If you’re like me, you like to be able to have access to some of your files wherever you might be. MobileMe has a great online storage option with their iDisk, but you want cheaper? How about free? Then Dropbox might be the service you are looking for!

Dropbox is an online storage/folder sync service that ranges in price from Free for 2GB of online storage up to $19.99 per month for 100GB. So, what does Dropbox offer you? How does simple storage sound? After signing up for the Dropbox service and downloading the installer program for your computer, you get a Dropbox folder installed on your Computer. This folder is then synced to their servers. You can access this folder via their website or you can run the installer on another computer you own and then Dropbox will copy the contents of the synced folder onto that computer as well. Anytime you add a file or delete a file from your Dropbox folder, that change will then be synchronized to all copies of that folder on all your computers. Not too bad for free.

Have an iPhone or iPod Touch? Well, there’s an app for that! You can download the Dropbox application from the iTunes App Store and with that, you can browse the synced folder that is on the Dropbox server and even open files, such as PDF’s word docs, images… all from your pocket device!

What’s that you say? You want more features? Okay then, how about shared folders? That’s right, you can even share folders with your friends, so they can upload files and retrieve files from your Dropbox. More? Okay, you can right click on a file in your public folder located in the Dropbox, select “Copy URL” and then email that link to someone to download that file from the Dropbox. Need more free storage? Well, you can send referral emails from Dropbox and when your friends sign up, you will get another 250MB per person, up to a maximum of 3GB total.

I know that 2 to 3GB of online storage can’t compare to the 20GB that you get with a paid MobileMe account, but hey, we are looking for free here. Another service, SugarSync, also promotes free storage and an iPhone app as well. If you have another suggestion for free storage, let us know!

Save Circle by Candyware is a small application that you can use to set up autosaves… not just in Photoshop either. It can be configured to do saves in any application that is the frontmost app on your Mac. You can even configure how often you want it to save as well. Another big bonus… it’s free. I suggest you jump on over to Candyware today and download this program. It just might save your bacon!

I really love it.

Years ago, I used to carry around a Handspring Visor. This PDA used run the Palm OS and had a black & white screen. No color, no wifi… not really much fun either. It was good for taking notes, but not much else. It still sits somewhere in a closet in my house. When the iPod Touch came out, I knew this would be a great PDA for me, but oh the games!

Being a Mac gamer, I’ve never really had a wealth of games to choose from, so with the iPod Touch, I feel like a kid in a candy store… so much to choose from, where do I begin? Well, since most games aren’t even 10 dollars, it’s not too difficult or expensive to just pick one up. Football, racing, card games… You pick it, they’ve got it.

I decided that today would be a great time to give you a list of my top 10 Favorite iPod Touch games. If there’s one that you love that’s not on this list, be sure to let us know so that we can try it out! So with that, let’s go!

10. Tap Defense : This is a classic game of tower defense. Very customizable games and great replay value. I wasted many days with this one. I think this might have been one of the first games I got for the iPod.

9. Skee-Ball : There is nothing all that great about this game, except I find it quite addicting. I used to play Skee-ball at the arcade as a boy and this one really brings back the memories. You even accumulate tickets that you can turn in for virtual prizes.

8. Pocket God : Ever want to have complete control of life or death over a island full of primitive villagers? Well, neither did I, but I sure find it fun. Although not a game in the purest sense, it really doesn’t fit into any other categories, so here it lands at number 8 in our list.

7. Harbor Master : A fun little game that can help you waste away some time while sitting on a bus or passenger seat in the car. You find yourself as a harbor master trying to get the boats into their slips without hitting other boats. A good time.

6. Dark Nebula : This is the latest game I’ve just added to my iPod and I am enjoying it. You’re guiding a puck around some futuristic maps. Not much plot, but a lot of fun.

5. Sailboat : This game is easy to learn, but really tough to master. Take the helm in a sailboat in an America’s Cup style competition. You need to learn how to steer your boat with and against the wind. If you are up for a challenge, give this a try!

4. Tiger Woods Golf : Definitely not a driving game (snicker). This game has stayed faithful to console versions of the game on a little 3 inch screen. There are multiple courses available to play as well. You will find many hours of enjoyment with this game!

