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All the best app reviews last week on TUAW
Last week was a busy one for apps in the iOS App Store, giving your favorite TUAW writers a chance to post some great reviews of the apps that grace their home screens. Here's a quick roundup of our recent reviews -- and a few app roundups -- you may have missed: Use slow-motion video to improve your game with Ubersense Coach Mind the Buzz is fun trivia game with emphasis on education Get ahead of the curve with Cheating Tom Track your bicycle trips with BikeTool Dead Giveaway finishes dead last Keep on trucking with RGB Express Log anxiety attacks, take control of them with Worry Watch WeatherPro adds widgets and more for iOS Biggest first: Tap big or go home Bestie simplifies shopping with a Pinterest-esque approach Don't Panic: Transmit for iOS is here for your FTP client needs Predict and win with Champions League Predictor RoboRun Space: Run robot run! Adobe updates Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements with great results Fuel Burner hovers and lands Tocomail for Gmail puts parents in control of teens' email Amazing Brick is amusing, but not amazing Perfectly Clear migrates from iOS to Mac Marty Farty Punch and Jump Game needs explanation The official Ryder Cup 2014 app delivers live video coverage Poorly designed, MemoPics memory game is still fun, unique Scanbot for iOS gets an update and improves your scans Shape up your golf game with Putting Bootcamp The tech in MyScript Smart Note is perfect for stylus users Stay organized and creative with the free version of NoteLedge TUAW will be back next week with another round of app reviews, so be sure to drop by to see what's new and what's cool.
All the best hardware and app reviews last week on TUAW
Last week was a busy one with new hardware and apps making their way into TUAW's virtual office. Here's a quick roundup of our recent reviews you may have missed. App Reviews Stay organized and creative with the free version of NoteLedge Start the 2014-2015 PGA Tour season with the Golf Channel app TunnelBear VPN lets you surf, securely Rocketeer! flies, but not exactly out of this world Track the Ryder Cup with Sportfusion Unofficial News Edition Logoist 2 puts you in the logo creation business Ascend to bird heaven in Frinkle Tremor aims to literally shake up your artistic abilities MigmO is fun, but doesn't stand out in a crowd Amazingly fast and file transfer with Send Anywhere All-Star Basketball fails to make it off the bench Corner the fantasy football market with Stadium Stock Exchange iOS 8 brings new 3rd party keyboards and Swype is one of the coolest Hands-on with the $1000 Vizzywig 4K app Runico lets you create personal amulets for good fortune TravelbyArt lets you discover the Paris of famous artists Light in the Dark is a bright addition to puzzle games Perfect Flick is perfectly frustrating Elegently manage your ideas with ClipUp Embrace a lack of productivity by scoring big in Nerf Hoops Never forget important events with Birthday Board Premium Stay adorably in tempo with Petronome Gunspell: Gunning for your device with magic Wheelio is a brilliant, must-have companion to Instagram Kinetics: pretty puzzler without much grit Chronulator: how to make world time both ugly and confusing Hardware Reviews Belkin WeMo Smart LED Bulbs take on Philips hue lux in smart lightbulb market Fujitsu ScanSnap iX100 Delivers Best In Class Mobile Scanning Blue Microphones breaks the headphone mold with Mo-Fi TUAW will be back next week with another round of reviews, so be sure to drop by to see what's new and what's cool.
