Ware of the Week

iWow plug-in for iTunes

Wow, it's been a year since a piece of shareware motivated me to a) write about it, b) plunk out real money to buy it, though on January 14, 2008, all that changed.

While persusing the vendors present at the User Group Wine & Cheese event during Macworld Expo, I was lured to a booth where everyone was bee-bopping with headphones on their head. Curious, I wandered over and learned about an iTunes plug-in by the folks at SRS Labs called iWow.

Porting some serious audio voodoo (thank you SRS Labs) into an iTunes plug-in (thank you Rogue Amoeba) the music issuing forth from my laptop speakers (or big Altec Lansing externals) sounds GOOD. Amazingly good. So good, in fact, that I will immediately cease traveling with the little external speakers that have been globe-trotting with me for the past few years. With iWow, you can adjust the base, definition in the highs, input volume, etc. You've simply got to hear it to believe it, and the difference is VERY noticeable.

Plus it's fun to watch the little green equalizer shown above :)

FYI, it's on sale for $19.99 (no idea how long the sale will last). If sound quality is important to you, and you like listening to music on your computer, grab your copy now!

Smile on My Mac's PDF Pen

Have you ever needed to fill out a PDF? Or sign one electronically? What about combining several PDFs from generated from different software into one PDF to email to a friend or colleague? How about securing an PDF with a password so it can only be opened by a chosen one? Chances are, the answer is yes and therfore my friend, you are in need of PDFPen.

Case in point: Three separate W-9 forms landed in my email inbox this week in the form of PDFs. Yes I could have printed them each and filled them out and then trotted to my local FedEx Kinkos and faxed them. This is unacceptable for many reasons least of which is faxing a document from a commercial establishment in Westport, CT costs at least $1.50 per page! Nevermind the fact that the Complete Act of Faxing feels distastefully archaic and clunky.

Enter PDFPen

PDFPen is a gloriously useful bit-o-shareware that opens super fast and gives you the ability to do everything I mentioned above, and more. It's available in two flavors: PDFPen and Pro, with a price of $49.95 and $99.95 respectively. Both programs allow you to search, select and copy text of a PDF, merge/delete/split up pages from several PDF files, reorder pages, sign a PDF by either scribbling your signature with the mouse or pasting in a scanned version, secure a PDF by adding a password, and more. Both are fully scriptable. The Pro version lets you create forms for your customers that are cross platform fillable, and it can squeeze OS X generated PDFs down to a more manageable (and emailable) file size.

Yes you can fill out forms in either Elements or Photoshop, but that's much slower. Yes you can do most everything listed above with the full version of Acrobat, but that's more expensive ($299 to be exact). Get your copy of PDFPen today!

Chax

August 30, 2006

It's been awhile since we've had a Ware of the Week but trust me, this piece of freeware is worth the wait. (Thanks to my brilliant husband, Shawn King, for turning me onto this little gem.)

Do you suffer from lack of screen real estate due to multiple iChat conversations? Suffer no more my friends, for a little piece of software called Chax piles all conversations into a single tabbed window... for free!

After downloading Chax, just pop open your iChat preferences by pressing Command + comma and click the Chax icon at the top. Activate the tabs by clicking the Tabs button and checking the "Use tabs for messages" option. Restart iChat and poof! You're in tab heaven. Buddies in the throes of typing a message to you will appear in green (Josh), and those with unread messages will appear in red (Tiffany), as shown below.

You can also elect to see the senders name in your dock by popping open the preferences once again, selecting Chax and clicking the Notification button. Choose "Show message notification in Dock", and "Unread message senders" option underneath. Oddly enough, that preference change doesn't require an iChat restart. There are many more options but those are the ones which stood out for me.

Such glorious iChat goodness, and we didn't even have to wait for the release of Leopard. Whee!

TypeIt4Me

Do you find yourself typing the same things over and over? Are you constantly trying to remember the exact syntax for adding an HTML link in a forum post? If you answered yes to either of these questions, check out TypeIt4Me. It's a gloriously useful piece of software that let's you store frequently typed items as abbreviations, then expands them as you type.

Just think of the possibilities here. You can store sentences, paragraphs, entire emails, forum or email signatures (no more trips up to the Message menu bar in Entourage if you use multiple signatures). Store chunks of frequently used code and personal data like your address. It's easily accessible from your menu bar. To add an item just copy it to your Clipboard, pop open TypeIt4Me, paste it in and assign a shortcut. Kapow! This is $27 well spent.

