Similar to the old arcade game Snake, Nimble Quest is a new game that lets you grow your train of characters, becoming stronger with each addition. Unlike Snake, though, where you created a huge, mutant reptile that roamed the arid arcade plains in search of food to fuel its ever increasing monstrous bulk, in Nimble Quest you’re creating a party of heroes and slaying baddies.
Is Nimble Quest a fun take on a classic or just a rip off of an old favorite? We’ll take a look and find out! (more…)
A computer network exists to ease the transfer of data from one computer to another. Before networks became common in homes and offices, moving even a small file would require transferring the file to some temporary medium, often a floppy disk, taking that temporary storage to the other location, and then copying the file onto the new destination computer. It took more time and effort and moving a file to a computer in another building or location required someone to walk or drive the disk there. Now with the ubiquity of networks this task has become an almost transparent action. We routinely move files around our local networks with little more difficultt than moving files within on our computer.
This easy transfer still only holds in when the source and destination are two computers on a local network. Once you need to transfer a file over the Internet, that is to a computer somewhere else, things get more complicated. This is such a common need and over time several dedicated protocols such as FTP and SFTP arose for this task. Unlike the seemingly transparent transfers on the local network, transfers with these protocols require a specialized client such as Cyberduck or FileZilla to move files between the remote location and your local computer.
The ExpanDrive app seeks to bring the convenience of a local drive to remote storage normally accessed through FTP, SFTP, and on Amazon’s S3 service. It makes a FTP, SFTP, or Amazon S3 connection appear like a USB drive plugged into your computer and transfers to these remote systems as simple as moving a file to an external hard drive. Let’s look at how well it works. (more…)
You’ve likely used word processors like Word, TextEdit, and Pages, as well as plain-text writing apps like iA Writer and Byword. If you’re a serious writer, you’ve likely used or at least looked at advanced writing apps like Scrivener or the original Ulysses.
But you’ve never seen anything like Ulysses III. It’s a totally new take on an advanced writing app, bringing the best of Markdown-focused plain text editors together with a multi-document management system that makes sense. Throw in HUDs that make Markdown formatting easier to use than rich editing in Word, and you’ve got one serious writing app. One that must be seen to be believed.
Recently I’ve gotten interested in time management techniques and apps, and I’ve gotten to review a few Pomodoro Technique apps and even had an interview with the developer of one of them. If you’re easily distracted and have a tendency to procrastinate, there’s nothing better than a little pull on the ears to keep you on track and away from distractions, and those tools are great for that.
But what about when those tools become more distracting and harder to use than they are helpful? Having all those great features and animations can actually slow you down, as I have found. So the question is, are these tools actually necessary, and to what extent? Let’s explore a few of the ins and outs of the problem.
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I love to see new games move to the Mac, but I’m primarily a console gamer. The difference for me is the console controller, and while I could invest in a Mac gaming controller, there’s some cost involved there, and, well, I already have my consoles for games like that.
That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes want a game controller for my Mac, but I can’t exactly plug my DualShock 3 into my USB port. My hopes haven’t been far off, though, because WJoy is a tiny app that will connect your Wii Remote and Mac, allowing you to use it as a controller for Mac games. We’ll see if it works as advertised. (more…)
And we’re back to Thursday’s News and Deals roundup!
The selection of news, deals and reads for this week looks superb, seriously. We’ve got Ulysses III coming to the Mac App Store and Reeder going free, Rdio’s new video streaming and Amazon’s cloud sync service.
Don’t miss our interesting reads for this week, because they are great! Alfred extensions, iCloud, App Store pricing, DuckDuckGo and more should give you enough reading material for the weekend.
We’ve all had to carry over text between different places, and it’s really annoying having your text pasted with all sorts of different weird formatting styles and other things that don’t carry over so well like bullet points, which then double your work as you have to correct and re-format what you’ve pasted to make it coincide with the rest of your text.
The app we are reviewing today is called TextScrub, and as its name implies, it can help you tidy up the text that’s in your clipboard so that it’s more easily transferred over. Sound interesting?
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I work from home on my own computer, so of course I have a bunch of apps to get me through the day. You know, I listen to music, send and respond to email, and am constantly using one browser or another. To tell you I stream music using Spotify or use Safari to browse isn’t really letting you in on any secrets of how I get through my day or giving out any tips on what apps I can’t live without.
Instead of looking to the more conspicuous apps that I use everyday and always have open, I want to let you in on some of the apps that don’t seem so integral at first blush, but that I just can’t make it through the day without. (more…)
If you need to work with different computers and devices throughout your day, then you are most likely familiar with all the cloud services that are around, like Dropbox, that allow you to keep your documents everywhere, always ready to be downloaded and uploaded again.
But then we’ve all been in those situations where we just forget to switch a file we are working on to our cloud folder so that it gets synced. Wouldn’t it be cool to have an app that automatically uploaded everything recent for you, regardless of its location on your computer? That’s what Quicksand’s all about. Let’s check it out!
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I like puzzles, and I like trains, so it happens that I’m often mistaken for a seven-year-old boy or a very active octogenarian. I don’t mind, though, because sometimes I get to combine puzzles and trains, and that’s pretty cool. This isn’t Jigsaw.PuzzleStorm, though, so it’s got to be something a lot better than a 1000 piece locomotive, right?
That’s where Rails comes in, a labor of love from developer BeLight Software. Build your own rail yard and get your trains to their destination in this reboot of the DOS classic. But will the gameplay stand up after all these years? We’ll find out! (more…)
