Category: Mac

At AppStorm, we pride ourselves on finding and presenting the very best apps. But have you ever stopped to think where we find all our wonderful apps? They don’t just appear on our doorsteps, we have to go out and search for the very best and most recent apps.

In this roundup, I’ll cover some of the best ways to seek out awesome apps. If you’re looking to discover new Mac software, you can’t go wrong with these wonderful sources.

Mac App Store

This one is a no-brainer. Apple’s Mac App Store only launched at the beginning of the year, but it already has thousands of brilliant apps waiting for you to find, from old favourites to the up-and-coming stars. The Featured page is curated very well, with an excellent collection of software constantly on show. If you’re looking for something more specific, the search feature works (admittedly not excellently), or you can browse by category. The App Store has to be the most comprehensive hub for Mac apps on this list, and the easiest way to install apps too.

iTunes RSS Feeds

This is a hidden gem which I have only discovered recently and have loved ever since. Apple has set up a specialized web page where you can generate quite specific RSS feeds which will alert you of all kind of apps, be it simply “Top Mac Apps”, or “Top Grossing Weather Apps”. I’m a sucker for free stuff, and am subscribed to the “Top Free Mac Apps” feed – Every day, I’ll get one or two recommendations, so it’s always easy to look through them. What makes this method so good is that you haven’t got to go out of your way to find apps, they’ll be delivered right to your RSS client.

Apple Blogs

There is a sea of Apple blogs out there, all competing to give you up-to-the-minute news on what the nutritional value of Steve Jobs’ lunch was. As interesting as the standard news is, my favorite articles in any Apple blog is their software articles and reviews. What makes these guys so great is that they’re used to reporting news as it happens, so if a big app is released, you’ll hear about it that day. As I’ve said, there are a million different blogs to choose from, but I’m particularly enjoying TUAW’s recent “Daily Mac App” series.

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo has always been a big player in the world of software discovery. What makes this service different is that it’s not for finding great apps you might like, but more for finding great alternatives to software. For example, if you used iTunes, but wanted something that will work a bit better, you can go the iTunes AlternativeTo page, and you’ll find out about apps like Songbird, Spotify and Miro, and from there, see reviews of it. Usually, if I’m looking for a new app, it will be to replace another app which hasn’t fully satisfied me, so AlternativeTo is an absolutely invaluable resource.

I Use This

I Use This is another wonderful source for apps, not dissimilar to AlternativeTo. People can click “I use this”, on an app, and with such ratings, you can see just how popular apps are, discover the newest apps, and much more. Like AlternativeTo, you can see similar apps, and there are reviews on the site. Most of the reviews are quite old, but it’s still a brilliant place to find new apps. One benefit of I Use This is that, in many cases, you can download the DMG direct from the site, which is very useful.

Developer Sites

This might seem like an obvious option for many people, but for others, they’d never consider it. You know those apps you use? There are real people who spend many hours making those apps. And funnily enough, those people have, more likely than not, made other wonderful apps, probably in a similar sort of market. For example, if you use and love LittleSnapper, you might want to check out all of RealMac’s apps, and you’ll discover RapidWeaver and Courier, both of which are awesome apps which would complement LittleSnapper wonderfully. Try to check back regularly too, or subscribe to their blogs, as devs are constantly bringing out awesome new apps.

Software Bundles

We at Envato recently released a great software bundle, with such software superstars as TextExpander and 1Password. You’ve probably heard of those two apps, but have you heard of Arq and Alarms, two other apps in the bundle? I certainly hadn’t. Generally, app bundles will give you a few big names to get you excited, and then a few lesser-known (but still amazing) apps which you mightn’t have heard about otherwise. Software bundles are two-a-penny these days, and there will always be a nice bundle running. One huge advantage of this is if you find an app you want, you can buy it, along with several other great apps, for a massively discounted price.

Bodega

Bodega is like the hipster version of the Mac App Store. It was a one-stop-shop for Mac software before being a one-stop-shop for Mac software was cool. This free app is absolutely stunning, and features apps I’ve never heard of. Spend five minutes in Bodega, and you are almost guaranteed to find an app you want, and installing apps from it is pretty straightforward too. Many people suspected Bodega to be killed off by the Mac App Store, but it’s certainly still going strong. Why not check out our review of Bodega?

Google

It’s impossible to write an article about discovering anything without including Google, the mother of all discovery services. The ways of finding apps through Google (or other search engines) is unlimited, but the best way seems to be to enter the task you need done, followed my the word “mac”. So if you wanted an app for project management, just Google “project management mac” and you’ll find apps like Merlin, OmniPlan, iTaskX and FastTrack. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with Google.

AppStorm

Excuse the shameless self promotion, you didn’t honestly think I was going to leave this one out, did you? If you’re reading this, you probably know about Mac.AppStorm, and how we find awesome (and not so awesome) apps, and write wonderful reviews of them. However, did you know that we also find and review iPhone apps, iPad apps, web apps and Android apps?

If you’ve been missing out on these great sites, then go straight to our archives, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do! You can also check out our awesome AppStorm home page for a feed of recent articles from the various sections.

Conclusion

There you have it, 10 fantastic ways to find brilliant apps. So what are you waiting for? Go and find some awesome apps right now!

I hope this post has been of some use to you, and that maybe you’ll be able to find some amazing software from the sources I’ve listed.

Choosing between a default Mac utility and a more powerful third party client is always difficult. Tighter system integration and the “free” aspect are on your side with the built-in tool, but there’s often a shortage of the kind of powerful features that a freestanding application offers.

Font management is a perfect example of this. Font Book is a decent way to manage your fonts, but creative professionals and anyone else who deals with fonts daily might find it fairly lacking.

Today we want to know how you manage your font library. Do you use third party software or have you stuck with the tools that Apple has provided? Cast your vote above, then leave a comment letting us know which font management apps you’ve tried and which you like the best.

We’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, Postbox.

Postbox is one of the most powerful alternatives to Mail.app that you’ll find anywhere and is a simply incredible email client. In addition to your favorite standard Postbox features like tabs and beautiful reply formatting, Postbox 2.5 sports several brand new features that make it even more irresistible.

New Interface!
The Postbox interface is now simpler and more intuitive, plus there’s a fresh new theme for the Mac by Benjamin De Cock, and a new icon set by Kenichi Yoshida.

64-Bit Support
On the Mac, Postbox 2.5 is now running in 64-bit mode, so it can take advantage of all the computing power your Mac has to offer.

Vertical View
Postbox now supports a double-row Vertical Thread Pane View, which makes more efficient use of widescreen displays.

