Category: Mac

I’m a die-hard fan of Gmail’s web service. I just can’t get myself to work with Mail.app, I’m not used to it and I’d much rather take advantage of Gmail’s labels and filters directly from their web mail. Still, there are a few things that I like about Mail.app, like the notifications for new messages.

Some time ago, I had a menu bar Gmail notifier that solved this problem and worked wonderfully called Notify. Eventually it stopped working and the developer ceased developing it. I started searching for a similar app, but I couldn’t find anything worthwhile. Well, it’s been a while since then and some new alternatives have come out that I’ve found just as good if not better than Notify. Want to check them out?

Conclusion

Running a mobile version of Gmail in your menu bar might not be very convenient for many, and having them provide almost instant notifications of your new emails raises the question of how on earth they do it and if it’s safe at all for your Gmail usage and your system’s memory. Back when MailTab first came out, it had a lot of problems working with Gmail, as it would make it so that your account was limited after a while for “excessive usage”. I’ve also heard people complain about how much of a resource hog these kinds of apps turn out to be.

I’ve been using MailTab for a long time now and I’ve never had any problems with it, not even the old “excessive Gmail usage” thing, as that’s been fixed. The immediacy and great compatibility that these apps provide with Gmail has made them primary in my computer, and I can’t imagine going back to Mail.app or anything like it. Having access to my labels and contacts from Gmail is far too important for me, but how about you? Are you a die-hard Gmail fan as I am? Or do you use Mail.app, Postbox, Sparrow, or anything like that? Let us know in the comments!

The beginning of a new year is always a good time to start new things, especially a journal. Even if you may have fallen a bit behind, it’s never too late to start. I’m just terrible at keeping journals, though, and have lots of lovely books with only the first ten or so pages filled in. I need an app to help me out!

My Wonderful Days is that app, recording everything that happens to me everyday. With reminders and lots of ways to customize my entries, including images, I may just be able to stick to my journal this year.

Record Your Thoughts

Even if you haven’t had a wonderful day, but especially if you have, click the red Today pencil to start a new entry. You’ll get a new blank journal entry, with a prompt up top. The default is “Today is…” and it’s just there to get you going if you’re not sure how to put your thoughts on paper.

There’s a sort of happy meter just below the entry window. If, for instance, you’d been to traffic court that day, you’ll obviously swing that slider all the way to gloomy, but if you got to meet a corgi puppy named Jimmy, you’ll scoot the slider over to positively ecstatic.

Click the camera icon to add images. While your image won’t be visible while you’re editing, My Wonderful Days will show you a thumbnail in the timeline view, and you can browse your journal images, too. You can remind yourself what kind of day it was quickly by clicking the heart and choosing up to two icons to represent your day. The icons are pretty limited, but there are both weather and emotions icons for you to choose from.

If you realize you left something out of an entry after you’ve saved, click the pencil icon to edit your entry. I find it’s easy to forget to set the happiness slider and I usually wait to add pictures until later, so I make good use of the journal edit feature. It really takes the pressure off of having to sit down and write about my entire day all in one go.

The search feature, available by clicking the magnifying glass at the bottom of the timeline drawer, will not only search your journal entries, but it will sort them, too. The timeline obviously keeps everything in chronological order, but the search is where you will find your starred entries. It also sorts your entries by best (or worst) day if you need a pick-me-up.

My Wonderful Preferences

There are some pretty useful settings if you click the gear icon, including iCloud sync. If you have the iOS version of My Wonderful Days, you can sync up your journal entries. I like being able to create and edit my journal entries when I’m away from my computer and still have them show up there when I get home.

My Wonderful Days will set a passcode lock for you if you’re worried about anyone taking a peek at your journal. You can set how long you’ll have to be inactive before the app requires the code. If you forget the code, though, you may end up having to erase all of your entries, so be careful with this feature.

If you’re me and you tend to forget things like journaling, you can set My Wonderful Days to remind you everyday at a specific time. You can also change the prompt you get when you start a new entry, but unfortunately it will always be the starting point you set and won’t cycle through different prompts.

Entry Annoyances

While you can add multiple images to an entry, they aren’t actually visible in the entry itself. You have to open a separate image viewer to see them. I really like having my images attached to the entry and adding more than one image, but I wish they were incorporated into the actual journal entry itself.

My Wonderful Days only lets you have one entry per day, too. If two big things happen in the same day, they have to go in the same entry. I wish I could do an entry for my morning adventure of cooking and finding a lost kitten and then add a second, separate entry for my evening out with friends. As it is now, everything I do in a single day has to be lumped together.

Final Thoughts

This is a nice little journaling app, there’s no question about it. It’s charming, and the interface reinforces a feeling of writing in an actual journal. However, it’s missing some features I want to see, like the ability to have multiple entries in a single day, timestamps on entries, pictures inside the entries themselves, or even the ability to grab location data.

That said, it’s a lot less expensive than an app like Day One that gives you all of that. If you’re not sure you’re ready to commit to daily journaling and don’t want to shell out the bones for a more pricey, albeit feature-rich, app, My Wonderful Days is a nice entry-level model. You’ll get everything you need to keep a daily journal in an experience nice enough that you’ll want to come back everyday, which is all you really need from a journal.

I like anything that can make my workday run more smoothly and remove those little stumbling blocks that slow me down. Continu is just such an app. While you’re watching old episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on YouTube or however else you spend your time on your computer during the day, Continu is working silently in the background. It can either make sure your applications stay open no matter what, whether they crash or you accidentally exit out of an app, and it can open applications when triggered.

How helpful is it really, though? We’ll take a look!

Continue What You Were Doing

I have a few applications that will quit entirely when I hit the red X instead of just closing the window or minimizing the app back to the dock. That’s the sort of thing I expect from older incarnations of Windows, not my trusty OS X, so I end up quitting some of my third-party apps accidentally. To automatically open those applications back up, first open up Continu and click Add Application.

Continu will open up your Applications folder, and you just need to select which app you want to keep open. Choose whether you want the closed app to relaunch in the background, and make sure the app is “enabled” in Continu. If you have an app you rely on but isn’t the most stable of the bunch and unfortunately tends to crash on you, that would be another great one to add to Continu.

Create Application Triggers

When I start work for the day, I tend to open a lot of the same applications, all of which have to stay in my Login Items, Dock, or menu bar, so that I’ll have quick access to them. With Continu, though, I can get rid of a lot of that clutter by using its “parent” feature. If the parent app is open, Continu will open all of the child apps, so I only have to open one or two apps in the morning, and Continu will do the rest. As long as the parent apps stay open, Continu will make sure all of the child apps do, too.

To set up parent apps, add an application to Continu the same as before, but this time take a look below “Launch in Background.” Click Add next to the empty space for a parent; select the parent application that will trigger the child application to open. A parent application can trigger as many other applications to open as you’d like, but the parent itself doesn’t have to be in Continu and can be opened manually.

