Category: Mac

Having graduated and lived on my own for a while now, I have come to understand the importance of setting a budget. There are an overwhelming number of apps and sites and methods to help in setting a budget, and it can quickly get overwhelming sorting through all of those different resources. While many apps have their own new system of budgeting, sometimes it’s important to take a look back at more traditional methods of budgeting.

MoneyWell is a recently updated budgeting application that has done just that. MoneyWell utilizes a traditional form of budgeting known as “envelope budgeting.” Read on for more information about how this technique translates to digital format and some of the great features available in the latest release of MoneyWell.

Understanding MoneyWell

This review feels a bit backwards as I often discuss some of the features before going into explanations, but MoneyWell requires an explanation before-hand or the features don’t make a lot of sense (as I found when I first tried out the app).

MoneyWell is based upon the envelope budgeting method. Back in the day, before computers and all of the credit and debit cards, people would often set a budget using cash and envelopes. Each envelope was dedicated to a certain category, and the money put into that envelope was the budget for whatever time period was chosen.

The folks at MoneyWell saw a problem with most other financial tools, in that most apps use reports about budget generated at the end of the month. MoneyWell, on the other hand, utilizes the envelope system and allows you to proactively budget. You are able to check the current status of your budget and then spend accordingly.

Setting Up MoneyWell

Like many budgeting systems, MoneyWell is great to use once it’s set-up. Unfortunately, the initial set-up is cumbersome at times. The first step is, of course, to set up your accounts. You can add bank accounts, credit cards, investments and more. In theory, you are able to link with any online accounts that already exist, although this only worked for about half of the accounts that I tried it with. My bank account did not connect automatically so I have to set up the account manually which is quite a pain.

When setting up accounts, if you have a loan or credit card account that isn’t used in daily cash flow, you can uncheck the button that states “Account Option: Include in cash flow” and it will not be included.

After the accounts are set up, you can go ahead and add the initial buckets. Buckets are the “envelopes” of MoneyWell and include income buckets and expense buckets. Start by adding income buckets so that you know where the money is coming from. If you don’t have a steady paycheck coming every month, MoneyWell recommends budgeting for months when you make less rather than months when you make more. The budget is easy to adjust if needed, so start conservatively and increase when appropriate.

The final set is to set up the expense buckets. This is where you must go in and determine the categories of spending that you need to budget for and the amount that you allot to each category. MoneyWell utilizes event-based budgeting, so rather than setting up a certain amount for “dining” every month, you would set up different “events” for estimated spending. For example, if you go out to dinner every Friday night you would set up an event like the one below.

Special Features

MoneyWell offers a few unique features that make using this app a great way to budget. First, let’s discuss the benefits of event-based budgeting in a bit more detail. At least within the variety of budgeting applications that I’ve tried out, MoneyWell is the only one that utilizes envelope and event-based budgeting. The greatest benefit of event-based budgeting is definitely the ability to simply revise the budget after it’s been set the first time. Rather than figuring out the amount to budget for dining after you stop eating lunch out every day, you can simply delete or revise the event.

Event based budgeting is great for frequently occurring expenses but also works well for infrequent events. MoneyWell supports events that occur as infrequently as once a year. You are also able to work to save money for certain events. Say, for example, you want to start budgeting money to save for a new car. You can set up a bucket that occurs only once but is filled every week or month. This is great for wishlist items or annual expenses such as Christmas gifts and taxes.

MoneyWell offers a very powerful currency calculator in the newest version. The currency feature allows you to keep within budget even when traveling abroad. If, for example, you purchase an item using Euros, you can record the expense as Euros. Then MoneyWell utilizes the currency exchange rate to convert the transaction to whatever currency your account is set to. You can also utilize a third currency if the bucket has a different currency setting.

Finally, MoneyWell offers unlimited usage of smart filters. If you are good about “tagging” transactions with metadata of your choosing, the smart filters are a great benefit. For example, if you need to find all transactions tagged “work,” a smart filter can help you out. You can also search by payee, date of transaction, amount, memo and more. The sheer amount of ways to sort and search through transactions is incredible.

These are just a few of the impressive features provided in MoneyWell. Check out the app to try out the interactive reports, calendars, Lion-specific features and more.

Final Thoughts

Of all of the apps that I’ve tried budgeting with on a variety of platforms, MoneyWell is definitely the most intriguing. I think that for me, getting down to the nitty-gritty details of my budget will definitely help me to stick with it. Getting through the set-up of MoneyWell was definitely a tiring experience, but this isn’t a fault of the application. Rather, it’s a necessity for this style of budgeting.

Using the application is a generally pleasant experience. MoneyWell offers an interface that is significantly less cluttered than other applications out there. While this is a generally nice feature, it does occasionally make it hard to find what you’re looking for, particularly when using a less common feature.

In the grand scheme of things, MoneyWell’s unique budgeting style makes it easy to stick with. While it’s difficult to get started, it’s incredibly easy to maintain and track your budget. My biggest frustration is definitely that several of my accounts won’t link automatically, but MoneyWell tends to add financial institutions and accounts fairly quickly when requested by users. To sum up, this is the first budget application I actually see myself possibly sticking with.

Let’s face it – buying a Mac isn’t cheap, but you can help justify some of that cost if you use only a few of these outstanding free Mac apps. I’ve included my favorite apps, from simple text editors to advanced publishing tools, which are available at no cost to you.

In addition I attempted to stay away from the apps that everyone uses, instead focusing on the apps which are either up-and-coming or gems in the rough. Read on and see if you can’t get some extra value out of your Mac!

Media

Macs have traditionally been the ultimate media machines, and these apps prove that that’s still true today. From drawing apps to media players – these are for the creative types.

1. Skitch – This isn’t a traditional photo editing app in that it’s used mostly for manipulation of screenshots. Its annotation tools make it indispensable for anyone who works in a team or just wants to share a photo without reveling sensitive information. If there’s any app on this list that I’d consider a must-try, Skitch would likely be it.

   Skitch was recently acquired by another free favorite Evernote, and the two services work together beautifully.

2. Sketchbook Express – I’m not an artist and I don’t claim to be, but when I want to feel like one I fire up SketchBook Express, an amazing drawing app from the folks over at Autodesk. The app makes use of some pretty slick gestures and its professional-grade brushes and tools should make it worth a try for any would-be-Picasso. Once you’ve outgrown SketchBook Express, Autodesk offers a professional version for a penny under $20, which is a steal in its own right.
3. QuickTime + Perian – Quicktime is undoubtably one of the most beautiful Mac apps, but it’s plagued by a weak list of supported files. On the flip side, VLC Media Player has a bland interface with amazing file format support. Luckily, a free tool called Perian lets you get the best of both worlds by extending Quicktime’s native file format support to include dozens of formats; both popular and obscure. You should note, though, that Perian doesn’t handle every file format, so having VLC as a backup isn’t a bad idea.
4. Kindle – While the Mac might not make the most robust eBook reader, the free Kindle app works as an awesome companion to the devices and/or the mobile apps. I can’t say that sitting down behind your computer to read Dickens is a good idea; but for students who need a faithful research companion, or if you’ve got some time to kill; Kindle is an indispensable tool.
5. Miro Video Converter – For those of us who live within the Apple-ecosystem video converting may be a thing of the past, but for people who still need to get video files from one format to another, Miro works great. It was fast and simple, with a number of presets to make your life a whole lot easier. If you need something a bit more robust, Handbrake might be an option, although Miro’s interface is much more welcoming to the less technical.
6. Soundcloud – If Mixx and VirtualDJ are great for trying to be a DJ, then Soundcloud is the perfect place to put your work as a DJ and share it with others. The service is free to use, has a beautiful Mac app, and best of all, has a great community surrounding it of both independent and signed artists. Soundcloud also features inline comments on your tracks which is a great way to share your thoughts about a particular part of a song.

   Soundcloud is great for music, but it can be used for just about any type of audio. It’s a great way to start up a quick podcast or just share your thoughts via audio.

