Category: Mac

I’m a huge news junkie. I run multiple RSS apps on my Mac, including Pulp and Reeder, each for different sets of RSS feeds that I subscribe to. In those rare moments that I get to step out of the office, whether I’m standing in line at the deli down the street or riding a bus downtown to meet up with my brother for lunch, I’m usually on my phone checking even more news feeds. Simply put, I drink heartily from the fountain of information that the Internet provides.

I recently stumbled across a somewhat unique RSS aggregator, and I wanted to show it to you today. Retickr is an app that lets you put together custom playlists of news feeds and display the top stories from them as a scrolling ticker on your screen. The idea is relatively novel and the execution is unique, but does Retickr have what it takes to become an arterial channel of information?

The Interface

The first thing I noticed about Retickr is that it staunchly avoids almost every interface element that would make it blend in with OS X.

The dashboard greets you when you launch the app.

After much deliberation, I’ve concluded that this is effectively a double-edged sword. On one hand, the interface is sharp. The dark colors give it a sleek, modern feel, and browsing the news is a pleasant experience. On the other hand, however, its unique design makes it stick out amongst the other elements on your screen. Personally, I found this to be ultimately distracting while working, which forced me to shut it down rather than being able to ignore it, lest I end up on cnn.com when I should’ve been composing this review.

The ticker is sleek and sexy, but can prove somewhat visually intrusive.

Admittedly, this is more my personal preference than a steadfast rule–if procrastination isn’t an issue for you, Retickr’s interface may not pose such a problem.

Aside from the protruding ticker, it seems as though Retickr does intend for you to have access to your news without distracting you too much. The built-in browser launches stories from your ticker without opening them in an external browser, which allows you to get the news you want and then get back to work, quickly.

The built-in browser isn’t anything special, but it does keep content itself from intruding on your workflow.

Setting Up Retickr

When you launch Retickr for the first time, you’ll be asked to sign in. You’ll have to create an account, but the Remember Me tick box will keep you from having to log in every time you launch the app.

The sign-in process seems largely superfluous, but I suppose it can be handy if you use multiple machines.

The dashboard (pictured in the previous section) greets you with a welcome message, some interesting statistics about feed usage, and a hand-picked “Feed of the Day”. In the right-hand sidebar is your collection of playlists, which are set to a few defaults until you edit them.

Retickr functions on this premise of the “playlist”. Each playlist can contain any number of feeds from various news sources to your social media feeds (requires you to login with Facebook and/or Twitter). The idea here is that your informational needs might change throughout the day, so you can adjust the information streaming across your screen accordingly.

To build a new playlist (or edit an existing one), you’ll need to find feeds to add. You can search by name using the search bar in the upper right corner, or you can click the “Browse” button.

Feeds are broken down into categories for ease of browsing.

From here, you can choose feeds from the Top 100 list, various categories, or your social media accounts that you’ve authorized to interact with Retickr. Once your playlist is tailored just the way you want it, simply click the play button on the playlist in the sidebar, and stories will begin scrolling along the ticker in chronological order.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a way to import your own feeds. Searching for them sometimes turns up results, but I found the less established sources to be a bit wonky. Hopefully this gets resolved in future versions.

Finally, make sure that Retickr behaves the way you want it to with the Settings menu. The ticker can be set to scroll along the top or bottom of your screen, as well as vertically on either side. The pace can be set to fast or slow, but I found the fastest speed to be almost too fast to be of any use. Lastly, if you like to stay current, you can tell Retickr to only display news of a certain age.

Customize screen placement, ticker speed, and the cutoff age for news stories.

Final Thoughts

I think Retickr would be better suited for someone with a larger monitor or a multi-screen setup (I’m working with a 13″ MBP over here). That being said, I do enjoy using it, and it will likely find it’s way onto my desktop during my more relaxed hours of the day when I’m not in full-on work mode.

The best thing about Retickr, I think, is that it joins a small number of apps that show us that RSS feeds don’t need to be displayed in the hierarchical format that we’re so used to. And with a price tag of free, there’s no reason not to give it a shot and see what you think. Let us know if Retickr works for your feed reading needs!

The smartphone revolution has made it extremely simple to document our life, every step of the way. In a lot of ways, it’s a good thing. Thanks to the crystal clear lenses in our pockets, we can forever capture cherishable moments not only as pictures, but also as videos with impeccable resolution (at least compared to what we’d have used a decade ago).

Over these years, a ton of apps and services have come up to help people organize their digital media. Managing images has never been easier, and from Picasa to iPhoto, there are so many nifty apps to help deal with our mountain of images. But what about all the shaky, blurry and perhaps the random good enough videos? That’s what Clipstart is for.

Getting Started

Clipstart complements your photo application to give you a place that is designed for home movies. You can download a free trial of Clipstart from the developer’s home page. With the trial version, you are free to explore all the features of the app without any restrictions. But, you won’t be able to add tags to more than 20 videos or upload more than 2. For $29, you can remove all these limitations.

Importing to Clipstart Library

Clipstart doesn’t just stop with the mobile devices you connect to the Mac. At the outset, it’ll ask you to select the location from where you want the app to index videos from. Plugged in devices and CD ROMs are covered too. For those asking – there are two ways you can handle videos spread across the drives.

First you could just ask the app to index everything in the library and access them all in one place. Or, you could just direct the app to move the videos to central destination for better organization. If you go with the second choice, all copying happens in the background and you can continue to use the app without having to wait.

Importing Videos

It took Clipstart only a few seconds to go through my stuff in the hard disk and index all videos. However, it took sometime for the app to offer a thumbnail view of the videos though. A major point worth notice is the user interface, or the lack of it! There are no buttons, icons or flashy elements to speak of in the app.

Imported Videos

There’s just the left column that shows all the tags you have created and the right column which displays all your videos.

Companion Window

A companion window floats to the side and comes in handy to check out the history of uploads and the tasks you have performed. The library tab in this companion window is the place to look for if you want to locate the videos in the Mac.

To tag videos, just click on them and add away. The app makes it a piece of cake for you to add or copy tags in bulk and this process can be made faster by way of using the keyboard shortcuts.

