Category: Mac

If you are a freelancer who gets paid by the hour, you might have used time-tracking apps (like Harvest) before. In fact, you might have already gone through the majority of them and decided on your favorite, but we come here today to change that, maybe.

We’re bringing you a look of the newest Harvest.com addition, the Harvest for Mac client, which expands on the web service’s features and brings them to your desktop.

Harvest.com

Harvest is a popular time-tracking web service that has been around for quite some time now. What’s so interesting about it is that it goes far beyond just being a time-tracker, and might as well be referred to as a full-on project manager. It lets you keep track of different projects, work on them with other users, keep up with timesheets, and even invoice for your completed work.

Everything I’ve described sure sounds wonderful, however, using the app means having it working through a window in your browser, which doesn’t sound as appealing if you’re a fan of native apps. There’s been some widgets and other types of apps that work as Harvest clients, but none of them really provide a full experience like the web app does. Which brings us to newest addition to the Harvest family…

Harvest for Mac

Harvest for Mac is a client for the web service, built by Harvest itself and with all the great features that you would expect from the official Mac Harvest app. As the developer puts it, it was built with 3 goals in mind, and they all quite describe the app very well:

• Lightweight: One of the main cons for Harvest is that running it from the browser is not exactly fast or convenient. So, the Mac app was built keeping simplicity in mind, and letting the users focus on what really matters: work.
• Visible: As you are working, Harvest is always ready to show you what matters the most, the time you’ve spent on the current project. That’s the advantage of having Harvest for Mac be a menu bar app.
• Smart: One of the coolest features of the app, is that it can tell when you might be away from your computer, so that it only tracks what’s really happening.

Harvest for Mac runs primarily on your menu bar, and although everything we’ve described makes it an excellent app for tracking time, it does not substitute the web service for the app. It’s simply a very cool device to keep it up with your work, but your project managing, and invoicing must still be done through the web-service. Let’s get a little deeper into the features.

Features

Harvest’s icon in the menu-bar is divided into two parts: one with the time spent on the current project, and another with an “H” that works as a start/stop button for your active timer. Inside the menu, you can find options for starting new timers, continuing old ones, showing the timesheet, launching the web app, or showing the preferences.

While starting a new timer, you’ll be able to select from your existing projects and the task that you’ll be performing from it. You can also add notes to the timer being created, and the duration (if it has any set one).

Once you have a timer running, one of the coolest things that the app can do is register when there is no activity from your cursor, and it can then ask you when you come back if you’d like the app to consider the time you spent away from your computer, or to substract it from the count. This is so that your timesheets are not inaccurate in case you forget to turn off the timer while leaving for lunch or anything similar.

Timesheet

The timesheet is another part of the app where you can review all of your recent (and even not so recent) activity. You can navigate it by days, each day showing a list of the projects that you worked on, as well as the time spent in it.

From the timesheet you can also modify any logged activity, from the project title to the time worked in it. You can as well add timers/projects, just like you can from the menu bar.

Pricing

While Harvest for Mac is a free app, using Harvest.com’s service is not (and obviously, you need to be subscribed to be able to use the Mac app). I’ve never really been a fan of the pricing that these type of project-management apps usually go for, especially if you are a freelancer who is paying for the service by yourself, instead of being provided with it by a company that you work for.

Harvest has 3 subscription tiers. The “Solo” one goes for $12 dollars and has pretty much anything that you would need to work with a small team of people (3 or less). The following plans get a bit pricier and bigger, and are only appropriate for bigger businesses with more employees, although they all offer sort of the same functionality (except for the timesheet approval, which is only available on the two pricier plans).

Online invoicing, reports, time-tracking and budget management might be useful if your freelance work relies heavily on hourly payments and constant invoicing. You might also look into one of these apps if you’re running a small business and would like to keep everyone in track and organized. But for some of us, it isn’t as primordial, especially not for its price.

Conclusion

If you are thinking about subscribing to a service like this, you might want to try out their 30-day free trial and see how much use you get out of it. You might be surprised as to how much time it saves you while invoicing, or how much more focused you become once you know you are being tracked. Or maybe it won’t work at all for you.

Like I said, a service like this might be quite a timesaver depending on the type of work you do. Harvest for Mac is a nice app for users of the service, although I’m not sure it could bring over users of similar services solely based on itself. What do you think?

Meet the Ultimate Mac App Collection – the latest bundle from BundleHunt. It features 7 of the best-selling Mac apps available today. At AppStorm we’re excited to offer you the chance to win one of the bundles!

The Spring Bundle features an awesome selection apps that collectively retail for $370, with BundleHunt you can get them for a mere $49.99, with AppStorm you get the chance to walk away with one for free!

The Ultimate Mac App Collection, their latest bundle, includes a variety of top-quality apps creative types want, including;

• RapidWeaver 5
• MotionComposer
• FX Photo Studio PRO
• Fantastical
• ExpanDrive
• KeyCue
• IconBox 2

Head over to BundleHunt to read up on the details!

Read on to find out how to enter!

How to Enter

Entering the competition is really easy. All you need to do is:

1. Post a link to this competition on Twitter, mentioning @macappstorm.
2. Leave a comment below with your username.

Best of luck, and I’ll be picking the winners in a week – giving you a few days to get your hands on the bundle if you don’t win one!

