Category: Mac

Recently out of beta and available for download, Bitcasa has a new Mac client and a new pricing plan. With a base plan of 10GB of free cloud storage, Bitcasa is definitely setting itself up to compete with the big boys.

But what is Bitcasa? If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s an online storage service which offers limitless – or nearly so – storage, online. With a free account, you can use Bitcasa as an online locker for cloud storage of some of your most used files or to share photos, videos, music, or documents with your friends. If you have a paid account, Bitcasa can automatically backup your entire computer. Size isn’t everything, though.

How does Bitcasa compare on speed and usability? We’ll find out!

Getting Started

Let’s assume you’ve gotten a Bitcasa account and have already installed the new Mac app on your computer, because you’re going to need to do both. A free Bitcasa account would have gotten you unlimited storage while the service was in beta, but you’ll still get a respectable 10GB. If that’s not enough, $10/month will get you infinite storage and backup.

If you’re just going to be sharing a few files or want to store documents in the cloud so you have access to them on another machine, that’s super easy, because Bitcasa is right there in the Finder right-click menu. After installation, in the right-click menu there will be a new submenu for Bitcasa. Select Copy This to Bitcasa to get anything into your Bitcasa drive. Choosing Send This To a Friend instead will generate a link to the file on Bitcasa that you can copy, email, or share on Facebook or Twitter, but the file won’t appear in your Bitcasa drive or eat up your 10GB if you have a free account.

Backup your files or share them with Bitcasa.

Click the menu bar icon and select Send Files or Folders to get a drag and drop sharing window. Plop anything you want to share in the upper pane, and you’ll get a link and a share button below. Bitcasa will keep track of your shared files here, but again, anything dropped in this window won’t actually make it into your Bitcasa drive. If you lose the link, you’ve lost the file.

To keep active and consistent backups of folders and files, right-click on the folder, and in the Bitcasa menu, select Mirror This Folder to Bitcasa. Not only will the folder appear in your Bitcasa drive, but any changes you make on your computer will be mirrored on Bitcasa, too. This is perfect for backing up your entire computer if you have unlimited space; just choose to mirror your User folder. If you’ve got a free account, though, this is still a good bet for an active project you’re working on or any folders you need to access from another computer.

Right-click on any file or folder to get the Bitcasa menu.

If you ever want a look-see inside your Bitcasa drive, it will have slapped itself all over the place, so you shouldn’t have far to look. Try the Bitcasa icon on your desktop or in your Finder sidebar (though my install gave me two Bitcasa drives in my sidebar). You can also select Show Bitcasa Infinite Drive or Access Bitcasa on the Web from the menu bar icon. If Bitcasa everywhere you look is too much–it was for me–you can dial it back in the Bitcasa preferences.

Speed vs. Space

Bitcasa isn’t the fastest thing out there, unfortunately. I uploaded the same folders full of files to Bitcasa, Dropbox, and Google Drive, all through their apps for Mac, and Bitcasa was definitely the slowest. I wasn’t doing any scientific speed tests or anything here, just throwing files into my various drives and watching the clock, but Bitcasa’s upload time was about twice as long as Dropbox and significantly slower than Google Drive.

Your Bitcasa drive will appear in your Finder sidebar.

The trade off is all that space. 10GB for free is a lot. I’m only getting half that with Google Drive, and Dropbox starts at 2GB before they start add on space for referrals. If you’re uploading a couple of GB of data at once, you could be here a while, sure, but if you’re just sharing a few pictures or getting a folder of documents mirrored and backed up, you might not even notice that Bitcasa is a bit sluggish.

Your Files in the Cloud

Taking a look at Bitcasa’s web app, it works really well as a photo browser and streaming music app, so if you decided to mirror all of your music or photos to Bitcasa, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. The downside is that everything needs to be in a folder before you upload it. I uploaded several individual music files, photos, and documents, and while they all just sort of fell into my main Bitcasa directory, when I tried to access the music, I found all of the album and artist information had been removed. Bitcasa now thought all of my songs were off of an album called “Getting Started,” which is a tutorial folder Bitcasa slips into your drive when you first sign up.

Similarly, all of my photos had been associated with “Getting Started.” While neither my music nor my photos were actually in the tutorial folder, when I clicked on those media sections of the Bitcasa web app, I would find my uploads buried in a mystery “Getting Started” directory. When I uploaded an entire album in a folder or several photos in their own folder, all of the track information for my music was preserved and my photos stayed together and away from the tutorial. I only tried this out on three or four files at a time, but if you uploaded hundreds of photos, mp3s, or other files, this would cause a huge problem when it comes to managing your files in Bitcasa.

The Bitcasa preferences can help fix some minor annoyances, but not everything is solvable.

Final Thoughts

Bitcasa’s more than a little intrusive, with its multiple drive icons everywhere you look and useful but hard to escape Finder integration. If you’re finding a lot of utility in Bitcasa, you’re going to be happy it’s always there, but if you ever need to uninstall it, you’re not going to be able to just toss the Bitcasa app in your Trash.

No one can argue that 10GB of free storage isn’t great, and while the upload speed isn’t the best, it gets there in the end. If you’re going to be backing up an entire computer, though, you’re probably going to be here for a while. The organization on the web app leaves a lot to be desired and won’t exactly mirror what you’re seeing on your computer, but if you’re aware of that going in, you can prepare for it by making sure everything you upload is in a folder. While Bitcasa hits a few stumbling blocks, it is definitely a great effort at both free and even premium cloud storage.

If you’ve ever wanted a more advanced to-do list app for your Mac, you’re bound to have tried OmniFocus or Things – or both. They’re the two most popular – or at least most talked about – task management apps on the Mac, with a somewhat similar feature set and seemingly equally fanatical fans.

OmniFocus 1 first came out in early 2008, while Things 1 came out in early 2009. Each have received a number of updates over time, and Things just released their second full version last year. OmniFocus 2, on the other hand, is one of the apps we’re anticipating most in 2013.

Both apps sync online, are designed to work with the GTD method, let you schedule tasks and organize things, though in their own manner. They’re really both great apps, though Things shines a bit more right now in the design and ease-of-use department, and OmniFocus is definitely the more geeky and “hackable” of the two.

So, which is your favorite of the two? Or have you foregone both Things and OmniFocus, and spent your GTD dollars on other apps?

For the record, I’m an OmniFocus guy, and can’t wait to get started using OmniFocus 2 😉

Looking for a way to make your Mac’s background a bit more exciting? Then you should give Live Wallpaper, our sponsor this week, a try. It’s been the #2 paid app in the US Mac App Store, and is still the #9 top paid app today, months after getting released.

