I hate to gush about any app, but I love it.  As a Comcast user (who is not getting anything free from Comcast, other than this app, which is free to all), I was shocked and dismayed that just earlier this year, the web client to access my voice mail forced me to listen to the mail before deleting them.  No mass delete check boxes either.  Since then, Comcast rolled out comcast.net and now the iPhone app and has removed any doubts I had about Comcasts commitment to getting mobile right.

The app is extremely clean and sleek.  I honestly don’t think Apple could have done a better job designing this one.  Comcast turned to mPortal for the heavy lifting in coding the app and they’ve done an outstanding job.  Let’s take a look at the features of this instantly-essential (to me at least) application.

Digital Voice

This is the killer app of the, well, app.  See that button in the lower right-hand corner?  That one allows you to forward your number as you please.  Awesome.  Now, I can forward and unforward my number about as easy as playing a rousing game of Lexic.

Simply hit the Call Forwarding button, choose where you want to forward your number to and push the slider to turn it on.  Users can even label phone lines, like “work” so they can be recalled easier and faster.

In a very Android-like way, all your calls are shown in the “All” category.  Users ccan click on Outgoing, Missed or VM tabs to access just those calls.  If you feel that is too much info to look at, simply hit clear and you have an empty page.  Very soothing.

Access to call logs, both incoming and outgoing is there as is easy deletion of voicemails.  Everything you need, all within reach seems to be the design mantra here and it works.

SmartZone Address Book

Last year, Comcast bought Plaxo, the social networking site that sought to keep everyone’s contact information in one place.  Comcast integrates this great idea in their iPhone app.  By bringing your Plaxo address book into your iPhone you get contacts sync’d much like the Palm Pre does.  When one of your contact changes say a phone number, that change is pushed to Plaxo and thus into your Comcast SmartZone address book which can be sync’d with your iPhone address book.

Comcast bills this as a universal address book – the last one you’ll ever need.  The iPhone app also uses your on-iPhone contacts as well.  Handy.

If you are like me and keep your iPhone by your side while watching TV, there is a nifty guide that localizes based on your location to tell you what is on.   Not ground breaking but nice to have.

SmartZone Inbox

Most Comcast users are going to love this.  This feature combines your Comcast line phone data along with your Comcast email.  All in one place, organized by time and searchable.  Even your email folders are accessible through this app.

On Demand

Another nice to have feature, find out what is new from Comcast’s On Demand.  The app will display movie trailers broken down into categories or you can search for a specific title.

Settings

Good settings to me, are the tell tale mark of a well thought out application.  This app has just about every setting adjustment you could want.  Users can change the home screen from a list to Cover Flow  to a grid, alerts can be customized as can several other settings.  It is a nice touch.

Summary

Rarely am I this impressed with an iPhone app. About the only flaw I can see is the lack of push notifications, but that is a minor (and fixable in later versions) flaw.  The Comcast application is simple, easy to use and very detailed; exactly the type of application that makes the iPhone shine.

Learn more at: [Comcast] or [iTunes link]

VLC can play almost any type of media file you can throw at it—video, audio, streaming, even recording. It is a cross-platform application, and even proprietary filetypes such as Real, Quicktime, or Windows Media pose no problem at all. It can play DVDs from any region of the world, without having to use up one of the five times you are allowed to switch the region of the DVD Player application.

The newly official release of VLC 1.0 brings with it many new and updated features from the program’s past. There is increased support for skins. The display can be made to look like pretty much anything you can dream of, and there are many skins already uploaded at the VLC site to peruse and download. If you want it to look like Quicktime, or Winamp, or even the computer screens from Star Trek, you can. This allows the program to suitably fit with whatever your desktop background or system set-up happens to be at the time.

The new version also allows you to customize the interface on a more basic level. If there is a button you need, you can add it. If you never use rewind, you can take it out of the controller. The goal of the application is to be a perfect tool for you, the viewer, and it does everything it can to be one.

VLC 1.0 also has sophisticated recording technology, both from internal sources as well as the external microphone and camera built in to most Macs. It also improves upon playback, with better control of fast-forward and rewind, instant pausing, and new compatibility with HD formats, other applications’ playlists, streaming audio, and so on.

VLC can be downloaded for free from its website. Try it out. You may never go back to Quicktime.

There was something magical about it.  The small of the vinyl and cardboard.  Grabbing a record by the edges so as not to scratch it.  Dropping the needle.  And of course, picking up a 45 in anticipation of an albums release.  Now Apple wants to recreate this experience with Digital 45’s, virtual reproductions of classic singles on the iTunes Store.

At a glance, this whole thing might sound like a marketing ploy to simply bundle songs together at a discounted price, and should they begin to clutter the Digital 45 Store with new albums together it would be an easy argument to make.  As it stands now though, the Digital 45 Store is offering up reproductions of actual 45’s, complete with the original sleeve art and matching B-side.

In the cases where sleeve art isn’t available, they’ve opted to show the label art from the center of the disc on a vinyl background.  It’s a great look, one that some will actually prefer to the sleeve art.  For those who missed the heydey of 45’s and later, CD singles, the real highlight to these releases always lay in the B-side, which usually featured a song not available on the album.  Adding B-sides to the iTunes catalogue should seriously satisfy the needs of music fans who think they’ve heard everything from their favorite artists.

Click here to check out everything that is currently offered on the Digital 45 Store.

In previous versions of Baseline, you had to delete files separately, which could be a tedious process when freeing up space. Now, Baseline allows you to select and delete multiple files at a time, making it much easier to get rid of large files. No more select and delete, select and delete… This is a pretty important feature though, but at least it now is in Baseline’s feature-set.

Along with that, Baseline also now supports multiple levels of undo, meaning you can easy undo many deletions. Again, this seems like it maybe should have already been there, because it’s very important in preventing data loss. Nonetheless, it is there now.

Another major-ish new feature is Baseline’s use of zip to compress files. This means, when you select some files, and go to File>Compress, these files will be put into a zip archive: The preferred archive type.

Along with this new features are stability fixes and minor memory fixes. I had never noticed memory issues with Baseline before, so it seems it was very minor. It may have also speed up the time it takes to scan your hard drive, which was already very fast.

As always, you can download a free 14-day trial from it’s site, and buy it for $20.00. Now that OmniDiskSweeper is free (which was one of Baseline’s major competitors), you may want to check it out too. It has a few less features, but it is also free. So, if you don’t need some of Baseline’s features, it may be perfect for you.

Earlier this morning at the Developer Conference in Brighton, Chillingo (one of the iPhone’s leading game publishers) announced their plans to create a social gaming network that would become “the de-facto social gaming standard for iPhone and iPod touch” according to Chillingo director Chris Byatte.

PocketGamer.biz reports that the network will be released under the moniker Crystal and is set to feature friends lists, achievements, and the ability to issue direct challenges to other gamers on the network. Equal parts Facebook and Xbox Live, Crystal is intended to offer up a way for iPhone gamers to stay in touch while deepening the gaming experience by offering new goals and challenges that place you in direct competition with your friends.

Like many product announcements, this morning’s unveiling raised more questions than answers.  Will the network only be available for titles published by Chillingo, or will the social platform be available as a sort of middleware that any publisher can license?  Can games that predate Crystal be patched to include it, or would they need to be rebuilt from the ground up?  Will Apple adopt this as “the de facto social gaming standard,” or will this launch a dozen imitators all fighting for the crown?

Chillingo isn’t the first company to attempt to craft a social gaming experience on the iPhone.  Competitor ngmoco launched their Plus+ network last month as a means for gamers to issue challenges, track friends and earn awards — exactly like Chillingo is planning to do.  It’s hard to gauge how well Plus+ will perform as it’s barely out of the gate, however early reviews from Star Defense players (the only game supported by the service so far) have been mostly positive.

Competition isn’t the only issue Crystal faces.  In its currently announced form, the networking platform does nothing to overcome social gaming’s greatest obstacle on the iPhone: a lack of online multiplayer.  Until Apple somehow makes it easier for online-enabled games to be developed with multiplayer in mind, social gaming on the iPhone is never going to attain the level of success that it has the potential to achieve.

There’s no word on a release date as of yet, but Chillingo has committed to keeping the service free for gamers and intends to integrate other major social networks like Twitter and Facebook.  There’s a lot of potential here.  We’ll just have to wait and see what, if anything, Crystal can offer that Plus+ can’t.

