Protect Your Mac Files, Folders and Apps with Espionage. Review and Giveaway.

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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Binary Hammer Announces Polyhedra XL for the iPad

We talked about Polyhedra for iPhone a few days ago here, and I’m still stuck into its addicting and fast gameplay. Today Binary Hammer has announced Polyhedra XL for the upcoming iPad, which should bring a lot of new features to an already great game.

From the official press release:

  • 4 new Zones: triangles, parallelograms, trapezoids, and diamonds. Each one with its own newly-composed soundtrack;
  • New gameplay features such as reverse- and zero gravity, and obstacles give the players a real challenge;

  • A new Level Editor allows the player to create their own levels and share them with friends;

  • Graphical enhancements like particles and colored gems are also planned.

Expect more updates and, hopefully, a preview soon.




Audiobox, Your Web Cloud Player.

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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Why Skitch Has Captured My Heart

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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