Category: Mac

You’ve got a lot of things to write down, but you want to keep them safe. Sure, there are a lot of notes apps to choose from, but how secure are they? Bluenote not only keeps your notes secure with AES-256 encryption, but it will also manage your passwords for you, too.

We’ll take a look at all Bluenote has to offer!

Take a Note

Your first move in Bluenote will be to create a password. If you’re thinking, “No, I’m good, no one’s getting into my notes,” that’s too bad. Bluenote requires a password, and it’s got to be a good one, too. You can’t just enter “password” or “pass123” like I tried. Bluenote will stop you in your tracks and tell you what it thinks of you and your lackluster password skills.

Create a password and make it good, or you can’t even get into Bluenote.

Once Bluenote has given your password its approval, you can actually start to do some stuff. Click the first icon in the sidebar to get to your notes or create a new note by selecting the Notes icon and hitting the plus sign that appears below. Create a title for your note, and use some text styling to give some rich formatting to your notes. There’s a word counter in the toolbar up top, and you can email your note or delete it up there, too.

The next icon down is for your task lists. Add new lists and select icons to represent them, and then add to dos within your lists. Click the information symbol next to each to do to add notes or any additional information, and reorder by dragging and dropping. When you’re ready to check a task off, just click the circle next to it. But hold on just a second! What’s that? It only filled in halfway? That’s because you can show your progress on a task by “coloring in” the circle next to the task until you’ve got it completed.

If you ever need to find anything, click the magnifying glass icon to reveal the search bar. You can only search within each category, in your notes, tasks, or passwords, not in all of Bluenote, so make sure you’re in the right section before you get to typing. Just click on the magnifying glass in the sidebar again to get rid of the search bar.

Not only is Bluenote great for taking notes, but it looks good, too.

I hear you saying that all of that sounds pretty good. But is there sync? Yeah, there’s sync. You’ll need a Dropbox account, but who doesn’t have at least one nowadays? Click the cloud with the up arrow to get things started and to authenticate with Dropbox. Syncing doesn’t happen automatically, so you’ll need to click that up cloud any time you make changes you want saved. When you’re ready to get the changes onto another Mac with Bluenote, click the down cloud to sync with your Dropbox data.

Keep It Secret

Click the key in the sidebar to get to Bluenote’s password manager. I’ll just go ahead and say that I originally thought a password manager in a notes app felt pretty tacked on, but then I thought again. Sure, I use a service that handles all of my passwords for me, but there are a lot of people who keep unsecured lists of passwords in text files or synced in Google Drive or Dropbox. That’s bad juju, guys. If you’re going to go that route to keep track of easily forgotten passwords, this is definitely a better and safer way to get the job done.

The password manager is a lot more secure than just sticking your passwords into TextEdit.

Add a title for each stored password, like the name of the service, or if you have multiple logins, you can use the service name and username. Then enter your login ID and password. Bluenote will let you know how secure your password is, and if you don’t feel comfortable with your current password, Bluenote can generate a new one. Click the lock next to your password to toggle how it is displayed, and add notes below.

Your passwords are always safest if they exist only in your head, but if that’s not going to work for you–it doesn’t work for me, so no judgment–this isn’t a bad alternative. Bluenote requires a password to get into the app, and it won’t let you just stick your name and birthday as a password, either. Everything’s automatically encrypted, too, so you should be safe as houses.

Feeling Blue

Bluenote doesn’t just work really well. It looks fantastic, too. Everything is in a shade of blueberry, but the major elements are in neutral navy or crisp off-white parchment, so the blue theme never becomes overwhelming. Bluenote keeps the fonts simple, using Lucida Grande or a close cousin throughout, but it changes things up with font size and color to differentiate elements.

Look how good your tasks look in Bluenote.

We recently had a discussion of the possible move from skeuomorphism to flat design on Mac.AppStorm, and Bluenote is definitely leaning heavily towards the latter. Full of large blocks of color and sharp corners, Bluenote doesn’t look at all like the official OS X apps. However, if you peer closely, there’s still remnants of skeuomorphic design in the main note and task panes where you’ll spend most of your time. Rather than a blank, white window, the background looks like fine paper, and instead of detracting from the overall UI, this helps to soften Bluenote.

Final Thoughts

The only thing missing from Bluenote are accompanying mobile apps. I’d love to make Bluenote my primary notes app, but I’m going to need access on my iPad and iPhone, especially for my tasks. That aside, everything in the app worked beautifully. It has absolutely all of the features I’m looking for, with the added security of AES-256 encryption.

It was easy to format, email, and delete my notes. Phased task completion was unexpected and perfect for keeping track of my progress. I even came around to the password manager and know there are lots of people who can get real use out of it. After weighing up all of its features, I can’t help but admit that Bluenote really is one of the best notes apps out there, and it looks good doing it.

Every product requires preparation to release, especially new mobile apps. If you’re trying to make people more productive, you’ll . Creating a great app demands planning, testing and studying in the look out for the best ways to achieve its intents.

One of the main culprits for a poor app is poor navigation, often caused by the lack of a prototype where you can visualize your app’s engines and hierarchies between screens. That’s what Briefs does. It allows you to set actions to the elements of your static design and create an interactive mockup, which you can send to partners for feedback or just grab a feeling of how it is to navigate within your project.

Briefs, Timelines and Scenes

Understanding the meaning of those three is the basis for the hierarchy of Briefs. The namesake — briefs — comes first; it’s the main project. Within a brief you can create timelines, which features each a set of interactions per device; for example, you can create a timeline for the iPhone 5, iPhone 4 or 4S and for the iPad and stipulate different scenes for each of them. You can also create multiple timelines for the same device to test alternative setups.

Briefs 2 has a gorgeous interface to help you create interactive mockups.

Scenes, if you allow me the comparison to Keynote, are your slides, which will carry all the elements to compose each screen of your prototype. Every scene has its default view in portrait, but you can also set a landscape view, also, scenes can be easily duplicated so you don’t have to apply all your elements from the ground up for each scene.

Change the view to check every aspect of your brief.

As you develop your prototype further, it is worthy mentioning that Briefs has three different views. The Scene View is the one you may be already familiar of as it is the first shown where you can edit your canvas and structure your elements. The Detail View shows a blueprint of your scene where you can dig further into the dimensions of your actors and visualize the assigned actions. Then there’s the Overview, which displays your entire timeline and every connection between the scenes.

Actors and Actions

Every graphical element placed in a scene is called an actor and you can attach actions to them: playing sounds, displaying alerts or jumping to other scenes. Actions can be customized as you please with eighteen combinations of transitions, like curling, sliding, flipping and covering. You can find plenty of actors to start your prototype at Briefs’ Library or drag your own designs to the library and you’ll have them included as well.