Postbox 2.5 is available for purchase on the Mac App Store. Not convinced? No worries, you can download and try the app for 30 days free from the Postbox Website.

Creating an outline is a handy way to organize, plan and brainstorm. One of the strengths of the outline is its hierarchical linear relationship among the topics in the list. That can also be one of its limitations, as the list can become long and start feeling one-dimensional.

The outliner Tree tries to remedy this with a twist on the standard outlining format. In Tree you can expand your outlines horizontally, as well as vertically. Today we’re going to take a look at whether or not the approach Tree takes actually bears fruit.

Tree is the work of Japanese developer Kazuhiro Kawana, whose website is called Top of Tree. You will need to download and install Tree the “old-fashioned” way, because it is not yet available on the App Store, although Kawana is planning to one day get it there. This is a review of version 1.7.3, which was released in early July. You can download and run a trial version of Tree for 14 days.

Tree has two viewing options for your outline: Listview and Treeview. If you are familiar with basic outlining applications, such as Opal, you will be pretty comfortable in Listview. Treeview, on the other hand, is something different. In Treeview your outline expands horizontally to the right, like a flow chart or diagram. Because Tree is first and foremost an outliner, I’m going to look closely at Listview and evaluate Tree for its ability to help you build useful outlines, before I move on to examining Treeview.

Outlining in Tree

The first thing I do when evaluating an outlining application is to just start using it. I want to find out how quickly I can become familiar and comfortable with the keystrokes necessary to create an outline. I don’t want to be thinking about which keys I need to press to create a sub-topic, or fumbling around trying to move a sub-topic from one topic to another. The more “invisible” the application is, the more effective it is for capturing thoughts and ideas.

Tree isn’t hard to get used to. I was able to quickly get the hang of its keystroke commands, most of which are intuitive once you know the scheme. To add an item as a sibling (that is, at the same level), use the command and return keys together. To create a daughter item of the currently selected item, use the command and K keys together. Alternatively, you can change a preference so that simply pressing return creates a new sibling item, which can be made a sub-topic with the tab key.

Likewise, moving items around the outline is pretty easy too. Use the arrow keys in conjunction with the control and command keys. I would prefer it if only one of those two keys were needed, but this is acceptable.

Inline Notes

Okay, now that I know I can use Tree efficiently to build my outlines, it is time to delve into its other outlining capabilities. First among these is the pleasant surprise that Tree supports inline notes. That is, you can create additional text for each of your topics and view it “inline.” This may not be an essential feature for outlines, but it provides a more natural reading and reviewing experience that I appreciate. And it is not very common in outliners today.

To create an inline note, just press the command and single-quote keys, or use the tool bar button. You can choose to hide notes individually by clicking the little note icon that lives to the right of each note. By default, the note text is grayed out, but you can change this using preferences.

Checkboxes, Numbering and Labels

You can choose to view or hide checkboxes and numbering for your Tree outlines. Neither checkboxes nor numbering is a particularly robust feature of Tree, but they are both serviceable. You cannot selectively apply checkboxes, so every item in your outline will have them or none. I can live with this all or nothing approach, but I’d be more impressed I could apply them to specific sets of topics.

Topic numbering is similarly limited. You can select what type of alpha-numeric character to use as the number for each topic, but you can’t really change the style. In other words, I can pick numerals, roman numerals, upper-case letters, etc… but they apply to the entire outline. I can’t make the top-level topic labels roman numerals, with the sub-topics uppercase letters, and sub-sub-topics regular numerals, as is a common format. That is not a severe limitation, but it may make Tree less useful for formal outlining, where the only style that really makes sense is numerals.

Tree also sports a simple labeling scheme that allows you to color-code the reveal arrows. You can choose up to seven different colors and give them custom meanings — urgent, important, etc.

Multiple Windows and Tabs Help You Focus

Hoisting is a very helpful feature in outliners allowing you to focus in on one topic and its sub-topics. Tree accomplishes this with a unique approach. Tree allows you to open a topic and its progeny in a separate window or in a separate tab. In this way you can easily reference the entire outline while working on just a section of it. When you make this selection (either tab or window), the topic in the original window is folded, so the sub-topics are hidden and you cannot reveal them until you close the family window/tab. You can open as many separate windows and tabs as you need.

Treeview Provides a New Perspective

So far we’ve seen that, as a straight outlining tool, Tree is quite functional with some nicely implemented properties. However, the feature that truly sets Tree apart, the one that gives it its name, is the Treeview mode.

Treeview mode switches the outline from a standard vertical layout to one that stretches out horizontally, more like a diagram than an outline. In Treeview, each succeeding generation (or topic level) is exposed in columns and connected by lines. Once in Treeview, your outline takes on a whole new dimension.

Treeview is a very flexible mode. When you invoke Treeview, the topics that were revealed unfold into separate columns; those that were concealed remain so. You can choose to reveal or conceal any of the topics. You can even see some topics in standard outlining mode while others are unfolded into the diagram.

Treeview can be applied tab by tab or window by window, so that in one tab you can see your standard outline, while in another, you can view a topic family in Treeview mode.

It’s this later capability that gives Tree its real power, I think. Viewing the entire outline as an expanded diagram doesn’t seem to me to be particularly useful, as the screen becomes overly cluttered. But being able to view sections of it this way could be very handy for various types of planning, writing and study.

Flexibility to Mix and Match Views

While I find Treeview an intriguing feature, what is most impressive about Tree is how the developer has built it so you can combine these various views. See part of your information in standard outline view, while another branch is expanded horizontally.

Closeup detail of a Tree outline in Treeview mode.

Exporting to Other Applications

For the most part, outliners are useful for the beginning of projects, for collecting thoughts, structuring a writing project. This means that a good outliner should be able to export its data into formats useful in other applications. Tree scores fairly well in this aspect. You can export your outline to formatted text or plain text, for continued work in your favorite word processor.

Tree also exports to Outline Processor Markup Language (or OPML) files. OPML is a standard file format that can be opened or imported by most quality outliners, which means your Tree files can easily be shared with a variety of other outliners, including OmniOutliner and Tinderbox, notes and all.

Conclusion

Tree is not a power outliner along the lines of Neo. It does not have cloning of items, meta data, or very robust numbering options. It doesn’t do tagging and you can’t include images or attachments. You also cannot adjust the format by level — that is, you can’t set the Tree to make level 1 items bold and 14 point text, and level 2 items underlined and 12 point text, for example.