Who here likes music? Yep, that’s what I thought, everybody. Some might go so far as to say, it’s what makes us — or at times perhaps keeps us — human.

Music tastes are as diverse as we ourselves. And we seem to be constantly on the prowl for more. Enterprising people noticed this fact, and decided to see what they could do in the world of web apps to help satisfy this constant need.

One such web app which appeared was Last.fm. And while its extensive feature set isn’t the topic of today’s article, one interesting feature of Last.fm is scrobbling. Scrobbling is a unique aspect to the Last.fm music streaming service, and for a lot of people, its best feature.

But this is 2012, a decade since Last.fm launched, and there are a myriad of music streaming services today. But none of them have tried to duplicate Last.fm’s scrobbling functionality, or the in-depth statistics that it generates. Why? Well, I suspect a big reason is that Last.fm has an API that allows developers to tie into Last.fm’s scrobbling service. Today we have for you seven Mac apps that support Last.fm’s scrobbling API.

Conclusion

So there you have it! Seven apps for the Mac that support your Last.fm scrobbling habits. Did we miss your personal favorite? Sound off in the comments and tell the world.

Last time we did a feature on the lightweight, cloud-based content-sharing app Droplr, it was in an early development phase. Since then, we haven’t looked very closely at it, despite the raging rivalry between fans of Droplr and it’s main competitor (which I’ll talk more about later). Well I aim to remedy that, and since Droplr has recently been upgraded to Version 2, what better time than today?

If you’re not familiar with the app, Droplr is a lightwight file-sharing service. Put simply, it works like this: you choose some content, and a method of uploading it, and then Droplr generates a shortened URL that you can then use to direct your friends, family, or colleagues to that content. But that’s only the beginning. Any old app can share content, but it’s the details that give an app the upper hand. Read on to find out more about the new Droplr for Mac.

What’s New?

A lot has changed since Droplr first became available. First and foremost, the current version is now available on the Mac AppStore, which makes locating, installing, and updating it a breeze.

Droplr now has a new and improved web interface, uploader, and gallery page that are not only more visually attractive than they have been in previous iterations, but also much more useful. The gallery lets you search, sort, and filter by file type, and also lets you rename your drops to improve the usability of your catalog.

Droplr supports drag-and-drop uploading via the menubar icon, and still automatically copies the resulting URL to the clipboard for ease of sharing. However, for even further utility, Droplr now supports plugins for some of the most common apps on your computer.

Lastly, Droplr now has fully documented API support, which is good. But I poked around on the dev page and discovered that enthusiasm has been disappointing, and as a result, hasn’t quite taken off yet. And that’s less than good.

Droplr Vs. CloudApp

I suppose it’s time to address the elephant in the room. Yes, I’m looking at you, CloudApp. CloudApp is a relatively well known application that is identical in many ways to Droplr (as well as it’s closest competition). However, there are a few differences, and these subtleties are likely to be the determining factors in your decision on which app (if either) to use. Let’s bust out that magnifying glass.

The first and most obvious difference that I’d like to address is the gallery page that opens anytime a share link is used (with the exception of when outside links are shared). CloudApp’s share pages look nice, with their dark and almost theater-like aesthetic.

However, Droplr’s page looks even better in my opinion. Good design makes me want to do that thing that dogs do with their back leg when they get their head scratched, and Droplr’s share pages are extraordinarily well designed. They are clean, but ad-supported which is the major functional difference between the apps. They look good, and good-looking ads make me less inclined to be frustrated by them, but they take up a pretty large section of the page, which is my sole complaint because I’m rocking a 13-inch display.

Second is content-support. Both CloudApp and Droplr support the sharing of multimedia files like images, video, and audio. Both apps also let you share text, but only Droplr will let you specify if that text is actually a code snippet, and will color-code the syntax accordingly. This makes collaborating between developers and designers amazingly handy. Droplr also supports both Textile and Markdown.

There are only a few other small differences to address. Droplr’s standard public URLs seem to be shorter than CloudApp’s (by one character), but CloudApp supports longer private URLs for security purposes, whereas Droplr does not. This isn’t that big of an issue for me, but I can definitely see where having the option would be useful to some users.

CloudApp allows you to automatically upload screenshots that you take with the default OS X shortcut, but Droplr implements a separate keyboard shortcut for performing this task. I prefer the Droplr way of doing things, because I don’t necessarily want or need to automatically share every screenshot I take. Droplr’s share pages have built in links for sharing content even further, as seen in the top-right of the screenshot below.

Lastly, I find Droplr’s web interface to be much more pleasing and space-efficient than CloudApp’s, and Droplr’s iPhone app is just as useful, whereas CloudApp’s is nonexistent.

Final Thoughts

Prior to the composition of this review, I was a CloudApp user through-and-through. And I still won’t hesitate to say that it is a rock-solid app that has its merits. However, after using Droplr again for the first time in a while, I have to say that I’m very likely to switch. The gorgeous design (and icon), the iPhone app, the speed, and the versatility of Droplr have hooked me, I think. It seems like the developers of Droplr have been able to achieve finer attention to detail and increased usability without compromising the lightweight nature of such an app.

But of course, that’s just one guy’s opinion (our readers clearly disagreed in a recent poll). The age-old debate between Droplr and CloudApp supporters hasn’t shown any signs of stopping. Tell us, how do you like the new Droplr, and has influenced which app you prefer?