Option to Change the Date

Though the name of the videos were retained, there is no way to see the metadata attached to them. Even right clicking on a video from the app offered only an option to change the date the video was taken and not a way see all its properties.

Trimming Videos

To either make them interesting or to save bandwidth, videos need a little nip and tuck before putting them on display. With Clipstart, you don’t have the hassle of working with another app to edit your videos. It isn’t Final Cut, but is good enough for a quick slice and dice!

Trimming a Video

If you have used the video editor in your iPhone, then you won’t need a crash course to get the job done. Move the mouse around to select the start and stop points in the video and that’s it! You can even quickly upload a trimmed portion of a movie without needing to save a new copy.

If need be, you can convert videos to H.264 right from the app too. At present, the app supports uploading videos to Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube.

Final Thoughts

The goal of Clipstart is simple enough. Solve the problems of folks who have a ton of videos in the mobile phones and hard disks and don’t know what to do with them. And, the app to a great extent succeeds in that vision, thanks to a clutter free user interface. Developers tend to go nuts with a ton of features and interface elements when it comes to an app like this.

The workflow couldn’t be simpler either – import, trim and upload! Clipstart is priced right too. For $29, the app is a steal and for sure will do a lot of heavy lifting if you own and upload lot of videos.

I have a Wacom tablet, and I love using it for a variety of purposes. If I want to do any sort of digital drawing or painting it is, of course, my tool of choice. Sometimes the drawings get quite detailed, full of many layers, colors, textures and more. In cases like those, opening Photoshop is completely justified. If, however, I just want to do a quick sketch or mock-up, opening Photoshop (or Corel or Sketchbook Pro or any other feature-heavy digital drawing/painting program) doesn’t always seem justified. When I find myself in that situation, I’m never quite sure what to do. Lately, however, I’ve been utilizing a great program called Inkist.

Inkist is a great new bitmap-based drawing and painting program that is great for simple drawings. The app works well with drawing tablets, boasts a small but intuitive feature set for a quick program, and is quite well designed. It’s definitely worth looking into, especially if you find yourself constantly waiting for Photoshop to load for just a few minutes worth of work. Read on to learn more about Inkist’s features, how it works and what I really think about it.

Features

First, let’s discuss some of Inkist’s great features. The app developer created the application with simplicity, quick loading, and ease of use in mind, so the features are fairly limited in order to maintain the simplicity. Despite the attempts for simplicity, it didn’t trim too far, as you can still use layers in your drawing, something often left out on more basic drawing apps. You can use the layers toolbox to add/delete layers, hide and view layers, and even toggle the layer opacity.

Adding and editing layers is simple, unlike other programs.

Next, the colors palette is important to note, as I quite like the way that the developer designed it. You have the ability to use a visual color selector to choose and save colors to the palette. I often like to have several shades of the same color available in the palette for easy use in shading. In Inkist, the brightness and temperature sliders make it easy to save a mid-tone and then just make simple adjustments from there. You can then easily save a great pallet of colors for use in the drawing.

The color selector along with the brightness/temperature sliders are a unique design concept, but definitely a good one.

The brushes are easily the most important component within the tools section, as the program would not be of any use without the brushes. Within the brush panel you can utilize any of the pre-installed brushes, adjust brush size, switch between the various modes (brush, erase, blend and line) or even create your own brush preset. Inkist does include support for pressure sensitivity on the graphics tablet, so when editing a brush you can change parameters such as minimum and maximum size, opacity, softness, jitter, and much more. It’s easy to create a huge variety of brush presets, although be warned that only the first 9 brushes have keyboard shortcuts.

A huge variety of brush parameters available.

Last but not least, the miscellaneous tools section contains a great variety of extra tools. Here, you can find a variety of selection tools, options to change the hue/saturation/lightness, and even a curves tool. This is also where you can do some basic text work, with the ability to change options such as font, size, and color.

A variety of miscellaneous tools, including the ever useful text tool.

Using the Program

Now that you have read up on the basic tools and features included in Inkist, it’s time to discuss how the program actually works in day to day usage. It’s important to first understand that Inkist was made by the developer in order to serve as a faster, cheaper, and simpler alternative to expensive graphics programs such as Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop.

Simplicity was at the forefront of the developer’s mind, a mindset that really governs what Inkist is good for. Inkist doesn’t boast a huge feature set. That’s ok – there are other programs for that. Instead, I utilize Inkist for rough mock-ups and quick sketches. It’s a fantastic program for that type of usage, evidenced by some of the examples detailed below.

A quick mock-up for a layout I was working on. It’s the perfect program for this kind of work.

The design and interface really lend themselves to simplicity and ease of use. First, the space is easily customizable, no matter your needs. The toolbars are all able to easily pop out and be moved around the application. You can dock the toolbars again with just one click. Size is adjustable, as well as shape. This is, of course, a given feature in applications like Photoshop that are more expensive. However, too often cheaper applications have just one immobile dock and set of tools. I appreciate that for price Inkist has the ability to pop out different toolbars for space flexibility. I do wish, however, that changing the position of the dock was also an option.

Another great feature of the layout/design which adds to the simplicity and ease of use is the size of the buttons. I was reading up on the blog about the app, and apparently the buttons are all 30 x 30 pixels in order to take up the least amount of screen space while still being easily clickable even when using the pen on a graphics tablet. They are the perfect size and it’s nice to have the interface focused (at least in part) on the experience solely when using a graphics tablet.

Toolbars are easily modified, dragged into different sizes and shapes in a variety of locations for your perfect workspace.

You’ve learned the interface and the tools. Everything is where it needs to be, but one question remains unanswered: How is the actually drawing with Inkist? You’ll be glad to hear that it’s pretty nice. It’s an uncluttered program, which really let me focus on the project at hand. It’s easy to select colors and brushes, all lending to an intuitive and cohesive drawing experience.

Keyboard shortcuts are definitely a plus within the app. Keyboard shortcuts are available to select the brush mode (brush, erase, blend or line). You can easily select any of the first 9 brushes in your palette with a keyboard shortcut. You can also select any colors already on the palette thanks to a keyboard shortcut. I do wish that the selection of shortcuts would be expanded. Brush size, for one, is something that I wish was easier to adjust. There isn’t a keyboard shortcut and I can’t use the dials on my tablet. It’s incredibly frustrating to have to make the transition to the mouse every time I wish to change a simple setting like the brush size. A greater preference section for things already included in the program is something I think the app could definitely benefit from.

