Author Archive

Budding screenwriters hoping to write the next action-packed blockbuster have a few hurdles to overcome. Besides the obvious creative obstacles, movie screenplays have a strict formatting structure and deviating from it is potentially suicidal for new writers breaking into the industry. Mariner Software’s Montage is a screenwriting application which allows screenwriters to write without worrying about technical formatting rules. Montage takes care of that part for you — you just have to supply the story.

Since Apple introduced the framework, Core Image powered editing applications have sprung up like Starbucks. From Pixelmator to Acorn, they’re everywhere to be found. Even so, there’s always room to innovate. Rhapsoft’s LiveQuartz, now at version 1.8, is a good example.

LiveQuartz has most of the standard image editing tools you might expect from a modern image editing application: layers, a rudimentary brush engine, selection lasso tools, a text engine, and filters. Like other editors powered by Core Image, LiveQuartz is fast and its filters operate in near realtime. Notable features which LiveQuartz lacks include layer styles and alpha masks.

One of the most grudging management tasks is renaming files, especially when you have many and they all need to be similarly renamed. For example: you want to rename a dozen photos from “DSC003123.jpg” to something more meaningful like “Wedding-Pictures-23.jpg.” Dare to be Creative has released version 3 of it’s batch renaming utility, the aptly named Renamer4Mac, a solution to this mind numbing task.

Renamer4Mac allows you to rename files with 5 variables. Search & Replace and Convert Case do exactly what they suggest. Insert and Remove allows you to respectively add or remove characters at any point in a filename. Finally, Renamer4Mac can number files in different ways, as in with numbers or letters or a combination of the two.

For most people, reading large amounts of text on a computer screen is unpleasant, while reading books and newspapers is not. Tofu, from developer Amar Sagoo, attempts to address this conundrum.

The idea behind Tofu is that vertically anchored narrow columns are easier to read than strolling through a single wide column of text. The application is basically a text viewer with a twist: Tofu automatically formats text into easy to read columns set against an eye-pleasing off-white backdrop. The application can open plain and rich-text files (.txt and .rtf respectively), or alternatively text can be imported into Tofu simply via copy-paste.

One of the nice things about Macs is how OS X hides ugly system configuration files and miscellaneous temporary folders from the average user. However, for the advanced user (craving to delete those pesky .DS_Store files for example), Mac OS X offers no easy way to to view hidden files or folders, short of cryptic terminal commands. Enter Houdini, an application which allows users to easily create, access, move and delete hidden files and folders.

While purchasing Audible books from iTunes is blissfully seamless, getting physical CD audiobooks into iTunes and onto an iPod is not. When you rip an audiobook with iTunes, iTunes treats the files like music. This means hundreds of audio tracks littering your music library and the annoyance of finding that iTunes refuses to place the tracks into the dedicated Audiobook sub-directory.

Splasm Software’s informatively named Audiobook Builder solves these annoyances. Audiobook Builder merges audio files together and joins them into a single iPod friendly audiobook file (.m4b). This process accomplishes several things, including consolidating the book into a single file, creating chapter markers, placing the home-brewed file into the Audiobook sub-directory, and making the file bookmarkable (iTunes/iPod will remember and save your place for easy resuming).

Looking at the sheer number of OS X FTP clients, one gets the impression that the only thing Mac users do is transfer files. If you happen to be one of those people and have yet to find an FTP application that suits you, version 3 of Ortabe’s NetFinder has been released.

NetFinder has all the features you’d expect from a modern FTP application. All standard FTP protocols are supported, including iDisk access through WebDAV. There are advanced synchronization and mirroring tools, as well as external editing support and integrated file previewing. A feature unique to NetFinder is the ability to add color labels and comments to files on remote servers.

For those who have the burning need to confess dark secrets, the options for digitally recording thoughts are practically limitless. Besides the plethora of text editors and word processors, there are a fruitful number of Mac journaling applications. Joining this party is Tagebuch from developer MOApp.

What sets Tagebuch apart is the ability to work portably. Because all of the entries you write are self-contained inside the application bundle, and the application uses no cache or preference files, you can even run Tagebuch from a USB flash drive. And, like many journaling applications, everything you write in Tagebuch is automatically saved, so there’s no need to worry about losing data.

If you live the iLife - that is, use Apple branded applications like iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie extensively, then having quick access to your media is essential. Certain Apple programs like Pages and Keynote already include a Media browser for Audio, Photos, and Video, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a similar browser available to all your applications? With Karelia Software’s iMedia Browser, you can.

Do you remember the days of a spatial Finder? Did you bemoan the loss of Clarus the dogcow? Cry when Apple removed all traces of pinstripes in Leopard? Well then, allow me to introduce you to Application Switcher Menu (henceforth referred to as ASM) from developer Frank Vercruesse.

ASM includes more tools than you might assume from the vanilla name, but the main draw of the application is that it brings the functionality of the classic Mac OS application switcher to OS X. “Classic” Mac OS users might remember switching between applications through a menu bar icon. ASM brings that back.

Comic Life, Plasq’s fantastic comic creation application has been updated to version 1.4. For the uninitiated, the Apple Design Award winning Comic Life allows you to take photos and turn them into comics–complete with speech bubbles, panels, and stylized text.

New in this release are various bug fixes, of course, but Plasq has also included quite a few major new features. The most obvious are the new image adjustment controls (Below, right). Users can now adjust brightness, contrast, sharpness, exposure, and saturation, all from within Comic Life. Other new features include the new jagged ballon tail style and the ability to rotate speech balloons (Below, left)

Looking for an alternative to Apple’s Mail but don’t like Mozilla Thunderbird’s non-native interface? You’re in luck, because developer Nick Kreeger has released Correo 0.3. Correo is an up and coming open-source email client designed to bring the power of Mozilla Thunderbird under the hood of Aqualicious interface.

Correo’s goals are similar to the Camino project. Like Camino bundled the power of Firefox into a native OS X application, Correo borrows key Thunderbird technologies while simultaneously leveraging the power of OS X. For example: Correo uses OS X technologies like Address Book for contact management and Keychain for password storage yet uses the same widely praised Gecko rendering engine found inside Thunderbird.

The five star rating system in iTunes is wonderfully useful once you’ve categorized your library. Need a list of your top 15 songs from 1980? Boom: smart playlists compile your selection within seconds. Wouldn’t it be great though, if iTunes had a more elaborate subjective rating system, tagging tracks not only on how “good” they are on a 5 point scale, but also by their tempo and mood? Well, with Moody, you can.

There has been a lot of activity in the OS X image editor realm lately. From new applications competing with Photoshop like Pixelmator and Acorn, to specialized tools like Skitch and Picturesque, there is no shortage of applications for the Mac consumer. Free image editors however, are difficult to come by. There is always the vulnerable venerable GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), but few have the patience to figure out its foreign interface and deal with the quirks of working in a X11 environment. For those Mac users who crave a free native cocoa image editor, Seashore is the answer.

The one-two punch of the mouse and GUI are an intuitive duet, but sometimes you just want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Keyboard shortcuts give you that.

While OS X offers keyboard shortcuts for most commands in the menu bar, there are a few orphaned commands worth adopting. Not a problem though, because OS X allows you to easily adopt any menu bar function and map it to a keyboard command, without the assistance of any third party software.