During Apple’s recent announcement of the “New iPad,” Tim Cook dropped the term “post-PC” so much that it became distracting. One thing is for sure, Apple wants to drill this concept into your brain. They know where the future of the industry is and they’re making dang sure you’re on board with their self-fulfilling prophecy.

According to some recent statistics from mobiThinking, Cook is right. They estimate that 25% of U.S. mobile web users are mobile-only, meaning their primary way of accessing the web fits nicely into their pocket.

Today we want to put some of these concepts to the test by asking which device you primarily use to access the web. Do you mostly browse on a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone? After you vote in the poll, leave a comment below telling us what you use and why.

Our featured sponsor this week is Papapapaya, a fun and effective way to learn vocabulary using state of the art techniques from learning psychology.

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One of Papapapaya’s most helpful features is its intelligent quizzes, which will always ask you the words that are best to be rehearsed at the very moment. There’s also a pop-up quiz mode that will quiz you on single words from the background while you do something else.

Papapapaya isn’t a shallow flash card app, it’s a powerful and robust vocabulary learning aid with a ton of great features such as Dropbox support, multiple language support, iOS syncing, detailed graphs and statistics to track your progress, extensive import/export options, and a lot more.

Go Get It!

If you’re looking for a better way to improve your vocabulary in any language, Papapapaya is your answer. Go grab your copy from the Papapapaya website today. There’s also a completely free accompanying iOS app that syncs with the desktop version!

As a writer, and specifically one who reviews apps, a rock solid screenshot utility is absolutely essential. Sure, I could use the good old fashioned ??3 or ??4 keyboard shortcuts that are built into OS X, but sometimes “fullscreen” and “area” aren’t enough options. Also, those screenshots are saved to the desktop, and that can become quite messy quite quickly. And unless I feel like launching the all-powerful Photoshop (and I usually don’t), I can forget about doing any sort of meaningful annotation.

Today I’m going to give Voila a shot. Voila is a screenshot utility from Global Delight that boasts an arsenal of useful features for when you need to capture whatever it is on your screen. Read on to find out how Voila stacks up against OS X’s default screenshot key-combos, or, God forbid, the dreaded Grab utility!

Capturing That Moment

No matter what you do for a living, if it involves your computer, there’s probably a good chance that you’ll need to capture what’s on your computer screen at one point or another. While OS X offers fullscreen capture and region capture, Voila allows you to grab the contents of your monitor in several different ways. However, since they seem to be the most common, we’ll talk about the fullscreen and region captures first.

Voila commandeers the ??3 and ??4 keyboard shortcuts that typically save screenshots to the desktop and instead bolsters them with a touch of class. With Voila running, these commands can be executed with the hotkeys or with the buttons on the toolbar, and once they are, the Voila screen is automatically hidden, the screenshot is snapped, and the result is saved in the built-in image library.

Because Voila takes control of ??3 and automatically hides itself upon capture, getting these screenshots of the app itself was quite tricky.

Beyond fullscreen and rectangular regions, Voila also lets you capture circular, polygonal, or freehand regions. The Object button on the toolbar will automatically recognize different objects on your desktop or on a webpage (the toolbar, or an application window, for example) and capture only that item, while the Menu button will capture a toolbar menu, which is something of which many screenshot utilities aren’t capable.

Perhaps the most interesting addition to Voila is the Record button, which makes it possible to record a fullscreen or region-limited screencast with a surprisingly robust set of options, including showing/hiding the cursor, and simultaneously recording audio from your Mac’s microphone or line-in jack.

Finally, Voila lets you load a webpage in the built in web browser and capture any part of it just like you would your desktop, and the iSight button lets you snag images from your iSight camera.

Organize, Annotate, Share

The filesystem in Voila is just about as robust as you could ask for in an app that organizes images and screenshots. All images are saved by default to the built in library, which is quite iTunes-esque. Smart folders in the sidebar exist by default, but they can be removed or changed to fit your needs. Recent screen captures are displayed across the bottom of the window so you always have access to your current project.

Voila has a pane of annotation tools available, which I will add is probably the most important tool that I look for in a screenshot utility. Sometimes I snap shots of app interfaces that might contain sensitive information (not that I don’t trust you, dear readers, I’m just pointing it out), and that information needs to be edited/blotted out in an elegant way.

Voila provides the tools to edit out portions of your image, annotate with notes, callouts, arrows, and more. The effects panel gives access to broader options, like image adjustment, filters, cropping, and highlighting so you can effectively get your point across.

Lastly, Voila has a set of sharing features built in. I’ve never run into a situation where I wanted to send my screenshots to iPhoto or Flickr, but social features seem to be the trend, and I’m sure someone would find a use for them. Use the buttons in the top right of the app to send your screenshot to a printer, via email, or even to an FTP server.

The Bottom Line

Voila is pretty good. I’ve used a handful screenshot utilities in the past, and Voila is definitely one of the most consistent. Even though trying to get screenshots of the app itself was like going on a snipe hunt, I actually really liked the way it made use of the default keyboard shortcuts. Besides, this is probably the only time I will run into such a problem with it.

The built in library, annotating tools, and even screen recording makes it a really robust piece of software. Where I was previously a staunch advocate of LittleSnapper, I am now unsure of which app will become my go-to screencap utility.

