When Steve Jobs introduced the original iPod, he told us that people wanted to own their music, not rent it. Now that there is sufficient bandwidth to support streaming, subscription services such as Rhapsody have become compelling alternatives to downloading and storing music on your computer. If you spend around $10 per month on music, Rhapsody makes sense.
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With beamr you can easily make what appears to be a virtual magazine by choosing photos from your iPhone’s Camera Roll. Click the Create button and you’ll have a link to share with friends by email or by posting on social media sites. Your photos appear full size and can be downloaded by your recipients.
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Snapheal does what Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill tool does and much more. With it, you can erase unwanted items and flaws from your photos. Snapheal creates a matching fill area by analyzing the surrounding pixels. The results can be stunning: Remove extraneous people from a landscape, erase facial flaws, remove flotsam from a beach scene, even clean up scratches and dust from scans.
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iPads and other tablets have progressed to the point where, frequently, you can leave your laptop at home. The real limitation of these mobile devices is inadequate storage space to carry all of your files. Seagate’s Wireless Plus deftly solves this problem.
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Ever hear a song from an online streaming service that you like and want to learn more about? Perhaps buy the entire album as a result? If you have Jaksta Music Miner on your Mac, you can.
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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.
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One of Photoshop’s many features is the ability to remove unwanted objects or people from a photo with a fancy-sounding technique called Content Aware Fill. For a fraction of the cost, you can achieve the same result with Snapheal from MacPhun. In addition, you can also fix old scanned photos, erase text, adjust exposure and saturation, and more.
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Over the past year, the popularity of wireless Bluetooth speakers has risen from a collection of small, niche devices to a category of their own. When wireless speakers first appeared, they were expensive and the sound quality varied from so-so to terrible. Recently, the field has become crowded and with technology advances reducing costs, the landscape has changed for the better.
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in:play is a music player app that accesses your iTunes music library but the big differentiator between the iOS Music player and in:play is its beautifully designed, typographic interface. The clean, minimalist design is spare but includes all the features you’d expect and some clever extras you wouldn’t.
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Sleek, speedy and gorgeous. No, not a gazelle—it’s the P’9223 Slim SSD external hard drive from LaCie. The Porsche Design enclosure measures a tidy 5″ by 3″ and is only 7/16″ thin; thinner than a MacBook Air. The case is solid aluminum and feels satisfyingly substantial. Apart from a razor thin slit for the indicator light and a USB port, the case is sleekly clean.
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Alien Skin Software makes a number of fine photography applications. Alt Photo is their first iOS app. It lets you alter and filter your photos in a variety of nostalgic ways.
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Put together a gorgeous slideshow with professional transitions and synchronized music. Now present it to others via a projector, Apple TV, YouTube, or even on a DVD. Sound complicated? On the contrary, it’s remarkably easy and fun with FotoMagico 4.
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Monotype Imaging has just released the 14-font Classic Grotesque suite of typefaces. This updated typeface was newly reimagined by Canadian designer Rod McDonald after four years of work. The typeface is an update of Monotype Grotesque, first released in 1926. McDonald was also influenced by an older typeface, Ideal Grotesk. These Monotype Grotesque typefaces were among the first sans serifs cut for hot metal machine typesetting.
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Joby’s ingenious GripTight Micro Stand and GripTight Mount serve a long-unfilled need. Joby makes the popular GorillaPod tripods. These have flexible legs that can securely wrap around and hug tree limbs, railings, lampposts, etc. This permits a camera to be set up out in the wild where a large tripod might be impractical.
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Put a pressure-sensitive stylus in your hand, apply it to a graphics tablet for the first time, and magic happens. It’s a revelation that makes you wonder about all that mousing you’ve done in the past to retouch a photo. You can read all you want about what it’s like to use a tablet, but you need to actually use one to understand how amazingly precise it feels.
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Back at the dawn of personal computing, people began to talk about The Next Big Thing on the horizon a paperless office. Computers would make our lives so simple that we would no longer need documents on paper. Decades later, this utopian state is still not a reality. Businesses deal with about as much paper as they always have. In our personal lives, we wrestle with ever increasing piles of invoices, correspondence, tax documents, and junk mail daily.
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Many years ago, David Pogue was present at Macworld Expo in Boston when an attendee opened a new software box. The guy was seriously disappointed that all he got for his money was a CD. This turned out to be Pogue’s Eureka! moment. It was also the birth of the Missing Manual series that now numbers over 150 books by a diverse group of knowledgeable authors. As he says in his latest book, “It’s a good thing you’ve got a book about OS X in your hands, because the only user manual you get with it is the Help menu.”
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The Mo’Beats Portable Stereo Bluetooth Speaker Stand is an elegant 9-1/2″ bar of extruded, anodized aluminum containing a 40mm speaker at each end with the electronics protected deep inside. It pairs with iPhones and iPads via Bluetooth so the sound from them is transmitted wirelessly to the Mo’Beats unit.
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When you are out and about, your iPad requires a case or a protective sleeve of some kind. However, when you are home or at the office, your iPad lies unprotected on your desk or coffee table. NewerTech has a great solution for times like these. The GripStand 3 securely contains the iPad (3rd version*), offering excellent protection from scratches or even an occasional drop as it is lined with a rubbery foam to cushion blows.
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The iFIT-1 Speaker is an inexpensive step-up from the built-in speakers in most smartphones. Its lithium-ion battery is charged with an included micro-USB to USB cable when attached to your computer. A hidden pull-out shelf serves as a convenient vertical or horizontal iPhone stand. The speaker works well with an iPad but becomes too top-heavy to be practical when used with the stand.
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