Another great way to set up parent and child applications is to create workflows. If you have a bunch of apps you always use together, like a video editor, video player, and an uploader, you can set the video editor as the trigger for the other two applications. Any of your triggers can be disabled at any time without removing the app from Continu, should you find you don’t actually need all of those applications open at the same time.

What It’s Missing

Continu works best when it’s running in the background, and you’ll want it to open on login, but unfortunately, that’s not an option in the application preferences. Sometimes you can set an app to open at login by right-clicking on its Dock icon, but Continu only exists in the menu bar and doesn’t have a Dock icon. If you want Continu running in the background all the time, you have to manually open it every time you turn on your computer or add it to your Login Items in System Preferences yourself.

While there is a relatively easy fix for this problem if you add Continu to Login Items, for an app that otherwise works seamlessly in the background, the developer seems to have overlooked something major. The whole point of Continu is that it keeps apps running while you do other stuff; you’re not supposed to have to think about it. It should just work.

Final Thoughts

Continu is one of those applications that tries to scratch that one itch that keeps bugging you, and it does a pretty good job. I do get legitimately annoyed at applications that close when I click the X traffic light, so an app that can spare me some of that annoyance won’t just increase my productivity but may lower my blood pressure, too.

I think the real benefit in Continu comes from setting up workflows via the parent app system, though. Continu can automate opening up all the apps I have to go around clicking when I want to start working on a project, and that really can save me some time in my day.

I wish Continu would open on login, a major oversight on the part of the developer, and I think $3.99 may be a bit steep for what Continu accomplishes, nice though it may be. Hefty price aside, I do like that I can pop Continu into Login Items or open it manually and have all my apps right there. It’s up to you to decide how much it’s worth to you to be saved from the accidental quit and to have all your apps ready to be popped open whenever you trigger them.

You just whipped up an awesome website design in Photoshop and are about to forward it to your developer. But wait: while you could do this, and risk that your design isn’t the most intuitive thing ever, you could also test it without having any past HTML or CSS experience with ClickThru. ClickThru is a Mac app that allows graphic designers to import test designs and create temporary splices. These splices then turn into buttons which make the test site functional. The designer can then test a design in the web browser before sending it off to a client.

Let’s take a look and see how helpful it can be in testing your designs.

Using ClickThru

ClickThru’s a fairly basic app, designed to let you import your images and turn them into a demo site. You’ll first need to add pages to your site by importing jpg, png, or gif files, then use the Compose mode to add buttons, links, and more to your design. Finally, you can preview your site mockup and see how it works together. It’s not that much harder than making a presentation in PowerPoint, and you can even turn your results into a real demo website.

There’s a handful of tools in ClickThru to help you make a demo site. The Button creator is the most important tool, as it’ll let you link parts of your design to other pages, so your design will act like a real site. Along with this, you’ll have a Region Select button, which allow you to select a section of your website design to load different content when you click a button. This tool is great to create, say, an image gallery or Twitter widget on your site. Then, there’s the drop-down option to let you make drop-down menus, which work as buttons to click through to other pages on your design.

Finally, there’s the Inspector button, which will open the settings dialog that lets you set the background color of your document as well as add a transition when navigating between pages. The Document Settings window will also allow you to manually insert buttons, regions and other content manually with coordinates, as well as modify on-click and target settings.

Linking Pages With ClickThru

Once you’ve created a few buttons, regions and a popup menu or two, you can start to link them together. While this may sound complicated, it’s actually quite easy in ClickThru as no code is required. To link a button to another page, simply click into the Select tool and hover over a button you added previously. You should see a small chain link button in the center of the selected region. Simply click on and drag this button to another page which you’ve imported into ClickThru. You can do the same when linking buttons to regions and more. It’s that simple.

Previewing Websites With ClickThru

Now that you have your design spliced and linked, it’s time to test it. You can try out the site in ClickThru’s own Preview mode, or export it as an HTML file and try it out in your browser. If you’ve made a demo mobile site, you can now try out the site directly on your mobile device and see how it feels. For desktop websites, the demo mode in ClickThru should be enough, but the HTML export is a great option to share your design with others.

Verdict

All in all, I think ClickThru is the perfect tool for anyone who would like to quickly test their web designs before sending them off to a client. However, it’s important to keep in mind that even though the created prototype webpage may look and feel like a full website, it isn’t. ClickThru will not allow you to add text boxes or other content to your website, and your website is still basically just linked static images.

That’s why I recommend ClickThru to web designers who need to quickly test designs. At $9.99, it should kill most budgets, and you can try it out for free with ClickThruLite, which lets you create a mockup with up to 5 pages with no HTML export for free.

In 2012, the Mac community lost one of the Mac OS X mail clients that many considered to be the best on the market: Sparrow. Development has stopped (which doesn’t mean you can’t still use this app, though, at least for now) since the team has been acquired by Google.

Some claim that the whole email concept needs a refresh and solutions are offered, and the previously reviewed Mail Pilot and its upcoming Mac client, or the upcoming .Mail app are proof of that. Others still prefer to use web-based apps like the popular Gmail.

I, for one, still think that Mail.app, since its OS X Lion revision, is the best. It’s built-in, offered at no cost, and is completely integrated with OS X. I’ve customized it to fit my needs and developed my own workflow to deal with emails.

In my humble opinion, you should be able to jump into your emails, process them quickly, and then get back to work. A mail client, for me, is just a way to send and receive emails, not a big messy, clunky, filing cabinet with hundreds of manually created and sorted folders. Read on to find out why, in that case, Mail.app is the best for me, even when processing hundreds of incoming messages per day.

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Smart Mailboxes and colored flags

Ever heard about the ‘Inbox Zero’? Ever struggled to achieve it?

I achieve Inbox Zero several times a day. It all depends of what you call your ‘inbox’ and how you deal with it.

I’ve set a simple Smart Mailbox that shows unread emails only. This is what I call my inbox. From now on, unless otherwise explicitely specified, when writing “my inbox”, I will refer to this smart, unread, inbox.

To add a new Smart Mailbox, just select the Mailbox > “New Smart Mailbox…” menu command within Mail.app, and define your conditions in the popup window. This is really similar to how you define a Smart Playlist in iTunes.

Setting up my inbox and using it has a double advantage:

• once I’ve read all emails in my inbox, this inbox is truly empty,
• which forces me to act on every incoming email as soon as I read it, otherwise it will vanish into what your software calls ‘Inbox’ and that I prefer to name “my email archive”.

I have a couple of other Smart Mailboxes set up:

• “Need reply”
• “Follow up”
• Today
• Sent
• VIP
• Trash
• “Not flagged”

For your inspiration, there are also some other Smart Inboxes ideas across the web.

One of the key concepts of my workflow for dealing with hundreds of emails a day is:

When I read an email, I immediately decide about what to do with it.