What do you think? Voila is a bit on the high priced side, but the feature set seems to make it worth it, and a free, fully functional 15-day trial is available on the developers site, so there’s no reason not to try it out. Let us know how it compares to your method of screenshotting.

Since the advent of the App Store for iDevices, there has been an influx of apps that serve a very particular niche and perform a single, basic function. This trend has started to move towards the Mac in a very noticeable way, and the Mac App Store has facilitated the acceleration.

Many of these single-purpose apps serve a specific function, such as Caffeine, which allows you to temporarily deactivate your screensaver, or Boom, which squeezes more power out of your laptop’s wimpy speakers. Others don’t serve any real purpose, and are just for simple entertainment, and Mousterpiece certainly qualifies as frivolous app meant only for your amusement. Is it worth a download? Read on to find out.

What is it?

Mousterpiece does one very specific thing: it records your mouse’s movements and turns them into art. After opening the app, you choose which style you would like it to render, click start, and go about your work, gaming, or whatever else you feel like doing on your computer, (Mousterpiece won’t judge you). Whenever you’re ready to see what it has been doing in the background, you head back, check out your your image, and save it if you like it. That’s it.

Functionality

As you’ve probably gathered, this is a very simple idea. It is meant to run in the background, and it will do just that. After you select your settings, you just leave it alone to do its thing.

You do have a few options for customizing the colors, as well as three styles: Tracks, Flower, and Grid. Tracks creates a dot when you click, and a line with you drag. The dots increase in size as you click in the same place, so double clicks stand out. The flower style creates a ribbon outwards from the center and moves around based on your mouse’s movement. The grid style divides the image into an invisible grid, and places a dot where you click. Clicking in the same area increases the size of the dots.

You also get some control over the colors for each setting. You can opt to go grayscale, monochrome, or multi-color. If you choose color, you can select a certain range, or just choose them all. You also get your pick of background colors, including transparent.

Results

I was intrigued by the idea of Mousterpiece from the beginning. There are plenty of apps that can track your workflow and spit out statistics for you, but few can turn it into art. My results, however, were mediocre at best.

I started with the tracks style. I fired up my browser and did some surfing. I clicked through some articles, shopped on Amazon for a while, and spent some time of Facebook. I went back to Mousterpiece to see what I ended up with. The image was not exactly what I would call art, (although some modern artists may disagree).

Then I tried my luck with the grid style. This time a opened up Grand Theft Auto and played around for about an hour. I came back to find an equally average result.

Lastly, I tried out the flower style. I again just went back to browsing and came back to see a picture that could best be described as “meh.”

Comparison to Similar Apps

One of the first apps I downloaded when the Mac App Store opened was Gravilux. It’s tough to explain what Gravilux does, but as the creator explains, it’s a combination between “drawing, animation, art, science, and gaming.” Mousterpiece isn’t quite as complex as that, nor are the results as beautiful. It is appealing to be able to save the images, but the simplicity of a et-it-and-forget-it method of creating the pictures doesn’t compare to the fun of actively participating in the creation process.

Should You Buy It?

I was pretty underwhelmed by the app. If Mousterpiece was free, I would recommend giving it a go and seeing if you have better luck than I did. However, at 4 bucks I think it’s overpriced. It is fun and different though so if you’re really looking to turn your mouse movements into art, you should check it out.

Glowing monitors filled with lines of scrolling green text aren’t limited to The Matrix; most IT gurus and power users prefer working with the command line over clunky graphical user interfaces because the CLI allows the user to operate directly with the system.

While the command line can seem terrifying at first, starting at the basics will allow you to see that it’s not much different from the graphical world you are used to. Learning how to use Terminal will give you a better understanding of how your Mac works under the hood, and give you the skills needed to troubleshoot any issue.

Choosing an Terminal Emulator

Before you take the red pill and jump into the complex world of bins and bashes, you’ll need to choose a terminal emulator. Like web browsers, various emulators have different features and interfaces. There aren’t many to choose from on OS X, but the default Terminal app will get the job done in a pinch. It offers horizontal pane splitting for viewing multiple inputs simultaneously, tabs, and a handful of built-in color schemes for making yourself at home.

If you want a bit more power, iTerm2 is a free emulator that includes more options than you’ll ever need. The app has all the features that Terminal.app offers, as well as enhanced pane splitting, customizable profiles, and a whole lot more that you don’t need to worry about quite yet.

Either will suffice for the purpose of this how-to, but I prefer to use iTerm2 for its additional features.

Navigating the filesystem

The most frequent commands you will use are ls (list) and cd (change directory). They are used for listing the contents of a directory and moving from one directory to another, just like Finder is used for browsing folders.

When you first launch a terminal, you’ll be plopped down in your home directory, a.k.a. “/Users/Name/”. To get an idea of how this relates to the GUI equivalent, open a new Finder window and select your name in the left hand column. You should see a few folders, including “Applications”, “Desktop”, and “Documents”.

Now, on the left hand column, select your hard drive in “Devices”. This location is the lowest level in the filesystem, called “root” (in command line terms, simply “/”). The root directory contains all the files that allow the operating system to operate, so it’s best not to meddle around here or you could cause all sorts of mayhem.

Listing Directories

In your fresh terminal window, type ls to list the files in your home directory. You should see “Documents”, “Music”, “Movies”, “Downloads”, and other directories that are created by default by OS X. If you type “ls -a”, it will activate the “all” flag to list everything—including files and folders that are hidden.