The Library contains a great set of actors for your prototype.

There are three kinds of actors: button, text and hotspot. The first two are quite self-explanatory, while the hotspot is an area that you can place on your other elements to assign specific actions into its boundaries. Hotspots make it extremely easy to simply add your static image of the whole screen and allocate actions for every area you want.

To every actor is allowed some sort of customization, you can keep track of its position on a X and Y axis, resize, rotate or change its opacity. For those that allow text you can change size, alignment, color or font, the latter has only a limited set of options. But the best part provided by the Info panel is the Actor States, where you can manipulate how an actor displays when disabled or touched, including different settings for regular or retina screens.

Set a transition as an action for your actors and tweak it.

Actions can be a bit tricky to setup, so here’s what you’ll need to do. After going the whole way and creating your first scene, open the Library and drag any actor into the canvas, right-click on it and choose “Add Action…”. Now comes the tricky part. There’s a circle in your actor and another one on your pointer, they’re linked by a dotted line. Just lead your pointer to another scene on the sidebar if you want to create a “jump to” action or click on the actor to set individual actions.

Testing your Prototype

It would be pointless to convert static images into something with motion, sound and user interaction and not be able to actually test the thing. There are two quick ways to test your prototypes. The first one is using the in-app Simulator. Just hit the “Play” icon in the toolbar and a template of your device will pop up on your desktop, ready for you to test with your mouse.

Test your interfaces on the Mac or beam it to your device of choice.

But, of course, you can test everything on the devices it was planned for. Briefs has an iOS helper called Briefscase, which is available for free in the App Store. You can upload your briefs to Dropbox and open them on Briefscase or using a feature called BriefsLive, which syncs your Mac and the device of choice wirelessly (both must be open and connected on the same network).

Conclusion

Briefs may not be ideal to people playing with mockups once in a while; with a $199 price tag, it seems more focused on indie developers who often test their ideas out. But if you just want to mess around and see if that old idea can take shape, you can download a fully functional trial, with no expiration date, only the limitation for 10 scenes, 1 timeline and 2 briefs, which may be enough for you to get a taste or perhaps use effectively to create a prototype of your dream iOS app.

The application looks gorgeous, and is an exciting way to build app mockups. I can’t see it as a game changer, though, as it still faces the main issue of interactive mockups’ lack of support for gestures. It’s hard to break out of the box with a totally new idea, when you’re constrained to what we’re already used to in apps.

Briefs has also crashed at least four times while I was reviewing it performing simple tasks, and it didn’t save my current work either time. So that’s an urgent thing to fix. It looks gorgeous and has great features, yet packs all the bugs we’re used to see on complex 1.0 apps.

File syncing services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive all have one thing in common: they provide a centrally hosted solution. Your files are stored not only on the devices you’re using but also on their servers. It’s an extremely useful feature as it means you can easily share files to other people without any complicated setup and you’ll always be able to access your files through a web browser. Whilst these services are extremely secure, there are those who are a little wary of having personal (or even confidential) information stored somewhere that they have no control over.

BitTorrent Sync is a new service that provides a decentralised file syncing solution with an emphasis on security and keeping your files off such servers. Is it a worthy alternative for the security conscious?

How It Compares

BitTorrent Sync is a secure file syncing solution developed by the same people responsible for the BitTorrent protocol of file sharing, indeed it even uses the same technology as its underpinnings. File transfers are fully encrypted and accessing shared folders requires a special key called a “secret”, a uniquely generated passcode. Entering this secret on any other computer running BitTorrent Sync will grant access to the folder and all the files within will sync, securely, without going through a server.

Unlike services such as Dropbox which sync via a central server, BitTorrent Sync establishes a direct connection between computers sharing folders

Compare this to a service like Dropbox, for example, and the files, whilst still syncing securely, do so via a server first. Additionally, speeds are usually throttled to maintain a consistent level of service for all users so even if you have a super-fast connection, you may find files seem to take longer than expected to sync.

Setting Up

BitTorrent Sync provides a setup assistant though lacks any descriptive information at this time

Once you’ve downloaded and launched the app, you’re given a simple setup assistant to guide you in starting. You’re asked if you’re setting this up for the first time or if you already have a secret that you’ve been provided. To a novice user, it’s not entirely explained what this means so some users may find it a little harder to understand to begin with. There’s no accompanying help guide so any assistance you might have will need to be found via the app’s website which does provide assistance via an easy to understand FAQ and active forum.

What you’ll notice immediately is that there is no user registration, no email address to provide, not login details to create. This is in keeping with some of BitTorrent’s more secure beliefs that security isn’t just about encryption, it’s about anonymity. Compared to a service such as Dropbox, it means that BitTorrent Sync lacks features such as a web interface since all the files exist only on the computers they reside on and if you need access to a file whilst on the move, there’s no mobile app either.

This leads on to another potential issue for some users as any computers with a folder being shared need to be running whilst a sync is in process since it’s a direct connection. Likewise, any changes made will only sync to the rest of the computers when they’re switched on and connected. Unlike Dropbox, there’s no automatic updates from a central, always-on server as soon as you switch your Mac on.

Similar to Dropbox, BitTorrent Sync provides a menu item to keep track of useful information and access the preferences

Once started, BitTorrent Sync includes a menu item that will provide some useful information as well as access to the app itself.

Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe

When you first set up BitTorrent Sync, you’re given a secret key for the default sync folder it sets up for you.

If you choose to perform a standard setup, BitTorrent Sync will create a folder within your home folder to use and then provide you with a special passcode, or key, called a “secret”. This is the way folders are shared. Since there’s no centralised account, you need to then enter this on the other computers you’ll setup, either by performing the setup assistant and selecting “I have a secret” or, if it’s already set up, using BitTorrent Sync’s preferences.

Whilst you are provided with a generic “BTsync” folder to use you can also add folders from anywhere on the Mac to sync, giving it a feature that is lacking in Dropbox.

You can add folders from anywhere on your Mac and generate a unique random secret key for each one

More than that, this secret allows you to share a folder with anyone you want, provided they’re also using BitTorrent Sync. Think of the secret as literally as a key, anyone using it can unlock that shared folder.

For each sync folder you add you’re given the a new secret, generate another one or you can create your own. Additionally, you can also create a “read-only” secret which means the recipient can’t make any changes to the files (nor remove them). For sharing documents that other people would want to use but not necessarily make changes to, it’s a great idea.

In addition to generating secrets for folder access, you can also provide read-only access and even keys that expire after 24 hours

For increased security you can also issue one-time secrets that expire after 24 hours.