7. VirtualDJ Home or Mixxx – Both VirtualDJ and Mixxx feature one basic promise: you can be the life of the party, and that promise is lived up to – mostly. While each app has its own limitations, for the budding DJ either one should be more than enough to get you started. Both pull from your Mac’s music collection to allow you to do some virtual scratching and mixing. I personally prefer VirtualDJ, but Mixxx has its fans, so you’re just going to have to try them out to see which works best for you. At the low-low price of free, why not?
8. GIMP – If you want to jump into the world of professional-grade photo editing without paying an arm and a leg (I’m looking at you, Photoshop), then GIMP might just be your ticket. It’s a robust cross-platform photo editor which works similarly to Photoshop and includes many of its most popular features. As with many other open source software titles, though, the interface isn’t the best (and it requires X11). Still, I’m willing to give up a few refinements to save my hard-earned cash.
9. Rdio – This is an all-you-can-eat music service with a twist: an amazing Mac app. Unlike its competition, the Rdio app feels like a native Mac application that’s done right. With the free service you’ll enjoy a nearly unlimited number of songs; although if you use it too much, or need to use it on a mobile device, they’ll make you upgrade to one of their premium plans. While it can be used as an iTunes replacement, you should really think of the free tier as something complimentary to the iTunes experience.
10. CamTwist – Whether you’re starting your own web show or just video chatting with Grandma, CamTwist can help you spice it up. It acts as a full live video production console that can be used with nearly any app. You’ll be able to add titles, transitions, and even live-broadcast your screen with just a little know-how. It has a GUI which is functional, but you’ll need to do some digging around in order to max out its potential.

Internet and Social

Internet and social is one of the hottest app categories out there today, so much so that nearly every app you use plugs into it in one way or another. Despite that, these are the apps that I felt fit best into the Internet and social category.

1. Twitter – Face it -the world is hooked on Twitter, and luckily you can get your tweet-fix right from the source with Twitter for Mac. While there are a plethora of alternatives available, the official app still takes the cake for the best interface and design, as well as a surprisingly rich feature-set. The app includes support for photo uploads and viewing, multiple accounts, and even the often overlooked lists feature. If you need a Twitter app that just works, look no further than, well – Twitter.
2. Notifications for Facebook – I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve got a bit of an addiction to Facebook, which often prevents me from getting any work done as I’m checking it too often, but thanks to Notifications for Facebook, I’ve been able to focus more and get stuff done. It’s a simple menu bar app that does just about what you’d expect – giving you real-time Facebook Notifications with no frills. If you’re like me and you love Facebook, then Notifications is really a no-brainer.
3. LogMeIn – At one point in your life you’ve probably been away from your computer when you need a file off of it the most, and unless you use a remote access solution you were probably out of luck. Generally these services can be costly and difficult to use, but the folks at LogMeIn have changed all that with their free tool, not surprisingly named “LogMeIn”. The service as well as mobile apps are completely free (yup, that means you can use your Mac via your iPad), and they are extremely fast and feature rich. On the desktop there isn’t really much of a desktop app with the exception of the menu-bar helper, which is disappointing, but the web interface is generally more than adequate. Oh, and it’s free so you can’t really complain.
4. Sparrow Lite – Whether you love email or hate it, Sparrow should come as a refreshingly simple way to manage it. The app presents your email in an interface which is nearly identical to the Twitter app’s and it includes some extra love for Gmail users, although it supports a wide variety of other services. In addition, Sparrow is fully integrated with Dropbox and CloudApp -making it the most web connected email client I’ve ever seen. The full version will run you ten bucks which will remove ads from the app and a “Sent with Sparrow” signature from your mail. In short, if you want to try something new in the world of email, look no further than Sparrow.
5. TWiT Live – Leo Laporte and his TWiT technology netcasts are really great, but did you know that there’s an app for that? There is, and it allows you to view their 24/7 live stream as well as chatroom in a nicely polished interface. If you have any interest in learning more about technology, TWiT (and it’s app) is a great place to start. Otherwise there’s not much else to say about this one except that I’d highly recommend it.
6. Raven – If Safari, Chrome, or Firefox don’t live up to your standards, RavenCo hopes to fill that void with their take on a web browser which combines the web with apps. Their approach to web browsing is refreshingly different and the app is relatively lightweight as well as styled beautifully for the Mac. Raven’s main claim to fame is its apps, which at the end of the day are really just glorified app menus, but they work nicely and give the web a nice Mac feel. Raven hasn’t replaced Chrome in my daily workflow just yet, but I can see that changing in the not-so distant future.
7. Telephone – If you use a SIP service then you need Telephone. It’s an amazing (and free) app which allows you to make and receive calls on your Mac via your SIP provider. The interface is beautiful and light, and it supports full Growl notifications. Telephone is just another no-brainer app pick for anyone who uses SIP; pick it up from the App Store today.
8. eBay – While eBay may seem like an antiquated service, it’s still the best way to buy and sell your stuff over the Internet, and their native Mac app makes that process just a bit easier. You can browse, bid, and buy items easily, but there is one glaring omission: you can’t list items from the app. If it could do that, the eBay app would be nearly perfect, but for now, at least, it’s only really useful for frequent shoppers. Still, if you do your fair share of eBay shopping, this little App might be your new right hand man.
9. Meme Generator – This pick might be a bit controversial, but I stand by it, because Memes are just plain funny. With the Meme Generator app you can effortlessly generate just about any Meme you can think of which makes it a winner in my book. This app won’t help you focus or get work done, but sometime you have to let your hair down and enjoy a little Meme-based fun, after all, this is the Internet.
10. Trillian – If you use Facebook, Windows Live, Twitter, GTalk, AIM, or Yahoo!, then you need Trillian. It’s hands down the most versatile free chat app for the Mac. It’s a well designed app that handles nearly ever IM protocol under the sun as well as syncing support for its companion iOS app. With Trillian there’s no need to use more than one IM client, and frankly, why would you?

Productivity

From text editors (there are a bunch of them in this article) to note-taking apps, these should satisfy your need to sit down a get typing.

1. Compositions – Currently there’s some stiff competition out there for the simplest writing app, and while Compositions isn’t the best, it is the cheapest. It uses the up-and-coming .write file format to compose basic text files which can be synced via Dropbox. The Mac version doesn’t have Dropbox sync built in, so you’ll need to install Dropbox separately, but the iOS version can read and edit the files you create on your Mac. In fact, I’m using it right now to write this article.
2. Wunderkit – Wunderlist has been a favorite among Mac users for a to-do list app for some time now, but recently its developer, 6Wunderkinder released a full featured project management service that includes a stellar Mac app which can be used by individuals for free. If you need to organize something, Wunderkit is one of the best options available. As I said before, though, for simple to-do lists, Wunderlist might be a better choice. Either way, 6Wunderkinder is a diamond in the rough of developers – especially at the ever-so appealing price of free.
3. Bean – If Compositions is too stripped down for your taste, perhaps Bean might be the magic bullet you’re looking for. It’s an RTF editor which should be easy to use for anyone skilled in Apple’s own apps (e.g. very heavy on the Inspector). The developers claim it’s not a replacement for Microsoft Word, but I haven’t looked back.
4. iBooks Author – iBooks Author is an amazing way to publish beautiful interactive books for the iPad. Apple recently cleared up some licensing concerns so theres no reason any aspiring author shouldn’t give this app a try. In addition your books can also be exported in plain text and PDF formats so you aren’t locked into Apple’s ecosystem.
5. TextWrangler – In a world of constantly changing Mac apps, TextWrangler is a constant. This app is perhaps the best free text and code editor on the market. It supports syntax coloring, OS X scripting support, FTP/SFTP and so much more. This is one Mac App you can’t live without.
6. insync – No, this isn’t the boy band from the mid-2000′s, insync is actually an amazing tool which bring Google Docs to your desktop. It works as a replacement for Dropbox as a sort of online flash drive, but since it uploads the files to your Google Docs account, you can edit them in the cloud. It’s 100% free and a killer app for any Google Docs addict.
7. Notational Velocity – If you need an app that does simple text notes right, then Notational Velocity is for you. Its great user interface coupled with syncing support for both Simplenote and Dropbox make this app a no-brainer pick. Also check out nvALT.
8. Evernote – If you don’t know about Evernote, chances are you’ve been living under a rock. Luckily, though, it’s never to late to start using this amazing “external brain”. It allows you to organize a collection of notes, files, pictures, et cetera which you can then search using their OCR technology. That’s really oversimplifying it, but needless to say – it’s amazing. If you’re not sold yet they offer mobile apps for nearly ever platform which should make your life a whole lot more organized.
9. Calendar – How would you like a full-featured calendar app in your menu bar? Unsurprisingly, that’s what you’ll get with Calendar by Qbix. It’s a nice way to see an overview of your schedule and it can use your iCal events so you don’t need to worry about importing or exporting data.
10. Chronicle Mini – Bills are the worst, but Chronicle Mini makes them just a little bit better by letting you see when payments are due, pay them, and log them all from your menu bar. In addition you can add bills to iCal so you’ll never forget them again. while other apps have similar functionality, Chronicle Mini is by far the most attractive and simple, and of course, it’s free.