Moving Around

To jump into one of these directories, type “cd ./Foldername”. The cd command tells the computer that you want to change directories, and the “./” indicates that you want to move forward relative to your current location. Alternatives include specifying the directory using an absolute path (a path that remains the same no matter where you are at the moment). This can be done by typing the full directory path from root all the way up. For example, “/Users/Name/Documents/”.

Tip: as you are typing, hit the tab key to auto-complete (ex. “cd /Users/Name/Doc[tab]” will expand to “/Users/Name/Documents”). If your flanges are tired from all this typing, you can also drag a folder from Finder onto the terminal window and its path will be pasted on to the current line.

You’ve now done something useful. The first thing you usually want to do in your new directory is look around. Type ls to list the contents. Type “cd ..” to return to the directory above you (and re-read the above paragraph to make your way back!). Try moving around more to familiarize yourself with the cd command.

Basic File Operations

Now it’s time to perform some basic file operations like cut, copy, and delete. It’s probably best to make a test file so you don’t break anything important, so open TextEdit and create a file named “TestFile.txt” inside a new folder called “Test”. We’ll learn how to do this using the command line in the next How To.

Copying

To copy a file or directory, you will use the cp command. Type “cp TestFile.txt TestFile-Copy.txt” to duplicate the file. This will create a new copy of the file in the current directory, but if you want to copy the file into a different directory, use “cp TestFile.txt /Some/Folder/”.

Tip: If you are copying a directory, you will need to specify the “recursive” argument to copy the directory along with its contents (cp -r). You can now use cd and ls to view your creation, or cheat by opening a new Finder window.

Moving

The mv command can be used the same way as cp, but it will move the file instead of copying it. mv can also be used to rename a file by doing “mv TestFile.txt TestFile-Renamed.txt”.

Deleting

The rm (remove) command is used to delete files and directories. Of all the various commands at your disposal, rm is by far the most ruthless and least forgiving.

Only rm a file that you are positive that you want to obliterate, and if anyone tells you to run “rm -rf /” do not do it. The “-rf” argument stands for “recursively” and “forcefully”, so the prompt will not ask for confirmation. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that the “/” directory is the root of your operating system. So, if you add all these options up, this command will “forcefully and recursively remove every file on your hard drive”. Not a good thing.

Now, crawl back out from under your desk and carefully remove your test file using “rm TestFile-Renamed.txt”.

Tip: you can alternatively use “rm -i” to “interactively” delete the file so the prompt will ask for confirmation before executing.

To delete the folder, use “cd ..” as you learned earlier to back out of the Test directory (you can’t delete a directory you are inside of!) and then use “rm -rf Test” to nuke it. Poof! The folder and all of its contents are now gone.

Conclusion

Now that you’re a certified hacker, feel free to poke around the terminal a bit more and test out different arguments for basic commands. Every CLI tool has a manual page linked to it that can be accessed using the man command (ex. “man ls” or even “man man”). It takes a lifetime of practice to master the command line, so get cracking! Check back soon with part two of this series for more Terminal tips!

Even if you don’t have a portable Mac, you should be aware that stuff happens, and even if you think that it’s never going to happen to you, thefts are not as unusual as you might think. I’ve been there, and I can tell you it feels awful having no way to access your computer at all after it’s been stolen, not even to say “hello” to its new owner.

There have been some theft-recovery apps floating around for a few years now, but it wasn’t until recently that Apple made its own service of the kind available. It’s called Find My Mac (or Find My iPad/iPhone), and today we’re going to be reviewing it along with a Mac client for the service called Sosumi.

What Is Find My Mac?

Find My iPhone/iPad/Mac is a free service that you probably have activated on all of your Apple devices without even knowing it. It works through iCloud, and its most popular use would probably be to recover stolen devices.

Once you set it up in your iDevices, you can access the service through your iCloud account via iCloud.com, where you can view in a map, where each of your registered devices is located with a fair amount of accuracy. You can then display a message to your device, change or set the password, or completely wipe its memory contents.

The service has been available in the iPhone and iPad for a while now, but it just became available for the Mac late last year. You can check if you have it activated by going to Preferences, the iCloud menu, and then checking off the “Find my Mac” service. Once you already have it active, you can check that everything is working correctly by navigating to your iCloud account and going to the “Find My iPhone” service. Congratulations! Now you have a way to access your computer or other iDevice, if it ever gets lost or stolen.

Sosumi

While the iOS devices have their own “Find my (Device)” apps, there isn’t really a dedicated client for this service on your Mac. That’s where Sosumi, a free open-source app, comes in. It’s a fairly simple way of checking up on your devices without having to open up the iCloud page on your browser, so that you can always have available data of where they are located.

Features

The interface of Sosumi is very simple and you might not find anything new that you don’t already have at the iCloud service. The one big advantage it has over it is that it lets you have more than one account active, which means that if you have devices activated with more than one account, you don’t need to go around logging on and off with each of them, here you have access to all of them at the same time.

Inside Sosumi, and once you’ve logged into all of your accounts, you’ll find some information about each of your devices (including a green or red button if they’re active), a refresh button, a “View on Map” button, and a “Send Message” button.

You’ll also have a map, and if you double click on any of your devices, you’ll be automatically zoomed in to the known location of your device. If it’s available, you’ll also get some more information of the device, like its coordinates, the accuracy of its location, if it’s charging or not, the battery level and the time it was located at.

