The land of software updates is an odd one. On one hand you love to get bug fixes and new features to your software, yet it’s such a pain to go through all of the hassles that go along with software updaters. Now, something easier has come along - it’s called AppFresh. AppFresh, in a nutshell is a mass software updater. It will scan your system for any applications, plugins, widgets, preference panes, and Apple system updates - really anything that might need to be updated.

You might be wondering how AppFresh does this. Well, it uses iUseThis AppCasts and will notify you of these updates by placing them in a sidebar category. Sidebar category.. what? Well the AppFresh interface is organized just like many other Mac OS X apps - including iTunes and the Finder. There are five main categories - Applications, By Kind, Vendors, iUseThis, and My Categories. Each of these five categories expand into subcategories, and so forth. The first section, “Applications”, is where the magic happens. Here, you will find all your apps and any updates you might need. Metaquark made it very simple to perform the updates, just simply hit the ‘Update” button at the top of the AppFresh window. To get a better picture of what I’m talking about, you should see the video review posted along with this review. Also included with AppFresh is growl support and iUseThis integration. Both features are fun, and make the program very well-rounded.

I only had a few bits of criticism. My main problem, was that while running the updates, App Fresh had a few questions. I was okay with this, and happily complied by answering them - yet AppFresh kept asking me over and over again, about the same things. Eventually, this cycle ended and the apps were updated - so no worries.

Keep in mind that AppFresh is in development, so don’t depend on it for your well-being, and be sure to have a working backup of your apps. I’d recommend a good Time Machine backup. AppFresh has come a long way since it’s beginnings almost a year ago, and I know I can’t wait to see version 1.0 finally hit the update feeds.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking to combine and streamline your updates, AppFresh is the way to go - especially it being free (at least while it’s under development).

You got your shiny new Mac, loaded up with all the cool new applications, so what do you want to do first? Fire up iPhoto? Make a song in Garage Band? But wait, you have a bunch of movies that you shot and never did anything with… Why not fire up iMovie?

Apple’s iLife suite is EXTREMELY cool, and iMovie is a great application for amateur movie makers. You simply import your video, into an event. (Events are a theme in iLife ’08) Once your video is imported, it is drag and drop to make your movie. To trim your movie you will drag the bars to have an in and out point, and using the built in transitions, you can make a professional looking movie with very little effort. The more you use iMovie, the quicker you will be able to crank out better looking movies. The only downside is once you master iMovie, you will want to make your movies more complex. It is then you will realize that you have outgrown iMovie, and you will want something with a little more horsepower.

Enter Final Cut Express, the baby brother of the Pro application Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Express is a little more difficult to get a handle on, as it is based off of a pro tool, but it is $199 US compared to the $1299 US for Final Cut Pro. Also Apple provides some very good tutorials, on their website. (I suggest watching all of them) Once you get a handle on the interface, you will find the application to be incredibly powerful. If you ever worked with any other video editing application, you will quickly find that the timeline editing style makes a lot of sense. In this article I cannot do the application justice to trying to describe it.

If you want to see more about either application, go to Apple.com and check out the tutorials. That is one of the things that Apple excels at, and that is helping their users. Additionally, most apple store will hold free classes on iLife. Check the Apple site for a schedule of classes at a store near you.

“I wanted to see what the specs were on my Hard Drive for my MacBook Pro. I know it’s supposed to be a 200GB 7200rpm hard drive, but I just wanted to confirm.”

At first thought, the easy choice for me was the System Profiler, but upon checking my system via the Profiler, I noticed that almost everything Efrain asked for was listed (and more), but I didn’t see anything for hard disk rpm. Now, granted, I could have missed it so thus the reason for this post.

There is nothing like the iBAM community I.Q.

What’s your favorite system info tool?

What is Bento? When I began reviewing Bento, I was very wary. I have been a Microsoft user for many years and know how tough a database program can be. I had to configure databases in Access, (Microsoft’s personal database solution.) Then I downloaded the demo of Bento with all of these fears in my mind. But I figured that I liked the other Mac applications that I have been using, I gave Bento a shot.

Once installed I realized that Bento is the missing application for iWork. Bento is a very simple, easy to use database program that was created for the Mac. The interface is extremely intuitive, as most of the best Mac applications are. In gearing this article for new Mac owners, being one myself, The first thing that you learn is that Mac applications are built to be terribly user friendly.

Back to the issue at hand, Bento. Bento is a personal, easily configureable database application. Why is Bento so great? The power of Bento comes from being on the Mac in the first place, Bento can manipulate data that is already on your Mac, such as your address book, or iCal. The database for is created by the user, (There are plenty of templates to start out) with the drag and drop functionality of the interface make it a pure joy to use. Additionally, Bento can use data in the address book, but can also create sub folders within Address Book as well as tasks in iCal.

