station, just go to Action>RadioURL.com and choose what you would like to do. Others can then click on the link created and listen to what you are.

Snowtape retails for $29 and you can download a free demo from that link as well. Having artist alerts would be nice, but with 700+ stations, by the time you got the alert, the song would probably be over. It is extremely well designed, and just nice to use. I was not much of a radio fan before it, but now that it’s so easy, I listen and record all the time. I think everyone should try out this app.

The iPhone winners were:

• MLB.com At Bat 2009
• Postage
• Topple 2
• Tweetie | MacApper Review
• Wooden Labyrinth 3D
• AccuTerra (3.0 Beta)

I have used all of these, and I must say, Apple is very right. There are a few apps that came out after the awards that I think would have won had the awards not been given out until after their release. A congratulations to all of these iPhone winners, we really appreciate your apps and the work you have put into them.

The Mac winners are:

• Billings
• BoinxTV
• Things | MacApper Review
• Versions | MacApper Review
• Fontcase | MacApper Review

Again, I have tried all these apps, and they are great. Congratulations to the winners of the Mac Apple Design Awards, we appreciate the work you have put into making your apps so great.

I recommend checking out all of these apps, not just because they won awards, but because they are great apps that really deserve notice. Especially the student winners (Fontcase and Wooden Labyrinth 3D), who not only create amazing apps, but also must manage schoolwork.

Star Walk shows you all its information based on the time of day and your location. Using Apple’s location services, you must only allow it to find your current location, and everything else is automatic. If you would like to change the time of day you’re looking at, simply click on the Clock icon (in the upper-right corner) and you can change it. To navigate around the map, you just use pinching and dragging. There are even four markers for North, East, South and West so you know exactly where to look for a specific constellation. There is also a red line for the horizon making it, again, even easier to see where something is.

Star Walk is cool enough with just the ability to look around a virtual map. But, it also adds some other features. When you press on a constellation name (in the virtual sky), you will see a white drawing of it with the stars. This feature is great for showing to kids (and for helping one find the constellation). While the name is still selected, if you hit the “i” button, you will get more information. A “W” button will also appear allowing you to see a Wikipedia article on it.

Constellations are not the only things Star Walk knows. If you click on any star or planet on the screen, you can also hit the “i” button and get more information.

What I would say is one of the most important features that Star Walk carries is its search. If you hit the search button (lower-left corner), you can search for stars, constellations, planets and messier. If the object is visible to you, its name will be in white, if not, they name will be grayed out. When you click on one, it will take you there on the map. This makes it so easy to find what you want.

Star Walk also includes some nice preferences. The first one is night mode, which basically turns everything into a red-ish color. There is also the ability to turn of the pictures of constellations and sounds. And finally, you can adjust the brightness of stars, planets, etc. All of these can be accessed from the button in the lower-right corner.

Star Walk costs $4.99 in the App Store and is the International Year of Astronomy 2009′s official product. It is extremely intuitive and also provides many features for amateurs and even pros. Anyone who likes watching the stars (and has an iPhone or iPod Touch) needs this app.

The purpose of Prizmo is to scan without a scanner. So, you can scan anywhere (so long as you have a digital camera [no, a film camera will not work]), on-the-go, at anytime. And, it only takes about three steps: Take the picture, open Prizmo and load the picture, and select the part of the picture you want and do a little bit of tweaking.

When you open Prizmo, you are presented with a nice animation telling you where to drop your image. But, there’s also a button that allows you to choose an image from a camera that’s connected to your computer or your iPhoto or Aperture library. Although Prizmo will accept most image types, I have had issues when feeding it RAW files, so you may want to convert to JPEG first (if you shoot in RAW).

As soon as you find your picture and drag it into Prizmo, you will so the editing window. This is where you will put the bounding box around the object you would like to ‘scan.’ The bounding box gives you four points to put at the four corners of the thing you are scanning. If you’re trying to scan a triangle, or a five-and-more-sided-figure, then you’re out of luck. Here, you will also find options for crop, lens distortion and processing. The crop tool just allows you to choose a size to constrain to. Processing just gives you options for brightness, contrast, sharpness and saturation.

Now for lens distortion. This can be a problem when trying to scan objects, because it, well…Distorts your images. Not many people will know how much to pull the distortion sliders, and Creaceed thought of that. They allow you to calibrate your camera, and even get data from other users’ calibrations. If you click the Search button, Prizmo will look through its online database for calibrations from people with the same camera (and lens for DSLRs). But, if it doesn’t find any, you can do it yourself. Just go to Tools>Calibrate Camera… (Command-K) and you will be presented with an assistant for calibrating your camera. Because no data was there for my camera and lens, I decided to do this. After following the directions and taking some pictures, it failed to recognize the checkered pattern on any of them. I was doing it in RAW at the time, so that could have been an issue. Then, though, I converted them to JPEGs and tried to add them, but they wouldn’t add. It seems there needs to be some fixing in the calibration.

Prizmo retails for $39.95, and you can download a free trial from the site. My results were great, despite not being able to calibrate for lens distortion, and it could definitely act as my only scanner. But, it really isn’t only a scanner, it can be used on anything. If you see a movie poster or an ad that you like, and would like to have documented, just take a picture, and Prizmo will help you with perspective, cropping and everything else.

The most important feature of Bento for iPhone is its ability to sync with the Mac version. So, you can access all of your databases on-the-go, in the palm of your hand. All you have to do is go to the Sync tab and click on the “Set up sync with computer…” item. You will then be prompted with directions to enable syncing, and once enabled, you only have to click the “Sync Now” button in the Sync tab. Syncing allows you to easily transfer the data from your iPhone to your Mac and vice versa.

Bento for iPhone comes with 25 templates for databases, but you can also create your own, or just start with a blank one. All you must do to create a new database is click on the New Library tab, choose a template and click Create Library. You may then begin adding entries. As with the Mac app, there are many different field types for different types of information. One of these field types is an image, which Bento allows you to take with the built-in camera. Unlike the Mac app, unfortunately, there is no way to edit the fields Once they have been created, they are there for good*.

Adding a new entry to a database is very straightforward. You just click the [+] button in the navigation bar of the database and are prompted to add information. Based on the field type, Bento will have you enter the information in a different way. There is one issue though: For some of the field types, the text field (into which you enter the information) never gets selected until you type something on the keyboard. This ca be confusing, because it seems as if the text field is not editable, but once you type something, you can see that it is. Also, for some field types (namely duration), Bento expects you to type the info in a certain way, but doesn’t tell you how to type it right there. It tells you when you create the field though.

Along with searching inside individual databases, Bento also allows you to do a global search. So, if you have many databases, and you only can remember the name, and not the database, this can be very helpful. However, with this power, there comes a consequence: Speed. Bento searches after every letter you enter, and this search can take some time, which makes the whole searching process quite slow. It would have been nice had Bento only searched when you didn’t press on the keyboard for more than a second.

One complaint of Bento for iPhone (not for Mac) is that you cannot access the calendar. But, this is not because the folks at FileMaker don’t want you to, or because they forgot to implement it, it is because Apple doesn’t let you access it. But, hopefully soon, Calendar Store will show up on the iPhone. Despite this, Bento still allows you to create databases with events and dates, it just doesn’t sync over to iCal (on the iPhone).