Utilities and More

This is the category for the apps that put function over form, the apps that do what you need, when you need it done, and best of all – for free.

1. CloudApp – In the file sharing world Dropbox is king, but it’s being challenged by a few new apps, most importantly CloudApp. Where Dropbox is really just a flash drive in the cloud, CloudApp tries to be a drag-and-done solution to sharing files of all types. Uploading a file is simple, just drag it to the CloudApp icon in your menu bar and you’re in business. You can access your files via the web and many 3rd party developers have begun to integrate the service into their own apps. CloudApp is free with paid plans available, although for most people that’s not necessary.
2. Caffeine – Imagine this: you plug your Mac into your TV, start up a movie, and get comfortable on the couch, only to have your screen saver activate five minutes later. While you could just disable it completely, it’s useful for power savings, so you’re in quite a pickle. Luckily, Caffeine is just what the doctor called for. It’s a menu bar app that prevents your Mac from sleeping with a single click, and vice versa. That’s it. For someone like me who uses their Mac as a media consumption device, Caffeine is truly priceless. I can’t recommend it enough.
3. Mactracker – If you are the tech support for your family and friends or you just like the sound of having a complete Mac encyclopedia at your fingertips, Mactracker might be for you. It’s an incredibly polished app which functions as a database of basically every product Apple has ever made. While it’s fun to use, it also has some serious practical uses. For example, if you need to know how much RAM a particular Mac supports, it’s never more than a click away. Mactracker is an amazing app, and while it’s not particularly glamourous any Mac nerd should have no problem losing themselves in the veritable ton of information it holds.
4. Xcode – Did you know that you there’s a simple way to make Mac, iPhone, and iPad apps for free? Well there is and it’s called Xcode. This is Apple’s own IDE with a little extra special sauce and it works great. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or a newbie, you’re going to need to familiarize yourself with this little gem. It’s also a really good deal as Apple used to charge for Xcode, but recently made it free. It’s worth noting, though, if you want to distribute your apps on an App Store you’ll need an Apple Developer Account.
5. VirusBarrier Express – Mac users, the time has come, we need to start protecting ourselves with AntiVirus software, and VirusBarrier Express by Intego is a great place to start. It won’t slow down you Mac and it helps get rid of any malware that might be plaguing your Mac. In addition it will prevent you from passing viruses along to your Windows-using friends, which should give you a nice warm and fuzzy feeling. So while us Mac users might need to start using anti-virus, it doesn’t need to be as slow or ugly as what our PC-lovin’ counterparts are stuck with.
6. NameChanger – This app lets you easily batch-rename a list of files for free. This is really useful for photos or videos. There’s not much else to it.
7. AppCleaner – Here at Mac.AppStorm we want you to love your Apps just as much as the computer they’re running on, but sometimes you just need to get rid of one or two. Luckily, and perhaps somewhat ironically, there’s an app for that. AppCleaner does more than your standard dragging-to-trash by searching for preference files and other byproducts of an app left on your system by uninstalling them as well. This is especially useful for games or apps like Microsoft Office which tend to spread themselves out across your system. It’s also extremely lightweight and unobtrusive so you shouldn’t have to worry about uninstalling this app any time soon.
8. Prey – Having you computer stolen would likely be a disaster -the machines themselves are expensive, but it would also likely grant a thief a huge amount of your personal data. That being said, it’s probably not a bad idea trying to protect yourself in every way possible – and that’s where Prey comes in. It’s a free (for up to 3 devices) cross platform app that monitors your computer if it’s ever stolen, protects your information, monitors the thief, and even tries to geolocate it for you. I have it installed on my Mac, it works really well and doesn’t use up too much memory. Pro plans are available, but you probably won’t feel the need to upgrade as the free plan is really full-featured.
9. HimmelBar – This is an amazing little launcher app that sort of mimics the start menu on Windows. I use this every day in combination with Spotlight for all my app-launching needs. Now I’m sure I’ll get quite a bit of hate for using an app that mimics a Windows feature, but I just think it works best. The app is currently listed as being on a sort of hiatus (since 2009), but it works great with every recent version of OS X and is almost entirely bug free. You probably won’t be getting updates any time soon, but I don’t really see a need to have any new features added.
10. Deeper – Your Mac has millions of little features and tweaks available to it, and Deeper makes them easy to access. Whether you’d like to change the look of your dock or the location of your screenshots, Deeper can handle it.

Bonus Round: Games

Once you’re finished with all those boring productivity apps, why not enjoy yourself by sitting back and enjoying one of these ten games which are both fun and free.

1. Touchgrind – Pretend you’re Tony Hawk with this awesome skateboarding game. Requires a multitouch trackpad.
2. Fantastic 4 in a Row Free – It’s basically a generic Connect Four game, but what more do you really need?
3. Papijump Free – A simple and addictive platform-jumping game.
4. Stand O’Food Free – A fun little restaurant simulation game.
5. Screen Snake – This is my favorite Mac game, it’s a game of snake overlaid on top of your desktop.
6. Robotek – Over 200 levels of free-to-play strategy, action, and role playing.
7. UberStrike HD – An amazing free-to-play online first person shooter.
8. Victory March – An addicting side-scroller set during World War II.
9. Air Hockey Free – The classic game of Air Hockey brought to your Mac.
10. The Battle for Wesnoth – A turn based strategy game set in a fantasy world.

Conclusion

So there you have it,- 50 apps for your Mac that cost nothing, but provide an amazing amount of functionality. If you noticed that one of your favorite apps is missing feel free to share it in the comments below.

iTunes movies and TV shows are great. You can rent or buy, then download and watch from your Mac, Windows PC, or Apple TV. But what if you have a lot of DVDs or Blu-rays? Do you have to buy all your content again through the iTunes store? Thankfully not. There are many solutions available for ripping DVDs to iTunes compatible files. While there aren’t as many solutions for Blu-ray, and they usually require a few more steps, you can rip Blu-rays into iTunes compatible formats as well.

If, like me, you maintain a multi-terabyte hard drive of your ripped media, how do you get everything to look pretty, embed artwork, add the proper metadata for proper display in iTunes, make HD-SD pairs play nicely, and so on? Well, there is a way, and that way is called Subler. Let’s check it out.

Do I Really Need This?

Define need. If you like for things to be neatly organized, and you are obsessive compulsive about organization and metadata as I am, then yes, you need this app. If you rip or convert some source to an iTunes .m4v file and then drop it straight into iTunes, it will go into the movies section with no data about what the movie is, artwork associated with it, or if it’s a TV show or some other kind of media. I’m sure for some people this is fine, but it drives me absolutely crazy.

When I started making my movies and TV shows all digital, I found an application called MetaX which performs pretty much the same function as Subler. The problem though is that it hasn’t been updated since 2008, and it’s in need of a refresh. It’s clunky.

Sometimes I go on a batch ripping spree, then need to tag a bunch of files. MetaX has perhaps a better queue/batch system than Subler but it takes forever! It seems that MetaX re-writes the entire .m4v file instead of just tagging the file as it exists on the Hard Drive. Saving tags to a file in Subler on the other hand is nearly instantaneous.

The Interface

I recently purchased the sampler Blu-ray disc for Star Trek: The Next Generation — Remastered. This disc contains 3 episodes which I quickly ripped and added to my library in place of the old DVD rips I have of TNG. I’ll use the episode “Sins of the Father” from the sampler disc (which is some of the best TNG).

Subler is a no frills, no fuss application. I usually open a file to be tagged (or files in the case) by dragging the files right on to Subler’s icon in the Dock.

After opening a file or files, you get a window for each one.

Now this is where Subler really shines. I want to pull some preset information about this episode from a database somewhere rather than just typing it all up myself. So I click the little search icon up in the top right, search for the appropriate movie or TV episode, and 99% of the time, Subler will find the right information.

Now, there is one problem we have yet to solve that I didn’t know how to for along time. When purchasing HD Movies or TV shows from the iTunes Store, you will get an HD/SD pair. The reason is some devices won’t play HD video files, or perhaps you don’t have room on your iPod to sync the HD version but you do the smaller SD version.

When ripping, I want the same thing. Handbrake has two very helpful presets, “Apple TV 2 Preset” for HD 720 (and I’m still ripping everything as 720 mostly for space considerations for my quickly filling media drive, and because 720 still looks pretty good), and “Universal Preset” for an SD file that works on pretty much any device. I rip to both formats, but how do I get iTunes to display them as one entry the way an HD/SD pair does from the iTunes Store?

