Category: Mac

Today, Apple has finally released their latest addition to the OS X family with version 10.8, also known as “Mountain Lion“. This new version brings with it a whole host of improvements, most of which focus on bringing features such as the Notification Center and iCloud from iOS to the Mac. In addition to those new features, 10.8 also includes systemwide refinements, which make the OS feel like what Lion should have been. And, at only $19.99, it’s the most affordable version of OS X yet.

Read on for our in-depth review of Apple’s latest big cat, and a chance to win a free copy of Mountain Lion!

The Default Desktop of OS X Mountain Lion

Notes, Reminders, and Game Center

From left to right: Notes, Game Center, and Reminders

One of the first things you’ll notice about Mountain Lion is the inclusion of some new apps which started their lives on iOS. If you’ve used iOS before, these “new” apps shouldn’t really feel all that “new”. Notes, Reminders, and, Game Center are all nearly identical clones of their iOS counterparts, with a more grown up feel on the Mac desktop.

Notes has received a small feature bump over its iOS counterpart, with the added ability to drag images into a note. You can store the notes you create either locally or sync them with iCloud. Reminders works just like you’d expect, and is even is able to tap into your location (presumably based on your WiFi and IP address) and deliver reminders either when arriving at or leaving a location. Similar to the iOS version of the app, Reminders also lets you set reminders for a specific date and time. Thanks to the addition of the Notification Center, reminders will be pushed to you regardless of whether or not you have the app open.

Since I’ve been testing a pre-release version of Mountain Lion I haven’t been able to test the functionality of Game Center, although it promises to be feature-complete with the iOS version of the service. One notable feature of Game Center is the ability to play against friends on iOS devices. It remains to be seen how well that feature will work, but it seems promising, nonetheless. Unfortunately, these three apps all share a common thread: their ridiculously skeuomorphic design. The Notes app emulates a legal pad, Game Center, a game table, and Reminders is just covered in “leather”. While it’s certainly a step up from some of their more basic skeuomorphic design of the past; these apps would look more at home on a Leapfrog device than my thousand-dollar Macbook.

Notification Center

Viewing an unread notification in Notification Center

The addition of the Notification Center to Mountain Lion is definitely a welcome one addition. Previously, apps would either have to build their own notification system from the ground up or rely upon the assistance of a third party solution such as Growl. Now, end users now have a notification system that is both integrated and easy to use, and developers have one consistent way for their apps to send notifications.

Apps push individual notifications which are display on the screen either for a set time or until the user performs some action such as snoozing or dismissing a reminder. When a timed notification goes away, as with iOS, it can be found within the Notification Center, which is a simple rollup of all notifications that the user has not acted upon. Accessing the Notification Center can be done on a trackpad through a left-to-right swipe with two fingers, or by clicking on it’s icon in the menu bar at the rightmost edge of the screen.  As with most new tools, it will likely take developers some time to integrate the Notification Center API into their apps, but luckily many have already started, and all Apple’s built in apps support the service out of the box. Best of all, with the upcoming Growl 2.0 for Mac, you’ll be able to set your Growl notifications to come into your Notification Center if you’d like.

AirPlay Mirroring

AirPlay Mirroring

Users of the AppleTV have reason to rejoice with the release of Mountain Lion, as it includes the ability to mirror your Mac’s screen to an AppleTV or any other AirPlay receiver. In my testing and in my personal use I found mirroring to be both fast easy to use. Videos from websites such as Hulu and YouTube, as well as those stored locally played without a hitch, with no noticeable sync issues between audio and video. Due to the inherent nature of mirroring technology, there is a slight lag between your mouse movements/ typing and what’s displayed on the AppleTV. That unfortunate problem making anything but the most casual games mostly unplayable.

Users with an AppleTV on the same WiFi network as their Mac will notice an AirPlay icon appear in the menubar; simply click the icon and select your AppleTV to get started. Within seconds, you should see your Mac’s desktop on the big screen. In your Mac’s display settings you can set your screen to match the resolution of your computer’s display or that of the AppleTV. In addition to mirroring your Mac’s display, Apple has also built in the somewhat hidden ability to mirror audio-only. For those who have their AppleTV connected to their home theaters, such as myself, this is an invaluable feature.  The audio-only option can be accessed by Option+clicking on the volume button in the menu bar and selecting “AirPlay” as the output device.

So in case I haven’t been clear: if you’ve got an AppleTV or AirPlay enabled home theater system, the Mountain Lion upgrade is a no-brainer just for AirPlay Mirroring!

Messages

Messages lets you send and receive iMessages on your Mac

Much like the other additions to Mountain Lion, Messages is an addition to the OS that just makes sense. Messages isn’t actually a whole new app; instead, it’s little more than a new skin on iChat, which isn’t a bad thing. Since the release of iMessage in iOS 5, there has been no way send or receive iMessages on the Mac (except for the beta version of Messages for Mac that’s been out for a couple months), and that’s where Messages comes in.

For the most part using Messages with iMessage worked well, except when I’d switch from my iPad to my Mac or visa versa, in which case it would often drop a message or two. Still, I wouldn’t be overly concerned, as Apple is rolling out improvements to iMessage fairly frequently. While iMessages are the flagship addition to the Messages app, it still supports Google Talk, Jabber, Yahoo!, and AIM accounts from it’s previous life as iChat. Messages also sports a new “Conversations” view similar to what you’d see on the iPad, which pulls in conversations from any account you have set up with the app.  Apple also updated the old iChat icon, which was beginning to look a bit long in the tooth, to feature two chat bubbles instead of one. That’s not a big deal, per se, but the little things add up.

iCloud Files

The standard iCloud Files dialog

Calling the iCloud integration in Lion “half baked” would be putting it lightly, but thankfully Apple has completely overhauled the way the OS interfaces with its cloud offering. Still, this new iCloud integration leaves something to be desired. In order to understand why iCloud and the Mac still don’t work all that well together, it’s important to understand how each platform handles files. On the Mac, files are managed by the user into folders and they can be opened by whichever app the user wants. The user can organize the files how they wish. However, most users don’t want to organize their files.

In response, Apple has tried something new with iCloud by tying files into specific applications, essentially eliminating the file system as we know it. That approach works well enough on iOS since there never was a traditional file system visible to users, but on OS X where users are used to Finder, Apple forged a middle-ground, which has proven to be a clunky solution at best. The major improvement to iCloud in Mountain Lion comes in the form of a new dialog box, available only on apps which are designed to support iCloud, allowing the user to upload files to iCloud to use with the app, and to open iCloud documents associated with the app. It’s better than what was available with Lion, but if Apple is serious about iCloud and the way it handles files, Apple is going to need to scrap the finder as we know it. That might be the most scary thing for power users, but for now, you can at least have your favorite Finder features and iCloud’s file features.

Security and the App Store

While the Mac is still by all accounts the safest platform out there (perhaps tied with desktop Linux), Apple has decided to play a preventative game with would-be hackers with the introduction of a technology called Gate Keeper. Much like how iCloud integration in the OS is a compromise between traditional notions of the Mac and Apple’s vision for the future, so too is Gate Keeper. Users have three options to choose from: only allowing apps from the Mac App Store, allowing apps from the App Store as well as apps from identified developers, or apps from anywhere. Apple has made the second option the default, in a compromise between a complete lockdown and complete freedom.

In this humble reviewers opinion, this is a great solution for Apple: if you don’t know how to change the security setting, than you probably shouldn’t be messing around with it. Now some would suggest that this is the first step towards a compete iOS-style lockdown of OS X, but the reality is that neither I, nor anybody else outside of Apple knows what the next version of OS X will bring. All that matters, is that for now, power users only need check a box to regain full control. And, since developers can signup to with Apple for free to sign their apps to pass Gate Keeper, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for most users for now.

Sharing

Adding a Flickr account through System Preferences

Another nice addition to OS X Mountain Lion is enhanced sharing capabilities. From the “Mail, Contacts & Calendars” screen in System Preferences, users can now set up Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo accounts with the OS. These accounts can be accessed from any app designed to take advantage of the new sharing APIs. Twitter and Facebook accounts will also automatically sync with your contacts to link profiles as well as import contact pictures. Moreover, certain accounts such as Twitter and Facebook are integrated into the Notification Center, allowing you to view you latest notifications from the services as well as post updates to them. Clicking on a Twitter notification, for example, bounces you out to Safari and the web version of Twitter. That may be annoying, though, if you’d rather use a 3rd party app with the social network.

