Category: Mac

Thanks to the advent of point and shoot digital cameras and megapixel rich smartphones, many among us have collections with as many pictures, or even more, than a professional photographer’s. It’s true that digital photography makes freezing those wonderful moments in life with so much ease, but handling, categorizing and archiving them has become a daunting task.

Apps that help organize photos come in all kinds and sizes. Great apps like Picasa are available for free. However, if you are someone who take your image collection seriously, a full blown organizer is the right way to go. ACDSee Pro has been around for a long time and has carved its own niche in the photo organizer vertical. After the break, we’ll check out how the app can put your photography workflow into overdrive.

The Backstory

I was introduced to ACDSee Pro about eight years ago, though I was using a Windows version then. It was one of the coolest apps I have ever come across and was a fan from day one. Those were the days when Irfanview was the rage. I loved the ease with which the app indexed and organized all my images (there were hundreds of them). But as version numbers went up, the app became bloated and I stopped using it and settled with the built in image viewers and Picasa. And now I get to review the Mac version of the app, after many years.

Modes

Immediately after launch, the app connects to a server to help you with the product registration. If you have already purchased a license, just enter it or submit your email address to get a 30 day free trial access. Those who aren’t willing to submit the email address get to try the app for 7 days.

ACDSee Pro works in three different modes – view, manage and organize – and you can switch between different modes in a single click.

Manage mode is set as default and at first glance the app looks a lot like a file manager. The three pane user interface is anything but mindblowing, yet is so functional. All devices and folders are listed in the left pane. Once a folder is selected the content is displayed in the middle pane.

The app does not limit itself to indexing images from the hard disk. As soon as I connected my iPhone, all my images were listed in ACDSee Pro. Unfortunately, you can only view those images but cannot process them until you copy them to the hard drive (likely due to Apple’s restrictions). Sorting and rotating of images can be managed from here. The right pane of the app helps you filter the images based on the ratings (which you will have to add), tags and categories.

I found the navigation keys at the top left corner (back, forward and one up) to be extremely helpful. They ensure that you can backtrack easily to where you came from instead of drilling down through the list of folders.

The view mode is triggered when you double click on an image. There’s nothing really worth mentioning in this section of the app, except for the thumbnail view pane helping you jump through folders quickly.

I don’t usually retouch my images but was delighted to see what all one can do with so many processing options. With the help of non destructive edits, you can perfect the exposure, color, clarity and geometry of the images. I was floored by the grid selection tool that allows picking just the right portion of the image for processing.

Batch Workflows

As a blogger I have to take a bunch of screenshots almost everyday and resize them all to 620px (the AppStorm spec). It’s a monotonous task but some apps that batch edit images did a poor job and I gave up. When I tried to batch edit them with ACDSee Pro, the results turned out to be really good.

Another fabulous addition to the batch workflow is the ability to drag and drop actions in any order you wish. This customized workflow can be saved as a preset and put to use in just a single click.

In addition to resizing images, renaming files, setting metadata information, adjusting the time stamp, changing the file format, copying, moving and applying image processing presets are the other activities that can have their own custom workflows. If other members of the team are working with ACDSee Pro as well, simply import and export your customized workflows to share with others. How nice!

Drag and drop technique is implemented with perfection in the case of search too. All you have to do is drag metadata info from the Properties pane and drop right into the search box at the top. ACDSee Pro will display all images that match the same metadata. The app also lets you save your searches, saving you a lot of time.

Final Thoughts

After almost five years I revisited an app that I once loved and used multiple times a day. The entire user interface has changed and so has the purpose of the app, but the experience was rather joyful. While it isn’t the nimble app that worked wonders anymore, ACDSee Pro still has a lot of magic left.

One sticking point is the steep price point. At $169.99, this is hardly an app for hobbyists and might be a bit under-featured for professional photographers. The batch workflow feature helps save a ton of time, but the rest of the feature set doesn’t seem to warrant such a hefty price tag.

A site-specific browser allows you to have the convenience of a dedicated desktop app wrapped around a website. You’ve seen these before and might even have a few Fluid or Prism apps sitting in your dock. Even so, you’ve never seen an app quite like Raven before.

This innovative browser attempts to be an all-in-one hub that turns your favorite sites into custom apps that sit in a sidebar. So what happens when a site-specific browser allows you to browse and save multiple sites? Does it become just a regular browser or something new and amazing? Read on to find out.

What Is Raven?