3. Flick Bowling : One of my first purchase on the iPod, Flick Bowling is one of my all-time favorite games. The touch controls for flicking the ball down the lanes are great and the animations of the characters all combine to make this one of the best bowling games I’ve ever played… on iPod or console!

2. Flight Control : THIS is addiction. After you start playing Flight Control, you will suddenly notice that it’s 3 hours later than when you started the game. You’re playing an air traffic controller that is trying to guide airplanes on approach to appropriate runways without crashing them into one another. Planes and helicopters are all traveling at different speeds, increasing the difficulty. Enjoy!

1. Madden Football : The all-time standard in football games for consoles and PC’s is on the iPod touch. I didn’t think that there would be any way that EA could bring a good experience to the touch, but they did. You can read our full-review of Madden here. It is number one on my list of games for the iPod Touch.

Wakoopa is a social networking site that can help you find the best software, web apps and games out there. So, what does it do? Well, to get in on the action to it’s fullest, you need to install the Wakoopa tracker. This application tracks what applications you use on your computer and for how long, uploads that data to their servers and from that can come up with recommendations of programs that you might be interested in. You get “points” allocated to you based on your usage, whether you review a program and some other milestones along the way. Gather enough points and you’ll be known by different titles such as Genius or Fanatic.

Some of Wakoopa's charts

So, what do I really think of Wakoopa? Well, I always was curious how much time I spend on my computer on a daily basis and now with the Wakoopa tracker, I can tell you just how much! Their graphs break down your usage into different categories such as design, games, office, internet, development and audio/video. I like to know if I’m working hard enough!

The software recommendation service seems pretty good and I’ve discovered a couple of programs that I really didn’t know about that I’ve found to be pretty good. Since program discovery is one of the reasons Wakoopa is out there, I’m glad this works pretty well. I imagine that the more that you use it, the better the recommendations will get.

You can also explore other people on the service and see what they are using and for how long. It feels a little voyeuristic, but it’s kinda cool.

Wakoopa is an interesting service that will help you to discover new software and services that may help increase your productivity. I recommend that you give it a try and see if it can help you.

3 out of 5 stars

Ever used MobileMe? If you have, then you might agree with me in the opinion that Apple really has created a nice suite of services. Originally called iTools, they have morphed into an online hub for all your personal data. You can create a website, share photos, access your calendar and contacts list and check your email. They’ve even given you 20GB of storage space that you can split up between all these services. Let’s also not forget Back to My Mac and find my iPhone. Wrap all these together and you get a total online presence from Apple. What’s this cost you? About $99 per year (you can sometimes get a discount by purchasing a kit through Amazon.com). But let’s say you’re a bit frugal and don’t want to pay for these services. Is there anything out there you can use to mimic all these services for free or really cheap?

The short of it yes… mostly. While there are freebees for all these, there is one service that does not have a match and that’s Apple’s find my iPhone. If you can live without that one, then I can show you a list of alternatives, and then in upcoming articles, I’ll show you how you set all these up on your Mac and your iPhone. So let’s get started.

Email: This is a simple one. Google’s free Gmail service is one of the most widely used, free email addresses on the internet. With Gmail, you get 7GB of space included for free. You can use Apple’s mail application with gmail if you don’t want to use the webmail interface. Gmail can even check other email accounts you have with other services. Gmail is fast and effective.

Address Book: Here’s another easy one. Gmail from Google has a great contacts feature that is incredibly easy to synchronize with your Mac’s address book. It’s a simple option to turn on in your address book’s preference pane and you are all set. You can even synchronize your contacts with your iPhone or iPod Touch via Google Sync.

Calendar: Looks like I’m taking another dive into the Google well one more time. Google’s calendar service allows you to connect via your iCal and synchronize your calendars so you can sync them over different computers and view them over the web as well. You can also set this up on your iPhone and iPod Touch via Google Sync too.