The map is powered by Google Maps, and you can evidently browse through it like you might on any other Google-powered map. Besides that, the app doesn’t do much. It actually doesn’t let you wipe your device or change its password, like the iCloud web service does. It’s purely a simple and quick way to check up on your devices, if you find yourself doing so constantly.

Find My Mac and the Competition

A while back I did a roundup on theft-recovery apps for the Mac, and I was very impressed with all of them back then. After having used them for a while, though, I can say that it’s very easy to forget about the paid services once it’s time to renew your plan.

You might be scared for a while of losing or getting your Mac stolen, but once that fear fades, these services will go to the back of your mind as well. I’m telling you this because it happened to me. I’ve gotten Macs stolen, and when that happened I swore I would do whatever I could to keep my new Mac safe. I got a one-year Hidden subscription, and when it was over a year later, I didn’t even bother to renew it (even though I did get an email telling me about it).

Find My Mac is more of a “set it and forget it” kind of service, as it doesn’t require you to pay, subscribe or keep up with it. It’s also included with your Mac, so I don’t think there’s really any other reason to keep using external paid services, other than their extra offerings like Undercover’s money-back guarantee. Besides that, I don’t think there’s any reason not to use a service like this, except perhaps if you worry about your security and you don’t trust a company like Apple (or even worse, one of the third-party app companies) with your location information.

The truth is, accidents do happen and your computer could very easily get stolen or lost with all of your sensitive information. Recovering it might seem like a very far off posibility, even knowing its location, but at least with services like these you can at least lock it or wipe it in case you can’t recover it physically. You know what they say, you can never be too careful.

Conclusion

Back when I did the theft-recovery roundup, I heard from a lot of people that worried about giving anybody permission to know their location or (with apps like Hidden), easy access to their webcam and other similar stuff. I get where they’re coming from, but I also think the security of having a quick way to access my devices when they’re gone far outweighs the conspiratorialist fears of some.

Sosumi isn’t exactly a big deal, it’s just a very simple client for a very simple service. It’s not necessary, but you might find it useful if you find yourself checking the location of your devices a lot.

What do you think? Do you have any successful recovery stories from services like Find My Mac? We want to hear them!

 

Apps that let you upload, share and keep your files synced up everywhere are a dime a dozen. Perhaps the most popular alternative is Dropbox, and I don’t know about you but I am not a big fan of it. I don’t have much use for it, so I don’t really feel like setting it up in every one of my devices, it just feels like too much unnecessary work.

That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to review Drops. It’s a much simpler and down to earth cloud app. It also offers unlimited storage and cross-platform support. Interested?

Getting Started

Drops, like most of these file storage types of apps, is based on its web complement, and the Mac app only works as sort of a shortcut between your desktop and the web app. It runs on your menu bar, it’s very easy to setup (even if you don’t have an account with them) and it is quite unintrusive. Think of it as a lightweight alternative to apps like Dropbox, with a few differences.

The service is free with unlimited storage, but the size of each individual file is limited to 10 MB. The premium service is $4.99 dollars per month, and it ups the allowed file size (to 100 MB) as well and gives you a few other privileges like no ads, convenient custom domains, analytics and multiple file uploading. Let’s get a little deeper into how the app works.

On Your Desktop

You can interact with Drops directly via the icon on your menu bar. After you log in and set it up, you can directly drag items into the icon to upload them to the platform. When you do this, a small progress circle will appear indicating the status of the upload. When it’s done, the icon will briefly turn blue and you’ll hear a notification sound.

You can also upload files by using a customizable keyboard shortcut, which will upload whatever is in your clipboard at the time it is used. There is also an option for uploading a screenshot, which will allow you to select a portion of your screen to be immediately uploaded to your files, where you can share it.

Features

The menu bar icon not only works for uploading files. It also holds a few key features that make handling files easier. For example, inside the app there is a section where your most recent files are displayed, they have the title along with a small image depicting the file type, and clicking them will take you to the link where the file is stored.

That’s about everything that the app does, although the real useful part comes from the website.

On the Web

The website where your files are stored, is luckily as simple and easy to understand as the Mac app is. Inside your “Admin” page, all of your uploaded files are neatly displayed with a preview of each one of them, and you also have a few other options to interact with them. You can upload files or “bookmarked text” directly to the site with a little uploader field located above your files. There is also a search bar and a link to access your settings.

Each item is shareable, although you need to change its privacy settings by clicking on the preview. If you make them public, you can set a custom URL for it under the drp.so domain. The web app makes the app compatible with pretty much any device, as you can access your files and upload new ones even in systems that might not have a dedicated Drops app (like the iOS).

Competition

I know people get pretty passionate with certain apps, Dropbox being a big one of them. I get why they love it so much for the most part, but I’ve never really gotten the hang of it. I don’t need it a lot, so I haven’t even bothered installing it in all of my devices. Especially because the Mac installation felt a bit confusing and I never completely understood how the app worked. There was something about a folder that the app ran on and I just felt it was unnecessary for me to do all of that.

Drops doesn’t change the fact that I don’t desperately need an app like this, but it does a good job at presenting itself to the user. It’s pretty easy to install and understand, and it doesn’t feel like it is going to slow my computer down or mess with the organization of my folders. The developers claim that (when compared to Dropbox), Drops is more of a quick file uploader, while Dropbox is more based on syncing and backup.

