Brett Terpstra

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Stories By Brett Terpstra

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    Vox 1.0 makes beautiful music

    The short version of this post: Vox is a music player with a beautiful interface and an elegant feature set. I love it. Vox 1.0 was released today after being in public beta for a while. It's a free music player for Mac that was originally created as a developer's side project. While it became quite popular, it never reached its full potential. That changes today. I've been using the beta for a couple of weeks now, and I'm loving it as an iTunes alternative for my local music. I'm a heavy Spotify user, so Simplify is still always open as well, but Vox has completely replaced iTunes for playing music from my local library. Vox handles all popular lossless and lossy formats: FLAC MP3 AAC Musepack Monkey's Audio OGG Vorbis Apple Lossless AIFF, WAV, IT, MOD, XM and others. It works with its own playlists for files on your drive, your iTunes library (including playlists) and internet radio (premium feature). The audio quality is outstanding, and there's a built-in 10-band equalizer with presets. Headphone listening is a pleasure with Bauer Stereo, and it can even pause when headphones are unplugged. The interface is compact and elegant, with all of the controls you need in a small space. You can even close the window and use controls in your menu bar, either spread out with prev / play / pause / next in a row, or a single icon that drops down a menu for those. Further, you can display album artwork in the Dock instead of the application icon, and right-clicking provides all the controls in a standard OS X Dock popup. There are subtle niceties such as gesture support for volume and playback position. Just put your cursor over the progress bar and scroll up and down or left and right to scrub through the track. Same for the volume button, which doubles as an output selector. Dragging an audio file over it overlays drop zones where you can add it to the current playlist, or clear the queue and play it immediately. Speaking of outputs, it works perfectly with Airfoil Speakers and AirPlay devices. The playback window can be "floated" to stay on top of other windows and easily assigned to appear on all spaces. Or not, your choice. Vox also has some great system integration. It can pause your music when you get a Skype call, and it sends full album artwork to Growl for alert styles that support it. You can customize global shortcut keys for playback and volume control, and with an additional plugin, you can enable support for various remotes, headphone controls and keyboard media keys. Last.fm scrobbling is built in, and there are more features on the way, including BowTie theme compatibility and a Take Five plugin. At the price of zero dollars, I can't see any reason why any music lover wouldn't go check out Vox right now. Also, the developers are running a little promo over at my own site, so hop on by to see what's up!

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    SteadyTune for Mac

    Agile Partners released SteadyTune for Mac today. It's a simple app that gives you a tuner for stringed instruments in your menu bar, and it's an amazingly accurate alternative to the tuners built into apps like Logic Pro. It uses a completely new algorithm from Agile Partners that provides a stable and accurate meter. You can define your instrument type and listen for all notes, or define a tuning to detect just certain pitches. It has presets for an array of instruments ranging from six- and 12-string guitars all the way through banjo, ukulele, violin and double bass. The entire meter glows red and green as you near the perfect pitch, which makes it easy to use from a distance. SteadyTune can be configured to stay on top of other windows, and you can set the input device to listen on and define a hotkey to pop it up and hide it. SteadyTune is just US$4.99 on the Mac App Store, and check out the website for more information. If you play a stringed instrument, this app is great on its own or in combination with any recording software you happen to use.

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    Agile Partners releases Lick of the Day 2.0

    "Wait, who's Brett Terpstra? Does that guy still write here?" Yes, he does, on special occasions. The release of Lick of the Day 2.0 seemed like a decent reason to come out of hiding. Lick of the Day is an app from Agile Partners for iPhone and iPad which teaches guitar players new skills in an easy-to-digest video and interactive format (see previous coverage by Matt Tinsley). With each lesson you get a high-quality video that includes explanations, fast and slow versions as well as tips for making the most of picking patterns and finger positions. Each lick also includes tab / notation, text narrative and backing tracks for practicing. The live fingerboard representation as the tab plays for you is one of my favorite parts of the app. In version 2, Agile partners with TrueFire to include 20 new Lick Packs that cover 500 blues, rock, jazz, rockabilly and acoustic lessons. Basically, if you play guitar, there's something there to enhance your ability, whether you're just getting started or a seasoned pro. They don't talk down to you; they present the music theory and techniques while building from the simple to the highly skilled, with enough instruction along the way to get you there. My personal guitar skills have enhanced tenfold over the last year, due in large part to this app. I'm excited to see all of the new content and features coming out in such a valuable part of my music toolkit. Check out Lick of the Day in the App Store. It's free, with each "Lick Pack" being an in-app purchase (US$2.99) with free samples from the pack to try out before purchasing.