See below for how I take my decisions.

Don’t be afraid to delete

If a message doesn’t really interest me, neither now nor in the future, I delete it immediately after reading or just “scanning” its content. No regrets.

Reply ASAP

If I need to reply to an email and can do it in a few minutes, I do it right after reading it.

The “Need Reply” Smart Mailbox

If the message needs a longer response, or more information to get or produce before replying to it, I add a blue flag to it. I have set my own keyboard shortcut for this (Option-Cmd-B, B as in ‘blue’), I will explain later how to do it. This instantly both gets it out of my inbox (because it was read) and puts it in my “Need Reply” Smart Mailbox (that has just one condition: message has a blue flag”).

When I’ve taken time to reply, I either unflag the message (Option-Cmd-B again) if I want to keep it (it will then vanish from my “Need Reply” Smart Mailbox but will be kept in my email archive), or I simply delete it.

The “Follow-up” Smart Mailbox

If the message contains information I think I might need in the following hours/days/weeks, I mark it with a green flag (with my own Option-Cmd-V shortcut, V being for “vert” which stands for green in French). All emails with a green flag go to my “Follow-up” Smart Mailbox.

When I feel I don’t need to quickly retrieve the info anymore, I simply unflag the message (with Option-Cmd-V again). Doing so, the message is not in my “Follow-up” Smart Mailbox anymore, but still in my email archive. This way I can retrieve it with a quick search in case I really need it later.

Other Smart Mailboxes

The Today, VIP, Sent, Trash, and “Not flagged” Smart Mailboxes are pretty self-explanatory. I created them just to add them to the Favorites bar and thus have a keyboard access to it. That’s useful because I choose to hide Mail’s side bar to get a cleaner UI (more on this later).

How-to: Create your own keyboard shortcuts

To flag/unflag a message as blue, I’ve set my own keyboard shortcut: Option-Cmd-B. To do this:

1. Go into the Keyboard preference pane of OS X, choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, and select Application Shortcuts at the end of the list on the left.
2. Click on the plus button on the right, and in the dropdown window that appears, choose Mail from the Application dropdown menu.
3. In the text field next to “Menu Title:”, enter the exact name of the command you want to add, for instance Blue if it is the name of the color in the Message > Flag menu command you want to map the shortcut to.
4. Click in the white field next to “Keyboard Shortcut” and press the key combo you want to assign, here Option-Cmd-B.
5. Finally, click the Add button and close the Keyboard preference pane, and you’re done.

The final trick: my previous “Need Action” Smart Mailbox and my new approach

If you carefully read the previous paragraphs, you probably noticed that I describe how to deal with messages that:

• I’m simply not interested in
• I need to reply, now or later
• I want to keep at hand for a given period of time.

But what do I do if the content of the email asks me to do something?

Previously, I had another Smart Mailbox, “Need Action”. I added a red flag (with my own Option-Cmd-R shortcut) to messages asking me to do something. The “Need Action” Smart Mailbox was set to show messages with a red flag.

Over time, I felt that:

1. adding a red flag to messages
2. then review the “Need Action” Smart Mailbox
3. to finally add the actions needed to my to-do list in TaskPaper

was requiring 3 steps, the two first being, in fact, unnecessary. Why not directly adding things to do to TaskPaper?

Fortunately, I found a script for TaskPaper that does exactly what I want: when you run it, “it will make a new entry in the Inbox of Taskpaper with the subject of the email and a URL that points to the email” as its creator explains it.

I even added my own Shift-Cmd-T keyboard shortcut to this script (which is actually run as a Service). So now, when I read an email that requires me to do something, I just press Shift-Cmd-T and it is added to my TaskPaper Inbox.

There is also a variation of this script that also adds a note to your new TaskPaper entry.

With all these considerations in mind, my take home message is:

There is a time for checking for new emails and decide what to do with each new one. There is another time to review your Smart Mailboxes and act on their contained emails.

These are two separate activities and you can do each of it whenever you want/can/need it to.

Just don’t re-read an email several times without doing anything: decide immediately, act on it whenever you can, and you’re done.

UI customization

When I use Mail.app, I get a really fresh and uncluttered UI by doing several modifications to the default UI, all without any third party apps.

Fully using your screen width

I use the new Mail layout, introduced in OS X 10.6 Lion, that takes advantage of the width of recent 16:9 and 16:10 monitors (uncheck “Use classic layout” in the View tab in the Mail Preferences window to achieve this).

I even expand the message list width to make it occupy approximately one fourth to one third of the window.

Showing the ‘Favorites’ bar

To get access to my favorite items from the Message Box list while keeping this list hidden, I add my smart inboxes to the Favorites bar. You can do this by simply dragging and dropping them from the Message Box list.

To make sure the Favorites bar is visible, use Shift-Option-Cmd-H or the View > “Show Favorites Bar” menu command.

By pressing Shift-Cmd-[any number key], the number key corresponding to the order (from left to right) of the favorite you want to access from the Favorites bar, you reach that Favorite directly.

Beware! Cmd-Shift–3 and Cmd-Shift–4 are assignated by OS X to, respectively, capture a full screen screenshot and capture a Selection screenshot. Thus you could get some conflicts with these shortcuts in Mail. But you can still modify the shortcuts for the OS X stock “Grab” application.

Hiding the sidebar

The sidebar (officially named the Message Box list) can be hidden by pressing Shift-Cmd-M or using your mouse to reach the View > “Hide Mailbox List” menu command.

Gmail-like conversations

If you want email messages sent back and forth between you and others being grouped in conversations, as in Gmail, simply select the View > “Organize by Conversation” menu command.

Mail.app as a fullscreen app

You just have to press Ctrl-Cmd-F, or choose the View > “Enter Full Screen” menu command, to get a dedicated screen for Mail.app.

The final result: a cleaner Mail.app

Rules, Data Detectors and Mailbox Search are your best friends

Here are three more things you get with Mail.app that makes managing and processing emails easier:

• Rules can be extremely handy. But my advice is not to use too much rules, otherwise you’ll spend more time dealing with them than actually processing your emails. I’ve set up just one rule that I’ve named “Trash!”. It triggers when I receive messages from specific email addresses that I can’t unsubscribe — or just have not taken the time to unsubscribe from — but don’t interest me. When the rule is triggered, the message is both marked as read and moved to the Trash. Simple.
• Data detectors are a little treasure! Hover your pointer over date/time contained in the message body to show a little box with grey dashed-line borders.
  

  The little grey dashed-line appears when you hover text containing date and time. This indicates Mail has detected some data you can interact with.

  From now on, you can click on the little triangle at the right of the box and you’ll have the opportunity to automatically (magically?) add a new meeting in the OS X built-in Calendar, or Ctrl-click on this triangle for more actions.

  

  Mail has detected that the body of the email message contains some data that refers to an event, so you can add it to your Calendar with just a click. Notice that the subject of the email has also been grabbed and added as the name of the new event.

