Archive for the “Mac” Category

Head over to iBoughtAMac.com and check out my latest review. This time I take a look at Delicious Library 2, which is an application to inventory and catalog collections of items.

Link: Get Organized with Delicious Library 2

If you are interested in trying out MobileMe from Apple next month, then you can do it for a little bit cheaper than the $99 it will cost from Apple. You can pick up a copy of the current .Mac at Amazon for $69. Apple will upgrade every .Mac user to the MobileMe service for free, so with this method you can save $30 off the retail price.

Link: .Mac at Amazon

Well today is the day we will finally get confirmation of all the stories and rumors from the past couple of months.  Will there be a new iPhone, a MacBook update, .Mac re-branding?  The list goes on and on.

For some reason there is no live stream of WWDC keynotes.  I’m not sure what the theory is behind this, but it’s annoying to say the least.  However, there are some other sources of WWDC news and live blogging,  that is about as close to live as you can get.  I wanted to list some here for the benefit of anyone who is interested.

• Macrumors: Definitely the best coverage with updates from the Macrumorslive.com site where you won’t have to worry about constantly refreshing the page.
• Arstechnica: Another great site for coverage with plenty of images to go along with the reporting.
• Engadget: More live coverage from the WWDC event.

RapidWeaver 4 from RealMacSoftware was finally released today. It’s a free upgrade to users of 3.6, and a discounted price is available to previous users before that.

RapidWeaver is a revolutionary but friendly piece of web design software made exclusively for the Mac. RapidWeaver creates and publishes beautiful, modern sites that are fully compliant with today’s web standards. Once you’ve created your website, RapidWeaver publishes it to an FTP, SFTP or .Mac server quickly and easily.

The update looks great so far, and hopefully I can give a review in the next couple of weeks.

Link: RapidWeaver 4

Head over to iBoughtAMac.com and check out my review of BannerZest Pro. It’s a great app for creating Flash content on the Mac.

Read the full review at iBam.

When I first saw the announcements that Bento was to be released, I was very excited about the potential of it, and was anxiously awaiting the chance to review it. Bento, which is developed by FileMaker, is a personal database application for Mac OS X Leopard. FileMaker is a phenomenal application in itself, but for many people FileMaker is just overkill, especially when it comes to more personal needs. What I needed is an application that will help me organize my contacts, events, projects, inventory, etc., and Bento is all about organization.

The first thing I noticed about Bento is the clean and well designed layout. It’s not cluttered, and offers basically everything you need to get started in a very usable manner. Looking through the source category, I immediately noticed the integration between Bento and Address Book and iCal. All of your iCal events and tasks, along with your contents of the Address Book are easily manageable inside Bento. Any changes you to make to these entries in Bento, will reflect in your Address Book and iCal.

Bento ships with quite a few templates sorted by education, personal, and work. These templates cover a wide range of needs including projects, events, planning, inventory, and more. You also have the option to start with a blank template, and build your own solution from scratch. The pre-made templates are completely customizable, so you can tailor them to your specific needs with ease.

Over the last couple of weeks I have created several different project types, but I wanted to focus on the one that Bento seemed most valuable to me, and that was the ability to create a complete inventory of my home. I started out using the Inventory template, and with about 20 minutes or so of customizing the layout and input fields, it was exactly what I needed. Once you are working inside a form, clicking the customize icon will let you easily modify the current template to your liking both visually and functionality wise. Arranging the layout is as simple as drag and drop, and adding fields like text, currency, media, etc. are setup by entering just a few choices.

I set my inventory form up to have two columns which one contained fields for item description, price, date purchased, serial numbers, and other relevant info. The second column was dedicated to media and notes. The media field allows you to add items like images, audio, video, and even gives the option to take your own pictures and import them directly to your form entry. Since my focus was inventory, I took pictures of my household items, and simply dragged them into the field. I had no problems importing media, but I would love to see an integration with Flickr where I could pull images from there right into a field.

The real difficult part was just adding all the data, but that is one thing that unfortunately Bento can’t do by itself. After a few short hours I had all my inventory data entered, and was very pleased with the final result. The table view inside Bento gives you a quick spreadsheet-like view of your data, which also gives you easy access to sort your data. There is also a summary view that will show your column stats depending on what type of data is entered into that area. For instance, in my “cost” category it can show me the total sum, average, minimum, or maximum data for that column. Don’t worry if you have a bunch of entries either, the iTunes-like search is quick and accurate.

Now I’m at the point where all of my data is entered, I have a good template setup that will make adding additional items easy, so just one more thing to do which is customizing my library. Clicking the customize icon once again, I browse through the over 20 included themes which give you different backgrounds, colors, and text. The included themes are good, but I would like to have the ability to add my own themes as well.

The last feature I wanted to try, and is probably the most important is the backup ability. After all, what’s the point of entering all your data if there is no way to save it to a safe place. To backup your database, or to restore a previously saved one, just select the option from the file menu and save or open the database. It can’t get much simpler than that. I took my backup and placed it on a secure thumb drive for safe keeping. A feature I would like to see here is the ability to password protect the backup directly from Bento.

As I said in the beginning, I was excited about the potential of Bento, and after using it for several weeks, Bento delivers on its mission to offer a powerful, yet simple, database solution for the rest of us. If you need a database solution for your home, or even small business, and don’t need the full power of something like FileMaker Pro, then Bento is the answer.

Bento easily earns a 5 star rating.