Dropbox is a great iDisk alternative

iDisk: iDisk gives you 10GB of online storage by default, so our free alternative to iDisk doesn’t quite give you the same storage space, but it is free and easy to use. Dropbox comes with 2GB for free standard. You can purchase more storage space if you find yourself using all of it and need more room (50GB will set you back $99 per year… right back to the cost of MobileMe). You can get additional storage, up to 3GB, for free by inviting your friends to join. Dropbox will sync a folder on multiple computers which you can also access over the web from the Dropbox website and then even offer an iPhone app for you to view files you have stored on Dropbox.

Website: You can still get a free website these days through a service like either Blogger or Tumblr. Both of these create blogs that you can edit yourself, upload photos and share your thoughts on anything. Free is good!

Photo Sharing: Flickr is far and away the most popular of the photo sharing sites out on the internet today. A free account is quick and easy to get at Flickr.com. There is also easy integration between Flickr and iPhoto as well. You can easily export to Flickr using the Flickr button in iPhoto.

Back to My Mac: A new service that is now available for the Mac is LogMeIn Free. As I have yet to try it out, I cannot speak to it’s ease and reliability, but I will have a full report for you in this series. If you are willing to jump through some hoops, you can setup a free domain that will point back to your home computer and you can access it through a free program like Chicken Of the VNC. This is a bit more complex to setup, but once it’s done, it works very well.

I hope that this list has helped to show you that there are some pretty good free alternatives to MobileMe out there. This is by no means a full list of all the freebees out there, but you could say this is a good starting point. In the next part in this series, I will show you how to setup a Gmail account and setup your Mac and iPhone to access it and keep your mail in sync between the two.

The entry screen for 1Password

way that applications run on the iPhone, I did not think that there was a chance that this program could run as smoothly as their desktop application, and to some extent this is true. What is also true, it the very creative ways that they overcame some of the deificiencies of the iPhone OS.

When you launch 1Password on the iPhone (after it’s rather simple setup), you must enter a 4 digit unlock code every time you open it. This is a reasonable first layer of security, especially considering the data you’ve probably got stored in this. From there, you are taken to your list of Logins that are shown alphabetically. Tapping on one will bring you to the login information for that site… unless you’ve setup high security for that site which will then ask you to enter a separate Master Password to gain access to it. This extra layer of security is great when you are dealing with passwords for banking sites and the like. Now comes the good part! On this page, you now see the website address, the username and password. From here, you can click on the password to copy it and bring it back into Safari or (and this is my favorite part) you can tap on the website address and it will launch a browser in the 1Password application which will then autofill the username and password into the appropriate fields. Click the enter button on whatever site you’re in and you are off to the races. It’s just that simple! No more fumbling around for crazy passwords in the notepad or anything, and they are all secure.

There is a section on the iPhone app called wallet, which can contain credit card information if you like (secured by an additional master password). There are a whole lot of other options such as software licenses and goverment documents you can record in here as well. All these options make the iPhone app for 1Password as full-featured as the desktop application. Which brings me to…

Here is where you enter the master password for sensitive data

Syncing! Yes, 1Password for the iPhone includes the ability to synchronize with the desktop version of 1Password on your Mac over wifi. It takes only a second or two to pair the two together. Once they are, when you launch both the desktop application and the one on the iPhone, they will automatically synchronize their passwords, notes and anything else you’ve stored in seconds. This ability really makes it worth the purchase price of this app (which I got for a measley $7.99 on the iTunes app store). I can’t recommend this program enough and it’s abilities, combined with the desktop app, have helped add an extra layer of security into all my internet access that has really brought me some additional peace of mind.

5 out of 5 stars

First, open up your System Preferences and select Print & Fax under Hardware:

Select the printer on the left that is causing you the issues

Then hit the ‘-’ key and delete that printer from your list

Next, hit the ‘+’ key to re-add that printer

After that, you should be okay to print! If that did not work, I would suggest resetting the printing system on your Mac. You can do this by right-clicking (or control-click) in a blank area in the printer list. It will bring up a pop-up menu where you can select to reset the printing system. Hope this helps you out!

