International Mac Podcast

I’ll admit it. I’m a keyboard junkie. I hate using my mouse. My trackpad is tolerable, but I just cannot stand using a mouse. I am so much faster using a keyboard than I am a mouse. One of the products that helps me accomplish this ludicrous speed on my Mac is Launchbar. This handy utility allows my fingers to fly all over my Mac, launching apps, navigating the filesystem, moving files, opening documents, making calculations, pasting things, doing Google searches, and a whole lot more. However, the one area in which Launchbar was unable to help me was making calendar events. Launchbar does have the ability to add events to a particular calendar, but it required a very specific syntax that I could never remember. While my calendaring app of choice, Busycal, is certainly better at this than iCal, creating events was always a very mouse-intensive process. I thought I was doomed to calendar-mousing-hell, until I discovered Fantastical.

Fantastical is a new menubar application that has been receiving a lot of press lately in the Mac community. It is an app that displays the current day and day of the week in the menubar. If you click it, you see the current month, and any upcoming calendar events, color coded with their respective calendars. It allows you to view other months, and other events. While these features are nice, it is what appears at the top of the window that is so amazing. There is a text box that allows you to create new calendar events in natural language. This is incredible. I can type something like

Have lunch with Steve at 7PM next Tuesday at Betelnut

and Fantastical will decipher this into a calendar appointment, filling in all the important fields, allowing you to edit, then save the event. This is incredible in and of itself. You can configure a keyboard shortcut to activate Fantastical from any application, and you can immediately begin typing to create a new event.

However, I have a dream. My dream is to have Launchbar be the window to my Mac world. I want to be able to do just about anything from Launchbar. Already, I am well on my way to this. I can use it to move files, launch any app, open any file or folder, do calculations, add OmniFocus tasks, browse to a URL, do a Google search, and a wide variety of other cool things. And now, with the new version of Launchbar, I can create calendar appointments, too. Launchbar 5.1 allows the use of 3rd Party calendaring utilities. Now, when I select one of my calendars in Launchbar and invoke it, I can type in natural language into Launchbar, then when I hit return, Launchbar will pass the input to Fantastical, which parses what I typed, just as if I typed it into Fantastical itself! While this may not seem like a big deal, I think this is huge, because it is establishing Launchbar as the central access of my Mac life, and I can do just about anything thru it. I don’t need to remember a bunch of different shortcuts for all my different apps and utilities; I don’t even need to open them half the time! Launchbar just runs my entire Mac, and I think this is amazing.

If you want to get in on this awesomeness, you can get Fantastical at the Mac App Store for $20 USD, and Launchbar for $35 USD.

This post originally appeared at Blog.ConnorP.com.

Tiny Wings is a game for iOS produced by independent developer Andreas Illiger. The game’s story tells of a bird with “Tiny Wings” that wants to fly, but can’t (Kind of like Orville except without without Keith Harris’ hand up its butt – Stu) and the only way it can take flight is by using hills to propel yourself, as this bird, into the skies. But, what game would be complete without a challenge, night time is chasing you and if it catches up with you, it’s game over, literally.

Want to outrun the night, and become utterly addicted to a game about a bird? Then keep reading! (more…)

OK, so before I start let me get the good old disclosure stuff out of the way. The wonderful folks at OWC were kind enough to ship over the bundle I’m about to talk about. It’s a 60 day review deal, but as you’ll soon read, I plan to purchase this from them. While we’re on the subject of the folks at OWC, I’d like to extend a huge thanks to both Grant and Eileen from OWC for getting everything setup and giving me the green light for this review.

Also, let me say up front, this is a long review. I wanted to really give this setup a good write up, so if you’re at all interested, please do keep reading, you can rant at me in the comments if you want!

The Problem to be Solved

As my friend Allison Sheridan (from the Nosillacast podcast, hosted over at podfeet.com) would always ask, “What problem are you trying to solve?” Well that’s a great question and I think the best way is to look at the typical situation most Mac users, particularly those with MacBook Pros, find themselves in. (more…)

Charging, it’s both magical and a pain in the rear. Yes the process of getting power from  a wall socket into your latest gadget is pretty amazing, but it’s just SO inconvenient. 1 socket, 5 devices, 5 different cables and a spaghetti-like mess of unadulterated chaos. Sound familiar? I bet it does.

This is where the Powermat comes into play.  This sleek and stylish little table provides a one-stop shop for all your charging needs.  But, Oli, you may ask. How does it do that? Well you inquisitive reader you, allow me to explain. (more…)

This is a companion review for the NosillaCast podcast for RemotePad, an iPhone and iPod touch remote control app.

So, you’ve been buying equipment, enduring the harsh and sometimes often untruthful sales pitches from Best Buy associates, and you’re now setting it up. Your home theater system is starting to look really good, but how to control the Mac mini at the center of it all? RemotePad does that, and it does it well.

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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…)