The Human Element

I’m very impressed with how BitTorrent Sync works and during my testing it worked without issue. With all this focus on security, however, the human element is what proves to be a letdown for this app.

I can see the primary way people would share these randomly generated, ultra-secure keys would be via email. Email communication, even today, isn’t secure and many companies who send their users passwords via email are often criticised for practicing poor security.

Despite the emphasis on security and anonymity, many users will almost certainly take to emailing secret keys which isn’t secure.

Likewise, should anyone somehow obtain a secret key by snooping on emails, they’ll then have access to a folder you’re wanting to share. At the moment, there’s not really an easy way to share these keys securely though such as iMessage, which is encrypted, would be preferable. But there are just too many people who would just automatically take to email, making much of the security that BitTorrent Sync promotes kind of, well, redundant.

Ready for Prime Time?

For those wanting to use this for their own personal use and not share folders with other users, perhaps entering the secret into 1Password, then BitTorrent Sync is an extremely useful tool. In terms of file syncing, it doesn’t bring anything else to the table that services such as Dropbox and Google Drive don’t already offer. In fact, because of its decentralised method of file syncing, it actually provides fewer features than its server-based counterparts. Granted, your files aren’t centrally hosted so for the security conscious it’s very appealing but if secret keys are sent via email then in some ways, BitTorrent Sync could be seen as less secure.

Despite the advantages and disadvantages of BitTorrent Sync, it’s strictly in alpha testing at the moment. This is the earliest stage that a developer feels that general users can start testing it and if you know what a beta version is, this is the one before it. Because of this, it’s hard to recommend it as a viable alternative to services like Dropbox or Google Drive… yet. There will be tradeoffs to consider if you’re wanting to switch file syncing service and you’ll need to judge whether the additional security is worth the reduction in overall features.

I came away from using BitTorrent Sync hopeful that continued development and an eventual 1.0 release will make it a viable alternative. For power users and hobbyists, this is something definitely worth exploring. I myself am going to keep using the app as it matures but I’ll be continuing to use Dropbox as my primary file syncing service.

For everyone else, stick with what what’s already established and available but keep your eyes open, there’s a new kid in town.

In the time I’ve been a Mac user, I’ve nailed down a pretty solid set of applications that get just about any job I throw at my computer done. For the most part, my Mac is used for reading and writing, podcasting, coding (web development, mostly), and your standard web browsing fare. For most of those things, I’ve found my current-generation spec’d out Macbook Air to be more than adequate, although coming from a 27 inch iMac, I actually need to conserve screen real estate, which plays a role in the applications I choose to use.

Before we continue, I should also warn you that I tend to be a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to the applications I choose to use: I’ll literally stop using an otherwise fine application if I think its icon is ugly. The end result is that each application on my Mac is here for a reason. So while I’ve tried out hundreds of different applications, only a select few have made the cut. If I’m not using it, it’s been deleted: end of story.

Honorable Mentions

The above was just a sampling of the apps I use on a daily basis. Below are a few more that didn’t get their own writeup but are by no means any less awesome:

• Pages – Apple’s word processing tool seems to be superior to Microsoft Word in everything I use it for. I particularly love iCloud syncing with my iPad and iPhone.
• Reeder – Even though Google Reader is going away, Reeder isn’t and it still remains my RSS reading app of choice.
• Tweetbot – The best Twitter app for the Mac.
• Sip – A cool little color-picker.
• Preferences Quick Launch – Okay, this is a bit shameless given that I wrote the app, but I can’t live without the quick access to the sound preferences that it provides me with.
• Coda 2 – If you do any sort of web development, Coda is a must-have tool. You can’t beat its interface and feature-set.
• Alfred – A launcher that beats Spotlight in every way. I haven’t upgraded to version 2 yet, but I’ve heard it’s great.

Conclusion

When it comes to the apps we use, I try to have a “to each their own” mentality, although I’m particularly fond of my current setup. Still, I could seriously argue with someone for hours about something as basic as our color picker of choice. So, do you use and love (or hate) any of the same apps? Let me know in the comments below!

If you’ve got a job that requires invoicing the time you worked on certain tasks, it can become quite a chore to keep up the tracking of each of them, hence the justification for project managing and time tracking apps. They lend a helpful hand if you want to track your work time or simply if you want to know more about where your time is going.

The downside is that most of these apps tend to be pricy and overcomplicated. It’s refreshing to see an app that takes a more simplistic approach to the task of time tracking. Chronos is one of them, and we’ll be checking it out today.

Chronos

Chronos is a little app that for $4.99 can help you keep track of the time you’ve spent on your work in a very simple, quick way. However, its simplicity is complemented with powerful customization and a heavy set of features. It won’t stop you from using it as a companion to your favorite invoicing service, or as an information hub for your working habits.

Interface

Interface

Chronos runs as a stand alone window as well as on your menu bar. The main window is where you can set your projects and tasks, and the menu bar component is the quick go-to whenever you are working for stopping and starting the clock.

The main window of the app is pretty simplistic, there’s a status bar where your current timer is shown and where the REC button is located, then there’s the sidebar which gives you access to all your different projects, and the main area is where all of the tasks and relevant information for your selected project is shown.

Projects & Tasks

Projects and Tasks

Chronos gives you two levels of organization for your tracking needs. First, there are the projects, which contain a list of assignments, referred to as “tasks”. A project can have any number of tasks, and when you want to start tracking time, your clock will need to be attached to a task, not just to a project in general.

There’s a lot of flexibility as to how the projects and tasks can be managed, it’s really up to you how deep you want to get with the categorization of them. For example, I could set “Appstorm” as a general project and manage each of my articles as a single task, such as “Chronos Review”, or alternatively I could set that single review as my project and manage each part of the review as a task, such as “Writing” and “Editing”.

If you are done with a project, you can select to delete it or to archive it. The archive will simply move them over to a separate organization area under the projects list, but it will keep all of the tasks and information in them ready for consulting or for setting as active again.

Tracking Time

Tracking Time

To start tracking time, all you need to do is select your project and task from the main window and hit the REC button. If you had previously tracked another session under the same task, the timer will just continue over the previously recorded time. If you’d rather manage the app through the menu bar, starting a timer is as simple as clicking its little icon. A popup will appear, letting you choose the project and task under which the app should record your time.

If you’d like to know more about your tracked time, you can double click each task to view a summary of all the sessions under which you recorded time for that task. This information is neatly organized with each session containing date, duration and there’s even a field for comments.

