Archive for August, 2009
The Big Cat
Aug 29th
After Snow Leopard was a no show for me and many others on release day yesterday, apparently due to Royal Mail walkouts, I was hopeful that my copy would arrive today but wasn’t too expectant as the estimated delivery date was 2nd September. However, at 10am sharp my copy landed on the doormat. Once I’d told the world twitter that it had arrived, I went back to bed. Well, it is a Saturday afterall 
After breakfast I did a full Time Machine back-up, then ran OnyX to give my system a good clean. I also did this on Thursday in anticipation of a Friday installation, so things were pretty speedy with the housekeeping today. Once that was complete I popped in my disc and followed the on-screen instructions which was ‘Install Mac OS X’. I chose to upgrade rather than a clean install as I’d read it was Apple’s most tested path, hence why it’s offered as default. The installation took approximately 45 minutes and then a welcome sight was a big green tick with the words “Install Succeeded”.
Following my first reboot I noticed that DockStar wasn’t showing in my Mail preferences, so I had to reinstall that. CoverSutra was also another app that failed to work under Snow Leopard but I noticed an update had become available recently and now it works fine. I’m very impressed with the speed when opening some apps including Mail and Safari. I have also gained back 20GB hard disk space, so I jumped from 148GB to 168GB in 45 minutes. Impressive considering Apple estimated a freeing of 7GB.
Has your Big Cat arrived? Did your installation go smoothly?
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Loading ...Pre-ordering Snow Leopard
Aug 24th
Mac OS X Snow Leopard was added to the Apple Store today for pre-order, with a release date of Friday 28th August, priced £25/$29 with free shipping.
I pre-ordered my copy early this afternoon. I must admit to not being terribly excited about Snow Leopard as my focus has been somewhat on their hardware and this iTablet/iPad that has been rumoured to death for months now. I hope Apple officially announce one way or another soon what is happening on that front. Hopefully there will be confirmation on or around the next Apple Event, expected in September.
So, have you pre-ordered Snow Leopard yet? What features are you most looking forward to?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Manage Multiple Gmail accounts with Notify
Aug 23rd
For a year or two I have been using Gmail’s Notifier app on my Mac to keep a check on new mail. It sat in my menu bar and would give me a Growl notification when new mail was awaiting me. Now I’ve found another menu bar app that does the same thing, but oh so nicer.
Notify is a beautiful free app that sits in your menu bar and auto-checks your mail accounts as often every 1 minute or up to 15 minutes. Notify also has Growl Integration and will handle up to four Gmail accounts, unlike many others out there.
This has completely replaced Google’s official Gmail notifier for me. Elegant and beautiful, Notify feels right at home on the Mac.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Fun Booth 2 Review
Aug 22nd
If there’s one feature of the Mac where my friends and family are concerned that is a huge hit, it’s Photo Booth using my built-in iSight. Even those who are the most camera shy can’t wait to sit down infront of the webcam and have their faces distorted. I’m always amazed at how well received it is.
I came across Fun Booth 2 some weeks ago which, rather than distorting your face like the built-in Photo Booth effects, gives you a whole heap of props to throw on to your head and face. The most interesting part of this is the advanced face detection so rather than placing a pair of sunglasses onto the screen and you having to adjust your position to make them look like they’re sitting on your nose, the software does that for you and if you move around, the glasses will stay where they should on your face which makes it ideal for video chatting – and for the kids who won’t stay still!
As you can see from the interface above, it’s very much like Photo Booth. The Inspector window contains all the props such as eyewear, facial hair, headwear, masks and objects. You can choose to wear one prop at a time, or combine props so you could be wearing glasses, a beard and a hat all at the same time.
When you have taken silly photos of yourself you can browse through them through the built-in Photo and Video Library which is beautifully designed and send them via e-mail, right within the application itself, aswell as send to iPhoto, Flickr or via FTP.
If you record video of yourself wearing the props then you can upload that directly to YouTube, once again right within the app.
You can even use the props in realtime when video chatting in iChat.
As yet my friends and family haven’t had the opportunity to enjoy Fun Booth 2, otherwise you’d be seeing them in the screenshots instead of the yellow guy – and believe me, face detection works much better on a human face. But, I know they are going to love it as the Fun Booth iPhone/iPod touch app was very well received when I downloaded it 7 days ago. Like it’s big OS X brother, the iPhone app has face detection and gets it spot on. From within the app you can then e-mail your photos, assign to a contact or upload it to Twitter and Flickr.
Fun Booth 2 for Mac OS X costs $19.99 but a free trial before you buy is available.
Fun Booth for iPhone/iPod touch costs $0.99/59p – iTunes link.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Wondershare Video to iPhone Giveaway
Aug 20th
Passing on an interesting retweet today (see, they do happen occasionally) for free video to iPhone conversion software. The offer is valid between August 10th and September 10th 2009.