Often, throughout the life of a computer, the hard drive slowly fills with all manner of things: music, movies, preferences, support files, and so on. At a certain point this gets to be too much, and a user must clean house. But in order to do so, she must first discover which are the files that are taking up the most unnecessary space, and where they are. This is where disk visualizers like DaisyDisk come in. While it is nothing special, DaisyDisk is a perfectly competent and very aesthetic application for dealing with this problem.

This application is by no means the only visualizer out there. The problem of finding space on your Mac has been around for almost as long as the computers themselves have. DaisyDisk is, however, one of the best-looking visualizers on the market. Instead of showing files as simple rectangles, or even as a list, DaisyDisk shows all files as radiating outwards from the parent folder (marked with the full size of the folder, in the middle). This is where the name DaisyDisk presumably comes from, as the end result vaguely resembles a flower, although it is more similar to a pie chart, with the size of each file’s wedge based on how large it is.

The application presents its data in a format that is incredibly easy to understand. Once it is opened, it presents the user with a list of the various hard drives on the computer, with a bar displaying how full or empty the drive is (which changes color from green to red as more space is filled) Once a hard drive is picked, the disk is scanned (remarkably quickly compared to other visualizers), and navigation through the results, for the most part, is also very user-friendly. One simply clicks on the folder they want to explore—either in the list or in the graphic—and that folder slides into the center with a nice animation. This can be done indefinitely, drilling down (or outward, as the case may be) into smaller and smaller folders until the space-hogging culprit can be found. The path to the current folder is displayed at the top of the window, and if the center is clicked on, the parent folder opens, allowing easy access backwards. This can also be accomplished by a keyboard shortcut.

This app offers little more than a pretty interface. There are literally no preferences, no options to customize—color, layout, even canceling the transparent background which can be a little annoying at times. It also fails to allow for what can often be the most useful tool in any visualizer—a delete option. For the most part, people use this kind of application to find files they can remove to free up space. However, with DaisyDisk, once you find the file, you must right-click on it to open it in the finder, and then delete it manually. DaisyDisk does have a few features that beat out the competition—the most useful being integration with Apple’s Quick Look. Once a file is clicked on, a user simply presses space bar to hear the audio, see the video or text, which is a great way to see if you really need a file or what it is. But again, if you decide it is unnecessary, you still have to go to the Finder to delete it.

There is also no help available in the application. While it is a very simple program, it is not simple enough  to warrant no aid at all. The Quick Look integration, for example, I found out by accident. There is one option in the menu to scan as a Super-User, presumably to find invisible and hidden files, but this is not explained anywhere. The “Back” button next to the file path also does not function as one might think: instead of moving up a file path, it moves to the last view you were at, acting more like a web browser than a file browser. Despite being a fully released product, it is clear that this is still a work in progress. Besides these omissions and flaws, one of the few menu options that does exist is to submit Feedback to the developers. Hopefully they will quickly respond and change the options that need changing.

DaisyDisk is not a necessary application, nor is it a perfect one. However, for a visually appealing way of discovering the files on your hard drive, a user needs to look no further. While not necessarily the most useful visualizer, DaisyDisk is fun to play with and look at, as the animations are smooth, the colors varied, and the interface simple. DaisyDisk retails for the slightly expensive price of $19.95, and you can download a free 15-day trial from its website.

This week we discuss Prowl and Google Chrome as well as other app news.

If you are interested in the links we talked about (and more), check out our Delicious tags for the week.

Please leave us feedback and/or comments on what you would like to see in future episodes.

Stainless is the brainchild of the small software company Mesa Dynamics, initially meant more as a proof than a product. Mesa wrote the browser simply to demonstrate a multiple-process web browser similar to Google Chrome, but the app has since flourished due to fan demand into a full fledged web browser.

Stainless utilizes the same WebKit layout rendering engine used by Apple’s Safari browser and Google’s Chrome browser, but has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. Stainless has a unique feature called parallel sessions, which allows users to log into the same website multiple times with different accounts in each tab. Each tab open is designed to be its own process, so that if it stops responding, it doesn’t crash the entire browser. I noticed a number of subtle features in the course of using Stainless that really stuck out. One being that when you search for text on a page (Cmd+F), it searches on each page you click to afterwards automatically, something neither Safari or Firefox do. It was incredibly useful when looking for references of the same topic on multiple sites.

Stainless has a useful minimalist interface

I see the app’s main feature as it’s simplicity. Stainless gives all the screen real estate to the web page, rather than cluttering it with it’s own icons and menus. The simple 3-button control bar, address/search combo bar, and thin bookmark column felt comfortable. I was surprised how much I liked the icon-only bookmark column WebKit gives the browser that zippy feel that we’ve all come to expect in Safari, though Stainless is possibly even speedier. I found in an informal speed test between the new Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Stainless, that it definitely edged out on top in rendering and application responsiveness.

I do have a few quipes with Stainless though. It’s obviously still a beta, but I had trouble moving the app around in Spaces, and then switching tabs in the new space. The app wanted to jump back to the originating space, so I presume that this is related to the multiple-process architecture. Also, the switch to the browser was tricky without a bookmark or settings import wizard, something I’ve come to expect from a browser if it expects me to switch.

All in all Stainless is a fantastic piece of software. It’s obviously been planned out well. It’s handsome, integrates fabulous features like parallel sessions, and Google Gears, while maintaining performance. It’s sparse, but after a few days I realized that it had everything you NEED in a browser, nothing more, and nothing less. In the Mac world right now I’d call Safari the flashy browser, Firefox the extendible browser, Stainless the speedy browser, and Chrome the vaporware browser. If you’re waiting for Chrome, Stainless provides an excellent preview of what to expect.

One of the most useful things about the Dock is that it tells you with a quick glance what programs are open. I can see that I have, for example, four different browsers running, and that’s probably what’s making my computer slow. Or, the reason I can’t find that window is not because I accidentally moved it but rather that the application quit itself. I can also easily see if there are files in a folder, using the Stacks. When this feature first came out, I was one of the people who were a little suspicious of its utility, but I have since been converted. I have a Temporary folder where I put things I have to deal with, and I can tell quickly whether or not there’s anything in there. I can also see whether I have to empty the Trash (a task that is much less arduous than its real-life counterpart, but still one I often forget to do). All of these tasks are very difficult to do with Quicksilver.

Now, you can move files through Quicksilver. You just have to find the file, usually by browsing through a directory, then tab over to the action panel, type in “move to,” and then tab again, and find the final resting place. But, with a few folders in the Dock, you can just drag the file straight in. I find this a lot easier, and a lot less time consuming. Although I might save time by using Quicksilver, I still open up the folders afterwards and make sure that the file was actually moved. That is one big problem with anything done through Quicksilver—opening applications, moving files, and so on—there’s no feedback. When you click on or drag something to the Dock, it bounces, or fades, or slides. You know something has happened. With Quicksilver, you just have to trust it.

But the biggest reason I keep my Dock around is for the sake of art. There are many programs out there, like Dock Library, SuperDocker, and so on, that allow you to customize the way your Dock looks. I can always be content that my Dock matches my Stack icons and the style of my computer by being “wooden.” You can customize Quicksilver too, but that’s only up for as long as you’re using it. With the Dock, you can also admire the well-designed icons of the world.

I wouldn’t want to compute without the Dock. It may not be my go-to application for launching applications, but it serves so many other purposes that it’s still worthwhile to keep around. Sure, there are scripts, programs, and hacks floating around the internet that allow you to do away with it, but I’m standing by my old friend. A launcher like Quicksilver is the easiest way to be quick, but the Dock adds style and utility to a desktop.

It’s this spirit of preservation that has allowed the underground world of digital comics to flourish.  Rather than risking damage to that Action Comics #71 you have tucked away for a down payment on a house, digital reproductions allow you to view the comics in your collection without ever taking them out of their protective plastic.  The lack of a decent portable program that allowed for the reading of these digital iterations has kept many a reader tied to their desktop… until now.

Comic Zeal allows you to transfer your digital comic book collection directly to your iPhone or iPod Touch, and presents you a number of great viewing options for reading.  Each page can be zoomed and navigated using the same tap and zoom mechanics that iPhone users have grown used to.  Comics can be read in landscape or portrait depending on your preference, with pages being flipped through by simply sliding your finger to advance through the story.  The fundamentals of page navigation, something that is at the core of any good comics reader, should be second nature to any iPhone user.