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    Calling all web developers: Engadget is hiring!

    AOL Tech -- the team behind Engadget, TUAW, Joystiq, Massively and more -- is looking for a great front-end developer who can help us take Engadget and our other blogs to new levels. The job is a full-time remote worker position, so the ideal candidate has good time management skills and deals well with working outside of an office. It also means that you get to work with a great team for a great company, get great benefits and a chance to exercise your skills in a high-visibility job, all without having to relocate! The description: Front-end developer for AOL Tech (Engadget, TUAW, Joystiq, Massively). The ideal candidate is highly proficient in JavaScript/jQuery, comfortable with PHP / mySQL and experienced in web design, optimization and related technologies for desktop and mobile. A solid understanding of mobile-first design is a must. Requirements High proficiency in JavaScript/jQuery Familiar with spriting, lazy loading, and other general performance-optimized techniques. Mac access for compatibility with current tools HTML5/CSS3 Git SSH If you're interested in joining us, please send us a resume and contact information!

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    AmpKit for Mac released, guitar nerds rejoice

    AmpKit has just released a Mac version of its awesome iOS guitar effect and recording tool. Lucky me, I've had a preview version for a little while now, and I've really enjoyed putting it through its paces. Everything you get in the iOS app is there: pedals, heads, cabs and amazing presets for just about any style of guitar or bass. There's the tuner, meters and metronome, plus the recording capability. It's everything I liked about the iPhone and iPad versions, bigger and with all of the settings more easily accessible on one panel. The Mac version comes with built-in recording tools (including non-destructive re-amping) and 23 backing tracks. You can choose any input and use any analog or digital interface with it. I tested with an M-Audio FastTrack and got great results, but I'm sure a more advanced interface (and nicer guitar) could get some great output. If you're a GarageBand or Logic user, you always have the option of using SoundFlower to pipe the audio into your DAW of choice. I did it and it worked flawlessly. The level of detail you can find in the controls is impressive. Put a Taos Rectifier stack together, set up the mic model and mic position, and then start tweaking channel, volume, drive, presence, bass, mid and treble until you find the perfect sound. Add a rack of pedals and control the settings individually. Start from the dozens of built-in presets and add save your own as you build them. You can even share your setups with other AmpKit users on Mac or iOS with a click. For the nerds: almost every menu command has a keyboard shortcut, and they're fully scriptable. If you're into it (and I am), you can turn any input device into triggers for switching stacks, starting and stopping recording, and playing and pausing backup tracks. I have an extra Magic Trackpad, an iPad and a MIDI keyboard, which -- combined with BetterTouchTool, BTT Remote and KeyboardMaestro -- give me a ton of ways to trigger easily while I'm playing. Short version: if you play guitar or bass and would like an infinite range of sounds without buying thousands of dollars worth of gear, take a look at AmpKit for Mac. For $49.99 you get more gear than you'd pay a few hundred for with similar apps, and more than you'd ever manage to collect in physical form. Add a decent set of monitors and you can rock out any time you want. Have a look.

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    Everything cool about Curio just got better

    Curio, one of my long-time favorite brainstorming and project management applications, has received a massive update with version 8. If you've never seen Curio, it's a highly visual environment for collecting information, lists, mind maps, websites, PDFs, emails and much more into organized projects and "spaces." You can collect, present, share and manage all kinds of information using an organization method that works for you. Whether you prefer a spatial, visual layout or a more rigid view of your data, Curio provides an amazing set of tools. The release notes for version 8 are rather immense, but definitely worth looking through. Here are a few highlights: All-new interface (fewer visible buttons, but more power) Improved mind-mapping tools Improved sharing options for projects, spaces and figures Repository-based group access to resources Split view for working in multiple spaces in a project Mountain Lion Reminders/iCal integration Bookmarks More robust audio/video recording Improved Evernote integration The list goes on. It's honestly more than I could cover in this post. There are even features which aren't specifically called out in the release notes, but which make me a bit giddy. For example, drag an OPML file (from a mind map or outliner application) onto a project space, and Curio will ask you what to turn it into: mind map, index card, outline, etc. Brilliant. You can purchase Curio 8 for US$99, and current users of either the Mac App Store version or a version purchased from Zengobi directly can upgrade for $49.99. There is a free 25-day trial available at Zengobi's site, and I highly recommend checking it out.

