Posts in reviews

BaseApp: Basecamp Notifications for Mac, Done Right

If you’re a Basecamp user, I guess you’re annoyed by its email notification system. Every time someone does something in the account, like edit a writeboard, a new email pops up in your Inbox. And even with a Priority Inbox, there’s not really anything you can do about that: you’ll get the email. With teams, it gets worse. If you have more than 5 projects and 20 people on a single account, just think about the consequences. Hundreds of emails per day. No way, there must be a better way.

Now we can say there’s a better way to stay updated with Basecamp. Thanks to BaseApp, you’ll be able to get every single update directly on your Mac desktop, without the clutter. For serious Basecamp users, BaseApp is a must-have. Read more

SendTab for Safari Shares Websites Between Browsers

Sharing websites is the staple of online communication, but we haven’t really figured out how to appropriately share links in person. Somebody overseas can be bothered with a Twitter link or quick email, but if you’re trying to share a video with a group of people (say at work), you ultimately end up with three terribly smelly people crowding around your computer, complaining about the monitor viewing angle and whatnot. So it’s time to further solve our ability to spread the latest offices memes with the SendTab extension for Safari.

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iPliz for Mac Controls your Files via Email

It’s always best to have a backup plan. It’s one of those days; you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, you’re late for class, and in the process of scrambling to hike the mile across campus, you forgot to save a copy of your report to your netbook. Just imagine for a minute how bad this actually is: you forget to save a file in Dropbox, stuff your thumb drive into your backpack, or even email yourself a copy of that fifty five page college thesis all at the same time. That report amounts to 50% of your grade, and you can’t return to your dorm out without being late to only the most important session of the semester. So what do you do?

Most people would panic, but being the Mac savvy connoisseur that you are, you pull out that fancy netbook of yours and email yourself with the name of your report. In seconds, you’re sending commands between your email client and your Mac that allow you to find the file, upload it to your current machine, and print it out in the nick of time. iPliz is a niche application for users who don’t employ the best backup strategies, but the ability to email your Mac for files is just cool.

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Nebulous Notes for iPad

When I saw Nebulous Notes for the iPad in the App Store, I raised an eyebrow at the reviews. An otherwise solid looking notepad was getting shit ratings because the developer started things off on a good note with an honest, self review. Yes, he gave himself five stars. But I don’t know why people get bent out of shape when the developer openly admitted he’s reviewing himself when there’s shady companies that do this hundreds of times over to game the system. One five star review isn’t going to greatly affect an app ranking in the large scale of things, so kudos to the developer for his strong beliefs in an application he’s put a lot of work into. I think there was good intentions here, even if commenters on the App Store have taken it the wrong way.

So I downloaded the application, and I found Nebulous Notes to be okay as an ideal Dropbox application for taking notes. All the icons are pretty, Dropbox syncing is seamless, and I can lock my contents to keep my work private from users I share the iPad with. With a few improvements, this could be my go-to notes application.

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SyncMate for Mac

I had held off on reviewing SyncMate for some time now. Though when I finally bit the bullet, I found its unassuming looks mask an application with potential. Not only does SyncMate make syncing my Android phone to my Mac completely pretty easy, I’m able to share files with Macs and Windows PCs on my local network, dump files onto flash drives from specific folders, and keep my flash drive loaded with the latest college documents just in case.

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Speed-Up Gives you an iTunes Playback Throttle

Audiobook and podcast listeners might be a little more impatient than most. Occasionally we come across that news podcast or something that doesn’t require our full attention. When time is of the essence, why not speed things up a little bit? Speed-Up by WetFish Software is an incredibly simple application that sits in your menubar and allows you to adjust the playback speed of currently playing items in iTunes. While speeding through some of the blogger podcasts just to get the gist, I got thinking, “What would a Molly Rant sound like at .25x the speed?” You’ll just have to download the application and a BOL podcast to find out.

Simple utility status: Not for everyone, but it works like a charm. Licenses come at $5 a pop.

[Speed-up]

Nozbe: Web-based GTD on iPad and iPhone. Reviewed.

Talking about GTD apps and online tools is difficult, and you know why? Because my method of Getting Things Done will always be different from yours, so will the apps I use, so will the fact that I used to constantly switch between different softwares. More on this tomorrow, though.

Discussing GTD is like talking about favorite foods: at an extent, it’s pointless. I can’t come up here and say “Hey, you should work this way - don’t organize tasks like that”. That’s why when Cody and I reviewed Basecamp and Backpack we decided to talk about our experience, rather than giving away some pretentious advices to wanna-be entrepreneurs and the like.

GTD is personal. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a Nozbe account and downloaded the iPhone and iPad apps. I was intrigued by the whole “Do in the web, find it again on mobile apps” concept, and I was fascinated by the terrific amount of integration with 3rd party online services the developers advertised.

So, Nozbe. I’ll just throw this out there: if you’re not an OmniFocus user and feel the need of having more than just tasks in your GTD application, Nozbe is the best you can have right now. With real OTA sync. With real Evernote integration. Oh, and with team-management capabilities.

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Review: IconBox 2.0, Icon Management for your Mac

I know quite a few of you MacStories readers are die hard icon fanatics. The Mac community is full of young and vibrant designers willing to get down and dirty with Photoshop, and entire communities are built around various Mac themes, icon sets, and related design mischief. Though after folders and folders of icons, you might be wondering if there’s a better way to organize your collection of icons. Today, I’d like to introduce you to IconBox, a full featured icon library for your Mac. If you haven’t heard about IconBox and their latest 2.0 release, or you’re on the fence about an application like this, I think you’ll enjoy this review.

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