GPush is the first app for the iPhone that will send you a push notification any time you get a new message in your Gmail inbox.  It’s a fairly simple app that tackles a fairly simple problem, and it works.  After a simple username and password set up, you’ll receive a push notification whenever a new message pops into your Gmail account.  The push notification is similar to any text message you might receive.

One of our earlier complaints about the app, and one which we intended to focus on here was the inability to access your new mail directly from the notification.  This was addressed in a recently released update to the app, and we couldn’t be happier.  Now when you receive a new push, whether you’re in a application or not, you’ll be given the option to view the email or close the push notification.  If you choose to view the email you’ll be kicked out of your current application and taken to GPush.  Once there, GPush will take you to the new Gmail tab where it loads up a mobile-friendly version of your Gmail inbox that’s identical to the one seen in the Google Mobile App.

This new view feature is a great addition and well appreciated, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without flaws.  Clicking view only brings you to your inbox, not the email itself.  For folks like myself who much prefer using the iPhone’s built-in Mail app, having to use the web-based Gmail mobile feels a little too slow and clunky.  And the view option doesn’t work in every circumstance — if your device receives a push notification in standby you won’t have the option to view or close.  Instead sometimes you’ll be forced to open GPush the next time you unlock your device, and sometimes you won’t.  It’s flaky and inconsistent from the standby state, which is a fairly significant stumbling block when it comes to using the feature properly.

There are other annoyances with the app as well.  Many folks have multiple Gmail addresses for business, personal, etc.. but GPush only allows for one account.  And speaking of Gmail, why only the one client?  Sure Gmail is the biggest freemail provider out there, but does that mean users of Yahoo, Hotmail and Live need to be left out in the cold?  Or how about server based emails?  I happen to use several addresses, both Gmail and otherwise, and would have been delighted to have an app that could cater to all my push notification needs.

Despite our nitpicky complaints, GPush sets out with one thing in mind and it does that one thing incredibly well — it keeps me from bringing up my inbox every 5 minutes.  If it can accomplish that, it can probably accomplish anything.

GPush is available from Tiverias Apps on the iTunes AppStore for $1.99.

Accessing the Genius function is a simple enough process.  At the top of the App Store App beside the New and What’s Hot options that we’ve grown accustomed to will be a new to access Genius.  The first time you access this you’ll need to read and agree to the Genius Terms of Service, but once that’s out of the way it’s pretty much smooth sailing as it compiles a list of recommendations.

iTunes Genius has, in my experience, offered a wonderfully appropriate list of suggestions based on my listening tastes.  They’ve turned me on to new music, suggested music I already know I love — all in all it’s been a quality service since it launched.  It’s baby sibling, however, isn’t fairing as well.

While iTunes Genius seems to base it’s recommendations off of the purchases of like-minded individuals, App Store Genius feels as though it’s pulling random apps from similar categories and dumping them in your lap.  Paypal was recommended based on my use of CBC Radio.  NFL 2010 was recommended because I have Pac-Man Remix.  While these things might technically fall under the same category, their purposes and audiences couldn’t be less similar.

Still, it’s not all bad.  Based on my use of Tweetie a number of Twitter-related apps were suggested my way.  My use of Twitpic led to a recommendation for HP iPrint Photo.  These are all things that are thematically the same.  They make sense.  The problem is that more often than not I would be recommended MLB at Bat based on Twitpic or DOOM based on Civilization Revolution.

Looking at your purchases on the whole and making recommendations based on those might have made a little more sense.  If it did Genius would learn pretty quick how much I love tower defense games, and recommendations of those would have been a welcome addition to the sea of nonsense that’s currently presented.  It may break from the system used by iTunes Genius, but maybe that’s what’s needed here.  Music and apps are two very different beasts, and those beasts need two very different approaches to be tackled effectively.

One thing that surprised me was that Genius only factored in apps currently on your device.  If you’ve purchased apps in the past but removed them, those aren’t included.  One can appreciate the logic behind this — if you’ve deleted an app you probably don’t like it — but there’s a flipside to that argument.  What if you loved the app, but just didn’t need it right now?  Secret of Monkey Island SE easily ranks amongst my favorite iPhone games, but I deleted it once I was finished because of the space it took up.  In my mind, that’s something that should absolutely be factored in to any recommendation engine that’s trying to learn about my shopping habits.

App Store Genius is a great idea, but it’s execution is poor and contrary to the it’s own purposes.  Without consistently sensible recommendations, this just isn’t a part of the App Store that you’ll find yourself visiting.

Simplenote provides exactly what it says, a simple way to take and sync notes on your iPhone and iPod Touch. When you open an app, you see a simple page where you can add a new, view, search, and delete notes as well as allowing you to sign up/log in to your web account. Adding a note is as simple as touching the “+”, to manage syncing you simply touch the wrench button, and to delete a note you swipe your finger across the note and touch “Delete”.

When creating a new note or editing a preexisting note, the interface remains clean and simple with buttons to return to the notes list, email your note, or delete it. The app supports both portrait and landscape mode, which is very nice if you are typing a lot and prefer the landscape keyboard as I do. With no extra frills like titles, tags, locations, images, and file attachments, Simplenote runs extremely fast, even on old iPhones and iPod Touches.

The web app for accessing your notes on your desktop is just as clean and light as the app. It looks almost the same as the app and provides the same exact features. The app syncs automatically and stores local copies of your notes to allow you to view, search, edit, and add new notes even when you don’t have network access.

With the latest update of the app, Cloud Factory has added an API which allows for the creation of “Extras” which allows developers to create third party applications to interface with Simplenote. Currently the only app is a web application, Simple Backup, which allows you to backup/export your Simplenote notes into plain text, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, and Evernote archive formats. I expect to see some exciting new features added with this feature in the future.

If you are looking for a simple, clean, and fast note taking app for your iPhone or iPod Touch that also syncs with the web Simplenote is my pick. Simplenote costs $1.99 which includes a free web account and can be downloaded from iTunes.

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.

Bevy can display you applications in a few different ways. You can view all applications, included applications, excluded applications, or running applications. You can view them all in one big group, or have then grouped by folder. Applications that are currently open will be in a box or have a stroke around them, which you can pick in the settings. You can also change all the colors of Bevy and adjust the opacity in the settings.

But Bevy isn’t just to launch applications. If you want to open a file in a certain application you can drag the file, launch Bevy, and drop the file onto an application. All applications that can open the certain type of file will be highlighted, and all other applications will be dimmed. You can also quickly find applications by holding a letter on your keyboard. This will cause applications that start with that letter to be highlighted.

However, Bevy could use a few other features. One thing that it lacks is an actual search. Bevy also doesn’t work with Spaces, and it will only show in one space. If you open Bevy while in a different space, you will switch to the space that Bevy is in. If you want to quickly access every application on their Mac, you might want to try Bevy. Bevy is available from bergdesign for $9.95.

The point of Flickery is to move all of the functionality of Flickr to your desktop. So, of course, you can upload photos with it. All you do is go to the Upload item in the sidebar, and either drag some photos onto the window, or use the Make Screenshot button to create and upload a screenshot. You can also click the Open button to choose some files to upload. These can be either pictures or videos. But, to make things even simpler, you can record a movie to upload directly from Flickery. Once you have chosen some images and/or videos, you can then add titles, descriptions and tags to them. However, from this screen, you can’t choose what photoset it will go into when uploaded.