  It also works with contact info, usually added in the email signature of the sender: hover your pointer over these info and add the info to an existing contact or create a new one with just a click!

  This built-in trick just saves me so much time! I haven’t seen any other email client such tighly integrated with Calendar and Contacts on the Mac. This clearly makes Apple’s Mail.app a winner, though I suspect developers of other mail clients can’t have access to these data detectors to implement them in their software, just because Apple does not allow it (yet?).

• Rather than filing the emails I don’t delete into a complicated structure with folders and subfolders, I rely on the Mailbox Search (press Cmd-Option-F to access it, it is located in the upper right of your Mail window). It is really powerful since the Lion update and you can even specify you’re looking for contacts, dates, subjects, and more.

Conclusion

I definitely think Mail.app is one of the best tools to deal with emails on the Mac. Of course, there are other apps but this one is free and tightly integrated with OS X. I have developed my own workflow to deal with emails and I just can’t really use it with other email clients, because they lack multiple colors for flags, smart mailboxes, data detectors and rules.

This does not mean I don’t need a bit more, and, for instance, in the next iterations of Mail.app, I think cloud storage integration would be a real plus: simply drag and drop an item from your Dropbox folder to the body of a message and a share link is automatically created, as you can have if you use Sparrow. That said, it’s not way too hard to upload a file with CloudApp, Droplr, or Dropbox, and then share the link in your email.

What do you think about all of that? Do you use Mail.app? Have you found another email client that fits your need? Feel free to share your thoughts, tips and workflows in the comments below.

Have you ever wanted to share a link or a status update to more than one social networking account? You’d either have to copy and paste your message, or sign up for a social sharing app like Hootsuite or Buffer. I haven’t seen anything similar designed for the Mac until I came across a nifty menu bar app called Crosspost.

Similar to the simplistic Twitter app Wren with a little bit more to offer, Crosspost brings convenient sharing to users who’d post to multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts. It caters to the needs of the Mac social butterfly by enabling “cross-posting” to Twitter and Facebook profiles/pages from the comforts of the menu bar. Simple call out the app from the menu bar, type your message, select the accounts to share to, then click on the blue Post button.

It’s certainly an interesting and straightforward app, but I’m particularly drawn to two unique features that make Crosspost even more convenient: the get from browser feature and the Twitter selector.

Get From Browser

Let’s say you’d like to share an online article to your Twitter and Facebook timelines. You don’t want to go through the same copy-paste process to do this, so Crosspost allows you to share the page by simply retrieving the page’s link from your browser.

Here’s how it works: Click on the Crosspost menu bar app to appear on top of the browser and the page to be shared. Click on the “get from browser” link and the URL of the page will appear inside the body of the composer. If you’re posting to Facebook, Crosspost will automatically create a link preview. You can edit the message further before sending it off.

Twitter Selector

One of the biggest problems I have with social media apps like Hootsuite is having to delete words from the message to make it fit the 140-character count. Although this looks all right on Twitter, the essence of the message is somehow lost when posted to Facebook.

Crosspost’s Twitter selector solves this by highlighting a portion of the message and using it as the alternative content to tweet to your Twitter network/s. Just highlight the lines you’d like to share and click on the tweet selector link. This will tell Crosspost that only these lines are to be shared to your selected Twitter accounts.

It’s Not for Everyone

Though Crosspost has its advantages, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of app. On one hand, social media marketers and active Twitter/Facebook users won’t find Crosspost useful because it lacks the core features needed to maintain social presence. For instance, you can’t schedule messages for the future, or view and respond to interactions and mentions.

On the other hand, users who simply want to share nuggets of interesting content may find Crosspost easy to work with. It’s so accessible, no-nonsense, and self-explanatory that you may not even need to go through the welcome tutorial.

For improvements, I suggest being able to upload and share photos, shorten links, and more social networking services under its umbrella. The developer has planned on including LinkedIn to its list of services, so there’s definitely something to look forward to in the next update.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think of Crosspost? Is this something you would use to update your Twitter and Facebook accounts? Why or why not?

I spend a lot of time on the Hype Machine website, listening to the latest or most popular tracks from some of the best music blogs around the web. Constantly having a webapp open in the background can get in the way, though, especially when I get click happy and close all my open tabs.

What I need is a desktop client, but there’s nothing official out yet. Fortunately, Hypegram is filling the void, allowing me to listen to new music I wouldn’t hear otherwise without fear of my clicking finger running amok. We’ll take a look at how Hypegram stands up to the official web app and see if it’s as cool as the real deal.

Kick up the Jams

The top tab in the sidebar will get you to the most popular tracks on Hype Machine. Click that tab, and Hypegram will give you a track listing, with the most popular at the top. Double-click a track and it will begin playing in the third pane, the music player.

Before you get much further, you should probably log in to Hype Machine by clicking the gear icon at the bottom of the window. If you don’t have a Hype Machine account you can create one or continue without logging in. If you choose to move on without an account, thought, you should know you’re going to be excluded from some of the best features, such as a personalized feed and the ability to return to your favorite songs.

The player controls are pretty obvious, with pause and forward and backward buttons at the bottom. Inside the music player, you can also favorite a track if you want to hear it later or view the blog post the track originated from. Click the newspaper icon to subscribe to the blog on Hype Machine and add it to your music feed. You can also buy the song in iTunes or tweet about it if you want your friends to know you’re listening to really cool, obscure music.

Back in the sidebar you can move on to the Latest tan, which are the tracks most recently posted to various music blogs. From there you have your Loved or favorited tracks and the Subscribed tab, a personalized feed of music from only the blogs you’ve decided to follow. You can also listen to the the music trending on Twitter, but there will be some overlap in that tab and the Popular and Latest tabs.

Pros and Cons

Hypegram doesn’t work exactly like the Hype Machine web app or the official mobile apps. For instance, the other apps let you sort out the remixes (or only listen to remixes) in the Popular and Latest tabs, but there’s no such option in Hypegram. If you’re not in the mood for remixes, too bad, because Hype Machines tends to pipe through a lot of remixes.

I’m really okay with that, though. If I absolutely must have a playlist full of remixes or decide I can’t take one more, I can move to the web app, but I like the simplicity of just turning on the music and then going back to whatever else I was doing. There is a lot happening on the Hype Machine website, so fewer choices and things to fiddle with was nice in Hypegram. This might be a bigger issue for someone else, so I definitely wanted to mention it, but it didn’t hurt my enjoyment of Hypegram.

What did bug me though was how hard it was to subscribe to a blog. I had to hit the subscribe icon in just the right place, and that just right place wasn’t the center of the icon like you might think. I had to open the Hype Machine website to make sure my subscriptions had gone through (mostly not), which sort of defeats the purpose of a desktop app.

