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Space Gremlin Is A Simple App To Free Up Space On Your Mac

I stumbled upon Space Gremlin for Mac today when browsing new releases and top paid categories in the Mac App Store. Not as sexy and shiny as Daisy Disk, Space Gremlin can scan any drive connected to your Mac (external, internal Mac HD, network drive through AirPort Extreme station) and provide an easy solution to visualize files that are eating space on your computer.

Space Gremlin doesn’t allow you to delete files and folders in-app like Daisy Disk does with the recent 2.0 update, however it comes with a more standard grid view that reminds me of the popular cleaning tool WinDirStat for Windows. From this grid view (scan took a few seconds on my 120 GB SSD), you can select folders to reveal them in Finder, navigate to deeper levels, zoom back and hide free space / hidden files. What’s cool is that you can also add specific folders (like system ones) to an ignore list because you know they’re there and you can’t delete them. You can access and modify the ignore list at any time from the toolbar, which also happens to have buttons to refresh folders and perform a new scan. I really, really appreciate the fact that, together with my FireWire drive, the app also recognized the USB one attached to my AirPort extreme and shared on my local network. From the “begin a new scan” window, you also have shortcuts to popular Places like the Desktop, Documents and Applications folders.

Space Gremlin doesn’t have the most beautiful interface you’ve ever seen, but gets the job done. I would like to see the possibility to delete files within the app in a future update, and smoother animations when switching between folders in the filesystems. Overall, Space Gremlin is a well-realized utility that you can get at $3.99 in the Mac App Store.

Fingerprints and iPads - No Two Are Alike

George Kokkinidis, from Design Language News, recently did an interesting study called “Remnants of a Disappearing UI”. He studied the fingerprint patterns on the surface of his iPad using different applications, and the results are visually interesting.

Because the primary input method of the iPad is a single piece of multitouch glass, developers have incredible flexibility to design unique user interfaces. It’s hard to appreciate the variety of UIs though, since turning the screen off removes virtually all evidence of them. To spotlight these differences, I looked at the only fragments that remain from using an app: fingerprints.

George’s method involved cleaning the iPad’s screen before use, using a specific app for a short amount of time, then turning the iPad off. Then he photographed the iPad, imported the images into Adobe Illustrator, and placed them inside a vector-based iPad mortise. His technique helped the fingerprints emphasize his “touchy” data. Read more

Shocking Study Reveals: iPad Doesn’t Make You Attractive

Dear iPad owners, according to a recent study by Retrevo Gadgetology gadgets don’t make you attractive to the opposite sex. Most specifically, the iPad doesn’t make you any sexier. “How is that even possible?”, you may ask. Well it turns out, men and women surveyed by Retrevo Gadgetology think reading books, carrying a cool phone or laptop will make you more interesting and worth consideration. We can hear you: iBooks and the Kindle app are the future and there’s no way you’re going back to paper. Still, iPad owners and geeks alike: the tablet won’t get you another date. Perhaps a new MacBook Air will. It’s so thin, after all.

But hey, we’re pretty sure it’s still better to just use the iPad than carry it around like this. Because that would make you less masculine. [via TUAW]

MacDropAny: Symlinks Made Easy

While symlinks are funny creatures (you’d never want to sync a Symlink from a Mac to a PC), they can be amazingly valuable if you’re keeping multiple Macs with equal paths in harmony. MacDropAny is a nifty Dropbox Addon that allows you to point to any folder on your computer outside of Dropbox via a symlink inside of Dropbox. It’s recommended that you don’t sync your Applications folder, but that documents folder might be nice to backup. There’s no application screenshot here: MacDropAny is so simple just a couple of menu prompts will walk you through the process.

[DropboxAddons: MacDropAny via Lifehacker]

Turn By Turn Voice Navigation Coming To iOS Maps via Jailbreak

A new Cydia tweak being developed by InfectionFX and TheZimm will add native turn-by-turn voice navigation to the Maps application for iPhone. A few alternatives like MapQuest offer turn-by-turn with voice today in the App Store; this tweak will plug directly into the native Google Maps software for iPhone. While not as full-featured as navigation system offered by Google on Android devices, this option will provide a relatively cheap and useful way to do turn-by-turn voice navigation on iOS without using multiple apps.