Clarity is the other cornerstone of a solid comics reader, and here too Comic Zeal excels.  While the default view even in landscape blurs the words a little too much too be readable, a light zoom fixes that right up.  And since you can still navigate from the zoom, you can simply set it once and forget it forever.  Presentation outside of an issue is just as good as inside.  Comics are displayed in “boxes” of series, which when clicked on will give you a cover view of every comic in that box.  It’s a nice touch, and a fantastic step up from the boring old text lists that most programs of this nature rely on.  Comics is a visual medium, and Comic Zeal embraces that fact.

Not everyone who loves comics has ventured into the world of digital reproductions, and unless you’re willing to scan your own or step into some of the internet’s shadier locales to download back-ups of comics you already own (MacApper in no way supports piracy, comic books are a dying medium, please support it!) you may not have much of a use for Comic Zeal.  Thankfully the developers at bitolithic recognized this and added some built in functionality for those looking to pick up some public domain comics to get a taste of something new.  Links to downloads from the indie superhero imprint Flashback Comics as well as a selection of Golden Age classics ranging from Atomic War to The Blue Beetle are available to anyone looking to expand their collection.

Despite these inclusions, Comic Zeal isn’t really aimed towards the reader with little previous experience with digital reprints.  Those with massive collections filling their hard drives have been dying to get their hands on a convenient portable reader that would allow them to read their collections.  Fantastic single issue iPhone apps have demonstrated the devices amazing capabilities pertaining to digital comics on the go, and while Comic Zeal can’t offer the amazing readability they do, it does allow you to port your comics to the iPhone with ease.

While one might hope for out-of-the-box support for the standard .cbr file type that most comics are read in, it’s not entirely the case.  Rather than reading .cbr files, Comic Zeal require you to convert your comics to their proprietary .cbi format via their freeware desktop application.  It may seem like a nuisance, but it makes a lot of sense when you see the reason behind it.  Traditional cbr’s exist at resolutions that are ridiculously high for iPhone usage.  Converting to cbi brings these down to a reasonable size, helping to conserve battery life by putting less strain on the processor.

When the app first launched there were endless hoops you’d have to jump through to get your files converted.  Before installing the desktop coversion software Comic Zeal Creator, you had to install supporting software.  Then you had to sort out server nonsense.  It was a mess.  Bit if past experiences with Creator turned you off of Comic Zeal, you might want to give it a second shot now that they’re released Creator’s successor, ComicZeal Sync.

Sync cuts out all the run around of it’s predecessor and opts for drag and drop simplicity.  After you drop an item into Sync, it will immediately begin the conversion.  If file names follow a certain structure, Sync should be able to sort out what file belongs to what series and keep your collection tidy without any first-hand involvement from you.  If your files aren’t that tidy, don’t worry.  While processing you can add basic info for the item such as series name, issue name, and issue number.  This will make sure that when you pop open Comic Zeal on the go everything is ready and waiting for you.  The only real problem here is that you can’t go back and edit that data after the file has been converted.  It’s not a major hassle, but it’s downright silly that the option to edit after conversion isn’t available.  And while you can also bulk convert, the necessity of providing correct info to keep your collection nice and neat kind of suggests that maybe you shouldn’t.

Syncing is a fairly painless process as well.  Clicking the sync button on the desktop app and the sync button in the iPhone app will get all of your new comics copied and sorted for you with no fuss or muss.  It’s all handled on the backend through the universally-acclaimed SyncDocs, so it’s highly unlikely you’ll find yourself running into data issues as a result.

The only real downside to the app, apart from the inability to edit your collection once converted, is how it underperforms compared to those single issue apps that exist for comics like Atomic Robo or The Terminator.  Being designed to specifically capture an individual issue means that each “page” can be a single panel, navigated frame by frame.  Using pre-existing scans simply doesn’t allow for that level of ease.  Despite this, ComicZeal offers up a fantastic experience for readers looking to take their collection on the go, even if it means they’ll have to pan and zoom to get through each page.

Unless Marvel and DC start to offer single issue downloads of their complete back catalogue in the AppStore, Comic Zeal will reign king as the premiere app for comic book lovers looking to take their favorites on the go.

Comic Zeal is available on the iTunes AppStore for $2.99.

What you’ll need:

1. A Mac running 10.4+
2. A mobile phone with text messaging capabilities
3. An e-mail account set-up with Apple Mail

Step 1

Direct your browser over to the Apple.com download section, find the Lock Desktop 1.0 automator application, and download it to your Mac. (if you prefer, you can build your own workflow in Automator and save it as an Application. I personally would prefer to just put my Mac to sleep, so I built an Automator workflow to sleep my Mac, and went to File-Save As… and chose “Application” as my file type. You must have the screen lock enabled in your security System Preferences for that to work though.)

Step 2

Now we’re going to write a short AppleScript, but don’t worry – it’s only one line. Open up Script Editor (Found in /Applications/AppleScript), and copy and paste the following line:

activate application "Lock Desktop"

If you created your own application in Step 2, then use that application name in place of Lock Desktop.

Now save this script in the same folder that you’ve saved your locking application. You should be able to click Run to test that your script is working.

Step 3

Now for the fun part. Launch Mail, open up the preferences, and navigate to the “Rules” tab. Click on “Add Rule,” and fill in the following information:

• Description: Remote Lock
• If all of the following conditions are met:
• From | Is equal to “your phone’s e-mail” (if you don’t know your cell phone’s e-mail address see this guide, or simply send a text message to your e-mail and copy the “From” field)
• To | Is equal to “your e-mail address”
• Message Content | Is equal to “________” (choose a word or phrase like a password)

Now we’re going to tell Mail what to do if it gets the “lock” message:

• Delete Message
• Run AppleScript “_______” choose your script from the menu here

Step 4

The last step is to tell Mail to get new messages as often as possible. In the preferences window, click the General tab, and set Check for new mail to Every minute. If you want to be especially thorough, you can set Mail to open at login, assuring that your e-mail will be received. To do this control+click on the Mail icon on the dock, and select Open at Login.

We’re done! To test it out, send your password in a text message to that e-mail account, and within a minute your Mac should lock itself! This is especially handy if you want to lock your workstation while you’re out, or a great April Fool’s prank on a friend.

This week we discuss Firefox 3.5, SweetFM, Mac productivity apps, Rolando 2, and the death of widgets.

Please leave us feedback and/or comments on what you would like to see in future episodes.

Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.

But while Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr may have taken this stance in a comment made to CNN.com’s Wes Finley-Price, there are still questions that remain unanswered.  Why does the iPhone Developer Program allow developers to make changes directly from the server in the first place?  Shouldn’t there be a system in place that restricts any changes to an app without a formal Apple approved update?  And if Apple “will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography,” then why do they issue a rating that includes the warning “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity”?  What are they expecting?  Tasteful, non-pornagraphic frequent and intense nudity?  Outside of a breast-cancer self-exam or a medical app, I can’t imagine  an app with frequent nudity.  And I certainly wouldn’t expect an app like that to have a 17+ rating, would you?

Apple doesn’t want to be seen as condoning pornography, and that’s understandable.  But pornography is about intent.  Covered breasts or not, Hottest Girls was approved by Apple.  If that’s the sort of content that does get approved, I can’t see why they’d have an issue with a parental-controlled version of the exact same software showing off a little bit of the boob.

The first thing you will notice about Snowtape is its amazing interface. It uses a completely custom UI that really works for the app. It also includes a mini-comtroller (just like iTunes) that is also unbelievably good-looking. It doesn’t just have a good UI though, it is very easy to use. There is a directory where you can search for stations, and there is also a repository of recorded tracks that you can edit and send to iTunes. It’s very simple.

In the directory, Snowtape sorts all stations by genres. Each station can have many genres, so some may appear all over the place. With the recent 1.1 update, Snowtape now has 700+ stations built-in, so you may never have to add your own. If you ever do, though, you just go to File>Import URL… if you have the URL of the playlist (for the station) or File>Import File… if you have the actual playlist file. You can sort stations by title, description, genre, number of streams, quality and popularity. The streams usually range from 320 kbps to about 16 kbps with most at about 128 kbps.

Snowtape’s main purpose is to record internet radio. And this is very simple to do. When you are listening to a stream, simply click the record button, and until you click the button again, everything will be recorded. Once you have recorded what you want, you can go to the Last Recorded section and see what you have. Your recording will be split into tracks based on the song that was playing. However, the track data from internet streams doesn’t always change exactly when the song changes, so you may have to do some editing. But, if some of the song gets cut out, you are out of luck. Although you can cut a track, you can’t add from one track to another. Luckily, you can decide for Snowtape to not cut it into tracks by going to the Recording tab of Preferences and deselecting the Enable automatic cut at track boundaries checkbox. Using that feature comes at a cost.

