Today, Eric Thomas, CEO of Freedom Voice, confided that the company is pulling back support from the App Store after months of no response from Apple.  The company will no longer seek iPhone App Store acceptance for now.  “I am disappointed,” says Thomas.  The company plans to integrate the Newber concept into their new FreedomVOICE IQ product, a hosted PBX phone system that is gaining traction for the company.

Just last week, Market Strategist for FreedomVOICE Systems, Nick Gowdy, told me the Newber team stands ready to respond to Apples comments, but none of come.  In fact, Apple hasn’t even registered the dummy account to test the application.  150+ days of silence from Apple for an application that, according to the company, does not break any of the rules set up by Apple.  “We are frustrated,” says Gowdy.  One might ask, “what gives Apple?”

What is Newber?
Newber, a brand of FreedomVOICE Systems, a virtual office phone system provider, accomplishes 3 things for the iPhone user: the ability to make and receive calls where AT&T has spotty or no reception; the ability to offload a call when your phone’s battery is nearly drained; the ability to take calls without burning your AT&T minutes.

Newber will create a second phone number for your iPhone that routes through their network.  This second line is customizable in a manner similar to Google’s Grand Central.  Users can control when they wish the calls to ring or go straight to voice mail.  For users who seek both a work phone and a personal phone, this solution could be attractive.  The original iPhone number would, of course, still work just as it did before this application installation.

Calls to a users Newber line could have been routed to other numbers, such as a land line.  Users simply enter the number they wish the calls transferred to, it is that simple.  Additionally, Newber made use of the iPhone 3G’s GPS and automatically switch calls to the predefined number when you enter that lines proximity.  For example, users can choose to have their Newber calls forwarded to their work phone when at the office.  Arriving at work would trigger the line forward just as leaving the office would transfer calls back to your iPhone.

Another feature of the application is one touch tree dialing system.  This feature allows users to select a contact to reach and the phone begins dialing the first number listed for the contact.  Should the call roll to voice mail, the second number listed is automatically dialed.  An example of this would be phoning your contact office line, then upon getting voice mail, trying the contact’s mobile number next; all without any added input from you.

Newber was priced at $5 per month plus 2 cents per minute.  International calls varied by country in price from $1.68 per minute to the Falkland Islands to $.0266 to China.  Calls placed on your Newber line from your iPhone burned both Newber minutes and iPhone AT&T minutes.

150 days of frustration
The team at Newber was super excited to gain admission to the iPhone developer program and were even more so when they submitted the application to Apple.  In the days and weeks that followed that excitement as numbed a bit.  According to Gowdy, the application, “shouldn’t be a concern” to Apple.  Another application that deals with VOIP is in the same approval limbo for their application: iCall.

The team tried changing names of the application and resubmitting.  They’ve changed the description and resubmitted.  They’ve changed anything that could perceived as a “bad” and resubmitted.  The team even tried a petition at CES and MacWorld to get Apple’s attention.  All to the same end: no response from Apple.

Previously, the company had stated a jailbroken app for the iPhone might be a possibility.  Thomas confirmed they’ve not made a decision on that, but went into the business case and stated it didn’t make too much sense.

Have you no decency Apple?

A point Thomas wanted to emphasize is social consciousness.  How can Apple in good faith, provide no response to a developer wanting to make their device more appealing to the business crowd?  Thomas said he could respect a, “no” but to offer no response, which led to a significant outlay in marketing and perhaps more importantly in time.  Instead of accolades, a request from Apple to help, rewards and awards for a signigicant contribution to the iPhone’s business side, they recieved nothing.

Thomas concludes it must be a marketing move for Apple’s lack of response, “I can only think Apple wants to avoid the negative press from denying acceptance of applications like Newber.”

Thomas plans to integrate the Newber concept into their FreedomVOICE IQ, a hosted PBX solution that allows company to move away from the expensive outlay for PBX phone hardware and move to a scalable system based on VOIP.  Thomas considers pulling Newber support is the right move for FreedomVOICE customers and for the company.  Work on a BlackBerry version has also been halted.

The Newber app is one that leverages the iPhones assets: a phone you cannot be without for personal or business use and smart call routing fused with GPS.  Here’s to hoping Apple sees it fit for approval the next time it gets the chance, as there are many of us excited to add this app to our phones.  You can learn more about Newber at mynewber.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Together can be used as a replacement of the Finder or it can be used along with the Finder. Together does not create a database; it really is just a hierarchy of folders, which is why you can use the Finder to view them too. It actually watches its library folder (~/Documents/Together/Default), so if you drop a file in one of the folders in there (e.g. Images, Documents), it will automatically be added to your library. The other easy way to add a file to your library is the sidebar. If you drag a file onto its Shelf, you can add it to any of your groups, or just your library. In this same Shelf, you can also create Quick Notes and Favorite Files. The final way to add files to your library is to click the Add toolbar item in the main window of the application. Here, you can also create things like Bookmarks, Web Archives, and notes from the clipboard. When you first use Together, it will copy the files you import, but you can change this. In the General pane of Together > Preferences, you can choose to either Copy files, Link to files (keep the files where they are), or Move files (moves the files to Together’s library folder).

One feature that has just been added to Together is automatic tagging. Most other apps like Together have tagging, but Together goes a bit further. When this feature is enabled (the Tags pane of Together > Preferences), Together will automatically apply tags to newly imported files based on similar files. This means that if you have two files with names containing ‘MacApper 08,’ similar tags will be applied. Also, if two files’ contents are similar (e.g. have the same header), similar tags will be applied. Since this feature was first implemented, there have been a fair number of bugs, but most of these have been fixed through updates.

Together also has a nice feature for us widescreen users. It has two view modes: Regular and Wide. To switch, just click on one of the toolbar icons in the bottom toolbar next to the [i] button. Wide mode really just puts the file list to the left side of the preview box, but the results are great; it really makes use of widescreen monitors. Users of WideMail will already be familiar with this view. Together also implements tabs, which can be very useful for viewing many files at once. The tabs could be much better, though. When you open a file in a new tab, it does just that — there is no more file list. So to open a new file in a tab, you have to go back to the Library tab. It is nice to have the extra space (from no file list) in tabs, though.

Together does have MobileMe syncing, but it is very buggy. Even since I enabled it, Together will have a memory leak, give me an error, or crash about once a day. At first I thought it was just me, but then I found that others have this problem too. I give them credit for having it — it’s a nice idea — but it really just needs better implementation. It is also hard to enable. Instead of there being a preference or button for it, you have to go to Together > Library Manager and then enable syncing. This may not sound too hard, but try figuring it out on your own.