You see, when dropping them both into iTunes, they display as separate entries even if all the metadata is identical (we could talk about how stupid it is that this is the case, but that wouldn’t do any good because that is the case and there’s not a lot we can do about it).

It turns out, there is a metadata item know as CNID, or as Subler now calls it in the latest version, contentID. So to add this metadata item, click the plus button dropdown in the lower left hand corner and choose “contentID”.

Now with a lot of movies or TV shows, you can get the CNID from the link to the iTunes Store item.

To get the content ID if the item is in the iTunes Store: go to the appropriate entry on the iTunes Store and click the little drop down next to the price/buy button. Select copy link and paste it into a text document. The CNID will be the last string of numbers on the end of the URL. For TV Shows it will be the number imidiately after “?i=” and for movies it will imidiately follow “id”.

But unfortunately for me and this particular file I’m tagging, TNG is not in the iTunes Store. I do have my own system for coming up with a unique CNID for files that are not in the iTunes Store (and it does need to be unique). It is possible that at some point in the future I would buy an iTunes Movie or TV show with the same CNID that I have used on a file already, but I have not had that happen yet.

Now, after entering the CNID, there is one thing further. Click on the other settings tab, and make sure Media Kind is set to TV Show or Movie depending upon which you are tagging. And this is important, for the HD version, check the HD Video check box.

Another nice thing about Subler: I’ve been tagging the HD version of the file, and haven’t yet touched the SD version of the file. But I can simply go to the Metadata Tab, use “Command + A” to select all, and paste it onto the SD file. Same goes for artwork. Once that is finished, you can now save and close both files. If all is well, when you drag both files into iTunes, you have a single entry for the HD/SD pair.

Tag Sets

Tag sets are nice too. If I happen to have acquired an entire season or ten on DVD or Blu-ray, I can save a basic entry of tag data to apply to these tens of dozens of files.

This functionality is rendered mostly unnecessary if the search feature finds the metadata that you need. However, there have been certain occasions when it didn’t find all the metadata, or I wasn’t happy with what Subler found, and sets is very useful for that.

The Opinion

I wish Subler had better batch capabilities. But all in all, I find it very useful for my obsessive compulsive need to have a well organized and well tagged media library. I haven’t found the interface to be terribly confusing, that said, I could see how it might be a bit more confusing for non-geeks.

Then again, I don’t think non-geeks would be managing and organizing a media library on a hard drive connected to a Mac Mini as a media center either.

With Lion, Apple completely rethought the Mail.app interface, largely drawing from what they had done on the iPad. Along with the visual upgrades came some functionality boosts as well, such as vastly improved searching and a more robust tagging system.

Despite these efforts, many users are still flocking to third party email solutions. Sparrow has made a huge splash in the email world and brings a lot of innovation to this market in terms of UI. It’s simple, beautiful and still feature rich enough to use as your primary email client.

Another major competitor is Postbox, which has long held the spot as the go-to client for Mac users who want a truly powerful alternative to Mail.app. The Postbox conversation reply formatting put’s Mail’s to shame and the entire client tightly and effortlessly integrates with your favorite Google services.

The question we want to know today is, “which is your favorite?” For those of us that work at our computers, email can be something that eats up a significant portion of our week and it’s important to make sure we use a client that makes our workflow as easy and efficient as possible. Cast your vote for your favorite client and leave a comment below telling us why you use the one that you do.

Our featured sponsor this week is xPlan, a powerful, friendly and attractive project management application.

Project management tools tend to be both complicated and expensive. If you’re a small business owner or are just new to this category in general, you need something that’s affordable and approachable without sacrificing important features. The tool you’re looking for is xPlan. With it, creating, tracking and managing your projects will be much easier than ever!

xPlan is designed to keep track of tasks and calculate a project’s cost. The easy to read Gantt Chart interface gives you a graphical representation of your projects including tasks, resources, start and end dates, milestones and completion. You can also import/export Microsoft Office documents and share your projects online so collaboration with others is a snap.

Go Get It!

If you’re in the market for a better way to manage your team or small business, xPlan is the way to go. It’s overflowing with useful features while remaining simple enough that you can easily implement it quickly across your entire team. For more information, or to pick up a trial copy, check out the xPlan website today.

There is certainly no shortage of finance apps available for the Mac. For some odd reason, Intuit has shied away from offering it’s full-fledged Quicken software for Mac. They offer a watered-down version called “Quicken Essentials for Mac,” but as someone who has used it, I can tell you that they are using that word “essentials” loosely, and charging far too much for the app. It lacks even the most basic features that people expect of any software for tracking their expenses, paying their bills, and organizing their finances in general.

As a result, the field is wide open for competing finance apps for the Mac. Today we are going to take a look at Money Plus, and see how it stacks up against the competition.

A Simple Approach

Money Plus helps you deal with budgeting and analyzing your spending, but does so in a very simplified way. Rather than just import all of your information from your credit card companies, banks, and stock brokers, Money Plus lets you do all of the entries manually.

It markets this feature as a “secure” method, eliminating any risk of hackers gaining access to your sensitive financial information. You input every paycheck or other form of income, and you input every expense. From there, the app will show you how you’ve been spending money, and some other interesting comparative statistics.

With all this simplicity, however, comes a limited feature set. Though more secure, you lose the convenience of having all your daily transactions imported automatically. If you are someone who uses cash everyday, remembering to enter your purchases into the program can be a challenge. Furthermore, if you use your credit card, you may still have to open up your statements to make sure you are entering the correct amounts.

Pros

The app approaches the problem of organizing your finances with an intuitive interface. Along the top of the menu bar, you can select one of five main windows. “Overview” lets you see a summary of income and expenses for any period of time you choose. “Daily” shows all of your transactions listed in order. “Categories” will break down your income and expenses into different types. “Budget” lets you create budgeting goals and see how you have been sticking to them. “Graphs” will create visual representations of all of the above information. Rounding out the rest of the menu are a calculator, date selector, and “New” button for inputing transactions.

While the menial task of manually entering every purchase you make and every paycheck you receive sounds frustrating, you can create repeating entries to save time. As I entered different expenses, I realized how much of a time saver this was. Many of my bills, such as my cell phone, Internet, Netflix subscription, etc., do not vary month-to-month, and therefore could be repeated.

The information that Money Plus gives is also well thought out. The app can show you your average daily income and average daily expenses, thus allowing you to see what percentage of your income has been spent. The budgeting feature is also nice, because it shows you a progress bar that fills up as you approach your self-imposed spending limit. The graphs feature is surprisingly well-designed, and lets you see daily spending, cumulative spending, and category spending. Each one has a nice little animation as the bars fill up.

The default categories are General, Food, Housing, Auto, and Miscellaneous, but you can also add your own. I found that the more specific you can get with your categories, the better the analysis of your spending will be. If you see that you are spending, say, 50 dollars a month on coffee, then you can make it a point to start making coffee at home instead of giving Starbucks so much of your hard earned cash.

Cons

As I mentioned, simplicity comes at a cost of limited features. Perhaps the biggest knock against not only this app but a general trend that has emerged in the financial app category for Macs is the manual entry of transactions. I used this app for a week, and looking over my entries, I am positive that I forgot a few.

An iPhone app exists, but I don’t think that having it would change my feelings; I would rather not have to pull out my phone and type out everything I buy throughout the course of a day. I brought up an example of buying coffee everyday and showed how the app could help you recognize that you are spending too much, but would you really want to type that in every time you buy a cup? It’s only a couple bucks here and there, and that might convince you that it’s not worth entering into Money Plus. But saving money is about long-term spending habits, so the idea of having to manually enter that becomes a big turn off.

While the user interface is laid out well, it also isn’t exactly the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. The icons look like they were all downloaded from some icon set, and the fonts remind me of a Mac OS around 10.3 or so.

Despite it’s simple interface, the design does have a few strange flaws. For one, when you’re entering a transaction, if you realize that none of your categories really match your entry, you can’t create a new category in that box. You have to cancel, go over to categories and create a new one. Little annoyances like that make your workflow feel disrupted.

As I mentioned, the repeating tasks are a nice addition but have their own setbacks. Take salary, for instance. If you have a salary that remains relatively constant month-to-month, a repeating income input makes perfect sense. But for anyone who has a highly variable income, such as service industry folks who make tips, repeating tasks is not going to be feasible. I also mentioned using the repeating expenses on things like my cell phone bill, but if you have bills that vary a lot, the feature may be less useful.

