Posts tagged Mac
Growl with Style
04 months ago
I picked up a gorgeous style for Growl recently. It’s so gorgeous that I look forward to my apps bringing in notifications, just so I can see this visual delight appearing on my screen.
It’s the Black Glass Growl Style by Ryan Collins and I made a video to show it off in all it’s shiny reflective and magnificent splendour.
I have set this as my default growl notification style across all the apps that notify me. You can download the style here. If you don’t already own Growl, it is available in the Mac App Store for just $1.99/£1.49. Grab it here!
Cool Bananas Shockproof case for MacBook Air
0I’ve been trying out the Cool Bananas Shockproof case for 11″ MacBook Air from Gearzap over the past week and just wanted to write a few words about it.
The case is extremely slimline, so it won’t make your super slim MacBook Air look in any way bulky. Apart from it’s stylish looks in black nylon, I feel safe in the knowledge that this will fully protect my expensive laptop from any little knocks and bumps, with its shock-absorbing memory foam core and soft inner material. It’s perfect for using to carry on its own, or popping inside another bag or rucksack. Here are some pictures of the case.
I’m very impressed with the quality of the Cool Bananas Shockproof and the little design touches it has, such as the double zip with the Cool Bananas logo on each zip pull.
Cool Bananas Shockproof case for the 11.6″ MacBook Air is currently £20.95 from Gearzap. They also have a huge collection of other cases for the 11″ Air and also the 13″ option.
[rating: 5/5]
Did you hear a click?
3On a British news channel this lunchtime, I caught one of the most adorable technology videos I have ever seen. An elderly couple trying to take a still photo to email to friends on Frank’s 84th Birthday, on their new Mac. I just had to post it here.
They fully deserve to be Internet stars, with the video having gained over 612,000 views so far!
InstaDesk
21 year ago
by Sam
in Photography
As a huge fan of the photo sharing app Instagram, I often want the ability to check my feed from my Mac but as yet Instagram do not offer an official web interface for doing so.
I found InstaDesk in the Mac App Store today whilst browsing the Photography category and it didn’t take me long to lay down the low price of £1.19 to purchase the app.
With InstaDesk you can browse beautiful pictures, newest uploads of your friends, or interesting people to follow. Furthermore, you can comment on pictures, like them, download them, or watch them in slideshows.
Features of InstaDesk:
- Find new people to follow
- View your Friend Feed, Popular Tags, Popular Pictures
- Comment on pictures or like pictures
- Save beautiful pictures in albums
- See when you get new comments or likes
- Follow / unfollow people
- View pictures in slideshows
- Download images
- Sadly, NO uploading due to Instagram policies
I’ll still always prefer browsing Instagram on the iPhone as the app is totally intended for that, but if I don’t check on a regular basis then I do have a tendency to miss some friends uploads. By having InstaDesk open on my Mac(s) I will be notified as regularly as I wish via the dock icon badge or menubar icon of how many new pics are available to view.
Another app I discovered a few days ago for the Mac which allows you to view your Instagram feed is Carousel. Whilst a nicely polished app, scrolling through felt too much like the iPhone interface. With InstaDesk I can have the app maximised to cover my whole screen if I so wish, therefore find it pulls me in more.
InstaDesk is available for £1.19 on the Mac App Store [direct link]
[rating: 4.5/5]
CalendarBar for Mac
3I discovered CalendarBar for Mac yesterday entirely by accident after visiting a website that carried an advert for it. Who says adverts are useless and annoying, eh?
CalendarBar is a unique way to keep track of your events. It supports Facebook, iCal and Google Calendar allowing you to keep track of all your upcoming events, all from hitting the icon in your menubar. And it all looks a little like this…
It’s nice to be able to access my events all from my menubar, rather than launching iCal each time and set-up couldn’t be easier. For iCal it’s just the tick of a box in the preferences, for Google Calendar just pop-in your login credentials to sync and for Facebook once again a tick of a box, authorisation with your account then sync up so you’ll never miss an important event again. All that and a beautifully polished UI to boot.
At the time of purchasing and writing, CalendarBar is available for the introductory limited time price of £1.19. Grab it before the price goes up!
iDrops for your Mac
5I’m a creature of habit when it comes to the wallpaper I use on my iMac, MacBook Air and iPhone. If I can have them all matching up, the better and once I find a clean wallpaper I very infrequently switch away from it.
Several months ago I found a very clean wallpaper which was inspired by the iOS 4 default wallpaper, called iDrops. This is the wallpaper I keep coming back to on my iPhone in particular. The package includes:
- For 16:9 ( 1280×720, 1920×1080 )
- For 16:10 ( 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200 )
- For iPhone 2g,3g,3gs and iPod Touch 1g,2g,3g ( in two variations )
- For iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4
- For iPad
Here it is in all it’s glory on my MacBook Air and iPhone 4:
You can download the iDrops package from deviantART.
CameraBag Desktop
52 years ago
A couple of months ago I wrote about how photos taken with the iPhone 3G can be much improved with camera applications such as CameraBag and ShakeItPhoto. These apps can add much character to an otherwise washed out and often bland offering.
Several weeks ago, the developer behind CameraBag for iPhone announced CameraBag Desktop, for Mac OS X. At the time of the release, there was no trial before buying which was a little disappointing, but because I had enjoyed the speedy way to enhance a photo on the iPhone I decided to jump right on in and plump up the $19 asking price. This was done mostly with the intention of checking it out so I could write an honest review here and let you, my dear readers, know whether it was worth parting with your money.
The application is extremely easy to use. Drag a photo onto the app window and you have all of your filters along the bottom as you can see. There’s plenty to choose from: Helga, Lolo, Mono, 1962, 1974, Instant, Magazine, Cinema and Colorcross – a filter that is not yet in the iPhone app. Aside from applying one filter, you also have a multi-filter option.
Let’s have a look at some before and after photos. First up is a photo I took today of my Nintendo DS…
And here is that same photo, with the Colorcross filter applied, along with a medium border…
In just one click, it has made a boring photo look really quite interesting. Here’s another of a sign post I took last year…
And here with the Colorcross filter, once again…
And finally this photo of the Millennium Bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne…
And now with the Instant filter applied…
CameraBag Desktop is a great way to make your photos look interesting in one click without spending time in your usual photo editor. I can’t say I will be using CameraBag Desktop as often as I will Pixelmator for photo editing, but when a photo calls for more than just a little contrast and vignette then it will be very useful.
I’m going to give CameraBag Desktop a rating of 3 stars. It would have received more had the 15-day trial been available when released, to avoid blindly buying.
[rating:3/5]
You can download a 15-day trial of CameraBag Desktop, here. Saving is disabled and images contain a watermark in the trial version.
Manage Multiple Gmail accounts with Notify
42 years ago
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.
Fun Booth 2 Review
1If 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.
Wondershare Video to iPhone Giveaway
0Passing 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.
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