Together, by Reinvented Software, retails for $39 and you can download a free trial from their site. It is a good tool for advanced file managing, but if you just want a place to put files until you can organize them, it’s not that good. For that, I would go with ShoveBox. And, like any app of its type, it takes some time to get used to. But if an advanced file manager is what you’re looking for, then Together is a pretty good choice.

For those of you who don’t know about CSS, I will quickly explain it. A while ago, all Web programmers had to program all of their styles (fonts, colors, positioning) in HTML, which was really annoying. So, CSS was created to address this problem. Instead of having to individually add styles, you create styles that you can apply to certain parts of your Web page, or even the whole thing. It gets better with every update, which is a reason that the quality of Websites has gone up over time.

When you first download Xyle scope, it has a lot of bookmarks built-in. These are Websites that the guys at Cultured Code think has interesting CSS. The most interesting of these (in the Favorites folder) is called CSS Zen Garden. As said at their Website, their Website is “a demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design.” You can select a style sheet from the sidebar of the Website, and it will load with that sheet. This allows you to see what the masters of CSS do.

Once you have loaded a Web page in Xyle scope, you will see three panes it its sidebar: the Hierarchical View, HTML Pane and Cascade view. The Hierarchical View shows you the HTML document as a hierarchy of elements. You can use your arrow keys or your mouse to navigate through these. When you select any item, you will see that the HTML Pane changes. The HTML Pane also shows you a hierarchy of elements, but it goes a little further in showing you the properties inside those tags. Like, for doing a link, you write, “a href=…” In the Hierarchical View, you would just see an ‘a’, but in the HTML view, you see the ‘a’, the ‘href’ and even the link. It is like a simplified version of a real HTML document. The Cascade allows you to see the CSS for the selected element in either the HTML Pane of the Hierarchical View.

Xyle scope also gives you another way to select elements: through the preview itself. Just click on the toolbar item next to the [Link] item, and you can just click somewhere in the preview to select an element. Sometimes it can be hard for beginners to understand things like ‘li’ and ‘ul’, and this really addresses that problem. Instead of having to know what ‘li’ means, you just have to click on the element you want to select. This can even help you learn what certain tags mean.

Xyle scope has a nice feature called Selector matching. To the right of the Cascade pane (if you pull it out from the right side of the window), there is another pane. If you click on a selector like ‘img’, this pane will show you all of the HTML element that will be effected by a change to the selector. This is a really nice tool, so I do not see why it is hidden by default.

Xyle scope also allows you to edit the CSS on Web pages. It gives you two ways to do it: typing in new values, or having Xyle scope helping you a little bit. If you know CSS, you may just want to type in new values in the Cascade view. If you’re not so familiar with it, you will want to do it the other way. In the Cascade view, just click on a property (like margin), and Xyle scope will present you with a window that gives you a place for a name and a value. So, you can also use this to add new properties. The reason this is good for people who don’t know much CSS is because it gives you lists of possible Names and Values. But of course, you can also add your own. Xyle scope also allows you to edit the CSS and HTML of Web pages in BBEdit, TextMate or TextEdit. However, the Web page you are editing must be a file on your hard drive. Xyle scope’s built-in CSS editor is not that great (which is why you would want to use Xyle scope to preview, and something like BBEdit to edit), but that is not really its purpose.

Cultured Code’s Xyle scope retails for $19.95 and you can download a free trial from their site. It is a wonderful tool for anyone learning CSS, or anyone who just wants to see how others do CSS, wishing to improve their own. It is not, however, a CSS editor and should not be compared to one. For actual editing purposes, it is mainly only used to do the finishing touches of Web pages.

Versions makes SVN easy. All you have to do to setup a Repository (where the files are stored) Bookmark is select the [+] button and click Add Repository Bookmark… You will then be prompted for a name, URL, and username and password. Most open-source SVN Repositories don’t require a password, but for a personal repository, you will probably want one. Once you have entered all the relevant information, just click the Create button. The Repository will then show up in the Bookmarks sidebar. When you click on one of these bookmarks, the Repository will be loaded.

The main panel of Versions has 3 tabs: Timeline, Browse, and Transcript. The Timeline tab shows you the most recent revisions. For each revision it tells you the user who made the change, the revision number, the files that were changed, and a description of the change. The browse tab gives you a look at the files in the Repository. It shows the files exactly like in list mode in the Finder. Double-clicking on a file will allow you to edit it and clicking the Quick Look toolbar item will allow you to view it in Quick Look. If you click the Compare Diff toolbar icon, you can compare the most recent version of the file with a previous revision. Once you choose the previous revision, it will open the files in the file-comparison app that you choose in Versions’ preferences (I suggest using Changes). The transcript tab just shows you what Versions has been doing (e.g. opening a file from a Repository, etc.).

Versions not only makes it easy to view Repositories, but it also makes it easy to upload to them. To create a Checkout Version (a local copy) of a Repository, just select a bookmark, go to the Browse tab, and select what part of the project you want, and then click the Checkout toolbar item. Versions will prompt you with a dialogue of where to save it to, and then it will save it. It would be nice if you could just select a bookmark and click Checkout, and it would download the entire thing. When you want to upload changes from your working copy, all you have to do is select your working copy, select the files you want to commit, and click the Commit toolbar item. If you added new files from the last time you uploaded, you will need to mark them as needing to be uploaded. You can do this by selecting the file and clicking the Add toolbar item. If there is a file listed that you do not want to upload, just click the Delete toolbar item. It can be a bit tedious to have to select to add all your new files, but it’s worth it.

If you are a real SVN lover and power-user, you will really like the information shown about files when the Inspector toolbar icon is clicked. I will not even try to explain all the features here, for I do not know them all, but they are useful to some.

Versions has just come out of Beta and now retails for about $48.57 (€39). It is the prettiest, most intuitive, and easiest to use SVN client available for the Mac. It is even a partner of Beanstalk, the best source of private Repositories. If you do any shared work, namely code, I suggest that you download the free trial of Versions and see how it compares to what you have used in the past; I think you will be surprised at how helpful it is.

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

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

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

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

Wallet fits its name because it is your digital wallet. You have different groups (like sections in a wallet) where you can store serial numbers, web passwords, credit cards or anything else you want. To create a new set of items (like a database), just hit the [+] button at the bottom-left-hand corner of the main window. You will be prompted with a window where you can customize all aspects of the group. To change the icon of the group, just click on the default folder icon in the upper-left-hand corner and wither choose a pre-made icon or choose a custom icon (by clicking Choose Custom…). The fields are for the basic information you want for the group. If you are keeping track of expenses, you can have fields like Date, Amount and Tax. You can also have multiple sections of fields. To create a new section, click on the Add Field button under the New Section box. If you want to add an AutoFill in Safari for members of the group, just click the Enable AutoFill checkbox, and drag the Website URL, Username and Password icons to their subsequent fields that you created. I must say, I really like the look of this panel because it uses an iPhone like interface. The fields look like table view cells on the iPhone; even the [-] buttons and draggers look alike!