There’s also CloudApp and Droplr, which are very similar to Drops in just about every way, with some added integration for other third party apps.

Conclusion

Drops might not replace your current “cloud” app, but if you think you could get some use of an app that lets you to very quickly upload files with just a few clicks and share them with as much ease, then Drops and you might get along just fine. It doesn’t have any impressive features like other similar apps have, it is just a well-made app with only what’s necessary and nothing more. It won’t replace Dropbox, but it’s a quick solution for sharing files easily without much hassle.

What do you think about Drops? Do you use anything similar, like Dropbox, and for what? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

In what was arguably the most anticipated technology announcement of 2012 so far, Apple has today announced a new iPad with a retina display matching the iPhone 4 display, a new Apple TV with 1080p support and an update to iOS, version 5.1, which will bring Japanese support to Siri, Apple’s own voice-commanded personal assistant.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO since August 2011, took to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco just after 10:00 am local time and, after rattling off a few sales figures for Apple devices, began with the presentation that tech journalists and members of the public had been waiting for. There had been frantic rumours circulating around in the tech world about what new features the iPad 3/HD/2S would sport, and now was the time for Cook to put the lid on them all.

Read on for a complete roundup of all the announcements from today’s keynote.

A New iPad, with retina display, a new camera and 4G LTE support

The most anticipated product to be announced was the latest reincarnation of the iPad dubbed simply “The New iPad”. This version sports a 2048 x 1536 retina display with a resolution of 264 ppi (pixels per inch), matching the display seen on the iPhone 4 and 4S and has improved colour saturation from its predecessor, the iPad 2, meaning that colours are rendered deeper and clearer.

The new features didn’t just stop at the new, beefed-up display. The new iPad will sport an A5X processor with a quad-core graphics chip, giving it enough processing power to render the most resource-hungry of games and applications (which Apple was keen to demonstrate along with the announcement). The A5X will, Apple claims, deliver 4 times the graphics processing power of the NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, which was launched last year and graces devices such as the ASUS Transformer Prime.

More features included an improved 5-megapixel camera, capable of shooting 1080p video and a brand-new dictation key allowing the user to dictate text directly to the iPad. Many users were hoping for Siri integration into the new release (as in the iPhone 4S), however sadly we didn’t get to see it this time round.

The new iPad finally added 4G LTE support, allowing for download speeds of up to 73 Mbps on compatible networks (such as AT&T and Verizon in the United States) and also supports HSPA+, allowing for download speeds of up to 21 Mbps, which may appeal more to European consumers, where LTE technology has not made great strides.

The new iPad is available for pre-order on the Apple store, ready for delivery on 16th March, with models starting from $499.

A New Apple TV

The first new product to be launched was an updated Apple TV, which features support for 1080p video, a new interface bearing a greater resemblance to iOS and a wealth of new apps (for example access to your Photo Stream in iCloud).

Your movies can now be stored on iCloud (allowing playback on all your iOS devices) and Genius now provides recommendations for movies, meaning you can discover more movies to your taste a lot easier.

The new Apple TV is priced at $99 and, like the new iPad, will be released on 16th March.

iOS 5.1 released worldwide

Just after the announcement ended, iOS 5.1 was released for all iOS devices, which brought, along with the usual bug fixes, Japanese support for Siri and the ability to access the camera directly from the lock screen. You can get it by heading over to “Software Update” on your iOS device or by connecting it to iTunes.

Find out more!

We certainly were excited about today’s announcement (despite the fact there was nothing really for the Mac) and with the touted iPhone 5 and a complete refresh of the MacBook Pro line (which may bring along retina displays for Macs, an absolute dream), it seems like 2012 really is going to be a fantastic year for Apple.

For more coverage on the new iPad, head over to our neighbours, iPad AppStorm, where they will be reviewing the new iPad in full in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, as always, share your thoughts in the comments section below. Did Apple succumb to your expectations? Or were you left a little disappointed? We’d love to hear from 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.

It’s time to ditch that ageing wallpaper on your desktop for something fresh and inspiring. There’s nothing better than a simple wallpaper that looks beautiful while not cluttering your display. Today we’re on a mission to find just this type of desktop background…

Whether you love simple graphic lines, typography, or photography, there’s something for you here. We’ve broken our collection of sexy wallpapers down into different categories to make it super-simple to find the right image for you, and even have a few exclusive OS X Lion wallpapers to share!

I hope you enjoy browsing through our collection of outstanding desktop wallpapers.

If you’d like to jump to the section that interests you the most, give one of these a try:

• Lines and Graphics
• Typography
• Photography
• OS X Lion Wallpapers

Lines and Graphics

These wallpapers are full of graphical goodness. Whether it’s cartoon-style simplicity, or something a little bit more in-depth, they’re simple enough to retain a minimalist desktop while adding that little touch of personality…

Typography

Who needs a crazy abstract wallpaper when you could settle for some beautifully rendered typography? All of these wallpapers use type in an elegant way – some with a simple result, and some with a little more complexity…

Photography

Using a photograph as a wallpaper can be a tricky thing to get right – even some of the images bundled with OS X are a little bit too “busy” for my taste. Here’s a collection that should fit the bill perfectly – many are taken from the outstanding Fifty Foot Shadows site, and I’d definitely recommend heading over there for plenty more outstanding photographs.

