Today’s claim to fame is a feature which many iCal users have been looking for for quite a while. It’s a small application that lives in your menu bar, and with a click, brings up a small window displaying today’s (or another day of your choice) events from one, some, or all of your calendars. To-do’s are there, (but called Tasks in Today) as well as your major scheduled events. It’s great for two reasons. One, as I mentioned before, you don’t have to have iCal open all the time. I’d much rather have this little guy open than full-fledged iCal for simply viewing events and tasks. Two, sometimes seeing too much into the future can be counter-productive to your day. This single-day approach; seeing only what you need to be productive TODAY– is a great one for productivity-minded folk like myself.

Another one of Today’s major features is full support for actually creating new events and new tasks. New events and tasks created in Today are automatically added to iCal. There is full support for alarms and even saving new ones for frequent use, however the options for running a script or opening a file at a set time are absent. Today 2.0 also brings with it support for the popular iCal alternative BusyCal, giving you the same experience you get with iCal syncing.

In the settings department, you have a good amount of customization options. Tasks can be sorted by calendar, title, priority, and due date, and you can choose to see only tasks due today, or all tasks due in the next 3, 7, 14, or 30 days. A new feature in this, the second iteration of Today.app, is the ability to display tomorrow’s upcoming events underneath today’s. Window transparency can also be set- useful if you’ve enabled the option to keep Today’s window on top of all other windows.

Something I do yearn for in a future iteration of Today, is the ability to scale down the size of the window to a truly tiny size. In order to actually view all of my upcoming events in the app in one view on my 13″ MBP, the window takes up valuable real estate. That being said, it’s just as easy to close the window and reopen from the menu bar (you can also set keyboard shortcuts), but i’d love to be able to dedicate a smaller portion of my screen to it permanently. Also, it isn’t possible to display To-do’s from a certain calendar while not displaying that calendars events. It’s either all or nothing.

All in all though, the minute I tried Today, they had me. It’s the closest you’ll get to MyDay (Microsoft’s version for it’s software suite), and provides a very rich experience for such a small app. It has the “just works” simplicity you expect from a Mac app, without any overkill. Price sits at just $21.95 for a single user. 5-computer family packs are $34.95, and upgrade licenses start at $11.95. If you’d like to try it out, a complete 14-day trial is available for download along with the full version over at Second Gear Software. Requires Mac OS 10.5+

If you’re new to the GPS game, let me assure you that the Magellan Roadmate 2010 app offers all the bells and whistles that you’d find if you were to buy a standalone Magellan Roadmate device.  In fact, the software this is sporting more closely resembles what you’ll see in newer models of the Roadmate rather than the budget priced entry-level devices.  But unlike other GPS devices, this one has the added benefit of playing friendly with other aspects of your iPhone/iPod Touch.  Want to play music?  You can do so from in the app.  Is someone calling?  You can answer it and then go right back to driving.

The problem is that it doesn’t do any of these features incredibly well.  If you want to take a call it kicks you out of the app and then reboots, meaning if you’re on speakerphone while driving and expecting to hear “turn left in 800 metres,” you’re going to be sorely disappointed.  And if you’re expecting the convenience and music browsability that the iPod is known for, here too you’ll find yourself out of luck.  The Magellan app will only play playlists — not individually browsed tracks.  While you can build playlists in the app, the whole experience is miles away from the “OneTouch” mentality that RoadMate is famous for.

Still — everything we’ve mentioned so far is just bells and whistles.  At the end of the day the only thing that matters here is navigation, and here the performance can be a little hit and miss.  Unless your device has an uninterrupted view of the sky the GPS signal is going to drop in and out on an incredibly regular basis.  If you have a car mount kit, though, you’ll be near enough the front window that you shouldn’t have any problems maintaining a signal.  But if you’re planning on tossing your iPhone in the passenger seat while you drive?  Forget about it.

Performance from that point gets spotty at best.  While the device is almost always good at mapping out the quickest possible routes (we had a few tiny exceptions, but nothing really worth mentioning) it failed to keep up with our actual location and kept notifying us of turns 40 feet after we were supposed to make them.  It was a nightmare.

With an experience this bad, you must be wondering how we could dare describe the navigation as “a little hit and miss.”  What we’ve described so far was the miss.  What we experienced and quickly came to love was the hit.  That hit?  It has a name;  the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

Available as a seperate purchase is Magellan’s Premium Car Kit, a $129 accessory that will boost the iPhone’s GPS signal exponentially, provide an in-car mount for your device, charge it, and provide an enhanced speaker as well.  In terms of turning your iPhone into a fully functional navigation system, this thing is a must-buy.  Our experience with the Magellan RoadMate 2010 before and after using the car kit was as different as night and day.  Once connected there was no doubt in our minds that RoadMate 2010 could easily keep up with the stiff competition from standalone GPS devices.

With the kit attached no turns were ever missed, no signal ever lost, and route recalculation would happen the moment I varied from the route.  It was fabulous.  Once we got used to it we quickly delved in to all of the other terrific features the app had to offer.  Entering new addresses is a snap, OneTouch menu options let you easily find the nearest gas stations and other points of interest.  You can even assign favorite locations to the One Touch menu in case you’re looking to make return trips.  RoadMate 2010 is a fully-featured device when compared to standalone units on the market, and with the car kit in place we couldn’t have been happier with the performance.

Still, there were a few things that we couldn’t help but nitpick about when it came to the car kit.  An enhanced speaker is nice, but what this kit really needed was an FM transmitter.  Newer cars might be built to incorporate an external audio source but those of us cruising around in 10 year old cars tend to send our audio across the airwaves.  And then there’s the price.  $129 wouldn’t seem so bad if it included a redemption code for RoadMate 2010, but it doesn’t.  You’ll have to buy both products separately to get them to work together, bringing your grand total to just under $220.  That’s about the price of a standalone mid-range GPS device.

It may sound like we’re dumping on the car kit, but nothing could be further from the truth.  It has a number of great features we’ve yet to mention.  For example, unlike most car mounts this one is designed to fit an iPhone in a protective case.  I keep my iPhone in an OtterBox case and had no problem getting it to fit.  The kit provides options for mounting to dash or window, allows you to pivot the device in any direction or position you might want, but most importantly; it boosts that GPS signal to an incredible degree.

When combined with the Magellan Premium Car Kit, Magellan RoadMate 2010 offers the same top notch performance as Magellan’s standalone RoadMate GPS device.  The two are comparable in price as well.  The only difference here is that Magellan RoadMate 2010 for the iPhone has the added bonus of simply being an iPhone.  It’s one less device to lose, it offers an enhanced speaker should anyone call, and you can play all of your music from inside the app.  It should also be noted that the Car Kit enhances the GPS of the device itself, and not just for RoadMate purposes.  If you need to check out other apps that utilize GPS the Premium Car Kit will make them infinitely more accurate.

While the Magellan RoadMate 2010 app can be purchased independent of the Car Kit, it’s not something we recommend.  On it’s own the app simply isn’t reliable enough to be counted on when trying to find your way in a strange city.  Still, it’s hard to blame Magellan.  The iPhone’s built-in GPS simply isn’t developed well enough to hand this sort of task.  Magellan saw this dilemma and came up with a solution, albeit at a price.

If you’re in the market for a new GPS device and prepared to spend what you’ll need to in the standalone marketplace, you’ll easily find Magellan’s RoadMate 2010 and Premium Car Kit to be a winning combination.  Just don’t expect satisfactory performance if you buy the app alone.

You can download Magellan RoadMate 2010 North America for $79.99 on  iTunes.  Check out magellangps.com for information on how to purchase the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

With features such as Piles and four walls and a floor to throw your stuff around on, BumpTop’s interface is a versatile workspace to organize your files. It isn’t a Finder replacement, but if you like to organize your stuff in plain sight, such as multiple files relating to a project, or a bunch of pictures, you can resize them and place them on any of BumpTop’s surfaces. It’s also easy to quickly jot a note and literally throw it up onto the wall in front of you, sticking there to remind you about your son’s soccer game in two hours.

It’s a nice interface to be sure. It’s pretty, smooth, and is more like a 3D Spaces iteration for the files on your desktop. You can customize the images on each wall, and even double click the background to get a traditional 2D view of your desktop.

There’s two versions, free and paid (obviously). The pro version is the one with the Multitouch Gestures, like pinching to resize items, and swiping through individual items in your Piles. You also get Find-As-You-Type, useful for locating lost items in a crowded desktop. After all, you’ve got 5 surfaces to store stuff on, and if you utilize them, you’ll need this feature for sure. BumpTop also stays out of the way when using Spaces, Exposé, and QuickLook, letting you use these awesome integrated OS X features without a hiccup.

As much as I was impressed with the smoothness of the transitions between surfaces, I found the interface to be a little congested when used on my 13-inch MacBook Pro. Shrinking the files helped, though I liked the preview of photos, and shrinking those too much sort of killed that experience.