Keyboard shortcuts – an absolute must!

Final Thoughts

Inkist has proved a pretty great purchase thus far – it’s easy to do digital sketches and mock-ups and I’m not forced to spend a lot of time waiting around for a big program like Photoshop to use. The features included in the program are fairly intuitive and easy to understand. I don’t think that many adjustments are likely required in order to make the program usable for your situation.

It is, of course, important to consider what the program is made for – it’s not for intensely detailed digital paintings. It’s a quickly loading, simple and user-friendly alternative for those times when you just don’t need Photoshop. Given a few features – some additional keyboard shortcuts, for example – I’ll soon be a very dedicated Inkist user.

So, there’s no doubt I’m a fan. What about you? Have you tried Inkist? What do you use it for? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve run a competition to win a Wyzowl promo video – I’m pleased to announce the four Wyzowl winners today!

• Android – EveryU
• iOS – PaperPlay
• Mac – infiniteNIL
• Web – RiddleMe

Congratulations to the winners, you’ll be contacted shortly – make sure you follow AppStorm for more great competitions!

Whether you’re a longtime developer or are just getting started coding apps, you’ve likely heard of Git, the popular version control system for source code and more. Git’s an incredibly useful open source tool that’s already built into your Mac, but it can be a bit complicated to get started with and use day-to-day.

That’s where Tower comes in. It’s a Mac app that makes git simpler to use and keeps you from having to remember obscure Terminal commands. It costs $59, but that can be well worth it if it helps you in your development projects. Our writer Duane Stark recently reviewed Tower here at Mac.AppStorm and gave it an impressive 9 out of 10 for its great features, interface, and performance.

That’s why we’re excited today to have 3 copies of Tower to givewaway to our readers, so 3 lucky readers can start making use of the most powerful Git app on the Mac in their development projects!

Tweet to Enter

If you’d love to win a free copy of Tower, 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. That’s it!

We’ll announce the winners on Thursday, July 26th. Good luck to everyone who enters!

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.

If you work regularly with an editing program of any sort – be it Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Avid, or other advanced programs – chances are good that you understand how truly important your personal preference files are. From keyboard shortcuts to import/export presets to installed plugins, preference files can incorporate a lot in a good editing program. In fact, without the proper preference files in place, an experienced editor’s productivity can completely disappear.

This brings me to the focus of the article – why it is important to always backup your preference files. If you are a serious editor, you probably already know why you should backup the files, and you might even be doing it already. If you don’t yet understand why you should backup the files or simply want to learn an easy way to backup the files with a convenient, free program called Preference Manager, then read on after the jump.

Why You Should Backup Preference Files

Before you can understand why it is incredibly important to backup preference files, it is important to first understand exactly what is contained in the preference files. This does vary from program to program, so the general list I discuss might not be perfectly reflective of your program of choice. Essentially, however, your preference files will contain most modifications that you make to the program you are working with.

First, preference files contain the program settings and general preferences. The settings can cover any number of options within the program, so chances are good that you have at least made some light modifications. Preference files might also contain any presets you have defined. Presets might be for new files, import/export sequences and much more. Presets save a great deal of time once you set them up for the first time, so they are definitely something you want to keep around once you invest the time to set them up properly.

Preference files sometimes include effects and style settings. Whether you have added effects purchased from a third party or simply set up some style presets, these helpful files are often included by default in your preference settings. Plugins are also typically included, meaning that you can backup and save the laundry list of plugins you have likely accumulated and installed during your time as an editor. Those with good luck might also find layouts included in the preference files. This means that there is a good chance that any custom workspace, column and window layouts are backed up for you.

Lastly, we must discuss keyboard shortcuts. If you have spent any time at all in an editing program, you understand how much of a difference in speed a good set of keyboard shortcuts can make. If you have modified the included shortcuts, then chances are good that your editing skills are totally decreased when using someone else’s setup. In fact, I know editors that always have a flash drive with their keyboard preference files on it, in order to always have their shortcuts no matter where they go. This, I believe, truly reflects the importance of preference files.

My futile attempt at searching manually for my various Adobe Premiere preference files.

Now that you know everything that can be included in a preference file, chances are good that you are ready to backup your files. If you still aren’t quite there, try using your program of choice on someone else’s computer. Your productivity will decrease as you waste time rearranging the workspace, altering settings and searching through menus looking for a function mapped to a keyboard shortcut on your computer.

Imagine that after that frustrating trial, you cannot return to your setup. Perhaps a faulty hard drive or a new computer is the cause. It could also be that your preferences have simply become corrupted for some reason. Whatever the reason, wouldn’t it be great to re-install the program and then plug in a drive with all of your preference files on it? Equally great is the opportunity to take your setup with you no matter what computer you are working on. These are two fantastic reasons to take the necessary few minutes and backup your preference files.

How to Backup Your Preference Files

One way to backup your preference files is, of course, to do it manually. You can always delve into the Finder, make copies of the appropriate files and stick them onto an external drive. If you don’t wish to dive into all of those files, Preference Manager is a simple (and free) way to backup preference files for many major editing systems.

Preference Manager works with a variety of different programs. Supported programs include Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer, Avid Symphony, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, and many more. In addition to traditional editing programs, other programs are included that are part of the overall production process.

The various supported programs – these are the “miscellaneous” ones typically used less frequently as a part of the overall production process.

Assuming that your program is included, you can utilize Preference Manager to do four different tasks for you. The app can trash, backup, lock and restore preference files for any supported program. This means that you can backup at any time, trash any corrupted preference files and more. It’s a full feature set for this particular purpose.

You can also make adjustments on a per-program basis regarding what is backed up and what isn’t. Within the backup and lock screens, you have the option to select which specific preference files are backed up and which are not. While some lesser known programs might have just one thing to backup, programs like Final Cut Pro offer a much larger selection of preference files. It is up to you to select which files to backup – likely, you will backup all of them but there might be a reason to stay away from a certain type of preference files.

Searching through the available files to backup.