The calculator function is nice to have, but is not nearly as robust as the Mac’s built in calculator, (for those of you who may not be aware, you can select ‘View’ and choose from advanced calculator types on the Mac).

Comparison to Similar Apps

Until Quicken starts respecting Mac users and releases their full-featured software for OS X, I’ll be forced to use alternatives. Fortunately, Intuit, the company that makes Quicken, runs the widely-popular Mint.com web-based financial management app that automatically tracks, categorizes and presents your income and spending. I use Mint.com, and I’ve been very pleased with it.

There is no such thing as a completely secure online banking solution, so Mint.com has it’s risks. Apps like Money Plus understand this risk, and present an alternative to those users who are hesitant to hand over all those passwords to one site. However, the risk/reward ratio of using Mint.com has always convinced me to continue using it. The web app lets you do everything Money Plus does, and more, with the convenience of it all happening automatically.

As far as Mac desktop software options, I have also used Koku, Money, and Chronicle. I think Chronicle is the best comparison to Money Plus in terms of features. What makes Chronicle better than Money Plus, though, is the ability to look ahead to your upcoming bills via iCal integration. The interface on Chronicle is also much better.

Should I Buy This?

I’ve already expressed my opinion about the entire category of finance apps that force you to manually enter your transactions. If you find yourself agreeing with me about how unappealing the idea of doing that everyday would be, then you should avoid not just Money Plus, but all apps in this category.

If, however, you like the idea of manually entering transactions because of the control it gives you and the security it provides, then Money Plus may be worth a shot. However, even though Chronicle costs five bucks more than Money Plus, I think you will like Chronicle more for it’s expanded features and cleaner interface.

The news that has dominated the Apple newssphere this week has been the launch of the new iPad on Friday in 10 countries around the world, with further launches scheduled for the next week. However if you’re not bothered about this new iPad model (or you’ve already got one), then here’s Mac AppStorm’s weekly roundup of the news in the Mac software world.

Apple seeds OS X 10.8 Developer Preview 2

Apple has started seeding the second preview of OS X 10.8, codenamed ”Mountain Lion”, to all registered developers and testers. The preview, which has the build number 12A154q, is available for immediate download from the Mac App Store (where all software updates will be based in Mountain Lion), however you’ll need a redemption code from the Mac OS X Development Portal in order to be able to proceed.

This new preview brings a few more of those promised iOS features to Mountain Lion than in the first developer preview, which was released last month. The new Notification Centre now integrates fully with the official Twitter for Mac app and notifications for new tweets, mentions and direct messages can either be in banner style (like on Growl) or via the actual Notification Centre itself.

There is also support for location-based reminders, like on iOS 5 and it appears that your Mac will now track you (when you are connected to a WiFi network) in order to alert you when you are in the right location. The preview also brings along iCloud sync for all your open Safari tabs across your iOS devices and there is a new icon on the Safari address bar, ”Show Tabs on Other Devices”, to help you do this.

There is also a request to access contacts after the Path fiasco, whereby it was found the app was uploading your entire address book (including phone numbers and email addresses) to their own servers. Although this feature will be seen in Mountain Lion, it will also grace all those iOS devices out there in the world at the moment via a future software update.

For more information about what’s coming up in Mountain Lion, be sure to check my roundup of all the new features and Alex’s in-depth review of the first developer preview.

Adobe putting the finishing touches on Creative Suite 6

Adobe is close to finishing the development on Creative Suite 6, one of the biggest overhauls of its collection of high-end software, with a public beta expected very soon. The San Jose based software company has been working on the latest release since mid-2011 and has already released countless private betas and previews.

The new features which you can expect to see are a revamped user interface, integration with Adobe’s new Creative Cloud service, which was launched at Adobe’s Max conference last autumn, and much more. All of the apps currently in the CS5 bundle are receiving the update, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Flash. There are also a couple of new applications with this release, including Muse, which lets you create websites without any prior coding knowledge (Muse is currently in public beta).

This new release of Creative Suite also sees Adobe pushing more towards a subscription-based service, instead of having the end user purchase the application outright. A yearly subscription to Creative Cloud provides 20 GB of storage for Mac and Windows users and is priced at $49.99 per month (additional storage is available at extra cost) and users can download any CS6 program that they want, with traditional licences still being offered.

This is a radical new approach and one that Adobe hasn’t used before. Only time will tell whether the idea is a successful one or not, however if you are planning to use CS6 long-term then it most probably works out cheaper to buy a traditional licence outright.

Adobe hasn’t released much information about CS6 but to find out more about Creative Cloud, head over to their website where you can also sign up for update notifications.

Adium, the popular free open-source chat client for OS X which supports multiple IM protocols (including Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and Facebook) has been given its first update in a year and a half, bringing it up to version 1.5.

The new release adds support for the latest version of Growl (version 1.3), allowing you to view your chat notifications easily from any part of OS X. However, if you’re not a fan of Growl, then Adium 1.5 includes its own notification system, nicknamed ”Mist” so you can stay up-to-date with minimum effort.

The release, alongside the usual bug fixes, also adds support for 64-bit Macs for the first time and the transcript viewer (which saves all your conversations) has been given an overhaul with a speedier and more refined interface, with new ”Next” and ”Previous” buttons so you can highlight terms in individual transcripts. You’ll also notice that several icons and buttons have been redesigned slightly and the transcript viewer has been given a slight interface tweak to bring it up to Lion’s design standards.

You can grab the free update via Adium’s website by clicking on the source link below. Bear in mind though, that because this update adds 64-bit support, you’ll have to update any plug-ins installed, which can be done via the Xtras page of Adium’s website. You’ll also need to be running OS X 10.6.8 or later, though I’m sure this won’t cause any frets for most people!

Source: Adium 1.5

The word-processing app market is flooded with alternatives, most of them already very well established like the popular options of Pages or Microsoft Office’s Word. There’s even a whole other market for super simple or “distraction-free” word processors, which we’ve covered before.

However, there’s not really an in-between alternative. Something that mixes a little bit of both worlds: that feels lightweight and simple, but also has the primordial features and the customization of a full-fledged processor. I’ve just described an app called Write. Want to check it out?

Getting Started

The interface of Write, at first, looks a whole lot like that of Pages, and that’s because they’re pretty much identical. In the center of the app you have the main area where your pages are located, and above them you have two toolbars, a smaller one with settings related to the font and text formatting; and another where you can find the usual features like printing, opening files or revealing the inspector.

Unlike Pages though, Write is a lot more understandable at first sight, and there aren’t many buttons lying around, just a few key ones. That’s where the beauty of Write lies: it’s simple, yet quite functional. It’s also very affordable. Write goes for a mere $5.99 on the App Store.

Features

While Write may look like a very simplistic word processor, it actually has plenty of features, they’re just hidden behind certain menus. For example, the “Info” button on the toolbar will bring up a page where you can easily modify certain aspects of your document: change the margins, view document information, modify the header and footers, and have access to a few statistics like the frequency of certain words through the document.

The usual stuff that you would expect from an app like this is also included, like spell check, find and replace, and of course, all of the text formatting options that you might need, from fonts and hyperlinks to indentation, lists and tables. A handy toolbar on the bottom gives you quick access to a few of these features, and also displays the words, characters and pages of the document.

Write has the ability to save files in a number of formats, including .doc and .pdf, but also as Rich Text Files and Open Office documents, although strangely not as a Pages document. You can also easily print or create a PDF of your document by using one of the dedicated buttons on the menu toolbar. Reading documents of certain files, is a different story, though.

Compatibility

Because of all the formats available for word processing documents, the compatibility that these kind of apps have with the files from other file types is pretty important. A word processor is not going to be very useful for you if they always break the original formatting of .doc documents or if they can’t open .pages files.

With Pages I wasn’t ever too happy with how it handled files with .doc or .docx extensions (which are arguably the most used file types still), most of the time when they had images or some sort of formatting other than plain text, I would get compatibility errors as soon as I opened the files. In the end the documents would open with only a few differences, and they would still look pretty much identical to the original one.

Unfortunately, Write isn’t much different, in fact it’s kind of worse in this area. It can save files in pretty much any popular format available and do so just fine, but at the time of opening files with complex formatting it doesn’t always go so well. I tried opening a bunch of .doc files, and while for the most part they were fine and readable, most of the formatting in them was broken and very far off from the original document. This is one area where Pages shines a lot over this app.

Worth It?

