And, assuming the bundle gets to 50,000 purchases, RapidWeaver ($79)
All of these applications were bundled for only $20. Truth be told I bought the bundle for RipIt because I had heard about it as a MacBreak Weekly pick, but the fact that I got 5 or 6 extra applications for the same price is pretty sweet. So far I’ve tried out MacJournal (obviously) and RipIt, and both are fantastic programs. Maybe one day I’ll end up reviewing all of the applications, but I have to say this is a great deal. If you’re a mac user and you haven’t heard of MacHeist do yourself a favor and take a look. Not only will you probably find some great software but a portion of the proceeds are donated to charity so it’s a win-win.
Given my recent departure from social media, including blogging, MacJournal has been a great outlet for my rambling. I’m hoping to get a nice collection of “in-the-dark posts” to upload once my break ends, and because they tout blog integration as a feature, I’m assuming that won’t be too difficult.
I was very happy to receive an iHome dock/clock for Christmas this year, and in the box there was a small note that said iHome apps would be coming to the iTunes Store in December. They didn’t quite make that timeframe, but in early January the iHome + Sleep app went live. I’ve since had a week to use it and I have to say, it was worth the wait.
From the home screen of the app you get a slick interface that shows you what you’d expect – the time. From here you can setup different alarms, including the time, what music to sleep/wake to, what social networking messages to send out when you go to sleep or wake up, and you can even have the app keep a log of everything that happens on Twitter and Facebook while you’re asleep so you can get caught up first thing in the morning. One of my favorite features though, is right up top on the main screen – the weather. Knowing that it’s 19 degrees when I get up let’s me know I better get my butt in gear so the car will have time to defrost.
Another cool thing is the interface for adding alarms. Rather than doing the normal text list of alarms, iHome has developed a slick punch-card system for your different alarms. The card displays the name of the alarm, what time it’s set for, and even the album covers for whatever music you’re going to sleep or wake-up to. You can flick through your various cards, and to set an alarm you drag it down into a slot much like “punching-in” to work. It’s a pretty unique and satisfying user experience.
If that wasn’t enough, the iHome + Sleep app even tracks your sleep statistics. At anytime you can hit a button and see how much sleep you got last night or what your average amount of sleep has been for the past week, month or year. Very cool. Finally, as you would expect, it works with my iHome dock exceptionally.
Oh, and did I mention it’s free? Yup. Free. I had paid for an app that works as an iPhone alarm called “Awaken,” but iHome + Sleep blows it out of the water to the point that I’m probably going to uninstall it. Anyways, if you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch user hit the iTunes Store link below to grab iHome + Sleep.
So I popped Inglourious Basterds into my PS3 the other day, and was delighted to see a quick ad for a new, free iPhone application called Pocket BLU. Basically, Pocket BLU will find your blu-ray player on your network over wifi and let you control the movie’s playback from your phone. As I mentioned my blu-ray player is my PS3, and I hate using the PS3’s controller to playback movies, so this is an awesome app for me.
The main UI does everything you’d expect, you can navigate the blu-ray’s menu, play/pause, rewind/fast forward and so on. There are some other cool features though – for instance a “Now Playing” button that will provide you with information about the movie you’re watching. Like the movie’s soundtrack? The app will give you access to the iTunes store so you can purchase it. Pretty cool!
When you flip the phone on its side you get some information about the movie’s playtime and can even “scrub” through the movie as though it were a song.
The only problem with the app is that it only works with movies that are Pocket BLU-enabled, but I assume that’ll be come a standard feature here on in. Like I said, it’s totally free so if you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user you can grab it at the link below!
I was fortunate enough to get invites to both Google Voice and Google Wave this week, but for now I’m going to stick with discussing Google Voice. This is mostly because nobody I know has Google Wave yet and, for a product that’s about collaboration with other people, it makes it hard to form an educated opinion about its usefulness.
Google Voice is a new service from Google which lets you link multiple phone numbers (home phone, work phone, mobile, etc.) to one new number of your choosing, as long as it’s available. You can search for numbers via keyword (for example your name), area code or zip code. Once you’ve chosen your new number all you have to do is link your pre-existing numbers to that one and you’ll have access to the host of cool features that Google Voice provides.
The most obvious feature Google Voice provides is call forwarding. Using the site’s settings you can set Google Voice to forward calls and messages to one of your various phones automatically. For example, you could set your work phone to only receive Google Voice calls between 9 and 5 on weekdays, or your home phone to only receive calls on weekends. You can even setup and manage certain groups of contacts and set the default phone for each – for example, if you want to direct work calls to your mobile phone you can do that.