Likely, you can stick to a manual backup of preference files using Preference Manager’s default settings. If, however, you find that Preference Manager doesn’t quite meet your needs by default, there are a few options you can change. First, you can change the default save location – this is great if you want to backup to an external drive, for example. Additionally, you can set up autosave. By default, Preference Manager does an autosave every 7 days, saving up to 10 versions of the preference files. If this is too often (or not enough), you can easily change the settings to suit your needs.

Preferences within Preference Manager – including the ability to adjust save locations and autosave frequency.

Wrapping Things Up

I hope I’ve managed to convince you, by this point, of the importance of backing up preference files. Whether your computer dies, your preference files become corrupted or you just need to work on a different computer, having a backup of these important files can be a lifesaver for your editing productivity. It’s important to find a way to backup the files that works for you, so that you can have the files on hand if you ever need them.

Preference Manager is not the most exciting program in the world. It doesn’t have the greatest design and it doesn’t do anything particularly mindblowing. That being said, it does the task at hand quite well. The app supports a number of editing programs, lets you do manual or automatic backups and allows you the ability to easily save files that you might otherwise spend a long time digging around to find and backup. It’s a great bargain (free!) and definitely worth a download if you have ever made any significant changes to your preference files.

I think that backing up preference files is incredibly important, but I want to hear your thoughts as well. Do you backup your preference files? Why or why not? What program do you use, or is it a manual backup? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Wouldn’t it be great if Apple released an app that we could use to customize the look of the operating system? Just imagine that for a bit. Think of how you’d tailor your experience. Think of the abundance of different themes that people would post on the internet for everyone else to use. Hey, think about how many roundups we would write up!

Sadly for us, the ability to theme our system’s interface has never been an easy or flawless task. Sure, we had Manifique and a few apps like it, but now they are gone. That’s why icon customizers are still interesting, since tweaking icons is one of the best ways you can still tweak your Mac experience.

iCondubber is dubbed as the “definitive icon/theme manager”, and while it probably isn’t the “definitive” icon manager, it is without a doubt a helpful and useful tool. Let’s take a look, and see if it’s worth trying out.

The Icon/Dock Customizer

iCondubber allows you to customize a sea of icons throughout your Mac, as well as the dock and some other smaller pieces of UI. Some of these icons you’ve probably never seen, but others will be familiar to you. Upon selecting the icon you want to change, you can drag and drop the new icon to replace the older one. You don’t even need to worry about what kind of file it is. Once you are done replacing icons, simply hit install and you’re done. Your computer won’t need to reboot or logout, it’ll only reload your desktop (it may quit some applications in the process, though).

Switching just about any icon in your system is painless, but iCondubber does have its issues here and there. For instance, when you want to change an individual folder’s icon, there seems to be no easy way to achieve this. The website does say that you can do this, even outside of the app, but I can’t seem to find how. What I did instead was to change a random icon and then select “assign as thumbnail to” from the settings and pick the folder that I wanted. Odd, right?

This is perhaps one of iCondubber’s biggest pitfalls. The lack of guidance, assistance, and user friendliness is tremendously frustrating. Usually when playing with any new application, the application itself can be forward and easy to use, or the application’s website has a few tutorials or samples of what you can do, but iCondubber is not very well documented. This isn’t particularly horrible for most applications, but for one that is tweaking things that otherwise shouldn’t be touched, it makes you feel less daring.

Although your learning process will be a bit daunting because of the lack of documentation, as you get comfortable with the application you will be able to use this app to create themes that you can then mix and match to turn your normal-looking UI into something unique.

Which brings me to a rather personal observation. Upon installing iCondubber, you are presented with the message in the image above. Now, a lot of apps probably have this somewhere in the agreement, but for the developer to put it in huge red letters, front and center, it only makes me think that perhaps I shouldn’t even be installing this application in the first place. This message can turn many people off, but those that know what they are doing will probably ignore it.

The Looks

While iCondubber’s UI is simple, it honestly doesn’t have the same eye candy that other apps like it do. Discovering all the icons on your system is easy, though, and they are even displayed nicely with animation, but they aren’t exactly self explanatory.

Once you start to mess around with it, you are gonna have to do a bit of trial and error to figure out what the end product is gonna look like. There is no visual aid to help you with how your dock will end up looking. This may lead to many desktop restarts until you get use to the layout.

The Verdict

iCondubber isn’t perfect, but it does get the job done, and it’ll only cost you zero dollars. Ultimately, it really comes down to how easy of an experience you want to have. All the icons listed on the app can be changed with ease, but going beyond that can be a learning curve some won’t want to undertake. Nevertheless, if you’ve wanted a free way to tweak the icons on your mac, iCondubber may be just the app for you.

When it’s time to buy a new MacBook, there’s a lot of decisions you’ll have to make. Air or Pro, or Retina Pro? In-store model, or extra ram? Faster processor or more storage?

Most of these choices are permanent nowadays, with even the ram soldered to the motherboard. But in many ways, the screen size will define how you use your Mac more than many of the other decisions. The 11″ Air will be the most cramped, but will also be the most portable, while a 15″ Pro will give you the most space but will also feel much more like a desktop and will be less portable.

I just purchased a new MacBook Air that’s en route from China right now. I chose the 13″ Air, as it felt like the best middle between size and portability, and sure hope I feel like I’ve made the right choice. It made me wonder what your favorite screen size is. What MacBook screen size do you own, or would you purchase if you could choose any right now?

It’s a huge pain having to constantly juggle multiple windows and apps to get the information I need to reference for the task at hand. Whether on a tiny MacBook Air or a spacious two-monitor desktop setup, I often have to rapidly switch from text editor to App Store to any of a dozen browser tabs while I work on an article.

With ScreenFloat those days are now largely behind me, as I can float screenshots of the pertinent information atop other windows. It’s easy to use, surprisingly versatile, and a huge time saver. And it lives right in my menubar (although there’s also an option to show the Dock icon instead, if you’re out of menubar space).

Floating Shots

Creating a shot is as simple as pressing Command-Shift-2 (or your own hotkey of choice) and selecting the area you want snapped. Shots can also be made directly from a file (images or PDFs only, I was sad to learn) or the clipboard. A floating, borderless window containing your new shot pops up on the screen. When you’re done with it, mouse-over the floating image and click the X. You can also make it behave like a regular window, save it to a specified location on your computer, copy it to the clipboard, delete it, or open it in another app — all from the drop-down menu that lives in its top-right corner.