Live Wallpaper lets your Mac showcase more than just a pretty picture. It lets you see the date, time, weather, and custom text, integrated into a beautiful picture or animated background. It’ll work on multiple monitors, too, giving you a great way to take advantage of your extra screen real estate. Even if you use full-screen apps or spaces on OS X, Live Wallpaper will work just the way you’d expect – like your default OS X wallpaper.

Live Wallpaper includes over 20 themes, with more being released all the time. You can fully customize the themes in Edit mode, changing the background and moving around the time and other objects in the theme. Or, you can download custom themes and talk to other users on the Live Wallpaper forum.

Go Get It!

If you’ve been wanting a simple way to liven up your Mac’s desktop, and make it a bit more useful at the same time, then be sure to try out Live Wallpaper. It’s just $0.99 in the App Store, plenty cheap enough to try out and see if it’s what you need to keep your Mac’s desktop from growing too boring. Plus, it just might be enough to keep you from ever having to switch over to Dashboard again.

In this day and age, we find ourselves surrounded by constant distractions, making focusing on a single task at any given time an increasingly difficult endeavour. Often times, we have to resort to mental hacks and gimmicks to focus on the task at hand… I know I do.

One method I’ve found helps me focus is The Pomodoro Technique. Pomodoro apps are dime a dozen in the App Store, some more complex and feature rich, others such as Tadam, more minimal. I recently took it for a spin. Read on to find out how it faired.

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What It’s All About

The idea behind The Pomodoro Technique is a simple one: divide your tasks into small manageable portions of 25 minutes, aptly named Pomodoros, then follow each Pomodoro with a 3–5 minute break. This keeps you productive while helping you maintaining focus. Tadam is a small menubar app that helps time those Pomodoros.

How It Works

There’s a number of Promodo apps, but Tadam’s strength lies in it’s simplicity. It has few preferences and even fewer buttons. It won’t let you control how many Pomodoros a given task took, or show you a historical record of your completed tasks. However, what it does… it does well and that’s time your Pomodoros while staying out of your way.

Activate Tadam, choose your time and get to work!

Activate the app by either clicking on the menubar icon or the configurable hotkey and you’ll be presented with a popup window where you can input time and press Go. That’s it! Once it’s timing, activating Tadam again will render a different view, now you’ll have access to a disclosure triangle where you can access further options, such as Take a Break, Change Time, Pause, Preferences, etc.

Tadam isn’t a novel app, but it does add a few features that make it somewhat unique. When a timer nears it’s end, the menubar icon will pulsate letting you know time’s almost up. This in essence allows you to allot just a few more minutes to complete the task (this would have been great when doing exams… Just a few more minutes…) When your time does end however, a soothing chime will sound and a modal window appear. Here, once again you can choose to work a little longer or finally take that much deserved break.

Work a little longer or take a break: you decide.

Visual Cues

Tadam is smart about staying out of your way, yet letting you quickly know where you stand. It pulls this trick off with subtle but effective visual cues. When a timer is paused, the menubar icon flashes, whereas when time is almost up, it lightly pulsates. A quick glance at the menubar icon also shows you visually how much time has passed.

Subtle but effective visual cues.

Final Thoughts

While overall a great app, it does have space for improvement. I felt the app could have benefited from more keyboard shortcuts, allowing a user to quickly pause a timer or change time. The developer has promised though that this is coming in a next release along with possibly AppleScript (for those who, akin to myself, like to tinker).

So while it’s not the only app of it’s kind nor is it the cheapest, it’s elegant, functional and does just what is promised on the label:

Simple Pomodoro timer that stays out of
your way and lets you get the work done

This little gem of an app, helped me focus while writing this review.

There’s one major problem with going paperless: everyone keeps sending you paper, and you can’t just tap a “Save to Dropbox” button on paper. You’ve still got to take it digital. Scanners are nothing new, but they’re typically synonymous with bulky all-in-one printers that are clunky and frustrating to use. Unless you’re really dedicated, odds are you’ll never digitalize all the paper you keep around with a traditional scanner.

The Doxie team recently sent me a Doxie One, their newest and simplest scanner, to try out. I’d recently purchased an HP printer+scanner, one that’s nice enough to have built-in wireless AirPrint. It’s no match for the Doxie, though, but then, the Doxie’s still no match for it either.

Here’s why.

Just Doxie It

The Doxie is quite at home in a world of mobile devices

Remember when you first got a smartphone? No matter how bad its camera was (my first took 1.3 megapixel shots), you suddenly were taking pictures all the time. Perhaps that’s not such a great trend, but then, most of us have captured pictures – and saved memories – that we never would have with a point-and-shoot or DSLR, which would end up being left at home more than not.

The Doxie is the scanner that’ll get you scanning in the same way that your phone got you taking pictures. It’s so simple to use, you’ll find it makes sense to scan, say, receipts, greeting cards, business cards, bills, and more. The Doxie One needs to be plugged up, but you’ll likely end up wanting to grab 4 AAA batteries to stick in it instead, so it’ll just work anywhere. And with little effort, you’ll be able to run your daily load paper through it in seconds, and everything will be stored on the included SD card (it comes with a 2Gb SD card, but with little effort you could get a, say, 32Gb SD card for ~$20 and use it instead to store an incredible ton of scans).

Using the Doxie One

The Doxie One (press picture)

The Doxie One I tested scanned a full sheet of paper in literally a few seconds, and the speed difference of scanning on the Doxie versus from my all-in-one printer felt about like the difference of printing a full page from an inkjet versus from a laser printer. The difference is night and day. Rather than putting a document in a flat-bed scanner, starting a scan from your Mac, then making any adjustments to the scanned area before saving the finished scan to your Mac (a process that can take minutes, as we all have experienced), the Doxie literally just takes you putting your document, face-up, into the front slit, and seconds later the scan is saved as a file on the SD card. It’s that simple.

The Doxie works great with a Mac; you can pop the SD card out and stick it in your SD card slot, or connect it via USB, and import the scans just like you would import pictures from your camera. Or, you could use it with the SD card connector for the iPad, making it one of the few scanners that would really work if you’re using an iPad as your main computer.

There’s several Doxie scanners, right now, but the Doxie One is the newest and cheapest – though it still costs $149. With that, you’ll get the scanner and a 2Gb SD card, which you could swap out with an Eye-Fi card to automatically upload your scans over Wifi, if you wanted, and can also add 4 AAA batteries to scan anywhere. It’s small enough that I threw it in my laptop bag with my MacBook Air and charger, and barely noticed the difference. It’s fast, quiet, works great, and is a scanner that doesn’t feel tied to the legacy of computing.

The Doxie App

Then, there’s the Doxie App, a free download that you’ll want to grab to get the most out of Doxie. It gives you a bit of handholding in setting up your Doxie, but odds are you’ll already have scanned documents on your Doxie before you get the app installed. The info is the same as you’ll see in the included pamphlet, so just click through it if you’ve already gotten started scanning.

