Koingo Software would like to announce a special New Years promotion with MacZot, where they’re offering MacCleanse alongside another 10 applications from other developers for only $59! These include titles like GarageSale, DEVONthink Personal, AppZapper, Xslimmer, Media Rage and more!
Every Mac user has probably noticed that the Address Book application that ships with your Mac has the option to show an image for each contact card. This of course holds true to the contacts application on your iPhone or your iPod touch. Getting an image for every person in your Address Book could take you a while. However, if any of your contacts use Facebook, and of course if you do also, there is a simple and free way to get their profile picture in to your Address Book. Of course if it can get into your Address Book, it can get onto your iPhone or iPod touch when you sync with iTunes, or if you use MobileMe. The Application is called AddressBookSync and the developers name is Dan Auclair.
Continue reading about AddressBookSync: Download Facebook Profile Pics
I’m sure there are new people coming to the mac all the time, and of course one of the first podcasts they’ll come to is here. And I thought that I hadn’t heard this app mentioned for a while and it deserves a mention as it is one of the best monitors out there.
iStatpro is a great little Widget that allows you to monitor various details of the in’ards of your beloved machine.
I’m crazy about screen snapshot software. Seriously, I’ve run through about 25 on the Mac and 10 on Winodws, always searching for that perfect application. I’ve pretty much settled in on Skitch on the Mac side, but I still use command-control-shift-4 when I need to capture a pulldown menu, or sometimes I’ll even use ScreenSteps because they’ve got a very powerful snapshot tool in there. When Tim suggested a review of Little Snapper from realmacsoftware.com, I didn’t think twice before volunteering. The competition in this space has been turning out cooler features every year that I didn’t dream I need – until I had them!
Continue reading about Little Snapper Screen and Web Capture
If you listen to the MacReviewCast you will know that I recently discussed with Tim the purchase of a case for the iPhone that I was planning. Fundamentally I am not a fan of cases for phones, in particular the iPhone as it is such a well designed device that I can’t really see the point of hiding it away in a case.
Continue reading about Power Support Crystal Jacket for iPhone 3G (Clear)
This week we have our Holiday Special! Plus, we review LittleSnapper, Hyperspaces, iStat Menus Pro, iSkin Revo2 and more. I want to thank you for downloading and listening to the podcast. We have the best in Mac hardware, software and websites reviews. We have a lot of great folks on today’s episode with their reviews and comments on software, hardware and websites that make using the Mac special. Plus I’ll have the top freeware Mac apps of the week and much more.
You can email me at surfbits at Gmail dot Com. I love to hear from you.
Receive 25% off of all Devon-Technologies software by going to http://www.devon-technologies.com/podcasts
Here is the freeware and shareware I look at during the podcast:
Tag Folders: http://web.me.com/jonstovell
Disk Inventory X: http://www.derlien.com
Point N See: http://customsolutionsofmaryland.50megs.com/pointnsee.htm
MacTracker: http://www.mactracker.ca
Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast Podcast looks at:
LittleSnapper: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/index.php
Darren Rolfe from MacWingNut.com joins us and talks about
iSkin revo2: http://www.iskin.com/revo2_overview.html
David Sparks from MacSparky joins us this week and reviews:
HyperSpaces: http://hyperspacesapp.com/
Gazmaz Joins us again this week to review:
iStat Menu Pro: http://islayer.com
Robert Lachman, L.A.Times Staff Photographer joins us. His Web site is PhotographyandtheMac.com, and we talk about:
How to take good Digital Holiday Photos and what to do with them afterwards.
And Last, but not least, we have the Lovely and Talented Lola Wong with a special Holiday treat for us all! You don’t want to miss this.
Try the new ENHANCED version of the MacReviewCast:
And now we have the Podcast in Bit-Torrent Feeds! 
… 
You can either click on the podcast link on the left and listen to it via QT from the browser, or you can right click on the podcast link and choose to “download linked file”. That will download the mp3 and you can play it from you hard drive with iTunes.
The right link below is the URL for the podcast RSS feed. Just right click it and choose to copy the address and then paste it in your podcast reader, or ipodder, or newsreader that will download enclosures automatically.
 |
 |
 techpodcasts.com |
Technorati Tags:
software, review, mac, apple, iTunes, Mac mini, podcast, Macreviewcast, podcasting, maccompanion, OSX, iPhoto, Exposure 2
Continue reading about The MacReviewcast #191: Special Holiday Edition
Be not mislead by the seemingly minor advance in version numbers – this 1.6 release is a major jump from the previous 1.5.x releases. So be prepared for a series of stunning changes in ForkLift’s user interface, created by our dedicated crew at the workflow tuning workshop. This is a free upgrade and recommended for all Leopard users.
Continue reading about Forklift Goes Through a Major Facelift
This week I’m going to review Bokeh from Alien Skin Software. It’s a plug-in used with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. The basic concept of the software is to make your subject stand out or pop by using the software to create vignettes or shallow depth of field with the background.
The software makes things fuzzy, but that’s a good thing if you can control where the out-of-focus goes. Sounds complicated, but not with Bokeh from Alien Skin. It’s very simple and well designed software. Let’s take a look at who the program is designed for.
TaskPaper is a Mac application that simply lets you make lists. But unlike other note applications or text editors, it’s has powerful functionality without the steep learning curve of other organizing apps.