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    VoodooPad 5: wiki magic

    For those of us who nerd out about things like desktop wikis, VoodooPad 5 (from the creator of Acorn) is an exciting release. It brings new capabilities so powerful that they should come with a "for good, not evil" warning. If you're not familiar with VoodooPad, it's a desktop wiki with media embedding capabilities, a scriptable interface and a lot of power under the hood. Whether you want to use it for note-taking, project management or even maintaining documentation and live websites, it's a powerhouse. We may have mentioned it once or twice before. What's so great about version 5? First, Dropbox sync is greatly improved. You can even share docs with multiple people and see who edited what, when. For those of us of the Markdown persuasion, there's a new page type specifically for Markdown, with editing features and syntax highlighting. If you build large documents -- say, a documentation project for your software -- you can publish the entire document as a PDF or ePub book. There's a new feature called "Collections" that lets you create tables of contents and determine page order, which makes the export features much more useful for more linear output formats. We've always been able to do fun things like write event scripts that search for certain @tags and compile them, but the new To-Dos palette offers a faster, customizable solution for this. There are more flexible event scripts, new scripting language support (including the ability to write scripts in JavaScript). There are even "scriptlets," your own small scripts that can be embedded directly within a page. There's plenty more, as you can see in the release notes. VoodooPad 5 is available in the Mac App Store for US$24.99 (limited time price), or directly from Flying Meat's store (same price).

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    Byword for iOS released

    Those who know me know that Byword has become my favorite writing tool. I've been keeping my mouth shut about this release during the beta testing period, but I'm really excited to announce it's arrival: Byword for iOS. The iOS version includes the Markdown-editing features that I love on the Mac, and has full iCloud and Dropbox sync between devices. There's an update to the Desktop version as well, enabling iCloud support for the multi-device sync. You can start typing on your Mac, pick up your iPhone and walk away, then continue typing wherever you end up. Your text is ready and waiting for you. Byword for iOS is a universal app, and one price gets you editing bliss on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch (or whatever combination you happen to have). The price is starting at US $2.99, and will start going up by $1 every three days until it reaches its standard price of US $4.99. Byword for Mac is available on the Mac App Store for $9.99. Even without the new iOS companion app, it's an excellent writing tool. Portability just makes it that much more useful to me. If you write on a Mac, and especially if you write in Markdown (see the TUAW Markdown Primer) Byword is a gorgeous and elegant environment to do it in. The feature set looks sparse; everything just works. You don't need to see a bunch of buttons, you can just type. Features such as automatic list continuation, selection wrapping, and unobtrusive word count just happen, and additional requirements are filled by keyboard shortcuts. It's worth every penny to me.

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    One Like Son produces entire album on an iPhone

    Powerpop band "One Like Son" has done something special. Using accessories like Peavey's AmpKit LiNK (TUAW review) and the GuitarJack from Sonoma Wireworks, they managed to produce an entire studio-quality album... on an iPhone. Daniel Codella of Sonoma Wireworks states that "One Like Son have really set the bar for what can be done with an inexpensive mobile recording setup. Bravo!" The band compares the experience to creating their first album, "Love Songs for the Apathetic," on a 4-track cassette recorder. Stephen Poff of the band said, "It was a pretty top of the line at the time, but it was tedious and of course there were only 4 tracks to work with. Now I'm recording up to 24 tracks... and it's on my iPhone!" While my taste in music might not run in this vein, I can't deny the quality of the recording is top notch and the technological feat is very impressive. It's not the first time we've seen the iPhone play an integral part in creating a track, but to record an entire album using nothing but an iPhone is impressive indeed. Check out a teaser video from the band below, and head to the band's website for a full track preview and ordering information.

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    Agile Partners rock GuitarToolkit 2.0

    Agile Partners (who've come up at TUAW a few times) have released GuitarToolkit 2.0, a major upgrade to the original app which adds extensive features and an iPad version. GuitarToolkit boasts a range of tools geared at guitar and bass players, but now includes enough flexibility to work with any fretted instrument you can imagine. This is a free update for existing customers, and additional functionality is available as a one-time, US $4.99 in-app upgrade. In addition to being redesigned to take advantage of the iPad's size, the new release expands from 500,000 chords to over 2,000,000 chords and scales--and now--arpeggios. There's full capo support, too: slide to any fret and scales and arpeggios automatically adjust. All of GuitarToolkit's features support six, seven, and twelve string guitars, as well as four, five and six string bass, banjo, mandolin and ukulele. The GuitarToolkit+ upgrade activates interactive Chord Sheets (a great tool for composition and building chord progressions), an Advanced Metronome (with visible flash option), a drum machine and Custom Instruments. Drum patterns can contain as many as 32 tracks, and you control time signature, number of bars and have access to 75 sounds in nine different categories. The Advanced Metronome is available immediately on the iPad, and coming shortly to the iPhone/iPod touch. The Custom Instruments capability is pretty cool, especially if you're playing something that doesn't necessarily fit into the standard guitar mold. Choose an instrument type, string and pickup type, assign a tuning, even add a capo if you like. GuitarToolkit+ includes great-sounding samples for every combination, as well as over 60 amp/effects presets powered by AmpKit. The tuner in GuitarToolkit is highly accurate and supports just about any tuning you can imagine (including custom tunings). More than I'll ever use, I'm sure. There's also a high-contrast mode to make sure you can use it in any lighting situation. All told, if you play a fretted instrument of any kind, the US $9.99 app (and the US $4.99 in-app upgrade) will probably pay off pretty quickly. This is the only app I've seen that offers this kind of flexibility and provides as many composition tools. Check it out in the App Store.