[iPhoneDownloadBlog via RazorianFly] Read more

Echofon For iPad & iPhone Update to 4.0

How could Echofon’s magical sync-a-bilities get anymore improved between Echofon on the desktop and your favorite iOS devices? How about the addition of user streaming to the iPad, global push notifications for direct messages, and the ability to temporarily mute tweet happy users? User streaming is something I’ve wished for in all clients as long as it continues to retain your place on the timeline (Twitter for iPad is good at this), and not too many have successfully took a swing at Echofon’s syncing features. There’s nothing more annoying that re-reading a garbage bin full of old tweets - pick up where you left off with Echofon, and download the free updates in the iTunes App Store via the links below.

Echofon for iOS, Free

[Business Wire: UberMedia: Echofon 4 Press Release via The Next Web]

Could Nokia - Microsoft Partnership Lead To A Patent Settlement with Apple?→

Could Nokia - Microsoft Partnership Lead To A Patent Settlement with Apple?

Earlier today, Microsoft and Nokia announced a partnership to bring Windows Phone 7 to Nokia’s smartphones. Intellectual property activist Florian Mueller speculates this could facilitate the settlement of patent disputes between Apple and Nokia.

I can’t imagine that Apple would assert any of its patents against Windows Phone 7. Nokia is now covered by Microsoft as far as Windows Phone-based devices are concerned, and it’s been a long time since Apple and Microsoft had (and settled) a patent dispute. They need each other.

In the past months, the two companies fired back at each other with a series of lawsuits. I don’t know how much Apple “needs” Microsoft at the end of the day, but I do agree that resources would be better spent going after Android rather than Nokia’s alleged patent infringements.

Read the whole story here.

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New MacBook Airs In June with Sandy Bridge CPU?

According to CNET, who cites “a source familiar with Apple’s plans”, the MacBook Air might receive an update in June with the new Intel Sandy Bridge processor:

Apple is targeting a MacBook Air update for this summer that will include a move to Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, CNET has learned.

The MacBook Air refresh is expected in June, according to a source familiar with Apple’s plans.

Intel’s Sandy Bridge chips were initially delayed due to a hardware bug, but the company confirmed earlier this week that shipments will start on February 20th. As CNET notes, the MacBook Air family is still carrying Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors which are two generations behind Sandy Bridge; the MacBook Airs were last updated in October, announced by Steve Jobs at the “Back to the Mac” event.

Recent rumors suggested the MacBook Pros, due a refresh, will soon receive an update, possibly featuring Sandy Bridge. A MacBook Air announcement in June would play well with the WWDC 2011 timeframe, where Apple is expected to unveil the next-generation iPhone.

Pulse For iPad Is Now Faster, Always In Sync with Google Reader

Pulse, the social news reader for iPad, was updated last night to include a number of optimizations and new features. With the release of the new Flipboard a few months ago, Pulse had to play catch-up to face the iPad app of the year, which was updated with better Facebook integration, Google Reader support and huge improvements to the interface and navigation. Pulse, however, was never based on the same concept of Flipboard: where Flipboard is a social magazine that aggregates content from Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader, Pulse is a wall for your news. Moving out of RSS feeds to embrace Facebook links confirms the news wall theory.

The latest update to Pulse is aimed at enhancing speed and Google Reader sync. The app will now store changes offline and sync them back as soon as an internet connection becomes available. On the engine side, Alphonso Labs improved image loading times, refresh and scrolling, which feels much smoother now. The app was never really fluid for me, and I expect things to get even better once the iPad 2 with a faster processor ships.

Images can now be saved to the iPad’s photo library, and search has been refined to direct you to proper news sources. There is no doubt Pulse is getting better over time, however I would like to see a redesign of the interface, which I believe has fallen behind the elegance and minimalism of Flipboard.

Pulse News Reader is available for free here.