Bento for iPhone retails for $4.99 in the App Store (link) and you can find more info from FileMaker. It has a few issues, but for any heavy Bento user, it is a must-have. For everyone else, it is a great companion to the Mac app, or as a standalone app, and if you think databases could help you, it’s definitely worth a look.

*Note: You can actually edit fields by going into a record and clicking on the “fields” button and then you can edit, rearrange and delete fields. It can be a little confusing to find at first though.

Project Gutenberg contains over 28,000 free titles that you can access from your computer, and now your iPhone too. Eucalyptus is really just an app that allows you to download and then read books from Project Gutenberg. And it does this very well. You can look at the “Picks” or search by author or book. The Picks are good if you are looking for a very classic book, or just don’t know what you want to read. Once you have selected a book you would like to read, you just click Get Book, and a nice animation shows you that the book has gone to your downloads. The only possible improvement for downloading books would be the ability to browse by genre or alphabetically.

When Eucalyptus downloads a book, there are two parts: The actual downloading and the structure analyzing. The downloading is straightforward, and when it says, “analyzing structure…” it basically means that it is analyzing and converting the book to be read with Eucalyptus. There is even a two-part progress indicator to show you how much of each step has been completed. The longer the book, the longer this whole process takes, so be prepared to wait a few minutes for a long book.

Your library of books is sorted in two ways: By title and by author. The Authors tab allows you to see books by specific authors (and also just see what authors you have books by), and the Books tab allows you to see your books alphabetically. There’s not much more to it than that.

As if its huge library of books, and the ease of downloading weren’t enough, the reading experience is outstanding. There are three ways to go through the book: The slider, flipping pages and the “back” view. The slider allows you to traverse through the book very fast, and also shows you what chapter the new location will be in. Sliding between pages is my favorite. There is only one other app that even does page turning similar to Eucalyptus, and I must say Eucalyptus even puts that app (Classics) to shame with the animations. An app like Classics uses static images to flip from page to page, which creates a great animation. But, Eucalyptus seems to use a real 3D engine. The shadow changes based on where the page is, and the page will even wiggle if you drag back and forth very fast. I really love this part of the app. You can also use the arrows at the bottom to go from chapter to chapter (but not page by page).

Another way to get through the book is the “back” view. You can get to this by clicking the icon in the right of the top bar (when in a book). Here you can simply click on a chapter (or other section), and Eucalyptus will bring you there. It also shows you the current chapter (or section). This basically brings a table of contents to the book, that is accessible without having to flip to the beginning of it.

Eucalyptus costs $9.99 in the App Store, and you can easily see the amount of polish and work put into it. It has become my favorite book reader instantly. And because of its huge library, you’ll always find a book to read. However, it is very expensive compared to other readers, but in some of those, you have to pay for books, or you only get a few. Anyone looking to read classic books on the iPhone must at least check out Eucalyptus. I might even say it is one of the most polished apps in the App Store.

MusicBox acts a lot like it’s brother product, VideoBox. You just drag a URL onto the window and choose the format and where to save. This would make sense because they are related products. So, once you are at the page you would like to download audio from, just drag the URL from your web browser of choice into MusicBox. It will then attempt to find audio on that page to download. If it doesn’t, though, it will prompt you with a WebKit view where you can press play, and then it will know what to do.

There is more than one way to choose a URL. MusicBox includes a Safari plugin that allows for one-click downloading. Just go to a URL, click the toolbar item, and you’re all set. To instal this go to MusicBox>Install Safari Plugin. The plugin even works with Safari 4 BETA.

MusicBox gives you a few formats to output the audio to. You can choose from raw, wav, mp3 and mp4, and also choose a bit rate (for all but raw). You can also choose to use the input file’s settings so no extra space is used for increasing quality that cannot be increased.

I do have a few gripes with MusicBox too. The main window shows a white-to-orange gradient with white text on it, which can be a bit hard to see, and looks a little funny. Also, one of the output options is mp4, but since MusicBox is only for audio, there is no reason to optput to a video format. Instead of mp4, m4a (AAC) should be included for maximum iTunes compatibility (or just for wanting all your songs in the same format). And one last thing is more of a warning that in issue. If you use any WebKit plugins to block flash video unless you click on it, you will usually have to play the clip for MusicBox because, well, the clip is being blocked.

MusicBox, by Tasty Apps retails for $15 and you can download a free trial from their site. It makes downloading music from the Internet very easy“You can do it in really only 2 steps. However, it is mostly for those who listen to music online and would like to bring it offline. Even for just downloading a bit of audio every now and then it can be very helpful, but for many it is unnecessary.

Toki Tori takes you through a young chick’s adventures in trying to rescue his siblings. It is both a platformer and a puzzler. You are given a limited number of tools to complete each level, and it can take a while to plan out what you should do. There are four words in the whole game, adding up to 80 levels, but there are also hard levels in each world that you can play once you have beaten the level. Having played this for a bit of time, it is pretty challenging, but yet still fun.

The sound effects and music are great. And the graphics and animations are stunning. It is an extremely polished game, of which we don’t see very many of these days in the App Store. Anyone looking for a new puzzler should try out Toki Tori for $4.99.

Turning a games like GTA into an iPhone App is a very hard thing“one of GTA’s best features is having a whole large map to roam around. So, to recreate the huge map on the iPhone takes some major space“the game is 222Mb, which is one of the largest in the App Store. The graphics are very nice and it runs very smoothly in 3D, so it is worth the space.

The controls can be a little awkward to start out: You move back and forwards with a double-arrowed box (up is forwards, down is reverse). But, you can’t move sideways, you must use the accelerometer to change the way your current vehicle or the person is going. But, having two more control buttons would have taken up too much space, so it may be a good thing that the controls are this way. Other than going back and forwards, there are two other main buttons: Punch/Weapon and Enter/Leave vehicle. There is also A score box at the top, a health meter, and a mini-map of the current city.

The goal in Payback is to gain points. Each level you play requires you to get a certain amount of points, and once you reach that, you win. To get points, you must complete missions or basically cause some trouble. However, the more trouble you cause, as in GTA, the more the cops want to find and ‘bust’ you. So, you can’t just go crazy. To start a mission, you will have to find a ringing phone, and then go next to it to answer it. You will then be told exactly what to do.

Story mode is not the only mode that Payback offers. You can also play in Rampage and Challenge mode. Challenge mode turns Payback into more of a game that you can pick up and put away easily, with a few extra smaller places to play. In Rampage Mode, you really just try to get as many points as possible, and can move from level to level as much as you want.

Overall, Payback provides a fun and challenging gameplay, with a few game modes to bring extra playability. The controls are awkward to being with, but you should get used to them. If you have 222Mb free on your iPhone or iPod Touch and $4.99 to spare, or if you’re just a GTA fan, you should definitely try Payback“there’s even a Lite version available.