In addition to sharing from individual apps, right clicking on a file in Finder now also shows a menu that allows the user to share to any service the file type supports. The big issue with Sharing in Mountain Lion, though, is it’s walled-garden approach to sharing services. Developers can’t add their services to the sharing menu, making it only useful for those who use the services Apple has anointed. Bottom line: no 500px support just yet.

Note: Facebook support will be released to the public “this fall”, according to Apple.

Dictation

Dictation in OS X Mountain Lion

Although Mountain Lion doesn’t have full  Siri capabilities, Apple has decided to share it’s dictation technology with the Mac. Even though I still prefer typing, I have to hand it to Apple on this one: dictation was quick and accurate. This is a pretty major addition to OS X, especially considering its only competitor, Dragon Dictation, costs $200. Of course, it’s not as feature complete as Dragon, but for typing an email, essay, or blog post, you can’t really ask for much more. Since it’s integrated at a system level, any standard text box in any app can be dictated into. By default, dictation is triggered by pressing the “Fn” key twice, but the shortcut can be changed from System Preferences. As with any dictation technology, it does make some mistakes, and it works better in a quiet room with a good microphone. Overall, this is really a hidden gem in OS X.

Refinements

The new dock in OS X Mountain Lion

In addition to all the aforementioned features, OS X Mountain Lion includes system-wide refinements for just about every app. After installing the OS on my computer, everything just seemed to work a little bit better. Those who upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard will know what I’m talking about, here; the small changes across the board are what makes it nearly impossible for me to go back and use a computer without Mountain Lion. Below, I’ve listed some changes Apple has made to the OS which don’t warrant their own section, but are definitely worth noting.

• Safari – The default browser on Mountain Lion has been upgraded to version 6. This new version includes support for the built-in Sharing feature, a unified search and URL bar, tab syncing via iCloud, as well as a new tab view.
• Updates – Gone is the old “Software Update” application. It’s been replaced by the App Store, which now handles all software updates, including updates to the operating system itself.
• Launchpad – There’s now a search bar for applications in Launchpad. It seems a bit unnecessary, as the Mac already has universal search via Spotlight, but I guess this has less of a learning curve for new users.
• Displays – Instead of showing all display resolutions within the “Displays” section of System Preferences, OS X now shows two options “Best for display”, the native resolution, and “Scaled”, which shows all possible resolutions.
• Appearance – The New OS also has a new dock, which is styled after frosted glass. It’s subtle, and less “in-your-face” with reflections than previous iteration of the dock. There are also a host of new desktop backgrounds for you to choose from.
• App Store & iTunes – You can now navigate  through the App Store and iTunes Store using two finger swipes on the trackpad.
• Power Nap – If you have a Macbook with flash storage, it can now sleep while updating Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Notes, Photo Stream, Find My Mac, and Documents in the Cloud. When connected to a power source, it downloads software updates and backups with Time Machine, all while sleeping. No rest for weary lions.
• China – OS X now supports a host of Chinese-centric services. As I can’t read or speak Chinese, I haven’t been able to test these features, but if you use Chinese on your Mac we’d love to hear your thoughts on the new Chinese integrations.
• Contacts – The Address Book has been renamed to Contacts.
• Calendar – iCal has been renamed to Calendar.
• Mail – You can now mark senders as “VIPs” to prioritize their emails.

Upgrading

While Mountain Lion is the cheapest version of OS X yet, Apple has increased its minimum required hardware specs, so you’ll need a relatively new system to make the switch. If you’ve got an original Macbook Air, a pre-2007 iMac or Mac Mini or a pre-2008 Macbook, you’re out of luck. Similarly, users of a Mac with Intel GMA 950, Intel x3100, or ATI Radeon X1600 graphics will all be left behind.

If you’re unsure if your Mac meets those minimum requirements, be sure to check using the “System Information” (previously known as “System Profiler”) app installed on your computer. If you’ve got the proper hardware, and are ready to perform the upgrade, simply open up the App Store on your Mac and search for “Mountain Lion”, or just click this link to open it directly. As with any operating system upgrade, it’s always a good idea to back up your Mac before making the switch.

If you purchased a new Mac from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 11, 2012, you’re eligible for a free upgrade to version 10.8. Visit Apple’s website for more information.

Conclusion

Mountain Lion is the latest and greatest version of OS X. With the looming competition from Windows 8, Apple has proven their readiness to compete by again, improving upon what was already a great product. While Microsoft is pushing their entire ecosystem towards a touch-centric interface, Apple brought elements of iOS from the iPad back to the Mac, made everything work great with their amazing touchpads, and kept OS X a powerful operating system for everyone, power users and newbies alike. And, at only $20, nearly everyone will find a reason or two to upgrade.

Mountain Lion is more than just another software update, though: it’s a clear indication that Apple is moving to the cloud. The future of OS X will be forged on the back of iCloud, and Mountain Lion is another step in that journey. Make no mistake; iCloud is far more than a simple syncing tool, and with the deep integration we’re seeing in Mountain Lion, it’s obvious that Apple considers iCloud a crucial part of its software strategy.

One More Thing…

Didn’t we say you could have a chance to get a free copy of OS X Mountain Lion? Of course we did! If you want the latest and greatest version of OS X, but want to get it for free, and don’t mind waiting to get it until the weekend, here’s your chance. We’re giving away 3 copies of Mountain Lion, and one could be running on your Mac this weekend.

As with most of our giveaways, all you have to do is click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet and your thoughts about Mountain Lion or the features you’re most excited about.

We’ll announce the winners at 8AM CST Saturday, July 28th, so hurry and get your entry in today! Or, if you can’t wait, just head over to the App Store and upgrade, then tell us what you like best about the latest version of OS X!

Prize will be giving in the form of $20 App Store credit. We’d love to see a screenshot of your newly upgraded Mac if you win. Envato staff or people who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm, or existing users of Ronin, however, are ineligible to enter.

The summer is drawing to a close for many and the summer vacation season is also near the end. The need to share all of your great vacation photos with your family and friends is becoming more apparent and now is the time to do it. You could of course just email all of your photos to family, but that would be cumbersome and boring. While there are many online photo sharing websites, you might like something with a little more flare. Hoping to bring that little something extra is Photo Album by FlippingBook.

Photo Album allows you to transform your photos into sharable photo albums. The goal of Photo Album is simplicity and ease of use, but does it live up to that expectation? That’s what we’re here to see.

The Basics

Photo Album by FlippingBook allows you to create photo albums using predesigned templates and share them through the Albm.com service. Photo Album uses the Albm.com service to add the upload and sharing functionality. You can download it for free from the Mac App Store, and if you decide you like it enough to go pro, you can buy their extended version for $19.99 as a separate download. The free app comes with 100 pages for your albums free, which should be more than sufficient for most needs. The pro version is where the shine starts to disappear, as it gives you 300 pages per year, and you then have to purchase more pages in-app, an unheard of restriction on standard Mac apps. The only good thing is, the pro version also gives you printing, pdf support, extra included themes, and other features, so it still might be of interest.

Getting Started

Getting started with Photo Album first requires that you sign up for the Albm.com companion service. Signing up for this service is pretty much required if you want to take full advantage of the upload features of Photo Album; the app is designed simply to let you create albums that you upload to their service, though with the pro version you can print albums or save them as PDF and use them elsewhere. Even then, you’ll still have to register for Albm.com before you can get started making an app, even if you intend to print it or save it as a PDF.

ALBM.com Signup

After you sign up for the Albm.com service, you will need to create a new album and name it. You will also need to choose a theme for your album as well. Once you have created your album, it is time to drop in your favorite photos at last.

New Album

Features

At the core of Photo Album is the ability to take a few of your photos and turn them into somewhat mediocre photo albums that you can share via the proprietary Albm.com service. Besides that core feature, you actually can’t do much with Photo Album.

Photo Album comes with several themes that range from nice to down right cheesy. The good thing is that they have a “Theme shop” which contains more themes that thankfully are designed to an obviously higher standard. Those themes, of course, will cost you extra money. The “Theme Shop” uses in app purchases for those on Lion and you can manually use a credit card on Snow Leopard.

Theme Shop

You can also make minor adjustments to the theme that is set to the pages. Once you click the edit button, you can choose between a set of very limited arrangements for your page.

Layout Preview

You can also scale and move your images so that you can get just the right fit inside the frame.