Once a picture or video has been uploaded, you can still edit its information just by clicking Edit Info. To add a photo to a photoset, you just have to click the Add to Set button, and then choose one or more photosets. However, the sets it is already in don’t appeared as checked (in the window that pops up), so you can’t really tell if it’s already in one. This also makes it hard to delete it from a photoset, because you can’t uncheck the box. You can also show comments, tags and descriptions of anyones photos by clicking the Show Details button when a photo is selected. I really like the crumpled paper look of this screen, but it really doesn’t match the rest of the UI, so it seems a little awkward. To view a larger size of an image, you just double click on it. Or, you can click the Fullscreen button to view the image in fullscreen.

Flickery also supports easy downloading of any picture or video. If you’ve ever browsed on Flickr.com, you know it’s always annoying to download an image or video. But Flickery makes it just the click of a button away. You just select an image or video, and hit Download. A downloads window will then appear, allowing you to manage multiple downloads. Along with this, you can also add any photo to your iPhone library (not Aperture though). You just click the Add to iPhoto library. I’m not sure why you’d want to add someone else’s image to your library, but you can.

Like Flickr.com, Flickery allows you to Explore. Exploring is just a cool way to find all images that were taken on a certain day. You can also perform and save searches right in Flickery, which is really cool. You can also see all of your contacts and their photostreams by just clicking on their name in the sidebar. However, you cannot manage contacts directly from Flickery. I assume this is an issue with the Flickr API, and not the app though.

Flickery is a great desktop version of Flickr.com. It has almost all the features the Website has and a couple extra. You can buy it for about $20, and download a 15-day free trial from their site. Anyone who uses Flickr frequently, or who wants a better image search engine should definitely try out Flickery.

TwitPic for the iPhone lets you log in to your twitpic account, upload any photo stored on your device, comment on it and tweet it…  and that’s it.  Essentially TwitPic is a twitter client for twitpic photos only.  In a world where Twitter clients offered zero photo functionality, this would be a godsend.  But that’s not the world we live in.  In fact, most iPhone Twitter clients not only offer image uploading features but allow you to pick from a list of hosts including twitpic.

The developers behind this app couldn’t have been oblivious to this fact, and yet their design decisions suggest just that very thing.  Adding in twitpic specific features such as browsing your photo history or the photo history of other users would have added something fresh and new here, but such features are conspicuously absent.  Going one step further they could have added in features that have been glaringly omitted from the site like a search functionality, but again, this app functions as little more than the image uploader you already have in a client.

Even as an image uploader, it’s far from perfect.  Once you enter the portion of the process where you “comment” on your photo, giving the tweet text, you’re officially locked in.  If, say, you change your mind at the last minute and decide you’d rather not post the image for whatever reason (logged into the wrong acct, don’t want to embarrass your wife, etc..), tough beans.  There’s no way to cancel at that point.  Even worse?  Logging out of the app will then force your pic to post when you boot it back up.

If you’re looking for a quick way to pop your photos on to Twitter without booting up your Twitter client for whatever reason, this is definitely going to be a handy little tool.  The problem?  I can’t imagine anyone who that situation might apply to.  It’s like entering the word processor market and offering a fantastic app for backspacing.  No matter how good it is, it doesn’t matter — every app already does that.  And this app?  It’s a sub-par backspacer at best.

Considering there are so many options that already exist for uploading photos to twitpic, this app feels completely edundant.  Had they added in some basic features like the ability to browse your twitpic acct or search through the photos of others, they may have had something worth checking out.  As it stands though, TwitPic for the iPhone offers a tiny set of features that you’ll already find built into the vast majority of Twitter clients in the App Store.

TwitPic is available for free on the iTunes App Store.

Power Pros Touch isn’t the first baseball game to make its way to the AppStore.  In fact, with more than a dozen baseball titles currently available for purchase some might say that Power Pros is a little late to the game.  But as the old saying goes, sometimes the best things in life are worth waiting for.

Whether this is your first time stepping up to the virtual plate or your fifty-first, Power Pros Touch offers the perfect blend of exciting baseball action and accessible gameplay.  Like many baseball games, Power Pros Touch is largely about pitching and hitting.  Making excellent use of the touch screen, you’ll choose your pitch from a selection wheel and pinpoint exactly where in the batter’s box you want to throw it.  When the shoe is on the other foot and you’re stepping up to the plate, a small target will appear that you’ll need to tap at just the right time to connect with the ball.  Little touches, like sliding your finger upward to try for a power hit, round out the core experience.

The visuals in Power Pro are so sugary sweet that those judging by appearances alone would almost instantly assume this is a children’s games.  The characters, with their rounded heads and giant eyes, feel like vinyl dolls come to life.  Power Pros Touch is simply the latest handheld iteration of Japan’s wildly successful Pawapuro series, so the teams and uniforms will be unfamiliar to most.  While entirely fictional (as opposed to having roots in real world Japanese baseball), teams like the Dolphins and the Pawapuro All-Stars have long been a staple of Japanese sports gaming.

What strikes me as odd about this release though is the lack of a Major League Baseball license.  Konami had previously brought the Pawapuro series to North American gamers as MLB Power Pros for the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 2, featuring all of the teams and players in the MLB.  While I can understand their desire to keep the roster small for the iPhone version, it’s surprising that they didn’t pick six teams from North America in an effort to appeal to a wider audience.  Still, wide eyes trump a wide audience any day, and Power Pros Touch definitely has wide, adorable eyes.

Despite it’s cute as a button presentation, an amazing amount of depth is available for players that want to amp up the challenge.  Much like its console predecessors Power Pros Touch can be customized to offer as simple or as deep an experience as you like.  By default the game boots up on the easiest settings, but a little tweaking in the options can change a number of items from automatic from manual.  The default controls automate everything outside of the pitching and batting, which means that base running and fielding are all controlled by your AI teammates.  And while the simplicity of this is downright elegant, gamers who want to step outside of the batters box and get live in the field can do so with ease thanks to the level of customization offered.  Full season and exhibition modes are also offered with adjustable numbers of innings, rules, and difficulties all popping up at the front of every game.

The team at Konami have done the seemingly impossible: they’ve created a baseball game for everyone.  Not only that, but they’ve created it to be played anywhere and for any length of time.  You can play a quick one inning match while waiting for your cab just as easily as you can work your way through a full season over a few months of lunch breaks.  There’s no doubt about it, Konami have really hit this one out of the park.  At $3.99 Power Pros Touch may be the best value you’ll find on the iPhone this summer.  You can find it exclusively in the iTunes App Store.

To start using Keymote, you need to sync your device with your computer. Just download and install the Keymote Controller to your Mac and tap “Add Computer…” in the Keymote settings. After that, you need to start creating keysets. Keysets are extremely easy to create. Just tap on the plus icon in the keysets section of the application and add a name and category. For each keyset you can add keystrokes and spacers. Spacers let you add a blank spot in between keystrokes. These custom keysets make Keymote so versatile. You can start by adding some keystrokes that you use the most often, and Keymote will definitely prove useful.

You don’t need to create all of your keysets. Keymote also has a Keyset Store where you can upload and download user-made keysets. Despite it’s name, everything on this store is free. The store already includes many keysets. There are keysets for a numerical pad and even one for Adobe Photoshop. There are many options in the store that let you easily browse the Keyset Store; it’s almost like browsing the App Store. You can check out staff picks, what’s hot, what’s new, categories, or just view an alphabetical list. You can also search the store to quickly find a keyset for the purpose you want. Adding a keyset to the store is easy. You just need to tap the plus icon on the top right and select your keyset.

I think that almost every Mac user will be able to find a good use for Keymote. With this application you won’t need to remember tons of keystrokes, you just need to tap a button. It does have a few small issues. It takes some time to set up a large custom keyset, and some keysets from the store might not work for you. You might have different keystrokes set up than the person who created the keyset. Despite it’s small flaws, Keymote is a very useful application that many Mac users will appreciate. Keymote is currently under review by Apple and should be available soon on the App Store for $3.99.

