You gotta clock in and clock out to get paid. After all, time is money. And even if you’re a freelancer, online tools like Basecamp offer time tracking prowess between you and your collaborators. If time tracking is up your ally, Fuel Collective’s PunchClock removes the fuss from traditional log-in / log-out pains by providing Mac users with one of the most beautiful menubar applications I’ve seen in a long time. Simplicity really is bliss, and with PunchClock, you’ll always have the time on hand. Read more
Posts in reviews
PunchClock, Beauty in Time Tracking. Review and Giveaway!
Snippet and Swatch, The Must Have Developer Tools. Review and Giveaway.
Continuing our week with Fuel Collective, today we reintroduce the classics. I’d like to say their name to fame was with the introduction of Snippet and Swatch, two excellent Mac applications that sit in your menubar and provide 24/7 access to a developer’s and designer’s most used tools. Together, they make a perfect pair for almost any duty that involves everything from code, blog posts, an Photoshop. If you’ve never heard of these tools, prepare to be amazed by both the simplicity and features provided - these are some must have applications people. Read more
Permute, the Mac’s Best Video Converter. Review and Giveaway.
We know Fuel Collective as a company that makes great software, and their latest application, Permute, has officially become one of my must have apps on any Mac. If you need some convincing, imagine being able to convert your favorite TV shows or music videos to any format imaginable. Just tell Permute that you want the latest Lady Gaga music video formatted for your PS3 or iPhone, and it does the job for you. The end user shouldn’t have to worry about extensions or formats - all the user should be concerned about is getting their files converted to the platform they want quickly and easily.
Let’s take a look.
One Extension. Multiple Applications. Magic Launch Does. Review and Giveaway!
Imagine if you’re working with MAMP, and you’re navigating through the sea of folders residing in htdocs. Deep within these folders you have a myriad of .html, .php, and .css files that need editing, but because you’re a programmer savant, you happen to have Textmate, BBEdit, Coda, SubEthaEdit, and Espresso on your Mac at the same time. And when you go to open one of those lovely HTML ridden files, it opens with the wrong application. How frustrating!
What if I told you that Magic Launch can not only help you ease those app opening pains, it can actually decide which application is better for you depending on contexts? That’s right - in one folder you might want to work in Espresso, while in another you might want to work in Coda. If the file includes lots of CSS, perhaps Magic Launch is smart enough to open that file in CSSEdit instead.
Nambu 2.0 Beta Goes Public. Reviewed.
Loren Brichter is working on Tweetie 2 for Mac, but it’s not that every developer out there is sitting at his desk waiting for the Atebits guy to ship his newest creation. Absolutely not, as almost a new Twitter client is released every day (yeah, according to Wikipedia) and guess what - a good 95% is pure shit. But fortunately, every once in a while a good client comes along and tries to persuade Mac users to stop using Tweetie 1.x, and approach a new experience.
Nambu for Mac has been around for a while now, but some weeks ago I heard that there was a 2.0 version floating around, and it was a closed beta. I got accepted into the private testing group and had the chance to try the app. Today Nambu has decided to open the gates of the beta version, which is now available for download for everyone.
Here are my impressions so far.
Propane Brings Campfire to Your Mac Desktop
As you may have read, we’ve started using Basecamp and Backpack from 37signals as our productivity tools of choice to manage the projects inside MacStories. We’ve also paired them with some 3rd party tools suck as Spootnik and Headquarters to further enhance our workflow, and we’re very happy with them - we think we’ve found the best way to keep us organized and access our tasks from anywhere, be it the desktop, web or iPhone.
The other 37signals product, Campfire, was too much tempting to not give it a try, and so I decided to create an account and see whether it could come in handy. Sure it did, but combined with a Mac app called Propane.
Read on to find out why.
Spot Color: Use Mac OS X Color Picker As a Standalone App
One of the greatest thing about Cocoa technology is the system wide color picker: I can’t even remember how many times that thing came in handy while working, and that’s even people who can’t stand it. Come on, the color picker is great. And if you don’t know yet, it’s extensible: you can install plugins into your Library/ColorPickers folder and enjoy the revamped tool with additional functionalities. There are some you should definitely check it out, like the Hex Color Picker, the Developer Picker from Panic, or the one that lets you choose palettes from the Adobe Kuler community.
The only thing I can’t really stand about the picker is that you can’t use it as standalone app, as it’s closely bound to applications that have a color picking feature built in. Well, actually there’s a way to invoke the Color Picker at any time, but it requires Applescript and I’m sure many of you guys don’t wanna mess with it. Today I’m going to talk about something way simpler instead, is called Spot Color and it’s a simple app that enables you to use the Color Picker at your pleasure.
Snippets, Code Library of Choice. Review and Giveaway.
I’m not a web designer by any means, but simply someone who is interested in the beauty of code. Being a big fan of HTML and CSS, I decided to learn a thing or two when I decided to craft my own WordPress blog. It’s not particularly fancy or make use of any cool CCS3 effects like Mike Matas’ new site, but it’s a step. I’m not at the point yet where I can drill out code or figure some (okay most) things off the top of my head, so I often reference a lot of code that I reuse or edit for my own purposes. I learn a lot through the myriads of tutorials that are available online. All of this eventually leads to Snippets, which I love to death. Finally, instead of having to reference bookmarks shoved into a desktop folder, I can store and save code in a beautiful desktop library that makes acquiring code incredibly easy to do.
MacKeeper, A New Take on System Care
Though many people say you don’t need to do any kind of maintenance on Mac OS X, I’ve gotten used to run a couple of applications every two weeks or so to keep my Mac clean and healthy. Mac OS X is a great platform, but this doesn’t mean it can’t become slower over time, especially because of caches, logs and undeleted preferences. Did you know that when you trash an application, it leaves many stuff behind it and that if you don’t use a dedicated app uninstaller (like AppZapper) that stuff will remain there for good? Imagine that stuff being a bunch of 200MB cache folders and you get the idea. This applies for caches, system logs, binaries, unused language files.
Fortunately, there are some apps that enable you to perform maintenance tasks thus deleting that unused space, and I think CleanMyMac from MacPaw (which we previously reviewed here) is the leading app, powered by a great UI and a large set of features. Today I’ll take a look at the new kid on the block, MacKeeper, which aims at keeping your Mac healthy and clean, but comes with other additional functionalities that could really make it stand out from the crowd.