Feeder 2.0′s new features/improvements include: A new User Interface, easier accessible templates, easier editing with syntax highlighting, new portrait previews, easier posting to Weblogs, automatic announcements on Twitter and Facebook, Amazon S3 uploading (it seems this is a new feature in many 2.0 upgrades these days), a new share panel that explains how to add your feed where you want it, iTunes U support, live validation, and many more new features and improvements all around. The full release notes can be found here.

Feeder costs $39 and you can upgrade from version 1.x for $14.95. You can also (still) get it an a bundle with Ãœbercaster over at the Ãœbercaster Store for only $95. Version 2.0 looks like a great update with many exciting new features “ look for a full review of it from us soon.

The biggest and best new feature has to be Amazon S3 support. If you don’t know what that is, it is a service from Amazon that allows you to host files. You can now easily add an S3 account to your accounts list, and connect to it like it is a USB or FireWire drive. But, this means much more than just that. Most people buy hosting for a website or web service. But, one of the points of Amazon S3 is offsite backup. So, when your S3 is treated like a regular hard drive, this makes things so much easier. ExpanDrive even includes a contextual menu in the Finder for changing permissions on files.

The next biggest feature “ or upgrade “ is the engine itself. It has been completely rewritten for this 2.0 upgrade, and you should notice a nice speed boost. You should also notice faster browsing. Of course, nothing can make up for a bad host, a bad server or a bad Internet connection, but ExpanDrive uses more of what’s there now. ExpanDrive can now detect edits that have been made on the server too, as a part of this new engine. This feature is still experimental though.

There are two other features that are also very notable. The first one is that FTP/FTPS (not to be mistaken with SFTP) has come out of BETA. When version 1.3 came out, they introduced FTP/FTPS as a BETA feature, but it is no longer that. The second one is actually two. First, they’ve updated the GUI to make it more Mac-like. There is now an eject button on each connected server in the list too. The second part is the customization of drive icons. If you drop an image into “~/Library/Application Support/ExpanDrive”, it will appear in a list of icons that you can choose from when creating a new drive. ExpanDrive also has 5 icons built-in.

ExpanDrive retails for $39.95 and you can upgrade from version 1 for $19.95. It is a nice upgrade, but still may seem to expensive to some. There is still one thing I would like to see in it though, AFP support.

The first new feature is the customization of mouse clicks“You can now show users your mouse clicks. There is a new Mouse tab where you can customize the size, color, duration and strength of your mouse clicks. You can even display the button name for the click. This means, if you click the left mouse button, it says, ‘Left’ where you clicked as well as showing the animation. You can visualize all these styles without having to create a video in the Mouse Actions Preview box at the bottom.

The second major feature added was optimized export workflows to easily export videos to a few places. All you do is right-click on a video, and you will see a list of 3 pre-defined exporters. So now, you can export for the iPhone just by clicking that and then clicking okay.

Screenium by Synium retails for $29 and you can download a free trial from their site. If you would like more in-depth info about it, you can look at our Face off of screen-capturing apps.

Espresso is a one-window app. Everything that can be done is done in its main window. There are three sections to this window: Workspace, Project and Publish. There are also project settings which can be found in the toolbar.

The Workspace section is…well your workspace. This is where you want to put the files you want to work on, or previews of different pages. Instead of having to go through a file structure on the sidebar, you just drag-and-drop important files here, and they’ll stay here. This is also where all previews you generate will go. You can also add a new item to your workspace by going to File>New Tab. If you have a file selected (in the Project section), it will put that file into your workspace. If no file is selected, it will add a blank file to your workspace. To go through items in your workspace, just hit Command-} (Select the next item) and Command-{ (Select the previous tab). To remove an item from this list, just put your moue over it, and then click the (x) that appears. You can also rearrange this list just by dragging. The Workspace is really helpful if you are dealing with many files and many previews, because it provides easy access to the ones you want to access.

The Project section contains all files for your current project. If you click the magnifying glass icon, a text field will appear that allows you to search for files. If you click the wheel icon, you can choose to reveal the current file in finder, delete it, duplicate it, etc. If you use Espresso as it really should be used, you usually won’t need to do much work from the Project section, you will just access files, add files, etc. For small projects, the list of files is very helpful, but for larger ones with complex hierarchies and structures, the Project search makes it extremely easy to find files.

The last section in Espresso is the Publish section. This allows you to easily upload files to an FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 or FTP with SSL server. To set one up, click the Settings toolbar button and then click Add Server. You can then enter the relevant information for your server. Once you have finishes, just click the Save button, and the server will be saved. Your server will then appear in the Publish section of Espresso. When you click on server, there are a couple things you can do. You can just browse and see what files are on the server (just click the Browse toolbar item). You can also do an Update. An Update just updates the copy of the files on the server. Everything on your computer stays the same. You can also do a Merge. A Merge syncs the files on your computer with the ones on your server so the most-up-to dat version of each file is kept. Before you click Publish (which will sync them), you can see what will happen to each file in the Action column. A Mirror is very similar to an Update, except it creates an exact mirror of the files on your computer on the server. The descriptions at the top of the page can get you really confused about the difference between Mirror and Update if you think too much into it. So, just use the names as guides. Mirror and Update are two different things. Based on what you want to do, choose one. It is nice that Espresso has built-in publishing with many SVN-like (Subversion) commands.

Espresso includes support for things called Sugars. These extend Espresso’s CodeSense (they add extra languages). So, Espresso is not confined to XHTML, CSS and JavaScript, it can include any language that has an available Sugar. But, Sugars aren’t just developed by a few people that have the experience, they can be developed by anyone who knows a little XML. But, of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to make your own. You can find an aggregated list at Coffee House. Sugars are great because they allow Espresso to support an infinite amount of languages (you could make your own pointless one even!), but Coda also has a form of them, so this does not lead it too far ahead of the pack.

Along with Sugars, Espresso includes Themes. These can also be downloaded from Coffee House. Themes allow for different syntax highlighting colors. They are similar to those of TextMate or Xcode. Except for the installing part. You have to click Reveal in Finder in the Colors tab of Espresso>Preferences… and then drag the .css file in there. Then, you have to restart Espresso, go back to the preferences and choose it from the list. This isn’t that bad, but it would be nicer if you could just click Instal Theme. Like Sugars, anyone with a knowledge of CSS can easily make an Espresso theme.

MacRabbit‘s Espresso retails for about $80 and you can download a trial from the Web site. It’s Sugars and Themes add a nice configurability option and community part to it. It is $20 less than the other popular IDE on the mac for web development. Of course, you can use a text editor and the Terminal for most features it contains, but it provides a beautiful interface with a very nice and clean environment for developing.

Espionage’s biggest advantage over other security software is its Application Templates and Application Associations. Instead of having to encrypt your Mail folder, and then decrypt it whenever you want to read your Mail, Espionage does this automatically for you. Just go to File>Application Templates… and choose Mail. You will then choose a password and choose what type of encryption to use. AES-256 is more secure than AES-128, but it is not needed for everything, and it takes longer to encrypt and decrypt. It should really only be used for extremely secret documents. Once you click Go, you will be prompted with the Application Associations window. This allows you to edit the password for the application, the location and the type of encryption. If you click Edit Application Associations, you will be prompted with a sheet that allows you to set the application to Lock on Quit and to have it launch at startup. This is different from a regular ‘Launch at Startup,’ because this actually delays the application’s startup so Espionage can unlock its folder. So, do not set an application to launch at startup in System Preferences if you are using Espionage to secure its data“Use Espionage’s ‘Launch at Startup.’ You can do this process not only for Mail.app, but for 17 other apps too.

