ScreenFlow 2.0: The Best Screen Recorder Gets Better
Ever since ScreenFlow came out there just hasn’t been a better application for making screencasts. ScreenFlow allows you to quickly create high quality screencasts. Just recently, Telestream updated ScreenFlow to version 2.0. If you want to check out our video review of ScreenFlow 1.0, look at Michael Mistretta’s great post here. In this article I’ll be covering most of the new features in version 2.0.
Bevy Review: A Powerful Application Launcher
If you are like me, you probably have a ton of applications that you use, but you also don’t want to have then all on your dock. Bevy, by bergdesign, is an application launcher that will show you all of your applications in one simple window.
When you first launch Bevy you will want to add a few folders. Just click the gear icon in the top left and select folders. Here you will tell Bevy where to search for applications, and Bevy will display you applications in different sections for each folder. This will let you easily keep things organized. You can also exclude some items that you don’t ever need.
Flickery Review: Flickr on Your Desktop
I assume most of you know about Flickr, the awesome, and free (unless you go pro) photo-sharing service. But it isn’t only for sharing your photos with your friends and family, it is also a great image search engine. Many photos on it are under Creative Commons, and the quality of image you get is much higher than on a place like Google. There have been many iPhone apps that let you access Flickr, but not so many Mac apps (surprisingly). One of the only Mac apps is Flickery.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed coming to Mac
Last fall console gamers were treated to a rather sublime Star Wars experience with the release of The Force Unleashed. Telling the story of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, Force Unleashed once again proved that the expanded universe could weave tales leaps and bounds better than anything Lucas had ever crafted. It had also proved once again that Mac gamers are always left out in the cold. That is, until now.
LucasArts and Aspyr Media have just announced The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition for for both Mac and PC. So what makes this release so “ultimate”? Journey with us to the dark side and find out.
1Password Review: A One-Stop Shop for Online Security
New social networking sites, online banking utilities, even new ways to communicate, are appearing nearly every day. Most of these require accounts made, and of course with new accounts come new passwords. Usually the sites have different requirements for how many characters, what kind of letters, and so on, so one ends up with many different passwords. How is one to keep track of all of these? Enter 1Password.
Ecoute Review: iTunes Simplified
Most people who have an iPhone or iPod sync it in iTunes. But what if you don’t want to use iTunes to listen to your music while you are using your computer? Ecoute, is the perfect application for this. Ecoute is a small app to browse and play music and videos in your iTunes library. You can browse artists, playlists, and much more and you can even play TV shows and movies.
How-To: Sync your Palm Pre with your iTunes Library
In our recent MacApper Podcast we discussed the iTunes 8.2.1 update that eliminated the Palm Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes. One of the Pre’s major selling points was it’s ability to masquerade as an iPod and sync natively with iTunes. If you’re a Pre user feeling left in the dust, or looking to buy the Pre, this is a simple way to get that sync back between your iTunes library and your Pre.
DaisyDisk Review: A Flower-Powered Disk Visualizer
Often, throughout the life of a computer, the hard drive slowly fills with all manner of things: music, movies, preferences, support files, and so on. At a certain point this gets to be too much, and a user must clean house. But in order to do so, she must first discover which are the files that are taking up the most unnecessary space, and where they are. This is where disk visualizers like DaisyDisk come in. While it is nothing special, DaisyDisk is a perfectly competent and very aesthetic application for dealing with this problem.
Stainless Review: A Fresh Take on the Browser
Stainless came into the world as a technology demo meant to show off features touted by Google Chrome, but has blossomed into a fully-functional, handsome, minimalist browser. For the past week I’ve been test driving Stainless as my default web browser (though, you don’t yet have the option to make this browser your default). I’ve come back slightly surprised, and found that I liked it more than I thought I would.
Stainless is the brainchild of the small software company Mesa Dynamics, initially meant more as a proof than a product. Mesa wrote the browser simply to demonstrate a multiple-process web browser similar to Google Chrome, but the app has since flourished due to fan demand into a full fledged web browser.
Opinion: Quicksilver Versus the Dock
I hardly ever use my mouse. Pretty much everything I do on my computer, from opening files to switching tracks in iTunes is activated by keyboard shortcuts. My number one app for doing so is the wonderful tool that goes by the name of Quicksilver. Through Quicksilver, you can open any application, folder, or file on your computer by just typing its name. Which means that anything is instantly available. So what use then is Apple’s built-in Dock? It would seem that Quicksilver would replace its only function—to have those programs and other items you most often use immediately at hand. But this is not the only thing the Dock can do, and indeed is nowhere near its best feature.
