Jaksta Deluxe
Company: Jaksta
Price: $69.95
A few months ago, I was assigned to review some new utilities from a company I’d not heard of before, Jaksta. At the time, they offered three separate media grab and convert utilities for the Mac:
- Jaksta Video Converter for Mac
- Jaksta Music Converter for Mac
- Jaksta
In the ensuing months, they have added a fourth program, Jaksta Music Miner, an audio capture utility (sold separately for $19.95), to the mix, and then bundled them all together for a single price $69.95, with a substantial discount for purchasing a additional bundles.
Let’s get right to the products I have had a chance to work with:
Continue reading »
OfficeJet 6700 Premium e-All-in-One
Company: Hewlett-Packard
Price: $169
Hewlett Packard (HP) is the granddaddy of the consumer inkjet printer business, manufacturing the first DeskJets in the mid-1980s. My first decent printer was an HP DeskWriter (specially configured for Macintosh™ computers), which I bought in the late 1980s, around the time HP did their first big price reduction (for the DeskWriter) from around $1200 down to $800. Yes, back in the day, inkjet printers (mostly monochrome then) were much more expensive than consumer-grade dot-matrix printers (which weren’t exactly cheap, either). The obvious advantage to an inkjet was the 300 dpi x 300 dpi quality, and the printing speed (8-10 pages per minute). I learned how to refill the cartridges with a hypodermic needle and a bottle of Pelikan fountain pen ink. Admittedly that got old, real fast. My DeskWriter replaced a glacially slow Seikosha dot matrix printer (remember them, tech old-timers?). After a few years, I replaced the DeskWriter with some nondescript inkjet printer whose name now escapes me, when Apple did away with their custom printer port, and besides, I wanted color.
Continue reading »
Download the show here
Subscribe in iTunes
While David records a solo segment for this weeks show, Tim is joined by his daughter, Brooke, to discuss technology and a little of this and that.
He’s young, articulate, experienced, and successful. Listen to our 20-minute intense conversation. Get advice on how to learn to code, how to create a personal hotspot from your iPhone Internet connection, how to use cloud and Dropbox storage efficiently, which headphones to buy, and plenty more.
Words of widsom from Ethan Bloch:
Stop waiting, and start now.
You can put it on a credit card.
Build a prototype yourself if you’re going to build a technical company. I advise you to have technical talent.
Powerbag Backpack By FUL
Company: FUL
Price: $139.99
Ever come across a time where you are out-and-about and bring your latest technology with you but the energy efficiency of that particular product drains carelessly throughout the day? The Powerbag backpack by FUL will have your “back” no doubt.
I have been using this Powerbag backpack day in and day out throughout my high school semester. It is equipped with a 3000mA battery that resides in a storage bay in the very front compartment. There are other options on the FUL site to upgrade your batter and swap it out for a much bigger 5000mA battery to get more usage out of your devices throughout several days.
WordPress The Missing Manual
Author: Matthew MacDonald
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
ISBN: 978-1-449-30984-8
MSRP: $29.99 (Street: $20.00)
WordPress: The Missing Manual
Did you know that WordPress is responsible for roughly one-sixth of the world’s websites and that 20% of all new websites run on WordPress? That’s impressive. Our MyMac.com website runs on WordPress. If you are a brand new blogger or an experienced web developer, WordPress: The Missing Manual is for you.
O’Reilly’s Missing Manual series of tech books is huge, uncompromisingly accurate, and the authors are experts on their topics. This book’s author, Matthew MacDonald, is a website development professional and author with more than a dozen books to his credit. In WordPress: The Missing Manual he tackles a sometimes-complex subject with an approachable style that explains concepts in ways that are easy-to-grasp.
Continue reading »
Take Control of Messages in Mountain Lion
Author: Glenn Fleishman
Published by: TidBITS Publishing Inc.
Price: $10.00
ebook 113 pages PDF format
ISBN: 9781615424146
I have been a Mac user for quite a few years now. It was surprising that I had never used iChat, considering how often I am talking to friends online all over the world. Now with it becoming the Messages application I was curious to see if it did more than what you see at first glance. Reviewing Take Control of Messages in Mountain Lion gave me the chance to delve a little deeper into Messages.
Download the show here
Subscribe in iTunes
Simple show concept this week. We talk about Christmas stuff, some G+ Community questions, then off to your Bumpers (brilliant they are too), and finally ending the show with a thank you to all the wonderful people that not only listen to the podcast, but contribute to MyMac.com in general. Merry Christmas to you all!
Some Links:
Gaz’s App Pick: 12 dye of Christmas by piso13.com
Guy’s App Pick: Labels and Addresses by BeLight Software $24.99
People’s Pick: JT Ray picked Timehop free
Guest review by Fred Wells
iRig Mix mobile mixer and DJ Rig app
$100
Free to $10 app
In the days of my youth, I was an active local DJ. I had a few nightly residencies and the opportunity to open for a few national acts. This was in the waning days of DJ’ing with vinyl — CDs were on the ascent and vinyl controllers such as Serato and other USB controllers were just emerging and incredibly expensive.
These days I DJ mostly as a hobby, doing it occasionally to relive the glory days and to just have a good time. While I love DJ’ing with vinyl, the one thing I have always hated is lugging around vinyl. I can assure you no vinyl DJ loves her records while carrying them back home at 3:00 a.m. This was one of the reasons I was excited to test out the iRig Mix, especially being able to have my whole DJ rig in shoulder bag that I could carry effortlessly. Sign me up!