But, what if an application whose data you want secured is not in the list of Templates? Well, you can just create your own Application Association. If you go to the Application Associations window (command-L), you can create your own Associations. If you want to secure MarsEdit’s data, just drag the data (~/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit) onto the window. You will then be prompted with a sheet that allows you to choose the encryption, password, and associated application. In this case, the associated application would be MarsEdit. You have now created your own Association. So, although Espionage only comes with 18 Templates, you can make Associations for any application you wish (so long as it stores its data on your hard drive…).

Espionage does also allow you to do normal file encryption. You just drag the file (or folder) on Espionage’s window, choose the encryption type, but just don’t specify an Association. Every time you try to access the folder, Espionage will ask you for your password.

With Espionage, you can also easily backup all encrypted folders. If you go to the Backup tab of Espionage>Preferences…, you can specify all the options for the backup. And, you don’t have to backup all of your encrypted files, you can just choose which ones you want. You can also specify when to backup.

Espionage also includes a rather interesting feature for an encryption app. It allows you to do encryption-less protection. When you create a new folder encryption, if instead of choosing AES-128 or AES-256, you choose No Encryption, Espionage will not actually encrypt it. What it does do, however, is make it much harder for someone to access it. They still could (if they knew how), but if you are leaving your computer for 2 minutes to go to the bathroom (and it’s locked in place), this may be the best choice.

Tao Effect‘s Espionage retails for $24.95 and you can download a free, 14-day trial from their site. It provides easy encryption with many built-in Templates and Application Associations. If you are concerned about the security of your computer, you will want to check it out to see if it is unobtrusive enough for you. If you think about it, the $24.95 might pay for itself if your computer is every compromised.

Stomp’s main purpose is to convert your videos to a large variety of formats. It comes built-in with 20 presets, but you can change the conversion settings as you wish. To change the settings for the audio or video, just click the Settings… button by the relevant label. You will then be prompted with a window that gives you many conversion options. You can also choose to leave the video or audio untouched or delete it altogether from the movie. Of course, you can also change the size and crop the video too. When you have chosen all the options you need, all you have to do is click the Process button in the lower right-hand-corner. However, unlike an app like Handbrake, you cannot click on an item in the list, and change conversion settings for just that clip. You must change it for them all, convert, and then do it again for different options.

Stomp’s other main feature is Filters. You can add from a list of many filters and apply them to your video during the conversion. There are 12 categories of filters and many within each one. They include standard filters you may see in an app like Pixelmator except for video. You can add as many as you want, and change the blend mode of each one. Of course, the more you add, the longer it will take. To add a filter, simply click on the [+] button in the Filters panel. Once you have added one, you will see the properties for the filter below the button. You can either delete a filter by clicking the [-] button, or you can just turn it off if you want to keep it, but want to preview your video without it. Stomp’s filters allow you to easily add many filters to your video without professional software.

One very nice (but not necessary) feature added to Stomp is performance control. In the Performance tab of Stomp>Preferences…, you can specify how many concurrent tasks to run, and whether to give other apps priority. This is great if you want to play Call of Duty 4 while converting your episodes of Lost (legally downloaded of course).

shinywhitebox‘s Stomp retails for $29.95 and you can download a free trial from their site. It makes it very easy to convert videos and add filters, but the only thing it has over an app like Handbrake is it’s Filters. If you do not need filters, then I suggest you go with Handbrake, because it’s free and works just fine. But, Stomp does provide a nice interface and a few advanced features that you will not find in Handbrake.

Unlike OS X’s Grab, Layers can capture every element on your screen, from your wallpaper, to your menu bar icons. But, it would be hard to select an individual menu bar icon every time you wanted to grab it, so they did something never seen before: They have allowed you to capture your screen as a PSD file. This means that every object on your screen is in a separate window, and they are even grouped by type (menu bar, desktop, apps). To do this, all you have to do is go to File>Capture screen. A PSD file will then appear on wherever you have set Layers to save it. You can also hit a keyboard shortcut to do this. You can also go to File>Capture front window to just capture the frontmost window (or again, there’s a keyboard shortcut).

But, this almost seems like a step back so far, because you can’t capture just any window or a selection without editing the PSD. Well, that’s not entirely true. If you go to Window>Inspector, you will see that you can capture individual elements very easily. If you click on one of the items in the list, Layers will highlight it and zoom in so you can see it. When you have a selection made (one or more items), you just hit Save, and Layers will save the/those elements. It also adds a white background to each element, which is nice if that’s what you want. If you don’t want that, all you have to do is click the Opaque toolbar item, and no white background will be drawn.

In the same inspector, you have a few more options. You can choose to hide all desktop elements and you can choose to hide all off-screen elements. Hiding the desktop is great if you need a screenshot with a blank desktop. You can also choose to give the selection a tight fit (which will make sure the total size of the PSD is the size of your desktop), a shadow, a frame and have the background opaque (these are all toolbar items).

wuonm‘s Layers retails for $19.95 and you can download a free trial from their Web site. It adds a lot of functionality to screen-capturing, but it is not necessary for all people. Only those who need a PSD of their desktop, or need a shot of a few select elements will find use in this. For everyone else, Apple’s Grab is just fine.

The Snow Report (Free)
The Snow Report is The North Face’s snow report app. Like Ski Lodge, it has maps built-in. It also allows you to see the weather, Website of the resort and the position of the resort in Google Maps. However, none of these are built-in“They take you to Mobile Safari or Google Maps. You can see the conditions, temperate and a mini weather report of the resort in the app. The buttons it uses can be very confusing“They don’t even look like buttons sometimes. One cool feature it includes that none of the others do is the ability to change the background. They have many built-in backgrounds shot by professionals. However, you only really see the sides of the background, because the resort info is over the rest. Overall, for a free app, it’s very nice.

Grade: B-

Snow and Ski Report By REI (Free)

Snow and Ski Report By REI is REI’s snow report app (kind of obvious). It has a unique interface“It uses a kind of Cover Flow. It also takes a different approach to finding resorts“You cannot search. You must know where it is, which can be a bit annoying at times. But, unlike some others, all the information you get is built-in toe app. This means you don’t have to leave the app to get Webcams or a weather report. It also shows you how many lifts are open and closed, and weather the resort is open or not. For each resort, there is a unique image that, I assume, is from the actual resort, which is very cool. Overall, this app provides a pretty nice interface and a lot of information, putting it up there with some of the paid apps.

Grade: B+

Snow Report ($1.99)

The Snow Report takes a minimalist approach at reporting show conditions. First of all, you cannot add favorites. So, you have to find the specific resort each time you open the app. Well, it does save where you were, so you’ll still be at the same region. But, that means you can only have 1 favorite at any time. Secondly, it only gives a little bit of information. You can only see 24 and 48 hour reports, the base depth and what the surface is like. This does mean that it’s faster, though. Like REI, you cannot search, you must know where it is. If you want minimal info, with faster loading, you may want to look at this, but I don’t think it’s worth it.

