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As social networks continue to grow, users share more and more of their lives online. Services like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are taking over as the primary places we spend our time online. Consequently, these networks are filled with years of our status updates, vacation photos, resumés, and more.
But what would happen if Instagram accidentally deleted years-worth of those 1970′s-style filtered photos of your brunches at the French restaurant down the street from your apartment? What if you lost access to your Facebook account and now would be unable to post a half-hearted happy birthday message to that guy who you vaguely remember from 7th grade P.E.? Fortunately, a service called SocialSafe has your social media life covered.
Simple, cheap (or free) image editing programs are incredibly easy to come by these days. If you simply need to do some basic image adjustments, resize an image or crop a photo, there are a huge number of programs available. This simple fact means that it can be quite overwhelming to sort through all of these programs in order to find one that’s right for you. Some programs, however, offer unique, high-quality features which make them stand out as unique amidst all of the incredibly similar programs available.
One of those programs is Thumbnailer Pro. This application allows you to easily crop, resize and rotate images. Simple editing tools are also available, allowing you to make simple adjustments, view details about the image and even apply some filters. Customizable presets, batch processing and an in-app file browser are rare features in the world of low-price image editing, allowing Thumbnailer Pro to stand out as a unique program. Stick with me after the jump to learn more about the features in Thumbnailer Pro and how well the program works.
I’m a huge news junkie. I run multiple RSS apps on my Mac, including Pulp and Reeder, each for different sets of RSS feeds that I subscribe to. In those rare moments that I get to step out of the office, whether I’m standing in line at the deli down the street or riding a bus downtown to meet up with my brother for lunch, I’m usually on my phone checking even more news feeds. Simply put, I drink heartily from the fountain of information that the Internet provides.
I recently stumbled across a somewhat unique RSS aggregator, and I wanted to show it to you today. Retickr is an app that lets you put together custom playlists of news feeds and display the top stories from them as a scrolling ticker on your screen. The idea is relatively novel and the execution is unique, but does Retickr have what it takes to become an arterial channel of information?
The smartphone revolution has made it extremely simple to document our life, every step of the way. In a lot of ways, it’s a good thing. Thanks to the crystal clear lenses in our pockets, we can forever capture cherishable moments not only as pictures, but also as videos with impeccable resolution (at least compared to what we’d have used a decade ago).
Over these years, a ton of apps and services have come up to help people organize their digital media. Managing images has never been easier, and from Picasa to iPhoto, there are so many nifty apps to help deal with our mountain of images. But what about all the shaky, blurry and perhaps the random good enough videos? That’s what Clipstart is for.
I have a Wacom tablet, and I love using it for a variety of purposes. If I want to do any sort of digital drawing or painting it is, of course, my tool of choice. Sometimes the drawings get quite detailed, full of many layers, colors, textures and more. In cases like those, opening Photoshop is completely justified. If, however, I just want to do a quick sketch or mock-up, opening Photoshop (or Corel or Sketchbook Pro or any other feature-heavy digital drawing/painting program) doesn’t always seem justified. When I find myself in that situation, I’m never quite sure what to do. Lately, however, I’ve been utilizing a great program called Inkist.
Inkist is a great new bitmap-based drawing and painting program that is great for simple drawings. The app works well with drawing tablets, boasts a small but intuitive feature set for a quick program, and is quite well designed. It’s definitely worth looking into, especially if you find yourself constantly waiting for Photoshop to load for just a few minutes worth of work. Read on to learn more about Inkist’s features, how it works and what I really think about it.
If you work regularly with an editing program of any sort – be it Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Avid, or other advanced programs – chances are good that you understand how truly important your personal preference files are. From keyboard shortcuts to import/export presets to installed plugins, preference files can incorporate a lot in a good editing program. In fact, without the proper preference files in place, an experienced editor’s productivity can completely disappear.
This brings me to the focus of the article – why it is important to always backup your preference files. If you are a serious editor, you probably already know why you should backup the files, and you might even be doing it already. If you don’t yet understand why you should backup the files or simply want to learn an easy way to backup the files with a convenient, free program called Preference Manager, then read on after the jump.
Wouldn’t it be great if Apple released an app that we could use to customize the look of the operating system? Just imagine that for a bit. Think of how you’d tailor your experience. Think of the abundance of different themes that people would post on the internet for everyone else to use. Hey, think about how many roundups we would write up!
Sadly for us, the ability to theme our system’s interface has never been an easy or flawless task. Sure, we had Manifique and a few apps like it, but now they are gone. That’s why icon customizers are still interesting, since tweaking icons is one of the best ways you can still tweak your Mac experience.
iCondubber is dubbed as the “definitive icon/theme manager”, and while it probably isn’t the “definitive” icon manager, it is without a doubt a helpful and useful tool. Let’s take a look, and see if it’s worth trying out. (more…)
It’s a huge pain having to constantly juggle multiple windows and apps to get the information I need to reference for the task at hand. Whether on a tiny MacBook Air or a spacious two-monitor desktop setup, I often have to rapidly switch from text editor to App Store to any of a dozen browser tabs while I work on an article.
With ScreenFloat those days are now largely behind me, as I can float screenshots of the pertinent information atop other windows. It’s easy to use, surprisingly versatile, and a huge time saver. And it lives right in my menubar (although there’s also an option to show the Dock icon instead, if you’re out of menubar space).
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Many of us have been using Mint’s web app to manage our finances online for years now. It even makes it easy to keep up with our spending on the go with full-featured mobile apps. But until recently, Mint hasn’t had a presence on the Mac.
All that’s changed with Mint QuickView, Mint’s first time out on the Mac App Store. A lot of what’s inside is going to look familiar, but there’s enough that’s new here to really make it a useful addition to the Mint family of financial tools. (more…)
As more iOS games are ported to OS X, the library of games in the Mac App Store keeps getting larger. Unfortunately for OS X users, this means that many games in the store were meant for smaller screens, limited controls, and “on-the-go” experiences. Granted, some developers do enhance your experience when porting a game over to OS X, but a lot of them don’t.
Keeping that in mind, let’s talk about Demolition Dash. This somewhat adorable platformer from dreamfab and Chimera Entertainment is one of those ported-to-the-Mac games that sometimes lacks the compelling factor a game should have on a non-mobile platform, but it can also provide a quick fix to your gaming needs.