1Password is an incredible application. Once installed, it automatically installs a plug-in into every browser. Any time a new password is entered, it gives you the option of saving it in 1Password. This seems similar to the password managers built in to many browsers, such as Firefox and Safari, until you realize that the passwords saved are available from any browser. Switching back and forth between multiple browsers, a common occurrence especially when testing out new websites that may not be complete, is made super easy with 1Password.

The application stores all passwords, as well as credit card information, license codes for software, pretty much anything that a user might need but would prefer to keep hidden. This is all accessible through an easy to use interface (primarily the aforementioned browser plug-ins), once a master password is entered. This password only has to be entered once per session, and then a keyboard shortcut is used after that to enter any password or login. 1Password gives you the option of creating new, super-secure passwords for any new web services that would be impossible to remember, but because of how the program works, it is not necessary to remember them.

One of the best things about 1Password is how easy it is, once a password is saved, to put it into a form. The user simply has to press a keyboard shortcut, and it automatically enters the login info into the provided boxes. This is not only easier than remembering your various usernames and passwords, it is also incredibly fast. 1Password also has the option of auto-submitting the information, so you don’t even have to click a button. This is true not only for login information, but also for billing addresses, credit card numbers, and so on.

1Password is not a perfect app. There were a few sites (although not the majority) that it didn’t notice when I was entering in a new password, and so didn’t take it up into its memory. Also, it is extremely difficult to enter a new login from the application itself, rather than from one of your browsers. Oddly, one of the reasons it is so difficult is that the program keeps reminding you that it is easier from a browser. 1Password consistently warns you about things that may compromise your security (using Apple’s built-in keychain software instead of the Agile Keychain), which is helpful, but can get annoying when it stops you from doing something you know you want to do.

The user interface of the application itself could be more aesthetic, like AllSecure’s, for example (a similar program). But, since most interaction is done through a browser, this is only a minor detail. Another issue I had, which is more an issue of usage than the actual program, is the suggested password. If a generated password, 16 random characters long, is used for an online banking site, that is fine when it is being accessed from the user’s computer, but it is impossible to get in from another computer, since the user does not actually know the password.

However, despite these flaws, 1Password is a great tool to streamline the internet—especially shopping and banking. It is available for $39.95 (with a money-back guarantee) from the Agile Web Solutions website.

When it comes to depth of content, lets get one thing straight; the database in Movie Genie isn’t just IMDB-like, it is IMDB.  Less a movie database and more an method of presenting IMDB in an iPhone-friendly way, Movie Genie acts as your go between for IMDB when you’re on the go and it does what it does incredibly well.  The fine folks at IMDB have been dragging their heels on developing an iPhone app for far too long.  Now that Movie Genie is here, they may very well have regretted the wait.

Any actor, director, or film can be found in seconds via the search feature.  Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, the profile is streamlined to make for easy navigation.  At the top of each page are two tabs; one that brings up a person or projects details, and one that brings up the cast & crew or filmography.

The Details page offers up all of the relevant information that you would find in an IMDB profile that’s not pertaining to the list data on the second tab.  Plot, trivia, goofs, user reviews, taglines — you name it, it’s on there.  In fact the only thing that seemed to be missing were trailers, and even they won’t be gone for too long.  The developer currently has trailers slated for a future update.  To keep things streamlined, each of the items on the details page offers up only a few short lines of text.  If you want more, you can just click on the feature to get all of the information.  This makes sure that the Details page provides access to everything you could want without ever getting cluttered.

In addition to the basic search feature Movie Genie also lets you keep track of favorites so that you can revisit material at a later time.  If you’re a big fan of Pauly Shore for example (and who isn’t?) you can bookmark his IMDB profile to your favorites for a quick visit whenever it’s needed.  Even better than the favorites feature (which, lets be honest, was totally expected) is the history tab.  Just give it a quick click and see all of the pages you’ve visited in reverse chronological order (ie most recent first).

Because it uses IMDB as its source material, Movie Genie can help you keep track of more than just movies.  TV shows and video games are also organized here, as well as all of the people associated with them.  If you want to know all the video games Ron Gilbert has worked on or all the TV shows Norman Lear has produced, the information is all at your fingertips.

The only negative to be found with Movie Genie is its nearly total lack of offline functionality.  Because it depends on IMDB for its database resources, Movie Genie needs to remain online for it to work.  And while this should pose no problem for iPhone owners, iPod Touch users will be left out in the cold.  Sure they can browse explore and enjoy when near a wifi point, but let’s be honest — how much of this app’s appeal is for users sitting near a wireless router at home and how much is it for those wanting a point of refernece while in a video store?  Or settling an argument with a friend while out and about on the town?  The idea of Movie Genie is to have a movie database on-the-go.  For iPod Touch users, that simply isn’t the case.

Still, that’s not to say the app would have zero appeal to those who are stuck offline in public.  Let’s say you’ve used your favorites tab to assemble a list of movies you’d like to see.  That list will still be visible regardless of internet connection.  If you want to go any deeper than that though, like finding out who is in the movies on your list or reading a quick synopsis, you’re fresh out of luck.

The lack of offline functionality will definitely be a dealbreaker for a number of iPod Touch users, but when it comes to everybody else?  Movie Genie is easily the best movie reference tool in the iTunes App Store so far.  IMDB should consider dealing directly with developer Taylan Pince when they finally get around to developing an iPhone app, because they’d have a hard time topping what he’s produced with Movie Genie.

Ecoute has a small main windows that feels a lot like an iPod. You can browse your music just as you would on an iPod or iPhone. When you play a song the window will shrink and display the album artwork for the song. Hover your mouse over the album artwork you can easly play, pause, and skip back or forward in the track. The bottom of the screen displays the time that is left in the track and you can click the search icon to search songs. Clicking the album artwork will display the song lyrics (if available).

Ecoute also has many features that iTunes lacks. You can add a small controller to your desktop. This will display the album artwork, song title, artist, and album. You can also use it to play/pause, and skip ahead or back. You don’t need to have Ecoute’s icon in the dock. It can be in the menu bar instead. Ecoute even has Last.fm scrobbling. If you don’t know what Last.fm is, it let’s you track and share what music you listen to.

Ecoute is a very basic app. While it would be nice if it included some more features, like playlist creation and the ability to tell if a playlist is new or not, it is a great application to listen to music and watch videos without opening iTunes. You can download a free trial of Ecoute from PixiApps and a license costs $10.

The first thing to be said about Postage is how good it looks. It has an amazing UI, and it is no wonder that in won an Apple Design Award this year. But it’s not just the UI that’s nice-looking, it’s the postcards you create as well that look great. And they’re easy to make—It just takes a couple of steps.

The first step is to choose the style for the postcard. As of now, there are over 55 styles in 10 different categories, which is more than enough. In the preview of each style, it shows you exactly where the picture will go, and where the text will go too. After you have chosen a style, you can choose a picture from your iPhone’s photo library. It would be great if you could see a preview with the picture as you were browsing photos, but I think that is an issue of Apple not allowing direct access to photos, you must use the list. After you have selected a picture, you can add one of 7 effects, or keep it as-is. More effects would be nice, and maybe even sliders for exposure, and saturation. But, this is supposed to be a simple app that allows you to make a postcard in just a minute, so it is not a necessity.

The next step is text. With Postage, not only can you choose what it says, but you can also choose a font, text style and text color. There are 9 different fonts to choose from, all of which are very different. If they added more, some would look alike, and you might end up spending minutes trying to figure out which one looks best. So, maybe you should be happy there aren’t more. The styles are normal text styles: left, center or right-alligned and normal or bold. I’m surprised that italics are not in there though, but for a simple message, I’m not sure you’d usually need them.