Grade: C-

The first thing you will notice about BBEdit is how many menubar items it has. For basic text editing and programming, you probably won’t even use half of these. So, BBEdit can be used in extremely advanced ways, and basic ways. However, if you are just using it for basic tasks, it can be very daunting.

When creating a document there is one main thing that you will need to worry about“the type of document. There are about 30 choices, including Objective-C, HTML, CSS and TeX. Choosing the right type will help BBEdit get the code-sense right. You can also set it to automatic, and it will choose one for you based on the content of the document. When you open a file that has not been created with it, this is what it does. Automatic is a very helpful choice.

The main window in BBEdit is actually very simple. The toolbar has normal items like an inspector, a button to show the file in the Finder, locking and unlocking and a few view options. Then, under the toolbar, you have a few popups. The arrows allow you to go through all the files opened in the current window. The next one displays the currently opened file. If you click on it, you can choose from all files in the current window. The next one allows you to go to specific ‘symbols.’ A symbol can be a method or a declaration. They are very useful for long documents. The next button allows you to add, find and delete markers. Markers are basically bookmarks for your files. The next button opens the file’s counterpart. This is really only used in Objective-C and other C languages“You have a header and a main file. So, if you have the header file open, it will open the main file, and vice versa. The last button has a list of included files (for the current document). If you click on one, it will try to find it, and then open it in the Finder. BBEdit provides a lot of usability just in the main interface“And that is only about 2% of the whole application.

The next most useful feature in BBEdit is its search. My favorite part is that it does multi-file search. This means that you can replace a word with another in many files at once. This feature is found in Search>Multi-File Search… You can also do a regular search, and a quick search from the same menubar item. BBEdit also has a file comparer. This means you can feed it two files, and it will show you what’s different. You just go to Search>Find Differences… Then, select the newer version of the file, and the old version. BBEdit will then show you both documents at once, and the differences below. You can also compare two opened documents by going to Search>Compare Two Front Documents. Other standalone difference comparing applications show you a bit more info like visually what’s changed. BBEdit just tells you. BBEdit also includes a few other search features for advanced users.

One great thing in BBEdit is its autocompletion. It will try to figure out what you want to type based on the contents of the file you’re in. If you’re coding in Objective-C, and you created a method, but you only remember the beginning, this can help you. Just type in the first few letters, and BBEdit will give you a list of possibilities. However, this feature is also in a free app like Xcode. But, Xcode is built for programming with Cocoa, and BBEdit is built for…well…anything.

There are also a few notable features that I will not go into detail with. BBEdit now has MobileMe syncing. This means that your preferences and Application Support will be synced to all of your computers running BBEdit. Another is To Do tracking. With this, you can actually put To Do’s and Fixes to make in your files so you remember what you’re supposed to do. The final is the scratchpad. This gives you a window where you can put things for remembering or edit text to get it the way you want it before you actually put it in your code.

Overall, BBEdit is a very full-featured app. There are many more things that what I talked about in this review. But, my main issue is its interface. It looks fairly outdated“It doesn’t look like a Leopard. They are on version 9, so it has been out for a while, so it’s not like they created an app specifically for Leopard without a Leopard interface. But, it could use a revamp. My other gripe with it is text coloring. You can change the color of different things (like in Xcode and TextMate). But, there are no color packs! No one can share their awesome color combinations with others. Even Xcode has this feature.

Bare Bones Software, called BBEdit retails for $125 and you can download a free trial from their site. That is a very high price, so, in my opinion, BBEdit should only be used by advanced users. Because the others can just use Xcode or TextMate. But, for the advanced users it is…well…very advanced. It gives you a lot of flexibility and a lot of features“It doesn’t suck.

Tags takes the whole idea of tagging files and folders, and makes it dead simple. There are no fancy windows where you create hierarchies, or groups of tags. You just tag. This makes it much faster and easier to do it. You can also select multiple files (or anything it supports) and tag all of them. Just hit the shortcut you have assigned for Tags, and you get a notepad-like interface (notepad in that it looks like paper). If you don’t have anything selected (at least anything that it can tag), it will show you the tag search window. Tags basically takes all the ‘fun’ out of tagging.

Not only can you use Tags’ built-in search, but you can also use Apple’s Spotlight. You just search “Tag:(insert tag here)” to search for all files with the given tag. So, if you are a Spotlight lover, this is an excellent feature for you.

Tags also allows you to see all of the tags you have created in one window. In the sidebar of this window, you will see all of your tags. Once you click on a tag, you will see all files that have that tag. From there, you can view them in the Finder, or create a Smart Folder for the tag. One highly overlooked thing this window allows you to do is change the name of a tag. If you accidently tagged 100 files “macaper” instead of “macapper”, you can just find the “macaper” tag, and rename it to “macapper.” Then those 100 files will be merged with the other “macapper” ones. In this window, you can also mark tags as favorites. This means, that when you are searching or tagging, that tag will appear at the top of the list (when Tags tries to autocomplete).

The biggest thing about Tags is the fact that it uses a framework called OpenMeta. OpenMeta is a new framework for use in tagging applications and it allows for Spotlight searching. More and more applications are starting to, or are going to use it, which will provide compatibility between programs. If you tag an email with Tags, then an application like MailTags will be able to read those tags, and use them. Of course, this hasn’t happened yet, but once more developers start using OpenMeta, this will happen.

My only issue so far with Tags has been speed. It can take a couple seconds to delete or rename a tag, even when there are only 5 files with that tag. Also, sometimes the flip animation can lag, but if it does, you can easily turn it off in preferences.

Gravity Apps‘ Tags retails for $29, and you can download a free trial from their Web site. It supports many applications already, and will support even more in the future. $29 is a bit pricy for an application that just tags your files, but you may end up paying much more than $29 if you misplace certain files. However, if you aren’t too serious about tagging or organization, this may not be the app for you.

One of the greatest blessings that Apple has given us developers is documentation. And not just documentation, but in-depth, clear, and understandable documentation. There are also lots of sample codes and coding guides. And when you install the SDK you automatically get all of this free of charge. You can even access it all right from Xcode; just go to Help>Documentation. You will then be presented with the documentation window. Based on whether or not you have the iPhone SDK installed, you will see Mac OS X and iPhone sections. You can search through certain sets (like OS X 10.5, or iPhone 2.2) or search them all. If you have the iPhone SDK installed, though, you will want to search by sets so you don’t accidentally try to put Cocoa Touch in Cocoa. If you click on a set in the sidebar, you can view its main page, which can help you find what you need if you don’t know what its called. The documentation is going to be your best friend as a Cocoa developer. You are never expected to remember those long delegate methods like tableView:targetIndexPathForMoveFromRowAtIndexPath:toProposedIndexPath: or even short methods like initWithCoder:.