Though, as with most things, with great power comes great responsibility. You have to be careful what shortcuts you assign. For example, if you regularly use "thx" as shorthand while iChatting to say thanks, then you probably don't want to store an entire email that says "Greetings! Thank you so much for taking the time to write, and for making such a generous donation to my tutorial web site" bla bla bla, as "thx", like I did. Else, each time you type "thx" into iChat, you send a a big honkin' chunk of text. Arg. The lesson here is to do as I say, not as I do ;)

Butler

Jan. 25, 2006

Those that know me, know that I'm a *huge* LaunchBar fan. That's the glorious little utility that gives me keystroke access to launch any application at warp speed, along with anything else on my hard drive.

However, I now have cause to try something new: Butler. That is, if I can handle the steep learning curve to configure it ;)

Butler, the "Swiss Army Knife of utilities" as Rob Griffiths of Macworld Magazine calls it, exists solely to help you automate tasks, especially those that are repetitive. Like LaunchBar, you can have it launch an application by pressing an activation keystroke, then typing in the first letter or two of the application's name. But with Butler, you can do a ton of other things too.

Because of its unique set of triggers, you can make it do almost anything through a visual configuration interface (hence the learning curve). You can configure it to open widgets, open specific system preference panes, manage browser bookmarks, control iTunes, display entries from your Address Book, create custom pop-up menus of anything you want, create keyboard macros, trigger a web site search, and on and on.

According to my friend and musician fantastico, Digital Droo, "Butler may just be the coolest productivity enhancer I've ever used." Thanks for the recommendation, Droo!

Film Loop

My favorite piece of software debuted at Macworld Expo is Film Loop. I was lucky enough to sit in on a demo by Guy Kawasaki and was blown away by this brilliant collaborative, photo-sharing software.

Once installed, this little jewel displays scrolling photos on your screen which you can pause at will. Once you create a "loop" of photos, you can invite others to join your loop. Once in a loop, you can even *add* your own photos, and comment on those already there. The additions immediately show up in the loops of those subscribed. How cool is that?!

Moreover, you can add actions to photos such as URL links and even zoom in for a larger view. Since the photos are so small (about 20k) the application doesn't hog up much memory.

I can't think of a more beautiful way to share photos with friends and family on a constant basis. And think of the possibilities for business! Imagine a designer shoe manufacturer adding new product photos to a loop. Imagine that this same shoe company has a sale and includes an add with URL link in the loop. Imagine that you subscribe to this loop AND YOU SEE YOUR DREAM SHOES SCROLL SLOWLY BY AT HALF PRICE... SWEET HEAVENLY BLISS!!!

Flim Loop is in prebeta now, but is available for download in both Mac and Windows format. Check it out!

AcidSearch

You know, I was just about ready to set Safari aside for a bit and switch over to FireFox for web browsing until a friend told me about a handy Safari enhancement called AcidSearch. Dangit. This tool is so nifty; I may have to grant Safari a stay, at least until the new wears off. No really, if you find yourself searching specific sites on a regular basis (think IMDB), or have the urge to search several sites at once, this bit-o-freeware is definitely for you.

AcidSearch enhances the Google search field, adding some incredibly useful functionality. It allows you to add your own search channels (as many as you want), and spend an entire afternoon customizing and organizing in myriad ways. Your inner OCD child will enjoy divying up the channels you create into tidy folders, viewable in true hierarchical beauty. And as I said before, you can enjoy the ability of trolling multiple search engines all in one fail swoop.

Other goodies include the ability to add an exclamation point after any search term to trigger a "I'm feeling lucky" search. Control-click selected text on any web page to launch a search, with the ability to pick one of your search channels.

Thanks to Loren Finkelstein for submitting this little gem!

NOTE: I'm always on the prowl for stuff like this. If there's a widget or a piece of free/shareware that you can't live without, let me know about it by sending a note to: ideas@graphicreporter.com.

Spam Sieve

If get spam, you need to download Spam Sieve immediately. That's all there is to it. This miraculous bit-o-shareware has saved me tons of time each day. I didn't used to have a spam problem, but suddenly about two weeks ago, I became inundated with hundreds and hundreds of the little buggers *every* time I checked my email. And unbeknownst to me, Entourage isn't trainable when it comes to spam. So even though my Junk Mail Filter was set to the highest level, my tedious coding of these hundreds and hundreds of spam messages was a galactic waste of time.

You might ask why I didn't download Spam Sieve sooner. (sigh) I've no real excuse other than I thought it was going to be a painful process. I mean come on, Spam Sieve is described as a "bayesian spam filter" with a "corpus" bla bla bla. What the...?! It finally got to the point where I knew the frustration of setting up Spam Sieve could not possibly be as aggravating as dealing with the spam itself, so I jumped in with both feet.