Photo Adjustments

There are no sharing options available inside the app; you must use the Albm.com service to do any sort of sharing. With the service, you can embed the html into a website or blog. You can also use your public album link to share on Twitter or by email. Sharing via Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn is also possible via the service.

Interface & Design

The interface of Photo Album is questionable at best. Many of the features are layered behind hidden buttons and menus. With these features so hidden, you do not even know you have the option to scale a photo or edit the layout of a page. Also the design is a heaping helping of the latest trend, hardwoods, linen, and traditional Aqua elements. Mixing the linen with hardwoods and adding in your traditional Aqua elements is very disorienting. There is no cohesiveness in the design and it leaves much to be desired.

Interface

Since you really cannot use Photo Album without reluctantly signing up for the Albm.com companion service, I will dive into the design of it as well. The design of the web interface is not bad and it is cohesive. The photo album is presented in a nice way by making it front and center. Overall, it is a good effort.

Albm.com Interface

The Verdict

If I had to sum up my experience with Photo Album by FlippingBook in one word, that word would be disappointing. I feel this app is all wrong. To get any functionality out of Photo Album, you must sign up for the Albm.com service which is proprietary and does not have easily set security features, which makes me uncomfortable to place my personal family photos on the site. Even if you dislike the Albm.com web service, you have no choice but to use it. The included themes are pretty lackluster and some even verge on cheesy. The design is haphazard and in-cohesive and also includes a healthy assortment of well-hidden features and buttons to confuse the user. Photo Album goes against easy and simple and verges on downright upsetting. Out of 10, Photo Album gets a 5. There are too many areas of improvement that I could not possibly list them all, but I would start with giving the app functionality without the web service.

What is your favorite Mac photo book app? Do you agree with my review? I certainly want to know exactly what you feel, so comment below and get the conversation going!

Editor’s Note: We typically would only publish reviews of apps we’d actually recommend, but since this app is actually fairly highly rated in the App Store, we thought it’d be good to let you know our thoughts about it after trying it out. And in short, the app might be fine for making basic online photo albums, but if you’re looking for more than that, you really likely will want to look elsewhere.

It’s time for a friendly reminder because Apple’s online storage service for iWork documents, the iWork.com Public Beta, is closing up this Tuesday, July 31st. As of July 31st, you will not be able to access any of the documents you might have hosted on the site as part of Apple’s universal transition to iCloud.

For now, there isn’t an Apple-powered alternative to iWork.com as Apple is yet to integrate iCloud even into it’s own, Mac App Store-distributed office suite. There’s a potential that’s going to change in a rumoured-to-be-very-soon update to the iWork suite that will see such integration (Update: as expected, iWork has been updated to work with iCloud and Retina Displays, but it’s still not a full new version of iWork), but, for now, it’s time to backup anything you may have saved and start looking at alternatives.

Goodbye, iWork

Before you dismiss the concept of you having uploaded to the service, be sure to just head over to iWork.com and login. I have stuff in there that I have no other copy of elsewhere, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry should you have something important located there.

If you do have iWork documents in the service, it’s pretty simple to download them. Simply click the downwards-facing arrow and select a file format to download the document in. You can grab a copy in the relevant iWork format, as a PDF or as a Microsoft Office document. If for some reason you don’t think you’ll be using iWork as much going forward, you might want to download documents in multiple formats just to be sure they’ll stay usable on any computer you use.

The downwards arrow allows you to download your documents in one of three file formats.

As Apple suggests, you’ll also want to remove public links to iWork.com that you may have online. If you’ve used the service to, for example, share or embed a Keynote presentation, the link will break come Tuesday along with the rest of the storage. Do your visitors a favour, and take them down. You could upload your documents to a service like Scribd or SlideShare to embed in your site, or even upload them to Google Docs and embed them, if you want.

Hello, New Service

Unfortunately, at least, at the time of writing, Apple doesn’t have an alternative in place so you’re going to have to look at third-party alternatives. For finding an alternative, i’ll direct you to the Web.AppStorm roundup of cloud-based storage apps to help you pick out an alternative. Note that since then, iCloud has launched and introduced an ability to manually upload documents. While not yet integrated natively into iWork, it’s still an interim option.

iCloud, Maybe?

However, change could be afoot. It’s possible that alongside the release of iCloud, Apple will either update or release brand new versions of iWork which may include support for iCloud’s “Documents in the Cloud” feature which will allow syncing of documents via the cloud.

iCloud, maybe? For now, you can head to the iWork section and manually upload documents.

Although there’s not any native iCloud integration in the iWork suite yet, you can manually upload documents to the iWork section of iCloud by heading to iCloud.com/iWork, clicking on the gear icon in the top-right corner and uploading a document manually.

Such a feature would ultimately replace iWork.com very well, with a presumed ability to access documents both in the native apps and at iCloud.com. Apple’s wording suggests heavily that these features will be coming, but, for now, make sure you’re taking action to save a copy of any documents you may have stored in iWork.com.

You’ve got only a matter of days to go! With an OS upgrade right around the corner, you might want to go ahead and backup your iWork.com documents today rather than waiting any longer!

Finding images on the Internet tends to be difficult and time-consuming. You have to switch from one search engine to another, clicking through to a separate page for advanced settings if you need specific types of images. Then, looking at a larger version takes you to another page, from which you can check out the full-size image or the website it was found on (with yet another click and page load). I hate it.

Skyscraper (formerly Pandora; renamed to avoid confusion with the popular music service) tries to solve that problem, giving you an app to search for images online from the comfort of your Mac. It has a raft of handy features that stand it as a major player in the image-search apps arena, and does a decent job of fulfilling its tagline: “Find and download images of anything.”

Getting Started

You’ve likely never thought of installing a new app just to find images online, but Skyscraper makes it so easy, you’ll wonder why you haven’t tried this approach sooner. It’s simple to get started with. The main window looks just like a web browser, with a preview column on the left side. The app shows its guide in any empty window by default, so if you’re unsure on how to do something just skim through and it should be there. You can create as many tabs and windows as you like; each one is a separate process.

The main window on startup.

To search, just type your keywords and hit return (or click the Start button). Skyscraper uses Google Image Search by default. If you want to limit results to images of a specific size, color, type, license, website, or SafeSearch restriction, just click the Setup button and choose your options.

There are also plugins for Flickr (with an authentication option) and Yahoo image search, with similarly reformatted option panes. To switch plugins, click and hold on the Setup button and make your choice from the resultant pop-up menu. I was hoping for an option to combine plugins on a single search, but you’ll have to use them individually. I suspect that the Yahoo plugin is out of date, since it never once worked for me. But Flickr search in Skyscraper is a much better experience than on the web (which I’ll get into shortly).

Web Spiders

Skyscraper also includes two web spidersvwhich take a URL rather than keywords as input. The default spider finds images by looking through the HTML tags on a web page. It can follow links indefinitely (until it reaches a site with no new links) or to a set depth, and you can restrict it to search only within the given domain.

The other web spider plugin finds consecutively-numbered files in a directory at the specified URL. It’s essentially a batch downloader — just enter the pattern, with square brackets and a dash for upper and lower bounds, and it will grab everything that matches. This is great for photographers who want to restore from their online backups and repositories (or just to download images to a new computer).

The web spiders can download music, movies, and documents, too. You set preferred file types in the Preferences, and place limits for minimum and/or maximum file size, then they’ll do the rest. This could be invaluable to anyone who stores or links to a lot of files on their personal or business web sites.

You can specify file types to search for from the list, adding any that are missing.

Finding and Browsing Images

Found images show up as thumbnails in the Preview pane on the left. Click on one to see a larger version in the display on the right. You can scale it to any of eleven sizes. The file size and dimensions are shown in a box near the bottom left. The URL of the image is below that in the window footer.

You can visit the web page that hosts the image via the Web Page button, set it as a new Desktop background, reveal it in the Finder, save it to a new location, print it out, or send it to the trash. You can select and drag any number of images from the Preview pane to other apps or windows. There’s also an option to view results in a slideshow.

Click on a thumbnail in the Preview pane to display a full-size or scaled version in the main display area, complete with information about its URL, size, and dimensions.

All images are automatically downloaded to your computer, which is a great help if you plan on using them offline or in other documents. But images can be a huge storage burden, so make sure you monitor this. You can tell Skyscraper to delete collected files after you close a search tab. If you’re worried about thousands of images downloading in the background, you can cap the results to a given file count.