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    Postbox 3 launches with more social, more integration

    We've tracked the progress of the Postbox email client for a while now, and it keeps getting better. Postbox -- an evolution of the Mozilla email client -- combines ease-of-use and email power tools to create a full-featured client with great polish. Version 3.0 brings with it not only new features, but a variety of improvements to system integration as well. More GMail features, including native "Label" support, "Important" view, "Send and Archive," support for GMail shortcuts and the ability to add detected dates as Google Calendar events. More social features, such as importing avatars from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more, displaying job titles and company names from LinkedIn, easy access to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles and the ability to update Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn right from the email client. More integration with services including Dropbox, Evernote, iCal/Google Calendar, and Growl 1.3. Version 3 also adds Lion Full Screen support and multi-touch gestures. There's more, including a new "Favorites Bar" that's worth checking out. Postbox also includes the ability to create a set of "canned responses" -- templates tailored for various types of repetitive inquiries -- quickly accessible when replying. Postbox has come a long way as far as being "Mac-like," and this release is looking great to me so far. If you bought Postbox after August 15th, 2011, this upgrade is free. Previous users can upgrade for US$9.95. A new Postbox license runs US$29.95. If you're looking for an alternative to Mail with a full suite of social and system integration features, Postbox is a good bet.

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    Students and iPads: ACU study shows positive results

    The first time I mentioned Abilene Christian University, it was because it was handing out iPhones to students. The next time was a year later when I followed up with an interview about the school's methods and research findings. Its approach to incorporating technology into education was both unobtrusive and highly effective, and it almost made me want to go back to school again. This year, as Mike Rose mentioned a little while ago, the studies go on and the results continue to impress. Now that the iPad is available, students are being equipped with a rich set of tools that can be used for learning; they can also be used to spend time on social networks, blogging, chatting with friends... all with ACU's blessing. There are no mandates that either teachers or students have to use the iPads. The fact that the iPad is as much a social tool as anything else is something that ACU has embraced, modifying many of its curriculums to work more effectively with the new technology. Among the students, the approval rating for the program is in the upper 90%, with the highest numbers coming from the youngest classes (100% for the class of 2015). Test scores have been shown to improve markedly (+25%) when notes are taken and texts annotated using the iPad. The numbers are all great, but that's not what really catches my attention about this story. What's most interesting to me is how the professors at ACU have voluntarily adapted their teaching styles to work with new technologies. The administration has provided all of the tools for a highly social, highly connected environment, and teachers and students alike have taken impressive advantage of the opportunities. The curriculum, as well, has been shifting to include rich media creation as part of everyday learning. Obviously, the iPad isn't making the difference alone. It's a conduit, a tool for taking advantage of the Internet, a network of friends and a new way of looking at education. Well, not new, really. Thoreau's classroom is in full effect here. In many classes students are interactively building the syllabus, creating the questions and finding the answers. The professors are taking on a new role as "coaches," focusing more on helping students learn to solve problems and answer questions than on rote learning and testing. Some professors have stopped traditional lecturing entirely, and have seen improved comprehension and test results across the board. In one class at ACU, students spend their class-time in the surrounding communities, armed with iPads, doing service work and solving real-world problems. They are asked to blog their experiences as they happen. Images, thoughts, discoveries and more are all captured in blog form, and the blog ultimately becomes the test. As an Apple fan, I'm thrilled that the iPad--and the iPhone before it--were chosen to be the center of this program. The technology (including a media creation studio donated by AT&T) shines brightly in this scenario. Without the active support of students, their teachers and the administration, though, the technology would just be a hindrance while the status quo was maintained. It's inspiring to see education taking what is, in my opinion, a very positive leap forward at ACU.

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    TextMate 2 alpha before Christmas?

