This isn’t the first time Sesame Street has showed some integration with our fruit-flavored overlords.  Last year the video podcast The Word on the Street debuted, featuring man on the street interviews with the new muppet Murray on a certain topic and classic Sesame Street clips that explore a similar theme.  As a parent to two little ones, having The Word on the Street in my pocket has made me a hero on more than one occasion.

The Word on the Street has recently been replaced by “Happy Healthy Monsters” in the same Sesame Street podcast feed on iTunes. Parents can also find other Sesame Street moments floating around iTunes.  The 1986 childhood classic Follow That Bird is available for rent or download, special episodes that touch on important subjects are available for free, and regular season episodes can be purchased in the Store.

If you’ve ever wondered where Sesame Street fits into last year’s popular ad campaign, Elmo is indeed a Mac.  Parents rejoice!

Buddy the Bus offers up a 21st century take on the book-and-record sets we used to get as kids.  Back then you’d dig out your Fisher-Price turntable and listen to the narrator read along with the story.  Now that we live in “the future,” both audio and book are magically transported as one package in this totally free app.  Your kids can pop in their headphones and listen along as Buddy the Bus takes his passengers all over the town.

Baby Flash Cards is, to no ones suprise, exactly what it sounds like.  Flash cards are considered by many to be a great way to stimulate a child’s mind.  But why shell out $5-$10 for a set of real cards when you can get a fantastic free set right here?  The free set included in Baby Flash Cards features a variety of real world objects and animals paired up with their matching words.  Cards can be explored alphabetically or randomly, and you can set it so that all the info is on the card at once or the words are hidden until you touch them.

SimpleDraw proves one solid universal truth: kids LOVE coloring.  It’s timeless.  Give a kid in 12th century Mongolia a crayon and he’ll know what to do with it in seconds.  So it should come as no surprise that the one app my 2 year old is always trying to wrestle away my iPod for is the one she calls “COLOR!!”  SimpleDraw’s name couldn’t be more accurate.  You can select from a handful of colors and brush thicknesses, but asides from that things are kept alarmingly minimalist.  Your little one can just put a finger on the screen and go to town.

Children’s Classics let’s you put the tradition of reading with you’re kids right in your pocket.  Sure you could ask your child to sit quietly and patiently on that long train trip/airport wait/doctor’s office visit, but wouldn’t it be more fun to break out the bedtime stories in the middle of the afternoon?  Children’s Classics offers up 16 classics children’s reads ranging from Pinnochio and Robin Hood to Aesop’s Fables and The Secret Garden.  If you find your family is really digging it, make sure to do a search on the AppStore for BeamItDown Software.  Not only have they pblished this great collection, but they have a number of other classic family stories like Alice in Wonderland or A Christmas Carol available completely free of charge.

myHomework is an app that every iPhone/iPod toting student should own, and every parent encourage.  myHomework lets a child keep track of their class schedule, assignments, tests and other school activities.  Even better, it has color coded reminders to let them know when something is about to come due or has missed a deadline.  Organization is a cornerstone to success, and what better developmental task to apply this to than the daily juggle of academia?

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are many apps, both paid and free, that prove to be a great resource for parents the world over.  What iPhone apps do you share with your kids?

The Schoolhouse interface bears a striking resemblance to iCal

When the app is first launched iCal users will immediately notice a familiar layout. Separated into 3 columns, Schoolhouse works and interacts similarly to iCal, but is designed with your studies in mind. Users can add as many classes as they choose, and fill out useful information about classes. Assignments, tasks, and notes can then be added to each class with options to customize due dates, attach files, add partners, assign priority, and deadlines for tasks. Notebooks to store a group of notes can be created by course, or separately for sub-topics.

Course schedules, instructors, and assignment types can all be customized

Schoolhouse allows you to add as much or as little detail about your schedule and assignments as you choose, depending on how organized you are. Assignments can be added and viewed quickly, or entered with significant details. Students can check off assignments when completed, enter grades for tests, and keep track of their term grades with the built-in Grades feature. The app also allows students to contact their teachers about specific assignments with just one-click.

Rich text notes can be stored in Notebooks and courses

While the app has robust customization features, I still wasn’t able to adapt it to my course schedule. I also felt confined to the app, with no way to export my assignments except for the proprietary Schoolhouse database. I would love to see options to export to iCal, iPods, and the web in the future. Also, I found the lack of keyboard shortcuts annoying as I tried to enter and manipulate my courses and assignments. Plus there’s no integration for students that have online textbooks or web services tied to their courses. I would also like to see the app fit more naturally into OS X by Schoolhouse 3. The app currently has portions that are non-standard for OS X applications, which Mac users wont find as intuitive as most native applications.