Setting up the Doxie app

Doxie’s app will then import your scans from your SD card or connected Doxie. You can then select multiple scans to “staple” them together as one file – similar to merging PDFs in Preview – and then can save scans to your Mac or send them to various apps and online services individually or in bulk. The Doxie app is integrated with Messages and AirDrop, which is nice to see. You can do some basic edits to your scans, but for most editing, you’ll likely want to head over to Preview or other apps.

When you save files, or send them to apps, you’ll have some options about how to send them. By default, they’ll be sent as normal images, but if you’re wanting to save your scans so you can easily find what was in those documents, you’ll want to choose to save files as a PDF with OCR. If you want, say, to save your scanned receipts to Dropbox, this is the best way to do it, as you’ll then be able to search from Spotlight or Alfred and find the scans, no matter what you name the files. It’s simple, fast, and while not perfect, it’s a great way to archive your document scans and go paperless.

Use your Doxie shots anywhere

Of course, if you’re saving files to Evernote, you’ll just want to send an image file, since Evernote does its own OCR. Or, if you scanned a photo that you want to tweak in Photoshop, you’ll just want to send the image file, so the defaults are fine. For anything else, head to the settings, where you can add more apps to the Send menu, as well as add integration with online apps such as Dropbox and CloudApp to easily save and share your files online. You’ll find some OCR and image settings as well. It’s not a terribly advanced app, but it’s enough to get the job of simple scanning done in a far less confusing way than the default Print and Scan app.

Doxie, meet the cloud.

If you do get a Doxie One – or if this just makes you start using your printer’s scanner more – then I’d highly recommend checking out Prizmo 2, which we reviewed recently here. The Doxie app’s own OCR is nice, and definitely a great free addition to go along with the scanner, but Prizmo takes it to a whole other level. It supports more languages (including, most recently, Thai), and lets you fine-tune OCR to get the very most text recognition from your documents. But then, that’s if you’re wanting to get archival-quality OCR, and the Doxie is more about just getting everything scanned. And for that, the included app is great.

Prizmo: the perfect Doxie companion

But Then…

As an American citizen living abroad, I often need to copy documents, especially pages from my passport. This week, I again needed to make some copies and mail forms off, and a robust scanner is needed for that. Even after using the Doxie One so much, and beginning to rely on for my scanning needs, the HP all-in-one was the machine for the task, as it could scan something thick, like a passport, and make paper copies without even turning on my Mac. The HP cost less than $100, so it wins the scanner race, hands down.

Right?

Well, not so fast. The Doxie was sitting right beside the HP printer, and it got the true paperless task of the day. For in the passport, I had a residence card that I needed to mail to the immigration office, and I wanted a copy of it for my own records. In less time than the HP made a paper copy, I had a digital copy of that important slip of paper saved on the Doxie’s SD card. Without turning on the Mac, or running any apps. It just worked.

Will the Doxie replace all-in-ones? No, not yet. But it’d sure make me far more confident of getting a printer – say, a compact laser printer – that didn’t include a scanner. And even with an all-in-one, I still think many would choose to do most of their scanning from a Doxie, because it’s quick, 1 step, and just works. It’d become your scanner of choice, even if not the technically best scanner, just like your phone became your camera of choice.

The Doxie One’s the cheapest standalone Doxie yet, and if you’re looking into buying a new scanner, it’s definitely the one I’d recommend checking into first. It’ll likely be the first scanner you really use daily.

When I first discovered Markdown and shortly thereafter MultiMarkdown, I instantly fell in love. Almost overnight writing workflows and tools were transfigured. They became more streamlined and ubiquitous.

Therefore, when news surfaced that Fletcher Penny was readying the release of MultiMarkdown Composer 2, I was antsy to get my hands on it. The wait was a long one… but well worth it!

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Look And Feel.

MultiMarkdown Composer in all its glory.

When starting Composer for the very first time, you’ll be greeted with a view very similar to that what we’ve come to expect from this type of application: a main window split vertically, showing both editor and preview. The similarities to other editors, however, end there.

Composer also has three HUDs that provide additional information and functionality:

• Information HUD – Shows word, character and line counts, either for the entire document or selected text
• References HUD – Holds the various reference entries found in your document (links, images, footnotes, etc.). You can search for a reference entry and double clicking or dragging an entry to the editor window will insert it into your document
• Table Of Contents HUD – Holds a live outline of your document, which can easily be searched and navigated (clicking on an entry will navigate both editor and preview to that section). Additionally, you can drag and drop entries in your TOC to rearrange the document structure. As is the case with the References HUD, dragging and entry into the editor window will create a link to that section of the document.

A view of all HUDS showing a TOC entry being dragged.

Style It.

Composer has a rather powerful syntax highlighter under its hood which can be fully customised by means of Styles. Although the bundled styles aren’t very appealing in my opinion, it’s easy enough to fashion one to your taste. If however that isn’t your thing, styles from other users are starting to surface already.

The style I’m using can be found here.

Smart Editing Features.

Unlike most other text editors, where MultiMarkdown seems to be an afterthought, Composer was designed with it in mind. This becomes immediately apparent once you start using it. The app is teeming with clever little features that make editing MultiMarkdown a much smarter affair.

To aid you in getting your words down as efficiently as possible, Composer will autocomplete pairs for you as well as automatically format lists, code blocks and block quotes. You can also just as easily toggle between list types with a single keystroke.

Magic Tables.

Tables in Composer are truly smart and working with them is – dare I say – a sheer joy. Start your table, type a header, hit tab and immediately a new | is inserted for you. Once you’ve entered all your headers, hit enter and Composer will complete the alignment row and place your cursor in the first cell. If the cell contents grow wider than the header then the app will shift everything so that it remains neatly aligned and readable.

Tables as seen in Byword (top) and Composer(bottom).

The magic doesn’t stop here though. Composer allows you to paste tab separated values as either a table or table rows. This means you can easily copy a content from a Spreadsheet app, paste it as a table and Composer will format it correctly.

Lists Are Fun Too.

Creating lists is just as easy and magical. Either select some text that is already on your page and hit ??L turning that text into a list item. Hit that very same key combo and it will toggle list type. As happens with many other apps, when you move on to the next line, Composer will continue the list for you. Additionally, you can paste any text as a list, either bulleted or enumerated.

Other Smart Tidbits.

Besides the already mentioned options, you also have Paste As Blockquote. Selecting some text and hitting ??B or ??I will turn the text Bold or Italic respectively. Creating a Markdown formatted link is a simple matter of selecting text and pasting a URL.

Before and After Cleaning Selected Lists.