    According to a blog post at MacroMates this morning, an alpha version of TextMate 2 will be available by December 25th. As a longtime TextMate fan(atic), this news fills me with cheer usually reserved for closer to that date. A very merry Christmas, indeed. TextMate is an extensible text editor and development tool and has been among the top contenders for developers, web designers and even writers for years now. Version 2 has been promised many times over the past few years without fulfillment. A hard timeline has even been mentioned before, but I can't help but get my hopes up for this one. Here's hoping that the MacroMates team follows through and brings us the sequel to my all-time favorite text editor. In the meantime, Espresso 2 is coming along nicely, Sublime Text and Chocolat are rising as contenders, BBEdit is receiving plenty of love and more and more people are tackling the Vim learning curve. If and when TextMate 2 arrives, it will be up against some stiff competition.

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    Yoink takes the drag out of file dragging

    Lion users, have you ever tried to drag a file between full-screen apps? It's a bear to do, especially with a trackpad. Matthias Gansrigler at Eternal Storms (no stranger to TUAW) has solved this problem with an app called Yoink. Yoink simply watches for you to start dragging a file and when the app notices this dragging motion, it opens a small drawer on the side of your screen. You can drag files to the drawer, and even stack multiple files in there, then switch spaces and drag them back out. It's simple, it's effective and it solves the problem quite elegantly. Check out Yoink on the Mac App Store, where you can pick it up for US$2.99. For a video of Yoink in action, or a 15-day trial, visit the Yoink homepage.

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    Clarify brings focus to your screen-based documentation

    Clarify -- now in Public Beta -- is Mango Learning System's new product for communicating screen-based instructions quickly and easily. It's something like a successor to ScreenSteps (which history will show I'm a big fan of), but in the words of developer Greg Devore, "while ScreenSteps was aimed at documentation, Clarify is aimed at communication." Clarify provides a simple set of tools for taking screenshots, adding annotations, writing descriptions and then sharing the final step-by-step instructions you create using the free screensteps.me service or by email. The tools are an evolution of what was found in ScreenSteps, and are both better looking and easier to use. You can take delayed screenshots (for setting up a dropdown menu before snapping, for example) and you can repeat prior screenshot location and dimensions, which is great for documenting things like navigating web pages where the only changes are within the browser window. The annotation tools are robust but not overwhelming, and the text editing tools are more Cocoa-like and familiar than ScreenSteps'. Sharing via ScreenSteps.me is free and provides a dead-simple way to get your communication to its destination. You can also deliver it by email, but using the service allows easy updates and export to plain HTML, styled HTML or just images as well. If all of this sounds useful for you, grab the free public beta and give it a whirl. Final pricing is undetermined at the moment but will be less than ScreenSteps. While Clarify is in beta it's a great time to offer new suggestions and help out with the development of the final release!

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    Paragraft gets iOS Markdown editing right

    I just discovered Paragraft, a text editor for iPad and iPhone that boasts some ingenious Markdown features (if I've lost you already, check out the TUAW Markdown Primer for a crash course). The good parts of Paragraft blew me away enough that I'm able to overlook an ugly icon and some bad interface decisions to deliver a fairly glowing endorsement: this is the first app I've found that has really allowed Markdown on iOS to make sense. There's no shortage of Markdown-enabled apps on any Apple platform right now, and I love that. I love Markdown, and while it's far superior to writing HTML or dealing with Rich Text in an iOS environment, I always miss the Markdown speed I can achieve in TextMate and other text editors on the Mac. Nebulous Notes has the flexibility to start getting there, but you have to build all the macros yourself. Other apps handle auto-continuing lists, maybe adding bold and italics, but still leave you digging through multiple levels of iOS keyboards to get to some symbols. TextExpander Touch can help quite a bit, too, but none of these really tap the capabilities of the iPhone and iPad. Paragraft has made me begin to rethink the possibilities.

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    Mac 101: Using Keynote as Motion in a bind (Updated)