Once you have finished editing a track, you can get artwork for it by simply clicking the Get Album Artwork button. You can then choose from the images it shows you. And once you have done that, you can export to iTunes. The track info will already be filled in, and if you choose artwork, it will be there too. Recording in Snowtape could not be simpler.

One thing that may be overlooked by some users of Snowtape is RadioURL.com. This is a service provided with Snowtape that allows you to share what you are currently listening to to other Snowtape users. When you are listening to a station, just go to Action>RadioURL.com and choose what you would like to do. Others can then click on the link created and listen to what you are.

Snowtape retails for $29 and you can download a free demo from that link as well. Having artist alerts would be nice, but with 700+ stations, by the time you got the alert, the song would probably be over. It is extremely well designed, and just nice to use. I was not much of a radio fan before it, but now that it’s so easy, I listen and record all the time. I think everyone should try out this app.

Columns Deluxe, normally $1.99, offers up a tremendous value even at its regular price.  Not only does it include the classic jewel-dropping puzzle game that SEGA dreamed up to compete with Tetris back in the Genesis days, but it also includes a version of Puyo Pop built right into the same app!  While the name Puyo Pop might not be too familiar in the ears of western gamers, they’ll likely be very familiar with the formula.  Back in the day it was brought home on 16-bit machines as Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Kirby’s Avalanche.  Matching like-colored blobs is simple, but incredibly addicting.  And like any good puzzle game, it never really gets old.

Some might find it strange to receive a gift on such a patriotic holiday from a company few would think of as domestic, but in all actuality SEGA has some very American roots.  Originally launched in 1940, Service Games (later shortened to SEGA) was an entrepreneurial venture by three Americans looking to provide coin-op amusements to US military personnel fighting the war in the Pacific.  So when you think about it, SEGA is a company with roots as red, white and blue as they come!

Click here to grab SEGA Columns Deluxe from the iTunes AppStore. Hurry though!  Sale ends Monday!

I think the program compatibility issue will be mostly resolved within a few years. Software companies will begin developing Mac compatible software for most windows only programs in order to grow their companies. This will only happen when there is a large enough customer base available to invest into porting the application over to the Mac. It doesn’t make good business sense until there is enough of a demand for the product to recoup their costs and generate profit. With the exploding popularity of the Mac and the iPhone finding it’s way into business their market share will only grow from here. The iPhone is a gateway gadget leading to the Macintosh computer. Many people using the iPhone that had not tried a Mac are being intrigued that there may be a better user experience on a computer for them. Visiting the Apple stores for their iPhone is generating more interest in the Computers which will drive growth. In addition, many of the applications that are installed on computers are being put into the cloud and accessed through the web browser. Google is leading the charge with their google docs push, and others are following. Faster broadband speeds, more sophisticated web development software and better browsers will push computer based applications to the web. This makes sense in a lot of ways where the application doesn’t need a lot of resources to complete the designed tasks.

The next big disadvantage is the lack of business support. I had issues with connecting my Mac to the windows domain. I called 1800-myapple and although they tried to help, they didn’t have the knowledge to solve my problem. Apple needs to alleviate some of the fear from users and IT staff by having better instructions and more knowledge available when we run into an issue. In their effort to help me they directed me to a document created by someone not related to Apple. Microsoft has a pay per incident team that will assist in solving a microsoft related problem until the issue is resolved regardless of how long it takes. From what I recall it was around $250 per incident which seems expensive, however there is no time limit to resolve the problem. In the upcoming Snow Leopard release Apple is integrating Exchange into the OS. Windows doesn’t have exchange integrated so it is quite obvious Apple is aiming for the business user. Apple needs to create a call center focused on the business user that is capable of solving business related computer/software issues.

Email is one of my biggest disappointments in making the switch. Microsoft doesn’t make an Outlook version for the Mac. There is a history where Outlook stopped development for the Mac and Entourage was left to pick up the slack in a relatively short period of time. They had to integrate exchange support into their existing program rather quickly with limited resources and have done a decent job with the latest version. That being said Entourage is well behind Outlook as far as a business class email client is concerned. They have similar concepts in grouping contacts, mail, tasks, and calendar into one program which I prefer, however It’s obvious where the development money is spend at Microsoft, on Outlook and not Entourage. When Snow Leopard is released I can move to the packaged apps in Mac OS X but then Contacts, Mail and Calendar will be three different programs rather than combined into one. I’m not excited about having to work between three different programs for my calendar and communications. Hopefully they will surprise us and allow us a single user interface that blends them all together into one user interface.

Connecting to windows servers is a little touchy. Many times I dont have issues connecting to the servers in the office, however there are times where they will not allow my Mac to connect. Usually waiting a short time and trying again will allow me in however this is an issue that should be fixed.

In Oracle on a windows machine the function keys are used to begin searches and or clear them as well. On the Mac the function keys dont seem to work the same. I have them setup in preferences to only be function keys when I press “fn” on the keyboard. This doesn’t work in Oracle. I’m forced to use the menu’s to start and clear searches and it does take extra time. Perhaps this is a simple fix but the answer has eluded me to this point. I am not able to get Safari to work with Oracle. I had to download Firefox which works very well.

This may be an isolated problem that I am having, but when I export files from Oracle they are exported as a .tsv file. In windows I associated the .tsv file extension with MS Excel and when I double clicked the file it opened with Excel. I’ve tried to associate .tsv with Excel on Mac but it wont allow me to select MS Excel as an option for the default program. If I open Excel and then choose to open the file from within excel it works fine. If I rename the extension .xls it will also open just by double clicking the file. As a work around, I created an automator script where I drag the .tsv file onto the automator program icon, it converts the extension to .xls and opens the file in excel. This isn’t a big hassle now that I figured out the work around, but it would be nice to just click on the file and have it open.

The software updates and patches are very big. For some reason Apples updates are quite large. Sometimes in the hundreds of megabytes and end up taking up too much bandwidth from our T-1 for others to continue working. Much of our work is done through the intranet and Oracle which are both hosted 2500 miles away. Now when there is an update to be completed I start the download when we head home for the day and complete it in the morning.

The cost of Macs are higher than a windows machine, but when one compares equal systems and benefit I think the cost is pretty close. The programs that come with the Mac as well as the superior build quality put the two much closer than many people think. I purchased the 24″ iMac for $1,500 which is likely 30% higher than a comparable Dell system, however averaged over the four year life cycle I’m willing to spend an extra $112 per year in order to have the superior build quality and beauty of the Mac on my desk. Besides I make up the extra cost in additional up time and productivity only found on a Mac.

The last issue that I deal with is from the web browser when navigating through our company intranet that was built in visual studio. First let me say that I created our company intranet a few years back so I’m intimately familiar with how it works. There are times when I’m not allowed to view the intranet from the inside of our firewall. I click on my shortcut link and it brings up a dead page. The windows machine next to me has no issues accessing the site. This has happened in the past with windows machines and the fix was to hardcode the ip address of the server hosting the intranet in the host file on the local computer. With the Mac I’m told there are command line adjustments I can make to the host file however I’m not comfortable with making those changes. My work around is to access the intranet by going outside of the VPN to corporate and back in. If anyone has any good ideas for me to fix this issue please leave a comment. This is an intermittent problem and I do have a work around.

So to recap there are areas for the Mac to improve. Most of the issues I have are from 3rd party software developers and not OSX or the Mac specifically. The exploding popularity of the iPhone and the apple experience will drive more people to the Apple stores and to Mac computers. Apple has responded with some price cuts and have Snow Leopard nearing its ship date. 3rd party software developers are taking notice and will respond in hopes getting in at the early stages and growing their companies. The next few years should be exciting to say the least.

I was going to cover security in the next post but would the readers like to discuss a different topic? Sound off and let me know.

Toki Tori is the game that just won’t die. Surprisingly, we mean this is in a good way. If you haven’t played Toki Tori yet you should absolutely stop reading this and grab it for less than a buck right now. But if you already love Toki Tori? Read on!

Originally released for the GameBoy Color back in 2001, Toki Tori was a critical success but a commercial failure. Most developers would have taken their lumps and moved on to their next projects, but Two Tribes knew that they had a true gem on their hands and weren’t ready to let go.

After allowing for a 2003 port to Windows Mobile, the team at Two Tribes took a break from Toki Tori only to re-emerge last year with a gorgeous remake on Nintendo’s WiiWare service. But with the service itself not gaining any real traction, Two Tribes still hadn’t see the commercial success that their title deserved.