The final step, but most important one, is the addresses. You can choose someone from your contacts, or just enter someone’s email address. And, you can choose any email address that it will be marked as being from. So, if you want to surprise them, but down a random email address. You can also choose to add the postcard to your photo library, so you can keep track of all the ones you send. I would have never thought of doing this, but it is a great idea. Then, once you have finished everything (and you can go back to the previous step at any point), you must click Send, and your postcard is complete.

Just as easy as—Actually easier than—Mailing an actual postcard and you can choose your own image, style and text style and it arrives almost instantly. All this for the (normal) price of ($4.99) about 8-10 postcards (with postage), and this allows you to send unlimited postcards. But as this is being written, Postage is 40% off, or just the price of ($2.99) 5-6 postcards (with postage). So, if you’re on vacation, or going on vacation soon, Postage can assure that you don’t have any angry relatives for not sending postcards—What’s not to like? It’s available in the App Store through This link for only $2.99 as of now.

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.

This application is by no means the only visualizer out there. The problem of finding space on your Mac has been around for almost as long as the computers themselves have. DaisyDisk is, however, one of the best-looking visualizers on the market. Instead of showing files as simple rectangles, or even as a list, DaisyDisk shows all files as radiating outwards from the parent folder (marked with the full size of the folder, in the middle). This is where the name DaisyDisk presumably comes from, as the end result vaguely resembles a flower, although it is more similar to a pie chart, with the size of each file’s wedge based on how large it is.

The application presents its data in a format that is incredibly easy to understand. Once it is opened, it presents the user with a list of the various hard drives on the computer, with a bar displaying how full or empty the drive is (which changes color from green to red as more space is filled) Once a hard drive is picked, the disk is scanned (remarkably quickly compared to other visualizers), and navigation through the results, for the most part, is also very user-friendly. One simply clicks on the folder they want to explore—either in the list or in the graphic—and that folder slides into the center with a nice animation. This can be done indefinitely, drilling down (or outward, as the case may be) into smaller and smaller folders until the space-hogging culprit can be found. The path to the current folder is displayed at the top of the window, and if the center is clicked on, the parent folder opens, allowing easy access backwards. This can also be accomplished by a keyboard shortcut.

This app offers little more than a pretty interface. There are literally no preferences, no options to customize—color, layout, even canceling the transparent background which can be a little annoying at times. It also fails to allow for what can often be the most useful tool in any visualizer—a delete option. For the most part, people use this kind of application to find files they can remove to free up space. However, with DaisyDisk, once you find the file, you must right-click on it to open it in the finder, and then delete it manually. DaisyDisk does have a few features that beat out the competition—the most useful being integration with Apple’s Quick Look. Once a file is clicked on, a user simply presses space bar to hear the audio, see the video or text, which is a great way to see if you really need a file or what it is. But again, if you decide it is unnecessary, you still have to go to the Finder to delete it.

There is also no help available in the application. While it is a very simple program, it is not simple enough  to warrant no aid at all. The Quick Look integration, for example, I found out by accident. There is one option in the menu to scan as a Super-User, presumably to find invisible and hidden files, but this is not explained anywhere. The “Back” button next to the file path also does not function as one might think: instead of moving up a file path, it moves to the last view you were at, acting more like a web browser than a file browser. Despite being a fully released product, it is clear that this is still a work in progress. Besides these omissions and flaws, one of the few menu options that does exist is to submit Feedback to the developers. Hopefully they will quickly respond and change the options that need changing.

DaisyDisk is not a necessary application, nor is it a perfect one. However, for a visually appealing way of discovering the files on your hard drive, a user needs to look no further. While not necessarily the most useful visualizer, DaisyDisk is fun to play with and look at, as the animations are smooth, the colors varied, and the interface simple. DaisyDisk retails for the slightly expensive price of $19.95, and you can download a free 15-day trial from its website.

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.

Stainless utilizes the same WebKit layout rendering engine used by Apple’s Safari browser and Google’s Chrome browser, but has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. Stainless has a unique feature called parallel sessions, which allows users to log into the same website multiple times with different accounts in each tab. Each tab open is designed to be its own process, so that if it stops responding, it doesn’t crash the entire browser. I noticed a number of subtle features in the course of using Stainless that really stuck out. One being that when you search for text on a page (Cmd+F), it searches on each page you click to afterwards automatically, something neither Safari or Firefox do. It was incredibly useful when looking for references of the same topic on multiple sites.

Stainless has a useful minimalist interface

I see the app’s main feature as it’s simplicity. Stainless gives all the screen real estate to the web page, rather than cluttering it with it’s own icons and menus. The simple 3-button control bar, address/search combo bar, and thin bookmark column felt comfortable. I was surprised how much I liked the icon-only bookmark column WebKit gives the browser that zippy feel that we’ve all come to expect in Safari, though Stainless is possibly even speedier. I found in an informal speed test between the new Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Stainless, that it definitely edged out on top in rendering and application responsiveness.

I do have a few quipes with Stainless though. It’s obviously still a beta, but I had trouble moving the app around in Spaces, and then switching tabs in the new space. The app wanted to jump back to the originating space, so I presume that this is related to the multiple-process architecture. Also, the switch to the browser was tricky without a bookmark or settings import wizard, something I’ve come to expect from a browser if it expects me to switch.

All in all Stainless is a fantastic piece of software. It’s obviously been planned out well. It’s handsome, integrates fabulous features like parallel sessions, and Google Gears, while maintaining performance. It’s sparse, but after a few days I realized that it had everything you NEED in a browser, nothing more, and nothing less. In the Mac world right now I’d call Safari the flashy browser, Firefox the extendible browser, Stainless the speedy browser, and Chrome the vaporware browser. If you’re waiting for Chrome, Stainless provides an excellent preview of what to expect.

It’s this spirit of preservation that has allowed the underground world of digital comics to flourish.  Rather than risking damage to that Action Comics #71 you have tucked away for a down payment on a house, digital reproductions allow you to view the comics in your collection without ever taking them out of their protective plastic.  The lack of a decent portable program that allowed for the reading of these digital iterations has kept many a reader tied to their desktop… until now.

Comic Zeal allows you to transfer your digital comic book collection directly to your iPhone or iPod Touch, and presents you a number of great viewing options for reading.  Each page can be zoomed and navigated using the same tap and zoom mechanics that iPhone users have grown used to.  Comics can be read in landscape or portrait depending on your preference, with pages being flipped through by simply sliding your finger to advance through the story.  The fundamentals of page navigation, something that is at the core of any good comics reader, should be second nature to any iPhone user.

Clarity is the other cornerstone of a solid comics reader, and here too Comic Zeal excels.  While the default view even in landscape blurs the words a little too much too be readable, a light zoom fixes that right up.  And since you can still navigate from the zoom, you can simply set it once and forget it forever.  Presentation outside of an issue is just as good as inside.  Comics are displayed in “boxes” of series, which when clicked on will give you a cover view of every comic in that box.  It’s a nice touch, and a fantastic step up from the boring old text lists that most programs of this nature rely on.  Comics is a visual medium, and Comic Zeal embraces that fact.

Not everyone who loves comics has ventured into the world of digital reproductions, and unless you’re willing to scan your own or step into some of the internet’s shadier locales to download back-ups of comics you already own (MacApper in no way supports piracy, comic books are a dying medium, please support it!) you may not have much of a use for Comic Zeal.  Thankfully the developers at bitolithic recognized this and added some built in functionality for those looking to pick up some public domain comics to get a taste of something new.  Links to downloads from the indie superhero imprint Flashback Comics as well as a selection of Golden Age classics ranging from Atomic War to The Blue Beetle are available to anyone looking to expand their collection.