In each item of each group you can enter as many or as few of the fields for that group. You can even add special fields just for that item. To do this, just click the Add Field button under the fields in the item. The titles of there groups will be in bold blue so you can tell that they are special fields. You can also add notes to any item (no need to specify another field) just by editing the Notes section of the item. Along with notes there is also an icon field included by default. Here you can specify an icon for a specific item. And what’s better, when you type in the name of an application you have installed into the name field, Wallet will put its icon in this field! To edit an item just click the pencil icon at the bottom of the window. In editing mode, you can flag (or star) an item just by clicking on the big star next to the name field. Starred items will not appear in the list where they should (alphabetically) but they will always appear at the top. You need not be in edit mode to edit the notes of an item though. When not in editing mode, if you click on a field, Wallet will copy the contents to your clipboard and show any awesome animation! Wallet 3.0 makes is easier than ever to create information and access it!

The best new feature in version 3.0 would have to be MobileMe syncing. When you first launch Wallet, during the setup, you will be asked if you want to enable MobileMe syncing. All you have to do is enter your MobileMe username and password, and you are set. To change when to sync automatically, just go to the Sync pane of Wallet>Preferences… and edit the checkboxes in the Always Sync Before section. You can also always manually sync to MobileMe just by clicking on the Cloud toolbar button in the main window of Wallet. To disable MobileMe syncing, just uncheck the Enable MobileMe Sync checkbox. Not only does syncing allow you to have the same items on all of your Macs, it allows for the iPhone Wallet application to be up-to-date too.

Another new feature added in version 3.0 is the AutoFill menubar item. Wallet has added a menubar item (that is always running, even when Wallet is not) that allows you to fill stored forms for Websites. To enable this, just go to the AutoFill pane of Wallet>Preferences… and check the Enable menubar app checkbox. You will now see a nice little icon (that looks like a wallet) sitting in your menubar. When you want to fill a form, just click this item and enter your Master Password in the field shown. If Wallet finds a stored form it will AutoFill it, and if not, it will tell you so. Instead of having to open Wallet and find the form and AutoFill if from there, you can do it in just one click! Wallet is now just as easy to use as 1Password.

Wallet, by Acrylic Apps retails for only $20 and you can upgrade from version 2 for just $5 and get a free trial! They also have an iPhone app that is only $3.99! Version 3 is a great upgrade to an already great app! If you like organizing any information with ease, then you have to try out Wallet today!

Mail Act-On works the same way as MailTags, once you install it, there will be a new preference pane in Mail.app. In the General tab of this pane, you can specify if the window is locked (it won’t disappear), and fading of the Result window. The “menus” tab lets you choose keyboard shortcuts for Mail Act-On’s basic functionality. However, if you own a laptop or new Apple keyboard, these shortcuts are very annoying because you must hit the Function key along with the F Key. Right now, there is a bug that does not allow modifier keys for these shortcuts, but I have been assured that it will be fixed soon. While you can turn off the need to hit the function key, it also turns off all of the special actions associated with the keys like Brightness and iTunes controls. To do this, go to System Preferences>Keyboard & Mouse>Keyboard and select the “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.”

Mail Act-On also adds some new Rules tabs. If you go to the Rules pane of Mail.app’s preferences you will see that there are now three tabs. The Inbox Rules tab is just like Mail.app’s regular Rules. The “Outbox Rules” tab allows you to make rules apply to messages being sent and the “Keystroke Rules” tab is where Mail-Act-On’s power is really seen. Here you can specify rules that can be applied to messages by just one keystroke. You will usually want the “If” part of the rule to be “Any Message” because the point of this rule is to apply it to every message selected when you invoke the rule. There is also a new field in this type of rule called the “Act-On Key”. When you want to apply a certain “Keystroke Rule” you select some messages and hit Control-[Act-On Key for the rule]. This makes it simpler than ever to apply dozens of rules to messages after they have been received.

Mail Act-On does not require you to have any rules set up to use it; you can just use it as a tool to perform many actions on multiple messages. To invoke Mail Act-On, just hit the function key you set up for Mail Act-On (unless you changed it, F1). You will see a HUD-like window popup with actions that can be done to your selected messages. If you have MailTags installed, you will not only see the “Apply Rules”, “Move”, “Copy” and “Open Folder” actions, but you will also see two more: “Add Keyword” and “Set Project.” You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll through these or just use your mouse. To lock this window manually, just hit F1 (or Function-F1) again. Then, even after you have performed an action of some messages, the Mail Act-On window will still be there. As you remember, there were also options for setting up shortcuts for each action in the Act-On window in Mail Act-On’s preferences. If you hit one of these key combinations, instead of going straight to actions part of the Act-On window, it will take you to the part of the window that corresponds with the keystroke. Although this window makes it amazingly easy to apply rules of all sorts, if Mail.app loses focus and then gains it again, the Act-On window disappears. It is a nice feature that it is not there when Mail.app doesn’t have focus, but it would be better if it appeared again.

indev’s Mail Act-On retails for $19.95 (an introductory price) and you can download a free 21-day trial from their site. If you are an avid user of Quicksilver, or even if you just want to speed up your Email system, you will love Mail Act-On.

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.

Bento is a simpler and more Mac-like version of the FileMaker software. It works in the same way, so it’s not that big of a switch from FileMaker Pro. However, as I said, it’s simpler; it does not have all the features of FileMaker Pro, so if you need some of FileMaker Pro’s more advanced features, or if you are using databases professionally, I suggest you stick with FileMaker Pro.

When you first open Bento there will already be four databases in your Source List. These databases are Address Book, iCal Events, iCal Tasks, and Projects. The first one automatically syncs with Address Book, and the second and third automatically sync with iCal, so you never need to add a new item when you add a new task, event, or person. You may ask, “Why do I need a database for these things when they are already stored in their own applications?” Well, with Bento, you can add custom fields for things like Nickname, Middle Name, or anything you want to contacts! Or you can add things like URLs and pictures to iCal Events. If you want more options for these things, then you will just love these pre-made databases.

One of the most interesting features of Bento is its templates. When you go to File>New Library, or click the [+] in the lower left-hand corner, you will be prompted with a Template dialogue. This is where you can choose a pre-made template. It has ones for projects, contacts, to-dos, and many other common databases. In that same dialogue, you can also enter a name for your database. They have enough templates to get you started, but when you really get into Bento, you will probably just want to use the Blank template as a starting point.

Once you have created a database, you will probably want to add some custom fields. In the Fields panel, there will be many common fields that you can drag onto your database, or you can create your own! Just hit the [+] in the lower right-hand corner and you will be prompted with a dialogue. You first have to choose a field type, such as Text. Then you have to add a name, and options based on what you choose. Once you have chosen all that information, just just click Create, and the field will appear in the Field list. All you have to do is drag it onto your form where you want it to be, and you’re off!