You will be amazed at all the things that you will be able to use a database for, such as: Projects, Event Planning, Exercise Log, Home Inventory, and much more. Creating any additional fields does not require any knowledge of database fields, Bento does that on it’s own. All you have to know is what kind of data you will be adding to the database. By that I mean will it be text? A number? Or a Date. The
possibilities are endless.

Bento also offers the ability to export the data to a CSV file, that can be used in Numbers or in Microsoft Excel.

The bottom line:

With a single user license costing $49.00 US, built by the makers of Filemaker, (a company that KNOWS databases) Bento is a can’t miss.

So I have a little question and was wondering if you could help.

I keep all of my photos nicely organized in iphoto with albums for everything. The problem is that I just can’t find a simple way to make sub-albums or sub-categories so I can clump certain albums together. It would be nice if I could have a “Family” album and then under that sub-album of “Holidays with the cousins” or “summer at home” or something like that.

Any suggestions would be great and thanks in advance.

As always, you guys rock and I appreciate you jumping in to help a fellow Mac user out.

Enjoy!

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There’s a new Twitter app on the streets, it’s called TwitterFone! It’s pretty simple but it’s backed up by some freaking awesome technology. In a nutshell, TwitterFone makes it possible to “tweet” through Twitter without having to type or text anything. You just talk and it transcribes it for you and posts it to your Twitter account.

TwitterFone launched this last week (May 6th to be exact) and has had over 15,000 signups in the last 4 days thanks to some really cool people helping promote the new service. I caught Pat Phelan (the idea guy) on the road and even got a chance to ask him a few super quick questions about the new startup. Here’s how our little convo went:

A little about the team/service from you.

Four board members Pat Phelan, Florian Seroussi CEO Celtrek, David Marcus CEO Zong/VOX telecom, Ivan MacDonald and Sean O Sullivan founders of Dial2DO

How did you guys come up with the idea?

I came up with it for a safety reason, texting is insanely dangerous whilst driving or even walking, speaking a tweek is so much more comfortable.

It hasn’t even been a week, are you surprised with the boom?

Blown away, 15,000 sign ups, it’s been perfect!

Have you had any challenges?

Obviously the translation engine has been difficult to get right, we scraped the top 1000 words every day for a month and this has been extremely helpful.

What are your plans for the future?

More countries… We own the TwitterFone urls for Japan and are closely examining that option, for the close future, add more countries, that’s it.

I have been playing with TwitterFone a little bit today and I’m really impressed so far with it’s mad voice recognition ’skills’. It got my name, punctuation and only missed one word (that I kinda slurred a little anyway.” Check out my tweet here.

TwitterFone is currently in private beta (invite only) so if you’re not in, you have to stand in line. However, Pat was very gracious to grant me 2 invite codes to jump 2 lucky readers to the front of the line and get them in. So here’s what we’ll do…

All you gotta do is comment on this post and I’ll draw two email addresses at random from the comments and send them the invites. I will announce the winners in 48 hours, that’s Monday night (May 12th) at 5pm PST. Then I’ll send out the invites and we can move on with our lives. So, on your mark, get set, go!

Thanks again Pat for taking the time while traveling, iBAM is eternally grateful! (maybe we can get some more invites later if we’re nice or something?)

We all have stuff we can sell from our garage (and otherwise). Heck, I got a buttload of hardware, software, equipment and what-not, not to mention the tons of (crap) stuff I greatly neglect to use that someone else could “really” use and benefit from. So, here’s my question… If you were to do a garage sale via social media avenues, what would you do? Cuz, Lord knows, I really don’t know! Can you help me sell my stuff! I got all sorts of cool things that are seriously neglected in my possession and deserve much better, more respectful owners. Don’t get me wrong, I take REALLY good care of stuff, I just don’t use it like it should be used (friggin early adopter gene in my DNA or something). Craig’s List just doesn’t do it complete justice and I’m not anywhere near a smart garage (or otherwise) sale guru. How have you ever sold your stuff successfully and what do you suggest I do? My first attempt is on… 7:30am (ug) tomorrow morning, but I understand this is freaking short notice! I can do this again, but how do you suggest I do it? (believe me, I have a LOT of really great stuff I am willing to pass off to a more loving and respectful owner). Any suggestions? I’m completely open!

FYI… watch Twitter and BrightKite for my location info. It’s a FIRE sale, I’m really green and honestly just kinda suck at this… Ideas, suggestions, thoughts and tips are GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

- Brent