As I explained in the introduction, Raven is likely quite unlike any browser you’ve ever used. It’s hard to nail down specifically what it is because it defies its own ideas. It claims to be a site-specific browser, but it allows you to view, browse and save as many sites as you want, which seems closer to typical browser behavior than something truly site-specific.

I would say that Raven attempts to bring an improved experience to a fairly small handful of sites and services that you access daily. If you like your current browser, you can keep it and just use Raven for a few select purposes. If not, you could use it as your primary browser. To see how this makes sense, let’s dive right in.

A New Kind of Browser

When you open Raven, you’ll immediately notice that it doesn’t look like your typical browser. In fact, it uses the increasingly popular darkened icon sidebar UI pattern made famous by Twitter for Mac. This pattern has been applied to everything from email applications to RSS readers, so why not a browser?

The home page shown above is basically a custom Google skin with a nice little tribute to Steve Jobs thrown in at the bottom. Just about everything else you see brings up questions though so let’s run through the features and UI areas one at a time.

Smart Bar: Raven App

Raven’s big claim to fame is the “Smart Bar,” which is the Twitter-like bar down the left side of the application. This bar holds custom versions of web applications that are conceptually very similar to Chrome apps.

The app that sits at the top of this bar (cloud icon) is the “Raven app.” This is basically the web browser, which is divided into four sub-sections each represented by a minimal icon.

The house is the main browser shown in the screenshot above. You can basically browse the web just like in any other browser here. Type in a URL, use back and forth buttons, and access the following menu items.

In addition to this there is a clock, which takes you to your web history, the star, which shows you favorites and bookmarks, and the down arrow, which is where you manage your downloads.

Favorites/Bookmarks

What’s the difference between a favorite and a bookmark? With other browsers, the solution isn’t clear but Raven seeks to answer this conundrum with some simple logic: Favorites are sites that you access every day and Bookmarks are pages that you want to come back to later.

Raven keeps Bookmarks and Favorites together, but in different tabs. Clicking on a favorite or bookmark brings up that page but also keeps the favorites menu open in a Reeder like multi-panel interface.

Here you also have the option to view the page in a simplified text-only format and/or send the page to Instapaper.

Other Apps

Up to this point, Raven has just been a pretty normal browser, but we haven’t even touched on the major premise of the app, which is dedicated site-specific applications.

Much like the Chrome Web Store, the Raven Web App Shop contains tiny apps that were built just for this browser. As you can see above, there are already a handful of popular options available with many more sure to come. The page claims that they are working on their app submission process so I imagine developers and/or users will soon be able to submit their own.

There’s not really much to a Raven app. Really, it’s just a group of sidebar icons connected to specific URLs. For instance, here’s a look at the Dropbox app:

There’s nothing here that you can’t get by visiting the Dropbox website. Each of those buttons merely takes you to a page that already existed before Raven even came around. However, there’s something extremely convenient about having a custom navigation menu for your favorite services built right into your browser.

There are quite a few social options that I immediately found useful. Of course you have big players like Facebook and Twitter but there are even some smaller networks like Dribbble, which I really love.

In this way Raven becomes a nice little social network aggregator that is already better than most other apps in that niche!

Much I Marvelled This Ungainly Fowl

Like Poe puzzling over the ebony bird perched above his chamber door, Raven proved quite confusing to me at first. The app’s site is gorgeous and the UI is really slick, so I had to download it and give it a shot. However, I didn’t really expect to like it. I have too many browsers as it is and am just fine using Fluid for site-specific app builds. Further, I was wrapped up in the confusion of not quite knowing what the app was really for versus a typical browser.

However, then I started to use it and something strange happened. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t need to wrap my head around an explanation for its purpose anymore but instead just instinctively knew what to use it for.

I am a fan of Chrome Apps, but this Smart Bar setup seems so much more logical, usable and flat out enjoyable. I’ve really started to feel like the web apps are built-in features of an incredibly flexible native app.

The bottom line is, whether you see a need for it or not, you simply have to try this app. It’s really something new and interesting and I think you’ll enjoy it.

My one complaint is that I’d really like to be able to throw anything I want into the Smart Bar. For instance, I use Basecamp to manage AppStorm articles and would love to have it in the sidebar but don’t want to wait for someone else to get around to building it. Raven should let me roll my own app on the fly. I could easily point to a list of URLS and choose from a list of generic icons to represent each link. In less than two minutes I could link my Basecamp ToDos to a checkmark icon, my Basecamp Calendar to a calendar icon, etc. This would be much more convenient than watching the Web App Shop daily and hoping someone else shares my need.