But Tree does provide unique perspectives on your notes with its Treeview mode and flexible combinations of views. It would make a fine choice for those who need a basic outliner for simple to moderate outlining tasks. And the price is low enough at $24.99 that Tree could be a nice supplement to a more powerful outliner for those intrigued by its multi-dimensional viewing options.

When I was a kid playing around on my first Mac, I always thought it was loads of fun to have the computer read out whatever I’d written in KidPix (remember KidPix?). On my grown-up Macbook, I sometimes set up spoken alarms and alerts, so that I can imagine Stephen Hawking is telling me what time it is.

However, if you want to convert longer passages of text to speech, you might be in for some quality time with the command line (more on that later). There’s a decent amount of professional text-to-speech software out there, but it’s generally expensive, and mostly intended for business use or for people with disabilities. Today we’re going to go over some free and inexpensive options, and learn how to convert text to speech using TextEdit or the Terminal.

1. Software

A quick Google search reveals fewer free options than I expected, given that text-to-speech is a native mac capability. Some of the highlights:

TypeIt ReadIt

TypeIt ReadIt is a free application with a simplistic interface aimed at the visually impaired, with a font-size slider and text-viewing options. This app is also useful for quickly making text more readable by changing color, size, and fonts, and offers 1-click conversion to .aiff.

None of these apps are going to win any awards for interface design, but despite it’s unattractive appearance, TypeIt ReadIt was my favorite app of those I looked due to its extensive keyboard shortcuts.

Read4Me

Read4Me is an app recently available at the Mac App store, and is by far the most Mac-like application I found. Like similar apps, Read4Me is basically just a graphical interface for what your Mac can already do, but does offer a more pleasant experience than some of the other options.

In addition to reading text and exporting .aiff files, Read4Me has a “Coach” feature, which lets you add markers to the text to “help” the reader read more accurately. These features were a bit confusing to me, and I don’t think a lot of them worked. However, I was able to add pauses, mark passages to be read more quickly or slowly, and change the pitch of the voice (which almost always ends badly). Some of the other options seemed to either do nothing or just cause the reader to spell out words instead of reading them.

Read4Me can also open .txt, .rtf, .doc and .docx files and read them out loud. At $4.99, it doesn’t do a whole lot more for your money, but I’m sure some people will find that the few extra features are worth a couple of dollars. My primary complaint here is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.

2. Web Apps

I looked through a bunch of web apps and lists of web apps, but I couldn’t find a good one that allowed you to easily export to a sound file. If you’re just looking to have a couple lines of text read out loud, try the AT&T text-to-speech website, cepstral.com, or vosMe which allows you to download mp3 files of your text.

Text to Speech on the Mac

Mac computers have had advanced text-to-speech technology called PlainTalk built in since System 7, and the voices have improved quite a bit in the last few releases.

Snow Leopard introduced the “Alex” voice, which is much more natural sounding than any previous system voices (“Vicki” is the most natural female voice, “Fred” is the sci-fi, Stephen Hawking-like voice).

Select the “Alex” voice for the most natural-sounding reading.

3. Using TextEdit

To enable the “add to iTunes as spoken track” action from the services menu in TextEdit, open up System Preferences/Keyboard pick Services in the left column, and tick the checkbox for add to iTunes as spoken track under Text. Now when you select text in TextEdit, the option will be there under TextEdit/Services, and will ask you to name and save the file, then open it in iTunes.

Additionally, you can have TextEdit read any text file or selection to you by selecting Edit>Speech>Start Speaking from the menu.

4. In the Terminal

My new favorite Terminal command is “say,” sometimes my roommate and I creep each other out by cranking up the volume on our MacBooks and telling Terminal to say things when it’s really quiet. To get your Mac to say anything, just type “say” and then whatever you want.

say Hello World

To have a text file read out loud, just navigate to the directory and type “say -f” and the file name (the file must be UTF-8 encoded).

say -f text.txt

To convert a text file right into a .aiff file, type “say -f” then the file name, then “-o” and the path to the file you want to create.

say -f text.txt -o audio.aiff

Conclusion

While researching for this article, I was pretty surprised both by how powerful my computer’s native text-to-speech capabilities were, and by the lack of free or cheap third-party options. Though it’s pretty easy to convert text to speech using TextEdit or Terminal, you’d think that someone would have made a nice graphical interface for those functions, since they’re already built in.

There are a lot of much more powerful, expensive options out there, with more advanced speech rendering and exporting options, but for the average user, OSX ships with everything you need.

Do you think it’s worth $4.99 to do what your Mac already does a bit more conveniently? What do you use text-to-speech for? Has anybody created a simple AppleScript or Automator action to convert text to audio quickly? Let me know if I’ve missed any free or affordable text-to-speech options!

For those of you from the U.K. and other fortunate regions that have been enjoying Spotify for years, this is a non-event. However, for any readers from the U.S., this is huge news. Get ready to completely neglect Grooveshark, Pandora, Last.fm and any other Internet radio you listen to. Spotify is that good.

What is Spotify? How does it work? How do you get it? Keep reading, we’ve got the answers.

Not So Fast, Invite Only

The rumors are true, Spotify has in fact launched in the United States, I know because I’m using the heck out of it. Unfortunately, it’s an invite only affair at the moment so you’ll need to stop by the site and request one or start bugging your more fortunate friends (huge thanks to Orman Clark for hooking me up).

Keep in mind that lots of highly anticipated web services launch exactly like this so don’t sweat it, you’ll no doubt be able to get your hands on Spotify very soon.

The Evolution of Web Radio

The great thing about radio is that it’s sort of organic. You just listen and the DJ takes care of everything. This is also the worst feature of radio. Other than choosing a station, you have almost no control over what you hear.

Pandora was a big evolution of this model, taking a much more interactive route that is amazing for discovering new music based on what you already love. However, your control over what is being played is still quite limited, with only occasional and limited input allowed.

For U.S. residents, the next link in this chain was Grooveshark, which gives you complete freedom to listen to what you want when you want. Don’t get me wrong, Grooveshark is amazing, but it definitely has some issues. For starters, it’s a Flash-based web app, which you may love or hate but isn’t ideal for lots of users. Also, it’s a bit difficult to sift through the content as you’re constantly hit with five or more versions of the same song. It’s close, but having seen and used Spotify previously, I knew that the experience wasn’t what it could be.

Enter Spotify

Spotify is the music service of your dreams. It’s a native app that looks and works a lot like iTunes. Just imagine though that your iTunes library was suddenly stuffed with millions of tracks spanning several decades. Want to check out the album 19 by Adele? Just search for it like you would in iTunes and listen to it… all of it.