Wondershare Video to iPhone Converter for Mac is an ideal tool that can convert various video formats including MPEG1, MPEG2, MP4, 3GP, FLV, AVI, WMV, AVCHD (MKV, TS, MTS, M2TS, TP, TRP, MOD, TOD), etc. to iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0 on Mac. The output files also can be played on iPod and Apple TV.
You can grab this giveaway, here.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The iPhone rules Flickr
Aug 18th
From The Next Web, regarding the iPhone now being the most popular camera on Flickr…
The iPhone is now showing us what it means when we combine technology. The camera isn’t ‘just’ a lens stuck to an iPhone. The fact that you always carry your iPhone, it is always connected to the web and always knows where you are makes it far more effective and efficient than ordinary digital camera’s that is isn’t surprising that it is quickly becoming the most popular camera.
I was just discussing this with a friend recently. I’ve been spoiled with the ease of uploading a photo to the internet in seconds with the iPhone without the nuisance of wires or docking that I rarely take my digital camera out with me now. I had recently considered buying a digital camcorder but wouldn’t the ultimate all-in-one device be the iPhone 3GS? Why take two bottles into the shower? Indeed.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...From iPhone to Flickr
Aug 16th
Depending on the subject and lighting available, I find that photos taken with the iPhone 3G can look bland, washed out and just not very interesting. It’s fine for sharing a quick photo on Twitter or MMS to your friend, but sometimes I want to upload a photo to Flickr but the quality lets me down.
iPhone Photo Post-Processing
I bought CameraBag a couple of weeks ago which gives you 10 filters to play with including Instant, Lomo style, Holga style, fisheye and more. The photo below was taken with the Helga (Holga style) filter…
And this one with the 1974 filter…
As you can see, the subjects themselves are just regular everyday things, yet the filters make them just that little more interesting to look at. More filters are expected to hit the app soon. CameraBag is £1.19 in the App Store [link].
If you are looking for a true polaroid style then check out ShakeItPhoto. Not only do you get wonderful results from this 59p/$0.99 app, but the true-polaroid sound effects to go with it…and by shaking your iPhone you will make the photo develop just that little bit quicker. If you’re like me and have an aversion to apps that require shaking your expensive piece of kit then don’t worry, the photo will develop anyway in the absence of any shaking action. Here’s a few of the results you can expect from ShakeItPhoto…
Grab ShakeItPhoto in the App Store for 59p [link].
iPhone to Flickr Uploading
The app that has both form and function for uploading to Flickr is Flickit. It has a gorgeous interface and allows you to upload and tag batches of photos from your iPhone, edit the standard Flickr metadata such as title and description.
To see the app in action, visit the Flickit website or just download from the App Store and check it out for yourself as the app is absolutely free.
For viewing the photos I’ve uploaded to Flickr, via my iPhone, I usually use Darkslide (free). This app is also capable of uploading but it’s been my experience that Flickit does it way quicker and with the all important ‘Taken with an Apple iPhone’ data intact.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...That Syncing Feeling
Aug 13th
I’ve written here a few times about RSS Readers both on the Mac and iPhone – and my quest in trying to find the one that does it all. I went from NewsFire to NetNewsWire then back again. Now it’s happening all over again.
After enjoying a long and happy relationship with NewsFire, I recently ran into problems where my feeds simply weren’t refreshing after upgrading to the most recent version. I’d look at the icon in the dock and wonder why it’s little green badge hadn’t appeared in hours to show me I had feeds to read, especially when it’s set to refresh every 5 minutes. Closing down the app and restarting prompted the downloads, but I’d find myself with almost 100 new articles awaiting my attention, not my usual easy-to-get-through bitesize chunks when arriving in a timely manner.
However, I wasn’t persuaded back to NetNewsWire for that reason alone. I’d have learned to live with NewsFire needing the occasional nudge because of it’s gorgeous UI and ability to auto refresh feeds less than just every 30 minutes, unlike NNW. No, my arm was finally twisted by Newsstand for the iPhone (my old review). It’s always been the most reliable and elegant RSS Reader on the iPhone, in my opinion, but the arrival of version 2.0 last night gave it the killer feature – Google Reader syncing. NetNewsWire now also syncs with Google Reader meaning that these two apps go together quite magically and beautifully.
As you can see by the above images, the Newsstand [£2.99 | iTunes Link] icon has been beautified even more, as has the app itself with the new carousel style flick through feeds. The only thing that would make this partnership even better is push notifications in Newsstand when new articles are available.
So, for now my RSS needs are being catered for by NetNewsWire on the Mac and Newsstand on the iPhone, with Google Reader syncing bringing them both together. It’s not the perfect solution for me as my heart still belongs to NewsFire for it’s beautiful UI. I hope our paths will cross again, hopefully when it’s own iPhone app is available with syncing.
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