Conclusion

I haven’t quite decide whether Raven is really a site-specific browser or simply a better way to build a browser. Whatever it is, it’s a great and truly unique attempt to rethink the way we use the web.

Raven is free, cool, attractive, useful; what are you waiting for? Go check it out and you just might turn to your old way of using web apps nevermore.

A site-specific browser allows you to have the convenience of a dedicated desktop app wrapped around a website. You’ve seen these before and might even have a few Fluid or Prism apps sitting in your dock. Even so, you’ve never seen an app quite like Raven before.

This innovative browser attempts to be an all-in-one hub that turns your favorite sites into custom apps that sit in a sidebar. So what happens when a site-specific browser allows you to browse and save multiple sites? Does it become just a regular browser or something new and amazing? Read on to find out.

What Is Raven?

As I explained in the introduction, Raven is likely quite unlike any browser you’ve ever used. It’s hard to nail down specifically what it is because it defies its own ideas. It claims to be a site-specific browser, but it allows you to view, browse and save as many sites as you want, which seems closer to typical browser behavior than something truly site-specific.

I would say that Raven attempts to bring an improved experience to a fairly small handful of sites and services that you access daily. If you like your current browser, you can keep it and just use Raven for a few select purposes. If not, you could use it as your primary browser. To see how this makes sense, let’s dive right in.

A New Kind of Browser

When you open Raven, you’ll immediately notice that it doesn’t look like your typical browser. In fact, it uses the increasingly popular darkened icon sidebar UI pattern made famous by Twitter for Mac. This pattern has been applied to everything from email applications to RSS readers, so why not a browser?

The home page shown above is basically a custom Google skin with a nice little tribute to Steve Jobs thrown in at the bottom. Just about everything else you see brings up questions though so let’s run through the features and UI areas one at a time.

Smart Bar: Raven App

Raven’s big claim to fame is the “Smart Bar,” which is the Twitter-like bar down the left side of the application. This bar holds custom versions of web applications that are conceptually very similar to Chrome apps.

The app that sits at the top of this bar (cloud icon) is the “Raven app.” This is basically the web browser, which is divided into four sub-sections each represented by a minimal icon.

The house is the main browser shown in the screenshot above. You can basically browse the web just like in any other browser here. Type in a URL, use back and forth buttons, and access the following menu items.

In addition to this there is a clock, which takes you to your web history, the star, which shows you favorites and bookmarks, and the down arrow, which is where you manage your downloads.

Favorites/Bookmarks

What’s the difference between a favorite and a bookmark? With other browsers, the solution isn’t clear but Raven seeks to answer this conundrum with some simple logic: Favorites are sites that you access every day and Bookmarks are pages that you want to come back to later.

Raven keeps Bookmarks and Favorites together, but in different tabs. Clicking on a favorite or bookmark brings up that page but also keeps the favorites menu open in a Reeder like multi-panel interface.

Here you also have the option to view the page in a simplified text-only format and/or send the page to Instapaper.

Other Apps

Up to this point, Raven has just been a pretty normal browser, but we haven’t even touched on the major premise of the app, which is dedicated site-specific applications.

Much like the Chrome Web Store, the Raven Web App Shop contains tiny apps that were built just for this browser. As you can see above, there are already a handful of popular options available with many more sure to come. The page claims that they are working on their app submission process so I imagine developers and/or users will soon be able to submit their own.

There’s not really much to a Raven app. Really, it’s just a group of sidebar icons connected to specific URLs. For instance, here’s a look at the Dropbox app:

There’s nothing here that you can’t get by visiting the Dropbox website. Each of those buttons merely takes you to a page that already existed before Raven even came around. However, there’s something extremely convenient about having a custom navigation menu for your favorite services built right into your browser.

There are quite a few social options that I immediately found useful. Of course you have big players like Facebook and Twitter but there are even some smaller networks like Dribbble, which I really love.

In this way Raven becomes a nice little social network aggregator that is already better than most other apps in that niche!

Much I Marvelled This Ungainly Fowl

Like Poe puzzling over the ebony bird perched above his chamber door, Raven proved quite confusing to me at first. The app’s site is gorgeous and the UI is really slick, so I had to download it and give it a shot. However, I didn’t really expect to like it. I have too many browsers as it is and am just fine using Fluid for site-specific app builds. Further, I was wrapped up in the confusion of not quite knowing what the app was really for versus a typical browser.

