Reviews

Review: OmniFocus

Task management is something I am continually learning to do better and something which I need to be competent at considering the many demands that populate my days. Although I am now entering what I believe will be the last week of this academic year, I still have a considerable amount to get done by Friday and indeed there are many projects that I intend to spend time on over the Summer months. Up until now I have relied heavily on Things from Cultured Code, an application which I still have i...
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Review: Coversutra

I spend a lot of time with iTunes, it's my one stop shop for all things music, podcast, audio books, movies and more. More often than not when I'm working on the Mac or indeed kicking back with some WoW or Steam related goodness I have iTunes providing the audio goodness. While there is nothing wrong with the main iTunes interface I have long sought a more discreet and minimalist way of interacting with the application. The idea of a menu bar application to access and control playback was my fir...
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Review: AnyBizSoft PDF to Word

As an academic I work with a wide range of file types on a daily basis. Perhaps two of the most common are the the MS Word .doc format and the Adobe .pdf - both are very common in academic institutions and both serve very useful and distinct purposes. The .doc file format is perhaps the universal format for information presentation, reports, essays, digital diaries etc are all produced in this format. MS Word, as much as I personally prefer Apple's Pages, is the standard word processing file for...
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Review: Pixelmator & Win A Copy!!

I have long been a fan & user of Adobe's Photoshop application. Over the past number of years, probably back as far as version seven, I have used the digital image editing application to support my teaching and in the development of all graphic related content. Lately however I have grown somewhat annoyed at the developer in how it ties users down to it's applications and the ridiculous price it charges for the various applications. With relationships between Adobe and my platform of choice,...
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The Ultimate Screencasting Guide – The Screencasting Handbook

Over the past decade I have seen many changes to the environment of learning, some for the better some in my personal opinion for the worse. At the very least it's great that the process of learning is evolving and people are prepared to explore new methodologies to support it. The introduction of web 2.0 concepts has given rise to a myriad of new tools and technologies to enhance the learning process, these tools do not change the process of learning but rather serve to allow learning to take p...
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Backing Up, Carbon Copy Cloner, Time Machine & Mozy

Backing up is something most computer literate people will be aware of, yet it is something that is often neglected my millions of computer users in varying disciplines all over the world. I myself fall into this category to some degree, I do have Time Machine backups and a good part of  my data stored on external hard drives but I do not manage the process with any degree of regularity or indeed care. Listening to a few of my favourite podcasts The Mac Attack, Mac Power Users and generally real...
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Transmission – Torrents Are Viable

The very mention of the word torrent signifies illegal activity and the acquisition of files in a non-legitimate fashion. It's a shame because for all it's misuse BitTorrent is actually an extremely useful protocol that when used properly provides a fast and reliable way for people to share data. I guess it's fair to say that it's not so much the concept but how people decide to use it or in this case misuse it. In today's digital media society the connected nature of our existence and the exten...
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Review: NIN Ghosts

I have long been a fan of Nine Inch Nails, the musical creations of Trent Reznor have provided me with many hours of escapism over the years. In fact I would go as far as to say that from my introduction to the world of alternative music over a decade ago no other band has been as consistent in their provision of great music. In addition to being a great musician Trent has embraced the world of new media and the need for change in the distribution of content - NIN gigs are frequently recorded in...
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Review: DaisyDisk & AppZapper

Have you ever wondered where all the space on your hard drive went? Have you spent time aimlessly navigating through folders trying to identify files that you no longer need to regain some much needed space? I think most computer users will know what I'm talking about. Enter DaisyDisk a wonderful, graphic driven hard disk analyser. DaisyDisk provides a visual mapping of any drives currently mounted on your system, internal system drives, external Firewire or USB drives. Once the application ...
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Review: Delicious Library

"If you're a geek you are going to love this..." That's what a friend told me when she was sitting at my desk in front of my MacBook Pro a couple of weeks ago. Of course she knew exactly what she was saying and doing as she loaded in the home page for Delicious Library. Ten minutes later I was captivated, ecstatic and riding high on the wave of geek euphoria - "this is bloody awesome" or something to that effect came from deep within my soul. It was one of those special moments that you think ba...
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Review: Hazel

Newtons first law of motion states that "an object at rest tends to stay at rest..." well I guess the same can be said of digital objects too. Whether it be downloading files that all stack up in your downloads folder, things that you are working on that generally find themselves on the desktop - files just tend to stay clumped with little or no organisation or order in their placement. Sure from time to time you may manually go through and clean up a portion of your hard drive, you may even org...
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Review: LaunchBar 5

Sometimes applications seem to offer very little enhancement to what you can already do in a given work flow, you look at certain applications thinking why would I possibly need that. Sometimes applications can be deceiving in what enhancement they truly provide and it is only through personal extensive use that you begin to appreciate the nuances of benefit that they offer. LaunchBar most certainly falls into the latter category. Developed by Objective Development, LaunchBar is an award winning...
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