Customizing Chronos

Under the settings there are a few things that let you tweak how Chronos behaves. For example, you can tell Chronos to stop the current timer if there is no activity on your computer for a certain amount of time. There are customizable global keyboard shortcuts for showing the app and starting/stopping a timer, as well as default tasks for each new project that’s created, small tweaks for showing the current timer on the menu bar, and a few other minor details.

Invoicing

Exporting works on a project basis and through .csv files. The process asks you first what information you’d like to include in the exporting, such as tasks, columns (dates, comments, duration, etc.), and the range of dates that you’re exporting, and that’s it.

Where It Fits In Your Workflow

Apps like Billings and similar that incorporate several features such as time-tracking, project-managing and invoicing into one single package are not on the level of Chronos, as the latter is much more simplistic and established in its own category. Think of it more on the level of simple menu-bar time trackers like TimeCop and TicToc.

Chronos won’t get in your way, with just a quick keyboard shortcut or a click in your menu bar, you’ll be ready to track your activities, leaving the hard work of classifying and invoicing for later. Set it, let it track its thing, and then export its information to your invoicing service later. If what you’re looking for is a complete and intuitive solution for time tracking that does not require too much of you everytime you want to use it, then this is a good option.

Conclusion

Keeping track of how your time is being spent is always useful, it helps you realize where exactly your day is going so that you can make some changes in your workflow, and if your work depends on billing for time worked, then it’s also something that’s imperative for invoicing.

Chronos is a nice simple solution for keeping up with the tracking of your time without it becoming too much of a chore. Setting and stopping tasks and timers won’t take you too much time, it’s simple enough for you to get it working in just a few seconds. It might not be on the level of more complete project-managing apps, but that’s not a fair comparison since Chronos knows its place as a simple but powerful time tracking app.

What do you think? Would you use this app, or do you use any other similar ones? Let us know in the comments!

John Calhoun’s original Glider — dating back to 1988 — may well be my favorite game. Quintessentially Mac in style, it put you in charge of a paper airplane in a rundown, dilapidated house. You needed simply to stay afloat, lifted by air vents, and try to reach the window leading to freedom.

It was a game of wits, and patience, and it’s one of the most innately-charming pieces of entertainment I’ve ever encountered. The shareware series earned a dedicated fan-base and awards from Mac magazines through its five main installments, culminating in a commercial release (Glider PRO, 1994), then gradually faded into the background … that is, until Glider Classic for iOS was released in late 2011, which was followed up last year by a Mac version simply called Glider.

Let’s see how this throwback stands up — both to modern standards and to the nostalgia of Glider games past.

Stay Afloat, Avoid Obstacles

For the uninitiated, Glider puts you in a world of magical mundanity — where ordinary objects such as basketballs, balloons, and toasters take on a life of their own, creating great peril for a simple paper plane with dreams of fresh-air flying.

Entering a strange world where the magical and mundane collide.

You ride on the currents from air vents and candles, gliding from one to the next in a zig-zag of movement across rooms — directing movement with the left/right arrow keys and flipping the nose (which shifts the camera slightly) with the down arrow.

It’s graceful and carefree, but for the challenge of keeping your glider both intact and in flight. If you crash against an object, or land on any surface that isn’t covered in grease, you lose a life. Brushing against the edges of most items of furniture is fine, though. You can also get electrocuted on malfunctioning power sockets, which are often tied to switch puzzles.

There are some fiendish puzzles combining switches, balloons, dripping water, and buzzing circuits.

Lose all your lives and you have three choices: start again, go back to the last waypoint, or stop playing. Pick the second of these and your score, which increases as you collect stars and cover new horizontal ground, starts afresh at zero while your position jumps to wherever it was that you last touched a banner labelled “waypoint.”

If you want a good score, then it’s probably best to start at the beginning every time to avoid the hassle of backtracking. Early on, you’ll likely just be happy to get deeper into the house.

Digging deeper. The basement rooms pose a serious challenge.

Keep Your Wits

Glider is purely a game of skill. You don’t need quick reflexes or twitchy fingers, and you don’t need luck. Everything is measured, calculated. If your plane crashes, it’s your fault — your error in judgement. As a result, it is never unfair. The balloons in this new installment may be despicable and stifling, but even they follow a clear and consistent pattern. You just need to learn the timing.

Balloons, balloons, everywhere. But they’re not as bad as you think.

This was always the case in Glider, even as Glider 4 and Glider PRO introduced new elements like rubber-band missiles (retained here), enemy gliders, and battery-powered speed boosts (both omitted from this version). It doesn’t seem so wild now, in this era of casual pick-up-and-play gaming, but early Glider went with domestic simplicity at a time when bells and explosions were the norm. It favored the same accessible unassumingness as the original Macintosh, which is perhaps why so many Mac-heads gravitated toward the game.

This new Glider retains much of the charm, going so far as to rewind the clock on Glider PRO’s extravagances — a 403-room default house, a world beyond for the glider to explore, and new mechanics that pulled away from the original game’s vision.

Glider PRO let you go outside, and — thanks to custom houses — to all manner of weird and wonderful places.

The new Glider feels like something between Glider 3 and Glider 4. It’s a back-to-basics move that reminds you how much mileage you can get out of a little game like this. But it’s also modern — a step away from the series’ history and into the new age of casual games.

In Some Ways A Departure

Glider’s grown up. The house is no longer in disrepair — unless you count the water leakage problem and the large number of toasters on the floor — and the walls now host colorful wallpaper instead of cracks and webs. It’s well past college age and has settled into a comfortable life with a family and a corporate job.

Misbehaving appliances, weird interior design, and leaky faucets look rather out of place in this new environment, and the blend of hand-drawn and computer-generated visuals doesn’t always sit right. For the most part, Glider gets away with its graphical style, thanks no doubt to its adaptation of an old pattern dithering trick, but fans of the series may be hoping for something more that never presents itself.

There are some lovely hand-drawn touches, but this is not the shabby, crumbling house of old.

Glider reclaims the “quiet domesticity” that creator John Calhoun once told me he felt the later entries lost, but there’s something missing. Much like today’s Apple, Glider seems torn between two warring — yet similar — ideals.

The problem is not just that without the House Editor — a tool latched onto by the Glider PRO community in the 90s — Glider feels incomplete. I’m not sure what it is, but it manifests in the mechanics and design through a conflict between collecting stars — the focus of Glider PRO — and escaping the house — the goal of every other Glider game.

The design is compromised, ever so subtly, as a result of this conflict. And Glider pulls you in both directions with equal force. It’s not so much the definitive version as a “Greatest Hits” entry to the series.

