International Mac Podcast

It seems I start every post with a discussion of my GTD theme, but I do want to say that it has evolved. Instead of being about GTD, the system, it’s more about organizing and removing distraction. It is in that spirit that I bring you a comparison of many apps that any writer may find a use for: the fullscreen text editor. This idea revolves around removing more or less everything but your words from your screen, and having you concentrate on what you type. (more…)

A little disclaimer before I begin the review. Ambrosia Software, developers of Wiretap Anywhere, did provide me with a review license of their product, however please know that it has not in any way biased me in my review. I thank Ambrosia Software for allowing me to review their product.

Again before we begin, I have an apology to make. The above mentioned review copy of Wiretap Anywhere was given to me, at my request, almost one year ago, in March, 2009. I had every intention to review it immediately, but as often happens, life gets in the way. I hope Ambrosia will forgive me for this.

Now, into the review proper. Wiretap Anywhere ($129 USD, http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wta/) is a piece of software for the Macintosh to allow you to direct any sort of audio in any sort of way. It does this by creating virtual audio devices. (more…)

Like most of you reading this post, I have a fairly worrying number of social media accounts: Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader and multiple Twitter accounts, which for some reason I feel the need to be constantly updated on. I think you realise you’re a social media addict when you meet someone in person and refer to by their Twitter handle, as @Chris… I mean Chris Wall will attest to!

Up until recently I’ve had to run a Twitter client (Tweetie, of course), an RSS reader, and then have Fluid SSBs for Facebook and Flickr, which meant a lot of dock real estate hogging and a fair bit of CPU and RAM usage too.

Then I found Socialite, formerly EventBox, from the lovely folks at Real Mac Software. I had a license of EventBox from a while ago, but the Real Mac Software gang kindly upgraded that to a Socialite license for no extra cost.

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A great many years ago I started creating a Christmas DVD with slideshows and videos of the past year for my family. Creating the content and making it look good isn’t that big of a problem, since that’s what I got iLife (and FinalCut Express) for. However creating the labels and covers for the DVD has been a very different challenge.

Back in 2005 when I started with those DVDs in earnest, I was using LightScribe to print those DVD labels. I got a bit of software with my DVD-Writer that made creating the DVD labels bearable, however those labels didn’t have that much contrast and thus despite looking good, they weren’t right for me. In 2008 I purchased a Canon printer that was able to print directly on DVD and again I got a bit of software that made creating the labels ok, but amazingly it didn’t work all that well with the printer.

Creating DVD covers ended up as a task for Pages and a ruler to measure an existing cover to get things just about right. Those cover were only limited by my lack of creativity. For Christmas 2009 I ended up getting a copy of DiscLabel from SmileOnMyMac and let me tell you, creating beautiful and stunning DVD labels and covers was a breeze.

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With Apple’s new mouse comes some pluses and some minuses. There a couple new features to the mouse, including multi-touch, multi-touch gestures, and momentum scrolling (all of which are welcome additions). Some features were left on the cutting room floor as they crafted the new tinier mouse. Exposé and Dashboard buttons have been taken away, however I believe they will return in the form of a software update.  The multi-touch gestures to go forward a page and backward a page are a bit awkward to activate but once you get used to it it’s nice to be able to do. Also adium users will be able to use these gestures to switch between chat windows, like you can on the MacBooks.

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I don’t know about you, but as a web designer I find it quite frustrating when working on a project to have to run a seperate FTP app. How great would it be if you could see all your files and folders on the remote server within Finder?!!

ExpanDrive is a really unique FTP client that does just that by providing a simple, convenient way to access, and edit files on your remote server by mounting it as if it were an external hard drive on your local system.

So lets dive in, and take a look at how it works. (more…)

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in a chat with a friend, and no matter what you do they don’t just get what you’re telling them about their computer, or vice versa. Put it down if you wouldn’t be able to solve that with a screenshot. The problem with that is getting the screenshot across the chat connection.

TinyGrab is a simple application with a web service attached that cuts out all the work. When you take a screenshot, TinyGrab uploads it to grab.by and copies the link to the clipboard. Unlike some other uploading sites, it doesn’t copy the link to a page with the image and some other content, such as ads. The link is to an image file, so you can (for example) embed it in a webpage or any chat that supports pictures. (more…)