The next feature I like is getting Google into some hot water with carriers – free SMS messaging. From the Google Voice website you can send text messages to any phone, for free. Many people have presumed that this feature alone is why the Google Voice application was denied from Apple’s App Store. You can be sure that AT&T wasn’t too excited about the idea.
One of the best features you get with Google Voice is the purest form of free visual voicemail I’ve ever seen. Voicemails sent to your Google Voice account are automatically transcribed to text and forwarded to the Google Voice website where you have an inbox for all incoming messages. The transcriptions are surprisingly accurate, but you can also playback the message from the website if there are a few missed words. As you would expect, from your Google Voice inbox you can read incoming messages as though you were reading email from your Gmail inbox. You can search for messages, leave notes to yourself and even add stars to important messages so you can come back to them later.
All said I think Google Voice is an excellent service. I can only hope that someone at Apple or AT&T decides to let the application through to the App Store. If not, you can bet that Google will work on a mobile web version of Google Voice like they’ve done with most of their other services, and we’ll get access to it anyways.
Doom Resurrection is a first person shooter from the folks at id Software, makers of the Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and now Rage series of games. It takes its cues from Doom 3 in particular, which was best-known for being a graphical revolution when it debuted on the PC back in 2004. Resurrection uses assets from that same game but, as you would expect of the iPhone, doesn’t look quite as good.
The fact that it’s an FPS has been misleading to some, because it’s one of the multiple “on-rails” games that have found their way to the iPhone. That being said it’s a full-featured experience that doesn’t borrow levels from its previous PC counterpart, and even though it doesn’t look as good as that game in particular, it’s one of the most impressive visual showcases on the platform.
Doom Resurrection was previously priced at $9.99, but at $2.99 it’s a steal. Hurry though, this is a QuakeCon exclusive deal that will end at noon tomorrow (August 16th). It’s worth noting that id’s iPhone version of Wolfenstein 3D is also on sale for only $0.99. Links to both can be found below.
One of my favorite things about Mac OSX are the stylish applications it has. Applications like Twitterific, NewsFire, Blogo and even Colloquy are all shining examples of beautiful programs that I love to use. However today I’m not talking about a Mac app, I’m talking about a really cool Windows Twitter client called Blu. The only caveat is that Blu is so pretty that you might mistake it for an OSX app at first glance.
Blu has a nice translucent blue user interface that’s pretty intuitive. Want to shorten a URL? All you have to do is paste it into the update box and it’s automatically done for you. Not sure how many characters you have left? Blu counts down the characters as you type behind the update box. It has separate panes for your direct messages and @ replies. Even the login screen is impressive, and if you save your login info you get a slick little animation of your details being entered into the fields when Blu starts up. Add to that the dulcet piano tones you hear whenever a new tweet comes in and you have a neat little package.
I have to say that on Windows this is my absolute favorite Twitter client. As long as you have the .NET 3.5 framework installed I see no reason to use anything else. In case you’re wondering I generally use Twhirl when I’m working in OSX. Also, I can’t take credit for discovering Blu personally as it wasn’t until my buddy @Eddie_Bell started using it that I tried it out for myself. So, what Twitter client do you use? If you’re interested, you can find Blu at the link below.
I’ve got another application screencast for you this weekend. This time I talk about a handy little video-streaming program called Livestation. It lets you get news (and other TV channels from around the world) delivered right to your desktop. Thanks for watching, as always. =)
Here’s my video post for the week. I decided that since I did a video about Dropbox, and since I sort of criticized Microsoft during that video for not rolling out Mac support with Live Mesh, I’d go ahead and follow up now that that support is available. Live Mesh is a lot like Dropbox with some unique features that make it either better or worse, depending on your point a view. Take a look and leave a comment if you have anything to say! Thanks for watching!
Pandora Radio has changed the way I’ve listened to music. It’s the most powerful music recommendation application I’ve ever used, and it’s led to me spending a lot on new albums. If you’re a music lover looking to broaden your horizons, check it out at pandora.com.
In this video not only do I talk about Pandora Radio, but some complementary tools to improve your Pandora listening experience. The first tool is PandoraBoy, a Google Code project that runs Pandora as an application (OSX only, but Pandora also has a platform-independent Adobe AIR application). This is cool for a couple reasons – first of all, it lets you cut out the big advertisements that are on Pandora.com and in the Adobe AIR version of Pandora, and secondly it adds some functionality (Growl notifications, keyboard shortcuts) which only a desktop application can deliver.
The second tool is a plugin for Adium, which is (in my opinion) the best instant messenger client for OSX. The script lets you use whatever is playing in PandoraBoy as your Adium status. If you’ve used iTunes to show your Now Playing song in Adium you’ll know what I mean. Check out the video and leave a comment! Thanks for watching!