Then came Chillingo. The iPhone publisher has become one of the premiere names in iPhone gaming, and they saw the potential Toki Tori had to offer. Porting the WiiWare remake to the iPhone, Chillingo has released the penultimate version of the puzzle platformer. Now that version is on sale for 99 cents. That’s 80% off the regular $4.99.

Toki Tori is the tale of a lonely bird trying to rescue all of his friends without being killed in the process. Lead Toki Tori safely past obstacles and solve environment-based puzzles to help him reach his objectives! Fans of games like Professor Fizzwizzle or Eets will find a lot to love here.  Having played both the GBC and WiiWare versions, I can easily say that the iPhone edition of Toki Tori is second to none.  Controls-wise the game has never felt more comfortable, and it looks downright mindblowing for a portable game.

No word on how long the sale is on for, but at this price picking it up is a no-brainer.  Click here to visit Toki Tori on the App Store.

The Twitter Phenomenon – some call it the death of journalism, some call it the rebirth of useful communication. No matter your feelings on Twitter, it’s likely that you have an account, or will get one soon enough.

Now when tweeting (verb: the act of updating your twitter) you have many options. The robust Twitter API allows you to post from just about anywhere with any internet or mobile device. There are hundreds of Twitter clients for you to choose from! Today we’ll go through the many different clients you can holster in your Twitter Toolbelt!

The AIR Clients:

AdobeAIR, for those of you that don’t know, is a runtime environment developed by Adobe for building powerful Internet applications that can be deployed as desktop applications. (They’re mainly composed of Flash, HTML, Javascript, and AJAX). Many Twitter apps have been developed in the AIR environment, making them all cross-platform, but with drawbacks. If you’re a Mac person, and you like your standard OS X Application Interface, then be warned. The AIR apps are great, but may not be right for you. Personally, I’ve tried many of them, but found that they reacted like web apps, when I wanted them to react like desktop applications. This is not to say they’re bad apps! Many are fantastic, but personally I don’t want them on my desktop.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is arguably the most popular AIR client, with an attractive dark, multi-column interface and integration with tons of popular URL shortening services as well as TwitPic and YFrog. TweetDeck also taps into the Facebook API to allow you to update Twitter and Facebook Status Updates. The app allows users to link more than one Twitter Account, something not seen in all clients.

Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop almost seems like a cousin to TweetDeck, but is a little bit less cluttered. Seesmic also takes the multi-column approach, but looses the icon-only-based navigation. The app has a great sidebar to organize your Tweets (and yes, Facebook integration in this one too), and just has a great user experience in general. I was impressed once again to see all of the external Twitter services such as URL shortening, photo uploading, and a handy “shrink text” feature to help you squeeze the most into of your Tweets.

Tweetr

Tweetr is about as straight up as you can get with a Twitter client. Its no-nonsense, “tell it like it is” layout works quite well for beginning tweeters. It shows tweets from people you’re following, your own tweets, @mentions, and direct messages all in the same list. Now if you follow hundreds of people and get thousands of @mentions a day… might not be the best app for you, but for a beginner Tweetr is great. It offers a number of excellent features such as URL shortening, uploading images right from your Webcam, and a basic layout.

The iPhone Clients:

Of course, “there’s an app for that.” There is a plethora of Twitter clients of the iPhone, and quite frankly it’s hard to find a bad one! The iPhone seems to have been built for Tweeting, it’s just so natural on the device. A few apps lack features in one or two areas, lag, or a just a bit ugly, but all-in-all the majorty of them are great. The following are considered some of the best:

Tweetie

Tweetie is an excellent app with a number of  features. Landscape keyboard, light-weight, and a well organized user interface make Tweetie stand out from the crowd. With support for multiple accounts, bit.ly and TwitPic integration, and a native iPhone feel, Tweetie is easily worth the $2.99 price tag, and is my favorite paid iPhone client.

Developer Screenshot

Twitterfon

Twiterfon is another great client, but it comes for the best price: $0. Twitterfon is the only free client on our list, and for good reason. Even though it’s sibling Twitterfon Pro offers a ton of great features, for the thrift shopper at the App Store, this is the best buy. It’s just a solid client, with features like conversation view, and a similar interface to Tweetie. Though freebie downloader beware: Twitterfon is ad-supported. It’s really not to invasive, but it’s kind of a pain. I’m personally too cheap to drop $4.99 on Twitterfon Pro, when I can get a great client like Tweetie for $2.99 with almost all of the same features. If you’re looking to spend nothing, and get almost all of the great features you’d expect in a paid app: look at Twitterfon.

Developer Screenshot

Twittelator Pro

Twittelator Pro is the heavy-weight in this category. This is for the Power Tweeter! You’ll be amazed at how many features are packed into this mobile app, you might even feel claustrophobic. It’s an incredible app, but it quite frankly it has more features than anyone will honestly ever need. It goes into a depth that is subterranean, but if you’re the kind of person that wants to put dingbats and Greek symbols into your tweets: this is your app. As seems to be quite common with these iPhone apps, they all seem to have agreed on the same basic interface to work from, so using one is like using another, only the features and colors vary.

Developer Screenshot

The OS X Native Clients:

These are by far my favorite type of Twitter apps! There’s nothing like a good ol’ native application in OS X. There are a number of advantages to a native client including Growl notifications, noticeable speed differences, interface responsiveness, quicker launch times… you get my point. Many of these are in their infancy, in early beta’s lacking a few of the features of the AIR clients, but they feel much studier.

Nambu

Nambu is my personal client of choice. It does exactly what you hope a Twitter client would do. It has a great sidebar for sorting tweets, it has multiple view modes, it has conversation view, it has that Mac OS X standard search in the upper-right corner, it has integration with tr.im and pic.im, and it just works. It can collapse itself into a Tweetr-esque interface, then sidebar view, or a TweetDeck-esque layout for those interested in seeing 3-4 columns of content. Best of all: it’s native. It feels comfortable, intuitive, and sturdy. It’s still in beta, but coming soon: Facebook support! AIR clients: meet your closest competitor.

Lounge

Lounge is a promising client, and a great one for people who like color coding. Lounge has a handsome OS X interface with cutesy color coded icons and tweets to help you distinguish all of the various details. My favorite feature of Lounge is how it handles TwitPic photos. If it sees a TwitPic link in a tweet, it loads a thumbnail of that photo next to the tweet. It’s really nice to have the mystery taken out of “what is this a photo of?” when clicking through to a TwitPic. Lounge also features a great multi-account system with each switching in-between. Another unique feature of Lounge is how it displays your followers/following feeds as mini-profiles.

Twitterpod

Twitterpod is an enigma. I should preface this by saying I strongly discourage readers from downloading this app. In all honesty when I first launched this app, I wondered if the developer was tripping. Users are greeted with what would be a standard Twitter client design except for the psychedelic multi-colored header scrolling your subscribed tweets in a pretty trippy way (there are three views in this app, one being full on trippy tweet scrolling). The top navigation of the client uses icons that are much too small, and require screen zoom to analyze their purpose. I can’t help but wondering if this is a joke of some kind: it’s that bad. There’s nothing particularly useful about the client. I only throw it into this mix as a warning, and because there are only 3 native OS X Twitter clients available. The other two are so innovative and unique from their AIR competitors, that I feel they make up for this pointless little… odd app.

Other Methods of Tweeting:

SMS

For those of you who have yet to convert to the iPhone, or prefer a different device there’s always tweeting by text message. Sign up on Twitter.com with your mobile number and start tweeting your heart away to shortcode: 40404. Also, you can subscribe to get mobile SMS updates when you subscribe to other Tweeters.

Blackberry

TwitterBerry is a popular app for RIM Blackberry devices. I haven’t used it personally, but I’ve heard it’s a decent client from a number of people.

The iPhone winners were:

• MLB.com At Bat 2009
• Postage
• Topple 2
• Tweetie | MacApper Review
• Wooden Labyrinth 3D
• AccuTerra (3.0 Beta)

I have used all of these, and I must say, Apple is very right. There are a few apps that came out after the awards that I think would have won had the awards not been given out until after their release. A congratulations to all of these iPhone winners, we really appreciate your apps and the work you have put into them.

The Mac winners are:

• Billings
• BoinxTV
• Things | MacApper Review
• Versions | MacApper Review
• Fontcase | MacApper Review

Again, I have tried all these apps, and they are great. Congratulations to the winners of the Mac Apple Design Awards, we appreciate the work you have put into making your apps so great.