This brings me back to Hypegram keeping it simple, I guess. Setting up your feed and getting everything just so needs to be done somewhere else. Hypegram is the app for when all that’s done and you just want to listen to music.

Final Thoughts

I can hear some people asking why they should even bother with Hypegram if it’s so hard to subscribe and you can’t even sort remixes. The Hype Machine web app music player is pretty great. That’s all true, and if you’re doing okay with a music player in a browser tab, you might not need a separate app. But I know I all too often close all my browser tabs, not realizing I’m shutting off my music when I do.

I tend to play music in iTunes for that reason, but Hypegram is solving my problem for me. Hype Machine is special because it’s music I’ve never heard, whereas my iTunes library is played out. With Hypegram I get the best of both worlds, new music discovery in a desktop app that won’t cut off my music when I close all my Chrome tabs.

Hypegram isn’t the same experience as the Hype Machine web app or official mobile apps, but it’s not an official client and wasn’t created by the same people, so it’s going to be different. Despite a few flaws, Hypegram is, however, a great desktop client for accessing the latest music on Hype Machine and all the music in your feed, without forcing you out of your workflow (and constantly reopening tabs).

When you spend most of your work day in front of a Mac’s screen, you develop a system for being productive. Fortunately, there is an abundance of apps available for OS X that fill very specific needs and help keep you and your computer running efficiently. Some of the utilities that I use on a daily basis are rather expensive, such as 1Password.

However, I use dozens of utilities as part of my workflow that cost five bucks or less. Here are some of my favorites.

The Best for $5 or Less

The Best for even Less

Those are my favorite utilities that cost less than five bucks. However, there are a few free utilities that I use so often that I would be willing to pay up to five dollars if the developers ever decided to start charging for them.

And That’s All, Folks!

Those are my favorites. What are your favorite cheap and free utilities?

Porting a physical board game to a digital platform is far from an easy task. The essence of the original game can sometimes be lost in translation as the very fabric the game lies with the board itself. Most major boardgames have been drawn in by the touchscreen revolution to largely tepid reviews. So, how do classic board games translate on traditional point and click devices? Conquist 2 has it nailed.

Strategy games, both digital and physical, have always been my favourite from childhood right through to adulthood. Risk, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires—you name it, I own it. Conquist 2 takes its inspiration directly from Risk whilst daring to best the classic at its own game. Adding its fair share of original content, Conquist has the potential to upstage its ancestor, but how does it fair on OS X?

Nothing is Original

There aren’t many boardgames as famous as Risk, the classic military strategy title with one of the only a handful of instantly recognisable boards in the industry. Such ubiquity can take years to develop, and, in the 21st century, only the most popular have managed to hold onto their fame. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean games need their own fame to reap similar benefits.

Conquist 2 takes inspiration directly from Risk by mimicking the classic’s fundamental features and presented for a digital platform. The similarities are so clear that quick search on the Mac App Store for Risk, in the absence of an official game, shows a prominent Conquist icon. Such association is extremely beneficial for the app’s developers, but that’s not to say it isn’t deserved.

Far from being a straight up copy, Conquist 2 features many original game modes and a unique, beautiful interface far-removed from the aesthetics of Risk. Though it does not possess the same reputation in the gaming world as its predecessor, in terms of quality, Conquist’s developers have managed to match the inherent playability and intensity found in the original, and perhaps raising the bar even higher.

From the Roman Empire to a Giant Octopus

One of the ways Conquist’s developers have managed to distinguish themselves is by utilising the advantages of the digital platform. Without the shackles of a tangible board, they have created eight unique maps with each representing a different strategic challenge; thus preventing the game stagnating and rewarding players with quick reactions and several strategies

Once upon a time I’d create my own alternative maps to shake-up the static Risk board, and, to the annoyance of my friends, many would take several sessions to complete a single game. Thankfully, my poorly drawn DIY skills are no longer required. Each new map has been intricately crafted to present a unique challenge; Atoll, for example, is based upon a complex set of rings with players required to be acutely aware of every avenue of weakness.

One hallmark of a great game is playability; the amount of times it can be played without becoming boring—Draw Something being the obvious precedent. In light of such pitfalls, two new game modes have been added to the game; however, though there is no disputing the levels are entertaining, it must be said that they are very similar and lack any true innovation.

Supplementing the standard World Domination and Secret Mission modes first invented by Risk, the Castle and Colonisation modes require players to conquer every capital to win. With Colonisation mode all troops must start at their respective capitals and advance through territories containing unaffiliated units to capture the enemy capitals requiring a perfect balance between attack and defence.

Alternatively, Castle mode seeks to prevent a domineering force being built and thus limits each territory to holding just ten units. Another stipulation requires the transfer of any remaining troops and territory held by a defeated player to their conqueror. Though in theory the second rule sounds like a good idea, in practice the resulting merger has, in my experience, proven to give an unassailable lead to the player reaping the benefits.

Multiplayer

Ironically, despite the integration of Game Centre, the best way to play Conquist 2 remains with friends—both locally and online. For me, the inherent competitiveness between one’s friends is what makes this style of game so alluring; however, the intensity of gameplay is lost when playing with strangers. Having the option is great, but nothing quite beats the deal brokering, back-stabbing, and the grudge attacks that can seemingly test a friendship’s foundations—until the dust settles and all is forgotten over a cold beverage!

Unfortunately, even if I preferred playing online, the process of connecting to a new game can be quite painstaking. In the era of interconnectivity the game is found wanting. It may be because there aren’t many regular players, but the majority of games I tried to join took several frustrating minutes to connect. Once a game has been connected performance is usually very good with only the occasional game abandoned after competitors leave—most likely from fear.

Given the ineptitude of the online multiplayer, local or single player are the best ways to play the game. There are 30 achievements to complete via Game Centre with many requiring an abundance of luck and a multitude of game wins to notch off the list. If you’re as intense as I about finishing every last aspect of a game, you should get the best value for your money possible.

Interface & Performance

Asides from the difficulties with multiplayer functionality, the rest of the game’s performance is nothing less than impeccable. In my own extensive use I have yet to encounter a single crash and not even a hint of lag. Even with the game settings cranked up to full speed with moves being made thick and fast by multiple CPU opponents, performance is as stable as can be.

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give the interface is that the first time I clicked the game’s awesome icon I didn’t have to consider what I needed to do. Designed in a coherent and easy to navigate style, the interface allows you to jump right into a game with just a few clicks. Featuring bold shapes and distinctive colouring, the overall design of the game is very striking without compromising its simplicity.

The Verdict

The absence of many popular board game titles on the Mac App Store is testament to the ambivalence of developers in bringing ports to the Mac. The platform is not as natural a fit as the iPad, for instance. However, there is definitely a market for such titles if, and only if, they are properly developed. Conquist 2, despite its failures with online gaming, is without doubt one of those games and is perfect for lovers of Risk seeking an alternative, digital edition of the classic.