Another great tool that can be used for remembering methods or blocks of code is Code Collector Pro (which we have previously reviewed). Code Collector Pro allows you to create code snippets and then sort them by tags, description, language, etc. It is very useful if there are large chunks of code that you use very often. You could use something like TextExpander, but Code Collector Pro is built for coders. It even has syntax highlighting.

One of my personal favorite tools is Class-Dump. Class-Dump allows you to feed it a binary file, and it will give you all the header files associated with that binary. This is great for finding private header files in things like UIKit, or if you just want to see the header files of your favorite application. The basic syntax for it is class-dump -H /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes. Before you run it you may want to call mkdir ~/Dekstop/headers and then cd ~/Dekstop/headers. This is just to make sure you don’t end up with 100+ header files in your home folder.

The final tool (or tools) I will leave you with are websites. These are my favorite websites for finding tutorials and answers to my questions:

• CocoaDev
• iPhone Dev SDK
• Cocoa Dev Central
• Cocoabuilder
• Cocoa-Dev lists

Although WebnoteHappy integrates with Delicious, it does not require you to use Delicious to store or view your bookmarks. So, you are not required to sign up for anything. You just download and go.

WebnoteHappy’s best feature is its ease-of-use. You can either use shortcuts or the application itself to add new bookmarks. By default, the shortcut to add a webnote (bookmark) is Command-Shift-D. Of course, for you to use this shortcut, the app must be open. When you hit that shortcut in almost any web browser (or any major web browser), you will see a popup that allows you to add a description, tags, a title and where to keep the webnote. If you choose to Share Via Delicious and you don’t already have Delicious set up in WebnoteHappy, a sheet will appear on its main window that asks you for your username and password.

As said above, you can also add a new webnote in the application itself. To do this, you just have to click the New toolbar item, and you will get a popup where you will insert the relevant information (all the information mentioned above, plus a URL).

WebnoteHappy also has organizing capabilities. You can create both folders and smart folders to keep certain webnotes in. It comes with two already made smart folders: Last 24 house and Last 7 days. To add a new folder, just go to File>New Folder, and to add a new smart folder, go to File>New Smart Folder. If you are creating a smart folder, you will then be asked for the conditions that need to be met for a webnote to be in the folder.

Along with sharing bookmarks to Delicious, WebnoteHappy also allows you to import from Delicious, Safari, Firefox, OmniWeb and XBEl and export to HTML and XBEL. To do this, just go to either File>Import from, or File>Export to, and choose the relevant format.

My only real gripe in WebnoteHappy is its interface. It looks slightly outdated. With just a few changes such as: different toolbar icons, bigger +/- buttons and different folder icons, it could look amazing. Also, if Cover Flow browsing was added, or at least previews, that would be a big plus as well.

Happy Apps‘ WebnoteHappy retails for $24.95, and you can get a family pack for only $5 more! You can also download a free, 30-day trial from their Web site. Although it has an outdated interface, it is extremely simple to use and very fast. However, if previews or Cover Flow was added, the import/add of a webnote time would probably increase. But whether you are a social bookmarking lover, or just want a nice database of your bookmarks, WebnoteHappy can help you.

Apple provides a completely free package of Applications that can be used to develop in Cocoa and other languages, such as Java. To download this package, you will want to register for a free account from ADC (Apple Developer Connection). This will allow you to download the latest SDK (package of tools), and provide you with lots of sample code and guides. You can also purchase paid memberships, which include things such as hardware discounts and pre-releases of OS X builds. But if you are just beginning Cocoa development, I suggest you just register for a free account.

Once you have downloaded and installed the SDK, you can just begin programming. But if you have never programmed in any type of C before, you will most definitely need some help. This being the first part of a Cocoa series, I will not be giving sample code or instructions for how to do things, but I will point you to a few great books. The first one is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, by Aaron Hillegass. This is usually known as the must-have book for any Cocoa developer. It is an especially great source for those starting out. It guides you through how to do many things in Cocoa, starting with the basics, and ending with topics like Core Data and Core Animation.

Another great book that’s not so much about Cocoa as it is about Xcode is Xcode 3 Unleashed, by Fritz Anderson. This book focuses on the Xcode programming environment, and teaches you how to use Xcode to its fullest. But if you are more concerned with learning Cocoa than learning Xcode, then you may want to hold off on getting this book until you understand Cocoa a little better.

Although people have differing opinions on whether this book should be read by beginners, I will still recommend it. It is The C Programming Language, by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie (sometimes known as K&R). Although, as seen in the title, this is not about Cocoa or Objective-C, this can give you an understanding of C. Although knowing C is not necessary for programming in Cocoa, it is very helpful. Objective-C is pretty vast, but there are some things that you may have to do in C, so it can be very helpful too. It is really up to you whether you would like to read this book.

The last book I will recommend is Stephen G. Kochan’s Programming in Objective-C 2.0. Objective-C 2.0 is very new, and some other books may have not been updated yet to cover it. It is great for beginners; it really teaches you how to program (as suggested in the title). It is much along the lines of Hillegass’ book, even though it is not usually seen as a must-have. I highly recommend this for you beginners.

I hope this has given you the tools you need to begin learning Cocoa. You should expect many more of these articles which will cover more advanced topics in Cocoa, Xcode, and anything related to Cocoa development. Happy programming!

FlightTrack’s coolest feature is definitely the Map View. This allows you to see where a flight is during its flight; and it works very well. It uses a service called FlightView to get the data, which can be used without the app. To get to the Map View, one only has to click the Map tab item in the navigation bar when a flight is selected.

Another big issue in flying is baggage claims. A number of times the airport tells you to go one place when your baggage is somewhere else, or maybe you just forget what claim number it is. With FlightTrack you can easily check baggage claim numbers; gate numbers; and scheduled, estimated, and actual departure times. Just create a search, find a flight, and see all of its info. You can also shake the phone to pick a random flight. I’m not sure exactly why you might want to do this, though. If you want to save a flight for later, just click on the Save button. You may find that some other flight-tracking apps have a few more features, like creating itineraries, or more general searches.

As said above, FlightTrack allows you to do searches. You must know at least some information about the flight to do a search, unless you just shake the phone. I find that the search is good if you know what you want, but it can get a little annoying. Sometimes you just want to see a list of flights out of a certain airport instead of searching for specific flights. But this also means that your list will be vary narrow after you search. And, with its 751 included airlines and 4530 included airports, maybe seeing a list of flights would just be overwhelming.

FlightTrack retails for $4.99 on the App Store and there is no Lite edition (I don’t know how there could be anyway). For a frequent traveler it is a great tool and gives you a fair number of features. Even for an infrequent traveler it can be a nice tool to have, just in case. And hey, $4.99 wouldn’t even buy you a meal at the airport that you had to buy because you didn’t hear your flight had been delayed 5 hours.

As said above, Deep allows you to search by colors. This can be really useful if you are looking for all the pictures of your room, because you know the wall color. Instead of making you pick a color out of the blue, Deep shows you a list of colors that your images contain. But they aren’t really specific colors, they are ranges. So, if you know the picture has a dark red in it, click on the icon that includes that color. This may sound really powerful already, but it gets even more powerful. Once you have clicked on a range, you can click on another one to narrow it down even more. When you click on another color, the list of colors and the list of images will then narrow down. There will always be 7 rows of colors, though, that go through the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, violet).