Another hotkey (Control-Option-Command-H, by default) hides or shows all open shots, while scrolling up and down on a shot changes its transparency. Shots can be resized, but only from the bottom right corner (even in Lion), and only to a size smaller than the original. You can also drag them into/onto other apps for immediate use (via the image icon that appears in the bottom left when you mouse over). I use this to share a shot online (via Droplr) or to attach a shot to an email.

You can do lots of things directly from the shot window.

You can customize the behavior of your shots. They can be deleted by default when closed, follow you around as you switch spaces, or double-clicked to open Preview or some other app. You can choose between PNG, TIFF, or JPG for the export format.

“Work mode” makes shots temporarily disappear when you mouse-over them, allowing you to look at whatever lies beneath. This is particularly useful if you floated a shot over the controls or file browser or toolbar and suddenly need to use that part of the app. This setting can be temporarily reversed by holding the option key.

There’s also library management, courtesy of the ScreenFloat Browser (which, like most things in this app, can be opened via hotkeys). This is where you’ll find all closed shots that haven’t been deleted. When a shot is opened, it disappears from the library view (which can instill a fleeting moment of panic if you forget that the open shots are set to hidden). The library supports collections (both smart and regular), search, renaming, and tagging, along with the actions described above. It’s pretty barebones, but it does the job.

The ScreenFloat browser includes all the features you expect from a library organizer/management tool.

Streamlined Workflow

As a writer and technology/games journalist, I use ScreenFloat primarily to plaster my screen with notes, quotes, and app details. For one recent story, I pulled key information from five different documents and (literally) covered every part of my screen except a small portion of my text editor’s main window. I never once had to switch to another window or app. Before ScreenFloat, I would have thought that impossible.

I can use ScreenFloat to float relevant notes and information on the screen while I write in a full-screen app.

Other uses might be editing a document — put the old version in a floating shot for cross-reference while you make changes — or copying bits of information from the settings of one image or video clip to another. Artists and designers could get great use out of using ScreenFloat for reference images and spec sheets, while coders might grab shots of key method definitions from several different source files while working on a class that references them.

You don’t realize or appreciate just how handy floating screenshots can be until you try the app. I went from skeptical to evangelical in a day of using ScreenFloat. And I can’t remember the last time a new app got me excited as I used it more. That’s not to say ScreenFloat is perfect, mind you.

Minor Quibbles

There are some counter-intuitive oddities to the app’s behavior. If you want to close one shot and leave the rest open while in work mode, you need to first hold down the option key and mouse over the shot in question. You must then release the option key before clicking the close button; otherwise all shots will be closed (because that is what happens when you option-click the close button). The same issue arises with using the “double-click to open in external app” feature.

The extra features are great, but it gets a bit hairy when you add the complexity of the option key also being used to override work mode.

I understand the benefit that comes from using one modifier key for most extra features — it’s easy to remember that the option key does all the fancy stuff — but this overloading of functions only serves to confuse. I’m not sure how to solve the problem — perhaps it would be better to spread the functions across the other modifier keys; perhaps it wouldn’t. But it causes me untold frustration, as time and again I forget to lift my finger off the option key and a dozen shots (I use a lot of them at once) suddenly close.

ScreenFloat has clearly made great progress since its initial release more than a year ago, but there’s still some work to do to push it up from “great buy” to “must have” status. There’s no support for annotations or editing, although it is now exceptionally easy to export to another app. It’s sorely lacking cloud support — specifically auto-syncing and auto-uploading options for people hopping between multiple machines or wishing to share with others.

This is on the way, thankfully, with iCloud (and potentially also other services, namely Dropbox and CloudApp) support locked in for an upcoming update. At the time of writing, a maintenance update to fix a few outstanding bugs is awaiting Apple approval.

A Brilliant Tool

ScreenFloat nestled its way into my workflow in between other screenshot tools LittleSnapper and Droplr, and if it adds options to auto-upload to a cloud service, it could push both of those off my menubar. It transformed my workflow overnight. ScreenFloat’s elegant design, ease of use, and brilliant concept make for a powerful tool that makes screenshots more useful than I ever thought possible.

Our weekly sponsor this week is StackSocial, a new site featuring deals on Mac apps, training courses, and more.

This week, StackSocial is featuring the iStack Mac Bundle, which includes 10 essential Mac tools for just $49.99. It includes Parallels 7, one of the most popular ways to run Windows and other operating systems on your Mac, which retails for $79 by itself. It also includes SnagIt, a popular screenshot tool, and Clarify, one of the best ways to turn screenshots into tutorials. There’s 6 other great apps, as well as an iOS development course to help you get started making your own iPhone apps.

Then, if that’s not enough, StackSocial has a number of ongoing deals, with new specials coming out all the time. It’s a site you should keep your eye on if you want to get great deals for your Mac.

Go Get It!

If you’ve been wanting a great deal on Parallels 7, SnagIt, Clarify, and other great Mac apps, then be sure to get the iStack Mac Bundle for just $49.99 before the deal’s over on July 26th. Or, feel free to check out the other great deals that StackSocial has on offer now and in the future. With great deals on apps and training courses, there’s specials that every Mac user would find interesting.

Many of us have been using Mint’s web app to manage our finances online for years now. It even makes it easy to keep up with our spending on the go with full-featured mobile apps. But until recently, Mint hasn’t had a presence on the Mac.

All that’s changed with Mint QuickView, Mint’s first time out on the Mac App Store. A lot of what’s inside is going to look familiar, but there’s enough that’s new here to really make it a useful addition to the Mint family of financial tools.

A Fresh Start

You’ll need to login to Mint or signup when you open the application for the first time. Logging in is simple, but if you’re signing up for the first time, the process is going to be a bit complicated. To get the full benefit of Mint, you’ll want to connect all of your bank accounts, your credit cards, and any other financial accounts. It’s also helpful to set up a budget. Go ahead, we’ll wait. (You can also finish this stuff up later.)

The Spending view, with its multicolored pie chart.

All done? Once logged in, Mint QuickView will load your most recent transactions and a pie chart of your spending. Your spending is broken down into major categories, like automotive or bills & utilities. If any of your spending is miscategorized, you can fix it either on the Mint website or right in the app. Clicking the icon for the menu, right next to the preferences gear in the lower right, will allow you to edit and recategorize transactions, or even add cash transactions.

Where Does the Money Go?

If you want to get a breakdown on any one spending category, click that section of the pie chart or select it from the Spending drop-down list. That category will be highlighted in the chart, and only transactions in that category will be displayed beneath. To view all transactions, click See More, and the transaction list will expand to fill the entire window.

Click the arrow to the right of the pie chart to see the Net Income view. Here, Mint QuickView compares your income to your spending and lets you know how you’re doing over all. Everything is laid out in a bar graph, and you can compare month to month.

Net Income view lets you know if you’re getting your spending under control.

To see the change over time, select a month by click in the graph or selecting it from the drop-down. The transactions from that month will be listed below the graph. Click Go to Trends beneath the graph, and Mint QuickView will take you to a new window where you can generate reports on your spending habits and income.

Finance Check-Up

Click to the left again to see how all of your accounts are doing. Lots of green is good, because that means you have more money than you owe. It can be disheartening to see a huge red bar, and I took my mortgage off for a while, because I’m never going to have as much cash on hand as I owe the bank for my house, and it was just a bit overwhelming to see it spelled out for me in mini-inforgraph style.

The Accounts view lets you compare your cash on hand to how much you owe.

To avoid loan anxiety, though, you can choose to see only your cash, credit cards, or loan accounts, and Mint QuickView will break down how much is in each account or owed to each lender. In your transactions list, you’ll see a breakdown of exactly where that money’s going, too.

Beneath all of this, Mint QuickView gives you advice on how to save money, like moving to a lower interest credit card or using a rewards card if you buy a lot of groceries or gas. Mint’s keeping this great service free by offering “deals” to its users, but really they’re just ads for credit, so keep that in mind.

Preferences and Features

Clicking the gear icon in the lower right gets you the preferences, but there’s not a lot to see here. You can change how the window acts and unpin it from the menubar icon, or choose to hide either the menubar icon or dock icon. The passcode options allow you to create a passcode to use Mint QuickView and set a timer, so that after a few minutes of inactivity, you’ll have to enter your passcode again to keep using the application. While I don’t really see a way of getting your bank account information out of Mint and stealing all your money, an underhanded or careless person could at least get a pretty good peek at your finances, so allowing a passcode isn’t a bad move for Mint.

Some basic but useful preferences.

The menu icon next to preferences allows you to launch pretty much any of the other Mint web features, but in the application. Rather than running the website in the app, which I can do in a browser and don’t need to download a separate application for, I wish they had given us a way to use all of Mint offline. Just to be sure, I turned off my WiFi, and it was a no go.

Conclusion

The utility in Mint QuickView comes from, well, giving a quick view of your Mint account. For actually working with your Mint budget, editing your transactions, or updating your financial accounts, Mint QuickView is really no better or worse than the webapp. In fact, it is essentially the webapp in a different package. It’s just that now that package is directly on your Mac, and that’s nice, I guess.

What’s missing is offline access. I had expected to be able to sync my accounts and view and edit my transactions offline, but this just isn’t the case. The QuickView account snapshot window does work more or less offline, and that’s what I liked best. I can just leave it running, and when it syncs every couple of hours, I’ll get account status updates. In between, I can get a good look at how my finances are doing. The rest of it, though useful, is nothing new.

Would I still recommend Mint QuickView? Sure, without reservations. There’s absolutely nothing bad here, and I hope in future we’ll get more offline features. Even without offline, Mint QuickView is still a really good, useful finances app. It’s just not as much as it could have been.

This week has been another really busy one in terms of app news so let’s get started and see what’s been happening!

Tweetbot for Mac alpha released

After months of speculation and rumours, Tapbots finally released the alpha version of their Twitter client Tweetbot for Mac to the public on Wednesday for all to try out and see.

The main interface of the alpha release of Tweetbot for Mac

The interface borrows heavily from the iPad version, with easy access to tweets, mentions, direct messages and so on running down the left-hand side and even the gestures have been brought to the Mac version, so to view a tweet in a bit more detail you simply swipe to the right. It also stacks up quite nicely against the iPad version in terms of features, with some missing for the time being (such as iCloud sync across devices).

Remember that Tweetbot for Mac is currently in alpha status so it has more than its fair share of bugs and problems. You can check out our full review of the most current version here before heading over to Tapbots’ website to download the alpha.

Check your app compatibility with Mountain Lion

With the Mountain Lion release just over the horizon, many developers are rushing to make their apps compatible with the new version of Apple’s operating system. If you’re worried whether your existing apps won’t be compatible then Roaring Apps have set up a free website with a wide range of Mac programs allowing you to check whether your favourite app will work under Mountain Lion.

Roaring Apps have created a website to check if your favourite programs are compatible with Mountain Lion.

The website’s information is compiled by its own users who have tested the apps under the various Developer Previews of Mountain Lion. Some have also been tested under the GM release, which was released at the start of this week, strongly hinting that they will be compatible in the final release.

You can check whether your apps are compatible with Mountain Lion by heading over to their website here.

Parallels Desktop for Mac goes retina

Parallels Desktop received a slight update back on Wednesday that brought retina support for the new MacBook Pro. This came after the iPad version was updated to support the new iPad’s retina display back in May. The new version supports (like previous versions) not only Windows 7 but also the Release Preview of Windows 8, Chrome OS and Ubuntu Linux. The app will also be updated to support both the final release of Windows 8 and Mountain Lion when these are both on the shelves.

Parallels Desktop is currently on offer as part of the iStack Mac Bundle, with 9 great Mac apps for $49 (normally Parallels on its own retails for $80) ending July 27th so if you haven’t already got it, now’s the time to grab it!

New Java malware discovered for OS X

Yet another Java malware bug has been discovered for OS X this week by the security firm F-Secure and relies on social engineering to convince users into running a Java Archive file which, if permission is granted by the user, remotely connects to an IP address via port 8080 to obtain additional code.

Java-based malware attacks have been rising in occurrence in recent times.