Additionally, I’m an avid GeekTool user, and with files in stacks and piles and on walls and such, the text files I display on my desktop with GT are obscured to say the least, if not unreadable and unusable sometimes.

Overall, it’s a great experience for those who love to see their files in front of them and use their mouse or trackpad. Quicksilver lovers will no doubt be unimpressed, but those loving nice graphics and wanting something new to try out against their traditional Mac desktop will be glad they gave it a shot. BumpTop is free to use without the Multitouch and other features, and the all-inclusive Pro version will run you 29 bucks.

The paperless society is an interesting concept.  It’s been around long enough that we’ve all gotten used to it, but in the grand scheme of things it’s still a fairly modern invention.  10 years ago it was commonplace to visit an office that still posted paper memos on a bulletin board in the cafeteria or to have a boss that preferred using a fax machine to sending a quick email.  Those days, it would seem, are far behind us.

With the office conquered, paperless lifestyle choices have quickly invaded our personal lives.  We’ve gotten used to digital purchases on everything from books and music to comics and movies.  It was only a matter of time until someone decided to bring the print magazine boldly into the 21st century.  It turns out that GQ was that someone.

Beginning with the December 2009 issue, GQ now offers an iPhone edition of their monthly men’s magazine that includes every piece of content found in the print version.  In addition to everything you’d see at the newsstand, the iPhone edition of GQ has a number of positive traits going for it;

• exclusive audio, video and photo content not found in the print version
• better price: $2.99 iPhone, $4.50 newsstand
• back issues still available after new issues are published

The flipside, of course, is that unless Apple somehow creates a subscription model, regular readers won’t be able to save by committing to multiple issues with one purchase.  As well, there’s a massive download required once the app is purchased to take the issue around with you offline.

Small complaints aside, there’s a great deal of potential in making magazine’s available as digital downloads for the iPhone.  I can think of half a dozen or so print publications I’d love to buy digital edtions of (Wired, I’m looking in your direction).  What do you think?  Is GQ blazing a trail that other magazine publishers should follow?  Would you pay $2.99 for a digital version of your favorite print mag?  What would you like to see in a magazine app?

1.) Keep Track of Your Work and Responsibilities

If you’re a student, or just have a lot of projects to keep track of, make sure you check out our article on 5 Apps For Staying Productive At School, where you’ll find our recommendations for assignment wrangling. Having one of these apps is invaluable, no one can remember everything all of the time. For a more simplified to-do manager, check out Remember The Milk. It’s an internet-synced to-do manager that will sync with as many computers as you want. Just set up your account, install one of the many services RTM offers, and get organized.

2.) Sync and Organize Your Digital Devices

iTunes is great for the iPods and iPhones in your life, but what about your other devices? You have a few options. Use the junkware that came with them to sync your music, photos, and movies, or take charge with a Mac application that makes its living from picking up where inadequate software leaves off. One answer lies in DoubleTwist (Mac OS X – Free). An open-source project that is still under heavy development, DoubleTwist supports Archos media players, the Palm Pre, Sony PSP, INQ1, G1 and Android phones, select Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson phones, as well as Blackberry, WinMo 5.0 and 6.0, as well as iPod and iPhone models! Just drag and drop for file and playlist transfer to your mobile device. New devices are being supported all the time, and you can request a feature or device in their forums.

3.) Get Access To Your Computers From Anywhere!

An important aspect of being organized is having easy access to all of your information and tools that you need to get things done. Several Mac apps make this idea easy to implement. Start with a solid VNC app for remote control of your computers from any corner of the globe. Try out the free apps JollysFastVNC or Chicken of the VNC, which we featured in our huge list of awesome Mac Freeware from last year (many applications in there are still very relevant today). Both will let you see and control your home or work computers from anywhere with an internet connection.

Also, grab an FTP client for easy transfer of files across your computers. I fully recommend downloading the free Cyberduck or the $28 YummyFTP, both of which work equally well in my own (and others) experiences, for file transfer to your website or personal machines.

4.) Back Up Your Files…twice.

If you aren’t doing this by now, get to it. Like, as soon as you’re done reading this paragraph. I cannot stress the importance of having multiple backups of your stuff. Having another copy of your data off-site (away from home, work, wherever) is equally important, and can save you in the case of a fire, Act of God, or robbery. In addition to Apple’s own Time Machine, there are many online services available, such as Dropbox (2GB Free; plus Paid tiers for more storage) and Mozy(2GB free as well as paid levels with more storage). Both do a great job of running silently from the menu bar, backing your stuff up to their servers as you go. So go get one! I think I hear a tornado coming…

5.) Keep your Mac up-to-date with AppFresh.

Spend less time keeping all your applications updated! Let AppFresh take care of it for you! AppFresh is a free indispensable utility that will index your applications and find their updates, all you have to do is click download and it installs them for you! Just run it once a week or so, and enjoy an quick update experience.

6.) Lock Down Your Finances

Whether or not you choose to do this completely digitally, there is something to be said for a software solution to one of human-kind’s most stressful topics – money. There are standalone apps to help you wrap your head around where you’re spending all that hard-earned dough (that thing you’re typing on, maybe?). For that, I recommend apps like SEE Finance($20), iCash($39.90), and even Quicken 2007($69.99) can help you get ahold of and track your finances. These apps serve their purpose well, and are all worth at the very least a look-see. From simple budgeting to keeping track of interest and investments, they’ll provide a good user experience and some allow you to download transactions from your bank’s website.

If you want to see up the minute updates with your current balances and lines of credit in an easy to see visual environment, I recommend Mint (free). Being able to have everything in front of you is invaluable. Mint provides you with complete breakdown of all your account activity over time, and gives you readouts of where you currently stand, all in a cross-platform web interface. It can’t get much easier than this, folks.

The UI is different, to put it simply. The default display is a CoverFlow-esque view of all your music in alphabetical order by artist then by album, just like in iTunes. To view tracks on a particular album, double click the album, and a track list slides out to the right.

I do appreciate what the developers tried to do with it, but it felt a little counter-intuitive at first. There is a slight learning curve associated with using the app to it’s fullest potential.

Also, there’s no way to view just a tracklist of all your music- your only option is the CoverFlow-like view. So if you rip your music from CD and don’t bother with the artwork, you might end up with something like this:

Full Screen mode could also use some improvement. Now, I realize this is a compact media player, so it’s not supposed to be ripe with features, but there’s a few that should be there to begin with. First of all in Full Screen, there’s no way to navigate your music other than scrolling through the album artwork. No quick-find, no search. If you have a lot of music, you’ll understand where this gets frustrating quickly. Also, within full-screen mode, there’s no way to do anything else, really- save navigating, sorting, playing and pausing. Along with a search box(at minimum), I’d like to see an on-screen volume slider, and a few control buttons: play/pause, forward and previous track.

One of Everplay’s biggest advantages is that it taps right into your iTunes library. No need to organize or reorganize your digital media files. If it’s the way you want it in iTunes, you’re all set. However, this could also be it’s biggest DIS-advantage, as there’s no way to add, delete, or reorganize media whatsoever. You can indeed play your movies and videos in Everplay, but be warned. There is no way to play DRM video content at all. This means any movies or TV shows you have in your iTunes library, you will have to play in iTunes. It’s something iTunes Store lovers will surely be a little disappointed about.

Another major plus in Everplay is its integrated Last.fm features. If you use Last.fm, you’ll be able to scrobble from right within the app, listen to radio, and find similar artists. Also, events from your Last.fm calendar can handily be sent right over to iCal.

Everplay has two modes for playing music, regular track order, and Jukebox Mode. Jukebox mode acts…well like a jukebox. Any track that is double-clicked is put into a queue for immediate play after the currently playing track ends. Great for parties, it’s basically creating an on-the-go playlist, and you can view or clear the upcoming tracks in the Upcoming menu drop-down. Jukebox Mode, however, is Everplay’s only playlist creation tool, and won’t save when you exit the app. To create a new playlist to use in Everplay, you’d have to do it in iTunes.

To sum things up, this app, like most of its competition excluding iTunes, is a great idea, but its execution is lacking nearly everywhere. It’s compact for sure, but there’s just too much missing. Were some of the missing features implemented in further releases, I’d fully recommend this software, but for now, stick with iTunes. Everplay is free to try, and $19.95 for a license from Snarb.tk

1. Journlr – Mac OS X only- Free/$35

While development of Journlr has ceased, it is almost an essential note-taking app for your college courses. It combines the ability to type notes, record audio, video, and take photos simultaneously. All media can be incorporated into a single page of notes and organized in many ways. Smart folders let you keep track of classes, sections, chapters, or whatever you choose to organize by. Notes can then be exported to email, your blog, your iPod, or iWeb if you so choose. Additionally, audio recordings of lectures or discussions can be exported directly into a Journlr playlist in iTunes. Journlr is available for free, but a license can still be purchased from the website.

2. Schoolhouse 3 –  Mac OS X only – $14

We reviewed Schoolhouse earlier this year, and it only makes sense to feature it here again. Since our last review, it has been upgraded to version 3.1.2 from 2.2 in the last review, and it now features a slightly refined look and feel, as well as MobileMe syncing and an autosave feature. Most useful for keeping track of all your assignments and their due dates, you can also write notes, and its great for project organization utilizing the ability to add documents and other media to a project’s page. Other features include grade tracking and a multitude of customization options. Schoolhouse has now moved to a paid model that is set at a quite reasonable $14. You can try it for free with a limit of being able to input 20 assignments, but I highly recommend shelling out the 14 bucks and getting an incredibly useful organizational app. Schoolhouse is available from Logans Collins at their website.

3. iHomework – Mac- Free – iPhone/iPod Touch- $0.99

If you’re looking for an application that will wirelessly sync between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac, look no further. This little app works great with just what you think…homework. While there are little to no note-taking abilities, iHomework allows you to enter all the class info you can think of, such as dates, times, instructors (mobile only), and places. The Add Work button is where you input all of your new assignments and their corresponding information like type of assignment, due date, course, and even lets you input your grade for a particular assignment. One of the great features of this app is the ability to send any and all events to iCal. The wireless syncing process is fairly straightforward, although it could use some adjustment, as the first time around is a little confusing. iHomework for OSX is free from their website, and the iHomework mobile version is just 99 cents from your friendly neighborhood App Store. Well worth it.

4. EtreTask – Mac OS X only – Free

EtreTask is a dead-simple to do list for your Mac. There’s not much to say about it, but if you’re looking for a to-do list only, this is definitely the app for you. It’s lightweight, and couldn’t be more straightforward. Input a note, and check it off when it’s done! EtreTask is free from Etresoft.

5. Circus Ponies Notebook – Mac OS X only – $49.95

Regarded in the Mac community as one of the best note-taking/organizational applications out there, Notebook is a customizable, versatile masterpiece. Upon initial launch, you’re presented with a multitude of templates from which to get started. Want to get organized at college? Notebook sets up a notebook just for you, with tabs for each class, and a contents page to show you where to input your information. Want to write a novel? Plan a trip? Keep a journal? Keep track of recipes? There’s a template for that. Notebook is $49.95 from Circus Ponies for an individual license, an academic license (with valid academic credentials) is $29.95 and a family pack can be had for $99.95.

Airlock is very easy to set up, you just need to turn bluetooth on on your iPhone and follow the directions on your Mac. Once you select your device, you can change some preferences to make sure Airlock works just how you want it to. First, you can change the range of Airlock. This is done with a nice little radar. A little blip on the radar shows your device, and you can drag the “activation range” slider to make the activation area on the radar bigger, or smaller.

Airlock has some more advanced features too. You can have Airlock automatically launch items when you come into range, or leave range, of your computer. Airlock can also increase the rate in which it scans for a device. This can decrease the battery of your iPhone or iPod if you set it very high, but it will also make your screen lock, and unlock, quicker. If you do not have your iPhone with you, you can click the small lock in the corner of the lock screen to type in your password. When you do this Airlock will be deactivated until it detects your device again. Currently Airlock only works with an iPhone or an iPod Touch, but they plan on adding support for almost any bluetooth device in the future.

Airlock does come with a few issues. If you want to save your battery, and you lower the responsiveness of the app, it will take a longer time to lock or unlock your computer. This is where the manual unlock tool comes in useful, but it still might be frustrating for some users. If you do not make the activation range large enough, you might suddenly get locked out, even if your device is near your computer. Be sure to try out the demo of Airlock first, because the developer does report that some users with bluetooth mice and keyboards are having issues. They are currently working on a fix for this.

Airlock is an interesting application. It does have a few issues, but it’s a cool app that I think everyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch should try out. A trial is available and you can purchase Airlock for $7.77 on it’s website.

The way I see it, there are really three different types of desktops. One has the background picture as the focus, one has files as the focus, and one has data. My desktop has gone through all three of these stages over the years. Currently, it only has three icons—my hard drive, a single folder, and my backup drive. Anything that shows up is automatically moved into that single folder through the magic of Hazel. The primary purpose of my desktop is to see my background picture (a shot from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris). I also have a few tidbits of data put up in Geektool, which prints text directly on your desktop, such as what is playing on my iTunes, my battery charge, and IP address. Now, this is the set-up that works for me. I’m a messy person by nature, so I had to find a way to force myself to keep things clean. I used to have files all around, but now, with my increasing use of Spotlight or Quicksilver, I no longer have to see things to open them.

There is, of course, too much of a good thing. Using Geektool, in addition to what I have already mentioned, I also had five separate to-do lists, weather, and all manner of other interesting but unnecessary system statistics. This was great from a standpoint of being informed, but my desktop picture was completely obscured and this depressed me.

Other people I know integrate their desktop backgrounds with the data on them, hiding stats in graffiti, or subway message boards. Others go the complete opposite direction and have countless files that they find by knowing their relations to other files. Many productivity experts say that you should always have a clean desktop—nothing to distract you, a clean slate to start from—but I know for a fact that this doesn’t work for everyone; here’s an example from a tech support company in Norway:

The answer to the question I asked earlier is really trial and error, at least in my experience. There are countless tools available to make your deskop as customized as you want it to be—extra wallpaper, built-in clocks, and so on. See how you work with no files. See how you work with a plain background, or if you really want to see places you’ve been, people you’ve met, then stick a photo or two up there. Data is helpful, but don’t go overboard. Try things out. Play around. After all, it’s a great way to procrastinate. Your desktop may end up being completely different than mine, but I can hope that I at least made you think about it, and set you on your road to your perfect screen.

I hate to gush about any app, but I love it.  As a Comcast user (who is not getting anything free from Comcast, other than this app, which is free to all), I was shocked and dismayed that just earlier this year, the web client to access my voice mail forced me to listen to the mail before deleting them.  No mass delete check boxes either.  Since then, Comcast rolled out comcast.net and now the iPhone app and has removed any doubts I had about Comcasts commitment to getting mobile right.

The app is extremely clean and sleek.  I honestly don’t think Apple could have done a better job designing this one.  Comcast turned to mPortal for the heavy lifting in coding the app and they’ve done an outstanding job.  Let’s take a look at the features of this instantly-essential (to me at least) application.

Digital Voice

This is the killer app of the, well, app.  See that button in the lower right-hand corner?  That one allows you to forward your number as you please.  Awesome.  Now, I can forward and unforward my number about as easy as playing a rousing game of Lexic.

Simply hit the Call Forwarding button, choose where you want to forward your number to and push the slider to turn it on.  Users can even label phone lines, like “work” so they can be recalled easier and faster.

In a very Android-like way, all your calls are shown in the “All” category.  Users ccan click on Outgoing, Missed or VM tabs to access just those calls.  If you feel that is too much info to look at, simply hit clear and you have an empty page.  Very soothing.

Access to call logs, both incoming and outgoing is there as is easy deletion of voicemails.  Everything you need, all within reach seems to be the design mantra here and it works.

SmartZone Address Book

Last year, Comcast bought Plaxo, the social networking site that sought to keep everyone’s contact information in one place.  Comcast integrates this great idea in their iPhone app.  By bringing your Plaxo address book into your iPhone you get contacts sync’d much like the Palm Pre does.  When one of your contact changes say a phone number, that change is pushed to Plaxo and thus into your Comcast SmartZone address book which can be sync’d with your iPhone address book.

Comcast bills this as a universal address book – the last one you’ll ever need.  The iPhone app also uses your on-iPhone contacts as well.  Handy.

If you are like me and keep your iPhone by your side while watching TV, there is a nifty guide that localizes based on your location to tell you what is on.   Not ground breaking but nice to have.

SmartZone Inbox

Most Comcast users are going to love this.  This feature combines your Comcast line phone data along with your Comcast email.  All in one place, organized by time and searchable.  Even your email folders are accessible through this app.

On Demand

Another nice to have feature, find out what is new from Comcast’s On Demand.  The app will display movie trailers broken down into categories or you can search for a specific title.

Settings

Good settings to me, are the tell tale mark of a well thought out application.  This app has just about every setting adjustment you could want.  Users can change the home screen from a list to Cover Flow  to a grid, alerts can be customized as can several other settings.  It is a nice touch.

Summary

Rarely am I this impressed with an iPhone app. About the only flaw I can see is the lack of push notifications, but that is a minor (and fixable in later versions) flaw.  The Comcast application is simple, easy to use and very detailed; exactly the type of application that makes the iPhone shine.

Learn more at: [Comcast] or [iTunes link]

The Calorie Tracker app links directly to your LIVESTRONG.com account and syncs data between the two, allowing users to literally take their LIVESTRONG account with them wherever they go.  To understand what this app offers, it’s important to understand a little bit about the website it’s based on.  Unlike other nutrition calculators, both online and on the iPhone, LIVESTRONG offers an open nutrition database.  This means that if a member can’t find a food they’ve consumed in the database, they can add it themselves.  Once approved, that food becomes available to all members as part of the database.  Kind of like a wiki for food facts.

Every chain restaurant, brand of food, or generic item you can think of is listed (and if it’s not, you can fix that).  That’s a big part of what makes LIVESTRONG so great.  The other big factor is how detailed the stat tracking is.  A user has access to numerous graphs and tables to show them exactly what they’ve been consuming and how their diet has improved or deteriorated over time.  You can even track your daily fitness, and the system will help you to use that activity to calculate your net calories for the day rather than just your consumed ones.

Why is it so important to know so much about LIVESTRONG.com?  Because without that knowledge you might not realize just how limited the Calorie Tracker really is.  Sure you have access to their seemingly limitless nutrition database, but if what you’re eating isn’t in there don’t expect to add new foods from the app.  And while the Calorie Breakdown provided gives you a good guide on how many calories you have left to consume in a given day, it doesn’t provide anywhere near the depth of information that the actual website does.  Want to know how much fat you’ve taken in?  How about fiber?  The app doesn’t tell you that, even though that information is readily available on the website.

Another problem: if you’re on an iPod touch, you’re pretty much out of luck.  Despite other apps somehow cramming a massive database into a tiny app file (see MovieBrain) Calorie Tacker by LIVESTRONG.com has decided it best to keep their central database available via internet connection only.  That’s not to say that iPod Touch owners can’t use the app.  In fact, certain tweaks make the app more useable offline than you might expect.  If you’ve eaten a food or completed an exercise before, it should be available locally, having been saved in the app prior.  If you’re eating the same foods on a daily basis (and many people do), the app should only provide occassional inconveniences when attempting to track your meals.  Any foods that you need the database for can always be accessed the next time you’re at a WiFi point.

With so much working against it, you might be suprised to hear that this app has our whole-hearted endorsement.  Regardless of how much less it offers than its website companion, it still offers far more than any other nutrition calculator in the App Store.  So long as you’re using this on an iPhone you’ll always have access to their seemingly endless database.  The ability to sync your daily consumption and exercise to a free online account that provides you with tons of statistical data and a strong community makes Calorie Tracker by LIVESTRONG.com an app that’s second to none.  Both as a nutrition calculator and a companion to the LIVESTRONG.com website, it’s an exceptional offering.  We’d have liked to have seen more of the info that the site offers as well as an offline database, but asides from these minor complaints there’s really very little room for improvement.

Calorie Tracker by LIVESTRONG.com is available for $2.99 on the App Store.

Books displays titles in a gallery view with a summary box below

Books is a great solution to make your own digital book information database. With Books you can scan your entire collection using your Mac’s built-in iSight camera. Simply hold a book’s barcode in front of the red scan lines in the iSight window, and Books will read the ISBN number. Then you have the option of calling a number of different databases, including Amazon.com, to fill out the rest of your book’s information.

The info fields can be filled automatically by iSight scan or by hand

One downside I found is that while overall accurate, the built-in iSight scanning wasn’t always perfect and took longer than I’d like with some barcodes. I’d recommend scanning books in a well-lit room to give the camera optimal light to read the barcode.

The app has a robust extensions engine with a number of fantastic plug-ins written for it. One plug-in allows users to generate a website with just a few clicks. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the generated site came equipped with a built-in search feature, and a really slick interface.

Books can generate attractive web libraries with just a few clicks

Books serves as a great personal catalogue, and also has functionality to work as a check-in, check-out system. I could see it being useful for used book stores interested in creating a web catalogue, or professors who wanted to create a catalogue online or library system for checking their books in and out. Then of course there’s always the book enthusiast who wants to keep their own personal catalogue of what they own, or what they’ve read.

While the app could use a little polish here or there, overall Books is a pretty incredible application. With an extensive pool of extensions, users who work with book databases will surely find use for it. Plus Books comes for the best price: free.

How does it work?

Simply put, doubleTwist is constantly updated with drivers and software designed to work with all of the latest gadgets and gear that stores all of your digital media assets.  Because of this, doubleTwist makes it as easy as plugging in your device, and dragging and dropping in your media files to and from your devices.

The Interface

DoubleTwist’s interface makes up a good part of it’s feature list.  DoubleTwist takes after a longtime design principal commonly found in iTunes and iPhoto.  In the right section of the window, you’ll find a sidebar filled with a list of sources where you’ll find your media content.  The sidebar is divided into four sections:  DoubleTwist “aka sharing information with doubleTwists’s own sharing service”, Library “used to access the media on your computer’s hard drive”, Devices “used to access your digital device’s content”, and Friends “which also works with DoubleTwist’s own sharing service”.

The right side of the app is where you view and interact with your content.  This side of the app changes based on what you have selected in the sidebar.  When viewing the “My Feed” section, you get at consecutive list filled with notifications.  Inside of these notifications are thumbnails of pictures, movies, and music which you can view at anytime.

When looking at any of the the Library sections, the right area of the app shows a simple browser interface designed for the one purpose of finding your media, and dragging it onto your device.

Which brings us to the Device section.  Clicking on the device itself shows a progress bar depicting how much storage space you have available.

PSP and Video!

One thing everyone always gripes about is video conversion.  Well gripe no more because doubleTwist automatically converts your video for you no matter what device you are using.  This is a big plus for PSP users.  Just drag in the video, and doubleTwist does the rest.  Thumbnail and all!

Sharing Online

Besides integrating with your digital devices, DoubleTwist also integrates with FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube allowing you to share your captured media online.

DoubleTwist also has a sharing service built in.  This allows you to easily share your media with all of your friends.  When you receive a photo, video, or audio file, doubleTwist will automatically update your feed.

Final Thoughts

DoubleTwist is still very new, meaning the compatible device list is a little sparse however, because doubleTwist is an ongoing project, the developers are hard at work making more and more devices compatible.

In terms of performance, doubleTwist does not disappoint.  Depending on how much memory you have as well as the speed of your Intel processor, the time it takes to transfer and convert video will vary, however testing on a 2nd gen aluminum iMac I found that doubleTwist is quite fast and will not disappoint.

DoubleTwist is available for the Mac (Leopard only) and PC at http://www.doubletwist.com/ for the unbeatable price of free.

When you open Cha-Ching you first have to enter your (optional) four digit pass code. Then the safe opens and you can access your accounts. For each account you can view the current balance and your transactions. You can view your transactions from this month, flagged transactions, search transactions, or view your history. There is also a button to add a transaction. Tap this, choose a payee, and enter the amount to quickly add transactions on the go.

Payees allow for speedy transactions. When you first start using the app you will need to add in the places where you are making your transactions. Once you have a large list of payees you just need to choose a payee and select an amount to add a transaction. Each payee can have a location attached. This lets you quickly select a payee based on your current location. Cha-Ching also lets you track budgets in different categories. Syncing with Cha-Ching Touch and Cha-Ching for OS X is easy. Just go to the sync option on Cha-Ching Touch, then launch Cha-Ching 2 and click sync. Syncing is fast and works over a local wireless network.

I have had a few small issues with Cha-Ching. If you use more than one account the budget section combines the purchases in both accounts; so you can’t set separate budgets for separate accounts. It also takes some extra time to add a description to the purchase.

Cha-Ching Touch is a great financing app for the iPhone. If you use Cha-Ching on your Mac be sure to pick this up; but the application is great even without Cha-Ching for Mac. Adding transactions is a snap; and syncing is easy. Cha-Ching is available now on iTunes for $2.99.

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.

For those of you know don’t know of Boxee, it’s free media center software compatible with OS X, Ubuntu Linux, and (with a hack) the AppleTV. Boxee pulls music, photos TV shows, and movies from your own hard drive, as well as a number of streaming web services. Boxee works a lot like Front Row or the AppleTV, but with significantly extended functionality. Boxee has the ability to stream video from providers like CBS, CNN, YouTube, MTV, Netflix, Comedy Central, The WB, myspacetv, and up until recently Hulu.

The Hulu streaming implemented by Boxee was actually quite clever. Boxee was able to embed Hulu videos into their software while still keeping the Hulu advertisements in place. This seemed like a win-win for Hulu and Boxee users. Users who were tired of having to sit in front of their computer to watch Hulu content could now enjoy it on their HDTV through their AppleTV. Hulu gained hundreds of thousands of streams from Boxee users, and their ads were still played.

According to the blog post Hulu’s content providers asked Hulu to pull the Boxee streaming. This seems like yet again another short-sighted decision by the entertainment industry. What they don’t seem to realize is that users who are savvy enough to hack their AppleTV with Boxee will be able to hook up their laptop or MacMini to their HDTV without breaking a sweat. Hulu is arguably the largest legal TV streaming site on the web. With content from FOX, NBC, Sci-Fi, FX, The WB and much more, this is only going to hurt the entertainment industry. Hulu is one of the most popular ways to stream TV shows legally on the web. When content providers continue to remove and restrict legal ways to access content on the web, many users turn to illegal methods of getting content.

