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Mac App of the Week: Mail Designer Pro
If you're a small business owner, chances are you try to collect a mailing list of customers who are open to getting newsletters and announcements from you. In order to make such newsletters appealing on a mobile device, you previously needed to hire a graphic designer and / or coder to create a nice HTML5-compatible newsletter that looks good in any email client, on any size device's screen (that is, unless you happen to possess these skills yourself). But that's all changed with the release of Equinux's Mail Designer Pro. Mail Designer Pro allows virtually anyone to quickly, easily and beautifully create rich HTML5 newsletters that look amazing in anyone's inbox. When you launch the app, you can select from more than 25 completely customizable templates in categories like Diner, Fashion, Jewelry, Travel and more. Select a template and you are then taken to the main page layout windows where you can tweak the template to your liking, including adding your own custom photos, text, styles and layouts. If you're familiar with Pages or InDesign, you'll feel pretty comfortable with the apps organization from the get go. What's really nice about Mail Designer Pro, besides the ease of use of creating professional-looking newsletters, is the fact that you can easily share drafts of the newsletters with others in your company. You do this by clicking the "Lend" button. It sends the file to your recipient who can open it on their copy of Mail Designer Pro, make changes and lend it back to you. But perhaps the best part of Mail Designer Pro is that it has mobile in mind. Nowadays many of us use our smartphones or iPads to check out email. Mail Designer Pro ensures that any newsletter you create will look gorgeous on your recipient's screen -- no matter what the size. It does this by building in design and support tools for creating newsletters formatted for multiple devices. You can even open up virtual iPads, iPhones and Android devices on your Mac desktop to see what the newsletter will look like and how it will act when scrolled. Essentially Mail Designer Pro takes the nerve-wracking guess work of "I wonder how this will look on my hundreds of recipients' various screen sizes." With Mail Designer Pro, your newsletters will look gorgeous no matter what the device they are being viewed on. When you're done creating your newsletter, you can send it to your email list without leaving Mail Designer Pro. Mail Designer Pro is a must-have OS X app for anyone with a small business or even medium- to large-sized companies with small marketing departments and budgets. Mail Designer Pro costs US$99.99 and is available on the Mac App Store or via Equinux's website, where users can download a trial version for free.
Get email design chores under control with equinux Mail Designer
If you've ever had to code together a complex HTML email then you know how painful it usually is. It's like taking a trip back to 1999 before the web discovered standards and everyone was still doing table-based design -- only with the addition of cumbersome inline CSS, and the challenge of dealing with scores of different mail clients and their divergent HTML rendering. Unless you do this every day the process can be unwieldy at best and a downright nightmare otherwise. For most of us, learning to code our own email is way more work then it's worth. That's where Mail Designer, a new application from equinux, comes in; it provides a rich graphical email composer that goes far beyond what you'll be able to do in your preferred email client's editor. Mail Designer takes an iWork approach, focusing on a balanced feature set that makes it easy to use and hides all the technical bits in the background before sending your email to Apple Mail for delivery.
Ask TUAW: Power adapters, Windows 7, iWork refresh, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about MacBook power adapters, Windows 7 in Boot Camp and virtualization in general, resetting the Mac Setup Assistant, the next iWork refresh, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
First Look: Equinux Tube Stick Hybrid
When it comes to Macintosh TV tuners, it's hard to ignore the very large cat sitting in the corner. Elgato dominates the US market, but in Europe Equinux has been a big player and they've recently crossed the ocean with a new US-compatible tuner. The TubeStick Hybrid with its "The Tube" software arrives at a distinct disadvantage. It's a small white box that you can attach to a spare USB port and use to watch channels both from over-the-air signals or connect to your cable TV. Equinux provides the software that turns the tuned data into a watch-able show on your screen. The product and its software remains at a stage I can best describe as "beta". Yes, you can watch TV with it. Yes, you can tune to both ATSC (High Def) and analog channels. But many features like integrated TV listings are not yet available for the US. You're able to import your own Extended Programming Guide listings in XMLTV format, and Equinux recommends SchedulesDirect.org. Follow the jump to read more about the Equinux Tube Stick Hybrid.
Swag bag winners, t-shirt replacements, many more giveaways to follow
This morning I finally shipped out the first round of swag-bag winners from our Talkcasts. Congratulations to those who called in, I hope you enjoy your junk prizes. Unfortunately our pre-Macworld t-shirt winners wound up with their t-shirts handed out at Macworld, and those were the very last of our version 1.0 TUAW t-shirts. Time and budgets will tell if we make more. Instead, I shipped the folks who responded to my winner emails some goodies courtesy Dr. Bott.And speaking of Dr. Bott, they've been generous enough to provide a big bag (or two) of goodies from the likes of Griffin, Marware, H20 Audio, ifrogz and other cool manufacturers. So be on the lookout for more giveaways-- my wife won't let me keep this stuff lying around the house forever! (Hint: we've got an extra MacBook Air poster hidden away)I'd also like to thank Equinux for the copies of Coverscout and Mail Stationery Packs, plus some show swag, which is also making its way out to you lucky readers.
equinux offers up TubeStick hybrid USB TV tuner
If neither of Elgato's latest from Macworld tickled your fancy, there's a decent shot you may like what equinux has going on instead. The TubeStick hybrid is the firm's newly announced USB TV tuner, which is housed in a diminutive chassis that won't block nearby ports and offers up OTA reception of NTSC, ATSC and digital (QAM) signals. Furthermore, the unit comes wearing the whitest of white outfits and also touts an external antenna and a one-month trial of the TubeToGo software. Yes, this critter will play nice with Windows machines as well, but we hear it tries to avoid such predicaments whenever possible. Ready to snag your own? Catch one next month for $129. [Via The Mac Observer]
Show floor video: Equinux shows the TubeStick
Equinux, makers of iSale, CoverScout and an interesting collection of other apps, was at Macworld demoing TubeStick, their TV receiver. Like El Gato's EyeTV, the TubeStick is a hardware doohickey with the TV parts inside (logically) and some software that lets you watch TV on your Mac. Unlike El Gato, however, there is a social aspect to TubeStick. Example: you can chat with friends who are watching the same thing. The CEO took us on a quick tour, which you can view after the break.(Note: Equinux also gave us some show swag which we'll be giving away next week)
Equinux TubeStick Hybrid with viewing over the net
On the same day as Elgato's EyeTV 3 was announced, equinux of MediaCentral fame has released their own hardware and software combination for turning your US-based Mac into a PVR; it's called TubeStick hybrid. The hardware is a USB dongle device similar to Elgato's EyeTV Hybrid that can handle analog cable and over the air broadcasts as well as digital HDTV ATSC and cable Clear QAM. The software does the standard recording and timeshifting, but of particular interesting is the TubeStickToGo service which will allow you to schedule recordings over the internet when you're away from home and then have those shows automatically uploaded to .Mac or an FTP server for remote viewing on your Mac, iPhone, or iPod touch. There's also an attempt at a Joost-like social viewing experience with TubeTalk that allows you to chat with other folks watching the same program on their Macs.The TubeStick Hybrid and associated software will launch in February. Pricing is not yet available, but will apparently include a subscription for the TubeStickToGo service.. Already available is a TubeStick for DVB-T/DTT in Europe for €39.95.