Todoist—the popular online task management app—recently came out with a Mac desktop app available through the Mac App Store. The app is free, so I gave it a test run. While the app does have a couple of nice features such as a quick add shortcut and a menu bar icon that shows the number of due and overdue tasks, I quickly reverted to using Todoist with Fluid.

In case you haven’t heard, Fluid is a great utility that allows Mac users to turn any web app into a de facto desktop app, or Fluid App. Read on to discover my handy Todoist/Fluid set-up, as well as some other use cases for Fluid.

Getting the Most Out of a Todoist Fluid App

Making a Fluid App is simple. Basically just launch Fluid, type in the URL, name the app, and hit enter. The key to my setup with Todoist is creating two Fluid apps: one with Todoist’s full site, and one with the Todoist mini site. The reasons for this become clear below. Please note that many of the features described require the paid version of Fluid, which goes for $4.99 and can be purchased from the Fluid site.

You can use any image as a Fluid App’s icon. Just drag and drop the image to Fluid’s window during setup.

Todoist Main Site Fluid App

Once you have created a Fluid App with Todoist’s main site there are a few features available in Fluid that will improve your Todoist experience. The most obvious advantages are opening Todoist quickly with spotlight or Alfred, not having to open a browser to use Todoist, and having the newly created app available in OS X’s built in application switcher. I have also found Fluid’s tabs and panels useful. Tabs and panels make it easy to have several different Todoist views open at the same time. For example, I can be mapping out a project in the Todoist app main window, and keep the today list open in a panel window.

Todoist’s minimalist design and simple beauty are enhanced with Fluid’s full screen capabilities. I find myself using Todoist in fullscreen mode quite often because it looks so darn good!

The Todoist Fluid app also displays a notification badge on the app’s icon. For Todoist, the badge displays due and overdue tasks. To my knowledge, there is no way to change what the notification badge displays.

One thing I love about Todoist is that it takes advantage of HTML5 allowing offline access to the app. With the Todoist Fluid app you can still take advantage of Todoist’s offline mode.

Todoist Mini Site Fluid App

Todoist also provides a slimmed down version of the website that does not show the project list unless you click to see it. This slimmed down version of the site is perfect for taking advantage of Fluid’s menu bar feature. Here is how I use the Todoist mini site with Fluid:

1. I created another Fluid app with the Todoist Mini site and named the app Todoist Menu.
2. I then pinned this app to the status bar by clicking on the app name in the menu bar and clicking on Pin to Status Bar. This moves the app to the menu bar.
3. I then added the app to my startup at login list so that the app is always open and I always have quick access to my Todoist tasks.

Because I leave the menu bar app open, it often shows outdated info when I open it. To fix this, I added a userscript I found and it now auto refreshes every 5 minutes, but you can adjust it to your likes. Here’s the script if you’d like to use it:
// ==UserScript==
// @name        Reload
// @namespace   http://fluidapp.com
// @description Refreshes page at given interval
// @include     *
// @author      Todd Ditchendorf
// ==/UserScript==
(function () {
if (window.fluid) {
var delayInSeconds = 30;
setInterval(function () {
window.location.reload()
}, 1000 * delayInSeconds)
}
})();

This setup has worked great for me. I always have quick access to my tasks in the menu bar, but I can also use the full Todoist site like a desktop app when I need it.

Other Uses for Fluid

Of course, Fluid does not work great with just Todoist. In fact, other task management web apps are designed to work with Fluid, including Flow. With Flow’s Fluid app, you will even be able to control the app’s notification badge.

Fluid also works great with Google Apps, especially if you have multiple Gmail accounts because you can create an app for each of your addresses. Imagine having all of your Gmail accounts open at the same time. No more switching between accounts! What a time saver.

What about you? What apps do you use with Fluid? Know of any good userscripts or userstyles for Fluid? Let us know in the comments.

We reviewed an app called Characters back in August. It gives you quick access to a large number of special characters, making it an indispensable tool for web developers, technical writers, and anyone else who needs to go beyond the standard ASCII fare on a regular basis.

But I think the best tool for the job is PopChar X, not Characters, nor OS X’s built-in character viewer (and not any of the many web-based alternatives, either). It nestles itself in the top-left (or right) corner of your menubar, and it has everything you could need. Allow me to explain.

ALL The Characters and Symbols

PopChar X includes every character that Mac OS X supports. Need to write in traditional Chinese? No problem. How about Sinhala, Cherokee, Hebrew, Armenian, Ancient Greek, or even Braille? They’re all in there, along with more arrows and glyphs than you can poke a stick at. The organization is a little different to the built-in character viewer, but you’ll get hundreds of thousands of characters and symbols at your fingertips.

You have characters grouped into five types: Unicode Blocks, Scripts and Symbols, ASCII, MacRoman, or Recent. Each of these divides into appropriate subcategories. You can limit the selection to only characters supported by the current font — every font installed on your computer is available for use — or go with the union of all fonts. This latter option is important for when you’re writing in a standard ASCII-derived (i.e., Latin) font such as Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Lucida Grande, and need something in a more exotic script.

Now let’s take this back to the Characters comparison for a moment. Characters has two modes: Designer and Developer. The former copies the character to the clipboard, while the latter copies the HTML entity. Why? If I’m pulling this tool up with a keyboard shortcut, chances are I want to use the character now.

Insert or Copy, in Any Format

PopChar X inserts the desired version of the symbol when you click on it, while a simple right-click allows copying as HTML, Unicode Decimal/Hex, or Name, and also lets you add it to your favorites or mark all the fonts that contain it. Plus there’s an option to have it always insert or copy in the same font as the foreground text document (provided the character is supported by that font). And designers can play around with font sheets and previews for that little bit of extra convenience. Simple, powerful, straightforward — I love it.

Searching is straightforward, too. Pop the standard character that most resembles your desired symbol into the search box, then choose it from the list. If you hover the mouse over a symbol, you can see its internal name, unicode or HTML entity number, and (where applicable) keyboard shortcut for future reference. If you happen to already know the keyboard macro for the character, like, say Option-Shift-O for the symbol Ø, but need this other data for coding purposes, just type that in and it’ll come up.

Accept No Substitute

So why would I — or anyone else — choose Characters? It’s convenient, sure, but with a limited character set, no insert feature, and no Unicode references, it seems crippled compared to PopChar X. And I hope you’re not so shallow as to dismiss PopChar for its inferior looks — it has everything else, after all, and beauty’s only skin deep, remember.

You pay a lot more for PopChar X than its alternatives — it’s priced at 30 Euros (~$40 USD), compared to just $2.99 for Characters and nothing for most web-based options — but I say it’s worth every penny. There’s no substitute for quality, and, while PopChar X isn’t the prettiest app around, it’s brimming with “how did I ever get things done before?” excellence.