A free application available at the iTunes application store, the Blizzard Authenticator adds another layer of authentication to your World of Warcraft account. It works this way: You log into your World of Warcraft game as you normally would with your username and password. After that, another entry box will pop up asking you to enter the number that is being shown on authenticator’s screen. Once you’ve done that, you are free to play your game. The number is changing all the time, some it become virtually impossible that someone else can hack your account and use it to spam others in the game.

You will have to setup your Blizzard Battle.net account to work with an authenticator (steps for that can be found at: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=24987). Once you’ve done that, you can rest assured that your account will then be safe. (Note: whatever you do, don’t lose the authenticator! If that happens, you will be on the phone with Blizzard trying to reset your account!)

The first Mac that my family owned was a Performa 578. This baby was screaming speed demon at a full 33mhz. I realized that I needed my own Mac and picked up a second-hand Mac IIsi for about $300. Now, this one was slower than the Performa, but I was able to pop it open and overclock the processor on it. I remember installing a system extension called “Kaleidoscope” that allowed you to change the look of the finder on the OS completely. After that, the first PowerPC processors were coming out and I realized that I needed one of these monsters. I bought my first “new” Mac at a WalMart of all places. It was an open box, so I thought that this was a great deal I found. Of course, when I got home, it would not start up. I tried to return it, but the store wouldn’t take it. Great. So I called Apple. They sent someone to my house to fix it! Yeah. That made me a fan for life there!

This magazine sits in my office

Around this time period, one of my all-time favorite magazines appeared. MacAddict magazine. This magazine was incredible! It was full of all kinds of great news about the Mac and it even came with a CD full of programs! Back at this time, if you had any internet access at all, it was dial-up, so downloading large programs and files was out of the question, so the CD was a fantastic addition to this magazine.

As time passed, I had gone through iMacs, iBooks, MacMinis, iPods and all kinds of applications from Apple. I was even a member of their Consultants Network for a number of years (I still maintain different Apple Certifications). One thing that always remained through all of Apple’s changes. That was their constant commitment to quality. Even in the bad old days of Gil Amelio, Apple was producing great machines. Of course, there were a few missteps here and there, but by and large, they came through when it mattered most.

Why do I tell you all this? So you know that I am passionate about Apple and their products. However, if they release a product that I don’t think is up to their standards, I will tell you. On the other hand, I will ring the bell when I think they’ve got another knockout. So, if you love the Mac like I do, be sure to stop on by everyday and check out what we’re talking about. We plan on having some great features, some tutorials, a podcast now & then and perhaps a video or two as well! Hopefully you’ll be entertained and even learn a little bit along the way.

Your Editor,
Brian Sakowicz

That's a spiffy tablet!

So, when I heard that Wacom had created tablets that included multi-touch, I was very intrigued. I had been using a 4×6 Intuous 2 for many years. When I purchased that back in 2004, it had cost me a cool $250. The new Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch with it’s huge surface space retails for $199 (you can possibly find it on Amazon.com for cheaper than that). Smaller ones can be had for under $100, but I wanted the big daddy!

When I opened the box from Amazon, I was impressed right off with the packaging. A lot of thought went into this and it made me feel as if someone from Apple had been kidnapped and made to create this packaging for Wacom. From this, I knew I would be in for a special treat.

Setup and installation was a snap. Just plug it in and install the drivers and you are off. I would recommend, first download the latest drivers from Wacom’s site. I had a little problem with the tablet recognizing touch input and the updated drivers solved this issue. Second, watch the tutorial video. It goes through the explanations of how to use the multi-touch functions of the tablet and how to set up the buttons on the left side of the tablet. I fumbled for a little bit with the tablet until I realized that I should watch the video. Once I did, I was zooming around.

If you’ve ever used one of the newer Apple laptops that have multi-touch touchpads on them, then you will feel right at home with the Bamboo. Two-finger drags for scrolling, pinch and zoom, rotate… they are all in here. Using these functions is revolutionizing the way that I’m interacting with my Mac daily. If I’m in another office that has one of the older pen tablets, I keep finding myself reaching to do touch input on it constantly out of habit.

