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Photos make for lasting memories. They are shared among family and friends and lead to stories about past events and fun. And we have been creating photo albums which tell the story of those memorable events for decades. With the rise of digital photography more and more often photos remain digital; sharing them often means showing a slideshow or emailing them. The art of creatively presenting photos seems to be on the path into oblivion.
Today we’ll take a look at ScrapPad for Mac. This app lets you stay on the digital path and still enjoy scrapbooking the analog way. Decorate, theme and share any way you want.
Many of us have had to learn a foreign language at some point, whether it was in school, in preparation for travel, or out of personal interest. We all know that learning a new language can feel like a never-ending process of skimming dictionaries and memorizing vocabulary, and without the proper tools, many learners end up getting frustrated.
One of the most essential tools for language learning is a quality bilingual dictionary. While people often head to the bookstore and look for a nice print dictionary, a dictionary app can be a good idea because of how fast and easy it is to look up words by typing. As far as dictionary apps go on the Mac, Ultralingua is one of the few solid, comprehensive choices. Read on to see how it can benefit your language studies.
Haven’t you ever dreamed about one day just out of nowhere pointing your finger at the globe and taking the next plane to the location that is selected? It’s a crazy idea, but we all have that adventurous side deep down that tells us to just go out and do it.
The app that we are reviewing today does that, sort of. It’s called KAYAK Explore and it uses the Kayak.com engine to help you find and book your next destination for a vacation. Let’s try it out!
Fed up with the nasty sound of your traditional alarm clock? That annoying beeping that rouses you in the middle of the night and does not really help to start a day in a good fashion?
Why not use what you’ve already got? The music in your iTunes library, Spotify or other music services combined with your Mac? Sleepytime lets you set exactly the song you want to hear when you go to sleep or wake up.
Journals or diaries are a great way to look back on things that you’ve done. You probably think that you don’t need to write down what you experience because you will remember it in the future, but if you try to look back now on anything you’ve done, I can guarantee you there’ll be some spots where your memory will fail you.
That’s why taking pictures when you’re traveling and just keeping a daily journal is a great idea if you care about having it there for posteriority. There are quite a few apps for the Mac that seek to simplify and improve that process, and today we’ll be reviewing one of them called “Chronories”. Let’s take a look!
As we move to more and more things becoming digital, it’s not surprising that we can now have cookbooks as eBooks and even as apps on our Macs. And thanks to integrated technologies cooking apps don’t have to simply hold a recipe, but can include detailed photos of ingredients and step-by-step tutorials.
The Photo Cookbook makes it deliciously easy, to fix any kind of dish and it does so with beautiful images and easy to follow instructions. Learn after the break how this app can bring you on your way to be the chef in your kitchen.
If you enjoy sports and workout regularly, you might already be keeping track of your exercise with one or more of the excellent online services available to you: Runkeeper, DailyMile, Garmin Connect among them. These services are great: they can really help you to gain insight into your performance, and to plot and plan improvements.
Some of us, though, prefer not to upload all our data online; it might be that you’re not particularly interested in the social networking benefits these services offer; or you’re concerned about possible privacy issues (you might not want the maps of your runs available to anybody). And so you might prefer to find an option that keeps the information local, storing it on your Mac. If that describes you, you’ll be interested in hearing about rubiTrack, a mature app that does an excellent job of recording and tracking your workouts.
Join me after the jump for a walkthrough of its main features.
Despite Apple’s near-domination of the digital media world with iTunes, Macs have never really had a stand-out solution for watching video – iTunes supports approximately 0 codecs, Front Row is pretty cumbersome, and standalone video players like QuickTime or VLC require far too much rooting around in my movies folders to find the movie I want. I’m looking for an easy-to-use, beautiful piece of software which will make watching movies on my Mac a pleasure.
This is where Plex comes in. As a firm favourite among movie-loving Mac users, Plex allows you to watch movies on your Mac from the comfort of your own sofa – It has support for the Apple Remote and accompanying iOS apps to improve the experience. To top it off, Plex even looks great. Could Plex be the media center app of my dreams? Let’s take a look!
This review should, in hindsight, be more of an obituary. As you are probably aware, Apple is planning to ditch Front Row from its latest release of Mac OS X, Lion. Why is anyone’s guess, but the fact that the last update for it was released in November 2009, I think we could all see it coming.
In comparison to other applications, Front Row is very basic and only offers a limited number of functions. Apple may want people to switch to the Apple TV, a small digital media receiver which did borrow heavily from Front Row, or maybe it ditched Front Row because of the rise of other, third-party media applications.
Boxee is one of these. Although the whole app and its interface had larger TVs in mind, it can still be used on desktops without too much trouble. Boxee has been around for a little while now – the public beta was released in January 2010 – however the application is still in its beta stage of development. It does boast a neat interface and some handy in-built features so even if you don’t have a large TV, you can still gain some use out of it on your computer.
Boxee is, in my opinion, the final nail in the coffin for Front Row. Read on to find out why.
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The internet has opened up a whole new world of recipes, available to anyone, anytime, without the need for piles of sauce-stained cookbooks. With so many amazing recipes out there, it can be hard to keep track of your favourites. Some people are content to use bookmarks, but what if you want to keep your recipes more organized, or want to add recipes of your own?
MacGourmet is designed as an “iTunes for your recipes”, allowing you to import, store, sort and update a huge library of recipes. Can an app take the place of a stack of recipe books and loose hand-writen recipes? Find out after the jump.
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