Despite these inclusions, Comic Zeal isn’t really aimed towards the reader with little previous experience with digital reprints.  Those with massive collections filling their hard drives have been dying to get their hands on a convenient portable reader that would allow them to read their collections.  Fantastic single issue iPhone apps have demonstrated the devices amazing capabilities pertaining to digital comics on the go, and while Comic Zeal can’t offer the amazing readability they do, it does allow you to port your comics to the iPhone with ease.

While one might hope for out-of-the-box support for the standard .cbr file type that most comics are read in, it’s not entirely the case.  Rather than reading .cbr files, Comic Zeal require you to convert your comics to their proprietary .cbi format via their freeware desktop application.  It may seem like a nuisance, but it makes a lot of sense when you see the reason behind it.  Traditional cbr’s exist at resolutions that are ridiculously high for iPhone usage.  Converting to cbi brings these down to a reasonable size, helping to conserve battery life by putting less strain on the processor.

When the app first launched there were endless hoops you’d have to jump through to get your files converted.  Before installing the desktop coversion software Comic Zeal Creator, you had to install supporting software.  Then you had to sort out server nonsense.  It was a mess.  Bit if past experiences with Creator turned you off of Comic Zeal, you might want to give it a second shot now that they’re released Creator’s successor, ComicZeal Sync.

Sync cuts out all the run around of it’s predecessor and opts for drag and drop simplicity.  After you drop an item into Sync, it will immediately begin the conversion.  If file names follow a certain structure, Sync should be able to sort out what file belongs to what series and keep your collection tidy without any first-hand involvement from you.  If your files aren’t that tidy, don’t worry.  While processing you can add basic info for the item such as series name, issue name, and issue number.  This will make sure that when you pop open Comic Zeal on the go everything is ready and waiting for you.  The only real problem here is that you can’t go back and edit that data after the file has been converted.  It’s not a major hassle, but it’s downright silly that the option to edit after conversion isn’t available.  And while you can also bulk convert, the necessity of providing correct info to keep your collection nice and neat kind of suggests that maybe you shouldn’t.

Syncing is a fairly painless process as well.  Clicking the sync button on the desktop app and the sync button in the iPhone app will get all of your new comics copied and sorted for you with no fuss or muss.  It’s all handled on the backend through the universally-acclaimed SyncDocs, so it’s highly unlikely you’ll find yourself running into data issues as a result.

The only real downside to the app, apart from the inability to edit your collection once converted, is how it underperforms compared to those single issue apps that exist for comics like Atomic Robo or The Terminator.  Being designed to specifically capture an individual issue means that each “page” can be a single panel, navigated frame by frame.  Using pre-existing scans simply doesn’t allow for that level of ease.  Despite this, ComicZeal offers up a fantastic experience for readers looking to take their collection on the go, even if it means they’ll have to pan and zoom to get through each page.

Unless Marvel and DC start to offer single issue downloads of their complete back catalogue in the AppStore, Comic Zeal will reign king as the premiere app for comic book lovers looking to take their favorites on the go.

Comic Zeal is available on the iTunes AppStore for $2.99.

The first thing you will notice about Snowtape is its amazing interface. It uses a completely custom UI that really works for the app. It also includes a mini-comtroller (just like iTunes) that is also unbelievably good-looking. It doesn’t just have a good UI though, it is very easy to use. There is a directory where you can search for stations, and there is also a repository of recorded tracks that you can edit and send to iTunes. It’s very simple.

In the directory, Snowtape sorts all stations by genres. Each station can have many genres, so some may appear all over the place. With the recent 1.1 update, Snowtape now has 700+ stations built-in, so you may never have to add your own. If you ever do, though, you just go to File>Import URL… if you have the URL of the playlist (for the station) or File>Import File… if you have the actual playlist file. You can sort stations by title, description, genre, number of streams, quality and popularity. The streams usually range from 320 kbps to about 16 kbps with most at about 128 kbps.

Snowtape’s main purpose is to record internet radio. And this is very simple to do. When you are listening to a stream, simply click the record button, and until you click the button again, everything will be recorded. Once you have recorded what you want, you can go to the Last Recorded section and see what you have. Your recording will be split into tracks based on the song that was playing. However, the track data from internet streams doesn’t always change exactly when the song changes, so you may have to do some editing. But, if some of the song gets cut out, you are out of luck. Although you can cut a track, you can’t add from one track to another. Luckily, you can decide for Snowtape to not cut it into tracks by going to the Recording tab of Preferences and deselecting the Enable automatic cut at track boundaries checkbox. Using that feature comes at a cost.

Once you have finished editing a track, you can get artwork for it by simply clicking the Get Album Artwork button. You can then choose from the images it shows you. And once you have done that, you can export to iTunes. The track info will already be filled in, and if you choose artwork, it will be there too. Recording in Snowtape could not be simpler.

One thing that may be overlooked by some users of Snowtape is RadioURL.com. This is a service provided with Snowtape that allows you to share what you are currently listening to to other Snowtape users. When you are listening to a station, just go to Action>RadioURL.com and choose what you would like to do. Others can then click on the link created and listen to what you are.

Snowtape retails for $29 and you can download a free demo from that link as well. Having artist alerts would be nice, but with 700+ stations, by the time you got the alert, the song would probably be over. It is extremely well designed, and just nice to use. I was not much of a radio fan before it, but now that it’s so easy, I listen and record all the time. I think everyone should try out this app.

μTorrent sports a handsome native cocoa interface

Users are greeted with a somewhat-vacant main window when they load .torrent files, but a well organized one. Windows users who have used μTorrent on XP or Vista will recognize the interface, but miss a few of the more robust features available for the Windows client. One major feature of this app that sets it apart from some of its other Mac competitors is its ability to load multiple torrents and manage them well (I realize that Transmission does this, but when downloading 2 or more files it gets difficult to manage).

I frequently download new Linux ISOs when they’re first released, ranging from 700mb to 2gb. Now getting the entire thing down can be a game of cat and mouse with the seeding ratio and upload/download limits, but μTorrent handles the connections quite nicely. Many users (including myself) have noticed significant down speed increases with the new μTorrent client. I was a Transmission user for a few years, but even when configured identically downloading the same torrent there’s no question that μTorrent is faster.

The preferences panel is well organized and gives users control
over all aspects of their Torrent experience

The app is great for downloading torrents and configuring network settings and preferences, but it doesn’t go much further than that. There is a search that launches to Google for searching, and some control of bandwidth priority, but overall in feature-set the client is rather light. It is quite quick, I found launching and quitting significantly faster than Transmission. All in all it’s a great client, but I found myself missing the RSS torrent download features available to Windows users. I used to be able to let μTorrent stay on top of the latest Ubuntu releases, but now I have to track down a number of different distributions from different pages. I hoping in future releases more of these features are integrated, but in all fairness the app is still in beta. Transmission users, trust me: it’s worth the switch. For now it functions as a solid client, just bare of some of the creature comforts that come with other apps.

SweetFM is a mash up of sorts, mixing Last.fm streaming with your average iTunes helper app. Like all other iTunes helper apps, SweetFM displays the album artwork of the song your currently listening to and that functionality also works with music you stream from Last.fm. It also has an indescript spot where you are suppose to enter what you want to listen to on Last.fm and an arbitrary arrow button next to it. One would think you could just enter an artist name into the box and get Last.fm to play it but this is not the case. Instead you have to press this arrow button to display a group of addition buttons labeled “Artist”, “Tags”, and etc. You then have to hit one of those buttons and enter further information into the box. For example, if I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd on Last.fm, I would have to open up SweetFM, click the arrow, click artist, and then enter “Pink Floyd” in the box.