User Experience

I had a great experience with Skyscraper — certainly much better than I’ve found using image search tools on websites such as Flickr and Google. It takes a lot of the pain out of image search, especially on Flickr — which may have a powerful search tool, but lacks user friendliness and accessibility. No longer do you have to go through pages of thumbnails and open dozens of tabs for each promising candidate. They’re all right on your hard drive, ready to go.

Everything’s clearly labelled and easy to understand. And advanced users can easily check a well-formatted log file to see if anything went wrong or to study load times (or whatever else).

Skyscraper’s log displays all the finer technical details you might need about the search.

The Competition

Skyscraper’s not the first — or the only — image search app in town, so I took a look at the alternatives. HyperImage is perhaps the most similar to Skyscraper, with a familiar Finder-like interface and plenty of advanced features. It uses Google for search — minus the advanced filtering options — and also allows downloading of all images on a website. With Tumblr integration, it’s a better choice for bloggers.

As for the others, the Java-based Web Image Collector appears to use multiple web-based search tools at once, and it boasts lots of features, but is really quite horrible to use. Viewfinder sports a streamlined interface and feature set, with Flickr used for search, and includes a handy button to send an image directly to a Keynote presentation. Beholder is very impressive, with detailed client-side filtering options, but it hasn’t been updated in three years, and there’s no way to filter by license.

Powerful but Pricey

It’s easy to recommend Skyscraper to anyone who needs to search the web for images a lot. It saves time, energy, and frustration, with a clean interface, advanced filtering, and complete integration of browser image search tools with OS X. Skyscraper doesn’t come cheap, though. At $29.99, it may not be worth it for some. But if you need to both find and download images on a regular basis, it’s the best tool I’ve seen.

Editor’s Note: Most of us download images online all the time without thinking, but it should be remembered that, just as with music and movies, everything online isn’t free, and you shouldn’t pirate. Always good to check and make sure sites are ok with you copying their images, especially if you’ll be using them in a public-facing project.

This past weekend, the Sparrow team shook the Mac app world by announcing they had been bought out by Google and wouldn’t be adding any new features to their popular email app. Sparrow was a great example of the amazing Mac-only apps you can get from the App Store, an app that was lovingly created by a team that really knew what they were doing. Now, the team’s moving to work on Gmail, and odds are Google will totally forget about the Mac app the team had built in the first place.

For those of use that use email all the time, many of us exclusively use Gmail or Google Apps on our own domains. However, we usually don’t use Gmail online, preferring instead to use Mail.app, Sparrow, or other 3rd party email apps to manage our email workflow. Sparrow was an especially good choice for Gmail users, as it supported Gmail’s features in a brilliant Mac interface, and just worked so good.

It’s not like Sparrow quit working overnight, but most of us are seriously considering alternate email apps now that Sparrow won’t be in active development going forward. That’s why we’re wondering if you’re going to keep using Sparrow, or if you’ve switched to another email app. We’d love to hear what email app you’re using, and why, in the comments below!

Special thanks to @CoolD78 for the poll idea!

Our giveaway is now closed. Thanks for entering, everyone! Congrats to @gustaoo and @Derek_Covatch for winning a copy of TerraRay, @keifun and @lucaschurchill for winning a copy of Sip, and @MohamadAshraf_ and @itkidx for winning a copy of Squirrel!

It’s always fun to snag a great deal on an app. $2 Tuesday has lately been keeping Mac app deals in the headlines with their great deals on popular apps every Tuesday. I personally got a copy of TaskPaper through the $2 Tuesday discount several weeks ago, and it’s quickly become part of my daily workflow.

This week, there’s 3 new apps on $2 Tuesday that just might end up becoming part of your daily workflow soon. All day today, you can get each of the following apps for just $2 (or really $1.99 plus tax in the App Store):

• Squirrel – A great personal finance management app that was a former Apple Design Award winner.
• Sip – A simple color picker app for developers that lets you pick colors and copy them with simple keyboard shortcuts.
• TerraRay – An easy to use terrain rendering app that lets you easily create your own 3D landscape.

Each of these apps are a great deal for just $2, but the best thing is, we have 2 copies of each of them to giveaway to our readers!

Tweet to Enter

If you’d love to win a free copy of today’s $2 Tuesday apps, it’s easy to get your entry submitted. All you have to do is click the link below and send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet and the app that you want to win. That’s it! We’ll then randomly pick 2 winners of each app when we close the contest.

We’ll announce the winners tomorrow on July 25th, so hurry and get your entry in today! Or if you can’t wait, just head over to the App Store and grab a copy of Squirell, Sip, or TerraRay for yourself. After all, they’re quite a good deal for just $2 each!

Envato staff or people who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm, or existing users of Ronin, however, are ineligible to enter.

Our weekly sponsor this week is Postbox, a first class email app for your Mac. It’s a powerful way to make you more productive with Gmail and other email accounts, helping you find the conversations and attachments you need while keeping you connected to your contacts.

Most of us use email daily, and often find ourselves sending dozens of emails a day, so your email app can be one of the most important apps on your computer. But as Mozilla’s stopped Thunderbird’s development, and Sparrow has been bought out by Google, you might be feeling like you need to find a new email app to take on your messaging challenges. Postbox might be just what you’re looking for.

It includes advanced Gmail features like labels and keyboard shortcuts, as well as advanced conversation view that makes it even easier to keep up with your email conversations. It has a powerful search tool that can help you find messages and attachments. Better still, it includes social network integration, and lets you send Dropbox links to files instead of having to deal with attachment file size limits. With a native Mac design, support for touchpad gestures, and a team that’s actively developing it, Postbox is easily one of the best email apps today.

Go Get It!

If you’re ready to get started managing your email better on your Mac, it’s a great time to try out Postbox. You can try it free for 30 days, then buy it for just $9.99. Or, if you’ve tried Postbox in the past and have a license for an older version, you can upgrade for just $4.95! Postbox also has new team discounts, so you can outfit your whole company with Postbox’s powerful email features for less than ever.

Time’s a very limited resource, and most of us are looking for ways to share extra minutes off our work whenever we can. Whether it’s with a text-expanding app, a web app, or a snippet library, there’s tons of ways software can speed you up, and it’s always great to find new ways to make your computer help you save time.

More often than not, though, these solutions are all over the place, and while they offer a speedy way to get the results you want, they aren’t very intuitive. For example, there are plenty of web apps out there that allow you to get CSS3 gradients, but in order to get exactly what you want, some require you to edit the code after you’ve mess around with its interface. So, wouldn’t it be cool if you could do it all from one application that you are already using? Wouldn’t it be cool to get almost-perfect results?

Of course it would. That’s why we were excited about CSS Hat. CSS Hat is not an app or a web app, but rather a Photoshop extension that’ll help you concentrate in your code and design rather than worry about vendor prefixes and RGBA vs HEX or the like. We don’t usually review Photoshop extensions, but since many of our readers use Photoshop and need an easier way to make CSS on their Macs, we thought you’d enjoy seeing our thoughts on our review copy of CSS Hat.

The CSS Hat Mission

CSS Hat inside Photoshop

So what does CSS Hat do exactly? Well, in a few words, CSS Hat turns Photoshop layer styles into CSS that you can then paste into your editor of choice. That’s all. No, really, that is pretty much what it does, but it does a masterful job at it.

See, when install CSS Hat, you can open any PSD file and select a layer that contains some styles. CSS Hat will then display CSS it generates based on the styles in that layer. CSS Hat also allows you to turn on and off comments, width and height of the object, vendor prefixes, and other useful things.

Copy your code and tweak settings to get just what you want

Ultimately, CSS Hat’s mission is to save you time and hassle, and without a shadow of a doubt, it does that. There is no need to mess around with web apps in order to get the exact gradient you wanted, convert HEX to RGBA, or try to remember how to make a circle with pure CSS. All of these things are taken care of for you by CSS Hat. The best part of using CSS Hat, however, is that if you’re already used to using Photoshop, there’s absolutely zero learning curve to using CSS Hat.

The Uses of CSS Hat

But, how useful can this little tool really be? Quite useful, actually. Let’s forget about how great it is for saving time and helping you create beautiful elements; that’s an obvious benefit of the app if you spend your days creating CSS. No, even if you didn’t use it for actual design work, it could still be insanely useful as a learning tool. Think about it: if you’re a designer who knows nothing about development or CSS but you’d like to learn, CSS Hat can help you learn CSS as you create your awesome mockups. As you make buttons and layouts, you’ll have a CSS reference to each of those pieces. Cool, right?