All the best new apps and app reviews last week on TUAW
Last week was a busy one for app news and announcements, giving your favorite TUAW writers a chance to post some great reviews of the apps that grace their home screens. Here's a quick roundup of our recent reviews -- and the best new apps -- you may have missed. App Reviews Just in time for his film return, Godzilla has an iOS game Daily App: FilePane is a versatile multi-tool utility for OS X file management Symmetrain challenges your one-handed reflexes CARROT fit 2.0 wants to you exercise, meat bag Daily App: Lapse It Pro is a robust time-lapse tool that's easy for everyone to use 5 fantastic iOS games you aren't playing, but should be iParked is the best way to find your car Daily App: Stack the States is a must-have educational game that quizzes you on US Geography Sonos 5.0 software hits the app store with many new features Klyme: A colorful way to look at your local weather Daily App: Piano Tiles adds music to popular Don't Step the White Tile game Wthr is a well thought out and innovative weather app for iOS Wthr is a well thought out and innovative weather app for iOS Fotos for iOS does some things Apple left out Oh look, a developer is making Nintendo's money without them The creepiest app on the App Store is now free New and Notable Apps Bricks – Arcade Game [iOS Universal; $0.99] Test your reaction skills! Rotate your iPhone or iPad 360 degrees to knock out all bricks and reach the top of the leaderboards in this totally new arcade experience. Haunted House [iOS Universal; Free] Run for your life! Based on the classic Atari hit of the same name, Haunted House® is the re-imagined update filled with non-stop thrills and chills. HexMiner [OS X; Free] HexMiner is a hex editor with features such as work with large files, multiple character encodings and more. ClickPhoto [iOS Universal; $0.99] ClickPhoto is a simple and easy to use application that allows the user to take an image by clicking their fingers. Last Inua - An Arctic Adventure [iOS Universal; $3.99] LAST INUA is an award winning platform adventure game featuring an Inuit father and his son on their epic quest for survival against the elements. Atom Run [iOS Universal; 42.99] Atom Run is an action-packed retro-futuristic platform game, in a superb mechanical-dynamic world. Jump, push, run and avoid the many dangers you'll encounter. 9/11 Museum Audio Guide [iPhone; Free] Enhance your experience of the 9/11 Memorial Museum by using the official audio guide. The Museum honors the 2,983 people killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. Swarm by Foursquare [iPhone; Free] Swarm, the new app from Foursquare, is the fastest way to keep up and meet up with your friends. With Swarm, you can easily see who's out nearby and who wants to hang out later. Thomas Was Alone [iPad; $8.99] Meet Thomas, a curious rectangle, and help him unravel the mysteries of his existence in a wonderfully strange world. Sago Mini Space Explorer [iOS Universal; $2.99] Blast into space with Harvey the dog. Invite Harvey out to play among the stars and planets. Hitman: Absolution - Elite Edition [OS X; $28.99] Become Agent 47, a genetically-engineered killer, and use your skill and ingenuity to turn assassination into an art. List One [OS X; Free] All your lists on one view. Customize, Share, Sync with iPad, iPhone and iPod using your iCloud account. Teleprompt+ 3 [iOS Universal; $14.99] Teleprompt+ 3 offers many advanced options and features that will enable you to custom tailor your prompting setup according to your needs. MovieLaLa [iPad; Free] MovieLaLa is a social network that helps anyone share and discover coming attractions through a personalized upcoming feed, share their favorites with friends, and find friends to go to movies with. FusionVOX [iOS Universal; Free] Use FusionVOX to assist & organise your daily life. Manage your daily tasks & increase productivity for study, music, business, home & much more with this new amazing memo & projects App! Twistam [iPhone; Free] Make two film clips: one with the front camera and one with back and blend them into one video clip! Pantomime 3D [iOS Universal; Free] Mind-bending Pantomime 3D™ turns any iPad, iPhone or iPod touch into an advanced 3D game paddle. Play in realistic 3D worlds on your table by swinging your mobile device - while you apparently look right through its screen. MagicSketch 2 [OS X; $4.99] With MagicSketch have fun and create professional quality sketch software. Publisher Plus [OS X; $19.99] Publisher Plus is a powerful desktop publishing and page layout app for both business and home use. Elephant Drop [iOS Universal; Free] Press and hold on either side of the screen to avoid thunderclouds and hit other objects to slow down. RecordRun [iOS Universal; Free] Record Run puts you in the middle of your music, chasing records and dodging obstacles to the beat in a crazy musical world. AFilter [iPhone; $1.99] Over 245 free effects are shown to you in this application. KeroBlaster [iPhone; $4.99] A classically-styled 2D side scrolling action game packed with adventure, for iPhone & iPod touch. Heroes : A Grail Quest [iOS Universal; $0.99] Heroes : A Grail Quest is a turn-based strategy game in a fantasy world. Kiwanuka [iOS Universal; $1.99] Kiwanuka! Only you can save us all! Guide the lost citizens to freedom. Discover forgotten dreams. Use the magical staff to tower and climb. Good luck on your journey! TWiT.tv [OS X; $1.99] Enjoy TWiT Live streaming, interact with Leo's Chat room live, and view the previously recorded shows! TUAW will be back next week with another round of app reviews, so be sure to drop by to see what's new and what's cool.