In reality all they are really doing with this convoluted process is adding a little tag behind the information you enter into the box. You would think they could automate this or have a little bit of magic happen behind the scenes, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Aside from that the application feels more like a beta than a final release, I’ve encountered multiple bugs in the few days that I’ve been playing with it. The first of which is that what the application shows as playing and what is actually playing in iTunes don’t match from time to time, even though SweetFM says the right info in it’s menu in the menu bar. Also, the progress indicator, which allows you to scrub through songs, occasionally does not work.

But the most disappointing part of this application is it’s user interface. Even though they are touting the fact that you can design skins for this app using HTML and CSS, a well built one should still come bundled with the app. Fibre, the included skin, is an overly glossy, distracting waste of desktop space. Personally, I like my iTunes helpers to be pinned to the desktop and just meld with everything else their but Fibre is just not capable of doing that (the melding at least). Silly things like having the horizontal volume slider bumped right up to the “Scrobbling” button for Last.fm makes it seem as though the slider has something to do with “Scrobbling” when in fact it does not. The semi-transparent background in particular is my least favorite part, why does it need to be there? Take a page from the designers doing skins for Bowtie and just get rid of the app background all together, it works so much better with the desktop. Luckily choco moko has a skins directory on their website but at the moment it only has one additional theme, which seems only like a slight redesign to Fibre and nothing more.

If your at all interested in helper apps for iTunes, I would recommend you stay away from SweetFM. Although if your a fan of Last.fm it is worth checking out. It is available from choco moko for $29. If you are just looking for an iTunes helper, check out the free Bowtie.

Star Walk shows you all its information based on the time of day and your location. Using Apple’s location services, you must only allow it to find your current location, and everything else is automatic. If you would like to change the time of day you’re looking at, simply click on the Clock icon (in the upper-right corner) and you can change it. To navigate around the map, you just use pinching and dragging. There are even four markers for North, East, South and West so you know exactly where to look for a specific constellation. There is also a red line for the horizon making it, again, even easier to see where something is.

Star Walk is cool enough with just the ability to look around a virtual map. But, it also adds some other features. When you press on a constellation name (in the virtual sky), you will see a white drawing of it with the stars. This feature is great for showing to kids (and for helping one find the constellation). While the name is still selected, if you hit the “i” button, you will get more information. A “W” button will also appear allowing you to see a Wikipedia article on it.

Constellations are not the only things Star Walk knows. If you click on any star or planet on the screen, you can also hit the “i” button and get more information.

What I would say is one of the most important features that Star Walk carries is its search. If you hit the search button (lower-left corner), you can search for stars, constellations, planets and messier. If the object is visible to you, its name will be in white, if not, they name will be grayed out. When you click on one, it will take you there on the map. This makes it so easy to find what you want.

Star Walk also includes some nice preferences. The first one is night mode, which basically turns everything into a red-ish color. There is also the ability to turn of the pictures of constellations and sounds. And finally, you can adjust the brightness of stars, planets, etc. All of these can be accessed from the button in the lower-right corner.

Star Walk costs $4.99 in the App Store and is the International Year of Astronomy 2009’s official product. It is extremely intuitive and also provides many features for amateurs and even pros. Anyone who likes watching the stars (and has an iPhone or iPod Touch) needs this app.

Ringer is a very basic application. The sidebar on the left lets you browse your iTunes library and the rest of the window is for creating ringtones. You can browse many different sections of iTunes including artists, movies, and TV shows. You can also search for the specific clip.

The ringtone creator is very similar to the one built into iTunes. It has the same features and tools. You simply drag a box around the portion of the song you’d like to use, and hit preview. You can also set the gap in between loops and have the audio fade in and out. When you click create the ringtone is instantly placed under “Ringtones” in iTunes and you will be able to sync them with your iPhone.

Ringer is a great app for creating simple ringtones, but it doesn’t have many advanced features. For some ringtones it might be useful to have a few simple audio effects. There is also no way to control the length of the audio fade. Ringer doesn’t have many features, but it does just what it should. It’s an easy way to create new ringtones in a few short seconds. Ringer is available for $15 from Pixel Research Labs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Songbird’s interface look familiar? A ghost from iTunes Past?

The most interesting thing about Songbird is the open-source code it’s built off of: Firefox. That’s right! The folks over at Pioneers for the Inevitable have built the entire thing on top of Mozilla’s popular browser, which brings me to my biggest complaint: my TI-84 graphic calculator could load my music library faster! Songbird’s Achilles heel seems to be it’s speed. It’s like trying to play streaming video on dial-up. The slow start times and rendering speeds that seem to plague the Mac version of Firefox get even worse in Songbird. I’m relatively impatient when it comes to app responsiveness and loading, but others I’ve spoken to agree: Songbird can be a bit of a clunker.

Songbird integrates Last.fm in a very classy way

Aside from my quips about speed, Songbird can be fun to use. Through extensions and themes (called “Feathers”), it has a number of fantastic features, and room for expansion. iPod support, Last.FM integration, QuickTime FairPlay integration, as well as the benefits of a built-in tabbed-browser (which I’m using right now to post this review). I know I was harsh on the developers earlier for using Firefox because of the speed, but it’s also my biggest compliment; browsing the web with your music elegantly placed in the same window is quite nice. Besides, the built-in web browser allows for easy integration of other Mp3 stores, and easy searching for legal music downloads on the web.

Firefox users will be met with a familiar preferences panel

Other features such as a Mini-Player, the ability to re-order your music window panes, song ratings, easy library search, and organizing features puts Songbird in contention with iTunes. It really is an intuitive program, and such an easy switch from iTunes, that you may not notice the difference (apart from the speed of course). Songbird will even import your iTunes library complete with music, playlists, and playcounts. If there isn’t a feature available built into Songbird check out their add-on’s page, where a number of incredibly useful plugins are available for download.

I do have one last issue to take with Songbird, and it’s video. When I imported my iTunes library, it brought in all of my video podcasts and integrated them into my music library. Songbird doesn’t support video playback, but will play the audio in a video. Putting my library on shuffle, I found it incredibly annoying to have to constantly stop and delete video from the library. Plus because I had Last.fm scrobbling enabled, I had to dig through my recent plays and pull them out. If the software isn’t going to support video, it shouldn’t allow it to import into the library.

All in all, Songbird makes a fantastic attempt at an iTunes replacement, but a number of short comings make it impossible for me to jump ship. If you can handle the slightly sluggish interface and you’re looking for an alternative to iTunes with support for other music stores, and iPod support; Songbird might just be your match.

The purpose of Prizmo is to scan without a scanner. So, you can scan anywhere (so long as you have a digital camera [no, a film camera will not work]), on-the-go, at anytime. And, it only takes about three steps: Take the picture, open Prizmo and load the picture, and select the part of the picture you want and do a little bit of tweaking.

When you open Prizmo, you are presented with a nice animation telling you where to drop your image. But, there’s also a button that allows you to choose an image from a camera that’s connected to your computer or your iPhoto or Aperture library. Although Prizmo will accept most image types, I have had issues when feeding it RAW files, so you may want to convert to JPEG first (if you shoot in RAW).

As soon as you find your picture and drag it into Prizmo, you will so the editing window. This is where you will put the bounding box around the object you would like to ’scan.’ The bounding box gives you four points to put at the four corners of the thing you are scanning. If you’re trying to scan a triangle, or a five-and-more-sided-figure, then you’re out of luck. Here, you will also find options for crop, lens distortion and processing. The crop tool just allows you to choose a size to constrain to. Processing just gives you options for brightness, contrast, sharpness and saturation.