I recommend checking out all of these apps, not just because they won awards, but because they are great apps that really deserve notice. Especially the student winners (Fontcase and Wooden Labyrinth 3D), who not only create amazing apps, but also must manage schoolwork.

μTorrent sports a handsome native cocoa interface

Users are greeted with a somewhat-vacant main window when they load .torrent files, but a well organized one. Windows users who have used μTorrent on XP or Vista will recognize the interface, but miss a few of the more robust features available for the Windows client. One major feature of this app that sets it apart from some of its other Mac competitors is its ability to load multiple torrents and manage them well (I realize that Transmission does this, but when downloading 2 or more files it gets difficult to manage).

I frequently download new Linux ISOs when they’re first released, ranging from 700mb to 2gb. Now getting the entire thing down can be a game of cat and mouse with the seeding ratio and upload/download limits, but μTorrent handles the connections quite nicely. Many users (including myself) have noticed significant down speed increases with the new μTorrent client. I was a Transmission user for a few years, but even when configured identically downloading the same torrent there’s no question that μTorrent is faster.

The preferences panel is well organized and gives users control
over all aspects of their Torrent experience

The app is great for downloading torrents and configuring network settings and preferences, but it doesn’t go much further than that. There is a search that launches to Google for searching, and some control of bandwidth priority, but overall in feature-set the client is rather light. It is quite quick, I found launching and quitting significantly faster than Transmission. All in all it’s a great client, but I found myself missing the RSS torrent download features available to Windows users. I used to be able to let μTorrent stay on top of the latest Ubuntu releases, but now I have to track down a number of different distributions from different pages. I hoping in future releases more of these features are integrated, but in all fairness the app is still in beta. Transmission users, trust me: it’s worth the switch. For now it functions as a solid client, just bare of some of the creature comforts that come with other apps.

SweetFM is a mash up of sorts, mixing Last.fm streaming with your average iTunes helper app. Like all other iTunes helper apps, SweetFM displays the album artwork of the song your currently listening to and that functionality also works with music you stream from Last.fm. It also has an indescript spot where you are suppose to enter what you want to listen to on Last.fm and an arbitrary arrow button next to it. One would think you could just enter an artist name into the box and get Last.fm to play it but this is not the case. Instead you have to press this arrow button to display a group of addition buttons labeled “Artist”, “Tags”, and etc. You then have to hit one of those buttons and enter further information into the box. For example, if I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd on Last.fm, I would have to open up SweetFM, click the arrow, click artist, and then enter “Pink Floyd” in the box.

In reality all they are really doing with this convoluted process is adding a little tag behind the information you enter into the box. You would think they could automate this or have a little bit of magic happen behind the scenes, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Aside from that the application feels more like a beta than a final release, I’ve encountered multiple bugs in the few days that I’ve been playing with it. The first of which is that what the application shows as playing and what is actually playing in iTunes don’t match from time to time, even though SweetFM says the right info in it’s menu in the menu bar. Also, the progress indicator, which allows you to scrub through songs, occasionally does not work.

But the most disappointing part of this application is it’s user interface. Even though they are touting the fact that you can design skins for this app using HTML and CSS, a well built one should still come bundled with the app. Fibre, the included skin, is an overly glossy, distracting waste of desktop space. Personally, I like my iTunes helpers to be pinned to the desktop and just meld with everything else their but Fibre is just not capable of doing that (the melding at least). Silly things like having the horizontal volume slider bumped right up to the “Scrobbling” button for Last.fm makes it seem as though the slider has something to do with “Scrobbling” when in fact it does not. The semi-transparent background in particular is my least favorite part, why does it need to be there? Take a page from the designers doing skins for Bowtie and just get rid of the app background all together, it works so much better with the desktop. Luckily choco moko has a skins directory on their website but at the moment it only has one additional theme, which seems only like a slight redesign to Fibre and nothing more.

If your at all interested in helper apps for iTunes, I would recommend you stay away from SweetFM. Although if your a fan of Last.fm it is worth checking out. It is available from choco moko for $29. If you are just looking for an iTunes helper, check out the free Bowtie.

Released this past December, Rolando’s iPhone tilting action and adorable personality quickly made it one of the platform’s must-own games.  Consistent critical acclaim and sales success had cemented it as one of the true cornerstones of the iTunes AppStore.  Taking that into consideration, it’s an absolute mystery why developer ngmoco has announced that Rolando is being removed from the AppStore this Wednesday, July 1st.

The pulling of this title from the AppStore, as well as it’s Lite counterpart, was a decision made to “make room for Rolando 2″ according to ngmoco representative mjmmoco.  In an announcement made on the TouchArcade forums, mjmmoco announced that both the regular and Lite versions of Rolando would be removed at the time of Rolando 2’s release.  I can’t even begin to understand why a decision like this would be made.

From a marketing standpoint, wouldn’t those checking out the franchise for the first time with Rolando 2 be inclined to go back and revisit the first Rolando, thereby driving ngmoco’s overall sales?  And if this decision wasn’t made by ngmoco but rather Apple, why would Apple want to remove one of the top selling games from their AppStore?  The game has been available for more than 6 months and still charts in the top 100 paid games in the App Store.

This whole situation reeks of confusion and poor decision making.  Regardless, if you were thinking about picking up the original Rolando, you’d better get rolling.  Unless this is all just a big marketing stunt to make a big fuss when they bring it back “due to popular demand.”  Existing Rolando fans can enjoy the new title Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid this Wednesday.

Star Walk shows you all its information based on the time of day and your location. Using Apple’s location services, you must only allow it to find your current location, and everything else is automatic. If you would like to change the time of day you’re looking at, simply click on the Clock icon (in the upper-right corner) and you can change it. To navigate around the map, you just use pinching and dragging. There are even four markers for North, East, South and West so you know exactly where to look for a specific constellation. There is also a red line for the horizon making it, again, even easier to see where something is.

Star Walk is cool enough with just the ability to look around a virtual map. But, it also adds some other features. When you press on a constellation name (in the virtual sky), you will see a white drawing of it with the stars. This feature is great for showing to kids (and for helping one find the constellation). While the name is still selected, if you hit the “i” button, you will get more information. A “W” button will also appear allowing you to see a Wikipedia article on it.

Constellations are not the only things Star Walk knows. If you click on any star or planet on the screen, you can also hit the “i” button and get more information.

What I would say is one of the most important features that Star Walk carries is its search. If you hit the search button (lower-left corner), you can search for stars, constellations, planets and messier. If the object is visible to you, its name will be in white, if not, they name will be grayed out. When you click on one, it will take you there on the map. This makes it so easy to find what you want.

Star Walk also includes some nice preferences. The first one is night mode, which basically turns everything into a red-ish color. There is also the ability to turn of the pictures of constellations and sounds. And finally, you can adjust the brightness of stars, planets, etc. All of these can be accessed from the button in the lower-right corner.

Star Walk costs $4.99 in the App Store and is the International Year of Astronomy 2009’s official product. It is extremely intuitive and also provides many features for amateurs and even pros. Anyone who likes watching the stars (and has an iPhone or iPod Touch) needs this app.

Ringer is a very basic application. The sidebar on the left lets you browse your iTunes library and the rest of the window is for creating ringtones. You can browse many different sections of iTunes including artists, movies, and TV shows. You can also search for the specific clip.

The ringtone creator is very similar to the one built into iTunes. It has the same features and tools. You simply drag a box around the portion of the song you’d like to use, and hit preview. You can also set the gap in between loops and have the audio fade in and out. When you click create the ringtone is instantly placed under “Ringtones” in iTunes and you will be able to sync them with your iPhone.

Ringer is a great app for creating simple ringtones, but it doesn’t have many advanced features. For some ringtones it might be useful to have a few simple audio effects. There is also no way to control the length of the audio fade. Ringer doesn’t have many features, but it does just what it should. It’s an easy way to create new ringtones in a few short seconds. Ringer is available for $15 from Pixel Research Labs.

This week we discuss Steve Jobs’ liver transplant, Fever, the iPhone 3.0 update, AIM for the iPhone (with push), and a few other iPhone apps.

Please leave us feedback and/or comments on what you would like to see in future episodes.

Google Chrome is a “fresh take on the web browser” according to Google. I would love to tell you about all of the innovative features in Chrome, or the awe-inspiring speed, or just how it’s a solid competitor to Firefox and Safari. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you any of these things as Google has yet to release Chrome for Mac. It has been close to 10 months since since Google released Chrome beta for Windows. Only a 3 months after releasing the beta for Windows, Google took the browser out of beta (Note: GMail has been in beta since its invitation-only release in 2004).