Daily App: FilePane is a versatile multi-tool utility for OS X file management
FilePane is handy Mac utility that simplifies the sometimes cumbersome task of managing your files. It's lightweight, sits in the menu bar and provides quick access to a variety of tasks such as resize image, convert text to PDF and more. FilePane sits quietly in the menu bar and activates whenever you select a file (or files) and drag them across your screen. When you start the dragging process, a small box appears that prompts you to "Drop Here." When you drop you files in this hot zone, a small dialog appears with a variety of options depending on the file type you have selected. The available options for each file(s) appear as icons, which makes it difficult when you start using the app. Most are self-explanatory, but I did find myself having the consult the cheat sheet provided with the app. You can find this icon list by opening the app in the menu bar and clicking on the question mark. The app supports images, text documents, multiple files and folders and provides with the following choices: show file size copy file path to clipboard move file email file AirDrop file resize image on the fly (images only) set as Desktop picture (images only) share on Twitter/Facebook (images only) convert it to PDF (text documents only) print (text documents only) and more Once you have identified the appropriate action for your file, you can then select it and follow the prompts to complete it. For example, I often drag an image file and choose to resize it. The app allows me to enter in the dimensions and provides an option to make it proportionate, which is useful if I want an image that is 600 pixels wide and an appropriately scaled height. FilePane is reliable -- it hasn't crashed nor affected the performance of my Mac because it is so lightweight. It works in other apps and it is not constrained to only the Finder, though that is where it is most useful. It also works in web browsers and document editors, allowing you to perform actions on the text and images that you select and drag. My only critique of FilePane is the duration of the "Drop Here" window can be frustratingly short when you are working in a large Finder window that is filled with files. Sometimes I would drag a set of files, pause for a second or two and the "Drop Here" window would disappear. I found that I had the files with the purpose of dropping them on the hot zone and had to drag with minimal pause. I believe this timed disappearance is a feature, allowing the hot zone to disappear quickly when you are dragging for reasons other than to activate FilePane. For example, I did notice that the FilePane drop zone activated I was managing my emails in a web browser. Every time I dragged an email to a folder, the "Drop Here" box appeared and then disappeared fast enough that it did not get in the way. FilePane is useful for OS X owners who want a quick and versatile method of accessing the most common actions for a file. It offers a variety of options that are different from those available when you right click on a file and is extremely easy to use. FilePane is available from the Mac App Store for US$4.99.
A roundup of last week's app reviews on TUAW
Last week was a busy one for app news and announcements, giving your favorite TUAW writers a chance to post some great reviews of the apps that grace their home screens. Here's a quick roundup of our recent reviews -- and a few app roundups -- you may have missed: Weekend App: Keepy is a private Facebook-style platform for your children's memorable moments I've fed this Human-Faced Fish 17 frogs and he's still hungry Daily App: Cubits! mixes Tetris with Rubik's Cube in a new tile-sliding game Bridge Constructor Medieval doesn't fix what isn't broken Take pictures in very low light with NightCap Pro Alfred 2.3 adds external triggers and more Fantastic Library lets you easily catalog books, movies, music and games Adobe Voice for iPad creates audio, video presentations quickly and easily I was having a lot of fun with this iOS game, and then it rained Would Apocalypse Survival Guide help keep you alive? Disney is hiding an excellent Podracing game inside this Star Wars storybook app AlienTube lets you replace YouTube comments with Reddit threads Daily App: Fjuul is a unique activity tracker for your iPhone FaceSnap has Galileo support for hands-free selfies Daily App: Watch Over Me protects you from harm even when you can't help yourself Sumotori Dreams is how my wife and I will now settle disagreements Picplace is a free app that helps you store your photo memories by location TUAW will be back next week with another round of app reviews, so be sure to drop by to see what's new and what's cool.
Daily App: WeathrClip brings the current weather conditions to your Mac's Menu Bar
What better place for a weather app than your menu bar, allowing you to see the current outside temperature with additional details available at a click. One simple, but effective weather app for your menu bar is WeathrClip by Gavin Wiggins. WeathrClip sits in your Mac's menu bar, displaying the current temperature along with a weather icon that reflects the conditions outside. Tapping on the icon displays a popover that contains the current weather conditions, a four-day weather forecast, and an animated radar with details from your current location or a specified location. Weather data is pulled from Weather Underground and arranged so you can digest all the important weather details in under a minute. WeathrClip's layout may not be stunning, but it is functional and to me, that is more important overall. Personally, I prefer WeathrClip to the web version of Weather Underground as I find it easier to just click on my menu bar instead of opening a web browser and navigating the Weather Underground site. WeathrClip has a handful of options that allow you to add multiple locations, change the weather refresh time and the units for your temperature. There also is the ability to store favorite locations, manually refresh the data as needed and change the Wunderground maps information. WeathrClip is US$1.99 from the Mac App Store.
Daily App: Monocle offers menu bar search for Mac owners running almost any OS X version
Monocle is a handy menu bar search utility that allows you to search Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube and Wikipedia in just one click. Monocle is more web search focused then OS X's Spotlight search and much less complex than similar productivity tools like Alfred. Just click on Monocle's magnifying glass in your menu bar, select your default search engine and type in your search terms. Monocle will display a list of search results that you can select and open in your default web browser. The app has been around for a while, which makes it perfect for Apple owners who have older Macs kicking around that still run previous versions of OS X. It also works just fine in OS X Mavericks. Monocle is free and worth the small amount of space that is occupies if you find yourself always searching the web for a tidbit here and tidbit there.You can download it from Waffle Software's website.
