As more of our lives are shared online, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of the things we want to keep private. You may be surprised how much of a trail you leave behind just from browsing the Internet. From saved cookies to form history, your personal information is scattered around your computer and the web.
Many applications on your Mac, including browsers, offer different settings to let you control what is and isn’t saved. However, it can be a complicated process to manually go through dozens of settings screens to ensure that everything is set in a way that will protect your privacy. PrivacyScan from Secure Mac helps you easily delete all of these potentially sensitive pieces of information.
With features like voicemail transcription, a master number for all your phones, free text messaging, and custom greetings based on who’s calling, Google Voice has become a wildly popular service for cell phone users. I’ve been using Google Voice for years, and for the most part I’ve found it to be a near-perfect communication tool.
The Google Voice iPhone app is decent, (the Android version is understandably better), but as long you’re sitting at the computer, it’s simpler to use the web interface to access voicemail and send text messages. GrowlVoice eliminates the need to open your browser to use Google Voice, and adds very convenient Growl notifications. How well does it perform?
Whether you’re a developer who wants to showcase the functionality of your new software, or you’re just the person in your family to whom all tech questions are brought, being able to clearly demonstrate how to use a program can be important. That can also be a challenge, considering how small a cursor is and the difficulty of keeping up with single clicks, double clicks, keyboard shortcuts, and more.
Boinx Software hopes to solve these problems with its simple tool called Mouseposé that helps make your demos and presentations easier to follow. Does it deserve a place in your menubar?
Once a small classifieds list for the San Francisco Bay area, Craigslist has evolved into a global marketplace and one of the Internet’s most visited sites. Craigslist has gained a loyal following thanks to the broad range of uses, from buying and selling goods and services, to finding a casual romantic partner who shares your unusual interests.
Unfortunately, as the site has grown and become available in thousands of new cities, the bare-bones layout has remained stuck in the 90′s. The simple format of plain text and links makes load times quick and navigation a bit less cumbersome than eBay, but you can’t help wishing there was a bit more functionality in the site. CraigShopper steps in to help those of us who want a few extra features to tweak the browsing process.
In contrast to the common consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation, iOS devices have popularized a more casual style of games. Mac gaming has come a long way in recent years, but this trend towards a more relaxed gameplay has been clearly influenced by iOS games. The Mac App Store has seen a surge of these casual games, some even directly ported from the iPad or iPhone.
BombSquad, a game by Eric Froemling, involves using different types of bombs to blow up your opponents. It takes this simple premise and expands it into various game formats. It won’t be mistaken for a blockbuster console game, but its simplicity lends itself to a less serious iOS-like diversion.
There is certainly no shortage of finance apps available for the Mac. For some odd reason, Intuit has shied away from offering it’s full-fledged Quicken software for Mac. They offer a watered-down version called “Quicken Essentials for Mac,” but as someone who has used it, I can tell you that they are using that word “essentials” loosely, and charging far too much for the app. It lacks even the most basic features that people expect of any software for tracking their expenses, paying their bills, and organizing their finances in general.
As a result, the field is wide open for competing finance apps for the Mac. Today we are going to take a look at Money Plus, and see how it stacks up against the competition.
Since the advent of the App Store for iDevices, there has been an influx of apps that serve a very particular niche and perform a single, basic function. This trend has started to move towards the Mac in a very noticeable way, and the Mac App Store has facilitated the acceleration.
Many of these single-purpose apps serve a specific function, such as Caffeine, which allows you to temporarily deactivate your screensaver, or Boom, which squeezes more power out of your laptop’s wimpy speakers. Others don’t serve any real purpose, and are just for simple entertainment, and Mousterpiece certainly qualifies as frivolous app meant only for your amusement. Is it worth a download? Read on to find out.
From his first appearance in comic books in 1939 to Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic reboot, the Batman franchise has seen countless reinterpretations in print, TV, and film. Batman: Arkham Asylum isn’t the first time that Bruce Wayne’s crime-fighting alter ego has shown up in a video game, but it is the first one in several years to be come to the Mac.
Originally released in 2009, Feral Interactive developed the game for OS X last year. The game received almost universal praise when it was reviewed for the major consoles and for Windows, but does the Mac version successfully replicate the original’s success?
As smartphones have advanced over the last few years, their storage capacities have grown by leaps and bounds. All that space means more apps, music, and movies to use while on the go. However, transferring large amounts of media files can be a tedious and time-consuming task, (particularly if you sync over WiFi).
Fortunately, a simple solution exists that allow us to stream our media to phones, tablets and laptops, thus eliminating the need to sync to our various devices. But does the convenience of personal streaming outweigh the limitations inherent to such a solution?
We live in a world where protecting our privacy isn’t just a matter of principle. Letting your personal information get exposed can harm you financially if your credit card information is obtained, and your credit rating can be damaged if someone steals your identity. Your emails and chat messages can contain sensitive information that you want to ensure only go to their intended recipients.
Our computers hold abundant amounts of personal data that most of us would rather not let get into the wrong hands. You might be surprised to see just how many applications are constantly sending data out of your computer, and it is important to be sure that all that stuff is going to places you trust. Fortunately, there are apps that help us monitor what our computers are sending out, and allow us to selectively block transmissions. Here we are going to look at two excellent apps called Little Snitch and Hands Off that aim to do just that.