Link: Bento ($49, 30 day trial)

If you have been following my blog or twitter posts, you might have noticed my search for the best blogging application for the Mac. Out of the many recommendations I received, two applications were always mentioned…..MarsEdit 2 and ecto 3 (beta). So over the last couple of weeks I have downloaded and tried both applications, and today I will give my review of both and hopefully come to some decision on which one I will use on a regular basis.

User Interface

The main user interface of both apps are very similar in appearance, and both are fairly simple and not cluttered in any way. Each has a sidebar which allows you to add/edit/delete your blog accounts. Both applications also support a wide range of blogging platforms including WordPress and TypePad. MarsEdit lets you add the site url/name, and then MarsEdit will try to automatically detect your weblog settings. If for some reason you need to do it manually, that option is also available. Ecto also lets you enter your blog information in much of the same way, but ecto also has an “assistant” which can guide you through the process, which can be very helpful for new users.

The main view shows your posts associated with the chosen blog (if you have multiple blogs), and by clicking a title you can see the post in the preview pane. Double-clicking the posts will retrieve them and open them inside the editor window. Each also has a variety of options which you can edit, delete, modify, create new posts, and save drafts. If you don’t like, or just want to change the default toolbar layout, you can easily customize the toolbar to your liking.

As far as the main interface is concerned, both MarsEdit and ecto have similar design and function, and were very easy to start using.

Editor

The Editor is where we start to see some real differences between the two apps. Once again, both have a similar layout, but ecto has quite a few more options. The most notable being that ecto has a more rich text editor (and an HTML editor) as opposed to the Editor in MarsEdit, which is based in HTML text markup. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but new users and people who are not familiar or comfortable with html markups, might find ecto easier to use as it’s more WYSIWYG.

As I said, the text markup in MarsEdit is not really a problem, and in while writing several posts with it I found no problem formatting my posts. MarsEdit has a drop-down menu in the upper right hand corner which gives quick access to common markups such as bold, links, block quote, etc. They also make it easy to add your own markup macros which comes in very handy.

The basic editing functions in both are very easy to use, but for new users, ecto might be a slightly better choice, but anyone who is comfortable or willing to take on some text markup, MarsEdit will satisfy.

More “Advanced” Editing

Blogging today is much more than just simple text formatting, right? Media, whether it happens to be images, video, etc., is now common in blogging. You can add items like images by simple drag and drop, or through the Media Manager in MarsEdit, and the “Import Media” button in ecto. Another advantage ecto has is the ability to preview audio and video before inserting into a post.

Nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but my main interest was with how each integrated using images from Flickr. In the MarsEdit Media Manager, Flickr has it’s own section where it will show your Flickr account images and even let you search through them. The images are displayed as rows of thumbnails for easy viewing, and give you the options of selecting the size and alignment of the image to insert.

Ecto has the Flickr Helper option which is similar in function to MarsEdit, but has way more options. It will let you filter your images by sets, and even let you “fetch” images from your contacts, groups, and tags. Another cool feature ecto has is the “Amazon Helper”. This opens a dialog where you can search the various sections on Amazon, and select a product to insert with your choice of displaying images and text. I didn’t have much of a use for it, but very neat nonetheless.

As far as more “advanced” editing goes, this was also a tough call to make. Between the two, ecto has quite a few more options than MarsEdit, but some of them might not be needed for everyone, and MarsEdit has all the editing options most bloggers would need.

Conclusion

I think it’s safe to say that trying to decide which of these applications was “the best” is quite difficult. They are both top notch in what they do, and I would not hesitate recommending either of them to anyone looking for a blogging solution for the Mac. After using both I think it all comes down to the matter of personal preference, and for my use, I would probably pick MarsEdit over ecto simply because it’s a bit more simple in design.

However, I haven’t made my final decision on which one I am going to use. I still have a few days left in the trial versions, but I’m not sure if I can even make a decision by then. The bottom line is both these applications are great, but newer users might be more taken with ecto, and users who like HTML markups should go with MarsEdit. I really recommend downloading the trial versions for each, and see which one works better for you. I don’t think you will be disappointed with either of them.

MarsEdit 2 ($29.95, 30 day free trial)

ecto 3 beta ($17.95, 21 day free trial)

Ars Technica takes a look at some of the new features in the Leopard-only RapidWeaver 4 from Realmac Software.

read more | digg story

People often ask how we create articles and guides on some of the various sites like WinCustomize.com, JoeUser.com, etc., so they can also help out by writing something they specialize in. Several of us here use a variety of tools, some more complex than others, but most people who would like to write some articles don’t need some of the more high-end tools.

One of the more complex and expensive applications is Expression Web from Microsoft. While it’s pretty good at what it does, the casual user will not likely use many of it’s features. Live Writer, which we have spoken about before, is one of the tools I highly recommend for writing blog posts and things of that sort.

I was recently referred to another piece of software called KompoZer. It’s built off the former NVU web authoring application that is no longer developed. KompoZer is a simple WYSIWYG html editor with an easy to use interface. You can create and layout some really nice articles or posts using images, links, tables, etc.

Two other good points is that it’s free, and it’s cross platform so if you run a PC or Mac you are all set.

Download: KompoZer

Over the last week or two I have been evaluating some blogging applications for OS X Leopard. The two which I received several recommendations for were MarsEdit 2 by Red Sweater Software, and ecto 3 (beta). Both of them seem great at what they do, and if I had to purchase one today, I would have a very hard time deciding which one.

So before I really start evaluating both of these, I wanted to ask the community again for recommendations. There are so many applications out there I don’t want to overlook anything else that people are using. So if you know of any other blogging applications for the Mac, please drop me a note, or leave your comments in this thread.