The Downsides of CSS Hat

From Photoshop to your browser, all in pure CSS

Sadly CSS Hat is not perfect, but most of it is not CSS Hat’s fault. For instance, there are a few styles that CSS Hat can’t convert to CSS. This is due to the fact that either there is no way to translate that Photoshop style into CSS, or that there is no CSS property that allows you to do what that style is doing.

If only CSS could do everything Photoshop can…

It is a little upsetting that sometimes you won’t get exactly what you want, but at the end of the day, you can’t really blame CSS Hat; however, there are a few things that CSS Hat should mend, such as their gradient support. Gradients are transformed into CSS by CSS Hat with percentages, degrees, and HEX. This is fine, but some of us want RGBA, and pixels. It would be awesome to see an option that would allow us to pick which format we want of CSS gradients we want.

Also, when CSS Hat is open and you try to double click on a layer to rename it, you won’t be able to. Once you close CSS Hat, you’ll be able to rename it again. A little bug perhaps, but nothing huge.

The CSS

So, how accurate is it, you ask. Good question. Turns out, CSS Hat is pretty accurate. Let’s take a look at the code below.

Some CSS Hat-generated CSS code

As you can see, this is a simple button that CSS Hat was able to make from a rounded rectangle with a few styles. In it, you can see width and height, border radius, background(s), box shadow, comments, and even background clips which prevent background colors from leaking outside of the border. The only thing absent in this code was the stroke style. This is due to the fact that CSS Hat can’t handle gradient-filled borders — fear not though, borders with solid colors are good to go.

Our test Photoshop design rendered in CSS in Safari

Verdict

It is hard to not recommend CSS Hat to those who work in the web design field. CSS Hat is a powerful time saver, and a powerful learning tool for those out there who lack CSS knowledge. With features like SASS and LESS support and more coming in future updates, CSS Hat is a must for those out there who want to accelerate their workflow. It’s also 30% off at the moment, so if you are interested, now may be the time to grab a copy.

If you give it a try, we’d love to hear your thoughts about how CSS Hat helps out your web development workflow!

Fresh off the presses, here is MacAppStorm’s weekly news roundup.

Happy reading!

Tweetbot for Mac Alpha 2 released

After last week’s initial hype of the first public alpha of Tweetbot for Mac being released, the app’s developers Tapbots have released the second Alpha to the public, which is available for immediate download either via their website or via the Check for Updates option from within Tweetbot for Mac.

The second Alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac has been released to the public.

The new version includes support for notifications on Mountain Lion, a couple of new features (for example now pressing the Command + U keys will give you the option to go straight to a particular user) and several bug fixes (such as the pull-to-refresh system, which was a bit temperamental in the first version).

Of course, Tweetbot for Mac is nowhere near completed and there are still several key features that are still missing (iCloud sync for example, which will not be available until the app goes on sale in the App Store, presumably to prompt people to buy the full version instead of using the beta version). There has been no word on an official release date but given the fact that only a week has pretty much passed since the release of the two alphas, we can expect a much more solid beta version and maybe even a final version with us very shortly.

Head over to their website to download the Alpha 2 version of Tweetbot for Mac (direct download link). Remember that the app is still in alpha version, so will still contain plenty of bugs and problems, though!

Google buys Sparrow for ‘new Gmail project’

Probably some of the most shocking tech news of the week came on Thursday when the CEO of Sparrow, Dom Leca, announced that his company has been bought out by Google for, according to The Verge, ‘under $25 million’, as the financial terms of the deal have not been fully disclosed.

Sparrow was acquired by Google on Thursday for an undisclosed sum.

The move heralded a significant advantage for Google, which may be looking to integrate some of Sparrow’s features from its iOS and Mac programs into their e-mail clients (we may also see a standalone Mac client coming up) but a blow for Sparrow’s faithful user base, as no new features will be developed for the Mac and iOS apps, with the company concentrating on developing for Google, not on further developing its own products.

In-app purchase hack also discovered in Mac apps

The hack developed by Russian developer Alexei Borodin, which allowed iOS users to circumvent in-app purchases by spoofing Apple servers has now been ported over to the Mac with his new “In-Appstore for OS X” service.

Alexei Borodin’s new “In-Appstore OS X” service, which allows Mac users to circumvent in-app purchases in Mac apps

The method is extremely similar to the iOS version – users install two local certificates then point their computer’s DNS settings towards Borodin’s server, which is located in the Russian Federation. On the server there is a companion app called Grim Receiper which must be run on the user’s local machine in order to bypass the receipt system put in place by Apple.

According to stats released on the developer’s website, his method has been used to allow over 8.5 million “free” purchase transactions, representing both a significant loss for both developers as well as Apple, who also take some commission from in-app purchases as well. Apple have issued two new APIs to developers to try to patch up the loophole on iOS, however there has been no official word on a fix for Mac apps at the moment.

Heard Anything Else?

If you’ve heard anything else exciting that’s happened this week then go ahead and post a link to it in the Comments section below for the benefit of our other readers!

Time’s a very limited resource, and most of us are looking for ways to share extra minutes off our work whenever we can. Whether it’s with a text-expanding app, a web app, or a snippet library, there’s tons of ways software can speed you up, and it’s always great to find new ways to make your computer help you save time.

More often than not, though, these solutions are all over the place, and while they offer a speedy way to get the results you want, they aren’t very intuitive. For example, there are plenty of web apps out there that allow you to get CSS3 gradients, but in order to get exactly what you want, some require you to edit the code after you’ve mess around with its interface. So, wouldn’t it be cool if you could do it all from one application that you are already using? Wouldn’t it be cool to get almost-perfect results?

Of course it would. That’s why we were excited about CSS Hat. CSS Hat is not an app or a web app, but rather a Photoshop extension that’ll help you concentrate in your code and design rather than worry about vendor prefixes and RGBA vs HEX or the like. We don’t usually review Photoshop extensions, but since many of our readers use Photoshop and need an easier way to make CSS on their Macs, we thought you’d enjoy seeing our thoughts on our review copy of CSS Hat.

The CSS Hat Mission

CSS Hat inside Photoshop

So what does CSS Hat do exactly? Well, in a few words, CSS Hat turns Photoshop layer styles into CSS that you can then paste into your editor of choice. That’s all. No, really, that is pretty much what it does, but it does a masterful job at it.

See, when install CSS Hat, you can open any PSD file and select a layer that contains some styles. CSS Hat will then display CSS it generates based on the styles in that layer. CSS Hat also allows you to turn on and off comments, width and height of the object, vendor prefixes, and other useful things.

Copy your code and tweak settings to get just what you want

Ultimately, CSS Hat’s mission is to save you time and hassle, and without a shadow of a doubt, it does that. There is no need to mess around with web apps in order to get the exact gradient you wanted, convert HEX to RGBA, or try to remember how to make a circle with pure CSS. All of these things are taken care of for you by CSS Hat. The best part of using CSS Hat, however, is that if you’re already used to using Photoshop, there’s absolutely zero learning curve to using CSS Hat.

The Uses of CSS Hat

But, how useful can this little tool really be? Quite useful, actually. Let’s forget about how great it is for saving time and helping you create beautiful elements; that’s an obvious benefit of the app if you spend your days creating CSS. No, even if you didn’t use it for actual design work, it could still be insanely useful as a learning tool. Think about it: if you’re a designer who knows nothing about development or CSS but you’d like to learn, CSS Hat can help you learn CSS as you create your awesome mockups. As you make buttons and layouts, you’ll have a CSS reference to each of those pieces. Cool, right?

The Downsides of CSS Hat

From Photoshop to your browser, all in pure CSS

Sadly CSS Hat is not perfect, but most of it is not CSS Hat’s fault. For instance, there are a few styles that CSS Hat can’t convert to CSS. This is due to the fact that either there is no way to translate that Photoshop style into CSS, or that there is no CSS property that allows you to do what that style is doing.

If only CSS could do everything Photoshop can…

It is a little upsetting that sometimes you won’t get exactly what you want, but at the end of the day, you can’t really blame CSS Hat; however, there are a few things that CSS Hat should mend, such as their gradient support. Gradients are transformed into CSS by CSS Hat with percentages, degrees, and HEX. This is fine, but some of us want RGBA, and pixels. It would be awesome to see an option that would allow us to pick which format we want of CSS gradients we want.