You must be asking yourself: where is Chrome for Mac? There must be a good answer right? Unfortunately, not really. Building a good browser is no trivial task. These days people expect a multitude of features to come standard, tight security, and quick browsing. If Google was truly building from scratch, I would give them more slack, but it seems that Chrome isn’t as fresh a take on the browser as Google claims.

Chrome relies heavily on a modified version of WebKit (Safari’s layout engine that Apple developed from pieces of the Konqueror browser). Google Chrome also draws pieces from Firefox, and 27 code libraries. Google is even drawing as far back as Netscape for code for their fresh, innovative browser.

Does it really take close to 10 months for the most powerful company on the web to use it’s nearly unlimited resources to port Chrome to the Mac? I realize that Google’s Mac department has never been it’s speediest division, but the fact that third-parties were coming out with rough ports of Chrome before Google is just embarrassing. Google did finally release a beta of Chrome recently, but this is not ready to be out in the wild. While most beta’s are usable with occasional bugs, this developer beta lacks major features (including the bulk of the security features… web browsers beware).

It can load a web page, but that’s about it.

Is it unreasonable to expect Google to have a Mac version out at the same time as their windows version? Mozilla seems to be able to do it, and their a non-profit (though to be fair, Mozilla does bring thousands of volunteers into the process to work with their staff). Even still, Google is a gigantic company, with some of the deepest pockets around, nearly 20,000 employees, and thousands of developers who help invent the web as we know it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a release by now, especially when it’s not nearly as “fresh” as they claim.

The beta currently lacks flash support, making it unusable for many sites including Google’s own YouTube.

In an interview with CNET News, Chrome Project Manager Brian Rakowski said that the company wanted to release the Mac version before the first half of 2009 is up. Well Google, it’s nearly up, so time for you guys to pony up.

These two movies turned iPhone games bring the same concept: go fast, beat those around you who try to knock you down, win the day.  The concept is tried and true: mix high energy rock music to fast driving/piloting and you’ve got a recipe for success.  How do they work out for Freeverse?  A mixed bag is what I found.

For each game, Freeverse uses similar strategies: look a like actor dialogue in between races/missions.  The result isn’t horrible if not a little hokey, but adds some plot to the games.

Days of Thunder

For Days of Thunder, you’re rookie driver Cole Trickle looking to move up through the racing ranks.  Left and right controls are handled through the accelerometer and do a fine job allowing players to dodge traffic, navigate turns and sling-shot around cars after drafting.  An onscreen button controls acceleration and brake in the lower left and right corners.

Play is good.  You can build up draft points and get enough and you can “drop the hammer” which catapults you beyond your top speed when the yellow hammer appears on the right hand side.  A speedometer reminds you to stay off the walls in corners and away from rubbing other racers.

Players also need to keep an eye on their car’s health meter on the top of the screen.  Get too low and you’ll be “out” and forced to pause racing and have to play catch up to limp into the pits to regain health.  There is nothing to do in the pits but wait out your health restore.

One aspect of the game thrown in to make it interesting is the other cars behavoir.  Your compeition likes to bang into you like bumper cars, rubbing your health lower and lower.  Fortunately these cars have health meters too that when depleted force them to crash.  I found it a bit annoying but so would coasting around the tracks.

The game is a good play until you lose track of what circuit you are in (about 15 races in my experience) then replay value was low for me.  It certainly was addicting for the first bunch of races.  I found the dialogue silly and at one point inappropriate as the racers talked about Dr. Claire Lewicki.

As popular as NASCAR is, this game pales in comparison to the second Tom Cruise fashioned game from Freeverse.

The game is currently $.99 in the App Store. Days of Thunder link in App Store

Top Gun

This game drips with adrenaline.  Maybe it is the fond memories of the Paramount movie or the fact that this is an Afterburner clone, or the game calling you by your chosen call sign;but whatever it is, mix a decent rock soundtrack to Vulcan Cannons and sidewinder missiles and you’ve got a winning combo.

Player are still fighting the Communist Russians but this time instead of the standard issue F-14 Tomcat, your assigned a prototype F22-B (we’ll sidestep the F-22-b being canceled back in 1993 as a replacement for the Tomcat).   From the movie, Iceman and Maverick are brought back as Top Gun instructors whose dialogue is less silly than in Days of Thunder as they outline the objectives through the mission, requiring you to click through.

Controls are similar to Days of Thunder: accelerometer for left right, up and down, bottom left for Vulcan Cannons and bottom right for missiles.  Guiding your sight over enemy aircraft turns their radar diamond to red, indicating radar lock.  Your radar can lock onto three targets at once allowing you to hit the missile fire button once to launch missiles on all three simultaneously.  Fun.

Obstacles in your way are “Danger Zones”.  The screen is divided up into 3 rows and 3 columns and much like tic-tac-toe you’ve got to escape into a free area as the danger zone turns from yellow to orange to red.  If your jet is in the Danger Zone when it turns red, you lose a health point.  Lose all your health points and you’ll be forced to eject.

If you’ve seen Top Gun then undoubtedly you know the Kenny Loggins hit Danger Zone.  The song here is reproduced by Gavareal and sounds very close to the original.  Other original songs are performed by Gavareal and do a good job of keeping your pulse quick.

This game has become my favorite iPhone game.  The action is quick, you can change the hardness level simply by deciding to take down combatants with your cannons instead of missiles and fighting the Russians is fun again!  The game has high replay value and I’ve still yet to beat the final level.

The dialogue lays out an decent plot, discovering that a mole exists in Top Gun.  Some of the movie-mimicking is a bit silly at times but it holds together.  It is not too hard to figure out who it is though I still have the big unveiling at the end of the final level to put it all together.

The graphics are amazing.  From the carrier take offs to the HUD (heads-up-display) everything is very clear and easy to figure out the game in short order.  Calibration of the accelerometer is very handy from in the game: simply hit pause and tap calibrate.  The game is well thought out and a blast to play.

As a huge fan of Afterburner, Top Gun was an easy pick as my new favorite.  Days of Thunder provided some fun but lacked in advanced play.  Once you mastered getting around cars and when to pit, not much changed.

For Top Gun, the enemies became craftier, dodging your missiles better, battleships through up anti-aircraft fire forcing you to be quick with the controls and to firing options keeps it moving.

The game is currently $3.99 in the App Store. Top Gun link to App Store

Summary

With Freeverse’s licesning relationship with Paramount, could Mission Impossible games be next?  $5 says both these games are on Tom Cruise’s iPhone.  Any takers?

Developer Site: [Freeverse]

The Calorie Tracker app links directly to your LIVESTRONG.com account and syncs data between the two, allowing users to literally take their LIVESTRONG account with them wherever they go.  To understand what this app offers, it’s important to understand a little bit about the website it’s based on.  Unlike other nutrition calculators, both online and on the iPhone, LIVESTRONG offers an open nutrition database.  This means that if a member can’t find a food they’ve consumed in the database, they can add it themselves.  Once approved, that food becomes available to all members as part of the database.  Kind of like a wiki for food facts.

Every chain restaurant, brand of food, or generic item you can think of is listed (and if it’s not, you can fix that).  That’s a big part of what makes LIVESTRONG so great.  The other big factor is how detailed the stat tracking is.  A user has access to numerous graphs and tables to show them exactly what they’ve been consuming and how their diet has improved or deteriorated over time.  You can even track your daily fitness, and the system will help you to use that activity to calculate your net calories for the day rather than just your consumed ones.

Why is it so important to know so much about LIVESTRONG.com?  Because without that knowledge you might not realize just how limited the Calorie Tracker really is.  Sure you have access to their seemingly limitless nutrition database, but if what you’re eating isn’t in there don’t expect to add new foods from the app.  And while the Calorie Breakdown provided gives you a good guide on how many calories you have left to consume in a given day, it doesn’t provide anywhere near the depth of information that the actual website does.  Want to know how much fat you’ve taken in?  How about fiber?  The app doesn’t tell you that, even though that information is readily available on the website.

Another problem: if you’re on an iPod touch, you’re pretty much out of luck.  Despite other apps somehow cramming a massive database into a tiny app file (see MovieBrain) Calorie Tacker by LIVESTRONG.com has decided it best to keep their central database available via internet connection only.  That’s not to say that iPod Touch owners can’t use the app.  In fact, certain tweaks make the app more useable offline than you might expect.  If you’ve eaten a food or completed an exercise before, it should be available locally, having been saved in the app prior.  If you’re eating the same foods on a daily basis (and many people do), the app should only provide occassional inconveniences when attempting to track your meals.  Any foods that you need the database for can always be accessed the next time you’re at a WiFi point.