Daily App: Shady allows you to dim your Mac's overly bright display
Shady is a handy OS X utility that sits in your menu bar and allows you to dim your Mac's screen beyond what is available is OS X. It's useful for Mac owners whose eyes are sensitive to light or for nighttime use when you don't want to light up the entire room with your Mac's overly bright screen. Shady doesn't modify the dim settings in OS X, it works by overlaying a virtual shade over your entire screen. This overlay can be darkened to the point where the entire screen is almost black (90% opacity) or lightened so it has no effect (0% opacity). The default setting is 40% opacity and you can adjust the darkening in 5 percent increments. You can change the darkness level of Shady by clicking on the menu bar icon and adjusting the slider. You also can drop the application icon into the Dock and then click on Shady to bring it to the forefront. When it is the frontmost application, you can use the Up/Down keys to adjust the shade or click "Q" to quit. Shady is available for free from Instinctive Code. It is compatible with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), and Snow Leopard (10.6) or later.
Voila screen recorder for OS X
OS X has a number of handy screen capture tools built in. There are standard keyboard shortcuts for capturing still images and QuickTime Player can capture basic screen recordings. However, sometimes you need a little more from your capture tools and, if that's the case for you, then check out the latest version of Voila, which is our Daily Mac App. Voila has just celebrated its fifth anniversary and developer Global Delight has released version 3.7 in honor of that. Among the updated features of the new version are a number of much-requested additions including the ability to record video in 60 frames per second, tighter social media sharing integration (Facebook, Twitter, and Vimeo have been added), and a number of features related to OS X 10.9 Mavericks including Messages and AirDrop sharing and improved tagging functionality. Another nice improvement is for those with Retina MacBooks: Voila 3.7 allows users to scale down Retina display images by up to a factor of two. This is incredibly handy as it reduces file sizes and also ensures that your screen captures will look good on non-Retina displays. The main benefit of Voila is not the new features, but the continued improvement of existing features. For starters, Voila has an excellent content management system built in. Under its Organizer tab you can quickly sort your captures via images, videos, or even files you have trashed. Voila also has a number of Smart folders set up or you can create you own, all of which makes finding your captured media quick and easy. Voila also offers a ton of tools and effects to use on your captures. One of my favorites is the rubber stamp tool, which allows you to make it appear as if you've stamped a screen capture with, for example, a "PAID" stamp or an "APPROVED" stamp, among others. Another really nice features is that screen captures aren't just limited to fullscreen, a single window, or a cropped area of the screen. You can capture multiple windows at once and even have non-standard shape captures, such as circles and free-form shapes. When you're done capturing, Voila makes it a snap to import your captures to iPhoto, email them, print them, or share them via Messages, AirDrop, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Voila is US$29.99 in the Mac App Store.
Daily App: Mactracker is a handy pocket guide to all things Mac
It's hard to believe that the Macintosh is 30 years old. To learn more about the venerable line of computers, you must make room on your iPhone, iPad or Mac for the Mactracker app from Ian Page. Mactracker is THE reference guide for the Mac, providing specifications and support details for every Apple Macintosh computer ever made. We've covered Mactracker over the past decade as it evolved from a Mac to an iPhone and then an iPad app, but on the anniversary of the Macintosh, it's worth taking another look. The tracker continues to be updated with new model information and updated support statuses for now obsolete models. It also tracks OS X and iOS versions as well as peripherals like Apple mice, keyboards and more. If it has an Apple label on it, it's likely in the Mactracker database. While the iOS version is a handy pocket reference, the OS X version of Mactracker has a few extra goodies like a "My Models" list that stores the models you own and tracks their warranty status. There's also a compare feature that allows you to compare the specifications or the differences between several Mac models at the same time. Mactracker is available for free from the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store.