There are 4 programmable function keys that run down the side of the tablet. These are programmed from the preference pane in the system preferences. I keep one of the keys set as a switch to turn off the touch functions of the tablet. This is very handy when you are using the pen input and don’t want to accidently touch the tablet with the palm of your hand and have an errant movement of the cursor.

The Wacom preference pane

There are some out there that will say the Bamboo series of tablets is for consumers and not for “real” designers. To those people, I say “Bull”. The Wacom Intuous 2 that I’ve been using for years has 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity built in. While the older versions of the Bamboo only 512 levels, the newest version has 1024… just like the pros like.

After using the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch for a month now, it’s easy to see that Wacom put a lot of thought into the design and function of this great new entry into the world of pen tablets. If you are looking for an affordable, well-designed and easy-to-use tablet for drawing or just regular everyday navigation, I recommend that you give the Bamboo Fun Pen &Touch a try. I think you’ll like it!

Now, after some deep thought, I could find many uses for such a device in my home. It would be a great little device for using the internet, much more functional than trying to surf using a iPod touch. My young son would love such a device for watching his shows while we are on vacation (can’t miss Little Einsteins!). My wife could check her email quickly without firing up her computer.

Of course, a lot will depend on what Apple charges for this device. If a tablet comes in around the $600-700 range, I could see people find a lot more justification for buying this device. Charge around $1000… then it becomes a question of “Do I spend a grand on a device that is probably not a full-functioned computer, or spend a little more and get a MacBook Pro”. That’s what you’ll be asking yourself at that price point.

Either way this shakes out next week, you can bet that you and your friends will be talking about this announcement for years to come!

Open up the Terminal application (Mac HD>Applications>Utilities>Terminal).

Enter the following command: defaults read com.wakoopa.wakoopatracker

It will give you some information on Wakoopa tracker. The most important line is:

paused = YES;

If you see this, go to the Wakoopa tracker app in your menubar and pause it, then unpause it. It should restart tracking your app usage. Run the terminal command again and see if paused now equals NO. If it doesn’t, try pausing and unpausing again. This should do the trick!

1Password, at it’s most basic, is a password management tool. I had always prided myself on using complex passwords that I had memorized. The main problem was that I would find myself using the same complex password over and over again. That’s a security issue, right there! In 1Password, you can have randomly generated passwords created for you, anywhere from 1 character up to 50. 1Password will remember the password then will fill it into the website for you. When you start with 1Password, you will create a Master Password that you will need to unlock your various passwords… but you only need ONE password (hence, the name). The password management tools are the bread and butter of this application, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all the other features packed in here.

There is an accounts section, which will allow you to record various bits of account information that you may to need recall, such as email accounts, ftp accounts and so on.

The identities section is a great way to auto fill forms when you reach a website. You can create multiple identities, which is great for someone like myself who sometimes fills out information of a personal nature or needs to fill out a form in a business sense. You will find it much more flexible than the Auto-Fill features in Safari or Firefox. Addresses, phone numbers, email addresses… it keeps them all in here.

1Password also includes a secure notes section as well.

One section that I was surprised to find, but happy to see was the software section. I’ve been using Macs for many years and over time, software delivery has changed from getting programs on physical media to more digital delivery. One thing that has happened with that is the rise of License Keys for software. I am always afraid of losing them, but now with 1Password, I have a great way to keep track of all my software licenses. I love it!

The last section I want to mention, that is bound to get me in trouble some day, is the wallet section. Here, you can store all the information you need to use your credit cards online. One click of a button, and it fills in the information needed on a web form to make a purchase. Great stuff.

1Password has great integration with your browsers so anytime you access a website you need to login, you can get quick access to your password. It will also store new passwords automatically when you create a new account with a website as well. I find that the toolbar 1Password had created in Firefox to a little more intuitive than the Safari interface, but that may also come from using Firefox much more than Safari. There is also a companion iPhone/iPod Touch application to go with this which I have used, but I will talk more about that in an upcoming review.

At $39.95 ($69.95 for a 5-user family license), 1Password might seem priced a little steep. When I factor in the seemless integration into Mac OS X and the multiple browsers, I find that the price is well-worth it. I give 1Password my highest recommendation.