Once you have selected an image, Deep gives you even more options. On the right side of the window you will see another color list, this time for colors in that image. Below the preview of the image you will see a view with all of your images. But when you click on one of the colors in the right, this list will narrow down to only images with that color. Deep can show you similar images with just a few clicks. But you can also have Deep do this for you with its “Genius” functionality. In the toolbar you will see an icon that looks like iTunes’ Genius button. If you press it, Deep will find all images similar to the selected one. It will still do it by color, but it should make it even easier to find similar images.

One gem in Deep that many can easily miss is its image list scroller. You can use a left or right scroller on a mouse to scroll through, but there’s another way — a better way — just click anywhere in the list and flick with your mouse, left or right, and the list will move through the images. Unlike regular scrolling, it will not stop moving until it has reached the end of the list. You can also just hit the Play button to have it go through the list slowly. The only issue is, there is no pause button, so you have to stop it by clicking somewhere on the list. Although it also has some issues (like dragging up or down can resize the list), it is still a very cool way to view a list of images — very iPhone-like.

Although Deep’s main purpose is to allow you to search images through colors, it also includes a few other things. First of all, when any image is selected, you can just hit Enter to enter some tags. This will also make it easier to find images in the future. You can also sort by image type, location and size and shape. You can actually do all of these at once. This means that you can look for a raw image in your Pictures folder that is extra-large, with a dark shade of blue.

Ironic Software‘s Deep retails for $34 and you can download a free trial from their site. It solves an issue that many of us have multiple times a day. Although it’s basically a one-trick-pony, it does the job, and does it well.

7 Cities TD ($4.99 Introductory Price)

7 Cities TD brings a storyline to tower defense. There are 7 cities (hence the name) that you must protect. There are also different towers and powers that you can unlock by beating levels. Even on the easiest difficulty, 7 Cities is very hard. Instead of upgrading with money, in 7 Cities you must use the special blue gems to upgrade. To get these gems, one of your towers must level. Leveling is not the same as upgrading, though. Your towers will level themselves when they get to a certain amount of kills. You can also collect these gems when a bonus wave comes. When a new wave is about to come, 7 Cities will tell you what type of armor they have: Light, Medium, or Heavy. The heavier the armor, the harder they are to kill. This game may sound very complex, but once you have played it a few times, the only complex part is figuring out a good strategy. 7 Cities provides hours of gameplay with its campaign (that can be played on three difficulties), and to top it off, its graphics are beautiful. This gives it a lot of bang for the buck. The only real issues are: it has no free play (although you could consider trying to beat a level free play), and it is very difficult, even on easy.

Grade: B+

Besiegement ($3.99)

Besiegement uses the same campaign idea as 7 Cities, but also goes a bit further. It provides 20 levels, and 10 things called challenges. The levels are a little bit different from those in most tower defense games. In each level, the enemies just go where you aren’t, and where there are no obstacles. The game forces you to allow them a path, but other than that you can go pretty much anywhere. This, for the most part, makes the game easier. Unlike 7 Cities, you can use money to upgrade your towers. The challenges work just like regular levels, except you cannot let any enemies escape. They also have restrictions on both you and the enemies. In some, you can only use certain weapons, and in all, there is only a certain type of enemy. Besiegement also allows you to store up to 5 profiles, so both you and your friends or family can have their own campaign. Although Besiegement is not extremely hard, it provides many levels and challenges, and also has great graphics and animation. It also provides a means to make it harder; you can increase and decrease the speed at which the enemies move. So, even though there’s not a campaign for each difficulty, you can make it a lot harder for yourself. Unlike in most other Tower Defense games, Besiegement does not let you zoom in on your map. Like 7 Cities, Besiegement does not have free play.

Grade: B

iTD ($1.99)

iTD is one of the closest to original tower defense games you can find. It’s simple: there are 3 maps you can play for each of three difficulties. There is no campaign or goal other than just playing as long as possible (trying to get a high score). There are four types of towers: Snow, Lightning, Bomb, and Laser. Like Besiegement, you use your money to upgrade the towers. As the game goes on the enemies get harder. Instead of using boats (like in 7 Cities) or real-looking enemies (like in Besiegement), iTD uses classic shapes and colors. Similarly, instead of using anything that looks like a tower, iTD uses blocks with pictures (as can be seen in the icon above). Like in both of the above, at the top of the screen iTD shows you the next enemy type. Even though it does not tell you the difficulty of the next enemy type, you should expect it to be stronger. Even though iTD keeps track of your scores, there is no way to view them without actually playing, which can be quite annoying. You also only have one profile, which doesn’t matter too much because it’s not campaign style. If you are looking for classic Tower Defense, with no campaigns or extras, then you will like iTD.

Grade: B-

Mote-M ($0.99)

Mote-M’s main difference from the other tower defense games mentioned is its difficulty meter. Instead of there being many different levels, you just drag a slider to choose a difficulty from 1 to 10. Of course, it goes up in increments of 1/2, so this does not provide infinite difficulties. Once you have selected a difficulty, you choose one of four Filed Types: Top-down, Across, Diagonal, or Sandbox. Like a few others, there is no defined course; instead, you define it yourself. Mote-M also brings another interesting feature: when green arrows appear around a square, you can put any tower on it for free. Like a few others, instead of actual tower-like figures, Mote-M just uses squares with dots that tell you their type. You use money to upgrade to new levels also. The level of a tower is shown with the circles in the bottom-right side of the tower. One of the best parts of Mote-M is its graphics. It runs extremely smoothly, and just looks clean. I have not had any lagging yet, even when there are many enemies on the field. Don’t let the $0.99 price tag make you think Mote-M is inferior to the others, because it provides great gameplay and graphics, and would be well worth $3. The only major issue with it is limited maps, but that is easily solved with the difficulty slider.

Grade: A-

Retro Defense ($3.99)

Retro Defense is the closest to original tower defense you can find, from the graphics to the board. However, this is not necessarily good. The game freezes up for a second every so often, and it lags most of the time. I have also found that sometimes after clicking a button, it freezes up for a couples seconds. I am not sure if this is all part of the retro-ness, or just a major bug, but it does get very annoying. Even though it’s supposed to be retro, that doesn’t mean that the animation has to be. Retro Defense provides many maps, and tells you the difficulty of each one. It also shows you the total waves, and the most waves you have ever defended on the map. If you are a big fan of retro games, or just retro tower defense, this is the game for you. If not, then you will definitely want to look elsewhere. For $3.99, this really is just for retro fans.

Grade: C

TapDefense (Free)

For a free game, TapDefense is very full-featured. Like Besiegement, it has both a challenge mode and a campaign/levels mode. Like 7 Cities, it has a high-score view where you can view all your high scores for any level. You can also see the high scores of people who have submitted their scores. In TapDefense, you start out with 3 types of towers, but there are 4 others that you can unlock. Unlocking in TapDefense works a lot like upgrading in 7 Cities — you collect halos (which are different from money), and then when you get enough (1 or 2), you can unlock a new tower. TapDefense also includes one really cool feature which none of the others have: interest. Not only do you receive money for killing the enemies, but you also get interest on your saved money after each round. If you want to increase your interest rate, you use your halos. When you are playing a level, if you click on an enemy, you can see its details, such as speed, name and health. Although this means you cannot target enemies (click on one, and it becomes a priority to all towers), it is still a pretty cool feature. Although TapDefense is free, it still packs a lot of features and many hours of play. It should be tried by anyone thinking of purchasing a Tower Defense game, because it is probably enough for most of us.