To add to a fantastic week for Boxee users, Apple released an update to the AppleTV that broke the Boxee hack (and seemingly added no additional functionality). As if Boxee wasn’t having a rough enough time, Hulu has yet again blocked the Boxee users from getting at their videos. Hulu has blocked the Boxee browser from calling the public RSS feeds. As pointed out by Boxee CEO Avner Ronan on the company blog Boxee’s browser “…is no different in how it accesses this content than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Opera or any of the other browsers out there.”

Media companies generally don’t fight so hard to keep users from using their service, it’s unfortunate that Hulu didn’t advocate for themselves a little bit more in meetings with their content providers.

For Boxee users worried about the fate of one of the applications most touted features: easy web video streaming shouldn’t worry. Ronan adds this note to users in his post:

To our users: if you choose to use boxee as your media browser to view legal and publicly available content on the internet, we will do everything we can to ensure that you can access it, no matter what the source.

If you’re a Boxee user having a rough few weeks from this Hulu ordeal you can comment on Hulu’s blog here. ]]> http://macapper.com/2009/03/11/news-boxee-loses-hulu/feed/ 2 http://macapper.com/2009/03/06/tv-forecast-review-track-your-tv-shows/ http://macapper.com/2009/03/06/tv-forecast-review-track-your-tv-shows/#comments Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:00:42 +0000 Dave Ryan http://macapper.com/?p=7287 Everyone has a favorite TV show. Whether it’s the latest action thriller, the next riveting medical drama, or that hot new reality show, many people follow at least one TV show regularly. Keeping track of even one show can be difficult, especially when it’s not airing every week. Big Bucket Software has a few solutions for the mac TV junkie looking to keep track of all of their favorite shows.

TV Forecast comes in 3 flavors: OS X Dashboard Widget, iPhone/iTouch App, and WebApp. The OS X Dashboard Widget is a free download from www.bigbucketblog.com/tv, and allows you to keep track of all your TV shows in a clean, streamlined widget. At a glance the widget shows you the next air-date for each show,  how many days until it airs, the episode title, and even a link to buy previous episodes from the iTunes store. Clicking on a series title or episode title will bring you to TV.com for more information. It’s a fantastic way to keep up with your shows, and adding and removing shows from your forecast can be done with just a few clicks. One caveat with the widget is that it calls it’s data from TV.com, and it’s been broken a number of times by TV.com re-designs.

If you’re an iPod touch or iPhone user you can keep your personal TV Forecast in your pocket. TV Forecast is a $2.99 purchase from the app store. For $2.99 you get a clean list of upcoming shows with a similar look to the dashboard widget. The app adds episode summaries, a list of past episodes, and an e-mail button to send a reminder to yourself or a friend. I was impressed with the app, but I’d like to see more features in the future like links to episode video teasers or links to full episodes online. The standalone iPhone app calls its data from TVRage.com, and doesn’t have as many issues with the application breaking from site re-designs.

Users on their iPod Touch or iPhone can also use the TV Forecast web app if they’re not ready to buy the standalone app quite yet. The web app is a great alternative to the the standalone app, but I found the developers site quite sluggish even on a Wi-Fi connection. If you aren’t very tolerant of slow web apps, I’d recommend buying the standalone app. One other advantage to the standalone app is that it will run even when you’re out of Wi-Fi or cellular range.

The apps may not be feature-loaded, but they do deliver the TV Forecast they promise. While some people just TiVo their shows, if you’re one of those people who just has to watch it live, then TV Forecast  is an excellent choice.

What does this app do?

Img2icns is designed to take any image in all of the popular formats, including Adobe Photoshop files, and apply it so that you can put that image on a folder/file. In other terms, it takes your image and turns it into an icon.

Img2icns feels like this was the blueprint throughout the entire app. All you have to do is drag your image into the window-dominating drop field and Img2icns gives you your options. Once the image is loaded into the app, simply drag another file or folder onto the same drop zone to give it your new icon. If you want to convert that image into Apple icon format (.icns), click the ICNS button.

Streamlined Interface

The developers put a ton of effort into the look and feel of this app. It’s no surprise that Img2icns is dominated by icons. The window is small so it doesn’t take up a bunch of real estate. Every step is transitioned with sleek animations making the experience as fun as the result. If you’re ever stuck, choose Help > Show help balloons and some popup balloons tell you what the interface elements do.

Requirements and Performance

Img2icns is universal, meaning that it can run on a Mac run by an Intel or PowerPC processor. Its current version is made for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, however you can also download version 0.5 for Mac OS 10.4 X Tiger. In terms of speed, like any app it will depend on your processor and the amount of memory you have. Img2icns imports and exports images extremely quickly. Icons are not big files, and setting them to files does not require a lot of processing power.

Standard or Pro?

Img2icns comes in two versions. The pro version obviously comes with more features. Shiny Frog, the developer of this app, has illustrated the capabilities of each version with a comparison table:

The Verdict

At the time of review Img2icns is in version 1.01 and does exactly what the title depicts: it takes your images and converts them into icons, which can be applied to style your files and folders. This app feels like it has been designed from the ground up for this purpose only. There are no excess features or fluff. Img2icns’ interface is streamlined, not to mention beautiful, with great transitions designed to keep your workflow productive and stress free. The best experience is when running this app under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, however there is a previous version available for Tiger. If you have a need for the ability to export icons for the iPhone or to create favicons, there’s a pro version for $12.90. Otherwise Img2icns is available at img2icnsapp.com for Free.

Tooble’s interface is simple and straightforward. There’s no fluff or extra features that aren’t needed; just select the video and hit “Download”. Tooble accomplishes this by having multiple ways to locate and select your videos for conversion. One way is to copy the YouTube.com URL into the “Enter a URL” sheet, accessible by clicking the button in the top left-hand corner of the main window. Hitting “Okay” sends Tooble on its way starting the download and conversion process.

Another way of locating your videos is by using the left-hand sidebar filled with YouTube’s categories and feeds. These feeds range from “Recently Featured” to “Most Viewed”. If you enter in your YouTube account screen name, you can use the “Your Favorites” feed to immediately access your favorite videos. Once you’ve scrolled through the now populated video list, check your selections and hit the “Download” button located in the bottom left-hand corner to convert them.

The third and final way to search and locate videos on YouTube with Tooble is with the handy dandy search field in the top right-hand corner. Enter your terms and hit Enter. Check your videos and hit “Download” to get things rolling.

Tooble’s performance most definitely varies based on the processing power of your Mac and the length of the video you are trying to download and convert, however I have found that it runs pretty smoothly. Tooble is required to run on Mac OS 10.4 Tiger or higher not to mention it’s also available on the PC for Windows XP or Vista.

There was one hitch, however. When opening the app for the first time, I started searching for videos via the search bar at the top. Almost immediately the processing speed of my Mac dropped to a dull roar, making everything virtually useless. After force quitting and trying it again, there seemed to be no problem. Just be sure to watch out for a few bugs like these.

Overall Tooble is a great app that does what it’s supposed to do: download and convert YouTube videos for the iPod quickly and easily. Though it might not be the most beautiful in terms of the interface, it certainly has all of the features easily accessible placed right where you need them. Performance is touchy but satisfying. At the time of writing, Tooble is version 1.0 and contains a few hiccups from time to time when locating videos.

Look for Tooble at Tooble.tv for the wonderful price of Free!

Classics is a new book reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch that is meant exclusively for reading popular classic novels. Currently the application includes 14 different titles ranging from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; but more are planned in future updates.

When you open the application you are greeted by a beautiful wooden bookshelf. Here you can slide up and down to view all the books, drag books organize them, or simply tap to start reading one. Books have nice, cream-colored pages which are very easy on the eyes. You can change pages by swiping, or simply tapping the right or left side of the screen. As you turn the page, the pages actually look like they are flipping, but if this annoys you you can turn it off in the options. If you want to skip to a different chapter, just tap the button in the top right to view a chapter list. You can also return to the main bookshelf by tapping the icon in the top left. As you return to the bookshelf a bookmark slides in onto the current page.

Although Classics is a great app, it still has it’s issues. First off, some people might not want just classic books, so this is not the application for them. Also, currently there isn’t a way to download extra books, and users will have to depend on the developer to release updates including more. If you love reading classic books and like a nice interface, then you might want to try out Classics. If not, you might want to try out Stanza, a free application that allows users to download hundreds of books. Stanza is also available in iTunes.

Classics is currently available in iTunes for $0.99.

LittleSnapper’s main feature is the ability to capture an entire website. As you browse the Internet, you can hit a keystroke and LittleSnapper will automatically save the whole web page as an image file. You can also open the current website in LittleSnapper and select a specific area to capture. When you open up a website in LittleSnapper you have two main choices: you can save the whole page, or you can select a section from it. As you hover your mouse pointer over sections of the web page, areas will become highlighted and you just need to click to capture it. LittleSnapper also includes the basic screenshot tools, so you can snap anything on your screen.

Once you have your screenshot, you can edit it. LittleSnapper comes with the basic tools. You can draw lines, circles, boxes, and arrows, and add text to your screenshot. You can also use the blur and highlight tool to hide or point out a section of the image. There is just one last step before you share your image: add information. You can add tags and/or a description.

LittleSnapper lets you quickly upload your images using Realmac’s QuickSnapper service. When you upload images to your QuickSnapper account people can view the image and add comments. QuickSnapper is currently in beta, so you may experience minor problems. Not only does LittleSnapper let you upload images to QuickSnapper, but you can also upload to Flickr or an FTP server.

With LittleSnapper you might be taking a lot of screenshots, so you can organize your screenshots in the LittleSnapper library. LittleSnapper lets you create collections and folders to organize your images. Folders can contain collections, and collections contain your screenshots. You can also create smart collections for easy organizing. You just need to set different rules, like rating or tags, and all applicable images will go straight to the collection.

LittleSnapper still comes with its flaws. While editing images, there isn’t a quick way in the toolbar to edit the text size and font. If you want to change the font you need to open the standard font window in the menu bar. There also isn’t a way to create a shape with a filled color. If you want to take a picture using your iSight and quickly share it, you would need to take the picture in a different application; LittleSnapper doesn’t have iSight support.

LittleSnapper is a great application to share screenshots. It works perfect for many uses, from sharing website designs to annotating images for your blog. You can download a free trial, or buy LittleSnapper for $39 from Realmac Software.

This app, like many others in the App Store today, allows you to search for any product and even purchase it from Amazon.com right from your iPhone. The feature that makes this application a complete killer though is known as “Amazon Remembers”. You simply select “Remembers” from the bottom of the screen and snap a photo of any item you would like Amazon to remember for you. This photo then gets uploaded to Amazon, where the real magic happens. They take advantage of their service known as “mechanical turk”, which is literally a human powered search service, in this case. With this service a real human looks at your photograph and identifies exactly what you took the photograph of with surprising accuracy. Amazon stipulates that this process can take anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours, but personally I only ever had to wait 5 minutes, at the longest.

I put the Amazon application up against another app, SnapTell Explorer, which uses a more algorithmic approach to identifying the target object. For this face-off, I snapped a photo of the front of my Nikon D80 camera (with the D80 and Nikon clearly visible), the spine of the OS X Leopard box, and the front cover of I am Legend. The I am Legend cover was easily identified by both applications but the D80 and the OS X box were only identified by Amazon. SnapTell Explorer turned around nearly instantaneously with a response, whereas Amazon took a minute or two.

After returning the identified object, the Amazon Mobile app allows you to compare prices, look at reviews, and even purchase the item from your phone. It even saves this information to your account so that when you log in to Amazon on your Mac it will be displayed on your homepage for further review or purchase.

Currently the Amazon Mobile app is listed for free on the App Store.

The first thing you will notice about NoteBook is how much it actually looks like a notebook. It has the fringes and everything! It makes it seem much more like taking notes than when done in Pages.

When you first open NoteBook you will be prompted with a dialogue that lets you create a new notebook from a starting point. You will notice that there are many options, so NoteBook is not really just for notes; it can be for anything that involves writing! The automatically selected option is Take Notes, which is what most people use it for. You can also choose to learn how to use NoteBook by just clicking Learn to Use NoteBook in a Few Easy Steps. If you uncheck the Show at start-up checkbox, you will never see this dialogue unless you go to File>New from Starting Point…

Two of the best new features in NoteBook 3.0 are Sticky Notes and Sticky Flags. These provide an easy way to jot down a little something that doesn’t have anything to do with the notes you’re taking. For example, you could make a sticky note that says “Remember to look up this person” if you are taking history notes. Then when you’re done with that Sticky Note, you just drag it off the notebook. Sticky Flags are a little bit different. With a Sticky Flag, you add a line of text to it, and put it somewhere, kind of like a marker. Sticky Flags come in a few flavors: plain old Sticky Flags, Fax Flags, Send Flags, Important Flags, Note Flags, and Urgent Flags. For all but the first kind, Notebook will put its type (e.g. Note) on the right side, and you can edit the text on the left side. With both Sticky Notes and Flags, you can drag them halfway out of the notebook to mark a certain page, and then whenever you want to get to that page, you just click on the part that’s sticking out.

Another great feature added in NoteBook 3.0 is tablet support. If you are someone like me who likes using their tablet to write on their computer, then you will love this feature. First, you should probably add Ink to your toolbar by going to View>Customize Toolbar… and adding Ink to the toolbar. Once you have done this, you can go to drawing mode (there will be a little doodle in the Ink toolbar item) or text recognition mode (there will be an “a” in the Ink toolbar item). To get to drawing mode, click once, and to get to text recognition mode, click twice. In drawing mode, you can just draw little doodles and diagrams. If you go into text recognition mode, you will want to write only text. Once you have written some text, NoteBook will use its text recognition algorithm to figure out what you wrote. It (what NoteBook thinks you wrote) will then appear right on top of the written text. If a word does not say what your wrote, then just click on it, and you will get a pulldown with other possible words. In this pulldown, you can also edit the text (what it thought you wrote), or just delete the recognition (in case you were drawing a doodle when in text recognition mode). I want to point out that this only works with tablets; you cannot just use your mouse.

One simple but extremely useful new feature in NoteBook 3.0 is the ability to rip out a page from your notebook. To rip out a page, just option-click a page in a divider page, and that page will be put in a new window. While you still have that page separately open, you cannot get to it within your notebook; you have to use the newly appeared window. Once you want the page to go back into the notebook, you just close the window, and everything will go back to normal. This can be very useful if you took notes on one page, and want to write a summary about them on another page.

These are just some of the amazing new features added in NoteBook 3.0. Here is a list of all of the new features. NoteBook 3.0 retails for $49.95 for a regular license and $29.95 for an academic license. Until October 31, you can upgrade from NoteBook 2.0 for only $19.95, and then it will go back to its normal price of $29.95. You can also download a trial from the same site. NoteBook 3.0 is an amazing update to an already amazing app, making it my favorite academic tool, and I hope it will become yours too.

Though still labeled as “Beta”, the basic functionality of OpenHuddle is already up and running at full steam, and users are starting to filter in to take a peek at what they’ve got going on. OpenHuddle’s homepage will explain the basics: the entire system functions through multi-functional web application areas called “Rooms” (or “Huddles”), which you can customize and create yourself.

Need a place where you can chat with twelve of your friends while doodling on a whiteboard to really illustrate (my trackpad art skills notwithstanding) your point? Not a problem, just add a whiteboard and chat widget to your Room’s layout space and you’re good to go. If you’re into more direct communication, OpenHuddle also has a fairly robust “Multi-User Video Conferencing” interface which does pretty much what you’d expect it to, except that, because it’s entirely web-based, it’s completely cross-platform compatible so you don’t have to worry about who’s on what. There’s also an audio-only chat option for Skype-like calls, and an instant-message-style text chat widget.

File sharing and collaboration is a necessary feature of these applications, and OpenHuddle acknowledges this by providing extensive file-type support for users. Need to get some comments on a presentation before you go up to perform? Upload your PowerPoint (.PPT) or Flash (.SWF) slideshow file and you’re ready to get comments from everyone in your room in seconds. Ditto for documents, photos, live web clips, and even your desktop! Need to teach someone exactly how to install something or perform certain actions in an application? Why tell them when you can show them with the equivalent of a screencast –- right inside their browser.

That’s all great in theory, of course, but how does it all actually work out in the real world? Well, it turns out that it performs quite speedily considering everything that’s going on within a single browser instance. The video chat was a little choppy in my experience (using the Macbook Pro’s built-in iSight camera and mic), and the text chat had some occasional delays in publishing a message, but not enough to be considered anything but an annoyance. The interface is indeed very customizable, though it may not be immediately clear how it works. The file and desktop sharing worked as advertised and, on a Mac, you’ll be asked to download a small Java applet which will allow you to specify whether you want to share your entire screen or just a section of it, which is actually very smart.

All of this functionality begs the question of how secure the whole enterprise is, and the answer is “not very”. The system seems more tailored to casual, friendly kinds of conversations between friends or family; it’s far too open and publicly-accessible to be of much use for business users hoping for a private meeting room, even though you can apply some basic access restrictions to your Room.

All in all, OpenHuddle has taken an important pioneering step for the web applications industry and it proves that this kind of cross-platform collaboration is indeed possible. Once they come out of beta and work out a few kinks in the system, I think that there will be a large market waiting for them. Head on over to OpenHuddle.com to check it out for yourself, and let us know how you think the service is coming along!

When you first open DVDRemaster Pro, you have to choose a source. DVDRemaster Pro comes with an application called FairMount, that allows you to mount DVDs like Disk Images.

Once you have chosen a source, you must decide what mode you are going to burn in. There are three modes in DVDRemaster Pro: Remaster, Export and Extract.