Now while Composer is smart enough to aid you in creating properly formatted lists, tables and metadata, you may have some legacy text where that isn’t the case. Selecting that text and choosing Format>Cleanup Selected (List/Table/Metadata) will correct this.

For those that prefer keyboard shortcuts over mousing around, Composer delivers. You can navigate between sections of your document, increase and decrease your selection ranging from word, line, paragraph or entire document and shift text up, down, left and right, all with a few keystrokes.

Import And Export.

Getting text in and out of Composer has clearly received as much thought and attention as did every other aspect of the app. Composer supports most text files (txt, md, mmd, ft, etc.) and additionally opens OPML outline files. When importing an OPML file, each node is a heading section and notes attached to a node are text under that specific section. This is without a doubt one of Composers “killer” features. It just makes it that much easier to get from brainstorm/outline to final text. OPML is also amongst the many export formats that Composer supports, as are MultiMarkdown Text Format, HTML, rtf, LaTex, PDF, Word and OpenOffice Document.

Exporting to PDF relies on Web Preview so you need to have it open in order to export to PDF.

Minor Gripes.

As great as it’s been to work with Composer 2, there are a few minor quirks that I feel need to be ironed out, in order for it to reach awesomeness!

• Automatic Pairs – This s a great feature with a single flaw: when deleting the initial pair, the second remains. I would expect that when deleting the first pair the second be removed as happens in other apps with a similar feature.
• Info HUD – I would have liked to see was smarter info panel with a more consistent behaviour. Currently, metadata and ending # in headings are included in the word count. On the other hand, it doesn’t count the URL part in a link as an extra word (which is correct in my opinion).
• Preview – Live web preview also exhibits inconsistent behaviour when dealing with images. In some cases it shows the image correctly whereas in others it simple shows the dreaded blue question mark.

Preview is inconsistent. Both images are present and named correctly. 

• Exporting – Both exporting to PDF and printing will retain text formatting of the current style which can sometimes lead to strange results (Solarized will render light text on a white document making it almost unreadable). This is not the case when exporting to rtf, doc, fodt or HTML. It would however make more sense to retain style of the preview when exporting to HTML.

Final Thoughts.

As I stated in the beginning of this review, the wait was long but worthwhile. This is without a doubt an essential app to have in your tool belt if you work with MultiMarkdown. With smart editing features and extensive import/export options, it’s a steal at $11.99.

While Macs are more popular than they’ve ever been, Windows computers still form the majority of the market. Many of us, in fact, spend time using both, perhaps a Mac at home while on a PC at work. Working with others means even full time Mac users often needs to exchange files and data with users running Windows.

Fortunately the increased popularity of Macs makes this split environment easier than ever. Many common applications are cross platform and available for both Mac and Windows computers, and open standards and web apps make up for the rest. Let’s look at some apps that make it easier on everyone when working on both Macs and PCs.

Microsoft Office

Word 2011 for Mac interacts very well with files created on the PC.

Love, hate, or just tolerate Microsoft, there is one suite you have little chance of avoiding when exchanging written documents or spreadsheets with Windows users: Microsoft Office. The vast majority of businesses still use Microsoft Office, and most home users are so conditioned to using Office that they’d hardly believe one could use a computer without it. For word processing and spreadsheets, the Microsoft Word and Excel formats are the standard most expect to receive.

Office has been available for both platforms for a long time, and comically Microsoft Office came out for the Mac before Windows even existed. I use both the Windows and Mac versions on a regular basis and rarely run into problems moving even complex documents between the two. My thesis was edited in both platforms interchangeably and I never had a problem. And, if you’re using Apple’s iWork apps, you can work with Office users fairly well, and Microsoft’s Office Web Apps can help out if you really need Microsoft’s apps but don’t have them on your Mac.

Adobe Creative Suite

Photoshop on Mac OS

Adobe products do a wonderful job of working across platforms. Here, the primary platform for the system has historically been the Mac, but the Windows versions of the suite are now equally powerful. I’ve never seen moving Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, or Premiere files between Mac OS and Windows cause a problem with the file. I routinely edit Photoshop files on my MacBook, and later do further work on my PC with no problems.

The Adobe applications also adapt to the environment they run under without losing sacrificing the unique feel of the application and feeling like part of the environment. For graphics work it’s hard to beat the cross platform compatibility and functionality of the Adobe suite. Plus, it’s rather impressive how well Adobe has done making their entire suite of apps work so well on both platforms.

Dropbox

The Dropbox folder. Any files places here will appear on all devices linked to my account. In addition several of these folders are shared with other users.

Dropbox has become ubiquitous for providing synchronized storage among multiple computers. If you have a desktop and laptop, you install Dropbox on both computers and any files placed in the created Dropbox folders will be copied to the other computers. Any changes made to a file on one computer will show up on the other computers.

For collaboration, you can also share a Dropbox folder with another user and anything placed in that folder will be shared with the other person’s Dropbox folder on their computer. Make changes to a file on your computer and it will appear in their computer. And since Dropbox stores previous versions of files when a change occurs, you also have a safety net in case someone accidentally deletes a file or makes a change you’d like to undo. It just works. It’s the cross-platform – or cross-Mac – app that we’d hardly know how to live without.

Faster typing with TextExpander and Breevy

Snippets in a just installed copy of TextExpander.

Smile’s TextExpander software is a well known and much loved way to speed up entering text. It lets you quickly replace a short piece of text with longer and more complex text. For example, instead of typing out your full address you can simply type hhome, press a hotkey, and the shortcut will be replaced with your full address in the correct format. These can also include more complex formatted text and prompts to enter text easing the creation of customizable form emails for example.

TextExpander includes the ability to sync these text replacements, called snippets, between computers using Dropbox. Breevy is a Windows program that provides this text replacement functionality for Windows computers. It contains a wonderful feature for the user of both system in that Breevy can also sync multiple computers using Dropbox. In addition it adds an option to sync with the TextExpander files in Dropbox. To do so, first enable syncing on your Mac computers through Dropbox. Then go to your Breevy computers and enable the Dropbox Sync with the TextExpander compatible option.

Protecting Passwords with Roboform and 1Password

The management of passwords is quite a task for all computer users. Every site wants you to log in to do anything. Security breeches show that using the same if and password for every site is asking for trouble. However, creating a unique login for every site invites the use of simple passwords that are easy to guess or hack.

RoboForm will store the logins and help create unique, secure passwords for every web site that you use.

The solution comes in password management tools. These allow you to remember one password and that passwords protects the individual passwords for the sites you need. You can create unique passwords for every site you need and only have to remember one which makes it easier for that to be a complex and hard to guess password.

There are several good password utilities and most work across platforms. Two that I’ve used are RoboForm and 1Password. Both integrate into the major browsers on each platform such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Safari. They also offer the ability to synchronize through the cloud or through the servers of the company. And, they both have Windows and Mac versions.