Also, when CSS Hat is open and you try to double click on a layer to rename it, you won’t be able to. Once you close CSS Hat, you’ll be able to rename it again. A little bug perhaps, but nothing huge.

The CSS

So, how accurate is it, you ask. Good question. Turns out, CSS Hat is pretty accurate. Let’s take a look at the code below.

Some CSS Hat-generated CSS code

As you can see, this is a simple button that CSS Hat was able to make from a rounded rectangle with a few styles. In it, you can see width and height, border radius, background(s), box shadow, comments, and even background clips which prevent background colors from leaking outside of the border. The only thing absent in this code was the stroke style. This is due to the fact that CSS Hat can’t handle gradient-filled borders — fear not though, borders with solid colors are good to go.

Our test Photoshop design rendered in CSS in Safari

Verdict

It is hard to not recommend CSS Hat to those who work in the web design field. CSS Hat is a powerful time saver, and a powerful learning tool for those out there who lack CSS knowledge. With features like SASS and LESS support and more coming in future updates, CSS Hat is a must for those out there who want to accelerate their workflow. It’s also 30% off at the moment, so if you are interested, now may be the time to grab a copy.

If you give it a try, we’d love to hear your thoughts about how CSS Hat helps out your web development workflow!

Fresh off the presses, here is MacAppStorm’s weekly news roundup.

Happy reading!

Tweetbot for Mac Alpha 2 released

After last week’s initial hype of the first public alpha of Tweetbot for Mac being released, the app’s developers Tapbots have released the second Alpha to the public, which is available for immediate download either via their website or via the Check for Updates option from within Tweetbot for Mac.

The second Alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac has been released to the public.

The new version includes support for notifications on Mountain Lion, a couple of new features (for example now pressing the Command + U keys will give you the option to go straight to a particular user) and several bug fixes (such as the pull-to-refresh system, which was a bit temperamental in the first version).

Of course, Tweetbot for Mac is nowhere near completed and there are still several key features that are still missing (iCloud sync for example, which will not be available until the app goes on sale in the App Store, presumably to prompt people to buy the full version instead of using the beta version). There has been no word on an official release date but given the fact that only a week has pretty much passed since the release of the two alphas, we can expect a much more solid beta version and maybe even a final version with us very shortly.

Head over to their website to download the Alpha 2 version of Tweetbot for Mac (direct download link). Remember that the app is still in alpha version, so will still contain plenty of bugs and problems, though!

Google buys Sparrow for ‘new Gmail project’

Probably some of the most shocking tech news of the week came on Thursday when the CEO of Sparrow, Dom Leca, announced that his company has been bought out by Google for, according to The Verge, ‘under $25 million’, as the financial terms of the deal have not been fully disclosed.

Sparrow was acquired by Google on Thursday for an undisclosed sum.

The move heralded a significant advantage for Google, which may be looking to integrate some of Sparrow’s features from its iOS and Mac programs into their e-mail clients (we may also see a standalone Mac client coming up) but a blow for Sparrow’s faithful user base, as no new features will be developed for the Mac and iOS apps, with the company concentrating on developing for Google, not on further developing its own products.

In-app purchase hack also discovered in Mac apps

The hack developed by Russian developer Alexei Borodin, which allowed iOS users to circumvent in-app purchases by spoofing Apple servers has now been ported over to the Mac with his new “In-Appstore for OS X” service.

Alexei Borodin’s new “In-Appstore OS X” service, which allows Mac users to circumvent in-app purchases in Mac apps

The method is extremely similar to the iOS version – users install two local certificates then point their computer’s DNS settings towards Borodin’s server, which is located in the Russian Federation. On the server there is a companion app called Grim Receiper which must be run on the user’s local machine in order to bypass the receipt system put in place by Apple.

According to stats released on the developer’s website, his method has been used to allow over 8.5 million “free” purchase transactions, representing both a significant loss for both developers as well as Apple, who also take some commission from in-app purchases as well. Apple have issued two new APIs to developers to try to patch up the loophole on iOS, however there has been no official word on a fix for Mac apps at the moment.

Heard Anything Else?

If you’ve heard anything else exciting that’s happened this week then go ahead and post a link to it in the Comments section below for the benefit of our other readers!

It seems like most of us are taking more and more pictures with every passing year.. The only thing that matches the amount of photos we are taking is the shear amount of photo editing apps available on the Mac. These apps range from photo editing apps costing hundreds of dollars to $1 simple filter apps. The problem is finding something that works for your needs. FX Photo Studio hopes to be that app.

FX Photo Studio is a photo app based on filters that offers more customization and the ability to transfer into other photo editing apps. Who exactly is FX Photo Studio for? Is it any good? Well, all of these questions and more will be answered in this review, so let’s dive in!

Introduction

MacPhun LLC, the developers of FX Photo Studio, have made it available in two versions: standard and pro. The only difference between the two is their resolution support. The standard version ($9.99 in the Mac App Store), the version we received for this review, supports up to 16 megapixel images, which the pro version supports up to 32 megapixel images ($39.99 in the Mac App Store).

FX Photo Studio, at its core, is a filter based photo editing app. It is very simple but can produce some amazing final products. FX Photo Studio also integrates with other photo editing apps, such as Photoshop.

Features

FX Photo Studio is not necessarily a feature powerhouse. What is included is what you would find as standard among photo editing apps. You have your adjustments for exposure, brightness, saturation, contrast, and hue. Also included are tools to rotate your image and crop. The rotate tools are quite disappointing; I would have liked a free form rotate tool and not just four buttons to rotate every 90 degrees.

Rotate Function

If you are just using FX Photo Studio as a launching pad to add a few effects before you dive into a real pro photo editing app like Photoshop, Aperture, or Lightroom, then you are in luck. Once you are finished adding effects, you can simply use the menu option to directly export to your application of choice. Once you choose, it will open up the program and load your finished photo.

Export to Photoshop

Perhaps my favorite feature of FX Photo Studio is the very simple, but really cool FX compare tool. With the FX compare feature you can see your original photo next to the altered photo. My only gripe is that you can only apply one filter or effect at a time and once it is applied, that altered picture becomes the next picture that you can compare to. I really would like to see the ability to put multiple effects and filters on top of each other and see that in the FX compare mode.

FX Compare

Filters & Effects

The bread and butter of FX Photo Studio are the filters. There are over 170 filters and 40 frames and borders that are included. Most of the filters dramatically alter the color of the image, which may work for some and not so much for others.

Filters & Effects

Personally, I would prefer to see more subtle filters that do not necessarily overpower the beauty of the image. You do have the option of adjusting some of the effects to increase subtlety if you so choose.

Frames

You can create your own filters by editing the existing ones and you have the option to save it under the presets, so that you can easily use it later! You can also adjust the mattes of certain effects as to add or subtract parts of the image. Check out some of my pictures that I added filters to below. The pictures below were also had minor editing in Photoshop using the export feature of FX Photo Studio.

Apple 5th Ave Before

Apple 5th Ave After

5th Ave Church Before

5th Ave Church After

Design & Interface

FX Photo Studio is a well-designed app that thoughtfully displays all of the filters and effects in an easy to use manner. I never found myself searching for essential functions and adjustment controls; they are all placed in plain view. At the top you have a toolbar that contains everything from view options to saving.

Top Function Bar

All of your adjustments such as crop and rotate are located on the right and your filters are located on the bottom. I would be remiss if I did not mention how the bottom effects window can become very annoying. The “tiles” which shows you a preview of your photo with the effect can take a little longer than preferred to load. This load time is frustrating. It would be better if they could remove the live preview and replace with static, stock preview images that would provide a faster browsing experience.

Filters

The Verdict

FX Photo Studio is a mixed bag for me; I am not quite sold on its need. The filters in FX Photo Studio are, for my taste, mostly overpowering. I really would like to see more filters with subtle effects that will help enhance the image and not completely change it. Features are not exactly what this app is known for but FX Photo Studio does contain all of the basic necessary features for simple image manipulation. The design and interface is nice, although I would like to see the live previews changed to static to decrease the time it takes to load the filters when scrolling. Out of 10 I would give FX Photo Studio a 7. It has decent filters and can export to other pro photo editing apps.

If you are looking at this app, you should also check out CameraBag 2. I reviewed it here on Mac.AppStorm and I liked it quite a bit more. What do you think? Do you like more or less features in a photo app? Sound off in the comments below!