The iTunes-like functionality continues. Run a search for Snow Patrol and listen to all of the available tracks on shuffle or build a custom playlist of Jamie Cullum and Michale Bublé music for that dinner party you’re throwing later.

Any Song?

The library of available tracks is extremely impressive. It’s not going to have every song you want to hear, but it will have tons of them. As a test run, I started out with a search for artist John Mclaughlin; not too main-stream, not too obscure. The result was awesome, around three hours of music, all completely free to stream immediately!

The App

The Spotify app has a sharp, dark interface that’s easy on the eyes and actually feels like a bit of an improvement over iTunes in some ways. Over on the left side of the interface is your basic navigation. Here you can check out your playlists, build a queue, look at what’s new on Spotify and view an “Inbox” of music that Spotify sends to you.

One really great iTunes-killing feature is that all of the music on your machine automatically shows up in Spotify! This really makes it the ultimate music hub for your computer. You can even use Spotify to move your local music to your iPod (premium subscription required).

Another great feature is Facebook integration. You can see your friends’ top tracks and artists and check out their published playlists. Ping? What’s Ping?

Spotify Plans

As you can imagine, the good people at Spotify have to make a living, not to mention license all of this content. Let’s take a quick look at the three plans that you’ll have to choose from after you score that invite and sign up.

Spotify Free

The free plan gives you tons of music that you can listen to instantly from the installed application on your home computer (Mac or PC) and share individual tracks with friends via a simple link. The catch is that it is in fact ad-supported. There are both visual ads inside the app and audio ads that interrupt your music. The system here is almost exactly like Pandora, the ads are quite infrequent and brief (usually only one at a time). The service is good enough that you likely wouldn’t dream of dropping it because of an occasional interruption.

At the moment, it seems that there is no time cap for free U.S. accounts, which is amazing. However, the U.K. service started off the same way. Spotify likes to get you addicted to unlimited free music before suddenly limiting the amount of time you can listen in a month. It looks like Spotify will soon revert free users to twenty hours per month just as they did in Europe.

One additional catch, if you travel abroad with Spotify Free, you only have 14 days before they cut you off. Your service will continue when you get back home.

Spotify Unlimited: $4.99/Month

For just under five bucks per month, you can ditch the ads and have unlimited access to your music when you travel. Otherwise, all of the features are the same as the free plan, for now. When Spotify does start putting time caps on free accounts, this will be the cheapest way to have that limit removed.

Spotify Premium: $9.99/Month

In addition to all of the features above, Spotify Premium gives you access to local files on your iPod, listen to Spotify on your mobile devices, listen to Spotify offline, enjoy better audio quality and exclusive tracks, and play Spotify through music systems like Squeezebox.

Check out this page for a complete breakdown and comparison of the three plans.

Conclusion

To sum up, Spotify is an outstanding music service that allows you to listen to almost any track, album or artist whenever you want from a slick, native application. Unless your iTunes library has 15,000,000 songs and adds 10,000 new tracks per day, you’re going to want to get in on this.

The biggest downside currently is that you have to find a way to score an invite, so beg, borrow and steal to get one because, despite an occasional ad, you’ll love the service.

We’ll see how long the awesomeness lasts, it’s really only a matter of time before Spotify slaps a time cap on free accounts to force all the new addicts to sign up for premium accounts.

It’s time for another “Ask the Editor” post today. A big thank you to everyone who sent in their questions – it’s great to have the chance to help you out with your Mac-related queries and quibbles.

Today I’ll be offering some advice about apps for taking student notes, concentrating, dimming your screen and managing your contacts. Read on for some awesome tips and tools to make your Mac experience even better.

I am currently a college student. What are some of the best apps for note taking on the Mac?

– Devin Clark

I’m glad you asked Devin! We’ve written a lot about apps for college students over the years and continue to search out the best solutions. Given that MacBooks pretty much dominate the college campus scene, this is a very important niche that developers should probably pay more attention to.

There are quite a few really great student-focused Mac apps out there that you’ll want to check out. Unfortunately, most of them, like iStudiez Pro, are more aimed at task and project management than note-taking, which is surprising since this is such a central component of student work.

The app that I recommend is Course Notes ($7.99). We just published a very positive review of this app that outlines the features in depth so I won’t go into it too much but I will say that it’s hard to beat for student notes. The interface for creating, organizing and sifting through past notes is really stellar and there are lots of great features including to-do functionality, attachments and more. There’s also a companion iPad app so you can keep up on your notes even if your laptop isn’t handy.

If you’re into a more minimal workflow, there are plenty of beautiful full-screen writing apps for Mac. Check out our article titled “6 Minimal, Full-Screen Writing Apps for Mac.” Of those, I personally use Writeroom, despite its simple appearance it has a ton of professional features. I really like that I can customize the color scheme and make it look like some of the more attractive options like IA Writer.

I’m looking for some anti-distraction software like Concentrate. Which is the best?

– Stepan

To be honest, Concentrate ($29) really does stand out as one of the premier applications for helping you concentrate. The feature set, which allows you to setup certain automated actions during customized concentration sessions, is completely unique as far as I know. It’s a brilliant little app and though it’s a little pricey, you simply can’t top it.

Now, if you take a look at the concentration genre in general, there are tons of alternatives, almost all in the basic screen-dimming category. What these apps do is help you focus on a certain application by dimming, blurring, hiding or otherwise obstructing anything else.

• Think (Free)
• Focus On (Free)
• Spirited Away (Free)
• Isolator (Free)
• FocusMask ($0.99)
• HazeOver ($1.99)
• Quiet ($3.99)

Of these, FocusMask seems to be one of the best values. At only $0.99, it has quite a bit of functionality, much of which you won’t easily find elsewhere such as the ability to focus on certain areas of a window or a selection.

If screen dimming isn’t what you’re looking for, consider the two apps below, both of which help keep you focused by popping up little reminders of the task that you’re currently trying to complete. Any time you get distracted there’s that nagging reminder of what it is that you’re really supposed to be accomplishing.

• FocusBar ($0.99)
• OneTask ($4.99)

Keep in mind that Lion will be releasing soon and you’ll start seeing lots of apps go the full-screen route. This should definitely help you keep your focus as you won’t see all those floating windows in the background.

To shut off the screen of the Macbook Pro, you hit Ctrl+Shift+Eject, which is handy but you have to use both hands. Is a way to change that shortcut to something else?