For each database, you have things called Forms. For instance, if you have a database for issue tracking, you can have one form for basic information, and then another for the details. It will keep your database clean and uncluttered. When you create a blank database (or use most other templates) there will be only one form. You can rename it by right-clicking on the top bar and clicking Rename <the current name of the form>. You will then be prompted with a dialogue where you choose a new name for the form. To edit the contents of a form, select it in the top bar, and then click the hammer and wrench toolbar icon. You can also right-click on the form, and click Customize Form. To add a new form, just click on the (+) in the top bar and you will be prompted with a dialogue where you choose a name for it. When I first learned about forms, they sounded complicated, but once you get used to them, you will find that they are very useful.

FileMaker’s Bento retails for only $49 for a single license or $99 for a 5-license family pack. You can pick up a free 30-day trial from their site. It is a great tool for making simple databases, and even some advanced ones. I suggest you download it out and check out all the ways in which you can use it. You may be surprised how useful it can be; I know I was.

For a number of weeks now, Adobe has been tantalizing their loving horde of followers with the promise of a “Brilliant Event” taking place on the 23rd of September – that’s today. It wasn’t really too much of a mystery though, as it was clear from the start that the big event is the unveiling of the long-awaited next installment in their multi-purpose creative design software package: Creative Suite 4. Interestingly, Adobe has chosen to call this their biggest software release to date, and when someone like Adobe says that, people take note.

Officially unveiled in a large-scale public webcast at 9AM Eastern Time this morning, CS4 will be available in a number of different packages: Master Collection, Production Premium, Web Standard, Web Premium, Design Standard and Design Premium. Each of these is a suite of applications specifically tailored to the needs of professionals in that field. Existing users of CS3 (or earlier versions) can also choose to upgrade or purchase any of their existing stand-alone elements individually.

Released in March of 2007, CS3 continued the legacy of industry-standard creative development applications and remains the staple for most design needs. Its successor comes trumpeting in with a number of new features for their 13 stand-alone products, 14 integrated technologies, and seven services. But the best part of CS4 isn’t its individual parts, but its apparently seamless integration between all products in the line.

This is achieved primarily through Adobe ConnectNow, an online service for real-time collaboration that can be accessed from many of the CS4 applications.

There are a number of feature updates for each of the individual applications in the suites, including the ability to use “tweens” instead of keyframes in Flash CS4 to facilitate precise control over animation attributes. Flash also sports a new tool called the “Bones” tool which allows for realistic animation of linked objects. InDesign users will be happy with the new Live PreFlight tool that can make catching minor errors easier, and Photoshop fans should enjoy the new Content-Aware Scaling tool that can automatically re-compose an image on the fly as you resize it.

Speaking of Photoshop, CS4 offers it in two flavours, the standard and “Extended” versions, which differ slightly in functionality and price. The added features of the “Extended” edition are mainly geared toward those who work in film and other mediums where advanced 3D image manipulation is important. Some of the most exciting “Extended” features are the ability to paint directly on 3D images, rotate and scale 3D models freely, and adjust lighting, meshes, and materials for any of your models.

On the negative side for us Mac folks, Adobe is not shipping 64-bit versions of its CS4 applications for the Mac OS, and is not expected to until CS5 shows up. This is apparently because the applications were originally written in Carbon rather than the Cocoa application framework. And since Apple decided to scrap plans for a 64-bit version of Carbon, all the applications must now be ported to Cocoa before they can continue on their way to a 64-bit release. Adobe is working on it, but they say that it’s no small undertaking and will not be something they will achieve for the release of CS4. I guess that means a few more months of letting Windows users have a 10% performance advantage on us. Darn.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 is scheduled to ship in October, and until then we can enjoy the betas of a couple of the applications including the new Flash Player 10, all of which are now available as free downloads. For more information on the features and functionality of CS4, check out the official site.

The main feature of Reference Tracker (as you would expect) is keeping track of references/sources. To add a new reference to the current document, you just click New Reference, and a drop down will appear with all the choices for the type of reference. Once the reference is added, it will appear in the table view at the top of the window. In the bottom of the window lies the pane where you add information for the reference. The fields will change based on what kind of reference it is, because different references require different fields.

One of my favorite (and most useful) features is the cited text support. In the bottom left corner of the information pane is a large text field labeled Cited Text. This is where you will want to put all of the text that you could possibly use in your paper. The more the better, because you never know when you’re going to forget that book at school! Although this feature may not seem that exciting or new, it is very useful, because then that text is right there along with the reference.

Another very cool and useful feature (if you like notes) is sticky notes support. In a specific reference, you can add a number sticky notes. These can be helpful for paraphrasing the text right in Reference Tracker, or just for taking notes. Either way, it keeps these notes in the same exact document as the references, so you can always find them! My favorite part is the ability to drag them around.

I know I have said that a lot of the features above are very useful, but there is one that is the most useful for putting together your paper — exporting. Once you have completed all your references for your paper, instead of having to rewrite all of them, you can just export them! Just go to File-Export, and choose a location! Right now, the exporting feature does not support Pages documents, but I hear he is working on it. For now, you can just export to an RTF and then copy and paste into Pages.

The feature that goes right along with exporting is importing. Again, this does not support Pages documents yet, but I hear it will. To import, you just go to File-Import. You can either import from a formatted reference list or a BIBText or RIS file. Right now Reference Tracker does not support MLA formatted references, so if you use them, for now, you’re out of luck. Reference Tracker will spit out a list at you that has all the found references, and you can choose to delete certain ones and edit the fields of others. Once you have gone through the list, you just click Accept All & Import, and you’re off!

Reference Tracker, by Malkinware retails for $44.95, but you can pick it up for just $29.95 until September 30th. Compared to other Mac reference trackers, it is pretty cheap, but still has a ways to go feature-wise to be worth $44.95. You should try it out (you can download it from the same site) to see if it fits your needs. If it does, I doubt you will want to go out and buy a $100 reference tracker that has way more features than you need. And remember, this is a 1.0 piece of software; it will only get better!

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!

So just what is OfficeTime? At its simplest, OfficeTime is a time tracking application. Keep track of your time on various projects, whether you charge for your time or not. When you begin work on a project (called a work session), you start the timer, and you stop it when you finish. It’s that simple! Of course, there are many more features, yet the software stays completely out of your way while you’re working, and you can make changes to times or projects easily via the Menu Bar icon, without having to leave your current application.