But with John Calhoun again working at Apple, we may never see the extra touches — a House Editor, more objects, and something truly new to the series — that would turn this installment into the Glider game to play. Nor are we likely to see Calhoun’s other old Mac classics (Pararena or Glypha, anyone?) given a touch-up by the man himself — at least not for a while.

Turn off the lights on your way out. Is this the end of Glider?

A Classic Reborn

So for now we’ll have to accept this slightly-flawed, arguably-incomplete, but totally-awesome one-off reboot of the quintessential Mac game. Glider isn’t what I hoped it would be, but it’s a great game nonetheless. You should still get it if only to taste a bit of the magic of the early days of Mac gaming, when the world was our oyster if we could just break free of its confinements.

It’ll charm your socks off, and have you whistling or humming the theme for days.

I love making videos, but I don’t love editing them together. I always have the best of intentions at holidays and birthdays and family gatherings, but it all falls apart once I’ve gotten the footage onto my Mac. I just never seem to do anything with it, and I’m the first to admit that a big part of my problem is my video editor.

I recently tried out Shotcut, a free and open source video editor. I’m no video professional, but then, most of us aren’t. Let’s see how it works out for a layperson just trying to put together some family videos without pulling out her hair.

The Edit Bay

Drag your single video or a bunch of them into the Shotcut window. You can also use the Open File icon in the toolbar or choose it from the File menu. Whatever you do, just get your files into Shotcut. If you’re only opening one file, it won’t immediately appear in your playlist, but a bunch of files will find their way there so that you can easily move around in them. If your aim is to splice your videos together and cut out the bits you don’t want, you can definitely do that in Shotcut. While pretty simple to use once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s not necessarily the most straightforward thing in the world.

Select your clip and click the menu button at the bottom of the playlist.

Select the video clip you want to edit in the playlist, click the menu icon at the bottom, and choose Open As Clip. You can then move the sliders around and select the part of the video you want to keep. When you’re done, click the menu icon at the bottom of the playlist again and choose Update. Maybe you want to keep the beginning and end of your video, but not the middle. Create your first selection, but this time, choose Insert Cut from the menu instead. Now you can return to your original clip and make your second selection, saving it with Update.

Use the Undo and Redo buttons to fix any recent mistakes, but those aren’t going to help you if you realize you made a booboo five minutes ago. For that, you’ll need to open the History browser. You can step back your changes, or select an edit from way in the past. This is great to recover work when you think you’ve gone astray or if you just want to review what you’ve done and compare the outcome to the original.

The Properties window gives you information about your video.

The Properties window is just what it sounds like. You can view the audio and video encoding and make limited changes. Shotcut will also give you access to the file’s metadata, if available. You can add comments to your video file in the Properties window, too.

To make real changes to how the audio and video are encoded, you’re going to have to save your project as a new file.

Movie Extras

There are some included filters, but these aren’t going to make your video look old-timey, at least not without some effort. Far from Instagram-type filters, these include blurs, mirroring, and saturation adjustments. Sure, if you adjust the heck out of the color on your video clip, you can get something that looks like an old Super 8, but that’s not what these filters are for. They’re really there for color and lighting correction, to help you get the most out of your video and make up for minor mistakes during recording.

History helps with Undo and Redo.

There aren’t any transitions currently. Yeah, that’s kind of a bummer. If you edit two clips together, they just sort of jump, with no fade or anything. It wasn’t near as jarring as I would have expected, so that’s something, but I still really missed seeing transitions between my clips and I know some of you are going to see that as a deal breaker. The developer is actively working on it, though, and transitions are on his roadmap for this year, so hopefully we can look forward to good things soon.

Saving and Encoding

When you’re ready to save your changes, you can do one of two things. Either save your playlist as an XML file, or create a new video from your playlist. To do the latter, click the Encode button up top. Choose one of the presets or customize how your video will be saved.

Encode your new video using a preset or custom settings.

There’s a bunch of stuff there, and I hope there’s enough to please people who really know what they’re doing, but I’m not one of those people. I’m just making videos of Christmas to watch next Christmas, so all of the presets are helpful, because I can look out for the formats I recognize and know will work for me. If that’s not what you need, though, there’s a lot going on here, and you have a lot of control over encoding.

Final Thoughts

There are definitely some good things about Shotcut. I’ve got a cheap and cheerful little HD Flip-style camera that isn’t at all compatible with iMovie. If I want to edit my videos in iMovie, I have to first convert everything to something iMovie likes in an app like Miro Video Converter or Handbrake. That means all my videos from last Christmas and the one before are still hanging around waiting to be dealt with because it’s just too much of a hassle to get them into iMovie. Shotcut, though, just took them all in and didn’t look back. There was no conversion required.

I don’t know what format you’re using, so I can’t promise you’ll have the same good time as I did, but Shotcut seems at least somewhat more accepting than iMovie. The flipside is that it’s not quite as user-friendly as iMovie and doesn’t have some of the fun features we hold so dear. There aren’t currently any transitions to make your video look more polished, and you can’t add text as far as I can tell, having scoured both the app and the Shotcut website. Shotcut also doesn’t hold your hand the same way iMovie does, and you have to figure some stuff out yourself.

All that said, it is fairly easy to use once you get going and doesn’t seem to slow my system way down the same way iMovie can. It’s also free, which is pretty nice, and the developer is responding to users in the forums and working on adding features right now. I was definitely pleased with what I found in Shotcut and surprised with how well it worked. If you’re not getting what you want from the video editor you’re using, this is definitely one to download.

Productivity apps and methods are perhaps among the most abundant Mac apps out there, but they all take the same kind of approach to getting things done: they only help you accomplish tasks, without really lending a hand in choosing what’s really important. You can get a dozen tasks crossed off by the end of your day, but if they’re mundane and unimportant, what good is that?

Today we’ll be talking about an app called Eisenpower, that incorporates a method to help you prioritize and classify your tasks, in order to realize what’s really important and what isn’t. Interested?

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Urgency Importance Matrix

Eisenhower’s Matrix – via advanTEACH

Did you know 34th President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower had his own productivity method? I didn’t, so I was pretty interested to hear about it. Turns out he marked his tasks by importance and urgency, therefore arranging them into four categories comformed into a matrix, which are the following in order of importance:

• Urgent and Important: Tasks that need to be done right away and that hold relevancy. E.g. Paying urgent bills, delivering timely work.
• Important and Not Urgent: Tasks that could be done later, but that are vital. E.g. email, regular work.
• Urgent and Non-Important: Tasks that demand one’s attention but that might not be relevant to your goals. E.g. phone calls, notifications, etc.
• Not Urgent and Not Important: Everything else that isn’t relevant and does not require immediate attention. E.g. time-wasting work and distractions

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”

President Eisenhower based his method around this quote, and it holds a lot of importance for anyone who wants to start using his matrix.