– Agustin Suarez

This is definitely a useful shortcut, but I can see what you mean as far as it being easier if you didn’t have to bring a second hand into the situation. Under “Keyboard” in System Preferences, you can customize many system shortcuts, but unfortunately, this isn’t one of them.

However, all hope is not lost for a quicker alternative. For starters, you can go into the Screen Saver options in System Preferences and set up a Hot Corner that will put your display to sleep. Then when your professor walks by and you have ESPN open in class, you can quickly move your cursor and hide everything. Also, remember that Exposé is a quick, one-handed way to hide all of the windows.

Alternatively, you can use an app like Sleep Display, which immediately sleeps your display upon opening. You can either stick this in your dock or hook it to a keyboard shortcut via Apptivate or something similar.

What apps do you suggest as an alternative to Address Book? There’s gotta be an app out there that could display all my contact cards in a more visually appealing way!

– Stef Gonzaga

Before you go looking for a better-looking Address Book alternative, remember that Lion has an improved Address Book app that not only has more eye candy but also gets a boost in functionality. Many people hate the new faux-realism stance Apple is taking on UI these days but others can’t get enough. It’s definitely worth a look before you go switching.

Now, that being said, there’s surprisingly really not many great alternatives. Some email clients like Thunderbird have address book features but changing email clients is a big deal for a lot of folks, especially if you’re just looking for a better Address Book.

One app that is popular among small business owners and other professionals is Bento, which goes far beyond contact management and helps you manage and track projects, plan events and more.

At $29, Bento is a steal but it might be more than you want to pay for a prettier address book. Commenters, feel free to chime in and tell us about any cheap and attractive Address Book alternatives you’ve tried!

Didn’t See Your Question?

If you asked a question but didn’t have it answered today, don’t worry! I’ll do my best to get to it in a future week. I love a challenge, so feel free to ask some weird and wonderful questions…

If you’d like to submit your query, you can do so here:Online Form – AppStorm > Ask The Editor

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you agree or disagree with anything I mentioned today!

Trophy Truck Extreme is a cross platform release from independent developers XMediaGrafx which promises to be a fun and addictive racing game, seeing off-road vehicles move at a breakneck speed across rough terrain and smashing into each other in a frantic race to come first place.

So, does Trophy Truck Extreme deliver on this promise? Read on after the break to find out!

Start Your Engines

Following a swift download and install from the App Store, Trophy Truck Extreme offers an initial setup screen with various options for graphics and resolution, tailored to suit your Mac’s specifications. This completed, one is now presented with the Main Menu, as shown above. The Main Menu hosts several self-explanatory options to choose from, accompanied by suitably macho rock music.

“Race” and “Smash” are Trophy Truck Extreme’s two types of play and upon choosing either of these, one is then asked to select between a small, light and relatively easier to handle buggy, shown below on the left, or the 650+ bhp powerhouse opposite.

I’m not exactly a hardcore gamer and I therefore haven’t got an external joystick or controller to use with Trophy Truck Extreme (though they are supported), so I’ve been stuck using my Mac’s keyboard for driving. This is never an ideal situation for a racing game but the developers have done a very good job of translating the minutia of racing an off-road vehicle to keyboard keys. Being confined to keys didn’t detract too much from the game’s experience.

Race

The “Race” option is perhaps Trophy Truck Extreme’s main draw and indeed this is where I found myself spending the majority of my time in the game. After selecting the default “Beautiful” preset on my MacBook Pro on Trophy Truck Extreme’s launch, the graphics looked great and as long as I had the game running in full-screen mode, I drove at high speed without any stuttering or glitches – this despite my keeping other Apps open in the background.

Though the learning curve seems quite tough at first, the skill of the computer opponents seemed just right overall and this learning curve likely squeezed a lot of extra mileage out of the game’s lone track.

On the starting line, the user is given three laps of the long course to move upwards in position from the sixth place in which you begin. Beginning in dead last like this makes for a frantic chase and I found that Trophy Truck Extreme’s simplicity belied an inherent addictiveness within the games design.

As the course progresses through many ramps and jumps, each moment spent in mid-air earns another increment of “Boost” – which comes in very handy because Trophy Truck Extreme’s punishing physical engine does not allow too much wiggle room for mistakes when clipping the tracks walls or landing awkwardly.

Smash

Smash is much the same experience as Race but with added wooden boxes, barrels and debris scattered throughout the course to smash into. I actually found that this leveled the playing field somewhat and it proved less competitive than Race, but there was still fun to be had in sabotaging the competitor’s path and causing much mayhem. Trophy Truck Extreme’s in-game physics make the objects react satisfactorily without becoming exaggerated at any point.

More Tracks Please!

The iOS game explosion has shown that not every title needs to offer the depth of graphics which can be seen on games such as Call Of Duty, sometimes all we want is to launch a game and play for a while. Trophy Truck Extreme is definitely in this latter camp, which is fine and it never pretends to be anything else.

Really, the one key drawback to Trophy Truck Extreme is that there is only one track to race, thus reducing the game’s shelf life somewhat – even the old trick of being able to race the same track backwards would have been an improvement. However, the developer of Trophy Truck Extreme states that subsequent updates are currently being worked on and will include additional cars and tracks, thus resolving this criticism.

Conclusion

Does Trophy Truck Extreme offer the user a game playing experience which is on a par with massively popular games like the Need For Speed series? No. Does it offer value for the small amount of money it costs? Undoubtedly!

When one considers the very low cost and its indie-developer roots, there is a lot to like about Trophy Truck Extreme. The gameplay is a lot of fun and the AI of the computer opponents provides a good challenge too. More than anything, Trophy Truck Extreme shows a lot of promise and what features are included are well-designed and robust. One hopes that the developers will indeed capitalize on this success to improve and update on what is for now at least, an uneven but immensely fun game.

Keeping up with an RSS reader has become so boring and monotonous that many people just stopped using their usual Gruml or NetNewsWire apps a while ago. That is, until a small app called Reeder for Mac came along, bringing the beauty and simplicity of mobile apps to the RSS reader market.

The app that we are reviewing today is called Printful, and it aims to be sort of a Reeder on steroids. How well does it work? Let’s find out.

Getting Started

The first time that you run the app, you’ll be shown a login screen where you can use your Printful account, create a new one or sign in using your Facebook, Google or Twitter profiles. When I tried to add my Google account, the app just kept loading without really showing me any of my items. I had to log out, create an account with Printful and add all my profiles through their website. It was a bit of an annoyance, but was what I would’ve ended up doing anyway.