When you launch a new document, TaksPaper *looks* like a text editor – but after typing in a few entries (following a very simple system of punctuation) each line is auto-formatted into it’s designated category.
Entries can be broken into four categories: projects, tasks, notes, and tags. Projects end with a colon, a task is created by starting the entry with a dash, a note is any line that is not a project or a task (so no designated punctuation) and a tag is created using the @ symbol. Tags that have been established auto-complete and can even hold a priority if a value is added in parentheses after the tag name.
Perhaps the single biggest obstacle to writing on a computer is distraction. Think about it. Back when you used a pencil and paper or a typewriter, those devices didn’t have the ability to instantly deliver mail to you, serve up a news feed, play games, check scores, or twitter your friends.
So the one thing our old technology had over the new stuff is that when we used them, we had no choice but to actually write. This is where WriteRoom comes in. Hog Bay Software’s WriteRoom is a word processor that excels at one thing, distraction free writing. When you start up WriteRoom and put it in to distraction free mode, your Mac magically turns into an Apple II. You see nothing but a black screen and green text. There is not tempting menu bar, Safari window, or anything else to distract you. Just the words and the screen.
gtdagenda.com ($69.95 Premier Account) is a project and task management application based on David Allen’s GTD. It has the main features like Projects, Contexts and Next Actions that you would expect in an application of this sort.
It has taken me a while to get round to writing this review as my relationship with gtdagenda.com has been very stop/start. I should stress that this has nothing to do with the application but with my own blogging laziness, the fact that I haven’t really been that busy so haven’t exactly had many tasks to manage, and the ongoing debate I have with myself over the cloud life.
I am always somewhat skeptical with ‘productivity’ type applications and services as I tend to feel that you spend an age setting them up, populating them, and then forcing them into your workflow that it becomes counter productive. With gtdagenda.com I took the conscious decision that I would just let it sit there and I would allow it to worm its way into by workflow as and when it felt relevant, and I certainly wasn’t going to spend any time setting it up!! To that end I didn’t bother to look at everything that it could do as I felt that would ‘force me’ into using the features regardless of need.
Continue reading about GTDagenda.com: Online Task Management
This week we look at plus much more. I want to thank you for downloading and listening to the podcast. We have the best in Mac hardware, software and websites reviews. We have a lot of great folks on today’s episode with their reviews and comments on software, hardware and websites that make using the Mac special. Plus I’ll have the top freeware Mac apps of the week and much more.
You can email me at surfbits at Gmail dot Com. I love to hear from you.
Receive 25% off of all Devon-Technologies software by going to http://www.devon-technologies.com/podcasts
Here is the freeware and shareware I look at during the podcast:
AppCleaner: http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner
Scribus: http://www.scribus.net
Vox: http://www.voxapp.net
Macsome AudioSplitter: http://www.macsome.com/audio-splitter-mac
Torrent Dam: http://torrentdam.sourceforge.net
TrueCrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org
Sweet Home 3D: http://www.sweethome3d.eu
Chris Marshall from ChrisMarshall.ws joins us this week. He reviews:
GTDagenda.com: http://gtdagenda.com
Power Support Crystal Jacket for iPhone 3G (Clear)
David Sparks from MacSparky joins us this week and reviews:
WriteRoom: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
Robert Lachman, L.A.Times Staff Photographer joins us. His Web site is PhotographyandtheMac.com, and he talks about:
Bokeh: http://www.alienskin.com/bokeh/index.aspx
Tom Piraino from MacinTomBlog.com looks at:
AddressBookSync: http://danauclair.com/addressbooksync
Our Good Friend Lola Wong joins us and reviews:
TaskPaper: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper
Try the new ENHANCED version of the MacReviewCast:
And now we have the Podcast in Bit-Torrent Feeds! …
You can either click on the podcast link on the left and listen to it via QT from the browser, or you can right click on the podcast link and choose to “download linked file”. That will download the mp3 and you can play it from you hard drive with iTunes.
The right link below is the URL for the podcast RSS feed. Just right click it and choose to copy the address and then paste it in your podcast reader, or ipodder, or newsreader that will download enclosures automatically.
|
|
techpodcasts.com |
Technorati Tags:
software, review, mac, apple, iTunes, Mac mini, podcast, Macreviewcast, podcasting, maccompanion, OSX, iPhoto, Exposure 2
Continue reading about The MacReviewcast #190: Bokeh, Taskpaper, AddressBookSync, GTDagenda.com
This one was going to be interesting because I wasn’t exactly sure what RoadMovie was for when I started. That wouldn’t stop me though, right? I did some reading on their website and it looks like RoadMovie is designed to allow you to add captions to your movies and also to convert them to h.264 video in some common formats like for the iPhone.
When I downloaded and installed RoadMovie, I launched it and it gave me the option of watching a Quickstart movie. Excellent, that’s just what I need! The bummer was the movie wouldn’t play. I hit that play button about 12 times but it wasn’t having any of that. Oh well, I’ll jump in anyway.
Do you constantly find yourself moving bits of text and pictures between different applications? I do. Because I do so much writing it is often simple text and I’ve found the free utility Jumpcut completely adequate for this purpose. Clips, however, goes way beyond keeping a list of recently copied text snippets. So the question becomes whether additional functionality would be useful?