    Update: KeynoteUser.com notes that it's easy to export your Keynote animations with an alpha channel, making it much simpler to work with them in pro editing apps or in Motion. On this trip to WWDC I packed light. One backpack, a MacBook Air and a camera light. I haven't had my Air for very long, and I've been trying to install only essential software on it and see what I can do without. I've been impressed enough with iMovie's capabilities (once you get past what I consider to be a terrible UI), so I didn't bother loading Final Cut Studio. I forgot, however, to whip up some "bumpers" (intro/outro) for our videos before I left. I'm used to using Apple's Motion to handle that, but I found myself looking for an easy alternative. The solution I found was Keynote, and a grand solution it is. I'm certain many of our intrepid readers have used this method in the past, but it was new to me. If you've never used Keynote, think of it as PowerPoint on a type of steroids that automatically make presentations not look like steaming piles of bullet points. With the animation and build tools available in the object inspector, I was able to drag in a couple of logos, type a little text and create a five-second intro in about five minutes. I created the whole thing in one frame, easily timed and sequenced the animations and output a QuickTime file ready to drop into iMovie. I have to say, the process was a thing of beauty. Below is a sample of the results, created in Keynote and soundtracked in GarageBand. I won't claim they're genius, but it was a surprisingly elegant solution in a pinch. Even if you never use higher-end production tools, keep Keynote in mind next time you need custom titles or video intros. Combine it with some loops in GarageBand and have some stylish video ready to go in just a few minutes. You can grab Keynote in the Mac App Store as a standalone app for US$19.99.

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    Prototypes makes iPhone mockups a breeze

    This is a cool one, at least for iPhone app designers. Prototypes is a Mac app that lets you take those handcrafted mockups of iPhone screens and turn them into a clickable demo you can share with any iPhone or iPod touch user. Prototypes takes just about any image format, including straight Photoshop PSD files. Once you drag them into your project, adding hotspots is as easy as clicking and dragging. Create a hotspot and then drag the link to whatever page should be loaded when it's tapped. You can assign a "back" action as well. All links can have a transition (in any direction) assigned to them. You can even add notes that display when a page is loaded and then disappear. Aside from its ease-of-use, the real beauty of Prototypes is the free web service that comes with it. When you share a mockup from within the app, you get a ptyp.es url and a PIN. Have your client, your teammates, your boss or whomever log in to ptyp.es. They'll be asked to install the web app on their home page, after which they can enter your PIN and click through your mockup. Prototypes currently only works on iPhones and iPod touches, but the developer expects to roll out iPad support in the next couple of months. At US$39.99, it's not a cheap investment, but if you deal with iPhone mockups regularly, this could be a lifesaver. The fact that you get the web service without a subscription makes the up-front price seem quite reasonable, at least to me. You can try out a pre-built prototype at the Prototypes website, and purchase it directly on the Mac App Store.

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    Code Pilot 2.0 with Xcode 4 compatibility

    Macoscope has released version 2.0 of its Xcode navigation plug-in, Code Pilot. Technically, it's still a beta -- judging from the 2.0b6 version number -- but it's been rock solid for me so far. This version brings Xcode 4 compatibility and a revamped interface. If you code and you haven't tried it, definitely take a look. Code Pilot attaches to Shift-Command-X in Xcode, and the hotkey brings up a HUD with a search field focused. As you type, it quickly and intelligently filters the files in your project down to the one you were looking for. It also searches symbol names across the board or within the selected file (add a space after the filename). It's similar to Xcode's Open Quickly, but smarter and easier to install than PeepCode's PeepOpen (which is great in MacVim and TextMate but a bit less friendly in Xcode). Macoscope, also behind Productive! Magazine for iPad and the Nozbe apps for iPad and iPhone, has gained a reputation for refined design. Code Pilot is a great example of smart, unobtrusive UI with some serious utility behind it. The free download is good for 10 days, at which point you'll need a license (US$29.95). Users who purchased v1.x in 2011 get v2.0 for free, and 1.x owners who purchased before that get a 50% discount.

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    Byword 1.2, now with Markdown support

    Byword is a full-screen, "distraction-free" word processor that has an interesting twist: it focuses on just the text around your cursor (or even just the current line), dimming the rest of your composition so that even that can't distract you. Byword (and its predecessors) are based on the idea that you'll be at the top of your writing game if there's nothing else on your screen. Whether you subscribe to that theory or not, it's becoming an increasingly crowded field. Thankfully, there's more to Byword than just a blank screen and blinking caret. Byword, which can also run in a windowed (non-fullscreen) mode, brings great typography along with its minimalist interface. Some of its brethren, like OmmWriter Dana, have done this as well, but if you add in excellent keyboard navigation, hyphenation support and its unique focus mode, Byword begins to stand on its own. Oh, one more thing. While I don't personally subscribe to the distraction-free idea, Byword has added one thing that always gets my attention in any writing environment: Markdown support. MultiMarkdown support, actually, with footnotes, tables and other fun stuff. Wondering what I'm talking about? Have a look at TUAW's Markdown Primer and the MultiMarkdown documentation for more advanced features. Use Markdown syntax while you're writing, then flip over to the Markdown Preview to see your rendered text. The preview mode has buttons for copying HTML source (great for pasting into blogs) and for exporting the HTML to a file (optionally including the Byword visual styling). Markdown is a great move for Byword. I'm seeing increasing support for this popular format across the board, which I think is a great thing. I do wish for a few things, including my usual plea for advanced editing tools, such as auto-pairing of brackets and automatic list continuation. I would also love to see an option for printing the rendered document directly from Byword. You could print straight to PDF that way, too. If you want a good-looking editor for plain text or minimal rich text and don't want all of the extra buttons and formatting options, this is worth a peek. There's a free trial available on the Byword homepage, and you can pick up Byword on the Mac App Store for US $9.99.