I then tried accessing my account through the Mac app, and after having some problems loading my feeds, it finally displayed all of my Google Reader subscriptions, but the read/unread numbers of items were really inaccurate, and it wouldn’t display my Twitter feed (not the strongest start).

The Interface

Much like Reeder for Mac, this app tries to mimic the feel and simplicity of most mobile apps by getting rid of annoying text buttons and replacing them with easy to use and fast icon buttons. Also like Reeder, there are 3 panels: one where you have your feeds, one where you have the items from the selected feed, and one where the content of the selected item is displayed.

The app is based on a combination of various tones of grey and black. It looks very simple, but also kind of dull. Every item is shown with its own images and full text, there are no “Click here to read more” links. There’s also a bar on the top, where you can find buttons to share items with Twitter, Facebook, or send them to Instapaper or Read It Later, star them or launch them in your browser.

Features

There’s nothing out of the ordinary in this app. You have the usual features of Starring and sharing links to your social networks. The starring works as its own freestanding feature in the app and there is no connection with Google Reader’s starring feature.

You can also add any new subscription by just going to the “+” sign on the bottom, where you’ll be shown a few popular feeds like Gizmodo or Techcrunch. From here you can also search whichever feed you want, or even add a news aggregator like Reddit or Digg.

Prtinful vs. Reeder: Does It Stack Up?

Of course, the field of RSS readers has been beaten to death by developers. There’s something for everyone, and it wasn’t until recently that these simplistic mobile-looking apps came to the desktop. The most relevant app like this in the market, and the one who probably started it all, was Reeder for Mac, which came out of beta a few months ago.

Printful seems like it wants to mimic what Reeder does, but while also adding a few more features like the Facebook integration. They both have mobile versions, and they both go for the same price. The thing is, Reeder is better looking and has been tested more, so there aren’t really any noticeable flaws like there are in Printful.

Printful could be a great competitor for Reeder if given enough time, but right now it feels a little like a rushed app. Perhaps switching a cheaper price point than Reeder would help it stand out against the competition.

The Flaws

There are problems loading the feeds, in a bunch of ways. To be fair though, I do have about 1500+ items unread, so I guess it isn’t easy loading all of them, and some are really old.

Also, based on the pictures on their App Store profile, it seems that it is supposed to load my Instapaper and Twitter accounts as feeds, but it doesn’t do that for me.

Although it works with Google Reader, I don’t really trust trust Printful to keep up with my feeds. You can read your articles just fine, but it seems like it doesn’t sync well; not when I have unread items and not when I have read an item through the app.

I would say that right now, the ideal way of using this app is not by syncing it with your Google account, but by subscribing to your favorite feeds through the app. It will work with Google Reader, but it’s not fully functional. Let’s keep in mind that the app only has a few days out and will probably get a lot of revisions in the near future.

Conclusion

The idea behind Printful is great. Reeder has gotten a lot of attention and could use some strong competition. I like the fact that Printful tries to integrate what made Reeder great, along with some extra useful elements like having easy access to Twitter, Facebook and Instapaper through the app.

Unfortunately, Printful just didn’t seem ready to be sold publicly. Reeder went through many betas, and most of them worked better than this. This app is almost there, it has a great interface, great ideas behind it and most of the work is already done. There are just some small, but noticeable flaws that need to be fixed. At the moment, Printful has loads of potential, and with some careful attention from the developer, it could be great.

If you’re a regular Mac.AppStorm visitor, then you probably love apps as much as we do. You might even have some ideas floating around in your head for an app that you’d like to build whether for your own purposes or to strike it rich on the Mac App Store.

The biggest hurdle to many would-be developers is a complete lack of knowledge of where to even start! How are Mac apps created? What skills are required? Where do I go to learn these skills? Today we’ll find out!

Be Ready to Learn a Lot

Mac applications are complicated beasts made up of many elements and thus require many different skill sets. Just take a look at any great application and you can see right away that a certain level of interface design proficiency will be necessary. You’ll be able to leverage core UI features but those will only take you so far, to accomplish anything fancy and custom-looking you’ll have to venture out on your own. Even with the core UI, interface layout is a complex science. If you screw up the usability component of your app, you’ll fall short on one of the main criteria for judging apps.

Further, the interface is just what sits on top, under that is the real heart of the application: the code. Learning to program is incredibly intimidating for most people. Fortunately, though it’s difficult, many people underestimate themselves and find that it’s not quite as impossible as they had imagined. You don’t need to be a genius to program a basic Mac app, only time and practice coupled with the right knowledge and set of tools.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at two of the main things that you’ll need to learn to create your own Mac applications and some resources that you can check out for learning them.

Cocoa and Objective-C

This is going to get pretty technical pretty fast so bear with me. Most Mac applications are built using Objective-C, an object-oriented programming language. Objective-C is the primary way to leverage one of Apple’s primary OS X APIs (Application Programming Interface): Cocoa.

So, just to make sure we’re clear: Cocoa is the API, which is a set of rules, standards, frameworks, etc. to help you build Mac applications, and Objective-C is the language that you use for that API.

One other thing that you should know about Objective-C is that it is basically an extension of C, another popular programming language. If you already know C, you are primed to learn Objective-C.

Online Resources for Learning Objective-C

There are quite a few sites that will teach you Objective-C completely free. If you are a self-driven person, these resources are definitely the place to start.

Cocoa Dev Central: Intro to C
Before you dive into Objective-C, it’s helpful to get a solid understanding of C. Cocoa Dev Central has an awesome walkthrough that will teach you the specific areas of C that are relevant to working with Cocoa. In other words, this tutorial is specifically targeted for people looking to take their first step in learning to program Mac applications.

Apple’s Intro to Objective-C
It’s always a good idea to go straight to the source. Apple has a ton of support for both new and experienced developers and really seeks to make the entire process as easy as possible. This guide will serve as a basic introduction to Objective-C and Cocoa application frameworks. Also be sure to check out Apple’s thorough Getting Started Guides, which cover a range of topics for new developers.

Cocoa Dev Central: Learn Objective-C
Cocoa Dev Central, the same folks who wrote the intro to C above also have a super basic introduction to Objective-C. If you’re already familiar with other programming languages, this might be a good place to start.

Books for Learning Objective-C

If you really want to get into Mac programming, you often can’t beat the in-depth instruction that you’ll get from a good old printed book. Here are a couple that we recommend.

Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running: Foundations of Mac, iPhone, and iPod Touch programming
O’Reilly is one of the first publishers I look to for any technical topic, be it web design or programming. As you would expect, they have an awesome book for those looking to get started in Mac and iPhone development that covers the basics of both Cocoa and Objective-C.