However, then I started to use it and something strange happened. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t need to wrap my head around an explanation for its purpose anymore but instead just instinctively knew what to use it for.

I am a fan of Chrome Apps, but this Smart Bar setup seems so much more logical, usable and flat out enjoyable. I’ve really started to feel like the web apps are built-in features of an incredibly flexible native app.

The bottom line is, whether you see a need for it or not, you simply have to try this app. It’s really something new and interesting and I think you’ll enjoy it.

My one complaint is that I’d really like to be able to throw anything I want into the Smart Bar. For instance, I use Basecamp to manage AppStorm articles and would love to have it in the sidebar but don’t want to wait for someone else to get around to building it. Raven should let me roll my own app on the fly. I could easily point to a list of URLS and choose from a list of generic icons to represent each link. In less than two minutes I could link my Basecamp ToDos to a checkmark icon, my Basecamp Calendar to a calendar icon, etc. This would be much more convenient than watching the Web App Shop daily and hoping someone else shares my need.

Conclusion

I haven’t quite decide whether Raven is really a site-specific browser or simply a better way to build a browser. Whatever it is, it’s a great and truly unique attempt to rethink the way we use the web.

Raven is free, cool, attractive, useful; what are you waiting for? Go check it out and you just might turn to your old way of using web apps nevermore.

Our sponsor this week is Drive Genius 3, an awesome and affordable way to mange your internal and external drives.

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Go Get It!

Drive Genius is available on the Prosoft Website for $99. The special Mac App Store version, Drive Genius 3 LE is available for only only $59.99. Go grab your copy today and take control of your drives!

Our sponsor this week is Drive Genius 3, an awesome and affordable way to mange your internal and external drives.

Drive Genius 3 is the ultimate tool for whipping your drives into shape. Whether you want to free up space with the super easy DriveSlim feature or are looking to perform some maintenance, Drive Genius 3 has you covered. Defrag, scan, repair repartition, duplicate, securely erase your drives and a whole lot more.

Used By Apple Geniuses!

Drive Genius 3 is the best hard drive utility on the Mac platform and is used by Apple at the Genius Bar as part of the ProCare Yearly Tune Up. Maintain, Manage and Optimize your Hard Drive with Drive Genius 3. Work on your external, non-start up drives with the special Mac App Store version, Drive Genius 3 LE.

Go Get It!

Drive Genius is available on the Prosoft Website for $99. The special Mac App Store version, Drive Genius 3 LE is available for only only $59.99. Go grab your copy today and take control of your drives!

Several months ago, I wrote this piece regarding the then-current state of syncing among Mac apps and their mobile counterparts. What I didn’t know at the time was that Apple was toiling away in the forges of 1 Infinite Loop on what we now eagerly look forward to as iCloud. In case you’ve been living under a rock, iCloud is Apple’s latest attempt at a cloud-based sync service. Though we all saw the tragic end to .Mac and MobileMe, iCloud shows quite a bit more promise.

Today, I’d like to explore what iCloud means for third party developers. Specifically, I want to outline the potential I see in iCloud, and where I would like to see it go with regard to third party software.

As Usual, Apple Sets The Standard

If we’re to believe what we’ve been told about iCloud (and I see no reason why we shouldn’t), all of the standard, native Mac apps that you use every day will be kept in-sync across all of your devices. This means that your calendar appointments and contacts will stay up to date on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It means that the songs and movies and TV shows and apps that you download on one device will automatically download to the other devices you own. And perhaps most excitingly (for me, anyway), it means that the documents you create in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote will stay in sync, letting you pick up on one device where you left off on another.

All of your data, media, and documents wherever and whenever you need them, without you having to do a thing. Sounds pretty great, right?

What About The Third Party Love?

If the Apple that we know and love were truly a completely closed ecosystem, iCloud as I’ve just described it seems right on the nose. But what about third party developers? Most of us use third party apps on a regularly basis, and probably rely heavily on their data staying up to date.

If you’ll voyage back with me for a moment, to those halcyon days of yore (about 3 years ago) when MobileMe ruled the cloud, we can see that Apple likely had the same intentions as they do this time around with iCloud. Perhaps they hadn’t worked out the kinks, or perhaps the technology simply wasn’t available in 2008, but MobileMe turned out to be the antithesis of the smashing success I expect from iCloud.

There are a few factors that I believe Apple got just right in designing iCloud that will put it miles beyond MobileMe.