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    New Core version of Curio in the Mac App Store

    We've mentioned the brainstorming, mind mapping, project managing notebook application Curio a few times before. The full version, Curio Professional, runs US$169.99, and the Standard version is $119.99, and both are well worth it in this blogger's opinion. Today, however, Curio announced a new Core Edition in the Mac App Store, with a tasty price of $39.99. The Core version retains many of the essential tools from the full versions, including the freeform note-taking and brainstorming style of the original. You can place rich text figures, flowcharts, mind maps in various configurations, shapes with gradient fills and shadow effects, connection lines, tables and more right into your workspaces. You can also embed documents, images, movies and other media. You have lists, outlines, and even to-do lists available. Sort your ideas on index cards and rearrange them in the freeform space. Tagging, checkmarks, percent complete, priorities and ratings, as well as advanced search features make project management easy. There is also a wide array of import and export options, which keeps your data portable and makes presenting your ideas a simple task. At the new price of $39.99, it's worth a look for users who've been holding out, as well as for folks who've never heard of Curio before. While there's not a free trial of the Core version available (Mac App Store-style), Zengobi just informed me that there is, in fact, a 15-day trial version (extendable to 60 days) of Core available at www.zengobi.com/curio/core. Consult the comparison matrix to see what features are available in the Core version vs. full versions.

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    Rock the electronic with SynthTronica for iPad

    SynthTronica is a new synthesizer app for iPad that provides some seriously cool audio modeling features. If you're a musician looking for some new sounds or even a live-performance instrument, this is worth a look. Even for the hobbyist, this US$4.99 app is a great way to explore some musical possibilities. SynthTronica provides a full set of tools, including multiple keyboard layouts, a unique multi-touch filter, built-in recording, sound editing and more. The presets are a great place to start (all 92 of them), but you can build an almost limitless library of your own sculpted sounds. With "Formant Distortion Synthesis" and the ability to apply any audio clip as "grooves," you can even take the same synth presets and make them into entirely different synth progressions. The multi-touch filter makes dynamic sweeps and live modulation a breeze, whether for recording or live performance. The keyboard remains visible while you work the filter, letting you play while doing multiple, simultaneous sweeps and band passes for some very cool effects. If you want to handcraft some highly original, custom sounds, have a look at SynthTronica on the App Store (US$4.99 introductory price). Also take a look at the videos on the SynthTronica home page for a demo, and check out a brief performance by Jordan Rudess on YouTube.

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    TV & Movies
    TV & Movies By Brett Terpstra

    History 3D brings the Civil War to life

    Just in time for the anniversary of the Civil War, History 3D for iPad brings the past to life. If you have a pair of anaglyph 3D glasses (the red and blue kind) handy, it gets even better. There are two dozen pictures to view in black and white and anaglyph 3D. The 3D images were taken using cameras with two or four lenses for a stereoscopic effect. These 3D photos amazed me, and I consider US$0.99 for the app well worth it for this bit of history. The interface is great; it's basically a storybook you can page through. Flip through the photos and tap to bring up the story behind the photos. The 3D images created in the making of this app are being donated copyright-free to the Library of Congress. You have to find your own 3D glasses at this point, but there will be links to stores that carry them on the support website soon. I definitely recommend commemorating this period in our history with a fresh look at the actual events of the Civil War. Check out a YouTube trailer and pop over to the App Store to get your copy of History 3D.

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    QuickCal for Mac: natural language events and todos for iCal