Schoolhouse was updated at the beginning of February after being crippled for well over a year. Leopard users on Intel Macs had to force Schoolhouse to run through Rosetta, causing the app to crawl. On February 6th the developer published Schoolhouse 2.2, fixing a number of the Leopard compatibility issues. The app remains overall the same. Classcasting, a feature that published assignments in RSS via .Mac, was removed due to the .Mac / MobileMe switch over and changes to the service. Current users can feel more comfortable upgrading to the new version because their library will be automatically backed-up before upgrading, but they will be frustrated when they can no longer manually backup and restore the database.

Despite some of the short-comings Schoolhouse is an amazing application. Now that the Leopard compatibility issues seem to have been sorted out, I feel comfortable using it to keep track of my assignments again. While there are plenty of features that can be added in the future, there are tons current features to help students keep track of their studies and spend less time doing it.

Tree gives you two ways to view your outlines: Listview and Treeview. Listview is your normal, everyday, outline view that uses indentation for children. Treeview, however, displays children on the right side of the parent. When in Treeview, you will see a little arrow at the right end of a box (if the box has a child). When you click this box, the child expands to the right. You can also do a bit of a hybrid between Listview and Treeview. If you click the big triangle on the left side of a box, Tree will show that box’s child below it, like in a regular list. But, this will not effect the child’s child or the parent, so you can still display some expanded to the right. If you want to resize a box Treeview, just click and drag on the divider at the top of the outline that corresponds with the box you are resizing. You cannot resize individual boxes, only a certain hierarchical level. So, Treeview, does not replace a mind manager, it is just another view for an outline.

The rest of Tree works exactly as you would expect it to. The toolbar buttons allow you to add, remove, indent, and outdent boxes. The Show Family toolbar icon will expand a whole family (parents and children) based on which way the family was expanded last (right or bottom). Although there is a show family toolbar item, nowhere is there a hide family toolbar item, or even menu item.
The Label toolbar item allows you to label a box a specific color. If you click on a box and then click the Edit Note toolbar item, you can edit the box’s note. The note text will be displayed in grey right under the main text for the box.

Tree also supports importing and exporting to a few formats. To open a OPML file, either go to File > Open or just drag it onto Tree’s icon. To import from a plain text document, just go to File > Open, or drag it onto Tree’s icon. You will then see a dialogue which allows you to view the text file, and choose an encoding to import with. What is strange is that even when you export with Tree, it cannot import notes as notes; they are just children. To export a document, just go to File > Export, and choose a format and encoding. Although Tree does allow you to import and export, you only have the choice of two formats (three including its own), and you can’t even get notes imported from files exported with Tree.

Tree, by Top of Tree retails for about $42.79 and you can download a free trial from their site. It has very few features, but does include a new view for outlining. However, for the price, I suggest you look elsewhere at products like OmniOutliner or OmniOutliner Pro.

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

When you first open up Timeline, it asks you to pick the “look” for your project. There are 7 pre-designed templates available for you to choose from, which you can edit to your hearts content. Below the template chooser is a list of applications that you can import events from. You can import from iCal, Address Book, iPhoto, RSS Feeds and more. For example, I chose to import events from System Profiler, which gave me a timeline of all the updates I have installed since I bought my MacBook Pro back in February. You can also import from a few applications that don’t come pre-installed on your computer, like Aperture and Skitch.

Once you have chosen your theme, and then whether or not you will be using a blank timeline, or import events, it is time to start editing. Timeline has a three-tabbed sidebar on the right, and a toolbar at the top. All of this applications functionality is contained within those two parts of the interface.

The first tab is labled “Visual Design,” and is where you can tweak the look of your timeline. From here, you can change the font used in your timeline, the color scheme, what the date line title looks like, and whether or not the selected event has a descender (the line connecting the event to the timeline).

The next tab, labeled “Dates,” lets you adjust the formatting of the dates on your timeline. You have quite a bit of control of how they are displayed, with multiple formating options, as well as the option to manually set the row date format (the dates that run along the bottom of your timeline), or have Timeline 3D adjust their formatting automatically.

The last tab of the Settings sidebar is labeled “Printing,” and lets you set up your options for when you want to print your timeline. You can set up the page size, document margins, and the minimum amount of pages you would like Timeline 3D to try and fit your timeline on (the default is 1).

The toolbar is where you begin adding/removing your events. After clicking the “Add” button to add an event to your timeline, you have to enter in some information about it. Of course you have the necessary information that is needed like the name of the event, and the date it started on, but you can also add an end date, notes, an image and a link associated with the event. Clicking an event after you have finished filling out its information, will let you remove it, edit it, and change the font.

Timeline 3D has 3 main views. First, there is the Screen View. Screen View lets you scroll through your timeline, and add/remove events on the fly. Next there is Bulk Edit, which shows you a list of all your events. This makes it easy to add additional information to many events at once, like notes, images etc. Finally, you have Preview view, which breaks up the timeline so you can see how it will look when printed out.

Next, is the feature that gives Timeline 3D its name. Clicking on 3D in the toolbar will show your timeline full screen. You can use the arrow keys to cycle through your events, and pressing space-bar will invoke all of Timeline’s 3D good-ness. From the 3D view you can cycle through your timeline just like in the 2D view. For an explanation for the idea behind why 3D is so great for presenting a timeline, check out this video from the developer, Adam Behringer. You can see a quick example of what the 3D view looks like below.

.

Timeline lets you search your timeline from the toolbar, by highlighting the event that matches your search query. Timeline also has a media browser for you to choose photos from your Mac to be included in your project.

Besides the 3D presenting view, all of the features I have mentioned so far are available in both the 2D and 3D edition of Timeline. The other feature that is 3D edition only is Timeline’s exporting options. In the 3D edition, you can export to your iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, 1080P HD and even Keynote (with a separate slide for each event). The 2D edition lets you export to PDF as well as send your timeline in an email.

In the end, I can certainly see why Timeline 3D was runner up for “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application.” It allows you to create/customize timelines that are interactive, sleek and well-organized; simple, yet powerful. There are a few videos of Timeline in action on Bee Documents website, so you can see a few examples of what it is capable of.

Timeline 3D from Bee Documents is $65, while the standard (2D) edition is $40. There is a free trial available which lets you do everything except for print/export your timelines.

Mental Case has a very clean interface; the toolbar on top lets you create cases and notes and start viewing a slideshow, and a bar on the left lets you select your cases so you can edit your notes.

It is very simple to create a new group of flash cards, or case, with Mental Case — simply press the “Add Case” button and type in a name. Then you are given some options to choose from. You can pick how often you want the notes to show up in your lesson and how quick the slideshow for that case goes. Creating notes is also easy. Once you click the “Add Note” button, the main area of the window changes to the note editing view. Notes have many options: First you type in a question on the left, and then the answer on the right. For both of these you may add a screen shot, image, or a picture from your iSight. Mental Case also has shortcut keys to quickly add a new note. You can add a text note, an image, a screenshot, or a new flash card with a question and answer using either a simple shortcut or the Mental Box menu item. These notes will show up in your lesson at some point, reminding you of your note that you might otherwise have forgotten about. If you want to take your notes anywhere you can export them as images to your iPod or iPhone or simply print them.

Mental Case also includes a lesson feature. Notes are automatically added to the lesson at a set interval, which you can change in the preferences. You can then have Mental Case automatically start a lesson when the number of notes in the folder reaches a set amount. Or you can just click the menu item and click “Study Lesson”. The number of notes currently in the lesson is displayed by a badge on the dock icon. If you only want to study notes in one case then you can select the case and click “View Notes in Case”. The background then dims and the slideshow starts. Slideshows have many different themes to choose from and you can pick how quick the slides are in the preferences. The top left part of the slide tells you which case that note is in. If it says “Prompt” in the top right then it is the question. The bottom right shows you which slide you are on and the question or answer is placed in the center. If you want the text aligned to the left or right you can also change that in the preferences.

Under the slides there is a controller. The left and right arrows advance a slide or go back, and the play button starts and pauses automatic advancement. By pressing the Tab key you can toggle to mark if you got it correct or wrong. You can also delete the note, restart the slideshow, or mark the slideshow as completed. The X button closes the slideshow.

Flash cards are tedious to make, but Mental Case makes it quick and easy to create many cards. It is a great way to study and has many more options than old fashioned flash cards. It is available from Maccoremac for €25 ($39) or €10 ($15) for students and free for teachers.

As usual, the MacHeist guys have done it again, with a bundle that consists of finance software, a word processor, an organizer as well as a handful of games for your Mac. Yea, lovely games.

I think it’s a rather cool idea bringing the concept of MacHeist into the mainstream. I’m sure they’ll be able to reach a lot more users who would otherwise not have heard of it. However, it’s still unclear how widespread the retail bundle will be physically available. I just hope that issues like distribution costs, rights and other nitty-gritty stuff like that wouldn’t ruin an otherwise superb idea.

What’s in it for people who already own these apps? Well, MacHeist is offering a referral program. Not just an ordinary referral program where you get paid for each sale. Instead they will be unveiling several diferent tiers of software prizes, each crammed with several options. Sounds like the MacHeist guys will have something cool up their sleeves, stay tuned for more.