Learn Objective-C on the Mac
This book serves as a solid starting point for anyone completely new to programming. Other manuals tend to assume that you’re already a developer who is picking up a new language but this guide starts from scratch and will help you learn the basics of development in general.

Xcode

As I mentioned above, the good folks at Apple are all about providing developers with the tools that they need to create amazing applications. Xcode is the main focus of this venture and serves as a suite of tools and utilities that you will use through every step of the application-building process, from planning interface layouts to writing and compiling code.

Xcode is a free download, but you have to join the Developer Program to get it, which will run you $99 per year. Alternatively, you can grab it in the Mac App Store for only $4.99.

Online Resources for Learning Xcode

Xcode 4 User Guide
One of the main components of the Xcode suite is the Xcode IDE, where you will do much of your programming. This is Apple’s official guide for getting started with the newest iteration, Xcode 4.

Lynda.com
Lynda.com is my absolute favorite resource for online video training. They have in-depth tutorials for just about every creative and technical topic you can name. The subscriptions don’t come cheap, but they’re worth every penny. Lynda has a complete series on developing for the Mac and iPhone. It covers, Objective-C, Xcode, getting your app to the App Store and more. If you’re looking for one place to go and learn it all, this is it.

Books for Learning Xcode

You’ll find that most of the Objective-C books actually cover Xcode so this section might be a little redundant, but there are in fact several dedicated Xcode books. Here are a couple you can check out.

Xcode 4 (Developer Reference)
When learning anything technical, it’s crucial to make sure that you’re using an up-to-date guide. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many books out yet dedicated to the new Xcode 4. This book is freshly released and takes you step-by-step through the process of developing for OS X with Xcode.

Xcode 4 Unleashed (Coming Soon)
The “Unleashed” series is quite popular and the books are well-known for their excellent coverage of their topics. This book hasn’t hit shelves yet but it’s available for pre-orders right now.

Conclusion

Utilizing Cocoa, Objective-C and Xcode are what you would consider the main-stream path to developing custom Mac applications. Most of the applications that really have that famous “Mac feel” have been developed using these tools.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that there are in fact several methods for developing Mac applications so if these just aren’t resonating with you, keep looking. For instance, if you’re looking to build something that works well across several platforms, check out Titanium, which enables rapid development of native mobile, desktop, and tablet applications using web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Leave a comment below and let us know whether or not you’re interested in developing Mac applications or are already a developer. What resources have you found to be helpful for beginners?

We’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to this week’s sponsor, Screeny

Screeny is a beautiful, simple and effective utility for taking screenshots and recording screencasts. The controls are basic enough that you can pick the app up immediately and powerful enough that you can create just what you want with almost no effort.

Screeny was just updated with some awesome new features like auto-uploading via CloudApp, multiple frame rates for video and the ability to record system audio. You can see these features in action on the new intro video.

And of course, all of things that make Screeny so amazing are still around:

• Record video of your screen at any size.
• Optionally capture audio from your computer’s microphone when recording video.
• Snap an image of your screen at any size (even across multiple monitors).
• Videos saved down at highest possible quality, and can be exported for web, etc. using Quicktime.
• Set your recording canvas size by entering a specific pixel dimension or by choosing some handy pre-set dimensions or by clicking, dragging & expanding the recording canvas.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts for all recording actions.

Screeny is available for purchase on Apple’s Mac App Store.

Apps that make your pictures look more interesting by adding filters and effects to them have become a really popular niche in the mobile app market recently, especially with apps like Instagram that just keep getting bigger. That’s why today we decided to bring you a few of the best apps for achieving these and other types of effects, but on your Mac.

Come take a look at our favorite effect and filter apps!

The Apps

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of apps in the market of photo effect apps. Whether you want something serious for making your most recent trip’s pictures look elegant, or just want to have some fun by taking silly pictures of you and your friends, we hope that you enjoy the options that we have laid out for you.

Which ones did you like? Do you use any other ones? Do you prefer the ones on your mobile devices, like Instagram and Hipstamatic? Let us know in the comments!

The Mac App Store has been out for quite a while now and we like to check in from time to time to see what you guys think of it. The most honest way that we give a product an up or down vote is with our wallets so today we want to know how many paid downloads you’ve made from the Mac App Store to date (free app downloads don’t count).

Choose one of the options on the right and then leave a comment below telling us which apps you’ve purchased and what you think of them. Also feel free to chime in on the overall pricing scheme of the App Store. Do you think apps are fairly priced for the most part? Too high? Too low? Your opinion matters and we want to hear it!

Despite Apple’s near-domination of the digital media world with iTunes, Macs have never really had a stand-out solution for watching video – iTunes supports approximately 0 codecs, Front Row is pretty cumbersome, and standalone video players like QuickTime or VLC require far too much rooting around in my movies folders to find the movie I want. I’m looking for an easy-to-use, beautiful piece of software which will make watching movies on my Mac a pleasure.

This is where Plex comes in. As a firm favourite among movie-loving Mac users, Plex allows you to watch movies on your Mac from the comfort of your own sofa – It has support for the Apple Remote and accompanying iOS apps to improve the experience. To top it off, Plex even looks great. Could Plex be the media center app of my dreams? Let’s take a look!

Getting Started

Plex is not available from the Mac App Store, only from their site. Luckily for you though, it’s 100% free and open-source, due to the fact that it is a fork of XMBC. The download file is a little hefty at 108MB, but they’ve still done a pretty good job at compressing it, considering that the app itself is double the size. Installation is pretty run-of-the-mill – Drag the app icon to the Applications alias and you’re good to go!

Upon first opening Plex, you’ll be greeted with a welcome screen, and a few initial bits of info you need to use the app. The most important of these is where you keep your movies, TV shows and music. Simply point the app to the right place, and Plex will keep an eye on that folder, adding any new files to the library whenever you add something to the folder. One handy feature is the ability to add multiple folders. So if I, for some reason, wanted to keep my English-language films in one place on the computer, and my foreign-language films somewhere completely different, but still wanted both of them in Plex, that would be incredibly easy.

Once you’ve told Plex everything you want to, it’ll go away and scan your library, gathering lots of metadata from a number of online sources to create a nice selection of movie data and images to make your Plex experience even better. In terms of movies, it found plenty of data for all of my movies (including a few somewhat obscure films). The only film it had any problem with was Back to the Future Part I, however that was fixable, simply by adding the film’s release year to the file name in Finder.