Daily App: Paint it Back brings its painting challenge to the Mac
Paint it Back from Casual Labs debuted last year for iOS and was an instant hit in the Puzzle game category. The app challenges you to use your paintbrush to solve each puzzle and restore the missing paintings from the art gallery. Paint it Back has a unique gameplay that uses a grid and numbers to tell you where to paint. It's a paint-by-numbers game with a whole new twist. At the top of each row and column of the grid is a number that tells you how many squares need to be painted in the grid. It's easy to figure out which squares to paint when the number tells you to paint 5 out of the 5 squares. It's much more of a challenge when there is only one square that needs to be painted, and you need to figure out which one. The app discourages you from guessing and encourages you to solve the puzzle by using the logical side of your brain to fill in the blanks using the numbers for other columns. There are 140 paintings to solve and 14 rooms to unlock. Each room gets increasingly difficult as the puzzles get larger and the patterns that you paint more complex. The app supports up to six profiles, allowing each member of a household to play at their own pace. The Mac version also uses iCloud sync to save game progress so you can start a game on a Mac and end it on your iPad. The Mac version appears to be a straight port from the iOS version, which brings with it some advantages and some disadvantages. The biggest advantage is that it is easy to sync games across devices. This makes the game even more enjoyable, as you can finish off a painting on your Mac while you wait for a file to download. The biggest disadvantage I found was with the controls -- the app was originally built for touchscreen gameplay and the controls did not carry over well to the cursor-driven interaction on the Mac. I repeatedly had difficulty selecting squares to color on my Mac (2013 MacBook Air). I would use two-fingers to fill a square and then move to the next square. If I didn't remove my fingers right away, the app would fill in the next square as I hovered over it. I also noticed that if I moved my cursor over a square for too long, the game would fill it in without me clicking on it. This made it frustrating to play as I was frequently painting squares and unpainting squares every time I deliberately or accidentally touched my trackpad with two fingers. Paint it Back is a fun and addictive puzzler. I highly recommend the iOS version and cautiously recommend the Mac version for those who already own the iOS version and want to extend their gameplay to the Mac. Personally, I' m going to put the Mac version away and wait for a few revisions to tweak the controls. Once the controls are in place, it'll be an enjoyable puzzler to play across platforms. Paint it Back is available from the Mac App Store for US$4.99. The iOS version is available for free and includes in-app purchases to unlock content.
Mac App of the Week: Hourly News delivers the latest news updates to your Mac
Whether you're a news junkie or trying to limit the amount of media you consume, Hourly News is worth consideration. It parses different sources and delivers hourly updates that keep you up-to-date with what's happening, domestically and internationally. Hourly News lives in your menu bar. With the click of a button, you get the most recent news updates from a variety of sources including NPR, BBC News, Fox News, ESPN SportsCenter and a number of other news outlets throughout the world. A US$0.99 in-app purchase nets the ability to add a custom source beyond the 16 provided with the app. The news updates last from two to five minutes each and are usually updated every hour, though a few are updated less often. You can toggle settings to automatically advance to the next item in your feed and to store settings on iCloud. I use Hourly News to keep on top of national and world news at work, especially when I'm busy doing other tasks. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the deluge of media in your day-to-day activities, Hourly News is great for making sure you're still on top of things without constant media exposure. Hourly News is $2.99 in the Mac App Store and also has an iOS version for $0.99.
Mac App of the Week: DxO Perspective takes a crooked photo and makes it straight
We've all taken those regrettable photos -- you snap a quick shot of your friends of family in front of a wonderful scene and when you get home you realize you weren't holding your camera as straight as you thought. You can fire up your favorite photo editor and try to apply a fix, but it is often an exercise in frustration as you try to rotate and skew the photo to get the correct angle and perspective. If you are ready to leave these frustrating fixes behind, then you should check out DxO Perspective from DxO Labs. DxO Perspective does one thing and it does it well -- it allows you to easily and quickly fix perspective problems in photos. The two most common tools in the app allow you to fix a crooked horizon by using a horizontal level or a vertical level. It's as easy as selecting your tool (horizontal or vertical), affixing a line to your photo and hitting apply. The app rotates the photo to the correct amount and crops it to remove any uneven edges. There are also advanced tools that allow you to fix more complex perspective problems. You can bring an object forward or move it to the back using these perspective tools. These require a fine touch and some skill as you need to box in the area that you want to fix. The tools are very intuitive, but I found them difficult to use because I just don't have an eye for this type of artistic photography. DxO perspective won't appeal to everyone as it is a niche app, designed for folks who take a lot of landscape photos, interior photos or photos of buildings. It is perfect for the photographer looking for a quick and easy way to straighten photos and adjust their perspective without having to purchase expensive tools like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. Even if you have these Adobe apps, you may still want to take a look at DxO Perspective as it is lightweight and easy to use. DxO Perspective is available in the Mac App Store. It is on sale for $5.99 from now until December 2.
Mac App of the Week: 2Do, a task manager with the right mix of power features, simplicity
I'm always on the lookout for new task managers that offer a different UI or a different approach to help me keep track of my seemingly endless to do list. The latest app to cross my path is 2Do for the Mac from Guided Ways technology. I was familiar with 2Do, having used their iOS app a few years ago when it launched. The tabbed interface of the iOS version never grabbed me, so I stopped using it after a few weeks. Late last year though, the company launched an OS X version, which was recently updated and overhauled. This latest Mac version (v.1.5.1) has brought me back into the 2Do fold. 2Do is a mid-tier task manager -- it's a step up from the Reminders app, but isn't as complex as Omnifocus. Very similar to Things, 2Do offers a nice balance between usefulness and simplicity. It's robust enough that you can use it to manage a large number of tasks and projects, but loose enough that you can adapt it to your own style of management. You're not pigeonholed into GTD or some other task management method. Rather than cover all the features of the app, which are too many to count, I wanted to point out a few features that'll keep me using 2Do for the foreseeable future. First and foremost is the app's smart list feature. This feature allows you create a custom list of tasks based upon search criteria such as tags. As the app review editor, I keep track of a lot of different apps for potential review. I tag every task and then use the smart list feature to group only iOS apps, only productivity apps or those apps assigned to my co-workers. It's a very flexible and powerful way of keeping track of a lot of tasks. Another aspect of 2Do I appreciate is how it approaches your tasks. Each individual task is more than just a simple note with a due date. You can add an image to your task, upload a file or attach an audio recording to help you remember unwritten details. 2Do supports status based on priority and tags, which are searchable within the app. You also can set a task to be recurring based on the days of the week, the days of the month or a set amount of time (every 4 days, for example). An alarm feature will remind you when your task is due, and you can choose when you want this gentle reminder to arrive. Last but not least is the Focus section in the app. This section sits in the left sidebar, which shows all your lists, smart lists, and a calendar. The Focus section is at the top, and it groups your upcoming and important tasks together. This is your central dashboard for the items that need your attention right away. It shows you all your tasks that are due today and highlights those that are overdue in red. This focus feature isn't unique to 2Do, other apps like Things have a similar focus section, but I am glad that Guided Ways decided to incorporate it into its app. It is extremely useful. Among the minor features, 2Do offers syncing across OS X and iOS devices so your task list will always be at your finger tips. It supports OS X Quick Look so you can highlight a task and tap your space bar to get an overview of your task. It also has a quick entry feature allowing you to add a task from any app. These are all small, but important items that increase your productivity. Note: If you use the default quick entry shortcut, you may lose the ability to access the new emoticons in OS X Mavericks as they both use the same Control-Command-Space shortcut. Just go into the preferences for 2Do and set your own custom keyboard shortcut. 2Do is as capable as any task manager I have used, with the exception of Omnifocus, which is in a league of its own. 2Do is a great choice for 99% of the Mac owners who are looking for a robust task manager to handle a variety of home and work tasks. It has a long list of features and is intuitive enough to use that you don't have to pull out a manual every time you want to add something to your to-do list. 2Do is available from the Mac App Store for $39.99.
Daily Mac app: PDF Reader X is a lightweight, tabbed PDF reader with some annotation features
Adobe Reader may be the most popular option for reading PDFs on your Mac, but the 77 MB app is far from being lightweight and nimble. If you are looking for an alternative that takes up less space and is easier on your computer, then you should check out PDF Reader X. When you launch PDF Reader X for the first time, you'll immediately notice the UI, which is not as polished as some OS X apps. Its interface is functional and efficient, but that can be a benefit as a basic reader app does not require a lot of fluff. It can also be a turn off for folks who want something more than square buttons and grey backgrounds. The best part of the experience and the reason to check out the app is the tabbed interface, which allows you to open multiple documents and easily switch between them. Beyond reading, PDF Reader X supports bookmarking and has some light annotating features like highlight, strikethrough and underline. You can also add notes, text boxes and a few other goodies. Adding notes is a little quirky as the text in the box disappears off the side of the document if you place the note at the edge of the margin. This only appears when you are editing -- the note looks fine when you are viewing the final document. There are a few minor features like autosave which will backup your changes as you make them and a multiple-level undo that will allow you to erase your mistakes. It's all pretty standard fare for a basic PDF viewer. PDF Reader X is available for free from the Mac App Store. It is also available on github. It's worth a download if you routinely open multiple PDFs as the tabbed interface will make switching between them a breeze.
Mac App of the Week: MovieDek quickly extracts frames from your favorite video clips
If you want to pull frames quickly and easily from your video clips, then you should take a close look at MovieDek from Limit Point. MovieDek is a video utility that'll scan a video file and export a range of frames as stills in just a few minutes. MovieDek is a bare-bones app that launches with a small dialog box in the center of the screen. The app instructs you to drop a movie file on the application or the window to start the extraction process. There's also a preferences button and a quit button if you want to shut down the app. Inside the preferences, you can set the scale of the exported images as well as the image file format and image quality. You can also select the range of frames that you want to export. Once you configure your settings and drop your movie on the app, MovieDek will start exporting your frames. The app works through the movie frames one by one, so it may take some time if you are exporting all the frames in a long movie. On average, I was able to export about 300 frames in less than five minutes. I use MovieDek on a regular basis to grab the perfect shot that I missed because I was filming video of a scene instead of taking photos. The exported stills from a 720P HD movie are good enough for web usage, but I wouldn't plan on making a large print from them. Pulling stills from a video won't replace using your camera for shots. It's meant to be used in a pinch for creative uses. MovieDek is available in the Mac App Store for US$9.99. You can also download and purchase the app on Limit Point's website.
