Two things should be taken seriously when doing professional work with Mac OS X: backups and security. We’ve talked a lot about backups solutions: you can use Dropbox and even find some creative uses for it, or deploy everything to Amazon S3 using Arq as your upload manager. Also, don’t forget about MobileMe which, hopefully, will receive a huge update from Apple in a couple of months.

As for security, I never took “local” security that seriously. I mean, I use Agileweb’s 1Password as my default passwords manager and generator, so I used to worry more about online security rather than the security of my machine. But you know, I’ve got some important documents here as well, like reports, personal stuff and so on. I don’t want anybody to mess with my computer files and folders while I’m taking a shower or having a coffee somewhere in my house. So, when the Tao Effect guys, developers of Espionage, asked me if I might be interested in reviewing their app I immediately agreed.

They also offered 10 licenses to MacStories readers.

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I don’t want to repeat myself, but I can’t help mentioning everything is moving to the cloud, including our music. With Bitspace out of the closed beta and Apple building a massive data center in North Carolina, it seems like we’ll be choosing between 3rd party cloud music apps and iTunes Air in a matter of a few years. But as we’re waiting for Apple’s ultimate solution to be announced, we can already test cloud powered music players - Bitspace is a great example.

Today I’ll talk about a new webapp I discovered some weeks ago, it’s called Audiobox and it’s already been featured by sites like Lifehacker. The development team is entirely Italian, the guys are based in Milan and I had the chance to talk with them about the creation of the app - which is really promising and somehow different from what Bitspace offers.

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Skitch is awesome. I love it, and if it were a girl, I would want to take it out to dinner, impress it with fine wine choice and witty banter, and then encourage it to love me forever, and have my babies. I think if you get to know it, you’ll love it too, although maybe more platonically.

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I like applications that make my life easier. Anything that helps me avoid post production for example is usually something I’ll fall in love with if I can apply it to my work. If you noticed in the last screencast, I was able to better display screen shortcuts sans what Screenflow offered me. While Screenflow is certainly an excellent tool, its specific text tools were not geared towards my application. Instead, I was using something called Mouseposé, which is a must have if you ever do screencasts. Many of you probably already know about it, or even have it. I just came across this wonderful tool, and would like to share my walkthrough with all the other new screencasters out there.

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This is neat. Extract from Zach Waugh is a new Mac app that can load html code in a dedicated, almost chromeless, window and it’s ideally meant for loading flash videos into a standalone window on your Mac. You just have to launch the app, copy the embed code from either Youtube or Vimeo and paste it into Extract; the app will then load the lash instance and display it into a minimal, translucent black chrome.

Extract Mac

I find this app very useful as it lets you watch a video without having to open another Safari window or switching between tabs in the browser. Also, you can activate the “Keep on Top” function that will make the app stand in the foreground even when another application is selected: this means you can drag Safari around and the transparent border of Extract will just overlay it.

Extract Mac

Now the developer just need to add an “automatically resize” feature and this will be my favorite utility since ClickToFlash.

Extract Mac

Sure, you can open a new Safari window, resize it and play the video in that window. Problem is, Flash would still be able to kill the browser (Leopard only. Snow Leopard has a separate process for Flash) and, overall, you can’t compare it to the easy to use of Extract.

Good job, Zach.

Business communication is incredibly important whether you’re working with clients or you’re discussing the latest coffee spill from your board meeting. While some may rely on e-mail to keep up to tabs, let’s not forget that this is a relatively archaic way of chatting.

The folks over at HipChat have presented to us a wonderful new chat application built on Adobe Air that is designed for teams, groups, business, collaborators, and people who want to have a focused medium for tracking and recording their conversations. While the words “Adobe Air” might scare you, we wouldn’t be reviewing this if it wasn’t seriously cool, and as it takes two people to chat, I present to you today another DoubleStory feature.

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ThermoCLine is an interesting utility developed by my friend @elasticthread which allows you to perform a lot of action from a command line interface anywhere on your Mac. You can go to folders, start Google searches, do some math, shorten URLs and even tweet.

It requires a little bit of setup (you have to copy some files, assign a keyboard shortcut with Fastscripts to the required Applescript) but after that, it’s pure awesomeness. The .zip files comes with a huge explanation of how the app works and with a list of commands as well, so you won’t miss anything TCL offers.

ThermoCLine

You can download the app here. Don’t forget to follow @elasticthreads on Twitter and give him some suggestions for new features.

MacStories has covered a few window management apps, including Cinch, MercuryMover, and SizeUp. Today, we’re going to bring you yet another window manager, this time for those who can’t keep their hands off their clickers.

Zooom/2, despite its name, is a handy window manager that makes moving and resizing windows just a tad easier. It isn’t revolutionary, but it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

Instead of grabbing the corner of a window, you are given the option to move, resize, and maximize/minimize by holding a couple of modifier keys from anywhere in your target window. The demo is a little confusing though, since the default settings conflict with the instructions (just something to be aware of), and you’ll want to enable “Require mouse click to activate” to follow along. Other than this minor caveat, learning the app only takes 30 seconds to learn - and you’ll be happy you went through the demo.

Otherwise, I think this is a pretty cool app, but it’s a bit buggy. Magnetics didn’t always work like I wanted them too, so I left it off. The ignore list initially confused me, because I thought checking an item disabled that particular feature, rather than enabling it. Overall I think it’s pretty solid, it’s 64-bit compatible for Snow Leopard, and it features what the developer describes as “clean code” (although I thought hiding the dock icon required some kind of hack). Anyway, check out the video for a quick demonstration on it’s feature. Trust me, this one is short!

What a nice application I’ve just found on MacThemes forums. It’s called Hobiconer and it’s a free app by Jérémy Marchand that lets you create, import and export icon in many formats: .icns (Apple icon format), .ico (Microsoft icon), .png and .tiff.

As you can see from the screenshots, you can import an icon and see it at every available resolution, change the background color from black to white with a slider (or even choose another color with the system wide picker), hit the eye button to see the icon “live” in the dock, open more than a “project” in the sidebar.

Hobiconer

Hobiconer

Hobiconer

There are a lot of advanced tools that let you export icon image files, but this one is just a simple solution for people who need a quick conversion / preview. The app it’s free, it does well what it’s meant for, you should give it a try.

[Fever icon by Matthew Rex Downham. Go download it here.]