Task Management with Wunderlist

At install Wunderlist provides some basic structure for you to enter tasks.

There is no shortage of task management programs for all operating systems, but few allow synchronization of tasks and status across platforms. Wunderlist 2 is my favorite of the ones I’ve tried that do. It looks almost identical on both the Mac and PC and syncs through the company’s servers, allowing you to track tasks no matter which computer you use.

In spite of being free, Wunderlist is a pretty powerful task management tool. It supports reminders, recurring tasks, and subtasks making it easier to track progress on a project consisting of multiple steps. It also includes collaboration and allows you to invite people into your tasks to help.

File Transfer with Cyberduck and FileZilla

While there are many cloud transfer tools, sometimes you have to rely on the old reliable methods to send files to another computer, especially when sending web files to a server. Here you’ll likely be dealing with the secure SFTP or older FTP protocols. These allow easy transfer of files between computers with few problems regardless of the operating systems of the source and destination machines. Whether you’re hosting your own website, or backing up files in Amazon S3, a file transfer app can sure be a handy tool.

Cyberduck allows connecting to almost any service you would want to transfer files between.

Cyberduck is one of the nicest, and is available in the App Store or it can be freely downloaded from the company’s web site. This is a very popular and well written application that supports almost any type of transfer you could ask for. Originally on the Mac, it is now available for both the Mac and Windows. In addition to SFTP and FTP, it allows connections to WebDAV, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Windows Azure, and Rackspace. It supports transfers and synchronizing files between local and remote machines.

Conclusion

The good news is that working on both Mac and Windows is easier than ever. But collaborating on files between Windows and Mac users adds some additional challenges. Using apps that available natively for both systems makes the process much simpler. If that’s not an option then you can make things easier by choosing tools with the most compatibility between them. A final step to make the process smoother is to use a tool such as Dropbox that allows easier sharing and integration on both operating systems.

Presenting The Lifehacker Mac Bundle: 9 Elite apps that will make your Mac unstoppable! Get your hands on TechTool Pro, Path Finder, TextExpander, and 6 other apps valued at over $300 for only $49.99!

Here at AppStorm we’re giving you the chance to win one of three copies of the bundle, read on to find out more!

The Lifehacker Mac Bundle

How to Enter

To enter, simply follow us on Twitter and leave a comment on this post with your username. We’ll choose the winners at random one week from today. Good luck!

With every passing day, online security gets increasingly important. Hardly a day goes by without hearing of a high-level hacking. But unfortunately, far too many people rely on insecure passwords, and reuse those same passwords on all of their online accounts. If one account gets hacked – boom – everything account they have could be easily logged into.

There’s a ton of password managers out there, but for many, they seem too much trouble. They can get rather expensive, and require installing extensions in your browser and more. PassLocker is trying to make password management simpler for everyone with a menubar app that’s incredibly easy to use.

iOS Style, in the Menubar

If you’ve ever been intimidated by more complex password managers, you’ll definitely not feel that way with PassLocker. It’s just about the simplest password manager you could imagine. Setup is a snap: just launch the app, set a 4-digit pin number, then start entering your passwords. You can pick from a handful of popular sites, or just enter the site’s URL, and your username and password, then save. There’s no way to import accounts, so you’ll need to enter all of your accounts, but this app is aimed at those with smaller password management needs so that shouldn’t be too frustrating.

If you’re creating a brand-new account, you can use PassLocker to help you make it more secure. Just make a new account in PassLocker first and click the key icon in the password field to generate a unique new password. Then, copy that password and use it when signing up for the new account. If you’re in the habit of reusing the same password everywhere, this is a great way to start being more secure.

When you’re ready to visit a site, you can search for the account you want, then click on the account name to see its password and click the purple icon to copy it. Alternately, you can click on the Safari-style icon that appears when you hover over the account name to automatically login to that site in Safari, so you won’t have to manually enter your username and paste the password. That’s the best option, though oddly, it only works with Safari, no matter what you have set as your default browser. If you’re a Chrome or Firefox user, you’re out of luck. Also, if you want to check the “Stay logged in” box on your sites, you’ll need enter your account by hand, as PassLocker has no option to check boxes or do anything extra.

Click the gear icon on the bottom right for a few more options, such as changing your pin and backing up or exporting your passwords. There’s also a number of other small options – delaying Autolock to 15 seconds after you leave the app, enabling iCloud sync, and more – that you’ll see with small red-light icons. Red means the setting is turned off, while green means it’s turned on. It’s simple, but perhaps a bit too simplistic, since there’s no way to change much about the app.

Security, Security

On the security side, PassLocker is definitely a great step in the right direction if you’ve been using your browser – or brain – to store all of your passwords. I was very glad to see that the app was set to autolock, so your passwords will be safe even if your computer is unattended, though it’d be nice to have more options than just an instant lock or 15 second delay. It was also good to see that PassLocker can generate passwords, though more options on password length and complexity would be good.

Then, PassLocker uses industry-standard AES-256bit encryption on your passwords, but secures them with just a 4 number pin, which would be rather simple to brute-force hack. PassLocker keeps you from entering the passcode again for 15 seconds if you enter it wrong 3 times in a row, which mitigates that a bit, but it’d be much better to allow longer and more complex passwords for the app itself.

PassLocker, Everywhere

Then, if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can take your PassLocker passwords with you wherever you go with PassLocker for iPhone. The app is almost the exact same as the Mac app, though here, you’ll only be able to copy passwords and paste them into Safari. There’s no simple way to directly login to your sites from PassLocker, and no integrated browser to view sites right in the app. You can add new apps, generate random passwords for new accounts, and everything will stay synced almost instantly thanks to iCloud. And at $1.99, it’s definitely affordable to get the whole PassLocker suite.

Conclusion

Passlocker isn’t 1Password or LastPass, and really, it’s not even gunning for the same space. It’s password management, simplified, designed to make it simpler to keep up with a smaller set of passwords. At $4.99, it seems to be a good middle ground between expensive, full-fledged password management apps, and the alternate, which for many is relying on built-in password storage in the browser.

We hope to see Passlocker come with more options in the future, especially a way to work better with Chrome and options to set longer passphrases. For now, though, if you’ve wanted a simpler and cheaper way to manage your passwords, this might be just what you’re looking for, if you’re a Safari user and aren’t too worked about the potentially less secure short passcodes.

Macs have kept their reputation as the machines of choice for those in creative fields – and hey, why let them take the title away? After all, there’s a ton of creative apps on the Mac that can help you make just about anything you want, and Apple itself has quite the portfolio of pro creative apps that are exclusive to the Mac. Take, for instance, Motion.