Maybe it’s just me and my old-ish slow computer, but I have to think long and hard before opening a .pages or .doc file, because I know that opening Word or Pages is going to take a long time and it’s probably going to have an effect on my computer’s performance. Especially Microsoft’s Office apps, which are very complex and have tons and tons of features that 90% of the time I do not need nor use, and that only end up making the app heavy and slower to load.

For being quite a lightweight app, Write doesn’t leave behind features like full screen Lion support or any other primordial features of a word processor. It is missing some stuff, but for the most part it has everything that you might find essential, and you really can’t go wrong with the price.

Conclusion

Overall, Write is a very well-done, affordable and simplistic alternative to the popular word processors. If you are only going to be using your processor to occasionally create simple text-based documents, but still want some basic formatting features, then this might be a wise purchase for you instead of going the full way and paying $20 bucks for Pages or even the ridiculous $120 dollars for Office for Mac.

For creating documents, Write is an amazing alternative. It’s really stellar if you are only going to be using basic tools for formatting your documents, but as far as replacing Pages or Word and their capability to open documents from other file types, then it falls a bit short. What do you think?

Apple has released another update to Safari, version 5.1.4, which has a total of 83 improvements to its performance, stability and, most importantly, security. The renewed offering of Apple’s default browser, which was released on Monday via the Software Update, is available to OS X Snow Leopard and Lion users and clocks in at roughly 45 MB download size (depending on your OS).

The major draw for most users (and one that Apple was keen to highlight), was an 11% increase in JavaScript performance over Safari 5.1.3 (which was tested by Apple using a 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 21-inch model iMac on OS X Lion v10.7.3 and Sunspider 0.9.1). A further improvement (and one that had been bugging my editor, Josh, for a long time!) was a fix to stop websites flashing whilst you flick between them, a source of constant irritation for many Safari users. 

Further improvement was seen with Flash content and, for our American readers, a patch which allowed you to print out USPS shipping labels and embedded PDFs.

For a full list of changes in Safari 5.1.4, head over to the press release on Apple’s website. And if you already haven’t done so, head over to Software Update to grab the new version. 

Source: About Safari 5.1.4

In this day and age, everyone wants high-definiton content, and that means they either have to download the new 1080p video from iTunes or watch some Blu-Rays on their HDTV. Sadly, Macs still don’t sport Blu-Ray drives and probably never will, so why bother? Well, if you’ve already invested in lots of Blu-Ray films and TV shows, then it’s really not worth re-purchasing all your content on iTunes just to have it on your computer at the same resolution. I mean, there really should be a solution for this sort of thing.

And there is — sort of. You see, film producers decided that they would offer digital copies of their films with the physical copies. The only problem with this great idea is that many films do not include it and almost every TV show I know doesn’t, leaving the majority of what you own tied to your television and not playable on your Mac or Apple TV. Instead of fretting about this and going off to re-purcahse all your content on iTunes so that you can watch it on your iOS devices, Mac computers, and Apple TV, maybe you should consider ripping your Blu-Ray content. It’s not that hard to do actually, and I’m going to give you a full walkthrough, so join me after the break for some insight on getting all your high-definition content on your Mac.

Please take note that you will need at least 40 GB — maybe more — of hard disk space in order to rip a Blu-Ray film. If you don’t, then consider purchasing an external hard drive with more storage space.

Purchasing an External Blu-Ray Drive

The first thing you’re going to need for ripping a Blu-Ray is obviously a drive to read the disc, since Macs don’t have one. There are many external options out there that range in price from $60 to over $300 (there are even internal ones for those of you who wish to take it upon themselves to disassemble their Mac, but I’m not going over those here). While the cheaper ones do seem to hold up quite well and are much more desirable to the budget folk, the more elegant solutions, like a Firewire LaCie drive, are claimed to be more reliable.

The Cheap Route

First, let’s take a look at the cheapest way for you to get all your HD content on your Mac. I just purchased a really nice little off-brand solution from Amazon that had great ratings and looked simple and reliable. Sure, it’s not “certified” by anyone, but I don’t really feel like paying over $300 for a drive just for a small project.

This drive that I purchased is pictured above and costs $60 plus tax from Amazon. It’s simple, has one button, and is really the only thing I needed to get started transferring my Blu-Rays to my MacBook Pro’s hard drive.

Learn more about the Blu-Ray USB External Player DVDRW on Amazon. It’s also available in black if you dislike white.

The Luxury Route

If you want to go with something fancy that has the LaCie brand name on it, then you can spend $315 for their d2 12x Blu-Ray drive that works with both Firewire and USB. But do be warned that most of the reviews claim the price is far above what it should be for such a disc drive; most reviews recommend not buying it.

One nice thing about LaCie’s drive is that you can burn Blu-Rays as well, which may prove to be useful for some people, but it still looks pretty overpriced to me.

Learn more about the LaCie d2 Blu-Ray 12x drive on Amazon.

Download a Few Tools

Now that you’ve purchased a Blu-Ray drive, you’re going to need a few tools in order to decrypt the data on your discs. For the Mac, there’s really only one solution and while it does work very well, it is a shareware and you’ll have to purchase it after the 30-day trial period. It’s $50, which is nearly the same price as a cheap Blu-Ray drive, but you can always just rip all your discs during the evaluation period. You can find MakeMKV here. It’s not a very large download, so it should only take a few minutes. (Please note that even though this app is still in beta, it seems to perform well and has no issues.)

Secondly, if you don’t already have Handbrake, then you’ll need to download the latest version over here before proceeding. In case you didn’t know, Handbrake is a video conversion tool that can be used to rip DVDs. However, it doesn’t have the correct tools to rip Blu-Rays, so we’re going to use MakeMKV to save an MKV of the file and then just convert it to something we can play on our Mac.

Optionally, you may want to get MetaX if you’re going to be ripping a lot of films or TV shows because it’s a speedy way of adding the metadata to them before they get added to iTunes. I use it all the time and it works great.

Start Transferring

So, now that you have your Blu-Ray drive and ripping tools, I’ll guide you through the process of transferring an entire Blu-Ray film onto your hard drive and then importing in into iTunes for syncing with your favorite iOS devices.

1. First, insert the Blu-Ray disc into your external drive and wait for your Mac to recognize it. In order to make sure it detects the disc, just look for it on your desktop or open up Finder and look under the “Devices” category in the sidebar to the left.
2. If the disc has been detected, then open up MakeMKV and make sure the drive with that disc in it is selected before proceeding. If it’s not, then just click the drop-down menu and click the correct drive. Once you’ve done this, click that big button with the green arrow on it to begin scanning the disc.
3. Scanning should take about two or three minutes, depending on the content. Once it’s finished, you’ll be presented with a screen that shows a bunch of checked titles. You need to scroll to the right and find what title is the largest file size and has the most chapters. When you’ve found it, deselect all the others and double click that one.
4. When you’re in the information for that title, you may see a lot of subtitle and/or multi-language options. (An example would be here where Sherlock Holmes has a lot of different options, but the film may vary.) You can just deselect the languages that you don’t plan on hearing using and do the same with the subtitles. Make sure that the two top audio boxes are checked to ensure that all the sound comes out nicely.
5. Before starting the transfer, you may want to change the location that MakeMKV is saving the file and this can be done simply by clicking the little blue folder icon to the left of the “Make MKV” button and selecting the place of storage.
6. Now that you’ve got all the other stuff sorted out, go ahead and click the “Make MKV” button in the top right corner to begin the transfer. This won’t take a lot of CPU or RAM resources, but it will slow your disk down — which pretty much means the computer is going to be useless until it’s finished. For me, it took an average of an hour and a half to complete the transfer, but it depends on the speed of your Blu-Ray drive and hard drive as well.

Convert the Video

Since you’ve completed the transfer of the Blu-Ray disc, you’ll now need to convert it into something much more space-saving — how about 4 GB instead of 40 GB? This is a fairly simple process that can be accomplished using Handbrake.

1. The first thing you need to do is open up Handbrake and navigate to the location that you saved the MKV file. When you’ve found it, select it and click the “Open” button. Handbrake should then load it up using the default preset.
2. All you need to do next is go to the “Audio” tab and select track 1 for the audio instead of track 0. This is because it usually sounds better than the other, but if your audio isn’t as good as you had hoped for, then just reprocess the video using the first track instead.
3. Lastly, make sure the location you’re saving this video is correct and click the green “Start” button to begin. In my experience, this took about two hours for one two-hour film, but it will vary depending on your computer’s specs.

If you’d like the video to look the best it possibly can, then use the “High Profile” preset instead of the normal one. (You may have to press the “Toggle Presets” button in the upper right corner of the app to bring them up.) I will warn you though, this will take a considerably longer amount of time than the former and will yield a much larger file as well.

