Currently Browsing
Reviews
I guess I should start this review off with an admission… when it comes to personal finances, I’m very lazy. So lazy that I never budget and therefore always end up a couple of days before payday with no money. I guess the reason behind this is that setting up a spreadsheet to forecast my financial situation does not appeal to me in the slightest.
However, when Cashculator dropped on my desk this month, I thought I should at least give budgeting a go, if only just to review the software. It turns out that Apparent Software have made a pretty decent little app.
Wouldn’t it be good to organise all your social networks in one window that sits right on your desktop. Socialite combines the power of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Google Reader and RSS feeds in one convenient location.
Socialite organises your social networks together so you can easily manage all your services. It also allows you to use most of the functionality of the websites within the application (e.g. Twitter’s new ‘Lists’ feature).
Flow is a fantastic FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application that is set apart from the crowd by it’s beautiful interface that integrates well with the system scheme. The application feels native to the Mac OS X and is very easy to use – much like Finder.
This review will give you an in-depth look at the features that Flow offers as well as how it stacks up to various competitors. Flow was developed by the team over at extendmac and sells for the fantastic price of $25. Currently it is available for Mac OSX 10.5 and above.
Out of the box, your Mac is a relatively secure piece of equipment. It comes with a firewall, is more-or-less immune to viruses, and can be locked in a number of different ways. Airlock is a new piece of software that aims to add an extra level of security, in conjunction with an iPhone or iPod touch.
Whenever your phone moves a certain distance away from your computer, Airlock can automatically lock the screen. When you return, your Mac unlocks automatically. It’s a very simple idea, but one that could prove useful in many different circumstances.
It’s happened to all of us. You’re working on a document in Pages, a spreadsheet in Excel, or a masterpiece in Photoshop, and you completely forget to save. Suddenly the power cuts out, the application crashes, or someone closes your document without saving, and all of your hard work has vanished without a trace.
Just as I finished typing the paragraph above, Pages automatically saved itself. This is not a feature included with iWork, but the wonder of a new application from Tool Force Software called ForeverSave. This work of genius automatically saves and backs up all documents in applications you ask it to. This review will take a look at what this app lets you do, along with a few limitations.
There is no doubt Twitter and Facebook have changed the landscape of communication, both between individuals and between companies and their customers, and the list of ways for interacting with or through both platforms keeps growing day by day.
Well, on every list there is a first item leading the way, and in the crowded space of Twitter clients, there is one king second only to Twitter’s very own web. Today we’ll take a look at TweetDeck, a multi-platform Twitter client built on AIR and also available for the iPhone, which has some very nice Facebook and MySpace features up it’s sleeve.
The first words that jump into my mind when I think about the iTunes controller market are “over saturated.” That said, many of them skimp on the features, and lack a little design polish. Only a handful of them do their job well, and only a few of those do it with style.
CoverSutra by Sophiestication software is my personal favorite iTunes controller. I’m going to detail why I chose it over the other controllers out there, and highlight a few of the features that make it particularly unique.
There comes a time in the life of a designer where they seek methods to make their already beautiful design magnificent. The grid system is one of these such alternate methods, with many application developers, both online and offline, creating their own for a specific purpose. Two popular examples in the web field are the 960 grid system and the blueprint framework. Slammer takes this to a whole new level, adding in powerful tools to manipulate your grid system framework across all platforms.
Slammer, developed by Ringce, is an advanced layout tool that allows web and interface designers alike to create and tweak their layouts to align with a grid system, golden sections, harmonious sections and the fibonacci series.
Today, I’ll be taking a look at TimeNet, a long-standing player in the field of time tracking and project management. The application allows you to take control of your clients and projects, easily send invoices, and stay on top of who owes you what.
It offers a fairly simple window-based interface, to show you only the information you need at any given time. This makes it pleasant to navigate, and slightly different from more complex competitors.
Flickr is arguably the most widely used photo sharing website around, with hundreds of thousands of photos hosted online and a fantastic API resulting in many third party apps.
Today we will look at Flickery, a Mac desktop client which pretty much does it all, from managing your account to searching the Flickr photo library. Flickery has been developed by Eternal Storms Software who also brought us Hierarchical Dock and GimmeSomeTune.