Interface

Plex sports what is known as a 10-foot interface, which does exactly what it says on the tin: you can use it from 10 feet away. This is certainly useful if you want to put your MacBook down on the coffee table and watch a movie from the comfort of your sofa. The interface is very straightforward when it comes to usability. If you’ve ever used a DVD, video game, or anything in a similar vein, you’ll be very used to the linear structure of such an interface. You have a list of items, and if you click one, you get a new list of items, as each list of items bringing you closer to your target.

Aesthetically, the interface is quite nice, each item accompanied by a lovely big graphic. If you want to, you can change the background image to whatever you want in Preferences. Even the movies have an appropriate background image, in most cases an image from the film. In addition to the original theme, you can download third-party skins. Unfortunately, I found it almost impossible to find a skin online.

Watching Video

Watching video that is stored on your computer is very straightforward with Plex. There’s really not much that I need to go into. You can play, pause, fast forward, rewind, and all of the other things you’d expect to be able to do in a video player.

One thing that is worth noting, however, is how to control the player. By default, there is no cursor in Plex (you can enable one in Preferences), so any controls are done via the keyboard or a replacement device. I personally found navigating, pausing and playing using the arrow keys on the keyboard quite a pain, so I used my Apple Remote, which works perfectly with Plex, with almost the exact same functionality as in Front Row.

If you are more financially sound, and didn’t want to spend $20 on a small slab of metal with a few buttons on it, you can also whip out your slightly larger slab of metal with a few buttons on it, your iPhone, and control Plex via that, or your iPod Touch or iPad, for that matter. A universal iOS app which acts as a remote for Plex is available from the App Store for $4.99. To me, this is quite a high price, considering that the Mac app is free.

However, there are a few benefits of this app. The biggest one for me is the ability to stream movies that are in your Plex library on your Mac to your iPad. This is very handy if you’re watching a movie on your computer, and suddenly somebody else needs the computer. Instantly, the movie is on your iPad for your viewing pleasure.

Plex Online

Aside from native media, Plex also has support for online plug-ins for consuming media. There are a number of plug-ins, including most of your favourites: Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Apple Trailers, YouTube and Vimeo. This is a wonderful addition to Plex, as it offers something which Front Row never had, and the ability to go from watching a movie in Netflix to listening to your favourite song in Pandora without moving off the sofa will undoubtedly appeal to many.

Conclusion

I’ve been searching for a long time for a really straightforward, really useful media center app which won’t make me go through so many hoops that by the time I’ve got to the film, I’m no longer in the mood to watch it. Plex is almost certainly the app for me. It’s incredibly easy to add movies, watching them is equally nice, and added online functionality is the icing on the cake.

It’s blatantly obvious why Plex is so loved in the Mac community. If you haven’t tried it yet, go do it. Right now. You won’t be disappointed.

Apple products have long been hailed as great tools for education.  It hasn’t been too long since I was a student myself, and even since then some of my favorite Mac software has been apps aimed at students.  Because developers see the market for this, students have access to great apps like iProcrastinate for task management, Papers for project management, and even Schoolhouse for all-in-one student productivity.  If your academic app arsenal lacks a good note-taking app, Dear Panda aims to fill that gap with CourseNotes.

CourseNotes is a lightweight, yet robust note-taking app for students.  It is designed to eliminate the hassle of keeping track of your notes by organizing them into subjects and sessions, as well as making them fully searchable.  CourseNotes also has a companion iPad app that syncs with the Mac counterpart, but more on that later.

Interface and Usability

If you’ve read my reviews before, you know that I put a lot of stock in interface design.  If an app looks good, you’re more likely to enjoy using it, and more likely to benefit from it.  CourseNotes had me interested at first launch by it’s clean, iPad-resemblant interface, complete with sliding animations when transitioning between views.

For input purposes, CourseNotes is organized hierarchically.  Information is broken down and organized into three tiers: subjects, sessions, and notes.  Subjects are self explanatory: create one for each class you want to take notes in.  Sessions are best thought of as class days, and each session can include several notes.  Each note has a title and a body, and images and other files can be attached.

Once you’re in a session view, three session commands are aligned at the top of the CourseNotes window.  The interface effectively does away with labeled buttons in favor of icons whose meanings are clearly communicated.  To create a new note in the session, click the first button.  Bulleted lists are common in class notes, so the second button will create one without the hassle of aligning or stylizing.  If you have a lot of notes in a session, the last button will let you jump to a specific note, organized by note title.

Each note in a session has a few buttons on the side that only show up when you hover over them, effectively keeping the interface clean.  The second button down from the top will allow you to attach an image or file into your note, and the bottom button will delete the note and all of it’s contents.

CourseNotes takes somewhat of an object-oriented approach, and allows you to turn any note into a to-do.  Clicking the top button in a note (the calendar icon) will create a to-do item and let you give it a due date, allowing you to keep track of assignments and tests.  Once an note becomes a to-do item, it is automatically placed in the “To-Do Items” lists.

I mentioned that CourseNotes is organized hierarchically for input purposes, but where it really shines is in its search functionality.  Notes are searchable globally as well as within a specific session, so you won’t have to thumb through a spiral notebook looking for your notes on a particular topic.  Simply type a keyword into one of the search bars, and CourseNotes will find all of your notes and assignments regarding that topic.

iPad

I mentioned above that CourseNotes has a iPad companion app, and the good people at Dear Panda were kind enough to let me give it a spin.  While I’ll leave the more in-depth review to our friends at iPad.AppStorm, the iOS counterpart is an integral part of the note taking process, and in my opinion, worth a mention here.

 

CourseNotes for iPad, once paired with CourseNotes for Mac, will sync notes over your WiFi network, allowing you to come up with your own system for studying and note taking.  Perhaps you want to take your iPad to class to collect notes, and the sync them to your Mac for archival purpose.  Or maybe you prefer taking notes on a full keyboard, and want to sync them to your iPad so you can study on the go.  With CourseNotes for iPad even more feature-rich than the Mac version, you can take notes and study any way you want.

Last Words

CourseNotes may not have all the bells and whistles or flexibility that can be found in apps like Evernote or Curio, but it succeeds as a lightweight and streamlined note taking app.  The often time-consuming tasks of stylization, tagging, organizing, and formatting are done behind the scenes, allowing you to capture your notes as quickly and as simply as possible.  As I said, I am no longer a student.  However, I found CourseNotes a joy to work with, and certainly anticipate using it to organize my non-academic notes.

Do you have a favorite note taking app?  How does CourseNotes compare?