Pixa
Company: Shiny Frog
Price $30
Mac App Store Link (20% off until the end of 2012)
Are you an artist that wanted to organize your digital portfolio and files in a way similar to iPhoto, but you didn’t want to mix you artwork with your photo library? Well, you could have 2 libraries that you switch between or you could just buy Pixa for you Mac.
What is Pixa? Pixa is basically an image organizer similar to iPhoto for you artwork or other image files. Those familiar with iPhoto will fell right at home since the interface is very similar. However there are differences.
Cosmos Story Vol 1
App Developer: Cosmos Story
Version 1.1
License: US$2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires IOS 5.0 or later.
As an amateur astronomer and a volunteer with Project ASTRO, I regularly use the concept of scale to help teach astronomy and engage our students in visualizing and grasping the immensity of our universe. I typically use examples scaled in the dimension of physical length, area, and volume to assist in illustrating the distance and sizes of planets, our solar system and neighboring stars and galaxies. The Cosmos Story application approaches this concept of the size of our universe in slightly different way by using the dimension of time as related to the speed of light. That is, light travels 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second. Working in this dimension, the distance between the Earth and our Moon is a little more than a second and the distance from the Earth to our Sun is a little more than eight minutes.
Continue reading »
rEVOLUTION case for iPhone 5
Company: Marware
Price: $34.99 MSRP
The iPhone 5 is a beautifully designed and very lightweight phone that a lot of users don’t won’t to spoil by adding heavy cases to in an effort to protect them from normal everyday usage. Enter Marware’s rEVOLUTION case for the iPhone 5.
Nomad Flex
Company: Nomad Brush
Price: $29.00
The one thing missing about painting on an iPad with your finger or a stylus is the natural feel of using a real paintbrush. Sure, there are apps that mimic the look of a paintbrush and even the look of real paint, but there is nothing like using a real paintbrush. With the Nomad Flex you can paint on your iPad and have that real paintbrush feel of painting with a brush. Continue reading »
Download the show here
Subscribe in iTunes
The GMen are just blown away by how quickly the community has taken a liking to…well…Google Plus Communities and the MyMac Podcast one has been very active. SO active that a good chunk of our show talking about Apple’s iWork came right out of it. Not because we’re lazy…OK, we were lazy, but it’s really great stuff!
Some Links:
Gaz’s App Pick: Opus Domini Lite By piso13.com
Guy’s App Pick: Blogsy by Fomola $4.99
People’s Pick: None this week (sad face)
Sena Walletbook for iPhone 5
Company: Sena
Price: $54.95
Continue reading »
An upgrade to the iPhone 5 from a previous version means searching for a new case. The old iPhone cases will not fit because the iPhone 5 is longer and thinner. This is no problem for me because my only criteria, besides securely encasing the iPhone, is for the case to include pockets to store an ID, a couple of bills, and a credit card. The Walletbook is advertised as part designer wallet and part premium leather case with pockets, easy device access, secure snap closure, and a money compartment making it an excellent replacement case candidate.
t-JAYS Four with JAYS Curves Digital Signal Processing
JAYS
$130 US
First listen and look — User Report Nemo Memo
Sweden’s JAYS breaks into new sonic and app territory with t-JAYS Four in-ear headphones and the custom JAYS Curves iOS app for iPhone and iPad. This article may be the first you’re learning about Curves Digital Signal Processing (or DSP), but it won’t be the last time. DSP is here to stay, so brace yourself, audio fanatic.
The t-JAYS Four (abbreviated as tJ4) headphone are almost (or better than) conventional, which is a good thing. Multiple size comfortable tips and a too-small carrying case are provided in the idiosyncratic standard JAYS hard shell product packaging that we have described in prior reviews of JAYS products.
tJ4′s sharp-edged protuberances will take a bit of physical tweaking to achieve comfortable placement in your ears. I prefer the R and L speakers inserted into the corresponding ears, using JAYS’ largest tips, and with the cables looped over my ears from front to rear. Passive ambient sound isolation is good to very good.
mymosaic-photo mosaic maker
Company: MindTrip Studios
Version: 1.0
Compatible with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad. Optimized for iPhone 5.
Requires: iOS 4.3 or later
Price: 99 cents
Looking for a fun, inexpensive way to create mosaics on your iDevices? Take a look at mymosaic.
Continue reading »
The Norm
Insanely Great Products
Price: $35.00 US
I was recently sent a a demo unit of The Norm from Insanely Great Products.
The Norm is a simple vent-mount iPhone 4 holder. It uses a standard binder clip to clamp on to the vent, and is shaped to perfectly hold an iPhone 4 (or 4S).
Continue reading »
Drobo 5D
Price: $849 US
Company: Drobo
With Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 technology making their way into the market, many new products were recently announced supporting those technologies. Drobo made the announcement of two new products this summer that incorporate both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt: the Drobo mini and the Drobo 5D. In this review, I will cover the latter.
Download the show here
Subscribe in iTunes
Well the news is out. Apple will be assembling an entire Mac line here in the US. Wonderful news and all that, but why does it ring somewhat hollow? The MyMac Podcast has a new way to talk to the GMen. It’s our Google+ Community page! WOO! Now you can…do all the stuff like before…just in yet another place. Yeah, that’s a win.
Some Links: Swaziland has to tax witch doctors to stay afloat! Film at 11!
Gaz’s App Pick: Flick Golf by Fulfat Games. FREE!
Guy’s App Pick: Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 by Aspyr. $29.99 at the Mac App Store
People’s Pick: None this week (sad face)
Comments. Be heard!