The sidekick to Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion is a great and relatively affordable way to make cinematic effects and animations from your Mac. It’s a lot to master, though, if you’re starting out, but that’s where templates come in. Our parent company Envato’s VideoHive marketplace has a ton of great Apple Motion templates that can make it simple to produce high-quality animations in Motion on your Mac. We’ve looked at some great Motion templates here before, and now’s the time for another look at what VideoHive has to offer.

Kinetic Motion

Ever wished you could put together a stunning video with just text animated text that actually looks sharp? From videos that talk about what’s wrong with Windows 8 to well, just about anything you can think of, animated text is a great way to get your point across. And now, it’s easy to make your own animated text video with this template. Tweak the text and colors to suit your needs, and you’ll be ready to go.

Price: $10
Designer: uniquefx

Facebook Timeline

If you run a small business – or even sell Mac apps – you likely use social media for marketing. It’s a great way to reach out to your customers today, and that’s why you’ll see Facebook mentioned so much in ads today. Here’s your way to get a nice Facebook Timeline – that’s up-to-date with Facebook’s style – in your videos and commercials, without having to go to too much trouble.

And hey, you might find other uses for it, too – it’d look pretty nice in a video, say, of your adventures this summer!

Price: $15
Designer: SebicheArgentino

Flipping Cards

Here’s a snazzy way to show off some pictures and text, in an animation that’s reminiscent of a Keynote transition with a lot more 3D. You could build an extended version as a picture gallery, but it’d likely be better as a quick intro or overview to show what’s coming up in your video.

Price: $15
Designer: kicor

Lower Thirds Pack

Need to add in some nice titles and captions on your videos? Whether you’re wanting to add extra commentary, or just let your viewers know who’s talking, adding banners to the bottom of your video can be a helpful addition. They don’t have to look cheesy, either, with this set of nicely animated banners to feature on your videos.

Price: $12
Designer: SebicheArgentino

My Profile

Business cards? That’s so last century. Why not show off your work with a detailed – and animated – video that includes much of the same info as a traditional business card, while showing off your work at the same time? This lovely template makes it simple to do just that.

Price: $20
Designer: SebicheArgentino

The Black Box

For your video, the normal stuff won’t cut it. You don’t want sentimental, and you certainly don’t want cheesy 3D. The Black Box, with its hint of Sci-fi, might be just what you need. It looks like a great way to make an animation ending for a clip about a new action clip, or a teaser of your upcoming app.

Price: $15
Designer: SebicheArgentino

Memories Table

But then, there is the place for nostalgia. And pictures. And sentimental music. Memories Table is a beautifully animated way to pull it all together, perhaps to show off your company’s history – or your children’s summer adventures. Now you’ll be looking forward to more pictures to show off in your next video.

Price: $12
Designer: SebicheArgentino

Photogram

So you like the pictures, eh? Ok, ok: here’s more pictures, this time, with Instagram-style effects. It’s the perfect way to show off your aged – or tweaked-to-look-aged – photos with animation and Ken Burns’ style effects that everyone loves.

Price: $20
Designer: DustBeam

Top 10 Package

Needing to brand all of your videos with a retro-modern look? This is the pack you need. It has the intros, banners, transitions, and more to make your video presentation consistent and modern. Plus, who can argue with sharp-looking Helvetica?

Price: $20
Designer: SebicheArgentino

Polaroid Presentation

Can’t get enough photo templates? Ok, here’s one last one. Polaroid photos have never lost their iconic look, and now you can turn your smartphone and DSLR shots into a beautiful arrangement of Polaroid-style pictures with subtle animations. It’s a beautiful way to show off pictures from any occasion.

Price: $20
Designer: kicor

And a bonus Valentine’s Day special…

Sure, it’s already Valentine’s day, but that doesn’t make it too late for you to make a sweet animation for your sweetheart. Or, you could always use this for an extra special birthday, anniverssary, or any other time you want to say “I Love You!”. Introducing…

Valentine’s Stop Motion

Handwritten notes – and paper airplanes, if you’re to believe Paperman, Disney’s newest animated short – are a great way to show your love. But how about a digital stop-motion note on virtual paper? You know what, that just might do the trick, too. This is a rather cute way to show your love, to your love, in your own animated words.

Price: $15
Designer: SebicheArgentino

Five Things I Love Most About You

That’s not enough? Ok, ok: this year, you want to go all out. That’s why you should tell your love the 5 things (or more) you love most about them. Of course, this template could work rather nicely for quite a few other things, so you could get it for your upcoming social media promo video – and use it for a quick Valentine’s as well!

Price: $15
Designer: Chechogm20

That’s all, folks!

So there you have it, 11 great Apple Motion templates to make it even easier to be creative from your Mac. Do you have a favorite Apple Motion template? If so, we’d love to hear about it below!

There’s two kinds of Mac users: the ones who love the iOS-style simplification that’s come to OS X in recent years, and the older-school Mac users who love the keyboard shortcuts, automation, scripting, terminal, and more that make OS X one of the most powerful – and productive – operating systems on on the market. These two camps seldom find common ground.

When PopClip first came out, I tried it out, but decided I vastly preferred tried-and-true keyboard shortcuts, and uninstalled the trial. It just wasn’t for me, and felt like iOS eye candy compared to what I was used to.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that PopClip is quite the productivity tool these days, one that geeks and everyone else can love. What made the difference? Extensions.

Copy, Paste, and so Much More

PopClip does quite a bit right out of the box

By default, PopClip is very similar to the familiar selection pop-over in iOS. Just select text, or click in a text editing area, and you’ll see the familiar dark popover giving you options to copy or paste text, correct spelling on misspelled words, and define selected words. PopClip has a few extra tricks: it’ll detect links and email addresses and let you open or copy them, and can start a web search for anything you’ve selected. Nothing too amazing, and nothing you couldn’t have already accomplished with a keyboard shortcut or a right-click.

What’s awesome this time is PopClip’s Extensions. Head over there for a minute, and you’ll suddenly see that PopClip is far more than just an iOS-style copy/paste tool. Instead, it could easily be the productivity tool for the Mac that Drafts is for iOS. There’s options to use PopClip to turn selected text into a todo or note in your favorite app, tweet or email it, add it to a calendar appointment, translate it, and much more.

You can turn Markdown text into HTML in one click (rather handy if you like writing in Markdown but your web app – say WordPress – needs HTML formatting). You can call phone numbers with Skype, send links to Instapaper or Pocket, run a terminal command, search tons of different sites, have your Mac speak text out loud, turn a typed-out math problem into its answer … or make your own extension that works just like you want.

Extensions for everyone!