Add Some Metadata and Import

The last thing you’ll want to do before importing your video into iTunes is add some metadata to it. This will tell iTunes the title of the video, the studio that made it, and more. All you have to do to add metadata is start up MetaX and follow these steps:

I recommend naming the file something close to the name of the film or TV show episode for this to work well.

1. Go to the MetaX menu and click Preferences, then go to the iTunes tab and check the “Enable iTunes plugin” box as well as the “Send to iTunes after writing” option in order to automatically import the video.
2. Open the video file by pressing the “Open” button in the top left corner, navigating to the video, selecting it, and clicking “Open”.
3. MetaX will search for some tags and display them in the pane to the left. You can click one to explore what it contains and double click it to apply it to the video. Once you’re finished, just click the red “Write & Share” button and let it write the tags.

Conclusion

There you have it! Hopefully this has provided much insight on how you should go about ripping a Blu-Ray disc. I wish you luck with your endeavors and do let us know if you have a suggestion that we should include in this tutorial.

Blu-Ray disc icon via dunedhel

The Toy Story franchise has long been a success, so it comes as no surprise that a Toy Story 3 game was introduced along-side the Toy Story 3 movie. I remember playing the original Toy Story game on my Nintendo, so I was excited to give a more modern Toy Story game a spin.

Toy Story 3 is a family friendly game with a few different ways to play. Check out story mode for a great way to play in between clips from the movie. Toybox mode puts you into a sandbox environment with missions, mini-games and the ability to make your own town. Is Toy Story 3 great for a family game or a trip down memory lane? Read on to find out!

Story Mode

The game first opens with a scene from the story mode, specifically the scene where Woody must defeat the Evil Dr. Porkchop in order to rescue the orphans. This scene is simple and straightforward, basically a way to teach you the basic controls and give you a chance to try the game right away.

After beating that first level you are taken to the board where the various levels of play are available. Story mode levels appear one at a time, filling in the spaces on the board as you beat various levels. From this screen you can also check how well you did at collecting tokens and cards to build up your collections.

There are a number of different levels and playing types in the story mode. Some levels, like the one at Andy’s house, involve Woody, Jessie and Buzz all at once. You can switch characters or use one character to aid another. Other levels, like the Runaway Train level and Buzz’s Videogame focus on one specific character and the others aren’t available. Also, for some added excitement you can always add another player to the story mode and both play at once.

Toybox Mode

If a freer style of play is more up your alley, then the toybox mode is for you. Toybox is a sandbox style of play. There are a couple of different things to do. The first is to complete missions. Missions earn you gold and items to use later. The missions almost always involve going around and finding a certain amount of a certain item, whether this is cowbells or barbershop quartet outfits.

A number of toys are available for purchase in toybox mode using the coins earned from completing missions and digging up gold. These toys come with mini-games and missions of their own which helps to greatly liven up the toybox mode. You can race while riding Bullseye the Horse or help the Paratroopers to fly onto a number of targets around the game.

Finally, you are able to customize the world in toybox mode. You can customize paint and texture, add new buildings and even dress the citizens of the town in different outfits you find throughout the game.

Miscellaneous Locations

Part of the story mode levels includes collecting various items. First, you collect cards that comprise a set for each level. Additionally, you must collect tokens. The tokens and cards are redeemed at Al’s Toybarn for collections and little toys. Finally, check out the Toy Story Theatre for fun clips from the movie and more.

How the Game Stacks Up

I really wanted this game to be awesome, but sadly it was not. First and foremost, it is painfully slow. I have a very nice computer and still the game takes five minutes to get started. The cut scenes take a few minutes to load as does every scene change in both story and toybox mode. Expect to spend a lot of time staring at this screen:

Furthermore, if it takes that long to load I would expect the game to look and play incredibly well. Sadly, this is not the case. While the graphics get the point across, compared to the movie graphics and what we have come to expect in most expensive video games, they aren’t so great. The sound is glitchy and freezes all the time, making it an unpleasant listening experience. There are many games out there that look and sound better while loading faster, making this game drop a ways down on my list.

Glitchiness and slowness aside, let’s talk about the actual gameplay. Of course the game is family friendly, and if your child (or adult) has the patience to deal with the loading screens, it can be very fun at times. Story mode is definitely the best way to play, providing the most variety and exciting action. Toybox mode is very lacking, particularly in the variety of missions available. It gets tiresome very quickly when you are simply wandering around looking for random items. The additional toys for purchase are more fun, providing some decent quality mini-games for the story mode.

Final Thoughts

All in all, my purchase of this game was definitely not worth it in my book. While there are decently amusing parts of the game, particularly story mode, the time spent waiting around for things to load and then not always work correctly is not worthwhile. There are many better games out there that offer the same fun and family-friendly gameplay but in a game that works well and provides an enjoyable experience.

Even if you’re a die-hard Toy Story fan, I would think twice before buying this game. If this price-tag were a bit lower I might think differently, but for the time being I can’t recommend it. As always, however, I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Feel free to chime in below!

If you’re a Markdown fan, then it’s likely that you’re always looking for a new editor with amazing capabilities. As of now, there are many of them on the Mac App Store, though they all differ in abilities and features. Some are just focused on writing (Byword, for instance), while others seem to concentrate more on including unique features that help you to do more than just write. The Markdown language is obviously more than just a tool you’d use for writing once in a while. It’s able to translate what you type into rich text or HTML without the need of a visual editor – and that’s what makes it so special.

Today I’m going to introduce a new type of Markdown editor to you. Instead of focusing just on distraction-free writing as most apps do, this one puts more of an emphasis on a special feature the developers call “combined view”. In addition to this, it has support for custom CSS, meaning that you can customize your document to many extents. The app is called “Valletta” and I’ll explain more on about after the break, so be sure to keep reading.

Features

Since there’s not really anything to set up before beginning, I’ve skipped over the getting started section and decided to dive right in to the features. While Valletta is much more feature-packed than competitors, it doesn’t actually have as many as you might expect. It’s still that simple Markdown editor that you’ve been used to, but it has some special enhancements for the more advanced user. Let’s go over these, shall we?

• Combined view: Here’s the most important feature of Valletta; it allows you to write in Markdown and see the results of the code right there instead of having to preview it. I don’t personally like this feature that much because I find to to be both ugly and a bit distracting, but others may love it since it brings some elements a visual editor has to Markdown editing.
• CSS: As I mentioned above, this is definitely the second most important feature in Valletta. Instead of the traditional Markdown editor that just lets you type plain text onto a page and then gives you the option of exporting it as HTML, Valletta will let you customize the CSS stylesheet of the page, which is great for Web developers and other advanced users.
• Keyboard shortcuts: If you’re looking for a quick way to move between the three views that Valletta provides, then all you have to do is press CMD + 1, 2, or 3 to go to the Markdown Source Editor, Combined Editor, and Preview, respectively. This is helpful for quick navigation and really makes things easier if you need to see how something will look once it’s in HTML.
• Quick Markdown syntax reference: Valletta includes a small button in the bottom right corner of the app that, when clicked, brings up a small reference screen for those who do not know Markdown very well. I wish more apps would include such a reference pop-up, because it would be very helpful to people who don’t know anything about the language.

User Interface

In all reality, the user interface in Valletta is just not attractive. It has no originality or elements of interest and the suffers from graphical bugs as well. I feel that it lacks the class that other apps like Byword and iA Writer seem to have. In addition to this, the combined editor’s pink highlight is horribly boring and can only be changed manually through the CSS stylesheet.

Bugs, Issues, and Weaknesses

I’ve always been one to point out the weak spots that an app has, because it only seems fair to tell you before you decide to go purchase it. This particular app doesn’t have a whole lot of weak points and issues, but are some worth mentioning.