It’s hard to throw a stone without hitting a new to-do list app for the Mac. From Apple’s Reminders app to the new, iPhone inspired apps like Clear to the old, trusty workhorse apps like Omnifocus and Things, there’s a million ways to get things done on your Mac.

The thing is, we all need different things from to-do list apps. I personally used a plain text file (with TaskPaper or any plain text editor) for the longest time to keep track of everything I needed to do, before it became too hard to keep up with the tasks that have deadlines. I then switched to Omnifocus, and rely on it to make sure I don’t miss anything I need to do. I still like using plain text files for to-dos, though, and also have taken to using Clear to keep up with lists of random things that don’t matter as much (say, apps I want to try or movies I want to watch).

There’s far too many to-do list apps to list in a poll, so I thought instead we’d just ask what apps you use to keep up with your todos. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

It used to be that if you needed to capture your screen — be it movies or static images — Snapz Pro X was the only option worth considering. But the screen capture field is a competitive one these days, with the likes of ScreenFlow and Camtasia raising the bar on the video side while LittleSnapper and its many alternatives doing the same for screenshots.

Does Ambrosia’s star utility still shine brightest? Let’s take a look.

Powerful Capturing in a Snap

Snapz Pro X puts OS X’s built-in screen capture tools to shame. With a couple of taps on the keyboard, you can grab screenshots and videos of windows, selections, or the entire display — all customized to your specific needs through the plethora of options.

If you’re just looking to snap a quick screenshot, you might be better off with a simpler tool, however. Snapz Pro X is laden with advanced features that slow down and complicate the process, although the interface has been streamlined to keep this mostly painless. You bring the app up with your hot key of choice, then choose the kind of snap you want — (full) screen, objects, selection, or movie. These are mapped to the numbers on your keyboard, but you can also click the buttons directly.

The screen darkens everywhere except within the dotted-line box that comes up, leaving you free to select the area you want to snap and preview the resulting image before saving it to disk. Unlike most other screenshot utilities, where you snap first and resize/export/watermark/whatever later, you get to change settings on the fly. The floating Screen Settings menu offers all the advanced options you might need, and it includes a Preview button that turns the screen grey and displays only what you’ll be saving in the file.

This preview option is perhaps the most valuable part of the app. You can always check to see exactly what you’re capturing — right down to the thumbnail, coloration, and even compression artifacts on JPEGs — before you hit okay, and the file size at the current settings gets displayed in the bottom-left corner. All of the typical post-capture processing that you’d do normally can be done live, streamlining and simplifying your workflow.

I don’t know of any other app that handles previews so brilliantly. It even shows how a video capture will look at your chosen frame rate, so that you can fine-tune the settings before you start.

Snaps can be sent directly to your printer, attached to a new email, or copied to the clipboard. There’s sadly no cloud support or exporting direct to another app for editing, though. On the plus side, the app handles multiple monitors, spaces, and Retina displays with ease — regardless of whether you’re grabbing screenshots or movies.

Easy Screen Recording

Snapz Pro X is a fine “on the fly” solution for screen recording, with those fantastic Preview options once again proving invaluable. You have three camera modes to choose from: a fixed camera stays locked in place, according to the dimensions and position you set; Smooth Pan follows the cursor with inertia, reacting to its movements as if being pulled by a rope; and Follow Cursor keeps the mouse cursor rigidly centered in the viewing window as it moves around your screen.

This should cover different styles and needs, and I expect the two unfixed camera modes will be of great use for recording tutorial videos at low resolution. File sizes can also be limited by reducing the frame rate, which can be set to any whole number from 1 to 30, or by reducing the scale (you can also scale up as high as 400% of the native resolution). The save dialog at the end of a recording allows your choice of compressor for both audio and video tracks, with all the usual corresponding settings.

The pre-save preview options don’t extend to seeing the impact of compressor choice for movie recordings, as they do on images, which means you’ll have to learn how to balance quality with file size through trial and error. This seems a strange inconsistency, although I expect it’s due to the comparatively large size of movies and the time it takes to encode them.

Missing Features

Perhaps the most glaring omission is that there’s no option to pause your screen recording. This has become a standard feature in screen recording apps, and it really hurts the viability of Snapz Pro X as a screencasting tool. If you are using it for screencasting, make sure you plan thoroughly in advance — or get ready to do some editing in another app afterwards.

You’re also out of luck if you’re looking for webcam support. The app can capture your Mac’s audio and your microphone, but not your iSight camera or any external video sources. This rules out picture-in-picture movies, unless you record the inset video separately and patch it in via an external editor.

The Competition

If you’re really serious about screencasts, check out Camtasia or Screenflow — they offer a far more robust and complete toolset. Purely in terms of making videos of your screen, Snapz Pro X fits between these and QuickTime’s built-in screen recording feature — more powerful than Apple’s utility, but lacking in the fine controls required by screencasting or webcasting pros.

As for direct competitors, Snagit, Voila, Screeny, and Jing all give Snapz Pro X and its ensemble of screen capturing tools a run for its money. Snagit and Jing come from the same developer, TechSmith, with the free Jing offering basic tools for capturing screenshots and screencasts while the paid Snagit leverages its best-in-class reputation on Windows to bring several killer features. In particular, Snagit offers webcam support, an elegant object selection tool, multi-region capture, editing/annotations, and cloud and app sharing.

Voila’s big hooks are that it can capture in exotic shapes (like triangles or freehand); capture an entire web page; and edit, import, organize, and annotate screenshots. It also offers webcam support, FTP uploads, and basic pre-processing. Screeny has the simplest interface of the group, similarly coupled with cloud and webcam support.

All of these apps offer the same features at their core, but none match Snapz Pro X on pre-capture manipulation. The few advanced settings that they do offer — Screeny and Voila have frame-rate options, for instance — are hidden away in separate menus. This makes the design simpler, sure, but the loss in functionality may not be worth it.

Final Thoughts

Snapz Pro X was once the undisputed heavyweight champion of Mac screen capturing, but in recent years it’s fallen on hard times. Snagit, Voila, Sceeny, and Jing all provide compelling alternatives for a lower price. While it’s still the best-in-class all-in-one screen capture utility, Ambrosia have let their star utility fall behind these younger upstarts in several key areas — and it has some catching up to do now.

It’s getting hard to justify that $69 price tag in the face of Screeny and Snagit’s slick design or pairings of more specialized apps such as ScreenFlow (for video) and LittleSnapper (for screenshots). Its best features may be overkill for casual users who just need to capture what’s on the screen, while these dedicated screenshot and screencasting alternatives are more in line with the needs of the high end (with a higher price to match).

If you’re somewhere in the middle, though, Snapz Pro X remains top dog thanks to its powerful pre-production and Live Preview tools.

Pictures capture moments, videos capture time. The former is valuable, yes, but the latter is its parent. Sadly, it’s not realistic for the average person to capture a beautiful sunrise in video that’s as high resolution as a photograph. That’s because not everyone has a Red camera. (For good reason: they’re priced in the tens of thousands, far out of the price range of the average consumer.) However, you can always make a time-lapse: a series of images taken seconds (2–30) apart and then merged to form a beautiful moving picture.