    QuickCal has been one of my favorite ways to add items to iCal. It started with a Dashboard widget that let me use natural language to add calendar events. I loved it (actually wrote about it back in '09). Then it became an iOS app, QuickCal Mobile, and I was able to add entries with blazing speed while on-the-go, as well as view all of my upcoming appointments within the app. It currently has a place on my iPhone dock for instant access. Now, QuickCal is a desktop application, available in the Mac App Store, and it has some cool new capabilities. The natural language engine is pretty smart to begin with. You can type things like "Dr. appt 4p" and an event is created for today at 4:00pm titled "Dr. appt." You can also get more verbose, adding locations and start and end times. It does todo items, too. "todo - Get something done by wed" will add a task to iCal with a due date. That's not working for me in the current version, but I've seen video of it working splendidly in the upcoming 2.3 release. You set a default calendar to add to, but you can change the target calendar by typing part of the calendar's name in the entry box. It can run menubar only, dock only or both. You can also set it up to launch directly to entry mode and quit after you finish one event or todo. That's perfect if you just want to run it from Quicksilver or LaunchBar and not have it running permanently. The menubar offers a dropdown showing all of your upcoming appointments and todo items. You can click an entry to open it in iCal, but you don't really need to. You can see everything you need to -- and in the upcoming version you can also check off tasks and see priorities and days until due -- from that little icon up there. Once the new version is approved by Apple, it will actually turn iCal into a much handier todo list than it normally would be. Smart reminders automatically set alarms based on the distance away an event is, and the duration of the event. If you set a day long event for a month away, you'll get reminders at configurable intervals up to the date. If your new event starts in an hour, you can automatically set just a 15 minute alarm. You can turn this off, but it makes setting reminders a breeze. Sound good? Grab it fast, it's only US$.99 while the upcoming version is in review with Apple. It could be days, it could be hours ... who knows? But it's cheap right now, and handy for anyone who uses iCal.

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    ColorSchemer Studio in the Mac App Store, and TUAW has free licenses!

    ColorSchemer Studio, my favorite Mac app for designing color combinations and palettes, is now available on the Mac App Store. I've mentioned it a few times before, and we've had a few licenses to give away in the past. To celebrate the arrival in the Mac App Store, ColorSchemer has given us three more licenses to hand out. See the rules at the bottom of this post to enter in the drawing. That's not all, though. ColorSchemer Studio is normally $49.99, but starting today, there's a special sale price of US$9.99. That's a pretty huge savings, so even if you don't win a free license, it's a great time to pick up a copy. ColorSchemer offers an array of tools for putting together palettes using basic to advanced color theory, and you can preview palettes in different ratios to find the perfect balance. It also integrates directly with the COLOURLovers, allowing you to import your favorite color palettes from the social website. If you're not already using it, it's worth a look for designers of any ilk. Check it out and leave a comment for a chance to get a copy for free! Here are the rules and a link to the legal statement: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older. To enter leave a comment on this post. The comment must be left before Monday, March 28, 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Three winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: A full license for ColorSchemer Studio. (US$49.99 value) Click Here for complete Official Rules. Good Luck!

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    ScreenFloat, a great productivity booster for Mac

    ScreenFloat, now available on the Mac App Store, is a small utility that does one simple thing: float screenshots above all your other windows. Seems silly at first, right? It's not. I've been beta testing this app for over a year, and every time I open it, I'm amazed at how useful this functionality is. Take, for example, InDesign. There's plenty of data that can't be quickly copied and pasted into a document, and InDesign tends to obscure everything but what you're working on with its interface elements. With ScreenFloat, I just hit Command+Shift+2 and snap a quick shot of the information I need to reference. When I switch back to InDesign, that screenshot is right there, floating wherever I move it to. InDesign stays focused as I enter what I need. It's great for writing, too. Right now I have a snap of the Mac App Store details for ScreenFlow floating next to the TextMate window where I'm writing this up. Price, release date, how to spell developer Matthias Gansrigler's name ... all instantly available for reference without a single Command+Tab. I could give you a dozen more examples, but I think that if ScreenFloat is going to be of use to you, you've probably already thought of a few times you could live without a bunch of app switching. ScreenFloat also catalogs previous screenshots, and it has "Open In" functionality for sending them to any other application. It's US$7.99 in the Mac App Store, and in this blogger's opinion, it's an essential tool for anyone doing real work on a Mac. By the way, Eternal Storms Software (Matthias Gansrigler) is also responsible for Flickery, my favorite Flickr browser. If you haven't checked it out, it's on the Mac App Store as well.

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    Zen Viewer, great-looking document management for iPad

    Zen Viewer is a relatively new app (available on iTunes right now) that offers a fresh take on document filing, viewing and sharing on the iPad. It works with a host of online services, provides many options for file upload and download, and it looks great, too. Right now, it's a buck (US$0.99) It's currently selling for US$2.99, so it's worth a look. We can start with the way it looks. You can start by "skinning" the app with a variety of color schemes and textures. There are a good number of free selections for download within the app, and more are available for purchase. I had no trouble finding a look I liked within the available free choices. You can also configure the interface in a number of ways, with sliding panels and collapsing sections. You quickly find a layout that works well for you, and you don't have to think about it again.

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