I knew this was going to happen. The day my “Images” folder would become too big to manage in the Finder and I should switch to a 3rd party software to collect and organize all the images I have on my Mac. I’m that kind of guy that saves very cool and interesting image he finds during the day: it could be a screenshost of an app website, it could be some “fail pic” found on Twitter or even a screenshot of a bug somewhere on a web app. I save everything on my hard drive and organize the new stuff before going to sleep. Then, it came the day I realized I needed a more powerful and efficient tool to manage my Library (yeah, as time passed by it became a library of lots of GBs) as the Finder didn’t offer the features I wanted in order to effectively sort thousands of images and screenshots. I felt the need of tags, a more structured folder organization, I wanted to be able to quickly attach metadata to everything in a few easy steps, I wanted to divide all the files into “type”.

Turns out LittleSnapper was aimed at me.

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Safari is a great browser. It’s fast, simple, elegant and definitely gets the job done. I was using Firefox until some months ago, but then I switched because it became slow, unresponsive and a huge memory hog.So I started using Safari, and I couldn’t be happier than this. Well, actually yes - I could be happier. I’d like to have better support for 3rd party plugins, or at least a more extensible Safari. With more features for sharing, developing, saving stuff.

Thank God I’ve just stumbled upon Quix app, which is very likely to stay in my bookmarks toolbar for the upcoming months.

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Since Apple released Snow Leopard last year and QuickTime came with built-in screen recording capabilities, many people started thinking apps such as Screenflow or Camtasia suddenly lost all of their value.

Couldn’t be any wronger.

There’s a big difference between a simple recording tool like QuickTime and those 3rd party applications: the difference lies in the editing features. QuickTime only provides the basic editing features like trimming and a few other things,which is clearly not enough. Sure, it’s great if you have very basic needs - but if you’re really serious about screen recordings you’re gonna need a more powerful application.

Today I’ll talk about Screenflow, one of the most famous screen recording apps for Mac OS X, while next week I’ll take a look at the new kind on the block, Camtasia for Mac. Enough said, let’s how it works.

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I have to admit that I am addicted to keeping my computer free of clutter. I have more fun reclaiming disk space than a sane person should. However, sometimes it is hard to determine where all your hard drive space is being used. There are some applications that love to hide extremely large files in very odd places.

That is where DaisyDisk comes in quite handy.

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How many times have you wished to have a collection of text snippets a mouse click away? Yeah, my entire workflow is somewhat based on recurring snippets I usually insert into mails, posts and other invoicing stuff. I’m currently using ClipMenu (the great, free clipboard utility you must go download now) to do the whole job of keeping snippets organized into folders, but for those who don’t like Clipmenu or just want an even simpler application, I’ve just discovered MenuBrain form The IconMaster which might be perfect for you.

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Having your data backed up at a regular schedule is something everyone should seriously consider. Especially if you work with your Mac, you should start thinking about start using Dropbox or SugarSync, two amazing online services that allow you store up to 2 GB of stuff for free. Now, many Mac users use Dropbox to backup and save copies of “stuff that matters” like applications’ libraries or databases. For example, I’ve set up an Automator workflow that together with an iCal event daily backs up my Yojimbo database into a Dropbox folder.

But what about more complex and structured applications, like Mail.app? Mail doesn’t have a simple and linear database structure like Yojimbo does, so backing it up manually could be a little difficult. I reviewed this app called MaBuRe a while ago, but many people told me it wasn’t working for them, and the overall backup time was pretty long, even for not-so-huge mail libraries.

Today I’d like to talk about EmailBackup Pro, the ultimate application for mail backups.

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When I purchased my Macbook, I partially did it because I knew Mac OS X was the operating system of choice of many musicians. Many friends of mine kept talking about how GarageBand, Logic and ProTools were so great, stable and useful on Mac OS so, together with many other motivations, I decided to make the big switch. I couldn’t have made a better choice in my entire life, but this is my personal story. The story of every artist and band out there is that Mac OS provides a huge amount of awesome tools and apps to record songs, annotate ideas, store files and manage the whole music experience. There’s no arguing about that.

Now, what if there was a single application that combined all of these things into one, simple, powerful package? Wouldn’t it be amazing to have all your recordings, collaborators, lyrics drafts, podcasts and ideas in one application? It’s not iTunes guys.

Meet Minim 2.

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I’ve never used financial apps that much. Maybe ‘cause I don’t have a good relationship with numbers at all, maybe because I just didn’t find the right app for me. The truth is, I never felt the need of having a financial manager anyway. Then I realized that keeping track of my expenses was actually an important thing, so I decided that I should start using some software to help me track my budget and some other stuff. I started using MoneyBook, and I’m still using it right now: awesome interface, easy to use, feature rich. It’s just perfect to me.

But what about the Mac? I heard that are a lot of different financial apps out there, some of them even support online banking, some have a stunning UI, but - seriously - none of them really suited to my needs. Guess I just wanted the perfect Mac version of MoneyBook, but don’t tell this to Silvio Rizzi or he’ll drop the iPhone development scene to create Mac apps. But finally - just like happened with MoneyBook - I found the app that works for me. It’s simple yet powerful, with all the features that I need and a very good interface.

It’s called Chronicle 3.

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Many people buy a Mac computer and think they would never have to do some maintenance, like they used to on Windows. This is partially wrong. Sure, there are no viruses / trojans / malwares but you have to clean up some stuff and free up some space from your hard drive as time goes by. Caches, log and language files, the infamous universal binaries: this stuff is using a lot of your drive’s space.

Today I’ll talk about what’s in my opinion one of the best (or maybe, the best) maintenance app for Mac OS X, CleanMyMac.

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