5 out of 5 stars

Madden 10's Main Menu

Games are fun! Well, they’re supposed to be, anyways… I’ve tried a lot of garbage games on my iPod Touch. Most of them are freebie games that I would download, play for a good 5 minutes and that would be it. Bye bye. Games that you have to pay for become a little bit dicey. I mean, throw down $10 on a game and find out it’s a dog? Great. So when EA released Madden 10 for the iPhone/iPod touch I was a little skeptical. I mean, how good could a game that has been shrunk down to fit a 3 inch screen that doesn’t have any real controls be? Well, pretty good it seems.

I started playing Madden and was really upset at first. I was having an awful time controlling the players, and it had just seemed… not fully baked to me. So, I set the game aside for a couple of days and had written it off as bad. Well, I’m glad I picked it back up because after spending a few minutes getting used to the control scheme, it has really taken off and become quite a good game.

Obviously the graphics are not going to be the same as on a console system, but for a 3 inch screen, how detailed do they need to be? The game relies on touch-screen controls, which at first are strange to use. You move the selected player around using the thumb control for your left hand and the right hand thumb is for your other controls (such as slo-mo, dive, juke, etc.). Making sure that you don’t cover the screen with your hands while you play is a primary concern when starting out, but you will get the hang of it after about 10 minutes of play.

Game screen looks pretty good.

I liked that all the actual NFL teams, their rosters and even their stadiums are in this game. It’s fun to have Tom Brady throwing the long ball to Randy Moss to crush the Dolphins… just like in real life. Also, like in real life, I get to hear Chris Collinsworth, AL Michaels and John Madden repeat the same cliche’s over and over again. Fortunately, that can be turned off, sadly, the same can’t be said for the Buccaneers. Games are automatically paused when you hit the home button to return to the iPod’s main menu. When you launch Madden, it asks if you want to continue your game from where you left off. You can also play in full-season mode as well, with this year’s schedule for the teams.

All in all, I think Madden 10 is a great buy for your iPhone/iPod touch. The game is a large download at 102mb and it costs $9.99. However, you love football games and want an enjoyable alternative for while on to go, I can recommend this game. We’ll give it 4 out of 5 stars!

Have I mentioned that I love Apple products? Maybe I haven’t since I really haven’t written a lot of articles for this site but I really do love their stuff. I fell in love the first time my parents brought home a Performa many years ago. I grew throughout the years as Apple advanced an added more great stuff.

Today, one of my favorite things is consuming my entertainment from Apple products. I have an iPod with me constantly that I can plug into my car’s stereo to listen on the go and at home I use an AppleTV to watch video podcasts and kid’s TV shows for my 2 year old son (actually a good cost savings over DVD’s for them). Other than watching some live sports, it’s pretty safe to say that the majority of my content these days is served up through Apple.

I have spent a lot of money in the past couple years on my entertainment from Apple. That being said, I do think that there is some vast room for improvement in their offerings. If I were running the show for a day, here’s some of the ideas I would do:

AppleTV subscriptions: This would be a cable TV killer. Imaging just turning on your AppleTV and being able to watch any show at anytime. I know that you can pretty much get that from Hulu, but their offerings are limited and it’s also limited to my computer. Unless I go through the trouble of hooking a computer up to my TV, Hulu is stuck in my home office, and isn’t that what the AppleTV was supposed to do away with?

Apple could even get away with a monthly fee for this too. Maybe something like $14.95 a month and you get to watch all you want. I think that would be fair and for someone who doesn’t feel like watching sports on live TV, this would be a great alternative.

iTunes Music subscriptions: Most other music services today are offering their versions of a music subscription service. Microsoft’s ZunePass is a great example of a subscription service that works great. $14.95 a month gets you all the music you want to listen to AND they let you download 10 tracks per month to keep as well. So, if you are already spending money on music downloads, this would be such a win-win. Also, it will generate auto-downloads based on music you listen to that you might be interested in as well. See, Microsoft can do things right… occasionally.

Apple provides me and my family with lots of great entertainment choices. I think with one or two improvements, they could move themselves into a dominant provider of content for years to come. Make the move, Apple, and make me happy.