Weekly Mac App: CopyClip is a no-frills clipboard manager
I'm still on the search for the ultimate clipboard manager. Namely, one that tracks your clipboard content and serves as a temporary repository for longer-form text that you need to save for a short period of time. In my search, I stumbled upon CopyClip from Fiplab, a no-frills app that'll log the snippets you send to your clipboard. By default, CopyClip logs the last 80 items you have copied and shows the last 20 in the menu bar. You can change this value, if you need access to more than 20 copied items. This isn't a free-for-all to show 1,000 items, as the length of the list is limited by the size of your screen. You need ample room to display more than 20 clipboard contents in the app's menu. For example, I could only retrieve a maximum of 35 items on my 13-inch MacBook Air. To use CopyClip, you click on the app in the menu bar, select the item that is stored and then paste the content where you need it. It's a bit inconvenient to have to click on the menu bar to access your copied items, but that is how the app is designed to work. Items are stored in this copy list even when you quit the app or restart your computer. If your copy list is cluttered and you want to start with a fresh slate, you can hit "Clear" to delete everything in one click. One other handy feature is an exclusion list which ignores copied content in select apps. CopyClip isn't as robust as its competitors, but it is very stable and unobtrusive. It does what it advertises -- keeping a log of your most recent copied items and saving them for you to reuse. Because it requires a few steps to access your list of copied items, CopyClip is not for the power productivity user. It is perfect for the user who occasionally needs to access their copied items. It's for those who need to retrieve a URL they forget to paste in their browser window or an email draft they copied and then accidentally deleted. CopyClip is available for free from the Mac App Store.
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.
Mac App of the Week: Weather Live is a one-stop weather app for your Mac
There are few things that affect us on a daily basis more than the weather. Just ask anyone who has left the house without a coat on a rainy day and you will see what I mean. If you are looking for a new app to help you track the temperature on your Mac, then you should check out Weather Live from Apalon. Like most weather apps, Weather Live is partly about the weather, partly about the looks. The weather information is presented nicely in a dashboard-style layout with the date and time in the center. A moving background showcases the current conditions. It supports multiple cities so you can easily move from one city to another with a simple tap. You can also rearrange the city list, allowing you to put your favorite locations at the top. By default, the app displays your current conditions, the date and time, the hourly forecast and the upcoming forecast. The current conditions include the temperature, feels like temperature, projected highs/lows, the weather status (i.e., rain, cloudy, sunny, etc.) and the wind speed and direction. The app also has several customizable conditions such as the humidity, precipitation, pressure and visibility. You can switch these defaults and choose to display other parameters like the sunrise, sunset, wind chill and more. If you don't like this look, you can switch to a dashboard with just the current conditions or an all-text view that dumps the dashboard look and replaces it with text. In this text-only view, the background weather images really shine through. No matter what view you pick, the app displays the current temperature as a badge on the icon in the dock. It's a nice touch that lets you see the outside temperature without opening the app. There were a few quirks with the app that I encountered while using it. First, the badge in the dock disappeared occasionally and I had to toggle it off and then on again to get it to reappear. I also noticed that the projected weather forecast was displayed with the low temperature first followed by the high (33°F/65°F), instead of the other way around (65°F/33°F). Weather Live landed on the App Store today. It's available for US$2.99 and is worth the money if you are looking for a good-looking weather app to quickly check the current conditions or the upcoming forecast.