OS X Lion

If you’re on an older operating system, you might enjoy these three Lion only wallpapers.

Share Your Own!

If you’re using a beautiful wallpaper that we haven’t featured before, we’d love to hear about it. Just drop a link in the comments below so we can all take a look. Feel free to take a look at a few of the other wallpaper roundups we’ve posted as well!

• 60 Minimal Apple Desktop Wallpapers
• 50 Mac Desktops for Maximum Visual Goodness
• 50 Hot Designer Mac Desktops
• 6 Places to Find a Gorgeous New Mac Wallpaper
• 160+ Original & Awesome Mac Desktop Wallpapers

Last week we reviewed Gemini, the gorgeous new duplicate finder from MacPaw. Although not a revolutionary concept, Gemini takes a beautiful new approach to finding duplicate documents on your Mac, with a stunning interface and some fancy animations. Toby had this to say;

Gemini is a simple, easy and effective application that’s hard to beat.

This week we have 5 licenses for Gemini to give away, read on to find out how you can enter!

How to Enter

Entering is simple, all you have to do is:

1. 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.
Tweet to win #GeminiApp from @macpaw and @macappstorm – http://enva.to/wBlUKl

One of the reasons Twitter is popular is for its simplistic take on social networks. Instead of encouraging users to post as much content as they can, Twitter limits the amount of information a user can put out by limiting the characters in each tweet to 140 characters.

You probably knew this already, but I’m telling you this because the app that we are reviewing today intends to bring the simplicity of the original idea of Twitter, to the Mac. It’s called Itsy, want to check it out?

Getting Started

The installation of Itsy is unfortunately not as simple as the app is. In order to get it up and running, you need to complete several steps, like giving permission to the app on Twitter and using a special PIN for security reasons. After you complete these steps, you’ll be able to access your Twitter feed through Itsy.

Unlike Twitter for Mac or other popular Twitter clients, Itsy is very compact, simple, and it doesn’t have many features (at least on the surface). It it is what it is: just a simple way for you to read and interact with your Twitter feed.

Interface

Much of Itsy’s appeal relies on its minimalistic looks. Everything is tiny, clean, and there are no elements inside the main app’s window other than what is necessary. Icons play a big part on interacting with the app, like they do on any other Twitter client. All the actions are also handled inside the main window of the app, you’ll never see a secondary window popup, not even for writing new tweets.

You have a small toolbar on top with the usual “Feed”, “Mentions”, “Messages” and “Search” buttons, all represented by an icon. Next to them, on the corner, is a “New Tweet” button, and below this toolbar is your feed, which we’ll get to next.

Feed

When it comes to reading your feed, Itsy isn’t much different from the competition, or even Twitter’s web interface. Your feed is shown in a long list where the newest ones are found on top and the older ones are buried below. Each tweet is shown with its corresponding information, like the user’s name, icon and the time it was sent. Retweets are handled just like they are in Twitter’s web interface, with the original user’s info being used for the tweet and a legend below that reads “Retweeted by ___”.

One thing where Itsy differentiates itself from the competition is that it doesn’t ask for you to open anything in other windows. In fact, like I mentioned before, Itsy doesn’t even have the ability to open things through different panels or windows. For example, images are automatically shown inside the feed, without the need for you to open them elsewhere, and if you want to check out a user’s other tweets, you’ll be taken to their profile inside your browser.

Interacting

If you hover over any tweet in your feed, the usual interaction buttons will show up below the tweet. There, you can reply, retweet and favorite any item in your feed. If you select the “Reply” or the “New Tweet” buttons, the feed will be pushed downwards a little bit to make room for a text box above it, where you can write your replies or new tweets.

Tweets where you are mentioned will have a discrete blue background instead of the normal white/grey one. Your “Mentions” feed is much like you’d expect it to be, but the “Direct Messages” section is where it gets a bit confusing. Unlike other clients, here all of your messages are shown in one window, by date of when you sent them or received them. This makes it a bit hard to keep track of conversations with one specific user, but also makes it easy to see an overview of all your messages in one window.

Another disadvantage of this app is that it doesn’t have a way to show you the current trending topics, or anything similar. Usually these features are hidden inside the “Search” option in other clients, but in this one the “Search” section only works for what its name says.

Itsy vs. Twitter for Mac

Twitter for Mac, being the official client for the web service, is the most popular Twitter client for Mac available out there. For the most part, I think it does a great job and I’m a big fan of it, but I’ve heard people who complain a lot about it. Twitter for Mac is a pretty simple app too, but Itsy goes further in removing features from the app in order to make it less complicated.

However, while Itsy lacks some stuff in comparison to the competition, it also brings a few advantages to the table, that most other clients don’t have. For one, it has the advantage of a clean distraction-free experience. But there are other smaller details, like the inline image feature, Growl notifications for your entire feed, and customizable themes.

Conclusion

Overall, I like Itsy and I like some of what it brings to the market of Twitter clients. There are some elements that I love about this app, the inline images for one. However, I think for me, it lacks a few key features that Twitter for Mac has, like multiple account support and the ability to watch another user’s profile inside the app (along with their replies and other user information).

Which Twitter client do you use? Do you prefer the simple ones, or the overly complicated ones? What do you think about Itsy, or for that matter, about Twitter for Mac?