All those extensions could get a bit overwhelming if they all came up at once, but PopClip is smarter than that. It’ll only show the extensions and built-in options that make sense for the text you have selected. A to-do list or note app extension, say, would always show up when you select text, but they wouldn’t show up when you click in a blank text area to paste something. The Skype extension will only show up when you select a phone number (and yes, international numbers work, too), and link-based extensions like Instapaper or the built-in link tool will only show when the text you’ve selected contains a link. For lack of a better term, it just works.

PopClip adapts to what you’re doing

Keeping Things in Control

Now, sadly, there’s a bit of a practical limit to the number of extensions that you can use in PopClip, but that’s not as much of a problem as before since PopClip recently raised the number of extensions to 22. You can organize them right from your menubar, turning off the ones you don’t want to use, and changing accounts on extensions (like Instapaper) that take an account. You can even turn off PopClip temporally if you want, or have it not run automatically in certain apps. But I happen to bet you’ll want to use it in every app once you get used to it. It’s that handy.

As customizable as you like

Conclusion

If there’s anything I love, it’s when an app goes from something I don’t really care about to something that’s an essential part of my workflow. The Alfred Power Pack turned it into an irreplaceable part of my workflow, and now extensions have done the same to PopClip for me. PopClip is definitely something you should check out now.

Best of all, PopClip is part of the Get Things Done promotion on the Mac App Store, and is on sale for just $2.99 through tomorrow. That makes it a great time to go grab a copy if you aren’t already using it. Then, be sure to get some extensions; that’s what really makes PopClip awesome.

There’s a lot of little things you need to keep up with to make sure your business’ bookkeeping is straight. That’s what the new app book’n’keep from the team behind Employment:app is designed for.

book’n’keep is designed to make accounting simpler for the sole enterprise. When you’re working on your own business, the last think you want is to have to spend too much time managing the accounting, when you could be designing new products and giving better service to your customers. That’s why book’n’keep helps you keep track of all of your receivables, payables, payments and assets, store detailed info on your customers and suppliers, keep track of due dates and payments, and more. It’ll even sync via iCloud so all of your data is on all of your Macs!

The bookkeeping app for the sole proprietor

book’n’keep usually costs $29.99 on the Mac App Store, but today we have 3 free copies for our readers. Just comment below and tell us a bit about the business you’ll be managing with book’n’keep if you win the contest, and you’ll be entered for a chance to win! You can also share the giveaway publicly on Facebook, Twitter, or App.net and share a link to your post in a second comment for an extra entry in our giveaway.

We’ll be closing our giveaway on February 20th, 2013, 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.

Recently, I’ve found myself buying less music than at any other point in my life. The rise of “all you can eat” monthly subscriptions to services like Spotify and Rdio have sapped my desire to pay for an album when I can just stream it. When I want a more passive music-listening experience, I opt to have services like Pandora make my listening choices for me. I’ve recently fallen back in love with the seemingly marginalized medium of radio due to the passive listening experience and the skillful curation of knowledgeable DJs who can find great new music for me.

Radium has long been a popular app for listening to internet radio. I’ve been using the private beta of Radium 3 for the past week to listen to the radio on my Mac. How does it stack up to its predecessor and the competition?

Interface

With all of the apps I try out, it seems like my menu bar becomes more bloated every day. Even with Bartender, the fantastic menu bar organizer, I’ve had to be a bit stricter about giving up precious real estate to new apps. Radium lives up there, and unlike many other apps that have a menu bar presence, it doesn’t give you the option to run in the dock. Fortunately, its footprint is small.

The new, dark menu is cleaner than previous versions.

The first thing users of Radium 2 will notice is the cleaner, darker appearance of the drop-down from the icon, (which, for some reason, is a heart rather than a radio). Across the top of the window are controls for playback, a search field, and access to a menu with more options. You can search by station identifiers (those four letters starting with W or K), the frequency, the network (ESPN, CBS, etc.), the genre of music, and just about any other criteria you can think of. A nice touch in the search results is the use of icons to show the category of the station. Unfortunately, these aren’t always completely accurate, as I occasionally saw a sneaker logo (signifying sports) next to my music station, or guitar next to a news station.

The track information in the menu bar is a great touch.

When you find the station you want, the menu bar can be set to display the artist and song. Should you choose, you can also get Mountain Lion notifications to display track changes.

Features

Selecting the gear icon in the drop down reveals how fully-featured Radium 3 truly is. You can set different volume levels for where your music is playing, by controlling your internal speakers as well as your Apple TV (which has taken over for AirPort express in Radium 2).

An optional album art window displays what’s playing.

I liked having the app stay out of the way, but you can also have Radium display album art in a similar manner as Bowtie. Hovering over the window pulls up playback controls, as well as two additional menus. One allows you to view the track in iTunes (or search Google for it), and add it to Radium’s wish list. The other menu includes a variety of sharing options and utilities. You can copy the track information to the clipboard, Tweet the song you’re listening to, love the track on Last.FM, and visit the website of the station.

The options menu shows how much care went into Radium’s many features.

Songs saved to the wish list can be pulled up in the drop down, and selecting them brings you to either iTunes or Google, (depending on whether Radium was able to positively identify the song).

I’ve never been someone who obsesses over audio equalizers, but I like have the option to play with the levels if something doesn’t sound right. By default, Radium automatically adjusts the levels to correspond with what you’re listening to. But if you want to boost the bass on that Top 40 Club Mix, you can bring up the equalizer window and tweak the settings to your ear’s delight. Of course, this feature may be unnecessary in many cases, considering that streaming radio often isn’t exactly high-quality, uncompressed audio.

The equalizer gives audiophiles plenty of control.

Like just about anything else that plays music these days, Radium can Scrobble to Last.FM. It’s a nice feature, but as with any other playlist that you don’t control, it sort of defeats the point of Last.FM if you use the service as it is meant to be used. I like to keep track of what I choose to listen to, but Scrobbling the songs on the radio – which I don’t control – muddles my results. I opted to leave that option un-checked.

I’ve mentioned how well Radium manages to keep a low-profile, and the abundance of shortcuts makes sure it stays that way. Shortcuts can quickly hide and reveal the album art window, your wish list, the equalizer, and your subscriptions. You can control playback, display a notification of the current song, and more, all with complete key customization.

A Few Rough Spots

While Radium’s interface is as slick as it can be and it packs enough features to embarrass other internet radio players, it does have a few areas for improvement.

I loved having the current song information displayed right in the menu bar, but at times, I found that it was a bit slow to update. I got almost a minute into the next song a few times before it updated to what I was currently listening to. The same went for the Mountain Lion Notifications. However, this likely isn’t the developers’ fault so much as the radio stations that are playing.

It would be awesome to get album art in the notifications instead of the app icon.