Basically, there are 6 things you should know to really use OfficeTime effectively. The good news is that you have an idea about all of them already, so this is more like a refresher list. You can have multiple windows open, each with its own project, if you want. I usually keep one window open and toggle the project via a drop-down menu in the window. You can avoid windows if you like by using the Menu Bar icon to handle most time-related tasks. A category can be broad like “Consulting,” but I find it more useful to break down consulting projects into the respective companies or people I work for. Categories make it fast and easy to keep projects grouped together, and provide for some very powerful filtering and reporting options. Projects are the large to-do items on your list, like a website redesign or an article you’re writing. Sessions are the smaller pieces of the project, like research, interviews, phone calls, tech support, travel time, writing, editing, etc. Expenses are costs associated with your project that don’t fall into billable-by-time costs, such as travel, materials, and purchases. And you can get reports on just about anything.

The software is designed with the busy worker in mind, so you can download and install the software, add a few projects, and be tracking your time in mere minutes. Then, as you grow accustomed to recording your time spent on different projects, you’ll want more features, and OfficeTime is ready with tons of features including customizable reports, invoicing and payment tracking, and even tracking multiple people, which is very handy for managers. OfficeTime works on both Mac and Windows machines, so you can play nicely with your co-workers in a typical office. You can synchronize your sessions with iCal and share those calendars with others, which is handy if your boss is often popping in to check on you—they can just look at your progress online or subscribe to your OfficeTime calendar.

And finally, one of the best features of OfficeTime is the developers themselves. As you can see, if you visit their website, they have fun writing software, and they really want to make OfficeTime the easiest, most useful software you’ve ever used. They take customer suggestions very seriously, and if they can add a feature without interfering with the ease-of-use, they will.

OfficeTime costs $47 from Transcena Design Ltd., with a 120-day money back guarantee and a 21 day full-featured trial. In a matter of weeks, it will pay for itself in time savings and more accurate time reporting.

Upon launching Montage, one the most striking aspects of the application you’ll notice is the native Mac interface. I wouldn’t normally bring this up, but it’s notable because most professional screenwriting applications are cross platform and as a result not only look like bad Windows ports, but lack OS X integration with services like the inline dictionary and spell check. Montage has both of these, as well as .Mac integration and Spotlight indexing support.

But Montage isn’t simply a pretty interface. The application has all the expected screenwriting tools you find in competing applications — tools like automatic script formatting, title page support, and return/tab key-based navigation — as well as a few unique ones. For example, Montage has a useful Scene View mode for viewing and editing scripts. Unlike the normal Script View, which emulates how the document looks when printed, Scene View in Montage visually breaks down the script into sections, making it easy to spot where individual scenes begin and end.

Users of other screenwriting programs will be familiar to the other viewing modes available: Outline View organizes a script into scenes for annotation and easy reordering, Character View displays all the dialog and scenes for a certain character, and Location View shows all the scenes of a given location. Extra tools not directly related to screenwriting integrated with Montage include a contacts manager, a tasks to-do list, and a research file depository.

The best unique feature of Montage is the Smart View tool. The tool works like iTunes’ Smart Playlists feature. You dial in certain variables and Montage automatically calls the portions of your script that adhere to the values and displays them. Montage also has a full screen feature for editing and writing — a useful tool noticeably absent in most of it’s competitors.

Key tools which Montage has trouble with are change tracking and page locking. Tracking changes is essential when collaborating with other writers or managing different drafts. Similarly, when going into production, a script is often locked so that subsequent rewrites during production do not change page numbers for existing scenes. Montage has neither of these essential screenwriting features.

Montage is relative newcomer in a field where two giants, Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter, have dominated for over twenty years. To compensate for this, Montage not only supports import of common text files like Rich-Text Format (.rtf), but also Final Draft (.fdr) files. For output, Montage can export MS Word (.doc), PDF, and Final Draft format (.fdr). Sorely absent is HTML export.

My evaluation of the Final Draft support was disappointing. My testing revealed many page synchronization issues, especially when a character’s dialog overlaps onto two pages. The formating inconsistencies are minor when exporting to Final Draft files, and worse with import. The issues are magnified with longer scripts.

The biggest problem with Montage has nothing to do with the application itself. It’s the competition.

Montage costs about $150. It’s costly for a word processor, but somewhat fairly priced compared to other professional screenwriting applications. This is precisely the problem. Montage costs roughly the same as its industry standard competitors, yet does not have the feature set or industry support to warrant its price. Final Draft and Movie Magic ScreenWriter, considered by most to be the industry standards, both retail for about $175. Both may not have the native Mac goodness of Montage, but nonetheless are solid applications with tools that professional screenwriters need and Montage lacks.

For the price-conscious non-professional who can deal with the lack of key features like page lock and change tracking, Montage is even more unappealing. There are a plethora of free or inexpensive solutions that match or beat Montage’s feature set. For example, the open-source Celtx is a cross-platform solution that offers nearly everything Montage advertises for free.

Montage costs $149.95 USD (A downloadable version is also available for $139.95) and is available from Mariner Software.

WriteRoom, by Hog Bay Software is a tool for working without distractions. It puts a black (or any color you want) background behind a text editor. It is very easy to use, and really does help to keep you from getting distracted, even if you have ADD!

WriteRoom has a full screen mode and a regular mode. The full screen mode is the one that helps with those distractions. In the regular mode, it simply looks like any other text editor. You can easily switch between these modes using the Esc key. If you put your mouse in the lower left-hand corner of the screen (only in full screen mode), it will tell you the name of your document, plus how many characters, words and lines there are.

Where the real features of WriteRoom are is in the Preferences. The General tab of the Preferences gives you some basic options, like whether to use plain text or rich text. The man difference in these is that plain text does not have any formatting, like color or styles. You can also choose what to display in the lower left-hand corner here. Other preferences here include how many lines long the writing is and how many characters wide.

The Text Editing tab gives you options for the actual editing of the text. A feature that I really like is the ability to turn of the block insertion point; I like the line insertion point more. The main part of this tab is choosing which fonts are used for which kind of text. You can choose a style (that you see) for plain text and rich text.

The Full Screen tab gives you lots of features for how the full screen mode will look. This is the part that sets WriteRoom apart from a normal text editor. My favorite part of this tab is the ability to choose background color, page color, and text. The background color is what is around the text editor, the page color is the color of the text editor and the text color is, well, you get it. It would be very cool if people could create themes for this preference tab alone, so you could get a full screen mode that someone spent lots of time working on. A feature I really like about the full screen mode is the typewriter scrolling. This makes it so the line you are working on can always be in the center, so it’s easy to see.

A feature of WriteRoom that I really want to use is the Edit in WriteRoom plugin. However, this does not work in Leopard yet, so I have been unable to try it. From their website, the developer has released an early version of QuickCursor, which is meant to give you this same ability in Leopard. However, I don’t like that it puts the button in the menubar; the Edit in WriteRoom plugin puts it into your Edit menu. QuickCursor is still in development, but I am hoping he gets this working soon, because it looks like such a nice feature. This would make WriteRoom a perfect tool for doing HTML, too!