If we follow through with this quote, Urgent and Important tasks need doing as soon as possible, followed by the Important & Not Urgent tasks. Then we move on to Urgent and Non-Important tasks, which we should not really spend time on, but they do call for attention so it’s best to find an appropriate way to deal with them that does not hinge on our productivity. Lastly, just forget about the Non Important and Non Urgent tasks, your Facebook game invites can wait.

Eisenpower

So the method caught your interest, but how can you start using it in your Mac? That’s where Eisenpower comes in. It’s a Mac app thought around this method, and the way it approaches it is quite simple and understandable.

Categories and Projects

Projects

Projects are the equivalent of a “notebook” or a “list” in other task managers. You can set different projects to keep unrelated tasks from colliding with each other. This way you can have a project for your work and another for things that need to be done at home.

Each project consists of four blocks, each representing a category in the method. By default these are named differently, in order to make tasks more organic and easy to classify. The categories are “Do First”, “Schedule”, “Delegate”, and “Really?!”. Some of those titles are a little misleading, depending on your take on what goes into each category, but they do a good job at explaining the method to a newcomer. If you’re already comfortable with the method, you can specify different labels for your categories in each project.

Tasks

Reminders

As each block is managed like a list, creating an item is easy and intuitive, you just have to select the category where your task will go in, double click it, and start typing its title. Then, you can just leave your tasks there up for completion, or you can interact with them. For example, if a task changes priority, it’s easy to drag them into another category.

There’s also integration with Reminders. You just have to press the bell button next to the title of your tasks to set a reminder with a date and hour, which will immediately be sent to your Reminders app and all of your iCloud synced devices under a previously specified reminders list. Speaking of iCloud, Eisenpower can keep track of all your tasks across multiple Macs. And if you’d like to share a task via email, Twitter, Facebook or iMessage, there’s also functionality for that.

Does It Work?

Worth It?

As always the answer is: it might, depending on how you work. The Eisenhower method is simple to understand, but not to maintain. Debating whether one task is important or urgent and all the other permutations can be demanding and confusing, making the method not as straight-forward at times.

The app Eisenpower is not exclusively bound to this method though, and you could use it to classify tasks in whatever priority you’d like. The ability to rename categories under each different project makes the app quite versatile, giving you the possility to use it as a regular task manager with double organization.

There’s something to the idea of doing only what’s necessary. I’ve heard before that at the beginning of your day you should mark the tasks that if completed, will make you feel succesful at the end of the day. Perhaps using this system to classify all of your daily tasks for a few weeks will help you identify easily what needs doing and which tasks are just mundane and a waste of time.

Conclusion

Eisenpower is a very simple app, and if you’re interested in following the Eisenhower method, it’ll do a fine job at helping you arrange your matrix in your computer. The app itself is quite versatile and it’ll work for more than just the one method. Features like Reminders integration, iCloud syncing and multiple project support make it quite robust, but it never feels overwhelming or complicated.

As far as the method goes, you need to decide what works for you and what doesn’t. Giving this one a try will at least help you realize which tasks in your workflow are important and which ones should be dropped, which is something that other productivity methods don’t even touch. Further than that, this method won’t really help you stay on track while doing those tasks. So if you feel that is something you need, then you might want to look elsewhere.

But what do you think? Have you used this method or any similar ones? Would you be interested in trying it?

Sometimes planning a vacation can be so much work that it feels like more trouble than it’s worth. You’ve got to remember everything to pack — from sunscreen to extra space for souvenirs. You’ve got to budget your money to have a great time but end up broke halfway through your trip. You also should likely plan ahead for where you’ll stop on the way, and how you’ll spend your time so you’ll get the most out of your trip. And you’ll likely end up with ideas for new trips you’ll want to take in the future, and will want to keep up with them as well.

YourtTrip is the app your Mac needs to make this vacation season more fun. It can handle all of this and more, in a newly redesigned interface that makes it better than ever.

YourtTrip usually costs $19.99, but we’ve got 5 copies of the new YourtTrip to giveaway to our readers this week! Just leave a comment below and let us know where you’re planning on traveling this summer to enter our giveaway. Then, share our giveaway post on your favorite social network, and share a link to your post in a new comment below for an extra entry.

We’ll close the giveaway this Friday, May 3rd, so hurry and get your entry in!

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

Reminders are a super way to keep you on track, especially if you can get into a work rut like me and forget there’s an entire world outside of your computer. I don’t just need to be reminded to check my to do list or go to the gym, though. I’ll be typing away and completely forget that it’s time to go home or, perhaps worse, that my laptop is running out of power.

A neat little app to help with all of that remembering, Notifi will create notifications based on your preferences. You tell it what’s important, and it let’s you know when you need to make a move. Notifi isn’t the only app of its kind, though, so can it hold its own?

Noteworthy Notifications

Notifi is accessible from the menu bar, and you’ll want to open its application preferences to get started. That’s where you set up your notifications and toggle on and off the different types of notifications. Every time something on your Mac pings one of the actions you’ve told Notifi to look out for, you’ll get an alert on your Desktop and in Notification Center.

The first in Notifi’s preferences is device notifications, which will let you know when a device connects or disconnects. This didn’t work when I connected my iPhone over USB, but I guess that’s because my phone isn’t a mountable device. This one had limited use for me, because when I connect a mountable disk drive, I don’t need a notification, since I had just mounted the thing myself. Same for when I unmount (dismount?) my devices. But I’m not one to deny another a feature they’ll find useful, and I can always just keep it toggled off.

Notifiy can alert you to your Mac’s low disk space.

The next is the Disk Space tab, which will alert you when available disk space gets below a certain level. Set your disks–you can choose four–with the Choose Device buttons. Then use the sliders to set the low percentage Notifi should be on the look out for. The Battery tab works similarly, in that you’ll set a percentage at which you’ll want Notifi to send up a flare and let you know it’s time to plug your machine in. I try to avoid menu bar clutter and don’t have my battery’s percentage displayed, so I often run the thing way down without realizing it, and this is a neat one to have.

In the Files in Folder tab, choose the folders you want Notifi to monitor. Anytime files are created, modified, or deleted, Notifi will do its job and let you know. As before with the Disk Space tab, Notifi will only monitor four folders, so you’ll want to choose what’s most important to you. The app won’t be peeking into your subfolders either, so if Notifi’s monitoring Documents and a file changes in Documents > Bills, you’re not getting told about it. That’s probably for the best, though, because that could end up being a lot of notifications about stuff you already know. This is used best when put to work monitoring folders that will have a lot of files moving around or being created automatically, and not a lot of folders fit that bill.