• Free price point
• Effortless syncing
• Third party incentive

MobileMe was a relatively closed service. Like .Mac, it was still shrouded behind a hefty price tag that a majority of Mac users probably didn’t want to cough up. Likewise, Apple didn’t seem to have the interest in providing a third party syncing platform as much as it was attempting to move your basic data (calendar, contacts, photos) to the cloud. As a result, MobileMe didn’t have the appeal necessary to drive third party developers to want to use it.

On the other hand, iCloud seems to be precisely the platform that developers will want to use. The first two factors I listed above create the third: an incentive for developers to utilize the platform.

How Things Have Changed

As I look back to March (several months before iCloud’s initial announcement) and reread the article where I first discussed the sync options available to developers, I notice that my conclusion began with this:

“My perfect scenario would be a free MobileMe that synced all of my applications to the cloud.  Obviously this is a little on the dreamy side, but the desire for simplicity and reliability still remains.”

Today, I will willfully and joyfully eat my hat, because iCloud seems to be exactly that for which I was longing.

In that article, I also pitted wi-fi and cloud sync against each other in a grudge match–a showdown that, in hindsight, now seems petty and immaterial. With iCloud having an inherently large user base at launch, as well as the “free” and “easy to use” factors, I think that there will be a lot of pressure for third party developers to use the platform, and abandon their paid sync service.

Since the publishing of that post in March, Potion Factory finally released an iPhone version of The Hit List (my preferred to-do list app) along with a $2/month cloud sync service. I can’t say I’ve been thrilled to subscribe to this paid model when a simple wi-fi sync isn’t even an option, but I will admit that it is a solid and reliable service. I also can’t say for certain that such services will buckle under pressure and utilize the iCloud platform (or that I’ll stop paying if they don’t), but I would certainly like to see this happen across the board.

Conclusion

The performance and reliability of iCloud remain to be seen, but will likely be brutally evaluated upon launch, much like MobileMe was. My guess is that if it survives that initial scrutiny, iCloud will be far and away more useful than any of Apple’s previous attempts at such a service.

What do you think? Is this the cloud platform that will break the mold? Will Apple have to give it another go in a few years?

Several months ago, I wrote this piece regarding the then-current state of syncing among Mac apps and their mobile counterparts. What I didn’t know at the time was that Apple was toiling away in the forges of 1 Infinite Loop on what we now eagerly look forward to as iCloud. In case you’ve been living under a rock, iCloud is Apple’s latest attempt at a cloud-based sync service. Though we all saw the tragic end to .Mac and MobileMe, iCloud shows quite a bit more promise.

Today, I’d like to explore what iCloud means for third party developers. Specifically, I want to outline the potential I see in iCloud, and where I would like to see it go with regard to third party software.

As Usual, Apple Sets The Standard

If we’re to believe what we’ve been told about iCloud (and I see no reason why we shouldn’t), all of the standard, native Mac apps that you use every day will be kept in-sync across all of your devices. This means that your calendar appointments and contacts will stay up to date on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It means that the songs and movies and TV shows and apps that you download on one device will automatically download to the other devices you own. And perhaps most excitingly (for me, anyway), it means that the documents you create in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote will stay in sync, letting you pick up on one device where you left off on another.

All of your data, media, and documents wherever and whenever you need them, without you having to do a thing. Sounds pretty great, right?

What About The Third Party Love?

If the Apple that we know and love were truly a completely closed ecosystem, iCloud as I’ve just described it seems right on the nose. But what about third party developers? Most of us use third party apps on a regularly basis, and probably rely heavily on their data staying up to date.

If you’ll voyage back with me for a moment, to those halcyon days of yore (about 3 years ago) when MobileMe ruled the cloud, we can see that Apple likely had the same intentions as they do this time around with iCloud. Perhaps they hadn’t worked out the kinks, or perhaps the technology simply wasn’t available in 2008, but MobileMe turned out to be the antithesis of the smashing success I expect from iCloud.

There are a few factors that I believe Apple got just right in designing iCloud that will put it miles beyond MobileMe.

• Free price point
• Effortless syncing
• Third party incentive

MobileMe was a relatively closed service. Like .Mac, it was still shrouded behind a hefty price tag that a majority of Mac users probably didn’t want to cough up. Likewise, Apple didn’t seem to have the interest in providing a third party syncing platform as much as it was attempting to move your basic data (calendar, contacts, photos) to the cloud. As a result, MobileMe didn’t have the appeal necessary to drive third party developers to want to use it.