Now for lens distortion. This can be a problem when trying to scan objects, because it, well…Distorts your images. Not many people will know how much to pull the distortion sliders, and Creaceed thought of that. They allow you to calibrate your camera, and even get data from other users’ calibrations. If you click the Search button, Prizmo will look through its online database for calibrations from people with the same camera (and lens for DSLRs). But, if it doesn’t find any, you can do it yourself. Just go to Tools>Calibrate Camera… (Command-K) and you will be presented with an assistant for calibrating your camera. Because no data was there for my camera and lens, I decided to do this. After following the directions and taking some pictures, it failed to recognize the checkered pattern on any of them. I was doing it in RAW at the time, so that could have been an issue. Then, though, I converted them to JPEGs and tried to add them, but they wouldn’t add. It seems there needs to be some fixing in the calibration.

Prizmo retails for $39.95, and you can download a free trial from the site. My results were great, despite not being able to calibrate for lens distortion, and it could definitely act as my only scanner. But, it really isn’t only a scanner, it can be used on anything. If you see a movie poster or an ad that you like, and would like to have documented, just take a picture, and Prizmo will help you with perspective, cropping and everything else.

The most important feature of Bento for iPhone is its ability to sync with the Mac version. So, you can access all of your databases on-the-go, in the palm of your hand. All you have to do is go to the Sync tab and click on the “Set up sync with computer…” item. You will then be prompted with directions to enable syncing, and once enabled, you only have to click the “Sync Now” button in the Sync tab. Syncing allows you to easily transfer the data from your iPhone to your Mac and vice versa.

Bento for iPhone comes with 25 templates for databases, but you can also create your own, or just start with a blank one. All you must do to create a new database is click on the New Library tab, choose a template and click Create Library. You may then begin adding entries. As with the Mac app, there are many different field types for different types of information. One of these field types is an image, which Bento allows you to take with the built-in camera. Unlike the Mac app, unfortunately, there is no way to edit the fields—Once they have been created, they are there for good*.

Adding a new entry to a database is very straightforward. You just click the [+] button in the navigation bar of the database and are prompted to add information. Based on the field type, Bento will have you enter the information in a different way. There is one issue though: For some of the field types, the text field (into which you enter the information) never gets selected until you type something on the keyboard. This ca be confusing, because it seems as if the text field is not editable, but once you type something, you can see that it is. Also, for some field types (namely duration), Bento expects you to type the info in a certain way, but doesn’t tell you how to type it right there. It tells you when you create the field though.

Along with searching inside individual databases, Bento also allows you to do a global search. So, if you have many databases, and you only can remember the name, and not the database, this can be very helpful. However, with this power, there comes a consequence: Speed. Bento searches after every letter you enter, and this search can take some time, which makes the whole searching process quite slow. It would have been nice had Bento only searched when you didn’t press on the keyboard for more than a second.

One complaint of Bento for iPhone (not for Mac) is that you cannot access the calendar. But, this is not because the folks at FileMaker don’t want you to, or because they forgot to implement it, it is because Apple doesn’t let you access it. But, hopefully soon, Calendar Store will show up on the iPhone. Despite this, Bento still allows you to create databases with events and dates, it just doesn’t sync over to iCal (on the iPhone).

Bento for iPhone retails for $4.99 in the App Store (link) and you can find more info from FileMaker. It has a few issues, but for any heavy Bento user, it is a must-have. For everyone else, it is a great companion to the Mac app, or as a standalone app, and if you think databases could help you, it’s definitely worth a look.

*Note: You can actually edit fields by going into a record and clicking on the “fields” button and then you can edit, rearrange and delete fields. It can be a little confusing to find at first though.

Hulu Desktop brings the best of Hulu.com while adding an intuitive albeit somewhat confusing user interface, but after playing with the app for a little while it all makes sense. Upon opening the application, the video you were previously watching begins to play and you are given the options: Start Watching, Menu, and Switch Profile.

Diving into the menu system, you are given options for looking at Popular and Recently Added videos as well as TV, Movies and even Search. In actuality, the navigational system is very similar to that of it’s web version except it is all “live” and you don’t have to worry about pages loading or having to stop watching your video to find something else. The menu is easily accessible at all times by simply hitting the ESC button on your keyboard or by hitting the Menu button on your Apple Remote.

While watching a video, you are given a very familiar bar indicating your current position in the video but it has one very helpful feature that its web counterpart does not have. When putting your mouse over the timeline you are given a picture of what is at that position, something that is handy when looking for a particular part of a video. When you click on the video and pause it, a menu pops up on the left hand side giving you the feature that Hulu.com has, like Closed Captioning, Ratings, and etc. In that menu you will also find a help section which gives you all the keyboard and Apple Remote shortcuts, allowing you to watching your favorite videos without the aid of your mouse.

Overall, Hulu Desktop is an intuitive copy of its web-based brother, Hulu.com. The only real additions simply come from the app no longer being in your browser, things like not having to wait for pages to load and being able to have the video continue to play while you search the bowels of the menu system. So if you are an avid TV viewer and frequent Hulu.com regularly or just want the convenience of a desktop app, you can pick up Hulu Desktop for Windows and Mac at Hulu.com/Labs.

Project Gutenberg contains over 28,000 free titles that you can access from your computer, and now your iPhone too. Eucalyptus is really just an app that allows you to download and then read books from Project Gutenberg. And it does this very well. You can look at the “Picks” or search by author or book. The Picks are good if you are looking for a very classic book, or just don’t know what you want to read. Once you have selected a book you would like to read, you just click Get Book, and a nice animation shows you that the book has gone to your downloads. The only possible improvement for downloading books would be the ability to browse by genre or alphabetically.

When Eucalyptus downloads a book, there are two parts: The actual downloading and the structure analyzing. The downloading is straightforward, and when it says, “analyzing structure…” it basically means that it is analyzing and converting the book to be read with Eucalyptus. There is even a two-part progress indicator to show you how much of each step has been completed. The longer the book, the longer this whole process takes, so be prepared to wait a few minutes for a long book.

Your library of books is sorted in two ways: By title and by author. The Authors tab allows you to see books by specific authors (and also just see what authors you have books by), and the Books tab allows you to see your books alphabetically. There’s not much more to it than that.

As if its huge library of books, and the ease of downloading weren’t enough, the reading experience is outstanding. There are three ways to go through the book: The slider, flipping pages and the “back” view. The slider allows you to traverse through the book very fast, and also shows you what chapter the new location will be in. Sliding between pages is my favorite. There is only one other app that even does page turning similar to Eucalyptus, and I must say Eucalyptus even puts that app (Classics) to shame with the animations. An app like Classics uses static images to flip from page to page, which creates a great animation. But, Eucalyptus seems to use a real 3D engine. The shadow changes based on where the page is, and the page will even wiggle if you drag back and forth very fast. I really love this part of the app. You can also use the arrows at the bottom to go from chapter to chapter (but not page by page).

Another way to get through the book is the “back” view. You can get to this by clicking the icon in the right of the top bar (when in a book). Here you can simply click on a chapter (or other section), and Eucalyptus will bring you there. It also shows you the current chapter (or section). This basically brings a table of contents to the book, that is accessible without having to flip to the beginning of it.

Eucalyptus costs $9.99 in the App Store, and you can easily see the amount of polish and work put into it. It has become my favorite book reader instantly. And because of its huge library, you’ll always find a book to read. However, it is very expensive compared to other readers, but in some of those, you have to pay for books, or you only get a few. Anyone looking to read classic books on the iPhone must at least check out Eucalyptus. I might even say it is one of the most polished apps in the App Store.