The Notification Center compatibility is great, but there is no option to use Growl is you prefer to keep it old-school. Additionally, it would great to have the album art show up on the notification banners, though again, the developers are probably hamstrung by OS X limitations here.

Sadly, no Growl options here.

Lastly, having quick access to the songs in iTunes is great, but additional purchasing options would be great for those who like to buy their music from other distributers, such as Amazon.

Conclusion

Many developers fail to successfully find the right balance between a minimalist, uncluttered interface with a full set of features. In this regard, Radium absolutely shines. It is packed to the brim with features without being bloated, and the interface is clean and polished without being too pared-down to be useful.

Internet radio is undoubtedly not going to be everyone’s favorite way to listen to music, especially with the growing options for buying and streaming music. But if you want to listen to your favorite local station from your long-lost hometown or follow your favorite sports talk show, I can’t recommend Radium 3 enough.

Best of all, Radium 3 is 50% off (or just $9.99) until February 19th, so hurry and get a copy before the deal is over!

If Apple keeps up with its new annual OS X release cycle, then we should be expecting to see a new cat roaring on our Macs before the end of 2013. Mountain Lion was released last July, and its claim to fame was bringing more iOS features to OS X. iCloud, Notes, Dictation, Reminders, and more came as a reminder (pun not intended) that iOS was Apple’s more well-known and widely used operating system these days.

There’s little more from iOS we can imagine that Apple would bring to the Mac, aside from Siri and possibly Maps (oh, and iBooks), but there’s quite a few power user features that iOS users are clamoring for in iOS 7. If anything, it seems that Apple needs to bring some Mac features to iOS this year.

That’s not to say there’s nothing for OS X 10.9 to conquer this year. At the very least, I’d love to see a vastly improved iCloud and Messages, perhaps Siri, Maps, and iBooks, and some much needed love for older OS X apps like Automator. It’d also be great to be surprised with some new, OS X only features, stuff to make Macs stand out even more than they already do from the competition – and Apple’s iOS devices. iWork and iLife could desperately use a new upgrade as well, though that’s hardly a core part of OS X.

With Jony Ive the head of Apple’s software design, it’ll be interesting at the very least to see what design changes, if nothing else, show up in the next version of OS X. So what are you hoping to see in the OS X 10.9? It may just be wishing, but we’d sure love to see what you hope to see from Apple this year in the comments below!

So you’re focused working on something, when suddenly you come up with an amazing idea, or think of something that you’d like to remember for later. If you’re anything like me, you feel the need to write it down right then and there before it goes away forever. But, if you follow any sort of productivity discipline, you also don’t want to lose focus on your main task, or get involved with other intricate apps that could take your precious attention.

A simple piece of paper next to your computer might do the trick, but since you’re already working on your computer, why not do it there? Why not have a simple, small note taking app that runs in your menu bar? We’ve got one of those for you today. It’s good, it’s free, and it’s called Noteworthy+. Why don’t we get deeper into it?

Noteworthy+

Noteworthy+

Noteworthy+ lives as a tiny app in your menu bar that functions as a drop-down simple note taking app. It’s a little bit more intricate than most menu bar note-taking apps though, as it supports a neat organization system, formatting, and exporting of all your notes. Best of all, it goes for free on the Mac App Store. Let me explain it better.

How It Works

Noteworthy’s Keyboard Shortcuts

Noteworthy+ is a little bit more elaborate than similar apps to it, which makes the app more complicated to understand, but also increases its functionality. The navigation is a little too knotty and that’s why the app needs a somewhat lengthy (but intuitive) tutorial showcasing everything it can do.

The navigation is broken into 2 parts: notebooks and notes inside those notebooks. The main window of the app shows you a list of all your notebooks, each one being shown with its title along with the number of notes in it.

Clicking on any notebook will switch the view to display a list of all the notes you have saved in that notebook. Each note is easily editable, just click anywhere on the note and your cursor will appear there, ready for your input.

On the bottom-right corner of the window there’s a big button with a square in it. Even though it doesn’t look like it, this is the “back” button. If you are inside the settings or editing your notes inside a notebook, this button will bring you up a level in the navigation.

The Notes System

Notes as Lists

The search bar is the center of operations in the app, as it also works for creating new notes and notebooks. It can be found in both the notes and notebook views, and it’s located on top of your lists, looking as if it were another element in them.

As you type on this search bar, your notebooks or notes below will start being filtered based on your search matches. If you instead want to input your search query as a new note or notebook, you can hit CMD+Enter to submit your new note.

If you are located in the notes view, the sidebar will switch buttons into a format toolbar, which can help you create bullet points, highlight, bold and italicize text, change colors, font size and font. All of these formatting options are something that I found quite useful, since most menu-bar notetaking apps don’t offer such customization for making certain parts of the text stand out.

Where It Fits in Your Workflow

My Evernote

I’m a huge fan of note-taking apps like Evernote, but I have to admit that I don’t always find them easy or fast to use. Evernote is great for organizing everything in a very OCD way, picking tags, inserting images and audio to notes, and finding the right notebook for everything… this is is all great for keeping a big organized collection of all sorts of information, without getting lost in the process.

But there are times when I want to just write something down quickly without having to deal with a big app like Evernote. Sometimes I’ll be writing an article or reading a post, and I’ll remember something that I want to write for later. Bringing up Evernote is just not a very fast process and I find it rather distracting.

Scrawl

I like simple, small note-taking apps like this one or Scrawl, because they’re easily accessible and they don’t require me to take focus out of what I’m doing to make a new note. Then, at the end of the day, I take all of the notes that I gathered in my menu bar app, and organize them in Evernote.

Setbacks

Despite the more organized navigation system of this app versus similar menu bar notes apps, navigating around the app sometimes gets uncomfortable, since keyboard shortcuts are not customizable, and there aren’t enough of them. For example, you can’t go back a level in the navigation with a keyboard shortcut, you have to click the “Back” button, which is also inconveniently located in the bottom of the app. Small details like this make using the app awkward at times, but they’re minor details after all.

Conclusion

I used to be a pretty big fan of Scrawl, which is a similar app, but much smaller and simpler. It doesn’t have a whole lot of features other than letting you create new notes; no format or anything. Eventually, the app got a little bit too buggy and stale, to the point where it no longer fulfilled my needs.

That’s how I found Noteworthy+. It’s way more complex than Scrawl, but its formatting and organizing features don’t make it feel a lot more heavy or slower to use than Scrawl. It’s also a lot more stable (it has never frozen on me, whereas Scrawl freezes up all the time in Mountain Lion), and it goes for one dollar less.

Noteworthy+ may not be a huge organizing app like Evernote is, but for me it fills in where Evernote fails, which is in the simplicity field. But what about you? Do you use note-taking apps at all? And if so, which ones? Let us know in the comments!