The anti-virus developer Sophos stated on Wednesday that the bug has the potential to affect a high number of users owing to its cross-platform potential (the malware automatically detects whether the user is running Windows, OS X or Linux on their computer). On a Mac, it is known as Backdoor:OSX/GetShell.A and is a PowerPC based binary, meaning that anyone who has Rosetta installed (or has an older PowerPC based Mac) is at risk.

Anyone who uses Lion is unaffected as the operating system does not provide any support for PowerPC based programs. So far, there has been no official comment from Apple but if you’re running Snow Leopard or lower, then it is strongly recommended to grab yourself a decent virus scanner (such as avast!) and give your system a thorough scan.

Mountain Lion incompatible with older Macs

Users of older Macs – look away now. Apple has officially released the list of models which will be compatible with the new release of Mountain Lion, due at the end of this month. The list includes:

• iMac (mid-2007 or newer)
• MacBook (late 2008 aluminium or early 2009 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (mid/late 2007 or newer)
• MacBook Air (late 2008 or newer)
• Mac Mini (early 2009 or newer)

Steam Summer Sale on: up to 88% off your favourite games

And finally, Steam’s Summer Sale is in full swing with some extremely generous discounts and price cuts, some up to 88% off single games. Their website has been updated to feature these reductions, with daily deals on throughout the sale, which ends on July 22nd.

Steam’s Summer Sale is running until July 22nd, with daily deals on selected games.

Some of the games are at their lowest prices ever, including one of my particular favourites, Portal 2, which can be had currently for the minuscule price of $4.99.

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!

As more iOS games are ported to OS X, the library of games in the Mac App Store keeps getting larger. Unfortunately for OS X users, this means that many games in the store were meant for smaller screens, limited controls, and “on-the-go” experiences. Granted, some developers do enhance your experience when porting a game over to OS X, but a lot of them don’t.

Keeping that in mind, let’s talk about Demolition Dash. This somewhat adorable platformer from dreamfab and Chimera Entertainment is one of those ported-to-the-Mac games that sometimes lacks the compelling factor a game should have on a non-mobile platform, but it can also provide a quick fix to your gaming needs.

Presentation

Demolition Dash is your typical platformer. While there aren’t any crazy formulas implemented into this game to make it stand out from others like it, the title does manage to entertain and provide you with a few “that was cool” moments.

In the game, you take control of Zilla — a little red monster with a cute face and the need to destroy everything in its path. This little red monster will take you across eight different places around the globe as you help him cause havoc, and that is pretty much it. The game. unlike its iOS counterpart, doesn’t have achievements that can be shared with friends via Facebook or Twitter, nor does it have an online high score list, so there is no long-term motivation to complete any challenges. The game doesn’t feature some kind of reward once you’ve completed a challenge either, so again, there isn’t much else to see here.

Graphics

throughout your trek alongside your buddy Zilla, you will be sent to various places around the world, and see many landmarks in key cities. This is one of the nicest things you get to do in Demolition Dash because it offers an artsy graphical style, a bit cartoonish if you will. If you are playing with the family, you can introduce parts of the world to the little ones this way.

The only complain here is that while the backgrounds and building graphics change according to your location, obstacles and cops don’t change their look. This makes you forget about the fact that you are not in the same place over and over again, since your focus will be entirely with all the objects you’re interacting with.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, Demolition Dash is a hit and miss. The game is fun, the game’s mechanics are great, but it just feels like there should be more — specially when the developers are asking you for three bucks.

Controls are absurdly simple; there are only two keys that control the game: jumping and roaring. That means that you don’t actually control movement, Zilla just runs through the stage by himself and all you do is make him jump and roar. This is awesome for those who like the “jump n run” style games where you can do speed runs, but others will find it daunting or precarious.

The upside to this is that you get four random “power-ups” throughout some of your runs. These actually make you feel a bit powerful for a few seconds. They can vary from wings that allow you to fly over every obstacle, to red stars that transform you into GodZilla making you invincible for a while. When that happens, you start to appreciate the game a bit more.

Conclusion

While it works great for a mobile, on-the-go experience, Demolition Dash makes it a bit hard to recommend for a computer experience. However, the game does have its entertaining moments, and to some gamers out there who enjoy games like this one, they can feel right at home.

Nevertheless, Demolition Dash asking price weighs in at three bucks. That is reasonable to some, but with the sea of games available, it will really come down to your appreciation for this genre.

I’ve been looking for a good scrobbler for a long time. There are a lot of them out there, but they all seemed too bulky or had too many features or, worse yet, not enough for what I wanted. All I want out of a Last.FM scrobbling app is something that pushes the songs I want to my profile and leave out everything else. A slim profile doesn’t hurt, either.

Along came Melo. It’s boasts just about the smallest profile I’ve seen for a scrobbler; all told, it’s the size of my pinky finger. Can a tiny app handle all my music without getting in the way?

Scrobbling with Melo

Melo is just a little swirl that lives in your menubar and scrobbles, or publishes, all the music and really anything else you’re listening to on your Last.FM profile. When you launch Melo for the first time, you’ll have to grant it access to your Last.FM account. You’ll be directed to a Last.FM login page, but once you’ve given Melo access, you’ll have to return to the app to see any change.

Scrobbling a song with Melo.

Melo will refresh and explain that it will be scrobbling whatever you play on your Mac. The only way to know this is happening, though, is to check in on your Last.FM profile page periodically, which I did. The last few songs were there with roughly the correct timestamp, my current song was front and center, a “listening” icon denoting that it was currently playing on my Mac, and it only took a couple of seconds and a refresh for the current song to update.

What Else Can it Do?

Melo’s functionality beyond scrobbling is pretty limited, and that’s intentional. Melo is meant to be a small app that does one thing well. You can get a few things done with Melo, though. Clicking the Melo menubar swirl and choosing the heart will “love” the current song on Last.FM, and selecting the Last.FM icon will load your profile in your default browser.

Favoriting a currently playing song.

You can also create some pretty specific filters to prevent scrobbling, too. Melo comes with the default voice memo and audiobook filters, and I added to that a podcast filter, because the three people I’m friends with on Last.FM don’t need to know as much about my NPR addiction. There are also filters for album and artist name, so if you want to disguise all of your Korean pop or just find it embarrassing you listen to so much Arcade Fire, you can hide all of that from Melo, and thus from Last.FM and the internet.