WriteRoom, by Hog Bay Software, costs $24.95. For the time it can save you, and the productivity you get out of it, it is well worth the money. Remember, time is money, and this can save you time.

This may only be my personal opinion, but I hated the look of Office 2004. The free-floating toolbars just didn’t work for me. They weren’t a part of the main window and you couldn’t dock them. The result was a cluttered, ugly layout that was not ideal for working. Because of this I instead chose the free alternative NeoOffice for my word processing needs.

But now Microsoft has won me back over. Overall, Office 2008 just feels more polished and clean. The interface integrates well with the Mac and the toolbars are docked in the top area by default, which is how things work in most Mac applications. You can also re-arrange and edit toolbars, which, although expected, is still a great feature for people who just need to work in a certain way.

One of the features that I liked about Office 2004 was the so-called “Formatting Palette” which allowed you to access all basic word processing functions in a small little window. Microsoft has now expanded that window to include dozens of more commands and functions. You can edit formatting, alignment, and margins in the formatting tab. But then, if you move over there are drawing shapes, a citation generator, a feature called “Scrapbook”, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a compatibility checker. These features aren’t necessarily new, but putting them all in one easily accessible place was a great move on Microsoft’s part. The formating palette also replaces those pesky windows that popped up whenever you start working with pictures or tables. Instead, the palette will just tab over to the correct function and you can edit it from there.

Another new feature in Office 2008 is a shiny little toolbar that gives you access to tables, charts, word art, diagrams, and document designs. It’s the layout part of the new Word, and it’s effective. As with the formatting palette, it puts new and old features in an easily accessible area. Excel and Powerpoint both have similar toolbars which do similar functions for their respective apps, with a nice color scheme to match each one.

Finally, the not-so-good. Visual Basic is gone. This doesn’t affect me personally, but many people are upset about this. You can no longer record macros and automate your workflow, with Microsoft’s excuse being that it would have taken 2 years to add Visual Basic support in xcode. For many people this will be a major turn-off. However, this is a sign about the direction of Microsoft Office (at least for the Mac). The new features like the formatting palette and layout toolbar are meant to bring the powerful features of Word up front so the average consumer can take advantage of them. This unfortunately means that the power user will feel left out as Microsoft stops supporting Visual Basic in order to focus on more average, consumer-oriented features.

Having never used Visual Basic, I have found this upgrade to be fantastic. I have Word customized just how I want it and I think that Microsoft has taken a step in the right direction with Office 2008. It integrates well with OS X (typical eye candy shiny effects mostly) and is overall easy to use. To learn more about the features of Office 2008, you can visit Microsoft’s website which has some great videos exploring some of the new features.

There are 4 versions of Office 2008:
1. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (Standard) which goes for $400 on Apple and $325 on Amazon.
2. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Upgrade which goes for $205 on Amazon.
3. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition which goes for $500 on Apple.
4. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Student and Teacher Edition which goes for $150 on Apple and $130 on Amazon.

While I seriously doubt the holy war will end anytime soon, here’s an app that will provide some middleground. It’s called Google Notifier for OS X.

What it does is bring the GMail and Google Calendar web apps ‘closer’ to the desktop. After installation, you will get toolbar icons, which will update and notify you when you have new email or calendar appointments. Great for productivity, as you do not have to constantly check your inbox or calendar, although I’m not sure how effective it is for the unlucky ones among us with the overflowing inboxes.

Google Notifier puts most of the common tasks at your fingertips. Want to compose a new email? No problem. Want to create an event? Easy. Want to access your inbox? Piece of cake. These options are available with just one click on the respective toolbar icons. It will also show you your new emails and calendar events too.

If you don’t like the default options, you can change them to your heart’s content. Individually disable either Mail or Calendar notifications to reduce the load on your system, or change the way Google Notifier alerts you, visually or through sound.

Google Notifier only supports one account, given the way the program is laid out. If you have multiple Google accounts, perhaps now’s the time to consolidate them all into one? Regardless, Google Notifier for OS X is still a very convenient way to use your web applications.

TaskTime4 is a straightforward and simple to use Client/Project manager from ToThePoint Software. By generating a client list imported from Address Book, TaskTime4 allows the user to easily manage multiple projects, print or email custom invoices, and export projects to text or Excel as needed.

The project manager window is the main page of TaskTime4. You can look at the project list and quickly determine the status of each project.

With TaskTime4, you can import contact information from both Address Book and Entourage as well as input new contacts directly into the client manager. I like the client input window enough to input contacts in TaskTime4, and because of this, I wish that there was an option to sync my client list with Address Book.

Each project window tracks the time for each session. To add a session, you can either start the project timer or select “Add One” through the session menu. I would love to see an add button on the project window itself like the project manager window and the client manager.

Custom invoices can be created by uploading a header graphic in the preferences window. Invoices may be printed off or emailed as a pdf attachment. Though TaskTime4 is not a publisher, I like that it can generate a clean and professional invoice.

TaskTime4 has a few features that really stand out. First, it includes the ability to synchronize project folders. This means that you can use TaskTime4 on multiple computers and synchronize each folder for up to date project information. Second, each project window has a resources tray. You can organize and link to files related to the project and easily access them from the resource tray. Third, you can schedule regular backups of your projects through the preferences window, and you can restore projects just as easily as you have backed them up.

ToThePoint Software has hooked us up with two licenses to give away. To qualify, just download the demo and comment on a feature or improvement that you would like to see added to the next release. You must submit your entry by midnight EST on March 26th.

TaskTime4 is shareware and can be registered for $20.

MacSpeech Dictate is based on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition engine. As this was probably the most powerful and accurate engine on the Windows platform, it’s not really a surprise that it works very well at many things on the Mac. To start things off, you need to have a “Data Disk” which I presume has all the dictionary material for the speech recognition and typing. The program should ask you for it when it needs it, but I was able to dictate and issue commands without the disk image being mounted. The disk image is about 970mb, and can definitely be stored on an external HD for use when needed.

When you run the program for the first time, it asks you to complete a somewhat lengthy set-up wizard. It took me about 8-10 minutes to get through, and the nice thing about it is that you’re reading instructions for the program and training it to your voice at the same time. You also set up a profile that will be linked to your voice training. It took a surprisingly long time to get it fully set up, but after that the wait wasn’t horrible.

I used the built-in microphone in my MacBook Pro. It says that this isn’t one of the preferred methods, but unless you’re really a heavy user, it should be satisfactory. Once I got all set up and running, I immediately opened up a new Word document (I even launched Word by using the command “Open Microsoft Word”) and then tried to voice away. My first sentence was very simple: “I’m reviewing MacSpeech Dictate for MacApper.com” but from the screenshot below, you can see that my text wasn’t exactly interpreted correctly.