With so much working against it, you might be suprised to hear that this app has our whole-hearted endorsement.  Regardless of how much less it offers than its website companion, it still offers far more than any other nutrition calculator in the App Store.  So long as you’re using this on an iPhone you’ll always have access to their seemingly endless database.  The ability to sync your daily consumption and exercise to a free online account that provides you with tons of statistical data and a strong community makes Calorie Tracker by LIVESTRONG.com an app that’s second to none.  Both as a nutrition calculator and a companion to the LIVESTRONG.com website, it’s an exceptional offering.  We’d have liked to have seen more of the info that the site offers as well as an offline database, but asides from these minor complaints there’s really very little room for improvement.

Calorie Tracker by LIVESTRONG.com is available for $2.99 on the App Store.

First I show off Finder. Finder is the file manager and equivalent to Explorer for windows. I use finder in columns view so that it is easy to drill down through folders and see the hierarchy in detail as I drill down to a file several folders deep. This alone is a huge improvement over explorer. Explorer can drill down by expanding folders in a vertical fashion, but it’s a bit difficult to navigate. Finder expands in columns from left to right and will continue to add columns as you continue to drill down. I drill down a bit and find a group of files that are mixed in file type such as movie, pictures, documents and Highlight them as a group. Moving into my next demo I hit spacebar to show them spotlight. Of course I pause before hitting the space bar to build suspense and tell them to “Watch this, BAM!”. For some reason I cant resist the color commentary when demoing. A split second later a preview pops to the center of the screen. Arrow right down through the list from .pdf to .jpg to .mov and each file show as fast as I can push the arrow. I explain to them that OS X doesn’t need to open a program to view the file. If I would have done this in Windows it would have had to open each program associated with the file, loaded the program, opened the file then I would have had to close them all when it was done. On a Mac just hit spacebar for a quicklook.

Next I show off Spotlight. ?-Space “Boom!” More colorful vernacular of course. I explain how that set of keystrokes gives you a search field full of power. I start out by typing in simple calculations which responds dynamically with answers. Then I pick a random item to search for such as “quote”. The search results adjust with each keystroke and categorize my search for me based on resulting file type. I take it a step further and show them how to search for specific items. I type “kind:folder” and only folders show up, then I type my search term to narrow to folders with that search term in the name. To be fully honest I use textexpander so I only type “,sf” which converts to “kind:folder”. Textexpander constantly watches my keystrokes and when I type a specific set of predetermined characters in order, it will be replace with anything I’ve setup saving me many keystrokes. Next search, ?-Space “Numbers” and the application is highlighted for me to press enter to launch the program and go onto my next demo. At this point I’ve definitely got their attention.

Numbers is one of my favorite things to demo. As a long time MS Excel power user I’m use to being restricted to working within the grid of cells. One has to leave blank rows between groups of data, lay pictures over the top of cells that will need to be left unused, etc. Numbers is setup as a blank canvas and tables, shapes, pictures and charts are considered independent of one another and can be dragged around on the canvas and put in position where you want them. To keep the demo moving I insert a table, choose a style, convert the column and row to headers, type some numbers and labels in. I highlight the numbers and show introduce them to the drag and drop friendliness of OS X by dragging the sum balloon onto the table, I go back and grab avg and drop it in as well. I open up a web page and search for an image. I click and drag the image from the web page and drop it on my numbers sheet. I drag the picture around to show them the assistance I get with alignment in the form of blue snap lines. I drag another table out to show how easy it is to arrange the components. Numbers is important enough that I’ll spend a whole post on it in the future.

Screen capture is something I use every day. In an effort to communicate with people through email I often will capture a piece of a web site, email, picture, drawing, etc.. With windows it is a difficult multistep process to put a screen shot into a .jpg format. I would usually paste it into Word then create a .pdf which took several steps and was not nearly as clean for the recipient to view. Or I would paste it into an email and crop the picture to eliminate unwanted components which took a bit of time. With OS X ?-Shift-4 and the mouse pointer turns to cross hairs. I pick something and drag a box around it “Poof!”, Yes more color commentary, and it drops a .jpg image on the desktop. I highlight the file and hit spacebar using quickview to show them the results. At this point they are usually engaged in the demo and asking questions.

Having touched on the drag and drop friendliness of OS X I explain my perception as to why the menu menu bar is stuck to the top of the screen, and the program windows dont fill the screen as they do on a PC. I believe it’s to allow multiple windows to easilly be visible at one time so the user can drag items from one program to another. Having said that I drag the image file from my screen capture and drop it on the Entourage icon in the dock. A new email message is created with the file as an attachment. I drag the image into the Numbers document I still have open. I drag it down and drop it on the iPhoto icon in the dock and iPhoto opens and imports the image. Finally I have a printer alias setup on my desktop so I drag it over and drop it on top of the printer icon and drop it. Nothing happens, and they ask “What did that do?” A second later we hear the bizhub fire up and start printing the picture. Although this is a little gimmicky I think it shows just how drag and drop friendly OS X is.

Expose is another benefit that I share. I have my expose setup using hot corners. Each of the four corners of the screen can be setup so when the mouse is pushed to the extreme corner it activates a function. I have the bottom left corner setup with expose, and the bottom right corner setup for screen saver with password protection. So I whip the mouse down the bottom left corner and all the open windows spread and show themselves in full view. Move the cursor over the one I want and click to activate and bring to full size. Now I start getting questions such as “How much does a Mac cost?” and “Why aren’t Macs more popular since they are so cool?”

If I have my laptop with me at work I’ll pull it out and set it on the desk. The beauty alone is breath taking. When possible I’ll stack it on top of their Dell computers to show the contrast in beauty. The Dell is plastic, bulky, and cheap looking compared to the MacBook Pro. I always leave my laptop in sleep mode so I’ll ask them how long it takes their Dell’s to wake up when they open it. The usual answer is several minutes and from my experience thats an accurate answer. I open up the lid and start counting. By the time I get to 4 the computer is ready to use and by the time I count to 8 it has connected to the network and is ready to surf the web. That is the last demo that needs to be done to a business laptop user. One coworker sarcastically said “So I wont have to turn it on when I wake up in the morning so it will be ready by the time I’m done with my shower and breakfast? It takes 15 minutes to boot from the off position and 5-10 minutes to wake up from sleep.” At this point my face muscles don’t have the strength to hold back my huge smirk. They almost seem to get upset that Windows is so far behind and that OS X isn’t more mainstream. A few rants about viruses, virus scans, bloatware, frozen programs, reboots and they wrap it up with “My next computer is a Mac.”

I’m not even done showing them all the cool things about OS X so I share a few other tidbits of information that I find fascinating. I leave the laptop open and open up iPhoto to show how the trackpad and multi touch works. In the interest of brevity the touch pad will do different things with different strokes and gestures depending on the number of fingers on the pad at one time. One example would be rotating a picture in iPhoto by using two fingers and spinning in a circular motion. Another is two fingers pushed up and down to scroll and so on.

I get copied on all the quotes from our company. I have a rule setup in Entourage that identifies the email as a quote, moves it to a quote folder in Entourage and saves the attachment to a folder on the hard drive. With the speed of spotlight when a customer calls and gives me the quote number I can have it up and in front of me in 5 seconds. I’ll demonstrate the speed at which I can arrive at the quote. They are amazed and without question new Mac fans. If the company will let them get Macs as well, they will be sure to do so for their next computer. I move the mouse courser to the bottom right corner to activate the screen saver, demo over.

I realize that this post is a bit longer than I had hoped but it’s hard to not include some of the special functions of OS X that a windows coworker doesn’t know about. I have a passion for OS X and Macs and when I get going it’s hard to stop.

Although I love OS X it does have it’s flaws. Next post I’ll share some of the difficulties and incompatibilities I’ve ran into at work.

The long awaited update to the iPhone OS is coming tomorrow, June 17th, and it looks as though Apple is very much prepared.

Find My iPhone, a feature allowing you to find your iPhone via MobileMe if you were to lose it, has been available online for developers who are already running OS 3.0 since the announcement, last week.

But just a few moments ago, I noticed something in the App Store which I’m pretty sure wasn’t there before. Apple is now listing “iPhone OS 3.0 Tested” next to the version number of what seems to be all new applications. This message also appears next to all updates as well, further proving that Apple is making sure most of the applications available to consumers will work on the new OS.

Be sure to check back later this week for further coverage on iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS.