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Daily Mac app: Battery Health monitors your Mac's battery
With all the talk of battery life of iPhones and iPads it's easy to forget that your laptop battery needs some attention every so often. My laptop battery is pretty old, and it doesn't last as long as it used to. No surprise there, but I'd like to easily quantify its condition. That's where a free app in the Mac app store comes in called Battery Health. This little utility will reveal your current charge level, the capacity of your battery (it loses capacity as it ages), the number of times it has been charged and more. You can get some of this information from a System Report when you select About this Mac from under the Apple Menu, but I like this utility better. There are some other free utilities that get you the same information, and some paid ones, but Battery Health does the trick for me. If you are wondering about the state of your battery, and you should, give Battery Health a try. Some posters note that the app appears to be derived from another free open source app, CoconutBattery, and they do have some similar features. Download them both and put each to your personal tests. If you check the gallery you can see the info the app gives you. %Gallery-151913%
Daily Mac App: Gemini finds and removes duplicate files
After years of buying hard drives and moving files around, digital hoarders like myself eventually wind up with duplicate files all over the place. A few gigabytes here and there can add up, so Gemini aims to help you find and delete duplicate files across devices. It's a beautifully designed app, and if you're doing basic directory comparisons, is fast as lightning. To start, you just drag a few folders onto Gemini. It'll start scanning with a big circular progress bar moving around. One of the awesome features I've not seen elsewhere is the ability to see the results of a scan and do something about them while the app continues to scour your folders. Gemini is fast even though you can be impatient, which is a plus if you scan a really large set of folders. One issue I did run into was scanning a nearly-full 500 GB drive that had my Time Machine backups on it. The machine using Gemini only had about 5 GB of space available on its drive, and after about an hour of Gemini checking the external drive, my system locked up as it ran out of drive space! This is an oddball issue, according to MacPaw, and they are looking into it. That said, all the other scans of large folders I attempted worked great and went quickly without eating up HD space. Gemini's speed is really impressive. As a bonus, Gemini offers a delightfully designed interface. When you are shown duplicates, you can easily see where they are located, pick the ones you want to delete, then view a receipt of what you want to remove before you delete it. Then, when you are sure, Gemini "shreds" the receipt (and files) before your eyes. Taking something rather tedious (file management) and making it fun turns Gemini into a must-have app if you have years of files stored on external drives around your home.
Daily Mac App: Book Palette adds ten new templates to iBooks Author
That didn't take long. Only a few weeks after Apple's iBooks Author app debuted, template publisher Jumsoft began shipping Book Palette (US$2.99), a collection of ten professionally designed templates for iBooks Author. I had an opportunity to try Book Palette, which is packaged as a Mac app. Once installed from the Mac App Store and launched, the app displays ten textbook templates. To start using a template, you can either select it and click the Open in iBooks Author button, or just double-click the template. In either case, iBooks Author launches and the template opens right up. If you've modified your own iBooks Author templates before, they're saved in the /Application Support/iBooks Author/Templates/My Templates folder. You can choose to save the templates into that folder so that they appear with all of the rest of the standard templates in the template chooser. Like the other templates that are included with iBooks Author, Jumsoft provides layouts for textbooks only -- remember, that's the focus for iBooks Author at this point at this point in time. The templates include Biology, Cookery, Decision Making, Dental Hygiene, Environmental Design, Interior Design, IT Strategy, Managing Change, Psychology, and Team Building. All of the templates include the standard iBooks Author attributes, including a title page, a place for introductory media, a table of contents, and a glossary. The templates also follows the Chapter / Section format of the Apple-provided templates, and pages in a variety of layouts (one, two or three columns, and blank). %Gallery-146617% Of all the templates, I thought that Cookery was probably the most unique and least like a textbook template, but I now fear of a future of poorly written and self-published cookbooks that all look identical. On the other hand, the Biology and Dental Hygiene templates uses the Chalkduster font for call-outs, an unfortunate design decision that can be fixed by simply changing the font in those areas where it shows up. I also found the use of Didot Italic as the standard text font in the Interior Design template to be a nightmare, as it's hard to read a lot of text in such a flowery font. Most of the other templates were well-designed and very readable, and wouldn't require much (if any) change to create good-looking electronic texts. Jumsoft plans to release additional templates as app upgrades in the future, so book designers will have plenty of base templates to start with. For those who are currently beginning to work with iBooks Author, Book Palette is an inexpensive way to add to the paltry selection of six templates provided by Apple.
Daily Mac App: AirBeam
If you have an iPhone and iPad or Mac, you can set up an indoor surveillance system. All you need to get it going is AirBeam, which is software that turns your iPhone into a spy cam and your Mac desktop into a remote viewing station. Setup is simple -- just install AirBeam on all your hardware and the software will do the rest. There's a universal iOS version for your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and a desktop version that'll run on your Mac. The desktop version is the viewer which will let you watch video and listen to audio streamed from your iOS device(s). You'll need a camera-enabled device if you want video; otherwise, you will only receive audio stream. Once you fire up the software on all your iOS devices, the desktop software will automatically detect their streams. You can watch one stream or multiple streams at the same time. The app keeps the iOS device running so you will have a stream as long as you have battery power. No worries if you don't have a Mac, as the iOS version of the software can work as a monitor, too. This handy feature lets you use your iPhone/iPod touch as a camera and your iPad as the monitor (or vice versa). This is perfect if you have a little one napping upstairs and you want to watch him or her while you're sitting at your desk. The only catch with this setup is that the iOS devices and the Mac must be on the same Wi-Fi network. AirBeam is more than just a novelty; it's sophisticated surveillance software that'll let you set up a motion alarm, an audio alarm and even off-network monitoring so you can monitor your house while you're out running errands. You'll have to know your external IP (the one assigned to your modem) and set up port forwarding on the router for this remote viewing to work. AirBeam also has a recording feature that'll capture up to 30 seconds of video when the software detects motion or sound. You can watch that video remotely using the IP address and port assigned by the AirBeam software. Though you can't pan the remote iOS device, you can toggle both the LED and the camera on and off. In my time using AirBeam, the software's performance was flawless and provided a far better experience than any remote camera I've owned. There was zero configuration, and the video quality was excellent. The only surveillance camera feature I missed was movement. Most security cameras include a swiveling mount which lets you control the position of the camera. You lose that control with AirBeam, but you get almost every other surveillance feature at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated camera. You can grab the Mac version of AirBeam for free, while the iOS version will cost you US$3.99.
Daily Mac App: PixFit
Last week, we looked at SnapRuler, a tool for measuring the dimensions of an object on your screen. This week, we are taking a look at PixFit, a similar, but less expensive tool for taking measurements. Whether it's a square image or an irregularly-shaped block of text, PixFit will give you the dimensions. It resides in your menu bar and is ready to provide you measurements in a flash. You can launch the measuring tool directly from the menu bar or by using a hotkey shortcut. It gives you a straightforward crosshair selection tool that lets you draw a box around an object and measure the edges of your selection. If you don't like the selection, you can hold down the shift key and adjust the guidelines to get the perfect fit. The arrow keys can be used to adjust both the location and size of the selection box by one pixel at a time. If you still don't like your measurement, you can hit the esc key and start over. Once your selection is perfect, you can tap the space key and copy the width and height to your clipboard. You can copy the dimensions in CSS format or just plain text. PixFit is easy, fast and affordable. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of SnapRuler, but it's this simplicity that makes the app so useful. It's perfect for someone who only needs to measure the dimensions of an on-screen object and wants a simple, lightweight tool to help with that task. With its $5.99 price tag, PixFit is affordable, too.
Daily Mac App: Slender
New from Dragon Forged Software, Slender (US$9.99, currently on sale for $4.99) is a narrowly-focused utility that will either be exactly the tool you're looking for or one you can safely skip. It helps you non-destructively optimize Xcode projects by allowing you to view, evaluate, and adjust development assets. For example, you can scan multi-resolution image collections. Slender detects when you might be missing a @2x asset or have used an incorrect dimension. That's particularly handy when you're working on large projects and may find it hard to otherwise audit your images by hand. Slender also matches assets to source code, so you can automatically remove unused asset items to help save space in your shipping bundle. You can use Slender to add its extra checking and validation to your normal workflow as a final project cleanup stage. Developer Kyle Richter adds, "This is the perfect app for anyone who is working on large projects with frequent asset changes and anyone trying to keep an active eye on their final bundle size." Slender originated as an internal project. Richter explains, "When working on client projects, we frequently ran into issues with asset control. Slender was designed as an in-house tool to help us optimize our work flow and cut down on our development time. We found it extremely useful internally, as did the colleagues we shared it with, so we decided to release it on the App Store so we could share the tech with others." Slender is now available from the Mac App Store. For more details about its features, you can check out this information page.
Daily Mac App: SnapRuler
It wasn't too long ago that I was faced with the task of redesigning a website -- replacing all the images, re-doing an image map and implementing a layout with multiple columns. This task required lots of on-screen measurements, and my method of taking screenshots and measuring them in Photoshop just didn't work. After some searching, I found SnapRuler. SnapRuler is a simple, lightweight program that helps you measure items on your screen. The app uses a large loupe to help you pinpoint your starting and ending location. It has a snap-to feature that'll jump to the nearest edges or corners, which is handy when you're measuring an object with distinct boundaries. It even snaps to rounded edges, which is something that's difficult to do manually. The app uses a keyboard shortcut to toggle it on and off, so you can launch it quickly when you need it and shut it down when you're done. Once you measure the object, you can then copy the dimension to the clipboard in CSS, HTML or Objective-C format. SnapRuler is a basic app that does one thing and does it well. It costs US$9.99 and is available from the Mac App Store. Hat tip to Stephen for reminding us of this excellent app!
Daily Mac app: TurboCollage
Lately I've become a big fan of making photo collages. They can be a bit complicated to create in Photoshop or Elements, so we're beginning to see simpler targeted apps appear for both iOS and Mac OSX. We've reviewed one nice app for iOS called Diptic and now I want to turn your attention to TurboCollage for the Mac, now available in the Mac app store. It's simple to create some pretty stunning photo collages. Drag your photos into the app, and choose from any of 5 layouts. Options include what looks like a pile of photos to more intricate mosaics and jigsaw puzzles. You can decide what photos go where, or let the app randomly shuffle your collection. If your photos are high resolution, you can output preset images as wide as 5260 pixels, or you can set your own size and shape. The background of the collage can be another photo, or any color you choose from the color picker. You can adjust the width of borders, and render the final image in landscape or portrait orientation. You can overlay text if you want it, with control over the font, color, rotation and drop shadow. I was impressed with the quality of the output, and you can send your photos directly from the app to Facebook or email. There are a couple of cons. You don't have any control over the shape of the frames once you choose a layout. That can make it tough to fit in a panorama, although you can scale the image and recenter it. I'd also like to see some more layouts. Having said all that, this is an excellent app for the photo buff, and it does in minutes what might take hours to do in a high-end image editor. There is a lite version available which is free, but it has some limitations in the number of layouts. It will give you a feel for how the app works. There are also free versions of the app for both the iPad and the iPhone which are comparable in features to the full Mac app and a bargain at no cost. TurboCollage is US$3.99 for a limited time, a 75% off sale. If you want a quick and easy way to produce some nice artistic collages this is an excellent choice. I've included some sample scenes I created with some of my landscape photos to give you an idea how the app works. %Gallery-143264%
Daily Mac App: Fluid
Fluid lets you create an "app" out of a website. If you use one specific website all the time, this alone is very handy. For example, if you wanted a browser specifically for Gmail, you could make one using Fluid and set its own icon, download directory, and other settings. Or maybe you heard about Facebook tracking users even when they are "logged out" of Facebook and want to have a browser that you only use for Facebook. Once you start making them, the uses for per-site browsers start appearing everywhere. I created one for my web hosting company's "web panel" with links on the bookmark bar to domain registration, support links, mail settings, etc. I don't need to see those links all the time, so I wouldn't want to put them on my regular browser's toolbar. But when I need to do something on my host, it keeps me from having to search all over their menus for the settings I use the most. Is there a site that has a better iPad version than the regular version? Make a per-site browser for that site, and set the User Agent to the iPad from the menu. (Unlike Safari, that setting will stay even after the app is restarted.) Fluid is free to use, but for $5 you get a few extra features: Separate cookie storage (usually cookies are shared with Safari). Minimize app to the menu bar instead of the dock Userscripts or Userstyles Lion Full Screen mode Ok, honestly, #4 ought to be a default part of the app, but the others are really well worth the money. Do you use more than one Gmail account? With separate cookies, you can make separate browser-apps for each one, which makes it much easier. (Same goes for Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site.) Separate cookies for Facebook means that Facebook can't track you whenever are doing when you aren't using Facebook. Worried about Google invading your privacy? Create a Fluid.app for Google and keep its settings separate from your other sites too. Do you like to listen to Internet radio? Make a browser that only appears in the menu-bar and you can easily control it without cluttering up your dock. Use Google Calendar? Create a browser for it, set the User Agent to "iPhone" and put it in your menu bar for quick reference. Using Fluid.app Browsers With 1Password Unfortunately, Fluid.app browsers do not integrate with 1Password. I'm hoping that might change in the future, but in the meantime, the good news is that you can still use your 1Password data using a feature called 1PasswordAnywhere. The short version is this Locate your "1Password.agilekeychain" file Control-click » Show Package Contents Find 1Password.html file (If your 1Password file is in Dropbox, the path will be ~/Dropbox/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/1Password.html.) Put the full, complete path into your Fluid browser. For example, mine is: file:///Users/luomat/Dropbox/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/1Password.html (Be sure to change /Users/luomat/ to your path.) That way you can open your 1Password file (read-only) in your Fluid browser. (Note: if you have restricted what sites your Fluid browser can access, you may need to loosen that to allow it to access that page.) Closing Notes The only other drawback is that Safari extensions don't work with Fluid browsers. Also, you may have heard that Google Chrome has a similar feature called "Application Shortcuts." Unfortunately, that feature is not available on Mac OS X, and Google has not said if or when it ever will be. In a world where "web apps" are becoming more and more common, Fluid makes them easier to use than ever. You can use the majority of features for free, so go ahead and download Fluid and check it out. It requires 10.6 or later. Once you start using it, you'll probably find even more uses for it. Some day I'll explain my byzantine system of using Fluid and Choosy, but in the meantime, take it for a spin.
Daily Mac App: Typingstats
Typing- whether it's writing a blog post or responding to an email, almost everyone with a computer has to type. So why not make it fun? One way to liven up your typing experience is to use the small utility Typingstats. Typingstats is an OS X app that sits in your menu bar and keeps track of your keystrokes. It counts them for you and calculates your words per minute while you type. If you don't like words per minute, you can choose words per second, keystrokes per second, or keystrokes per minute. It's system-wide, so it tracks your typing in your web browser, email client and text editor. The app keeps a history of your keystrokes and produces a nice graph that shows your typing count each day. As expected, my graph is steady during the week and drops off during the weekend. Besides keystroke count and words per minute, the app also tracks which key you press most often. For me, it's the spacebar and sometimes the letter "a". You can keep your keystroke count to yourself or upload it to an online leaderboard where you can compete to become the typing king (or queen). Uploading does require you to sign up for an online Typingstats account. The app isn't 100% accurate. It only counts keystrokes and not words. The app assumes each word is five characters, so your word per minute count is an approximation. Typingstats also counts every keystroke, including command, option and control, so a simple copy and paste can be calculated as a word. For me, a close approximation is good enough. I enjoy watching the keystroke count go up each day and the wpm count fluctuate as I type. Typingstats is a fun utility for people who make their living typing or are just interested in knowing how much they type. If you're concerned about privacy (the app does track your keystrokes), you can open the app only when you're typing information that's not sensitive. The app is available in the Mac App Store for 99-cents.
Daily Mac App: Tab Launcher
For many people, it's kind of pointless to go searching for a Dock replacement. The Dock itself is one of the most attractive features of OS X and is actually one of the things that lured me into adopting Macs at home seven years ago. But when you have a smaller screen to work with, especially on a MacBook Air, space is a premium. This is where programs such as Tab Launcher come in. Currently on sale for US$.99, Tab Launcher organizes any type of file on a Mac into a tabbed group, then anchors that group to the side of the monitor. There's a number of options available, such as changing the tab's size, color, font and more. You can even tweak the individual icons on TabLauncher. Like the Dock, you can set it to auto-hide as well. If you want to switch away from using the Dock entirely, you can import the contents of the Dock to a new tab in Tab Launcher. You can save your Tab Launcher settings and load them on another computer, useful if you have more than one Mac in your household. Tab Launcher is stable, highly customizable and useful. If you're keen about organizing icons into groups and getting them out of the way to increase your productivity, it's worth dropping the 99 cents to see if this fits your Mac. I wasn't sure at first glance if it would be for me, but so far, it definitely is. %Gallery-142834%
Daily Mac App: iExplorer
Like most technically-inclined folks, I found myself doing a little family tech support over the holidays. I needed to use an iPod touch as a USB drive to copy files between my Mac and my brother's Windows 7 computer. This isn't something I'll do often so I was looking for something easy and free. I found what I was looking for in iExplorer (formerly "iPhone Explorer") from Macroplant. Let's be clear: iExplorer is a simple application which is designed to do only two things: a) mount your iOS devices like a basic USB "thumb" drive and b) persuade you to consider upgrading to the company's PhoneDisk (US$20) program, which has more features. Some of those features are even shown within the iExplorer UI, and when you click on them, a prompt appears to upgrade. Even if you don't want to upgrade, you'll still run into a mild case of the "nags." While iExplorer is offered for free, the developers ask that you spread the word by posting a message on Twitter or Facebook. Otherwise there's a window that covers up the application each time it launches. For a program that you keep in your "tech support tool belt" for occasional use only, these are minor annoyances. If you do decide to upgrade, I'd suggest checking out PhoneView which does a whole lot more than just mount the iOS device. I have written about PhoneView before, and it continues to be my "go to" app. There is no Windows version, however, so if that's important to you, PhoneDisk might be a better choice. There's not much more to say about iExplorer itself. The app installs simply, and usage is as straightforward as possible. I had a 32 GB USB thumb drive, but it was formatted for Mac OS X and couldn't be read on my brother's Windows 7 machine. A 32 GB iPod touch (or iPad or iPhone) with a lot of free space makes a great method of transportation between Windows and Mac computers. iExplorer filled a gap, and for free.
Daily Mac App: Fireworks HD
Some apps deliver exactly what they say on the package. Fireworks HD provides a display of artistic explosions to the desktop. Retailing for just $0.99, Fireworks HD works both as an app and a screen saver. Unlike most fireworks apps, HD uses actual video footage rather than simulated emitter effects. That means the app download is 1.5 GB, and the full app takes up 3.55 GB in its basic release. If you work with a primary SSD with limited storage space like I do, this might not be the best app for you. Or you might want to move it to a secondary drive and run it from there. Are its sound effects "shockingly great" as the marketing text suggests? Actually, yes. They are far better than those you normally get in these kinds of apps. And the fireworks are quite lovely to look at. For several minutes at a time. There's no "story" per se, the way there is in a real show and unless you really, really, really like fireworks, you might not feel that the huge disk requirements and the limited functionality make the app worth a purchase. New Year's is coming up. If you're looking for a fireworks app, have lots of room on your disk, and are ready to supply your own music, it's a good one to have.
Daily Mac App: Camtasia 2
TechSmith's Camtasia for Mac received an update this week to version 2.0, and the improvements made an already good screencasting app even better. To start with, TechSmith listened to feedback and redesigned the user interface for the editor. It's easier to use now, with less searching for the tools that you need to apply to your screencasts. There's a new blur effect so you can hide private information on a screen, and the app is now anywhere from 40 to 60 percent faster in terms of production time. I was personally happy to see that you can now export HD-quality files with a Flash wrapper and fallback to HTML5, so even browsers that aren't running Flash can view screencasts produced with Camtasia 2. Another new favorite for professional screencasters is the ability of the app to let you reuse callouts. It's possible to copy and paste those annotations, which gives multiple projects a more consistent look and feel. If you've ever needed just a few more seconds to explain something during a screencast, there's now an extend frame function that lengthens individual frames of a video so you can add to your narration without worry. App developers are going to love the new device framing feature. You record video of your app in action using Camtasia 2, and can then add an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook Pro frame around the video. You can see an example of this feature in the sample video below. If you're currently running Camtasia for Mac 1.x, the upgrade price is US$49.50. New users can try the app for free for 30 days, and a new full license for Camtasia 2.0 is $99.00 for electronic delivery from TechSmith. The app is also available on the Mac App Store for $99.99.
Daily Mac App: Snapheal
A lot of digital photographers and iPhoneographers would love to have the ability to touch up their photos, but find some of the apps a bit hard to master. Now MacPhun LLC, developers of the FX Photo Studio, FX Photo Studio Pro, and Color Splash Studio apps (among others), has come up with an easy to learn app for "healing" those sick pictures. Snapheal (introductory price of US$9.99, normally $19.99), just arrived in the Mac App Store this morning, but TUAW had an early look at this app and it's earned a place as the Daily Mac App. Snapheal opens to a screen showing a location where you can drop a photo. You can also import an image from your iPhoto library for retouching. Once you've brought the image into Snapheal, there are tools that you can use to erase items (like clouds in an otherwise blue sky), clone and stamp shapes, retouch (change the contrast, saturation, sharpness, or brightness of areas), make other adjustments of color and contrast, crop, and rotate or flip images. %Gallery-141775% Similar tools in other apps can be tricky to master, but MacPhun provides a video tutorial for every trick in Snapheal. These are short videos that demonstrate how each tool is used. Just about every tool can be applied with two clicks, and if you happen to make a mistake there's an undo button just above the image. You'll also find a compare button that let you look at your original and retouched photos side by side to view your progress. There's a fun touch that I absolutely loved. While the app is in the process of making a major change to an image (for example, erasing some clouds), a progress screen appears that shows some "amazing fact." I'm a fan of trivia, so I found myself undoing some of my work and then reapplying changes just to see another fact. Compared to other retouching tools available for the Mac such as Adobe Photoshop Elements ($79.99), Snapheal may not be as fully functional, but it's also easier to use and less costly than many of those apps. For a full set of tools that rivals Photoshop Elements, you might want to combine FX Photo Studio ($9.99) or FX Photo Studio Pro ($39.99) with Snapheal. I found that Snapheal did a wonderful job of letting me edit my photos without a lot of work. Once you're done turning a so-so photo into a masterpiece, you can share it with Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter or email. If you're in the market for a photo editing app of this type, I'd suggest that you snap up Snapheal while it's still at the introductory pricing.
Daily Mac App: Coffee Break
I enjoy using my computer, especially at night when it's quiet. I enjoy it so much that I often forget to get up and stretch every few hours. I also stay up way too late. My propensity to get caught up in my Twitter stream or my RSS feed is one reason why I bought Coffee Break. Coffee Break sits in your menu bar and forces you to take a break. You select the time you want to take a break and the app will darken your screen when it's time to walk away from the computer. There's a countdown timer that'll warn you when a break is about to start. When your break is over, the screen will brighten, and you will be ready to roll back into what you were doing. If you're on the computer for an extended time, you can schedule several breaks throughout the day and add a reminder so you don't forget why you are breaking. Coffee Break is a pleasure to use. It's visually appealing and easy to configure. The controls are intuitive and it's simple to turn a scheduled coffee break on or off as needed. It's also a lightweight app and hardly uses any system resources. It's one of my favorite little apps. Coffee break is available in the Mac App Store for US$2.99.
Daily Mac App: NameChanger
Batch-processing files is a great way to save time. Automator scripts work will for simple jobs, but if you're trying to do something complex like remove or alter the filename of a great many files, a free tool like NameChanger could be a useful addition to your armory. NameChanger takes on file renaming with aplomb. It'll allow you to replace parts of a file name, append or prepend characters to existing file names, as well as add dates, sequences or any other regular expression. It's a little more complex than the likes of Quick File Renamer; but once you get to grips with it, it's a rapid way to process files. One thing that's not that obvious when you first start out, is that to get NameChanger to ignore file extensions in it's processing of your file name, you have to reach into the Options menu and tick the "Hide Extensions" box. That way you can maintain the original file extensions of the files you're processing. Once you've got that down pat, it's just a case dragging and dropping the files you want modified onto the app. You use the drop-down box to select the type of processing you want, type in the characters or select the sequence or date string and hit "Rename." Alternatively, if you want to do it all within the program you can use the "Add," "Remove" and "Clear" buttons on the toolbar. While it's true you can perform all these functions with Automator's file actions, NameChanger brings swift flexibility to your batch-renaming tasks. It's free, so if you're after a file renamer, it's well worth checking out. Thanks for the suggestion Brandon.
Daily Mac App: Keka
Great free archive utilities are pretty hard to come by on the Mac. Keka is the exception. If OS X's built-in compression utility doesn't do enough for you, Keka could be the answer. Keka's been around since 2009, but only recently made it into the Mac App Store. Unlike Growl, Keka is available both as a paid, US$2 app from the Mac App Store and as a free download from the Keka project site. The two versions will be kept in sync, so there'll always be a free option. Of course if you use it, supporting the developers, either by a donation or buying it in the Mac App Store, will help them continue to update it. Keka allows you to compress files in multiple formats. Zip, 7z, Tar, Gzip and Bzip2 are all included. What's more Keka can extract even more with RAR, 7z, Lzma, Zip, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, ISO, EXE, CAB, PAX, and even ACE supported. Keka also supports encrypted archives meaning you can password protect compressed files, as well as split archives -- handy when you have file size limitations. Like the Unarchiver and others, you can set Keka as the default extraction client, so files can be decompressed with a double click. If you want to get a bit more advanced, the Keka Dock icon serves as the one-stop shop for compression. Drag and drop files onto it to either decompress or create a new archive in the default format of your choosing. Format and compression method can be changed quickly from a pop-up menu from the Dock icon. It's all very slick.
Daily Mac App: Spotify
Now that Spotify is available on both sides of the pond, it's about time we took a quick look at it. Free streaming music apps don't get much better than Spotify. Right now you can stream any track in the Spotify library for free with a pretty decent desktop Mac app. It's not available in the Mac App Store, but that doesn't matter -- it's just a simple old-style app install, drag-and-drop like any other app (remember when Mac programs were called applications and they were all installed like that?). Once installed you can sign-up for a free ad-supported Spotify account. If you've never used Spotify before I suggest you start there, you can always upgrade to "Unlimited", which gives you unlimited streaming without adverts for US$4.99 a month; or "Premium", which gives you ad-free unlimited streaming plus offline caching and Spotify access on your smartphone for $9.99 a month. Log into the Spotify app on your Mac and you're presented with a fairly familiar interface. Search in the top left, find an artist you want to listen to and hit play. Where Spotify differs from most of the other free streaming music services is that it allows you to pick and choose tracks, not just artists or genres -- it's not just radio-style streaming, it's like playing music in iTunes. Spotify will also play local music files, so your entire iTunes library is also accessible from within the app -- you don't have to forgo your original music collection or juggle two programs. Spotify is relatively social too -- you can share playlists with anyone with a Spotify account. Recently there's been a bit of controversy over the company's use of Facebook integration. Spotify was essentially spitting out status updates about each track you played to your Facebook account. Thankfully you can switch that off -- and I suggest you do -- to avoid annoying the hell out of your friends. Spotify also provides radio-style streaming, if that's what you're after. Pick from a list of genres or styles of music and Spotify will chew through a curated selection of tracks. If you're interested in reading-up on a key artist, Spotify also includes biographies on some of the bigger artists. Each artist page also includes links to similar artists, but if you're after music discovery Spotify is relatively weak compared to some of the other streaming services available like Last.fm, Pandora, MOG or Rdio. The recent unveiling of Spotify's App Finder, which essentially allows you to use curated plug-in-style apps within the Spotify desktop client, should help the service improve in that regard. There's already an app for Last.fm available, so with a bit of luck Spotify could end up as one of the best one-stop-shops for both music discovery and playback. If you're a Spotify user who's interested in testing out the App Finder early, Spotify's made available a preview client, which you can test out right now. Spotify is a new comer to the States, but it's the dominant music streaming service in Europe and for good reason. It combines a decent sized library, the ability to play your own local tracks, and free, ad-supported, streaming. With the single track and artist selection that you're used to in iTunes, it could best some of the more popular streaming services in the US, if you're after a pick'n'play-type experience. Whether you're a die-hard iTunes user, or you're hooked into Rdio, Mog or Pandora, it's worth grabbing yourself a free Spotify account and giving it a whirl, if you haven't already. The free Spotify desktop Mac client is available directly from the Spotify website, where you'll also find sign-ups for Open (free), Unlimited ($4.99) and Premium ($9.99) services.
Daily Mac App: Quick File Renamer
Bulk renaming files can be a time consuming pain without the right tool. If it's a problem you face often, you've probably already got a favorite batch-renaming app residing on your Mac, but if not, Quick File Renamer might be a good place to start. It has a user-friendly interface with straightforward options -- "idiot proof" you might call it. Add the files that you want to rename into the "Before Rename" box by using the file finder built into the program or dragging and dropping from Finder. You then select the kind of renaming action you want from the presets, input your custom name, set whether you want to save the renamed files in the same location or another, and whether you want to delete the original files. If you want to do something a little more complicated, the advanced tab lets you change or add numbers to an existing series or clear the name entirely. You can also modify things such as upper or lowercase names, add dates, suffixes or prefixes, remove or replace sections of names or add audio or photo tags. A comprehensive help system will guide you through the more complicated actions, which is accessible via the good old F1 key. Quick File Renamer comes in two flavors -- a free 'lite' version, which lacks some of the more advanced renaming and tagging options, but will rename and append file numbers without issue; and a fully capable paid version that'll set you back US$1.99. There are quite a few other batch renamers available for the Mac including Renamer, Name Mangler and Photo A.K.A, while you can achieve the same result with a bit of Automator magic. But if you're looking for a decent free batch renaming app for the occasional file renaming task, then Quick File Renamer Lite is a good start.