It takes a little getting used to, but I can really see some of this functionality working out to help me in the future. It’s a little odd to start speaking much slower and enunciating more throughout your sentences, not to mention the frequent necessity of saying “PERIOD” to end a sentence or add another punctuation mark. However, you can really get into the hang of it and it does work pretty well.

Another really nice feature of the program is that once a specific program is active, the MacSpeech window on the side of the screen (which can be moved) shifts to include some of the special functions for that particular app. For example, when I had Safari set as my active window, a set of specific Safari commands showed up in the side. I can see this being very useful, especially if it’s possible to set up custom commands or add other applications that aren’t supported out of the box. The first screenshot shows the global panel itself, and then there is a shot of how it changes when Safari is active.

Overall, this program is very solid and I can definitely recommend it. There’s definitely a bit of a learning curve to it, but once you get over the hump it’s a very useful program and I like it a lot. MacSpeech Dictate is available from MacSpeech.com. It costs around $187.99 and can be purchased from MacMall.

I’m not sure of your reasons for more than one location setting, but I have an answer that will let you set it, and forget it!

Do yourself a favor and pick up a free copy of Locamatic by 45RPM Software. This pref pane is perfect for those of us who don’t like clicking three times if we don’t have to. Locamatic automatically changes your network location settings based on which WiFi network you’re mooching off of, and will even modify printer connections and the Safari Home Page.

When you open Locamatic, go ahead and click the Extras button to access all of the features. I’m not sure why this Extras button is there, and I would suggest that future releases just put everything out there, but who am I to question this nice bit of code?

Your window (if you’ve downloaded the beta version) should look a little something like this:

As you can see I’ve set up two locations with Locamatic. First, I selected the location and then clicked the drop down menu for a list of frequently used SSIDs. Both of the networks that I used were actually not on the list, so I just typed in the network names as they would appear in the airport drop down menu. Next, click Add and a new association is created. With a location selected, I can also choose a default printer and homepage to correspond with the WiFi network thanks to the “Extra” features. Be sure to correctly identify the URL (”http://”) and hit the Apply button for your changes to take effect.

I tested Locamatic out with both a wireless LAN and computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network, and switching between the two was seamless. The best part is: I don’t have to open Locamatic again unless I’ve added a new location to my network preferences. So the next time I want to buy kung fu slippers with ninja speed and accuracy, Locamatic will be doing all the dishonorable work for me. Locamatic is available as freeware from 45RPM Software.

The browser’s main inspiration is the iTunes sidebar. That list includes all of your tabs, bookmarks, RSS feeds, downloads, and more.

Other fresh ideas include putting web videos into a Quick Look-style pop-out window, and a Time Machine themed History interface. This is still very much in the “idea” stage, so don’t expect anything to come out of it very soon, but I post the mockups here out of interest. Hopefully they’ll become a reality in the not-so-distant future.

Clutter-free interface and pop-out video.

Time Machine inspired History viewing

To see more screenshots and to read more about this idea, check out Sebastiaan’s orginal post and his follow up. Would you use this browser? What do you see that you really like? What would you change?

Note: All images in this post were created by and are the property of Sebastiaan de With.

And that’s just with personal relationships — what about professional relationships, where sometimes the extent of your contact with an individual is a series of digital transactions?

Jumsoft jumps to the rescue with an update to one of its award-winning pieces of productivity software, aptly named Relationship. This little gem is a piece of customer relationship management software geared towards the small business market. With its attractive price tag and competitive features, it’s easily established itself as a staple of the consumer corporate world, and the 1.1 update brings only improvements to the tried-and-tested formula for success.

When we originally reviewed Relationship last year, the software was still in its fledgling state, and many of its ambitious features had not yet been fleshed out to their full potential. With the release of version 1.1, Jumsoft has endeavored to streamline their practical one-window interface (in keeping with what seems to be an increasingly popular trend in software design) and speed up the response times for everything from searching old data records to importing new ones.

This speed boost is especially evident when working with larger numbers of stored contacts. Relationship has also retained its ability to import records in the form of VCards and tab-delimited files which can then be organized using classic features like colour labeling.

One of the most acclaimed features of the original Relationship was its integration with the Mac’s native Address Book, and Jumsoft has expanded upon this integration by allowing users to effectively manage their contacts entirely from within Relationship: from basic information-gathering, to advanced scheduling and mass-emailing capabilities that work seamlessly together to ensure that you’ve got everything you need at your fingertips.

The ability to create groups and “Smart Groups” based on any criteria you like makes keeping people organized a breeze — and each of these groups can be customized with an infinite number of user-defined columns and sub-columns for additional information. Not to mention the ability to attach files and add notes to any contact or group.

If there’s one thing that relationships thrive on, it’s collaboration. And Jumsoft — perceptive fellows that they are — have added a brand new feature allowing different users to collaborate over the Bonjour network. Perhaps the most obvious thing that a relationship needs, though, is security. Relationship is up to par on this account as well, as the update includes the ability to back up all your data securely to your .Mac account. This addition helps augment the previously-existing ability to password protect the entire application, or simply individual groups containing more sensitive data.

Relationship is available for download from Jumsoft’s website either individually for $39.00, or as part of their excellent Business Trio package (which includes the latest versions of Relationship, Money, and Operation) for $59.00. When it comes to managing customer relations for your small business, consider Jumsoft’s Relationship and become your own PR Department.

If you already have, why not tell us how the experience has been for you? How does this Address Book usurper cope with your small (or large) business’ needs?

Previously only compatible with PC and mobile devices, the folks over at SugarSync announced today an alpha release for Mac. SugarSync allows you to upload your files to their service, and then access those files from anywhere with an internet connection and a browser.

Once downloaded, SugarSync will ask you to log in with the e-mail address you have used previously, or you can make a new e-mail address to use with SugarSync. After picking a cute icon and naming the computer that you’re setting up to use with SugarSync, you are then prompted to choose the folders/documents that you want to sync. As far as I know at the moment, SugarSync provides 1 GB of free space. It’s not clear whether SugarSync will offer options to pay for more storage, but if I had to venture a guess, I’d have to say that it’s a very likely possibility.

After you log in, you are presented with a window to choose what folders you want to upload. For the purposes of this early review, I took a folder that I had with some of my school-related stuff in it, and uploaded it to SugarSync’s servers. The upload went really quickly, even on the crappy internet connection in my hotel in California.

After the initial upload has completed, you’re finally presented with SugarSync’s main window. This is where you can manage everything that gets uploaded, is uploaded, and other options for your sugarsync.com personal file site. The UI is super clean and simple.