• There are no focus options: Aside from that grotesque pink highlight overlay that resides in the combined view mode, there are really no focus options for people who are editing their document
• There’s no way to hide the word count or add a character count: For me, this is annoying because I have a hard time hitting my word limit on articles and the presence of a word counter is both distracting and unproductive – though it may be useful to some. In addition, there’s no way to see how many characters are in the document, which some people may require.
• This app is picky about Markdown: Say you’re writing a list, just like this one that you’re reading. Well, it’s not as easy as tapping the little “-” key, but rather holding shift and pressing the “8” key for the asterisk. Not one other Markdown editor that I’ve used on the Mac does this, so I’m not sure what the problem is here. I’m not the only one who’s noticed this either, because there’s a review on the Mac App Store that complains about the same thing. Hopefully they resolve the issue soon.
• The “Markdown Syntax Reference” screen won’t come up after closing: This is an irritating little bug that the app seems to have, at least for me. You know that nice Markdown reference pop-up that I mentioned earlier? It’s great, don’t get me wrong there. The problem is that once you click it and close the pop-up, you have to close the entire app before you’ll be able to get the pop-up again, which isn’t helpful at all. I couldn’t even get it to reappear by using the keyboard shortcut (CMD + /) or the option in the Help menu.
• Lack of export formats: Even though being able to export the document in DOC, HTML, and PDF should suffice, some users may wish to use other methods of export. In Byword, for instance, you can copy the HTML to the clipboard or export in RTF and LaTeX, which aren’t available in Valletta.

Conclusion

So, for the price of $6.99, is this a good Markdown editor or has it received an undeserved markup? I think it’s the latter since the features that it includes just aren’t worth $6.99. Sure, they’re great for the advanced Markdown user, but I don’t think that many will want to pay that much for them. Even though competitors like Byword and iA writer are $9.99, I’d recommend them over this because they’re much more distraction free and easily customizable.

For instance, if I wanted to change the background in Valletta to black and the text to white, then I’d have to manually edit the CSS. In Byword, I can simply go to the preferences menu and change it with one click. It’s the same with the font and document size – which is either medium, wide, or narrow in Byword. I like having these quick options because then I can focus on writing.

Valletta has good customizability with CSS integration, but I feel like it’s only needed for an advanced user. In other words, if you want a Markdown editor for building a webpage or something, then this might just do you well. However, if you’re just looking for a simple Markdown editor, then this is not for you.

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 March 30th, 2011.

One of the great things about Macs is the high resale value they maintain over time. In the last 4 years alone, I’ve never had to pay more than $300 out-of-pocket for a brand-new Macintosh, and that’s because I’ve been able to get the most value from the Macs I’ve sold!

I’ve put together a simple list of everything to consider when you go to sell your Mac. Read on past the break and we’ll look at some steps for getting the most out of selling your Mac.

Step 1: Knowing What You’ve Got

When you sell a car, people want to know all the details: how big is the engine, what kind of transmission does it have, does it have power windows, air conditioning, etc. When you go to post your Mac online, it’s important to include a list of everything your Mac has and does.

Luckily, your Mac has a simple utility called the System Profiler that will tell you everything you need to know.

To launch System Profiler, just click on the Apple Menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. You’ll notice “About This Mac,” but if you hold down your Option key, that menu item will change into System Profiler, letting you go take a peek “under the hood” of your Mac!

Once inside System Profiler, you’ll find everything – from your Mac’s processor speed to the amount of memory your video card has. There’s more than enough info here to satisfy any curious purchaser.

Lion Update

In Lion, System Profiler has changed a little bit. It’s in the same place but is now called “System Information” and features a much more user friendly design.

Step 2: Packing Up Your Data

With the amount of information we keep in our computers these days, moving to a new one can feel more like moving to a new house. And of course, as in any big move, you’ll want to start by making sure you’ve got everything packed up and nothing left behind.

Luckily, the Mac makes it easy to “pack up” your data in a variety of ways:

1: Time Machine

Included with every Mac since 2007, Time Machine is the simplest and most convenient way to backup your files and move them to a new machine. All you need to do is plug in an external Hard Drive to a Mac running OS X 10.5 Leopard or later and follow the onscreen prompts.

If you go the Time Machine route, then transferring your data onto your new Mac will be incredibly easy; every new Mac asks during the initial setup process if you want to migrate data from a Time Machine backup. ?

2: Duping Your Drive

For users running an operating system prior to 10.5 Leopard or wary of Time Machine, creating an exact copy of your hard drive will be your next best bet. You’ll still need an external hard drive to store this “duplicate” on, so make sure you’ve got a drive with plenty of storage on-hand.

Apps like SuperDuper! from Shirt Pocket can be great options, or you can even use the Mac’s built-in Disk Utility to create a duplicate “image” of your hard drive!

A little more technical know-how may be required to go this route, so novice users or those who feel “technologically challenged” will still be better off using Time Machine if their Mac supports it.?

Step 3: Don’t Forget to Deauthorize!

Now that your files are all packed up, you’ll want to make sure and “turn the lights out” by de-authorizing your Mac from iTunes. Since iTunes purchases like songs and apps can only be stored on 5 computers at a time, you’ll want to make sure you’re not getting penalized by a machine you no longer own!

Simply launch iTunes, click on the Store menu, and select “De-Authorize this Computer.” Enter your iTunes password, and that old Mac will no longer count towards your 5 authorized machines.

You’ll also want to make sure you de-activate any serialized applications like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop. Nothing stings like realizing you can’t use that $600 app because your serial number has been eaten up by an old Mac.

For information on deactivating third-party apps, refer to the support documentation included with the respective programs.

Step 4: Restoring Your System

Now that you’re packed and ready to move, it’s time to clear the old machine, leaving it empty and ready for a new owner to “move in.”

Restoring a Mac is pretty simple, and all-in-all should take you about an hour. You’ll just need the gray install discs that came with your computer. Insert the “Mac OS X Installation” disc, and restart your computer while holding down the “C” key on your keyboard until you see the Apple logo. Then it’s just a matter of following the onscreen prompts to erase your hard drive and reinstall OS X.

If you can’t find your restore discs, don’t fret! A quick call to AppleCare’s 1-800-MY-APPLE line can get you a new set for a few dollars shipping and handling. Otherwise, the Geniuses at your local Apple Store can help you through the restore process during a Genius Bar appointment. On Lion? Learn to make your very own boot disc here.

Step 5: A Clean Mac is a Happy Mac

Have you ever seen an old Mac keyboard after a few years of use? It can be pretty frightening, and cleaning them can be a real hassle.

The fact is, computers get dirty. And people don’t like buying dirty things. So once your system is clean, you’ll want to spend some time on the outside of your Mac.

A few ground-rules before you start cleaning:

• No Alcohol! – If your Mac was made in the last couple years or so, then chances are it has a beautiful glass panel on the front. Using alcohol on this glass will cause a dreadful splotchy coloration to appear across it, and will virtually ruin your Mac’s display. Stick to water-based solutions for your glass!
• No Ammonia! – Commercial glass cleaners are full of chemicals which, like alcohol, will ruin your Mac’s display. Again, water-based cleaners are your best bet.
• Less is More! – Any cleaning solution you use should be sprayed lightly on a cloth, and then applied to your Mac. Spraying directly on your computer is never good for anybody.

Now, there are probably a hundred thousand different cleaning solutions for computers, but there are two in particular that have worked great for me:

iClean by Monster

A light spritz of this miracle solution on the included microfiber cloth will work wonders on the display and keyboard of your Mac. You can find it online, and at most Apple Stores.

Bausch & Lomb Clens

A set of wet wipes that will take the gunk off of your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod, or i-Just about anything else. Find it online or in the Apple Store.

Mr.Clean Magic Erasers

Many people scoff at the suggestion, but these little white squares are great at picking up dirt from your Mac’s keyboard, and do amazing things for Mac notebooks.

Simply leave the eraser completely dry and buff away the dirt. White iBooks and MacBooks especially will benefit from a visit by Mr. Clean.

Time to Make That Sale

Now you’ve got a beautiful Mac with a fresh system install, and a nice clean enclosure. Your last decision should now be where and how to sell it.

Everyone will tell you their own preferred method or marketplace, but I will say from experience that you are always best dealing locally through sites like Craigslist, or other user-populated classifieds.

Online auctions will require additional fees, and you’re likely to incur shipping charges. Plus the elevated threat of getting scammed is pretty high with online auction houses. Post locally, take cash only, and meet someone in a public place!

Hopefully, you now feel ready to polish up that Mac and post it for sale. Let us hear your own success secrets in the comments, and happy selling!

As a color lover, and even a color nerd, I am always finding apps out there that excite my interest. I love color both as a designer and photographer and there are a number of Mac apps out there that are made with these interests in mind.

These apps run the gamut from developer’s color tools to color scheme generators to apps that make the color in photographs more exciting. There is even a bonus game included in the round-up. Read on to find out more about these fun apps for color lovers.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the many, many tools out there that exist to help color decisions and problems. Color lovers will always find apps dedicated to them, whether the apps create themes for designs, convert color values or even challenge the brain with some sudoku.

So then, calling all color lovers. What are your favorite apps? Do you use any of these or do you have something completely different?