On the other hand, iCloud seems to be precisely the platform that developers will want to use. The first two factors I listed above create the third: an incentive for developers to utilize the platform.

How Things Have Changed

As I look back to March (several months before iCloud’s initial announcement) and reread the article where I first discussed the sync options available to developers, I notice that my conclusion began with this:

“My perfect scenario would be a free MobileMe that synced all of my applications to the cloud.  Obviously this is a little on the dreamy side, but the desire for simplicity and reliability still remains.”

Today, I will willfully and joyfully eat my hat, because iCloud seems to be exactly that for which I was longing.

In that article, I also pitted wi-fi and cloud sync against each other in a grudge match–a showdown that, in hindsight, now seems petty and immaterial. With iCloud having an inherently large user base at launch, as well as the “free” and “easy to use” factors, I think that there will be a lot of pressure for third party developers to use the platform, and abandon their paid sync service.

Since the publishing of that post in March, Potion Factory finally released an iPhone version of The Hit List (my preferred to-do list app) along with a $2/month cloud sync service. I can’t say I’ve been thrilled to subscribe to this paid model when a simple wi-fi sync isn’t even an option, but I will admit that it is a solid and reliable service. I also can’t say for certain that such services will buckle under pressure and utilize the iCloud platform (or that I’ll stop paying if they don’t), but I would certainly like to see this happen across the board.

Conclusion

The performance and reliability of iCloud remain to be seen, but will likely be brutally evaluated upon launch, much like MobileMe was. My guess is that if it survives that initial scrutiny, iCloud will be far and away more useful than any of Apple’s previous attempts at such a service.

What do you think? Is this the cloud platform that will break the mold? Will Apple have to give it another go in a few years?

I’m a fortunate soul who hasn’t really been forced to use a Windows PC since elementary school. For the most part, I get by entirely on Macs both for home and work use.

I recently had the realization though that not every Mac user is quite so lucky. I know several people who love Macs, own Macs and would prefer to use them 100% of the time, but are still forced to use the standard issue Dell or HP provided their employer.

Today we want to know what your situation is with Macs and PCs. Do you use a Mac at home, work or both? For the sake of simplicity, we’ll lump student work and schools in with work.

After you vote in the poll, leave a comment and tell us if you ever use a Windows PC and why. Do you personally find a need to use Windows frequently? Are you being forced? Do you like it just as much or better for certain tasks?

I’m a fortunate soul who hasn’t really been forced to use a Windows PC since elementary school. For the most part, I get by entirely on Macs both for home and work use.

I recently had the realization though that not every Mac user is quite so lucky. I know several people who love Macs, own Macs and would prefer to use them 100% of the time, but are still forced to use the standard issue Dell or HP provided their employer.

Today we want to know what your situation is with Macs and PCs. Do you use a Mac at home, work or both? For the sake of simplicity, we’ll lump student work and schools in with work.

After you vote in the poll, leave a comment and tell us if you ever use a Windows PC and why. Do you personally find a need to use Windows frequently? Are you being forced? Do you like it just as much or better for certain tasks?

We’re immensely pleased to announce that, after months of waiting, a new member of the AppStorm network has landed: Windows.AppStorm!

Complimenting Mac.AppStorm, Web.AppStorm, iPhone.AppStorm, iPad.AppStorm, and Android.AppStorm, our new Windows site will be offering reviews and roundups covering the entire Windows ecosystem, including Windows Phone 7, and games, along with tips and tricks to get the most from Windows.

We’re incredibly excited to bring you excellent Windows content of the high quality you’ve come to expect from AppStorm – daily reviews, how-to’s, roundups, news, and opinion. Read on to find out the best way to get involved!

Go to Windows.AppStorm…

We’re immensely pleased to announce that, after months of waiting, a new member of the AppStorm network has landed: Windows.AppStorm!

Complimenting Mac.AppStorm, Web.AppStorm, iPhone.AppStorm, iPad.AppStorm, and Android.AppStorm, our new Windows site will be offering reviews and roundups covering the entire Windows ecosystem, including Windows Phone 7, and games, along with tips and tricks to get the most from Windows.

We’re incredibly excited to bring you excellent Windows content of the high quality you’ve come to expect from AppStorm – daily reviews, how-to’s, roundups, news, and opinion. Read on to find out the best way to get involved!