Remaster lets you re-compress the DVD onto your hard drive, that can simply be stored, or later re-burned. You can choose to re-compress the entire DVD, or just the main feature. First you have to select a Recompression Module, and you can choose a target size to try and keep the file size under.

Export is the mode that I expect most people to use this application for. You can choose from 7 formats to export for, including iPod, Apple TV, MP4 and Quicktime. There are a number of presets included in DVDRemaster Pro for this mode, and you can easily create your own in the “Configure” dialog. Once you have chosen your format and preset, you can go through the files on the disc and choose which files you want to export. You can also have the result automatically imported into iTunes once it is done, and choose whether you want the subtitles of a particular file.

Finally, DVDRemaster’s third mode is Extract. Extract lets you take the raw stream off the DVD for use in another application, such as VLC.

In the end, DVDRemaster produced great results, and made it easy to get files quickily from DVD to iPod. It took DVDRemaster Pro 5 minutes, 59 seconds to rip a 26 minute episode of FRIENDS, where it took Handbrake 18 minutes, 24 seconds to rip the same episode, at the same settings. This test was in no way scientific, but rather just a quick test to compare burn times.

DVDRemaster Pro is a little on the expensive side at $49.99 ($39.99 for standard version) when there are tools like Hanbrake available, but it depends on whether you are willing to pay for the convenience of time.

Just remember that you should not rip DVDs that you do not have ownership of. If I understand correctly, it is illegal in the US to rip a DVD if you circumvent the encryption or protection in the process. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Mellel greets you with an interface that is, shall we say, familiar. The developers have decided to adopt Word’s interesting format of having your document in one window and a tool panel separately in another window, which includes pretty much everything you’d want to do to your document (from Office for Mac). Similar to Word, the tool panel is divided into helpful tabs which contain the functions related to its title. For example, the “Alignment and Spacing” tab will give you access to controls for aligning your text and defining the spacing of your paragraphs and between lines of text.

The tool panel is functional, if somewhat perplexing because of its separate window existence. While I found it to be very convenient to have every major operation available from a single window, I question the need to actually separate it into the “floating” dialogue that Mellel provides. I had the same misgiving about Office for Mac’s version of Word, and I’m worried to see that other developers are adopting this particular design choice, even though some may prefer it to the integrated ribbon bar found in the latest version of Word’s Windows counterpart.

Perhaps for the sake of an uncluttered page window interface, Mellel does not offer the typical New, Open, Print, and Save buttons that most other word processors provide as part of their main toolbar. These options are still accessible from the File menu, of course, and I didn’t really miss having the extra buttons. In fact, the only things that you will find on the page window of Mellel is a zoom control, a table generation button, a central window providing information on the text style, and buttons for Left, Right, Center, and Justified text alignment.

The interface similarities between Mellel and Word do not extend as far as the program’s skin, though, which is outfitted in a drab, gunmetal-gray that may be a little bit unfavorable for users who are not fond of having a distinctly military aesthetic about their writing environments.

The way Mellel’s website talks about it, you’d think that it was what God used to write the ten commandments or something. Not only does RedleX give a “Competitive Comparison” chart, which I’ll get to in a moment, but they also have a page with the “Top Ten Reasons to Switch to Mellel,” which begins, modestly, with “Mellel is the best word processor for Mac OSX.” There is a fine line between arrogance and ambition, and Mellel treads on it with gusto.

Some of the items on the Top Ten list are strong arguments, such as the claim that Mellel will not crash, even under the strain of extremely long documents (which it was apparently designed to handle efficiently). I myself tested it with some challenging documents (200+ page theatrical scripts with storyboard images, novel manuscripts, etc.) and did not manage to crash it or even significantly slow it down, which was impressive. It also provides an interesting “secondary font” option which allows users to mix languages in the text fluently, with full support for OpenType language options.

Other items are not as convincing. Saying that Mellel can deal with footnotes and endnotes is not exactly an innovative feature revelation, and the fact that they’ve required no less than 16 “major updates” in just three years is hardly a selling point. Nevertheless, Mellel’s got some great things going for it, which their extensive comparison chart helps to illustrate.

The chart, as mentioned above, is part of Mellel’s loud-mouthed advertising and provides an in-depth comparison between Mellel, Word, Open Office, and NisusWriter Express. Without going into unnecessary detail, the chart highlights some significant positive attributes, including an extremely fast launch time, resource-efficient operation, and a good array of features and file-type compatibilities. On the other hand, the lack of important features like password-protection, spellcheck exclusions and multiple language support, different page sizes in one document, intelligent tables, and a number of graphics limitations is difficult to ignore.

Add to that the fact that the chart was created using results from last-generation versions of the competing software and you may start to question the credibility of its data, which obviously favors Mellel. RedleX graciously admits to this though, saying about the chart: “What is it good for? Not much, except for getting a general impression.”

Despite its shortcomings, Mellel truly is an ambitious and competent word processor, and its nimble operation and spartan interface may appeal to those looking for an efficient writing environment with bells and whistles that are present without being distracting. Mellel is available from RedleX for $49.00 for a standard license, $64.00 for a boxed edition (including shipping charges), or $35.00 for an educational license. Any purchase comes with 2 years of free updates, free email support, and some tutorials and guides.

I enjoyed my experience with Mellel, but I can’t say I was thrilled enough to consider switching to it as my primary word processor. Have your own Mellel experiences to share? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!

If you are familiar with the GTD concept by David Allen, you will feel right at home with OmniFocus. If you’re not, OmniFocus has a few included actions that will help you get acquainted.

When you first open OmniFocus, you are greeted with the actions that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Before we get into using OmniFocus though, I would like to talk a bit about the philosophy behind this app.

First off, OmniFocus’ methodology was based off of David Allen’s popular GTD book Getting Things Done though if you are not familiar with the book, it will not hinder you from understanding this application. The three concepts that you need to know when beginning to use OmniFocus are:

1. Action: something you can physically do in one step.
2. Project: any task that takes more than one physical action. In other words, a goal that requires more than one action to reach.
3. Context: physical requirement for an action (e.g. place, object, activity, person).

OmniFocus is set up to follow a 3-step process: Capture, Organize, Do. It is recommended that you first perform a “brain dump” and allow OmniFocus to capture all of your current tasks in the Inbox. Once you have added all of the things you want to do, you can organize them, and then (hopefully) do those tasks.

Alright, so now onto the meat of this post, which will be focused on how to use OmniFocus. If you go into the Inbox, you will be greeted with a blank screen, as there hasn’t been any items entered into OmniFocus yet. Clicking on the “Add Action” button will get you started with a new action. Tapping “enter” while an action is selected will create a new action below the active one; tapping “tab” will cycle horizontally through the options available for each action (Project, Context etc.). You can add actions on the fly (when you aren’t in OmniFocus) buy holding “ctrl+option+Space,” which will bring up the quick entry window.

For each action, there is much more information that you can optionally add to your actions like a start date, due date, repeat the action etc.

Once you have a list of actions going, it is time to organize them. Any actions that require more than one step should be made into projects. You can create a project by dragging an action into your library, or by clicking the “+” in the bottom-left corner of the window. Just like with actions, you can use the Inspector to add more information about your project to OmniFocus, such as status, start date, due date etc.

In terms of viewing your project, clicking on it’s name in the sidebar will show all of the actions associated with it. Clicking on “Focus” in the toolbar will hide all other projects except for the one currently selected. You can choose whether the tasks need to be done sequentially, or non-sequentially in the inspector, or by clicking on the arrows in the project’s name at the top of the window. You can re-order actions by dragging and dropping them. Clicking “View” in the toolbar drops down a little bar that allows you to filter your actions based on certain criteria. Once you have your actions organized into projects, you need to assign contexts to them.

Contexts, like I said before, are the physical requirements for actions. In other words, the category in which the action falls (e.g. Errands, Mac, Phone). OmniFocus comes with a few contexts already, and it is simple to add your own. To add a context to an action, click in the column to the right of its title, and type the name of the context. Contexts you already have entered will show up as you type (demonstrated in the screenshot above), making it quick to find the context you are looking for. Once you’ve assigned contexts to your actions, you can really begin to take advantage of what OmniFocus has to offer.

In the top-left corner of the window, under the close/minimize buttons, there are mode buttons. You can choose to have the window display in “Planning” or “Context” mode. Going into context mode allows you to view all of the actions for a certain context. For example, if you are sitting with your Mac and have access to the internet, you can see all of your actions that are under the “Mac: Online” context, or if you are going to run some errands, you can see all of the actions that you tagged as such.

In the “Context” mode you can also re-arrange your contexts, according to your preferences. You can group contexts together by dragging their names onto each other, which allows you to see multiple, related contexts at once.

When you want to check an item off your list, you just click in the checkbox to the left of the action; clicking “Clean Up” will remove all completed items from the project. If you ever want to see your completed items again, clicking “Perspectives>All Items” in the menubar will show you just that. To learn more about Perspectives, I suggest you watch this video by the OmniGroup.