Time-lapses are a fascinating concept, and also one of the best ways to show someone what a scene looks like because you can get a larger aperture and use fancy 10mm lenses. Since it’s captured differently than a video — there are less frames per second — you are able to get a much higher resolution, so you can edit and crop things to your liking. Time-lapses are perfect for constellation movements and you’ve probably seen a lot of them around Vimeo. If you’ve ever wanted to make your own, Sequence may just be the best app for that.

Inspiration

Before we begin, you may be wondering why on earth a making a time-lapse is even the least bit cool. To those folk, I say you browse Vimeo a bit. For some inspiration, or maybe just a bit of fun, here are four of my favorites:

A Quick Introduction to Capturing a Time-lapse

You can skip this section if you have basic knowledge of the time-lapse procedure.

If you have no experience taking pictures for a time-lapse, don’t worry: I’ll explain it to you. It’s actually a very simple process. You will need a DSLR (i.e. Canon T3i) or compact system camera (i.e. Sony NEX–5N), a tripod (the sturdier the better), and an intervalometer for your camera. The intervalometer is required to take a time-lapse simply because it’s impossible for you to time things apart perfectly. If you feel that your camera’s buffer (the time between photos) is enough, feel free to get a regular remote. Just make sure you get the right one for your camera and read some of the reviews on the item before purchasing. You can also leave a comment below with your camera model and I’ll find you a good one.

Once you have the required items, find yourself a scene. This can be anything from, as I said before, the night sky to leaves on a tree to clouds in the sky to a lake’s waves. Just make sure the scene doesn’t require a rapid refresh rate (sports, people, or anything fast-moving), because that’ll yield a choppy and unrealistic video – though of course, some people like this style. If you want to do something like this video (another example), it’s possible but requires a bit of a different technique. (Also, that video uses a tilt-shift effect on every photo for the miniature look.) When you’ve thought up a nice scene, set up your tripod, camera, and remote.

It’s best to use manual for shooting the photos that will make up your time-lapse video. You should never use auto and, if you must, resort to aperture priority (Av or A on your toggle) with a manual ISO. If you leave things to the camera, it will yield very inconsistent images due to the changing scene — no matter where you are. It’s also a very good idea to manually set the white balance so you don’t have to batch process a bunch of overly-warm images.

When you’re all ready for shooting, plug in your intervalometer, set a timer, and begin shooting. The faster the shutter speed, the better. You don’t want a bunch of blurry images that don’t progress nicely as a video. You also don’t want an aperture that doesn’t get everything in focus. Make sure to carefully spend time setting your properties before beginning a shoot.

Importing the Photos

Once you’ve finished capturing life around you, it’s time to import all the photos to your computer. Since there will probably be over 100 (preferably, since that only makes a 4-second video at 25 frames per second), give your computer some time to download the files. I shot my test run in my camera’s RAW format, so it took an extra long amount of time to import, but it gave me more flexibility with pre-time-lapse editing.

Now launch Sequence and drag your folder of photos into it. The app may take a few moments to load things up, depending on how many photos you have, but for me it only took about ten seconds with 120 photos. Once everything is finished, the app waits for you to press play, or hit your spacebar. It will then run through your time-lapse at 25 FPS. You can change this number by clicking the gear beside the numbers in the middle of the screen and typing in what you’d like, or selecting a number from the drop-down menu.

Deflickering and Other Processing

As you watch your time-lapse, you may notice a lot of flickering. That can be caused by your exposure not being set the same for every shot, light in the room changing, or you using auto mode instead of manual on your camera. Regardless of the reason, Sequence has a nifty Deflicker feature. Check the box in the bottom left and the app will quickly take out the flickering in your time-lapse — at least, as much as it can. You’ll notice that things are more ambient than before, and more balanced.

Look at the Deflicker graph to know what parts have spikes (lots of flicker). You can also adjust the amount of deflickering by clicking the gear beside the feature and changing 10 (default) to your preference.

On to additional processing, and a really nice photo browsing feature. To know when you’ve taken a photo, click the gear beside Photos and scroll through the pop-up. There you will find timestamps of each image, which might help you understand why things changed so much between shots. Another way to browse your photos is the main slider, which changes images every click. You can drag it or use your keyboard buttons to navigate. Click the button in the bottom right to view the Exif data on a photo.

Quick Exporting

Everything so far has been very straightforward, and exporting is exactly the same. Just click the play button in the bottom right and you’ll be presented with an export options screen including resolution, encoding type, frame rate, and scaling mode. There’s also a list of presets to make things easier. Alternatively, you can export all the photos (deflickered) and then import them into another tool. That’s all there is to it, and that’s all there really needs to be.

No Support for Adding Audio or Advanced Editing

A lot of people like to add music to their time-lapses, simply because the video is extremely boring without some sound. At the moment, Sequence doesn’t support that sort of editing, or really anything advanced. For $20, that’s sensible. After all, you can perform all the tasks you need to in iMovie after you export the video file. However, there’s one thing that’s easier to do when you process the whole thing in iMovie: panning.

It’s very common to pan the photos in time-lapses since there’s a large 3000+ pixel image available as the source. When you have a lot of these, you can do fun things like zooming, cropping, and navigating around the screen. iMovie does that automatically when you photos for a time-lapse, but Sequence doesn’t have a way to do panning.

I spoke with the developer about both of these outstanding features and he said that the audio may be added in the future. “I want to walk that fine line before it turns into a full non-linear editing system like Final Cut Pro or Premiere,” he said. As for panning and cropping, it’s “definitely on the roadmap”. The developer said that he thinks of Sequence right now as a simple app, and it “might just be a cog in a workflow for professional timelapse photographers working on larger multiscene projects/films, but it should still offer a one-stop solution for simpler straightforward projects.”

A Beautiful Little Tool

Below is a little something I made quickly with Sequence. It’s not much, but it only took a half an hour, whereas most of the time this kind of stuff takes at least a full day.

I had a great experience with Sequence. Not only was it simple and easy to use from the start, there was also a lot of effort put into the nice user interface and the way you go about creating a time-lapse. It was nice to see the minimalism in some areas, with true features in others. Little things like the Deflicker make this app feel more professional than it’s trying to be, and that’s nice to see.

Sequence will be perfect for anyone who wants to quickly compile their latest time-lapse. It doesn’t offer some of the more advanced tools, but for the price it’s a good value. If you’re looking for something more professional, there are tools like Boinx iStopMotion for $49.99. Obviously, the more you pay, the more you get. Would it be best to use Sequence instead of iMovie? Yes, if you’re looking for a quick way to make your time-lapse without dealing with iMovie’s slow processing time. Otherwise, combine them in a productive workflow.

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