Go to Windows.AppStorm…

If you’re a freelancer, you’re probably familiar with having to split your time between your work and the more managerial aspects of your business–like invoicing and bookkeeping. Here at AppStorm, we’re fond of the apps that take the edge off of this part of our day, and we’ve likely all used some sort of time tracker software. Usually, you have to create a client, and then a ticket, fill in all of the details of the project, and start a timer, all before getting to work. But what if you just want to get started and worry about all of that tedium later?

Enter Finch, a new kind of time tracking app from TouchStudios. Finch sits in your menubar or in your dock and automatically clocks the time you spend using each app.

Interface

Often, I start reviews with a “Getting Started” section, but Finch really has nothing to get started with. Just run the app, maybe choose a few settings, and after that, it’s completely hands off.

The Finch interface really has the right idea. Aside from a few visual bugs, the interface looks great, and uses a lot of the same features you might be used to if you use other popular productivity apps.

The simplistic window design shows 3 buttons at the top. The first two will display your usage history either by window title or by app. In either view, you can create and assign tags to specific apps, or even specific webpages, so that Finch can accurately determine how much time you’re spending on work or play (in my case) or even on a particular client or project.

Each entry in Finch has a drop down arrow that lets you see which window you used and for how long. For even more precision, you can search and filter by app or window title to find a specific window that you spent time on.

The third button will graph your app usage into a bar chart, giving you a visual representation of how your time is spent. I’ll cover this a bit more down below.

Tracking Your Time

The time that Finch saves you in pre-work time tracking it definitely makes up for in the end. It was convenient to get started on a project at an impulse, whenever the idea struck. But after wrapping up, you’ll have to review Finch to determine how long you worked and how much time to bill for.

Since Finch logs your time by app and not by project, tallying up the time spent on a job can be a little tedious, particularly if you use multiple apps for a project. Safari, for example, would need to be broken down into the time you spent on job-specific sites and unrelated webpages. It can be a bit disheartening to have to recap your time after a day spent on work, but ultimately, Finch does lead to more accurate time tracking.

Look at the Billings timer, for example. It’s handy in the sense that it sits in your menubar and keeps you on task (presumably), and when you’re finished working, you can just kill the timer and be done with it. But what if you get off task, take a break to surf the web, or switch over to another project? Finch may require some analysis upon completion, but it will log every app and every webpage you spend time on, allowing you to be very precise with your billable hours.

Other Uses

As you may know, I’m a big proponent of alternative uses for apps and services, and it would simply be irresponsible of me not to explore such uses for Finch. While it may take a unique approach to tracking your billable time as a freelancer, Finch can also provide you with information on how you spend your time when you’re not working.

I found Finch to be just as effective in telling me exactly when and how I get sidetracked from my work and waste time as it was in telling me how long I spent working on a certain project. You can display a “Report” of your time that shows you exactly how much time you spent on certain tasks (or time wasters) in the form of a bar graph. Use this information to your advantage to destroy distractions and stay on task.

Additionally, the app would probably make an effective monitoring tool for little ones–keeping an eye on how your children, or other users on a multi-user machine, are spending their time.

Conclusion

Using Finch for time tracking your freelance work is a matter of whether you’d rather do the work before (setting up a ticket, starting a timer) or after (tallying application time) working on the project itself. I found it most useful as a purely informational app, gleaning the data on where and when I spent (or wasted) my time. There’s definitely a lot of potential in Finch, and for this method of time tracking in general.

How do you track your time?

If you’re a freelancer, you’re probably familiar with having to split your time between your work and the more managerial aspects of your business–like invoicing and bookkeeping. Here at AppStorm, we’re fond of the apps that take the edge off of this part of our day, and we’ve likely all used some sort of time tracker software. Usually, you have to create a client, and then a ticket, fill in all of the details of the project, and start a timer, all before getting to work. But what if you just want to get started and worry about all of that tedium later?

Enter Finch, a new kind of time tracking app from TouchStudios. Finch sits in your menubar or in your dock and automatically clocks the time you spend using each app.

Interface

Often, I start reviews with a “Getting Started” section, but Finch really has nothing to get started with. Just run the app, maybe choose a few settings, and after that, it’s completely hands off.

The Finch interface really has the right idea. Aside from a few visual bugs, the interface looks great, and uses a lot of the same features you might be used to if you use other popular productivity apps.

The simplistic window design shows 3 buttons at the top. The first two will display your usage history either by window title or by app. In either view, you can create and assign tags to specific apps, or even specific webpages, so that Finch can accurately determine how much time you’re spending on work or play (in my case) or even on a particular client or project.