Grade: B

The Creeps! ($1.99 Introductory Price)

The Creeps provides a much different story than many of the others. Instead of defending a base, or something like that, you are defending a kid from monsters in the closet. To choose a map, you get a nice cover flow view, which is a feature that none of the others have. Like Mote-M, it has very smooth animation and looks very clean. One feature it has that only a few others have is targeting, but it goes a bit beyond just that. On each map there are pre-set objects, and you can target these too. So, if you want to build a tower where there is already a gravestone, you just target it, and all of your towers in range will try to destroy it. Like the others, you can upgrade your towers, which makes them perform better. Although it only has 10 levels at the moment, the developer promises that many more will come (the developer also promises sound). Another thing it has that many others don’t is accelerometer-based super-towers. These are towers that you use the accelerometer to activate. For $1.99, The Creeps offers great graphics and fun gameplay. However, some may find it a little too easy, but that may change in future updates.

Grade: B

Mémoires is really just a journal, nothing more. If you are looking for something that also includes tags, blogging abilities, and even more features, you may want to look at MacJournal or Journler. But, those two are also $15 more, so you might not want to look into them if you just want journaling.

Mémoires provides a clean and simple interface, similar to iCal. There is a calendar in the upper left-hand corner, where you choose a date to see all entries for. However, if you click on a date that is not the current date, and add an entry, it will be added to that date. I guess if you wrote an entry on a piece of paper and forgot about it for a week, this could help you. But it can also make things very confusing. Mémoires only provides two fields for each entry: a title and the entry. This makes it simple, so you can focus more on the journal, and less on adding tags and other things. In the entry field you can add special formatting and even images, which provides flexibility for what kind of entry you want to do.

Like many other journaling applications, Mémoires provides an easy way to encrypt your journal. You just go to File > Encrypt… and then choose a password. The whole journal will then be encrypted, so if you forget your password, your journal is gone. Unlike some other journaling applications, Mémoires allows you to choose where the journal will be saved. So if you want to have it on your MobileMe, you can. But Mémoires doesn’t provide regular MobileMe syncing, so to sync between two Macs, you must have it saved to your MobileMe.

If you are switching from one of the journaling programs mentioned above, Mémoires makes it really easy to import your data. You just go to File > Import…, choose the application, and Mémoires will create a new journal with the data in it. Mémoires also allows you to export to RTFD, RTF and TXT formats. Although you cannot import and export to as many formats as in some other journaling applications, you are not completely locked in to the Mémoires format. And actually, you don’t even need to export your journal to view it in another application. If you open the .memoire file in any SQLite application, you can view your data right there.

Mémoires retails for $19.95 and you can download a free trial from the site. It provides you with a clean and simple interface for writing a journal, but does not lock you into one format. Although it does not have as many features as others, that also means that you can focus more on content and less on extras. If you are thinking of starting a journal this year, then you will definitely want to check out Mémoires.

Sometimes people don’t care enough about the text in their documents. Then, when you have to clean it up, you have to do the same task many times, like converting double spaces to single spaces, or changing case. It is very tedious, which is exactly why some developers have created software to do these tasks. One of the more notable ones is Unmarked Software‘s TextSoap.

TextSoap looks a lot like TextEdit, except for the drawer on the right side and the toolbar at the bottom. The three buttons in the lower left-hand corner of the window allow you to choose what type of line endings to use. Unless you know what line endings will do to your text, I would stick with Unix. Now for the buttons in the lower right-hand corner: The one that says 100% just changes the zoom. The graph button next to it allows you to see stats, like the number of paragraphs, words, characters, etc. The paragraph button allows you to see formatting like new lines, tabs, spaces, etc. The fourth button simply allows you to toggle the drawer. With all of these buttons, the interface can look complex, but in reality it isn’t.

The main point of TextSoap is to clean your text, and this is what the drawer is for. At the top of the drawer you can choose what set of Scrubs to see. Library will show them all (100+), but the most useful (for the average user) are going to be found in Standard. When you click on one of the Cleaners in the list, it will preform that action on the text. These Cleaners are great, but they are just the base of TextSoap — the real power lies in custom Cleaners. Custom Cleaners allow you to create Cleaners that preform more than one task. To edit your Custom Cleaners, just click on the Edit Cleaners toolbar item. You will then see a window with all of your custom Cleaners on the left and the workflow for the selected cleaner in the middle. On the right side, there are about 25 actions that you can drag onto a workflow. When you drag one onto the workflow, there will usually be some fields that you need to fill out. If you need help with Syntax elements, Characters, and more, just click the RegEx Help button at the top of this window. Custom cleaners allow you to create complex workflows for things you do with text all the time. One of my favorites is a Blog post archiver, which grabs the text, changes the font, and even runs an AppleScript to download the images. My point is that you can create the simplest or the most complex actions with this one tool. There is only one minor issue — if you edit a Run Automator Workflow’s workflow, and there are no workflows in Automator’s actual workflow folder, then the popup box will not popup, which may make you think that TextSoap has frozen.

One feature that makes using TextSoap even easier than it already was is its OS X Service menu support. What this does is add a TextSoap item to your Services menu (found at [Open Applications Name] > Services), where you can apply TextSoap’s built-in Cleaners and your own to text. You may be thinking that you can only apply it to text in editable fields, but this is not true. You can actually change text on a Website in a (non-editable) Mail message! Well, it only stays that way until you refresh, and, of course, no one else can see it. But, nonetheless, this is awesome! So, if you just use the service to clean a Mail message in Mail.app, and then copy the text to your clipboard, it is clean! No need to even open TextSoap. To enable or disable this, just go to the OS X Services pane of TextSoap > Preferences.

Another feature that integrates TextSoap into your daily workflow is its plug-in support. TextSoap comes with plugins for BBEdit, TextWrangler, Mailsmith, Coda, and Eudora. In the Plugins pane of TextSoap > Preferences, you need only click the checkbox by the plug-in you want installed, and it will install! In an application such as Coda, TextSoap will appear in the Plug-ins menu for even easier access. Of course, you are limited to these applications, but hopefully the developer will add plug-ins for other applications too. But you can always use the Service menu.

One feature that would be nice to have is a System-wide keyboard shortcut. Yes, the Services menu is easy to use, but to have shortcuts for different cleaners would be really cool and make this much easier to use. It would also be cool to have droplet files, where you would drop a file, or some text, and it would created a new file with a certain Cleaner applied.

Unmarked Software‘s TextSoap retails for $39.95, and you can download a free trial from their site. It is a great tool that allows you to save a lot of time by not having to do tedious tasks. And, since time is money, in these times, this means that TextSoap will save you money.