Basically, once you get a hand of OmniFocus’ workflow, you can refine it to fit your needs. For many, a simple to-do app like Anxiety or Apple’s iCal is plenty for day to day tasks; but for those who need a more powerful application to manage all of their activities, OmniFocus does a great job of balancing ease-of-use with the GTD concept.

Choosing a GTD application can be a daunting task, as everyone has a different way they like to manage their to-do list, which means that every application will feel different to each individual. I suggest giving all the competition a test-drive before deciding which one is right for you.

OmniFocus is $79.95 (educational and family discounts available) from the OmniGroup.

MacGourmet Deluxe combines the robust MacGourmet recipe organizer with the Nutrition, Mealplan, and Cookbook plug-ins. Here is a small list of what you can do with the Deluxe version of MacGourmet:

⁃ Create, edit, and share recipes
⁃ Add recipes from online sources easily
⁃ Sync plans to/from iCal with one click
⁃ Publish recipes to .mac or your web site
⁃ Create and print your own cookbook
⁃ Take notes on cooking, as well as notes on the perfect wine
⁃ Plan meals by recipe or by the Weekly Meal Planner
⁃ Organize your collection with SmartLists
⁃ Calculate the nutritional content of your recipes with the included USDA database

My three favorite features are:

Generate shopping lists from ingredients. Once you’ve picked a recipe or made a meal plan for the day or the entire week, you can quickly generate a shopping list based on the ingredients in each recipe. MacGourmet Deluxe keeps track of quantities when they are labeled, and provides a list you can print out or put on your PDA and take to the supermarket. This feature is really handy when purchasing ingredients, and helps cut down on buying too much of something and having it go bad.

Plan a meal using the Cupboard Find or Potluck Find features. Do you have a hodgepodge of spices and other seemingly-unrelated ingredients sitting in your cupboard? Type them into the Cupboard Find in MacGourmet Deluxe, and it’ll search through your recipes for anything that uses those ingredients. Can’t decide what to make for lunch? Do a Potluck Find and have five random meal suggestions instantly.

Chef View. Ever tried to read your computer screen while you cook? It’s definitely a challenge. With Chef View, you can easily set the recipe directions in a large font that is easily readable from a safe distance. This keeps your hands free to prepare the meal, and keeps the meal from getting on your keyboard and screen.

In all, MacGourmet Deluxe packs a whole lot of functionality into one application. While some of the additions are not for everyone (I won’t use the Wine Notes, for example), the things you don’t use stay out of the way, and the focus remains on recipes, ingredients, and preparation—as it should. MacGourmet Deluxe is $44.95 for the digital download version from the Mariner Software website, and they offer a boxed version for $5 more. Also, if you bought a previous version of MacGourmet, you qualify for an upgrade price of $24.95.

Usually, to create a mind map on my Mac, I open up Pages, go into “Page Layout” and join text boxes and pictures together with lines. This method works fine for simple mind maps, but re-arranging boxes is a pain, and it can get difficult to add a little style to the page without making it a mess. OmniGraffle, from the OmniGroup, however, is an application focused on creating diagrams, process charts and more.

When you first open OmniGraffle, you are greeted with the template chooser. If you have ever used any of Apple’s iWork applications, the template chooser looks very similar to that. OmniGraffle comes with 16 templates, and you can find more online.

The aspect of OmniGraffle that really makes it useable for many different purposes though, is the stencils. Stencils are the objects that you drag into and manipulate in OmniGraffle projects. There are many stencils included with OmniGraffle, from boxes to clouds, maps, and even circuit engineering objects. There is a website recently featured on the OmniGroup’s website called Graffletopia (which you can now search from OmniGraffle), which has a database of user-submitted stencils, which help to expand OmniGraffle’s functionality even more.

The interface can be a little daunting at first, but just like OmniOutliner, the majority of the options for OmniGraffle are inside of a multi-paned inspector. Similar to OmniOutliner, there is a Style pane and a Document pane, as well as a Canvas and Properties pane.

The Style pane lets you change everything from the fill of a shape/line, to shadow, and how text looks. The amount of customization is quite extensive, so no two diagrams will ever have to look the same. You can set a background image for a shape, or even the whole canvas.

The Properties pane is where the more technical aspects of your diagram are altered. You can set where a shape will sit on the X/Y axis of your canvas, and it’s exact width and height. You can decide where a shapes magnets will be (where a line will automatically join onto the shape), and even add actions (like opening a file, or focusing on a point in your diagram) when a shape is clicked in Presentation mode.

The Canvas pane lets you set up your canvas (funny how that works eh?). You can set the canvas size, grid, alignment and even how the diagram will act when set to automatically lay itself out. One feature which I found nice in this pane was the “Selection” sub-pane. This lets you select all the occurrences of an object in your diagram at once, which makes it easy to style all of them at once, or change something about them.

The Document pane is quite simple, allowing you to add metadata to your file (Authors, Copyright, Description etc.), and a few options for when you save your file.

Similar to how Pages ’08 has a format bar under the toolbar, OmniGraffle has what the OmniGroup refer to as a “mini inspector.” This bar gives you access to the most used commands in OmniGraffle, so you don’t always have to go into the inspector to edit something.

You have lots of options for lines, from straight lines to curved lines, and OmniGraffle now supports Bezier lines, so you can curve to your hearts content.

Now, in terms of the professional version, it has features and options that I won’t even pretend to understand, which leads me to believe that for the average user, the standard version will more than suffice. The standard version of OmniGraffle comes in at $99.95, and the professional version weighs in at $199.95.

As I mentioned earlier, OmniGraffle has a Presentation mode, though only in the professional version. Going into View>Start Presentation shows your canvas fullscreen. Hovering over an element (Lines, shapes etc.), will highlight it, and clicking on an element will activate any actions you have assigned to them in the Properties pane.

If all you would ever need a mind-mapping application for is the occasional text chart, OmniGraffle can be over-kill, and not cost effective for most. If you just want a simple application for brainstorming or making a simple text chart, I recommend MindNode (freeware). It has a simple interface which makes it easy to create mind-maps.

In the end, OmniGraffle’s use spans far beyond just creating flow charts or mind-maps. Some people use OmniGraffle to lay out the structure for a website, and some even use it to lay out designs for yards and rooms!

If you you do a lot of work where creating diagrams etc. is essential, then the price of OmniGraffle is certainly justifiable, as it makes it simple to get your ideas from your brain to your computer. The stencils available help to convey the message of your diagram in a way that is visually appealing, and easy to understand. There are a few video tutorials done by ScreenCastsOnline of OmniGraffle on the OmniGroup’s website, though they have not yet been updated to reflect the newest version of OmniGraffle. You can purchase either version of OmniGraffle (which is now Leopard-only) from the OmniGroup’s store.

The developer states that his inspiration for the look and feel of Calories was the beautiful, elegant, simple design of the to-do app Things. And he has succeeded in creating the same ease-of-use and meaningfully colorful interface in Calories. At first glance the app looks deceptively simple: search for foods to add to your list for the day, changing the quantities if needed. Calories then tabulates Protein, Carbs, Fat, and 44 nutrients for you. The values are looked up on the fly from the USDA Food Database, and a bar graph at the bottom of the screen tells you at a glance how you’re doing for your caloric intake goals.

This simplicity masks several powerful features happening under the hood. For example, the first time you search for “subway,” you’ll get several hits. Once you’ve chosen the “Turkey, ham, and roast beef club sandwich,” for example, Calories remembers your choice, and then next time you search for “Subway,” that sandwich appears at the top of the results list, with a blue “favorites” check mark next to it. There is no need to mark a food as your favorite; the program intuitively figures that out from the foods you select. Simple and smart!

You can easily change the view to show all foods for the day, or view your foods as color-coded meals: Breakfast (orange), Lunch (green), Dinner (purple), or Snacks (gray), and you can easily drag and drop a food from one meal to the next, and option-drag to create a duplicate entry.

There are also reports you can generate for the day, week, month, or the whole year. This allows you to quickly see how you’re doing each day, or whether that weekend birthday party put you over your average calories for the week.

All of these features are packed into a remarkably clean user interface. But as powerful as Calories currently is, there are several additions that are planned which will greatly improve what the app can do. The next version, 1.1, is due out in mid-July. Future versions will allow you to:

• Add your own foods to the database
• Add your own tags
• Set daily goals for each nutrient that is being tracked
• Bundle your foods into meals
• Improved reporting
• Printing support

Through an online Calories user group, the developer gathers (and really listens to) user feedback and suggestions for future improvements. Two that stand out for the future include an iPhone version of Calories, and a possible collaboration with the developers of the MacGourmet application, to allow for meal planning integration with Calories.

With a clean user interface and many powerful features, this nutrition tracker is well worth a test drive. Calories is $19 from the NSObjects website, and comes with 100-entry trial version, and requires OS 10.5.