Posts Tagged “Software”

MacHeist is in the final days of offering a nice discount on Parallels 3. It’s normally $79, but you can get it through MacHeist for just $49, and if you have purchased a MacHeist bundle in the past, you can get another $10 off. I have used Parallels and it’s a great way to get Windows working on the Mac.

Link: Parallels from MacHeist

I am a huge fan of SnagIt from TechSmith. I was really surprised this morning to see an post on the Visual Lounge with info about a new release! It’s gotten quite an overhaul especially in the UI department, but one of the best additions is the multi-image capability.

I use SnagIt daily for work and personal use, and it’s worth every penny. Without a doubt it’s the best solution for taking screenshots and more of your desktop. TechSmith has a special upgrade for existing users for only $19.95, but that’s only good for a limited time. I will give SnagIt 9 a proper review in the future, but first I need to get my upgrade in the next week or so.

Link: SnagIt 9

If you have an iPhone, or any phone capable of changing the wallpaper image, then check out my review of Phone Wallpaper X over at iBoughtAMac.com.

Link: Phone Wallpaper X Review at iBAM

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

I have been following the Jing Project since nearly the beginning, and I have been very impressed with the progress so far. I noticed they issued an update yesterday bringing Jing up to version 1.6. This update includes some features that were highly requested from users, including:

• Return of the Save button
  
• New Copy to Clipboard button
  
• Modified UI

This update is for both Mac and PC versions.

Download: Jing

The WindowBlinds 6.1 update is available to current customers as a free update, and users can upgrade either through Stardock Central or the Impulse preview.  The WindowBlinds 6.1 release includes the following updates:

• Several maintenance and performance tweaks.
• Option to force start button to the middle of skins.
• Explorer background feature.

WindowBlinds has a free download available for evaluation, and is $19.95 for the full enhanced version.  WindowBlinds is also part of the Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements.

Link: WindowBlinds

This is the screencast to go along with the article about changing Windows cursors with Stardock’s CursorFX.

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)

KeepSafe is the ultimate real-time data protection technology that is as simple as set-and-forget it.  It’s designed to work in the background and be as seamless as possible.  Anyone who has ever lost that all important document due to a drive crash, corrupt save, overwritten, etc., then users will appreciate what KeepSafe can do. This new version of KeepSafe features several new features:

• Improved User Interface to make more user friendly and intuitive.
• Secondary backup location can be an external hard drive or USB drive.
• Configure KeepSafe to save to local storage temporarily, and copy to secondary drive when connected.  Very useful for when working mobile.
• New statistics view to show file counts and disk space usage.

Link: KeepSafe 2.0

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