Mac App of the Week: Hype 2.0 is a solid WYSIWYG tool for HTML5 animation and interactive graphics
When I made the transition from print designer to web producer in January, I wanted to make my graphic designing skills with me. PennLive.com, my day job, utilizes HTML5 to make the site desktop- and mobile-friendly and steers clear of Flash. While I knew some coding, I didn't know enough to create some of the elaborate interactive projects that other newspapers have done, such as the New York Times' Snow Fall and reshaping New York projects. In addition to custom components, the staff utilized jQuery and HTML5. Nothing beats a good, solid foundation in writing code, but as someone making the transition from designing full-time in InDesign, I wanted to work with a WYSIWYG editor. Adobe came out with Edge in 2011, but it requires a Creative Cloud subscription. Sencha Animator is available as well, but the US$99 price tag might be a deterrent. Then there's Hype. Created by two former Apple engineers, it is a low-cost, yet powerful tool for creating keyframe-based animation in HTML 5. Version 1 made its debut in May 2011, and 2.0 was released on August 20. Some impressive work has been done with Hype, including this graphic from the Los Angeles Times, and I was eager to try it. Design If you've ever used Flash, Hype will look very familiar. Most of the program centers around the stage, with timeline and properties bars beneath it. On the stage, you can expand various panels for adding scenes to your content or various elements. The preview button allows you to toggle among your browser of choice to view your project. Additional panels include an inspector, where you do the majority of your tweaking, a list of project resources, colors and fonts. Hype lets you bring your own fonts into the system through custom CSS or browsing popular open-source Google fonts, which is a really nice touch. In addition to the stage, you'll spend most of your time with the Inspector panel. The Swiss Army knife of Hype controls document settings, scene settings, metrics, elements, text, actions, and identity. There's a number of pre-set canvas sizes you can use based off standard monitors, iPhone and iPad screens. You can change stage sizes on the fly, which is good for when a project's demands suddenly change on you and you don't want to start over from scratch. Hype's Jonathan Deutsch equipped me with a copy of Hype and pointed me to the site's extensive documentation and YouTube tutorials. A lot of the newest tutorials addresses the features of Hype 2.0 -- the biggest being the ability to preview your work on iOS using the free Hype Reflect. To go along with this, Hype lets you build the ability to add touch and swipe events so your project is desktop- and mobile-friendly at the same time. Other new features include the aforementioned web fonts, audio actions, curved motion paths and more. Use I had a bit of Flash training about six years ago, and a lot of it came back to me as I played around with Hype. If you understand the concept of key frames and animating elements between those frames, you won't have an issue with Hype. You can bring in all sorts of material to Hype: images, video, HTML widgets and more. A lot of Hype's power comes from using the record button. In the timeline, either click where you want your key frame to be, or type in the time on the timeline. Hit the record button and either drag the object where you want it to go next or use the inspector panel to control things such as changing color, shape or opacity. You can establish different key frames for elements in the properties bar: movement can have one set of key frames, while opacity and color can have their own key frames. Creating some of the graphic elements is where my frustrations came in. I really wish there was an easy way to create something as simple as a triangle in Hype without having to mask part of another shape or bring it in as an image. Food for thought for a future release. Some of the keyboard shortcuts were a bit perplexing as well. I'd like to see a switch to using the standard zoom keyboard shortcuts (⌘+ and ⌘-) rather than the ones built into the app (⌘> and ⌘<), which didn't even work when I tried using them because they conflict with bringing up the preference panel. (Update: Deutsch explained that the keyboard shortcut match those for Keynote, which makes sense. Part of it was user error on my end as well. To zoom, I needed to press the shift key while doing ⌘> and ⌘<.) One of my favorite Hype features is an ongoing tracking of browser and mobile compatibility. I learned that no matter what I did, the animation I was developing was not going to be Opera-friendly. Internet Explorer hated my attempt at using background gradients. My test project concerned homicides in Harrisburg in 2013, and each new discovery in Hype added to our excitement for the project. We figured out we could link to our site's video player in Hype, letting us integrate previously posted videos into the graphic. You can see a version of the test graphic (note only one button is active) here. After creating the graphic, I added a couple of swipe gestures and did a preview through Hype Reflect. If on the same network as the Hype desktop client, your iOS device will show up as an available preview option. In Hype Reflect, you have the option to test your animation in mobile Safari, access console messages and utilize a mirroring option that lets you make changes on the Mac and see them instantly on Hype. Using Hype Reflect, I was able to see that the video link didn't work on mobile, and that the text rendered a bit differently than from the desktop version. Ah, well, back to the drawing board! Another feature I really like is the ability to export to Dropbox, in addition to exporting to a folder. That made it very easy for me to share the test animation with a couple co-workers. You can also export your project as a widget for use in iBooks or Dashboard. Conclusion If you're wanting to transition from doing Flash-based animation to HTML 5-based, Hype is a fantastic tool to start with if the thought of hand-coding interactive graphics sends a chill down your spine. I'm looking forward to using this more. The 2.0 release addresses a lot of issues reviewers had with the initial release two years ago, and the support system is excellent. Tumult features work being done with Hype on its site and is experimenting with doing live tutorials through Google+. Hype retails for $59.99 through the Mac App Store or Tumult, but is on sale for $29.99 until September 10. Those who purchased Hype 1.6 after July 20 are eligible for a free upgrade, and volume licensing is available. A 15-day trial is on site for those who want to give it a try.