Look for changes to files in watched folders.

Time notifications let you set up alarms. You’re kind of hamstrung here, because there are just three types of alarm and you only get one of each. There’s a normal sort of alarm that you can set for any time of day. Type in whatever notification you want, like a reminder to have lunch to take a walk in the afternoon, and it will pop up when it’s time for the alarm to go off. The second alarm sets a recurring notification at whatever interval you’d like, again with your own message. The third will just throw a notification up every hour, if that’s what you’re into.

Set your own alarms with Notifi.

Making Your Notifications Yours

The default notifications for Notifi are alerts. These are different from banner notifications, because alerts have to be acted upon before they’re dismissed. They won’t just go away on their own. You’ll have to click them or they’ll just sit up in your upper right corner literally forever. I ignored mine for a bit, and they started to stack up. This is great if you want to have to do something to your notification, if you don’t just want it to go away, but if you only want a friendly reminder, alerts can be a real pain.

To get banners instead, you’ll have to get into Notifications in System Preferences. From there, find Notifi in the list of apps, and select the kind of notification you want, in this case banner notifications. You can also decide how many notifications you want to appear in Notification Center and whether you want OS X to play a sound when Notifi has something to tell you.

These alert notifications have to be manually dismissed.

It’s probably a good idea to have Notifi launch at login. You can set this pretty easily in the menu bar dropdown, and it’s nice they give it to you right there in the app and don’t make you manually add Notifi to Login Items yourself. You’re definitely going to want to select that Open at Login feature, because if Notifi isn’t running, you won’t get any of your notifications.

Final Thoughts

There are other, more full-featured apps that will give you lots of options and control over your notifications and that can perform other actions, too. Hazel’s one that comes to mind right away, and it’s just great. There’s a whole lot you can do in Hazel that you’re never going to be able to do in Notifi, but Hazel’s going to cost you a lot more, too. And if all you want is a simple heads up when things are popping in your folders or your battery’s getting low, Hazel’s going to be too much app for you, anyway.

Notifi’s good if you just need a reminder every now and then to stretch your legs, plug in your laptop, or check your Downloads for new stuff. I do wish I could add more notifications or different types of notifications, especially in the timed tab. As it is, though, Notifi does have some great features that can really enhance your productivity. If you just want to add some easy notifications to OS X, Notifi is an app to try.

Tired of not being able to find that one document you need, when you need it? You should be. It should be simple to find your documents, no matter where they’re stored. And with doo, our sponsor this week, not finding that one document you need is a thing of the past.

doo is the one app for your documents. It brings together all your documents, wherever you keep them: in folders on your Mac, or in Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, email accounts, and more. It then automatically generates intelligent tags for individual categories such as Companies, Document Types, Filetypes, People, Places and more, to help you quickly sort through your documents. It also seamlessly integrates with scanners and your smartphone’s camera, and uses OCR to let you search for text even if it’s in an image or scan.

doo lets you find your documents wherever you work, with native apps for your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, as well as for Android and Windows 8 devices. It’ll also help you make sure you never lose documents again with its built in backup that’ll let you keep everything organized in the doo cloud with EU-standard security.

doo organizes every document in your personal and business live, giving you a quick and effective start into a paperless life.

Go Get it!

Sound like what you’ve been waiting for? Then why wait any longer? You can download doo for free from the App Store for your Mac and start finding documents quicker then ever. You can get 1Gb of doo cloud backup space for free, then upgrade to doo Premium starting at $4.99/month for 10Gb of storage and more premium features coming soon.

Endless Space is a 4X strategy game in the vein of the Civilization and Masters of Orion series, which means you’re going to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Build a mighty galactic empire by stripmining colonized planets and dominating rival civilizations through military might, diplomacy, or cultural influence.

So does Endless Space stand up against those big names of the 4X genre?

Conquer Everything. Or Don’t.

Choose from among nine unique races, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Some races are more peaceful and solve interspecies conflicts diplomatically, while others are brutal conquerors bent on subjugation through force. If you don’t think any of the alien cultures on offer can quench your thirst for blood or lust for conquest, create your own from scratch.

Evil or good, what will you be?

You begin with a lone planet on the edge of the galaxy, ripe for the colonizing. There are lots of planet types, including jungles planets, sandy desert planets, tundra ice worlds, and barren arid landscapes. Each planet you colonize will add to your resources: food governs population growth, industry controls fast your stuff gets built, dust is your game currency, and science regulates how fast your race figures out new technology. Your options will be pretty limited to begin with, but as you develop technologically and increase your total production, you’ll be able to colonize more and different types of planets.

You’re going to need ships to move around, and they become pretty important pretty quickly. Scout ships help you zip around and find all of the great (and not-so-great) planets to colonize, but they can’t do any of the heavy lifting. As soon as they’ve found a new star system, they’re off to the next. Colonizing ships are the guys that set down roots, but they’re one-time use only, so you’ll want to get on churning those out early on to set up your base of operations. You’ll create warships, too, and these are the ships that will take on pirates or invaders.

Exploit that planet for all it’s worth.

Stay on top of your research, because learning about science and technology is what effectively levels up your skills. Each turn is a year in Endless Space, so if you let your research slide for five turns, you’re five years behind. Don’t expect the bad guys to go easy on you, just because you voluntarily held yourself back. Even in singleplayer mode, the AI is going to keep moving towards galactic domination, whether you keep up or not.

Space Battles

You’re going to have to fight some guys. My favorite part of 4X games is always the bureaucratic stuff, overseeing my government and managing my people. Battling is just that stuff I do in between, and Endless Space hasn’t done a whole lot to make it more exciting than that. There are three stages for battle, long, medium, and melee, and you set all of your commands at the start of the battle. If you’ve correctly predicted how the enemy fleet is going to attack and can successfully counter, you’ll be the victor. If not, it’s a sad day in the galaxy for you.

I’m going to blast some guys.

A big part of combat in Endless Space is making sure your fleet is prepared ahead of time, and that’s going to take some planning. It will likely take several turns to even create one warship, and you’re going to want a bunch if you’ve got more than one colony. You’ll also need to move them into place, usually impossible in one turn, as well. Even in battle, then, Endless Space requires the same forward thinking strategy called for in the rest of the game.

Endless Victory

So how do you win? There are a bunch of different ways, actually. Conquer 75% of the universe. Yeah, so no big deal, right? Remember, even if you’re playing singleplayer, like I was, you’re still swatting alien races back with a stick, so that total conquest may be harder than it sounds. If you can just hang in there, though, you can win by completing all of the research in the science tree. No easy feat, but it doesn’t require the same killer instinct as conquest.