Adjusting my scrobbling filters.

Scrobbling from Devices

I’m really concerned, probably more than is remotely warranted, about getting all of the songs I listen to on my iPhone onto my Last.FM. Luckily, Melo has this in hand, too. When you sync any iOS device or an Apple TV, Melo scrobbles everything you’ve listened to since you’re last sync. And unlike scrobbling from the Mac, tracks scrobbled after a sync show up almost immediately on Last.FM.

Scrobbling from devices isn’t perfect, though. The developer says in the FAQ that music has to be synced to the device in iTunes; scrobbling won’t work with Melo if you manually manage music on your device. However, poking around Melo’s Twitter, a few people have reported scrobbling working with manually managed libraries on older versions of iOS. The takeaway from this is that the ability to scrobble may vary by device, and your mileage may vary.

Get the Bug Spray

The first time I opened up Melo’s preferences, I set it to always open at login. So far, that’s never happened. The developer explains this as an issue with Lion, and it’s easy enough to work around if you add Melo to your Login Items in System Preferences. However, if I have to make my way into System Prefs, there’s not much point in having a toggle for auto open in the app. That the app has bugs in Lion falls flat with me; this kitty’s almost a year old and we’re moments away from Mountain Lion. Shouldn’t Melo already be built for Lion?

Significantly worse than an automatic open that doesn’t open automatically is a scrobbling app that’s not scrobbling at all. The first time I tried out Melo, nothing showed up right away on Last.FM, and I had to keep refreshing to see a change. After about fifteen minutes, though, there were the first round of songs I’d listened to. The several minutes lag didn’t really affect the functionality, if I’m honest; scrobbling isn’t a speed sport, but I didn’t get the currently listening icon, either. Still, since this was my first time with the app, I thought this was how it was meant to work, and it was pretty disappointing.

Conclusion

I’ve tried a few different scrobbling apps, and nothing ever stuck for me. Either the scrobbled too much, like all of my super boring talk radio podcasts, or they tried to be too much, giving me access to individualized radio stations. They ended up trying to be and do so many things, they couldn’t do anything right.

Once I got past the bugs, I liked Melo a lot. It’s trying to do one thing well, but so far it’s doing that one things sort of okay. With some updates to address these issues, though, this will be a solid little app. At the end of the day, its small profile and insanely useful filters are all a scrobbling app needs to be and more than I expected.

Small business owners often need all the help they can get when it comes to running and managing their business. Keeping track of employee data is vital, but can often be overlooked and mismanaged. HR programs are useful as they allow business owners to keep track of everything from salaries and qualifications to absence data and training programs all in one handy piece of software.

Employment:app is a nice little HR management app designed for small to medium sized businesses and at first glance looks to pack a large punch in a small package. There are lots of competitors in the HR software market, so let’s see how it holds its own. Read on for my thoughts.

Getting Started

Employment:app can be downloaded from the Mac App Store here for $34.99 and once installed you can be up and running within seconds – there’s no need to spend hours configuring it to your business.

The layout is clean and simple, but perhaps not the most professional

The layout of Employment:app is clean, simple and relatively uncluttered, which may not be important to some users but I’ve always preferred my software to have both style and substance.

Features

Despite its low price, employment:app packs a considerable punch in the features department. Among my favourite features is the ability to add specific roles and functions that exist in your company, before I had a good play around with the software I was expecting to be forced to conform with preset options such as “Sales, Marketing, Management, Procurement”, but was pleasantly surprised to see this was not the case.

Employment:app can be adapted to suit your business

Another great feature is the ability to export employee data to Excel and Numbers or to PDF, allowing you to quickly gather employee statistics or print information on specific employees to present in a meeting – whilst perhaps not vital to smaller businesses with only a handful of employees, I feel this could be extremely useful for medium sized ventures with a sizeable number of employees.

Employment:app also comes with a handy little widget that tells you at a glance which of your employees are active or absent, great if you need to see which of your employees are available for a specific task quickly. There is however no possibility of breaking down this “at a glance” widget with the reasons for absence, for example employees on vacation or those who are sick etc. I feel this could be a great addition to a future version as it provides more detail of availability within seconds.

There is no breakdown for absent employees at a glance – an annoying exclusion

Employment:app also comes with the ability to sync with iCal and iCloud, which in my opinion is one of its greatest strengths. This allows all of your employee data to be shared between your Macs allowing you to always keep on top of any HR matters from anywhere on the planet with an internet connection. The iCal sync also means that it’s possible to see who’s absent or on vacation directly on a laptop or iPhone, useful if you’re away from a computer or in a meeting.

The software also comes with drag & drop functionality, which aside from fitting well with the clean and uncluttered style of the app, also allows employee pictures and documents to be added to employee files within seconds. This also means that you won’t have to keep paper copies of CVs or qualifications taking up space in your office, a handy advantage of employment:app for startups that have limited office space.

Employment:app also allows you to search for employees based on specific skills or qualities, such as foreign languages spoken, qualifications gained, gender, driving license type and so on. This I feel would be handy if you needed someone specific to carry out a certain task. Another neat feature is the ability to create reports for absence and training for any period you choose. These reports can be created for both individual and all employees, which is a great addition. This makes compiling individual or total employee data for quarterly or end of year reports both easy and quick.

The software does have its disadvantages however. The design, whilst clean and simple, may not be professional enough for some users. The lack of an option to group employees on the home screen into separate files depending on department is also disappointing and leads to a somewhat cluttered and unorganised list of employees on the home screen. Whilst employees can be ordered according to department, I feel that the addition of employee groups (or files) would be a wise addition to a future release of the software.

Conclusions

Employment:app is a great app that does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s great for its target market of small to medium size businesses, but firms on the larger side would benefit from software more specifically designed for a larger number of employees such as the professional version of BambooHR. The default view for all employees would become cluttered as number of employees increases.

However at its current price, it certainly isn’t a risky investment to buy it and try it and see if it suits your business needs. A free trial version is also available meaning even less risk in trying out Employment:app. Do you use Employment:app for your business? If so, what do you think about it and do you have any alternatives? Let us know in the comments section below.