MusicBox acts a lot like it’s brother product, VideoBox. You just drag a URL onto the window and choose the format and where to save. This would make sense because they are related products. So, once you are at the page you would like to download audio from, just drag the URL from your web browser of choice into MusicBox. It will then attempt to find audio on that page to download. If it doesn’t, though, it will prompt you with a WebKit view where you can press play, and then it will know what to do.

There is more than one way to choose a URL. MusicBox includes a Safari plugin that allows for one-click downloading. Just go to a URL, click the toolbar item, and you’re all set. To instal this go to MusicBox>Install Safari Plugin. The plugin even works with Safari 4 BETA.

MusicBox gives you a few formats to output the audio to. You can choose from raw, wav, mp3 and mp4, and also choose a bit rate (for all but raw). You can also choose to use the input file’s settings so no extra space is used for increasing quality that cannot be increased.

I do have a few gripes with MusicBox too. The main window shows a white-to-orange gradient with white text on it, which can be a bit hard to see, and looks a little funny. Also, one of the output options is mp4, but since MusicBox is only for audio, there is no reason to optput to a video format. Instead of mp4, m4a (AAC) should be included for maximum iTunes compatibility (or just for wanting all your songs in the same format). And one last thing is more of a warning that in issue. If you use any WebKit plugins to block flash video unless you click on it, you will usually have to play the clip for MusicBox because, well, the clip is being blocked.

MusicBox, by Tasty Apps retails for $15 and you can download a free trial from their site. It makes downloading music from the Internet very easy–You can do it in really only 2 steps. However, it is mostly for those who listen to music online and would like to bring it offline. Even for just downloading a bit of audio every now and then it can be very helpful, but for many it is unnecessary.

The user interface is what separates TwitterFon from the rest of the class. When new tweets are downloaded it will auto scroll to the beginning of the new tweets and shade all new tweets in blue. I prefer the visual difference between old tweets and new tweets. Many of the other applications auto scroll down to the last read tweet but dont identify the new ones visually. If you follow many people, as i do, you see many tweets per day. Occasionally I’d like to go back to one that referenced a link to a web page. TwitterFon has the ability to mark a tweet as a favorite with a gold star which will allow you to quickly find it from the favorites screen at a later time.

Another feature that I use and find fascinating is the search screen. Of course one can search for words but by using the GPS in the iPhone you can search in a defined radius from your current location. This is a great way to find people and activities in your local area. There is a trends feed within search that will show you what is most talked about on twitter at that moment. The search screen could use some refining and is a little confusing. The trends button toggles to the profile button when clicking in the search field and using the GPS for a search could be a little clearer. Perhaps the developer is trying to pack too much into one screen. I would prefer a little more real estate to input the search and hide the search criteria when the search results appear. Overall the app is very solid and doesn’t crash, the user interface is attractive, and the application is free with a small banner ad. Its worth a try.

For the most part, the answer to that is a resounding yes.  Peggle recreates the source material perfectly, level by level, offering a package as robust as the original which still sells for 4x the price.  Peggle veterans will find that everything they loved from the original is perfectly intact, from the addictive play mechanics to the wacky personalities.

Those of you new to Peggle (where have you been for the last two years??) will be pleasantly surprised by the fresh gameplay concept.  Peggle has it’s roots in games like Pachinko and Plinko, but is still entirely its own beast.  Each stage in Peggle is made up of dozens of pegs and squares.  Some of these are blue and some are orange.  The object of the game is to fire a ball from the top of the screen and remove all of the orange pegs.  The idea is simple enough and may even sound a tad boring to the uninitiated.  But Peggle is one of those rare games that’s equal parts luck and skill.  You’ll need to line up your shots perfectly to take out some orange pegs.  Other times its all about trying to figure out where you can ricochet the ball to reach those hard to get to pegs.   You’ll even find yourself weighing your options between clearing out some useless blue pegs or trying for that trick shot with the few balls you have remaining.

Each level plays host to a set number of stages, and during that level you’ll have the pleasure of meeting a Peggle Master who will give you a special power if you can hit the green peg.  These powers lend a lot to the strategies you’ll use.  Once you feel you’ve mastered the game, there are a number of different scoring possibilities out there that you can use as incentive to revisit a stage and conquer it all over again.   Completing the game will open up a totally new set of challenges.  Things like “clear this stage using only three balls,” “get such and such a score,” etc..  There’s a mountain of content in here for $4.99.

But the iPhone isn’t the Mac, and that means that certain tweaks to the gameplay had to be made in order to survive the transition.  Like all non-keyboard and mouse editions of Peggle, this version lacks the precision of the original.  Lining up shots, while still mostly accurate, has a few small hiccups that can be annoying at times.  You’ll aim with your finger and then remove your finger and press “FIRE” to shoot.  The only problem is that removing your finger generally causes you to nudge the shot a little.  Why they couldn’t have just taken advantage of the multi-touch surface to allow you to hold your shot with one finger and fire with the other is beyond me.  Still, the team at PopCap did an admirable job of modifying the controls to compensate for this.  Now, in addition to simply lining up the shot and firing, you can zoom in on your target area as well as use a dial to fine tune your shot.  It’s a few extra steps then you might want but you’ll find that you won’t need to go this route most of the time.  Unless you’re trying to pull off tht impossible shot, you’ll likely be good with a post-nudge firing.

Despite the small ripple of discomfort that occassionally pops up in aiming, Peggle on the iPhone offers an incredible amount of content and all of the fun and charm of the original.  Whether you were already in love with the original or have never heard the word before in your life, Peggle is pretty much a must buy for anyone with even a passing interest in video games.

Peggle is available now on the iTunes AppStore for $4.99.

The main window is uncluttered, yet powerful.

Meet SOHO Notes, the anything and everything note-taking app. Put notes into folders and sub-folders, label them, encrypt them, scan them in, record and link audio files as notes, set alarms, define your own forms for quick notes, sync your notes with MobileMe, write them in full screen: the list goes on and on.

Power users are likely going to want to start out by heading up to the Preferences panel, where they’ll be met with appearance tweaks, shortcuts, blog publishing settings, MobileMe and iPod syncing options, backup settings, security, and more. SOHO Notes features a basic text editor with standard rich-text formatting options very similar to TextEdit. Each note’s title is highlighted by a bold navy blue title bar that really helps distinguish between different notes.

One of the pre-built forms is for software serial numbers

The app has an integrated web browser to allow web research to be done from inside the note taking area, and web archives can be saved to pull webpages down to the app. Notes can be viewed full screen, in tabs, and inline with the app.

Naturally everything is searchable inside the application, and SOHO Notes also fully integrates with Spotlight to make locating notes incredibly easy. Smart folders as well as custom folders can be made inside the app to help quickly sort the notes. The app also integrates quite nicely with iPhoto, Address Book, Mail, and iCal.

SOHO Notes functions in both single-user and multi-user environments. SOHO Notes allows remote databases to be accessed over a network, allowing for employees to share meeting notes and other company documents. Users can be assigned read/write privileges to certain folders and access a number of encrypted databases on a server.

The Database Manager helps users create and access shared databases

The amount of features is quite frankly staggering (way too many to list here, though we’ve tried), but the application feels very manageable and intuitive. A single-user license sells for $39.99, with a family pack for $69.99. SOHO Notes can also be purchased inside of the SOHO Organizer suite. Chronos has really done it with SOHO Notes. Its a clean, un-cluttered app, with an extraordinary amount of power. SOHO Notes is only compatible with Leopard.