Each entry in Finch has a drop down arrow that lets you see which window you used and for how long. For even more precision, you can search and filter by app or window title to find a specific window that you spent time on.

The third button will graph your app usage into a bar chart, giving you a visual representation of how your time is spent. I’ll cover this a bit more down below.

Tracking Your Time

The time that Finch saves you in pre-work time tracking it definitely makes up for in the end. It was convenient to get started on a project at an impulse, whenever the idea struck. But after wrapping up, you’ll have to review Finch to determine how long you worked and how much time to bill for.

Since Finch logs your time by app and not by project, tallying up the time spent on a job can be a little tedious, particularly if you use multiple apps for a project. Safari, for example, would need to be broken down into the time you spent on job-specific sites and unrelated webpages. It can be a bit disheartening to have to recap your time after a day spent on work, but ultimately, Finch does lead to more accurate time tracking.

Look at the Billings timer, for example. It’s handy in the sense that it sits in your menubar and keeps you on task (presumably), and when you’re finished working, you can just kill the timer and be done with it. But what if you get off task, take a break to surf the web, or switch over to another project? Finch may require some analysis upon completion, but it will log every app and every webpage you spend time on, allowing you to be very precise with your billable hours.

Other Uses

As you may know, I’m a big proponent of alternative uses for apps and services, and it would simply be irresponsible of me not to explore such uses for Finch. While it may take a unique approach to tracking your billable time as a freelancer, Finch can also provide you with information on how you spend your time when you’re not working.

I found Finch to be just as effective in telling me exactly when and how I get sidetracked from my work and waste time as it was in telling me how long I spent working on a certain project. You can display a “Report” of your time that shows you exactly how much time you spent on certain tasks (or time wasters) in the form of a bar graph. Use this information to your advantage to destroy distractions and stay on task.

Additionally, the app would probably make an effective monitoring tool for little ones–keeping an eye on how your children, or other users on a multi-user machine, are spending their time.

Conclusion

Using Finch for time tracking your freelance work is a matter of whether you’d rather do the work before (setting up a ticket, starting a timer) or after (tallying application time) working on the project itself. I found it most useful as a purely informational app, gleaning the data on where and when I spent (or wasted) my time. There’s definitely a lot of potential in Finch, and for this method of time tracking in general.

How do you track your time?

Hello readers of AppStorm! As you may know, from time to time we cross promote other Envato sites and services here on the AppStorm network. Well, today we launched a short-run Graphic Designer Bundle on our marketplaces, and it’s fantastic value – $500 of photos, images and Photoshop/Illustrator add-ons for just $20!

In the bundle are files from our long-running and highly popular GraphicRiver marketplace, and the newly launched PhotoDune marketplace for royalty free stock photos. It’s a fantastic deal with some great stuff in it. I should know, as I picked the files myself!!

Maybe it’s just because I love graphics and design, but I would buy this bundle in a heartbeat. If you love a bit of Photoshop, you’ll have so much fun with these files, and they’re bound to come in handy on projects.

Buy the Graphic Designer Bundle

or check out just SOME of the $500 of files included in the bundle:

… and there are plenty more beautiful items and images included. It’s really a great deal, and definitely one for your toolkit! Don’t delay though, it’s only available until Friday midday (Australian time!)

Buy the Graphic Designer Bundle

OK that’s enough marketing from me, now back to your regularly scheduled programming 😉

Hello readers of AppStorm! As you may know, from time to time we cross promote other Envato sites and services here on the AppStorm network. Well, today we launched a short-run Graphic Designer Bundle on our marketplaces, and it’s fantastic value – $500 of photos, images and Photoshop/Illustrator add-ons for just $20!

In the bundle are files from our long-running and highly popular GraphicRiver marketplace, and the newly launched PhotoDune marketplace for royalty free stock photos. It’s a fantastic deal with some great stuff in it. I should know, as I picked the files myself!!

Maybe it’s just because I love graphics and design, but I would buy this bundle in a heartbeat. If you love a bit of Photoshop, you’ll have so much fun with these files, and they’re bound to come in handy on projects.

Buy the Graphic Designer Bundle

or check out just SOME of the $500 of files included in the bundle:

… and there are plenty more beautiful items and images included. It’s really a great deal, and definitely one for your toolkit! Don’t delay though, it’s only available until Friday midday (Australian time!)

Buy the Graphic Designer Bundle

OK that’s enough marketing from me, now back to your regularly scheduled programming 😉