If you don’t own the majority of these apps, please consider purchasing them. 25% of all proceeds will be going to a group of charities; MacHeist believes that this time round they could push the donations to over a million dollars. So what are you waiting for? Get your retail bundle today.

Open source app Stellarium is a planetarium for your Mac. Stellarium shows you the stars in a beautiful and fun to play with interface. The only thing that looks better is the real night sky.

From the settings dialogue you can set your location (anywhere on Earth), change the time (to see what the stars will look like later), and change the sky culture (Inuits anyone?). Moving around the sky is as easy as clicking and dragging with the mouse. The scroll wheel lets you zoom in and out.

Instead of menus, options are located along the bottom left corner and allow you to outline the constellations, show the Equatorial grid, view nebulas, search for objects, and configure a variety of custom settings.

Despite knowing nearly nothing about the stars, I was able to set Stellarium to my location and add constellation lines to help me recognize the stars that make up the constellations viewable from my location. Thanks to Stellarium, the Big Dipper will never escape me again.

Stellarium is a beautiful, versatile, and scientifically accurate program. If you’re a budding astronomer, you need it. If you have the type of friends that would be impressed if you casually pointed out Orion, then you definitely need it. Stellarium is free and you can grab it at the project’s website.

I personally attend many presentations at work where someone is at the back of the room with a video camera running to capture the presenter, his/her presentation on the overhead and the delivery that goes with it.

While this adds immense value for reuse of the presentation, the quality is often poor, and in many cases, the presentation itself is illegible. ProfCast, from Humble Daisy, is a great application for capturing live presentation content and audio in a format that can be easily published and distributed via a number of open channels.
ProfCast is able to record either PowerPoint or Keynote presentations in-time with the presenters audio.

With each new recording, a project document is created storing the raw material for future editing. Recordings can be shared by publishing as a Quicktime (.mov) movie or exporting to GarageBand or iWeb. The GarageBand export supports either enhanced .m4a audio or .m4b audio book formats. Through the use of ID3 Tags, it’s possible to include additional descriptive metadata information which is particularly useful when publishing content to iTunes U.

Podcasts are managed within a central repository called The Podcast Manager. Recordings are managed as a podcast series with associated episodes which can be edited and published. Additionally, screenshots, embedded links and other media not created by ProfCast can be included in the published podcast. The Podcast Manager will generate and publish well formed RSS feed files as well as publish the recording to an FTP, .Mac WebDav or local location.

With the mid-January update, Profcast 2.2 is now fully compatible with 10.5 Leopard as well as iLife 08 and iWork 08. ProfCast, distributed as shareware, is available for a 15 day free trial evaluation after which registration costs $59.95. Education pricing is available with volume discounts. If you’re the poor guy standing at the back of the room working the camcorder, why not give ProfCast a try and recommend it to your next set of presenters?

It will make your life a lot easier. Future viewers will thank you.

You fear the worst. And for good reason. For kids, the logic is this: You press buttons, things change colors on the screen. Pretty. End of story. Solution: Press lots of buttons.

Trouble is, they’ll mess with your volume, eject your iPod, delete that important file on your desktop – even get overexcited and start banging on the keyboard repeatedly (ouch). That’s where AlphaBaby comes in. Fire up AlphaBaby, and let the 3-year-old in question bang away.

“But what of my files?” you ask. The genius of AlphaBaby is that it disables most key combinations. Apple-Q won’t quit (another, more complicated key combination will though) and all other keys (when pressed) will spawn the letter colorfully and at a random location on the screen, accompanied by another (you guessed it) random sound effect. Kids love it.

But AlphaBaby goes beyond that. You can also choose how to display letters; what font, what color, what size. Or maybe you want to add some shapes in, or perhaps some random pictures from your iPhoto library. AlphaBaby provides more functionality than would be expected (or in that case, needed) in a program simply for kids. But for some reason older, more *cough* mature people *cough* (read: me) seem to find it amusing.

AlphaBaby can even say the letters out loud when the corresponding letter is pressed on the keyboard, making it an educational tool as well. It’s not going to teach your kid calculus, but it could certainly help younger toddlers learn the alphabet, names of people in pictures and more, using OS X’s built in text-to-speech technology.

AlphaBaby is free, open source, and the .dmg is less than a megabyte to download. Warning: Kids will get excited. MacApper is not responsible for broken keyboards. For Windows users, there is a similar program called BabySplat which is also free, although lacking in AlphaBaby’s advanced features.

That’s where Genius comes in. Genius is designed as an alternative to flash cards. Its purpose is to teach you the vocabulary quickly and efficiently by feeding you the words using fancy mind techniques, which may actually make you remember them.

Most people are probably screaming “iFlash!” at their computer right now. Sure, iFlash (which has been mentioned previously) is a great application to help you study, but its features are (in my opinion) overkill. Who really needs to record audio and attach pictures to their flash cards, and then sync it with their iPod? Who, of all the iPod owners in the world, would decide to study instead of watching the newest episode of Lost on their iPod? Not to mention iFlash will find your wallet $15 lighter after the 15-day trial expires.

Genius, on the other hand is a simple, free program (you’ll soon find out that this is the most important aspect for me). It shares the same basic features as iFlash, just without all the extra meat. You enter your words and their answers or translations into the list. Then click “Study.”

First, it tells you how to best get into the “alpha” mental state, which (as Genius has told me), is the mental state most conducive to learning. Then, your desktop darkens and you’re told the word and its meaning/translation. You press enter. Then, it asks you what the meaning of the word you just learned is. You type it. The next time you see the question, the answer is not shown, instead leaving the answer area blank. This process repeats, gradually feeding you new words as time goes by, but always going back to all of the words to make sure you don’t forget it.

It’s obviously done in such a way so that you remember the words better. And it works. Once you correctly know the meaning of a word 5 or 6 times, you get a nice green circle next to the word, indicating that you “know” the word. Genius has helped me through many Spanish tests this year, and the fact that it’s freeware makes it all the better. JCR Software’s website doesn’t have much going in design, but the developers behind this great software gem obviously know what they’re talking about when it comes to memorization. This is what I show people who say Macs are just for fun and play.

Genius costs $0 from jcr Software. There are also “packs” of vocabulary and other useful information available for download in the .genius file format online. Genius’s “official” community can be found in the “genius-talk” group on Yahoo Groups.

I’m sure a lot of Intel Mac users are unsatisfied with the performance of the Power PC version; Mac Office 2004 currently has to be translated (through Rosetta) on both Tiger and Leopard.

However, if you purchase ANY version of Office 2004 (this includes the Student and Teacher, Standard, or Professional Edition), you’ll get a free upgrade to the top of the line Mac Office 2008 Special Media Edition (excludes shipping and handling). Sounds like a really good deal to me. This means you can save up to $500 on a new copy of Office 2008.

There are two ways to redeem it. You can download your coupon, print it out, complete it, and mail it to Microsoft with proof of purchase. However, you can also redeem it online (though you’ll still need to send your proof of purchase via snail mail).

Let’s look at Mac Office 2008 a little closer. Just like its soon-to-be-predecessor, Mac Office 2008 comes in three different versions. At the low end, you have the Office 2008 Home & Student Edition followed by Office 2008 (we’ll refer to this as the standard version). At the high-end, there is the Office 2008 Special Media Edition, which completes the entire line-up.

They all come with the four basic productivity suite applications: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Entourage. Of course, if you pay more for the Standard and Special Media Edition, you’ll also get Exchange Server support as well as Automator Actions. The Special Media Edition also includes Microsoft Expression Media (previously known as iView).

Expression Media is an application that is used to manage and catalog digital assets (photos, movies, audio and any other type of media file). It handles tagging, batch processing, and almost everything else you need. Basic image editing tools are included to simplify your workflow, while Expression Media will also handle the creation of videos, slideshows and web galleries.

Mac Office is due for release in January 2008. So, let’s hear it, are you using Mac Office, iWork or something else?

SchoolHouse is simple to set up. You just right click in the left hand pane and add a term; under each term, you can add classes. In each class, you can not only keep track of your assignments but also professor information, grade weighting, time, location, etc. There is a slight problem with this, my school works on a 2-week cycle, meaning that classes are only the same every second week, which is not supported in the app.

SchoolHouse has an excellent interface. You can see all the information you want to know at a glance about your assignments (week, month, and list views are all available).

Adding a new assignment is easy; just click on the assignment button in the top left and you can add information about the assignment on the right side panel.

In this panel, there are 3 tabs: Details, Project and Files. Details is where you enter the details of the assignment, you can set a priority, which is a very useful feature, as well as due date, course, and comments. The Project and Files are the two tabs that hold the unique features of this app. In ‘Project’ you can add tasks for each assignment which you can tick off as you go along. You can also add a Partner, which is very useful, as it gives you a quick link to email them. The final pane, Files is a brilliant time saver. All you have to do is drag any file related to the project into the box pane and you have the option of either linking to the file or creating a duplicate for the app. Unfortunately, you can’t choose where it keeps the duplicate files; it automatically saves them to Application Support folder in your Library.

SchoolHouse not only lets you keep up to date with your assignments, it allows you to store notes. The notepad supports rich text, tables, and links. This makes a very easy way to have organized, and searchable notes!

Another unique feature is ClassCasts which are RSS feeds for your classes. RSS files can be stored in on any (S)FTP server as well as your .Mac, Amazon S3, or WebDav accounts. If you collaborate with other people a lot or are a professor this is a great feature.

SchoolHouse also has other unique features such as the ability to generate a graph showing how well you’ve done over the term. You can also make smart folders to organize your assignments.

Overall SchoolHouse is an excellent app despite a few minor flaws. It’s the best GTD app geared towards students, and is definitely worth a try. Best of all, SchoolHouse is donationware and is available for free from Logan Collins.

The problem is, that it is easy to get distracted. I myself find that I get distracted easily while on the computer. I might be working on a report, someone posts a YouTube video link on twitter, and I’ll find that it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, the report isn’t finished and I just spent an hour and a half looking at various YouTube videos. Luckily, there are a range of Mac applications available to help you and me stay on task.

1. Task Manager
In order to be productive, I think that everyone needs a good way to keep track of their tasks that need completion. At the moment, I am using OmniFocus (in private alpha) to keep track of what I need to do throughout the day. It does a great job of being my to-do list, though I can’t say much until it goes public. Before I was let in on the alpha, I used a few other applications like Do It, iCal and more recently TaskPaper. I think for now I am settled on OmniFocus, but what apps do you use to keep track of your tasks?

2. Word Processor
Most people these days write essays and such on a computer. I mean who uses a pen and paper these days? The only problem I find, is that sometimes word processors can be distracting. There are so many different things you can customize in word processors that you could easily find yourself spending more time finding a cool font for your project than actually typing. When I feel like I really need to get work done, I turn to WriteRoom. I like how WriteRoom blocks out everything else, and all you do is type. There is nothing else to it. I found it awkward at first going from typing in Pages to typing in WriteRoom, but it is something you get used to. When you focus on one task, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time. I do not know of any other word processors that can do this, so if you know of one, hit us up in the comments. Check out MacApper’s review of WriteRoom here.

3. Application Focus-er-on-er
Yes, that is a weird name for this next application, but in a way it fits. Think, from Freeverse, is an application that lets you focus on one window. It puts a backdrop color of your choice over your desktop, and lets you select a window that you want above the backdrop. Think basically allows you to do what WriteRoom does for word processing, to any application that you choose. This boosts my productivity greatly, as I can focus on just one windows at a time while still being able to switch to another quickly. Other applications have this ability such as Backdrop and Isolator (The other two apps along with think that were featured in this post); What have your experiences been with these applications?

4. RSS Reader
“RSS Reader, you say? But RSS feeds are the anti-productive” That is definitely true, but they can help boost your productivity greatly if you know when it is time to read RSS feeds, and when it is time to work. I am the type of person who loves to stay up to the minute on news. If Apple releases a new product, I want to know about it; If FSJ calls someone a frigtard, I want to know about it. RSS Readers help me stay up to the minute with news. Before I actually used an RSS Reader, I had a folder filled with about 15 bookmarks of blogs that I read regularly. It used to be a great bother to have to stop my work every few hours to peruse those blogs for new content. With an RSS Reader, all those blogs are combined into a nice application.

Instead of having to stop my work to check the blogs, my RSS Reader will let me know when there is new content. This saves a lot of time, and certainly helps me get the job done faster. Since I have got an RSS Reader I have found that I can read more blogs than I could have without one (not that I am a productive RSS Reader, as at the time of posting I have almost 4000 unread items). It is just a matter of being able to read a few RSS items, and still being able to get back to work quickly. My RSS Reader of choice right now is Cyndicate. Look for a review soon.

5. Clippings Application
One application that I think everyone needs is an application to store their notes, clippings etc. A pace where you can store images that you want to be able to find later, bits of text to remember, and research. The application that I use for this right now is DEVONThink Personal. If I find a quote on the internet I find funny, I can quickly open up DEVONThink and save it. When I need it again, it is as simple as opening up DEVONThink. No trying to remember what I named that TextEdit or Pages file.

This also comes in handy when researching for essays etc. as you can store paragraphs you want to quote or plagiarize use for information. There are many, many other things that you can store in DEVONThink, and different people use it for different things. Other apps that I have used in the past include SOHO Notes and Notebook.

So there you have it. Those are the applications that help me be productive, now I want to hear yours.

Needless to say, this comes as a very welcome perk for those of us spending all of our money buying texts and all our time studying them. While Apple’s student discounts are offered year-round, we are currently in the season of an even more exciting and limited time discount being offered to University, College and other post-secondary students: Buy a Mac, get a free iPod Nano.

Time is running out for this great opportunity. Qualifying Macs (MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac or Mac Pro), purchased with an iPod or iPod nano from an authorized Apple Campus retailer before September 16 2007, will receive a further mail-in discount up to the value of one iPod Nano. I took advantage of this fantastic deal last year with the purchase of my MacBook Pro and would recommend it to any post-secondary student thinking of making an Apple-related hardware purchase before school begins.

The mail-in discount went fairly smoothly, although I was surprised by the length of time it took to receive my actual discount. All the same, if you’ve been on the fence about whether your back to school computer was going to be a toss-up between the new iMac, a mid-range PC laptop or the MacBook, this program will hopefully make your decision a bit more easy.

Remember, the program ends September 16 2007.
Details for the American Apple Store can be found here.
Details for the Canadian Apple Store can be found here.

Magic Number Machine provides many of the features missing from Calculator.app such as 25 accurate digits of precision, support for complex numbers, many different number modes, function history, statistics functions, linear regressions, matricies, built in constants, and most importantly, a visual representation of the expression you are entering. If Calculator.app were a TI-83/84 calculator, Magic Number Machine would be more along the lines of a TI-89.

Along with OS X’s built-in Grapher utility, Magic Number Machine could replace an advanced scientific calculator such as the TI-89. If you regularly use such a calculator (or even if you don’t), I highly recommend this useful app. Magic Number Machine is freeware and available from Matt Gallagher.

Moreover, I’m guessing you’ve had enough math today and just want to get this over and done with. What could you do? Let me introduce Soulver, the calculator based on the English language.

From the makers of Picturesque, Soulver comes a very simple and intuitive user interface. You type whatever you want to find on the left-hand plane; once the computer figures out the correct answer, you get the result on the right. Soulver automatically updates and calculates when you type, so there’s no enter button or “equals” key that needs to be pressed.

Instead of typing numbers and signs, Soulver uses English phrases. Instead of typing “3×5″ or “100×0.2″ you can write “3 times 5” or “what is 20% of 100”. Soulver also uses variables. For instance, if you defined “x” as 200, you could say “456 times x” and Soulver will give you the correct answer. Though you can still type mathematical phrases if need be.

Soulver may be easy to use, but it is also very powerful. Clicking on the Answer Palette toolbar icon brings up a dashboard with multiple answers to common questions like “What’s the square root?” or “What’s that as a fraction?”. Soulver can also calculate whatever number you’d like to the 100th decimal point in real time just by dragging a slider.

Soulver is packed with many scientific and algebraic features, yet is still as easy as working in a word processor. Soulver is available with a price tag of $17.95(USD), however, you can use it for 15 days to see if it’s the solution to your mathematical woes.

For years I have been wanting to use a computer in class to take notes, but every application I use ends up becoming too cluttered, or I end up with a giant mess of poorly organized text files. Every Mac user has his/her own note-taking app of choice. Some love xPad, others love Scrivener, and even more just stick to the tried and tested Microsoft Office for this task. While I have tested each of these, I was really getting frustrated with the lack of a decent note-taking app in OS X.

I have used Notebook since the day I bought it. From the moment I first opened it, I have been kicking myself for not finding this tool earlier. It really is a student’s best friend. At its base Notebook is a full-featured text editor with support for multiple fonts, Unicode, attachments and ruler settings.

CPN is very versatile – it can be used as a note-taking app, to-do list, or a simple organizer. Many users will love the sheer simplicity, but underneath there is a lot of features that make this app really quite powerful. On the surface the GUI looks just like a notebook, that takes notes with pages and tabs, but take a look inside the preferences and you will see the amount of customizing and formating you can actually do with this app.

In my opinion, the best features of Notebook are the collapsible notes and bullet points, but one of the things that really makes this tool out-shine the competitors is its ability to pair your notes with their context: Responding to a professors email can be linked to the original email, or picking up your sister from a recital can be linked to an address book entry etc. Also a built-in spell checker and word completion tool makes your notes come out right the first time, error free.

You can try Notebook 2.1 free for 30 days and then get a full license for $49.95, a student license for $29.95 or a Family Pack for $99.95.

The first thing you’ll notice when playing American History Lux, is that it has a straightforward presentation which puts the player in the game immediately. Each war represents a different level in the game and each level must be won before the next one is played.

Also, once you have completed all of the levels, you can choose to play the whole game at different difficulties. The game itself is very simple and is built around a visual map, which is color labeled with different countries. By clicking on your own armies, you can add men to your ranks and decrease the effectiveness of a foreign attack.

The game is also separated into turns, like a game board. This helps to categorize players’ movements and strategies. Once you’ve added new men to your ranks, you can choose one of your armies to attack a foreign enemy. If you beat down that armies ranks, you automatically take control of that section of land.

These series of steps are repeated, until a country conquers all of the available portions of land. Another way of gaining army members is by collecting cards. Each time you defeat a country you gain a card, which in turn can be traded in for more armies.

Overall, American History Lux is great for light gamers who love strategy and straightforward thinking. After playing all of the levels of American History Lux, I must say that Silly Soft did a great job of making an addictive and compelling strategy game. Download a demo of American History Lux, or purchase it from Silly Soft for only 15 dollars.

To begin, select one of your favorite albums. Go down to the bottom of the window and click the + Calendar button. iPhoto will ask you to choose a theme of your liking. Use the scroll bar to go through the available themes. A preview of that theme is shown to the right.

Now that you’ve chosen your theme, iPhoto will ask you to set when the calendar will start and how many months it contains. You can also choose to show holidays from any country, events from your calendars in iCal, and Birthdays from your Address Book.

Once you hit “Okay” iPhoto will create a blank calendar with “drop-zones”. iPhoto automatically handles the effects and positioning so all you have to do is drag your photos into these drop-zones to insert your photos. If you want iPhoto to fill in the pictures for you, simply click the “Autoflow” button. If you don’t like a certain layout of one page, click on the layout drop menu to change how many pictures you want to see at once. Not only can you drag photos on top of the calendar, but on the actual dates as well. Drag a photo onto the date and iPhoto does the rest.

You have your calendar just the way you like it, now what can you do with it? Click the “Buy Calendar” button to have Apple print your calendar in high quality and ship it to you. Currently, a 12 month calendar is $19.00 (USD) without tax. You also have the ability to print your own calendar. To do so, go to File > Print or hit Apple + P.

Now you have a professional calendar filled with your very own digital memories. Enjoy!

ProVoc is most useful when an individual is learning a foreign language. With its library of five languages (Dutch, Chinese, English, French, and Spanish), the program helps almost any foreign language student. Entering vocabulary words is a snap and studying them is even easier. One thing I liked is that ProVoc offers groups so that one can put different lessons together.

Entering Vocabulary in ProVoc

Once a set of flashcards is selected, ProVoc offers the student three distinct options for studying. The first, aptly named “First Contact,” initiates a slideshow with the words and then takes the student through a brief multiple choice exam to test the words. Results are shown afterwards with the ability to flag or categorize incorrect words. ProVoc automatically adjusts the “difficulty” of the words based on results. The vocabulary words are then sortable via difficulty, flags, categories, and more. The same smart filters are available when one attempts to study the words.

ProVoc also offers a “written test” mode that I find most useful. Users are prompted in one language and must type the matching response in a text box below. The repetition of the typing really aids memorization. The third option, “Quick Test,” enables one to make sure that they have learned the material. A whirlwind round of questions ensures that the student is ready for his or her exam.

ProVoc’s First Contact Learning Mode

ProVoc’s features don’t stop at just studying. Post-studying, the student can look at his or her progress through the “History” tab, which nicely charts results by day, test, week, or month to enable the student to judge his or her progress. ProVoc lets users take their flashcards anywhere with convenient print and iPod modes. You can even print out flashcards on 8.5×11″ paper in a format that makes them a snap to cut out. Lists of the words can also be printed. What’s more ProVoc can put interactive “flashcards” in the Notes section of any iPod with the ability to read .txt files.

ProVoc’s History Feature

I think ProVoc really kicks ass and the application was recently named “Best Student Product” by MacGeneration. The tool is really essential for any form of student and can really aid anyone to achieve their learning goals. Provoc is available as freeware from the Arizona Software web site.

This review is part of an educational series by Zach Sims – hopefully some of you skool minded people find it useful. Up next is flashcard and memorization applications.

Pathway is an application for viewing Wikipedia pages. The main focus of the application is the way it tracks your history. While it displays a list of the pages you visited, it also uses a page web. For example, lets say I’m on the Macintosh page and I click on a link to the Apple Lisa page (as shown in the screenshot above). Then I click on a link to Steve Jobs. Using the page web, I can click on Macintosh again, and go right back where I came from. From there I can click on a link about Graphical user interfaces and click on an article about GNOME.

The bubbles of the page web can be moved and the page web can be zoomed in an out of. One interesting feature I found, is that on large pages, the bubble will have small white bubbles around it, with relevant links. An example is shown below.

Pathway supports the English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish Wikipedia’s. The developer is currently getting help translating the program into other languages, which is when I suspect the other Wikipedia’s will be supported. You can grab Pathway here.