To my surprise, the documentation was very straightforward and I was able to follow the process of installing some Applescripts specific to Entourage without a glitch. I created a single rule in Entourage to deal with the spam that Spam Sieve marks, hooked that up to one of the Applescripts, and POW! My spam is almost a thing of the past! There are 3 maybe 4 messages a DAY that it isn't catching, and those I simply mark to it learns what they look like in the future. I had a truckload of spam in my inbox at the time of installation, so I selected it all and hit the "Train spam" option in Entourage's Applescript menu. And unlike Entourage, I can continue training Spam Sieve at will, teaching it what is good email, and what is spam.

Bundle Up

I have a friend named Ian. One day, Ian innocently sent me an iChat message with a link to a game he'd downloaded. The game is of the tile-matching, must-have-three-tiles-together-in-order-to-eliminate kind of sort. I downloaded the game. (sigh) That was the last day I got any real work done.

Bundle Up is the game, though I've now christened it the, "I Can't Believe How Addictive This Is My Eyes Are Going to Bleed" game. It's totally free and distributed by CompUSA. The only bit of advertising you'll find, besides the logo, is a circular bubble filled with pictures of 2-3 suggested holiday gifts (digital cameras, computers, printers) that floats across the screen as you move up in levels. Does this kind of subliminal message really work?! I have no idea because I can't really see it anymore. I can only see lines... lines on little packages.

Honestly, this game is lots of fun and the audio feedback of zapping bundles of packages is highly pleasant. Sometimes, eliminating one bundle causes a cascade of bundle zappage across the screen, which is frighteningly pleasing. The interface lets you how many bundles combos are possible, and if you can't see the match, you can use a "snowflake" in the bundle shuffler to mix them up again. You get three snowflakes per level, so use them wisely. As you ascend levels the package colors get harder and harder to distinguish between, thus leading to serious ocular pain.

Not only has this game destroyed my vision, but the holiday sound loop has now permantently infiltrated my brain and I'm humming it constantly. So, I did the only thing I could: I forwarded the link to absolutely everyone I know, and I may have single-handledly shut down half the Mac community for at least a solid day. Cheers ;)

NightLights Screensaver

Most people love to decorate for the holidays, even though storing said decorations can be humongous PITA (pain in the arse). This holiday season, try downloading the NightLights Screensaver instead. No fuss no muss! Use it to easily fill your Mac screen(s) with big, colorful lights to celebrate any season. And if you're lucky enough to have a big Cinema display, it shall be all the more enjoyable.

To install it, just double-click the screensaver file and Panther or Tiger will deposit it in the appropriate place (with Jaguar you must place it manually). Hop over to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Screen Saver to activate and tweak its gloriously numerous settings.

Unless you fork out the $5, you have only red and green lights to play with, though you do have two different styles of bulbs and myriad options for flashing, non-flashing, bulb size, etc. Choose to scatter lights randomly across your screen or place them in a neat frame around the edges. And lest you get all haughty on me and whine, "It's not even Thanksgiving yet!"... just take a peek at the screensaver I created to the left. Ha!

After paying my $5, I had a super fun time selecting orange and yellow lights to frame my screen and blink at me. I tossed in some falling Oak leaves for interest, and set a little type in the center for which I could also spec font, color, and size. Sweet!!! And just look at the detail of these lightbulbs! Here, let me give you a close-up shot so you can appreciate their beauty, both on and off (yes, actually, I *am* easily amused, why do you ask?).

A big thank you to my girlfriend, Tiffany Barnes in Longview, TX, whose incessant bragging about the fun she was having with this darn thing made me download it myself. Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Backdrop

Sadly, the wonder of Widgets has worn off so this week I'm spotlighting a glorious piece of shareware instead. Say hello to Backdrop: a brilliant application which places a white "backdrop" over your entire desktop. For a self-proclaimed Screen Shot Goddess like myself, this baby rocks.

With Backdrop, gone are the days when I'm forced to open System Prefs (or Control click my desktop) to change my desktop background to white, nor do I have to worry if my desktop is trashed by clutter. I simply leave Backdrop running, and when I write a tutorial I choose it from the Dock, then select the application I'm taking screen shots in and presto! I have the perfect and I do mean *perfect* atmostphere for screen shot goodness. To see my actual desktop again, I simply choose Hide from Backdrop's contextual menu in the Dock.

Thanks to my friend J Curtis for turning me onto this time-saving beauty!