Do your research!

If your people aren’t that brainy, but they’re not that fighty, either, get a bunch of money to win, or just manage to stay alive without going to war a whole lot. There are lots of ways you can hook this thing up, meaning Endless Space doesn’t require a certain play style, and you won’t be penalized for choosing the super benevolent aliens at the beginning.

Final Thoughts

If you like Sid Meier’s Civilization, and you like outer space, well, I have the game for you. Endless Space is going to hit all of your buttons. It’s incredibly involved, and you’ll be quickly drawn into your own world of conquest, subjugation, or diplomacy. Make a galactic civilization and tear the universe apart, or foster harmony amongst your neighbors and broker a peace that will last a thousand years. And then start from scratch and do the opposite, because like any great game, Endless Space also has endless replay value.

Apple’s known for sleek metal+glass gadgets, with clean lines, no stickers, and nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary. It’s also known for software filled with faux linen, leather, felt, candy-colored buttons, and previously, transparency, pinstripes, and brushed metal.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has set itself on a new design course, with plain colors, flat lines, and sharp typography. The new design style, previously called Metro, is a stark departure for Windows’ previous glassy Aero style, or the bubbly plastic XP Bliss style.

Microsoft’s not known for innovating on the UI front, but their recent changes in Windows 8 and their other apps has set off a wave of changes across the industry. Moving away from skeuomorphism, many newer apps like Loren Brichter’s Letterpress and Ulysses III‘s “Pure Mode” have a design that’s reminiscent of the Metro design. And now, with Jony Ive taking over UI design at Apple, many have speculated that OS X 10.9 and iOS 7 will gain a flatter UI with less skeuomorphism than Apple’s known for.

We’re wondering which you prefer. Do you love UIs that look like something real, say, a bookshelf, or does the new Metro text-first design style appeal more to you? We’d love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments below!

Pictured: Microsoft’s Outlook.com calendar web app and Apple’s Calendar.app in OS X Mountain Lion

Archival tools aren’t usually the first thing you’d think of when looking for a cool new app to download. Sure, anyone with a history with PCs likely remembers installing WinZip as one of the first programs on a new computer — and then ignored the “trial over” popups for months after. But today, when you download a zip file in Safari it’s automatically extracted, and most of us aren’t trying to cram as much as possible into 700Mb CDs these days.

But there’s still space for archival tools. If you want to save space on your backups, easily extract archives in formats that Finder doesn’t support, encrypt your archived files, and more, you’ll need a better tool.

That’s what the freshly released Archiver 2.0 does. It’s a simple yet powerful solution to your advanced archive needs.

Compressing Archival Tools Down to the Minimum

Archiver 2 doesn’t look like an advanced app at first launch. It’s tastefully minimal, giving you only a target to drop files. There’s not much more minimal you could get.

It’s what happens next that matters, though. Drag a set of files to Archiver, and it’ll give you the options to compress them as you need, including brand-new tools to shrink images and audio files in your archives to save even more space. Or, drag an archive to the window, and you’ll be able to extract the whole archive, use Quick Look to find the one file you need and only extract it, or convert the archive into a different format and split it if needed. Now that’s a lot of power to pack into such a little app.

Serious Compression

Archiver 2 takes compression seriously, letting you create archives in zip, 7zip, Archiver, and a number of tar variants. You can choose the compression level you want to use: higher levels will get your archive file smaller, but they’ll also take longer to compress. Or, if you need more security, you can encrypt your archives with a password.

Then, sit back, and Archiver will take care of the rest. It’ll make your archives as small as possible — it shrunk our 820Mb test folder down to a 172Mb archive, when Finder’s default compress tool only shrunk it to 278Mb — though it may take longer than get those archives created than the default OS X compression. But that’s ok if space is at a greater premium than time. Once it’s done, you’ll get an option to drag the archive wherever you want, or just close the window and leave it saved in the top folder of the files you compressed.

All together, it’s just 4 steps: drag files into Archiver, hit the Create Archive button, choose the type of compression you want or just run with the last one you used (which is chosen by default), and finally drag your archive to the place you want to save it. Simple.

There’s one more nifty feature: the Archiver format, which lets you pre-compress audio and images in the archive file to make them even smaller. It’ll reduce the quality of the audio and images, but with the medium option you should be fine if space is a priority. And, you can make the files zip compatible so they’ll open on computers without Archiver. It’s not for everyone, but that’s sure a nice feature if you really need to squeeze stuff down as small as possible — though we wouldn’t recommend using it for archiving your files to keep in your backups. It’s best for sharing when quality doesn’t matter quite as much.

…and Expansion

You’ll still need a way to get your files un-archived, and Archiver 2 is great at that too. You can just double-click on any archive file in Finder to un-compress it with Archiver, once it’s set as your default app for archive files, and it’ll un-compress over 28 formats.

But sometimes you don’t want to extract everything: you only need that one specific file. Archiver 2 is great for that too. Just open the app, drag your archive to it, and you can then browse through the files in the archive and even preview them with Quick Look to find exactly what you need. Then, just drag the file out of the archive and onto your desktop or into another folder, and you’re done.

Alternately, you can use Archiver to convert an archaic archival format — like one from the Amiga — to a more standard archive format, or you can split archives into smaller chunks to fit, say, on CDs or DVDs if you have really large archives. Or, if your site or file sharing tool won’t let you upload files over a certain size, you can split archives into that size and then share them individually.

Conclusion

If you’re needing a tool to archive and un-archive files, you can’t go wrong with Archiver 2. It’s simple and fast to use, works great, and makes extracting individual files easier than ever.

Archiver 2 is also on sale this week for its launch, so you can get a copy from the Incredible Bee store for just $16.99, or if you already have a copy of Archiver 1, you can upgrade to v.2 for just $14.99. That makes it quite a good deal if you need to deal with archived files regularly, and want a simpler way to save more space.

Wunderlist has made quite a splash on the to-do list market, with free apps that work and look great on almost every platform. Perhaps it’s not as popular on the Mac thanks to our great selection of todo list apps (hello, OmniFocus, Things, and the rest of the awesome GTD apps on the App Store!).

Over time, Wunderlist has added features to its basic beginnings that make it a contender — nearly — with the top productivity apps. Now, it’s got $4.99/month pro accounts that bring unlimited subtasks, 8 new backgrounds, and (most importantly) task delegation. It’s ready to play in the big leagues now.

If you haven’t tried it in a while, be sure to check out the full article on Web.AppStorm to see how Wunderlist has matured and what it offers today. You just might want to give it another shot.

Continue reading on our full review of Wunderlist Pro at Web.AppStorm…