As social networks continue to grow, users share more and more of their lives online. Services like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are taking over as the primary places we spend our time online. Consequently, these networks are filled with years of our status updates, vacation photos, resumés, and more.

But what would happen if Instagram accidentally deleted years-worth of those 1970′s-style filtered photos of your brunches at the French restaurant down the street from your apartment? What if you lost access to your Facebook account and now would be unable to post a half-hearted happy birthday message to that guy who you vaguely remember from 7th grade P.E.? Fortunately, a service called SocialSafe has your social media life covered.

The Basics

SocialSafe is a cross platform app that lets you download data from multiple social networks. Once you have synced with each of the services that you choose to connect, you get a basic level of access to the photos, tweets, etc. that SocialSafe now has saved to your computer.

Getting Started

SocialSafe is built as an Adobe Air app. I personally have never been a fan of Air due to the incessant, sluggish updates that Adobe pushes out. Plus, using Adobe Air also means that installation requires a couple extra steps, which is frustrating.

Connecting to your social network accounts is easy.

After downloading the app, it will extract in Adobe Air. You’ll then be prompted to connect your first service. You’ll start out with the free package, meaning you can only connect one service. I’ll explain the differences in the packages which they offer later, but for now, keep in mind that I am writing this review using the “Pro” package.

Connecting services is straightforward, and if you’ve ever used any app that uses Facebook or Twitter as a login for another site, the process here won’t be new. For instance, logging in using Facebook will show you what power the app has (namely, accessing your data), what SocialSafe can post to your account, and so forth.

Syncing is fast, and you get a progress bar showing how long it will take.

Once connected, you’ll want to sync. SocialSafe will access your account, and download various data that you specify. Each online service has different things that you can choose to download. For example, Twitter lets you either download everything, or pick from your bio, followers, following, inbox, mentions, outbox, and of course, tweets.

You get detailed information about what was downloaded during each sync.

Syncing runs relatively quickly. I’m not an avid Facebook user, so I don’t post status updates or photos that often. It took about two minutes to sync that account, but I imagine Facebook addicts with thousands of photos and walls cluttered with postings will be waiting around for much longer.

Viewing Backups

For this review, I connected Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Once these services synced, it was time to see what the benefits were to backing up.

You can easily see everything that was backed up every time the app syncs.

The Journal view gives you a daily calendar of activity. If, for instance, you tweeted yesterday, clicking the back button will show the tweet. The journal also shows you SocialSafe’s activity, which is essentially limited to backups. Looking at Friday, July 20th, I see a lot of activity because I began using SocialSafe, and three backups occurred, one for each service. To see what got downloaded, you can click “View Backup.”

Instagram backups let you see each of your photos. Clicking on thumbnails expands them.

Your first backup will be chock-full of stuff, but consequent backups will just show new data. Each category of data will be organized by type, (profile updates, wall posts, photos, etc.). I found navigating the backups here was simple and intuitive.

The Calendar view lets you track your daily activity.

Perhaps most intriguing is the calendar view. Here you will see months, with a green dot on days where there was some activity on one of your accounts. If you mouseover a particular day, you’ll see a summary of your activity. Click on the day and you’ll see the actual picture or tweet or wall post.

Beyond Backups

So you’ve downloaded all those pithy comments you had while you were live-tweeting the terrible standup comedian you saw last year, and now you can rest easy knowing they’re all backed up. SocialSafe does far more than just backing up, though.

In addition to the Journal and Calendar views, you also get the Profile view. Here, you’ll see each connected service as a separate entity. The “Select Content to View” dropdown lets you filter what parts of your backups to see, and you get some interesting functionality here. For example, with Twitter, you get views such as “Exclusively Following,” “Mutually Following,” and “Lost Followers,” among others. Keep in mind that some of these require comparisons against previous backups, (such as the lost followers category), so they might not be useful after your first backup.

The search feature works incredibly well, and the results are displayed in a well-organized way.

You can also export all of your data out of the program, should you choose. This is certainly a welcome feature for backup purposes, but considering that the only available format is CSV, these files aren’t particularly useful on their own.

What I was most pleased with is the search feature. A solid search function is something that is surprisingly tough to implement well in many web and desktop apps, but SocialSafe’s search performs beautifully. After typing in your query, you get results filtered by service, with words matching your search highlighted. The scope of the search is impressive, even searching in Instagram captions and Likes.

Pricing

There are three tiers available for SocialSafe. The free level lets you backup Facebook, but places strict limits on the amount of data you can download. This means it doesn’t backup all your photos, statuses, etc. For $3.50/year, you get access to more social networks and full backups. For $7/year, you get all the additional features I reviewed here, including full search, integrated calendar views (which combines your activity across multiple networks onto one calendar.

Conclusion

I was very impressed with the ease of use for SocialSafe. The design is basic, and probably won’t replace the web app versions of most of these social networks, (or in Instagram’s case, the iOS and Android versions). However, that fact shows a shortcoming here. Many developers have tried – and in my opinion, all have failed – to create apps that merge your social networks into a single feed. SocialSafe is billed primarily as a way to view your activity on social networks, and in this regard, it excels wonderfully. I was so happy with all of the features, in fact, that it made me wish that the app wasn’t “Read Only.” I’d love to have the ability to tweet or post to Facebook right from the app.

Keeping this from being perfect are a few design issues. While the styling is clean, the navigation can, at times, feel a tad too complicated. There is a lack of preference settings as well, which means that things like shortcuts are missing. Perhaps the biggest flaw here is the nature of backups: You have to run the app for it to sync, unlike other backup solutions that we have come to love, like Time Machine.

All in all, this is app was a pleasant surprise at every turn. At just 7 bucks a year, the Pro plan feels like a great value. Whether needing to backup your social networks is truly necessary is debatable, but the additional features make SocialSafe an app worth having if you’re a social network junkie.

Simple, cheap (or free) image editing programs are incredibly easy to come by these days. If you simply need to do some basic image adjustments, resize an image or crop a photo, there are a huge number of programs available. This simple fact means that it can be quite overwhelming to sort through all of these programs in order to find one that’s right for you. Some programs, however, offer unique, high-quality features which make them stand out as unique amidst all of the incredibly similar programs available.

One of those programs is Thumbnailer Pro. This application allows you to easily crop, resize and rotate images. Simple editing tools are also available, allowing you to make simple adjustments, view details about the image and even apply some filters. Customizable presets, batch processing and an in-app file browser are rare features in the world of low-price image editing, allowing Thumbnailer Pro to stand out as a unique program. Stick with me after the jump to learn more about the features in Thumbnailer Pro and how well the program works.

Single Image Editing

Thumbnailer Pro offers all of the basic image editing features that you would expect when purchasing a Mac app that costs just $2.99. When editing a single image, you can make many basic adjustments. Size adjustments are a big one, with the ability to create and save presets for size (more on that later.) Crop and rotation buttons are also always visible from the main screen, ensuring that these basic functions are always readily available.

A view of the whole single image editing screen.

The slightly more advanced features for single image editing are tucked away in the appropriately named edit panel. This is, first of all, the place to go if you are looking for detailed information about the image. The details section of the editing panel contains information about compression, file type, color model, pixel measurements and more.

More importantly, however, the edit panel has sections for adjustments and effects. The adjustments section contains a variety of image editing options. The options are limited, of course, but many basic options are present. You can choose to adjust the exposure, contrast, saturation, temperature, tint, sepia and sharpness.

The basic adjustments you can make to individual images.

In addition to the basic image adjustments, Thumbnailer Pro includes some effects or filters that you can easily apply to images with a single click. The selection isn’t great, but available options include black and white, sepia, antique, sharpen and more. It’s a nice touch, although I don’t know how useful the effects really are with such a limited selection.

A very small selection of effects to add to images.

Once your image is set, it’s time to take a look at the final steps – output settings and save options. In output settings, you can easily adjust the image type and quality. Save options are limited to either the computer or a one click upload to imgur.com. While I don’t think that the options need to greatly expand, as Thumbnailer Pro grows it would be nice to see a few more places to share your images other than imgur.com.

The output and save options.

Batch Processing

The features above are fairly standard for simple, single image editing. As we take a closer look at the batch processing features, we begin to delve into what makes Thumbnailer Pro a unique program as compared to some of the other image editing programs out there.