The web service is super easy to use and very user-friendly as well. You simply log in to *yourusername*.sugarsync.com and you can then access all of your files and other items that you’ve uploaded with the service. It allows you to download your documents from wherever you are, and upload from other locations as well.

Also really nice is the mobile interface. I gave it a try on my BlackBerry and it worked perfectly. It was a little quirky to get set up at first, and I’m still not sure 100% about how it exactly works, but it seemed pretty nice. SugarSync also seems to have an iPhone/iPod touch version which looks very nice as well.

Overall, I’m super impressed with this new service. It also seems incredibly stable for an alpha release (*crosses fingers*). The SugarSync Mac alpha can be downloaded from SugarSync’s website, and for now is free while in alpha/beta stage. It’s unknown what SugarSync will cost (if anything) when it leaves beta, but you can certainly enjoy it in the meantime.

I have four email accounts that I use the most, which means I have four different mailboxes that I check often. When using mail.app, the left sidebar of your mail.app application can become a mess with all of its folders. I decided to figure out a way to make my four mailboxes, one.

As some of you may already know, you can create one account in mail.app and in the email address field on the “Account Information” tab, you can enter a comma delimited list of all your email addresses. However, you may not know that if your .mac account is the primary account you use, the comma delimited option will not work.

But there is a solution that you can use with your .mac email account in mail.app:

First, you will need to forward your email accounts to your .mac email address. Now, if you use Google Apps or Gmail, under the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, you can put in your .mac email address and then you should choose to archive your account’s copy of the message. You will want to do this in case you need to search for an old message that is no longer available in your mail client.

Second, create your .mac email account in mail.app. You will then want to create different signatures for your different identities. Now in order to create different identities, you will need to add your outgoing servers for each email account. Make sure to give a description of each account, and I will explain why a little later. Please take note that the different outgoing servers serve as your different identities.

Third, on the “Account Information” tab for your .mac email account, you will need to choose your .mac outgoing server. Unless your do so, your signatures will not be saved to the .mac account you created. When composing or replying to a message, a list of available outgoing servers (identities) will populate on the left just below the subject field. This is why you need to give a description for each of your outgoing servers (i.e. Personal, Work).

If not, it will give you a list like smtp.googlemail.com. That might work if you only have one, but if you are like me and have three (Google App and/or Gmail accounts), you will need to give them a description in order to know from what email address your message will be sent.

By using this method (or the other method if .mac is not your primary account), mail.app will be much cleaner and uncluttered. Also, it will help with your work flow. Lastly, you should create two folders: a hold folder and an action folder. Your hold folder should contain the messages you need to reference to at a later date. The action folder should contain the messages that need immediate attention. You can create an archive folder to archive your old messages, but this is not needed if you use Google Apps or Gmail.

The only painstaking task is that when you are composing a new email message or replying to an email message, you will need to choose the identity from the drop down list as well as the signature from the drop down list. Perhaps there is an applescript or rule that can be written to make this automated for you? If I come up with something, I will definitely make it known. Now, go and have fun with mail.app.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the tank, Microsoft Word, the current industry leader. In addition to being expensive it has a million and one features that are difficult to navigate and makes the program into a serious resource hog. In between those two extremes, you have Nisus Writer Express, from Nisus Software, which is more like a BMW.

It doesn’t do everything (if you need to interface your document directly with a database, this isn’t the program for you), but what it does do, it does extremely well, and a sleek interface. So, if BMW were to design a word processor, what would it look like?

I imagine that it would look a lot like Nisus Writer. When you open it up, you see a blank page with a toolbar on top and a drawer on the side. On the toolbar, you have access to some basic formatting and document settings. Next to your document, there is a drawer that contains all of the other formatting settings. The various controls are organized into palettes which are in turn organized into groups. In addition, you can break off palettes into floating windows and create custom palette groups, should you need to.

The experience does not end at having an intuitive interface, though. The program easily handles headers and footers, columns, and tables. One of my favorite tools is the included thesaurus, which is integrated into the drawer. After using it for a few days, it becomes second nature to glance over at the thesaurus for a synonym. There are some things that are left out, however, like Indexing and Cross Referencing. Chances are, however, that if you need a feature that isn’t there, you can find it in Nisus Writer Express’ big brother, Nisus Writer Pro.

One question that inevitably comes up when you are talking about a word processors is “But is it compatible with Microsoft Word?” Nisus Writer can save documents as Word documents, which Word opens with only occasional, minor formatting changes. Nisus Writer can also open Word documents, although the formatting sometimes goes through subtle changes. Predictably, if the Word document has an embedded Excel spreadsheet, you will lose that in the translation. In an office where everyone uses MS Office exclusively, you will probably have some issues with compatibility, but other than that, Nisus Writer Express works just fine.

Nisus Writer Express is available as shareware, with a 15-day free trial period. Registration costs $45, with a three license family pack available for $79. Academic discounts are available.

In short, Nisus Writer Express is everything a word processor for Mac should be: a combination of utility and elegance that just works.

Basically, the X11 window sytem is what OpenOffice was made for. OpenOffice, by being free, makes a perfect alternative to other office suites for the Mac, especially Microsoft’s much heralded Mac Office. So, the developers decided in September of last year to make a decent official port for the Mac.

The open source community created its own solution, a great OpenOffice fork called NeoOffice. I personally think the Ooo (I wonder how they pronounce this) project leaders have made a wise decision, we all know what forks in open source mean. Sadly, this also means the NeoOffice project will probably slowly die out, although the developers do have a large userbase at the moment. The thing is, I think OpenOffice is a great product; I just don’t trust companies sponsoring open source.

According to the official website:

“At the moment this means porting OpenOffice.org to run natively on Mac OS X. Once OpenOffice.org Aqua final is released, the team will focus on making OpenOffice.org adhere to the Apple HCI guidelines.”

Here it is running natively on my Mac. Like I said above X11 is not needed anymore, just drop it in your Applications folder and you’re up and running.

There is already a working alpha release available, and the team will continue to produce X11 builds after the final release, too, which is without doubt a very smart move.

The third version of the most popular open source office suite by Sun is planned for late 2008.

PopChar strives to get to your recently used characters with ease, and find specific ones you are looking for all in a simply beautiful interface. It’s really quite unique. In this video I will show you how I use PopChar, and if you can answer the question after the jump, you will all have a chance to win one of 3 licenses generously donated by the guys at Ergonis.

First take a look at the video.

Answer one or both of the following questions to be entered for a chance to win a license of PopChar:

How could/does PopChar fit into your daily work-flow?

or…

What feature of change would make PopChar more useful?

Thanks again to Christoph at Ergonis for supplying the licenses for the giveaway. The contest closes January 30th at midnight EST, and the winners will be announced shortly after that time. PopChar is available from Ergonis for $29.99.

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