I have to make similar edits to groups of images all the time, for various writing gigs and creative work. Due to that fact, I was excited to give the batch processing a try. While it’s not the greatest batch processing application I’ve ever tried, it quickly accomplished the job at hand. The first step is adding images. Rather than the nice browser utilized for single image edits, you are relegated to searching through Finder in order to add all of the images you wish to edit.

Unfortunately you must use Finder to browse for batch processing images.

After you add the images, there are a few different things that you can adjust for the images. First, make sure to change the target folder to the appropriate location for whatever images you are using. Next, you can easily adjust the file type and quality for the images. You can also adjust the size of the images using the sizing presets. Lastly, you can add a watermark of your choice to all of the images.

Choosing the preset for my batch processing.

Unique Features and Customization

In addition to the batch processing feature, Thumbnailer Pro also has some other features not often found (or ever found) in similarly priced image editing programs. First up is the image browser. While the batch processing function does not have a built-in image browser, the single image editing section does.

The in-app image browser is definitely a nicer way to find and choose images than going through the Finder. Because Thumbnailer Pro is not a library of images in any way, the image browser really works for the application. You can easily peruse any path you choose, with images contained within that path appearing on the screen as large images that are easy to browse and edit. It’s a unique approach and one that works quite well.

The in-app image browser. Definitely a better experience than adding images via Finder.

Another unique feature is the ability to add customized presets for image resizing. This is, again, a feature typically not found in a program of this cost. There are a few presets included (such as HD or 1024 x 768), but it is also incredibly easy to make your own presets. When creating a preset, you are able to use specific sizes, percentages or fixed values for one side of the image which proportionally resize the entire image.

I chose to create a preset for screenshots I take when writing reviews. This preset allows me to batch process the images for my review, easily adjusting the size of all of them with just one click. I no longer have to type in custom sizes every time I need to adjust an image. It’s quite convenient and a great feature.

Creating a size preset is easy and quite useful.

Last but not least, let’s discuss the layout and step-by-step features of the single image editing. Thumbnailer Pro is set up in such a way that you are guided through the basic process of editing an image. Steps are shown sequentially, with one step appearing at a time. You have to complete the prior step before the next one shows up.

I really like the concept, but I wish that it encompassed more of the features. The step-by-step process covers size presets, output settings, and saving but does not include options like cropping, rotating and editing. Those features, instead, are tucked into the small bottom toolbar. While I don’t want an individual step for each of those options, it would be nice to have a step in the process prompt you to make any edits to the image that you might need to do.

The steps appear as needed, ensuring that you hit all the important steps.

Wrapping Up

Thumbnailer Pro is an image editing program that gives you a great deal of unique features for a low cost. The batch processing, presets and unique layout are all great components of the program. Overall, I enjoyed using Thumbnailer Pro and just have a few small critiques spread throughout the review.

If you do a lot of batch processing, Thumbnailer Pro is definitely worth a download. If you’re looking for a unique way to browse images to edit, it’s also worth a download. If you are just editing an image or two at a time or need a variety of more advanced editing tools and filters, it’s probably not worth it a download.

Those are my thoughts on Thumbnailer Pro, but I want to hear yours as well. Have you tried the program? How did you like it? Do you have an alternate program you prefer? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on August 3th, 2011.

Remember iWeb? This former iLife member’s lofty goal was to translate the intimidating task of building a website down to the “drag and drop” simplicity of the Mac experience.

Apple’s brief foray into the world of DIY websites was impressive at first, but aged quickly and was eventually abandoned altogether. Discounting professional developer software like Dreamweaver, this leaves Mac users with three primary options for WYSIWYG website building: Sandvox, Rapidweaver and Flux. Today we’ll take a brief look at each and offer some advice on which you should use.

Sandvox

Sandvox

Conceptually, Sandvox is the closest thing to iWeb on the market. The workflow here is very familiar: choose a theme, edit the text, drag in some images and hit the “Publish” button.

Sandvox has plenty of built-in themes and can easily be expanded via third party designs. As a designer, I’m definitely not crazy about the available Sandvox themes, the overall aesthetic quality of the set feels dated, but there are some gems. Non-designers will likely find something fun and simple that’s perfect for their needs.

The professional features here are limited, but very close to what you saw in iWeb. The app definitely isn’t geared towards coders or designers who want to start from scratch, but you can “inject” snippets of HTML, JavaScript or even PHP into the pages on your site.

Who Should Use Sandvox?

Anyone who used and loved iWeb should definitely check out Sandvox. The two apps are close enough that you’ll have very little trouble transitioning from one to the other.

In fact, Sandvox’s marketing heavily targets iWeb users. The website welcomes “iWeb graduates” and even has a guide for iWeb switchers.

RapidWeaver

RapidWeaver

Occasionally, it seems as if a third-party developer understands the true “Mac experience” better than even Apple. RapidWeaver is not a slightly different version of what iWeb was but rather everything that iWeb should’ve been. It’s simply a beautiful program that is a joy to use whether you know anything about building websites or not.

To build a site in RapidWeaver, you add one page at a time, each of which conforms to one of eleven page types (blog, photo album, etc.) and the overall visual theme you choose. The interface is customized for each page type and the controls are simple enough for anyone to use.

The professional features here are pretty extensive. Overall, the design of your site is definitely driven by the chosen template, but you can customize code fairly easily and really bend the site to your will if you need that kind of flexibility. It really helps that the auto-generated code is actually human readable and conforms to web standards.

Extensions

The killer feature of RapidWeaver is definitely its expandability. The RapidWeaver Add Ons Library is not only full of gorgeously designed themes, but also some amazing plugins like that really stretch what’s possible. For instance, the Blocks plugin brings full-on freeform page layout to RapidWeaver and is a must-have for anyone who wants true control over their design.

Who Should Use RapidWeaver?

RapidWeaver is an app for a wide range of users. If you don’t know anything about building a site and aren’t crazy about the idea of going to school to learn web development, RapidWeaver will help you create a great site with little effort.

Also, if you’re a designer who knows his/her way around an HTML document but aren’t really the code-from-scratch type, RapidWeaver with the addition of a few powerful plugins could really help you convert your designs to basic but functional websites.

Basically, if you’re a newbie, RapidWeaver welcomes you with open arms and a user-friendly workflow and if you know enough to need some advanced features, they’re ready and waiting for you to dive in.

Flux

Flux

Flux is by far the furthest app from iWeb in the bunch. In fact, it’s so different that it’s hard to group with the two apps above.

iWeb, Sandvox and RapidWeaver are all primarily aimed at making website creation available to the masses. They’re tools that allow everyone to get a taste of web design without necessarily becoming professionals. Flux on the other hand, really is a professional web design tool.

It has much of the charm that you get from a RapidWeaver-like WYSISYG, only it gives you complete freedom to design and code your own site. There are some templates available, but the strength of the app is that it isn’t in any way template-dependent.

In fact, you can import existing web projects that you’ve coded by hand right into Flux and then shuffle objects, add styles or create dynamic objects with easy-to-use tools. Think of it as an awesome visual front-end to your code.

Who Should Use Flux?

Flux has a little bit of a learning curve and will make the most sense to those that are at least partly familiar with how CSS works. If you’re a graphic designer who is either intimidated by or bored with the process of coding entire sites by hand, you should absolutely give Flux a shot.

I personally code sites by hand and generally avoid WYSIWYGs like the plague. That being said, I love Flux. It’s a really innovative concept and once I took the time to really learn how to use it properly I was surprised at how much you could accomplish with a really simple workflow.

Obviously, none of these options are going to replace traditional text-based IDEs for hardcore coders. If you fall into this category, check out Coda or Espresso instead.

Conclusion

To sum up, there are three primary applications in the realm of Mac-centric WYSIWYG website building apps: Sandvox, RapidWeaver and Flux.

Sandvox is probably the most iWeb-like tool on the market. Users that were sad to see iWeb go should definitely take a look at Sandvox. RapidWeaver is like a really slick iWeb upgrade. It’s more attractive, more powerful and more amazing in just about every way. It’s easy enough for complete beginners to pick up and powerful enough that users who are slightly familiar with web development will find the features that they need, especially given the wealth of plugins that are available.

Finally, Flux is the most advanced and most flexible option, affording you complete template independence. If you don’t know a thing about web development, stay away from Flux. If however, you’re looking for the best non-Dreamweaver WYSIWYG around for the Mac, give Flux a download.

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think of these three apps. Where do you fall on the web developer spectrum and which app do you think is best suited for your needs?