IT Enquirer on Apple & Mac OS X

Picturesque 2

2008-07-21T17:03:02Z

Picturesque is a program that does one thing incredibly well: it spruces up images that you want to display online. Picturesque is not intended to be an effects generator for printed photographs, but rather serves the purpose of adding some nice effects to web images that would take you a couple of hours using Photoshop.

JoeSoft Hear, a sound enhancing experience for analogue output

2008-07-17T08:09:15Z

Hear is JoeSoft’s newest toy for Mac users, and yes you can spend a couple of days playing with it. Hear is a small application that installs a daemon in your system. It’s fun and it actually can make a bad pair of speakers or headphones sound much better, but it only works with the analogue output of your Mac.

1Password Turns Your Keychain into a Security Powerhouse

2008-07-14T07:34:06Z

Password managers and generators have been around for a long time. Some of them are plain useless, others look OK but you can’t help wonder how secure your data really is with them. And then there’s that third category: applications that just work well and really secure your data. 1Password belongs to that category. It stores your passwords and secure data in Apple’s own keychain file. That file uses TripleDES to encrypt the password field of every keychain entry. TDES still is considered a highly secure algorithm, and Apple’s weight behind it means that if you decide to stop upgrading 1Password, you won’t lose any data.

Getting Things Done on a Mac

2008-06-23T12:13:54Z

If you happen to be in the market for a GTD application, you are certainly pampered when you’re running Mac OS X. Under Leopard, GTD applications have even seen an explosive boost as some of the synchronisation functionality offered in some of these programs heavily depend on Leopard technologies.

With the Mac increasingly becoming an all-round tool of productivity for organising anything from your personal life to your enterprise-class creative or publishing work, GTD and mind mapping are becoming essential concepts and technologies. Started under Tiger, most of the GTD applications currently available for Mac OS X are only now finding a large market of eager users.

Apple Selects SproutCore in favour of Flash?

2008-06-17T17:09:43Z

On Monday, AppleInsider brought the story that Apple is using SproutCore to build web applications. SproutCore is an open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications, according to the public schedule for WWDC.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard at WWDC

2008-06-10T08:29:00Z

Ironic, isn’t it? At the same moment Microsoft has given up the struggle to improve Windows Vista, letting users downgrade for free (!) to Windows XP, Apple is previewing its next version of Mac OS X, code-named Snow Leopard. Equally ironic is that Snow Leopard will be the first Mac OS X version to support Microsoft Exchange 2007 out-of-the-box. Microsoft Exchange is currently the market leader in enterprise-class communications and an operating system that has native support for it is bound to find its way into large organisations easier and more quickly.

Elgato EyeTV Diversity

2008-06-08T13:29:00Z

Just like the EyeTV Hybrid we discussed a couple of weeks ago, the EyeTV Diversity allows you to enjoy digital terrestrial TV wherever it is available, and regardless if you’re moving in a car, a train, or sitting in your office at home. The hardware resembles the Hybrid version --it’s a big USB stick with a coaxial connector at the top. But the side doesn’t come with a mini-USB connector, but with a second, tiny connector that accepts one of the two antennas that are delivered with the device.

Pentax Mobile Scanner and Printer Report

2008-06-04T12:19:00Z

Mobile computing is on the rise. An increasing mobility, consumerisation and alternative application delivery models are shifting corporate needs in new directions. In the U.S., 45% of the workforce was mobile in 2006, while in Europe some 80 to 90 million people are working from their cars, homes, hotel lobbies, etc. To accommodate the needs of these people, the technologies they use must roughly have the same capabilities as what they have access to when they are working from their office.

Intego FileGuard X5

2008-06-02T09:27:00Z

FileGuard X5 is Intego’s idea of securing your data. It is comparable to Knox, another application which allows you to create disk images that you can secure with a password and encryption --a bit like Disk Utility, but with a couple of extras.

Drive Genius 2

2008-05-27T16:03:01Z

Prosoft Engineering developed Drive Genius 2 to be extremely easy to use and yet have all the functionality you expect from a first-class system utilities suite. Drive Genius 2 has a science-fiction startup interface, but once you get past that, it becomes a regular Mac OS X program.

Outspring Mail 1.0.5

2008-05-22T11:39:00Z

Outspring Mail 1.0.5 is the e-mail client that has been on my system since it was released. In total, I’ve been testing Outspring Mail since version 1, holding off the review hoping the e-mail application would become more robust, faster, and less crash-prone. Version 1.0.5 certainly became less crash-prone, but after well over 2 months, the Junk Mail system still is in Training phase with about 400 spam messages fed into it in order to get it to automatically move towards Active Service mode. And suggestions for storing mail? Outspring Mail isn’t intelligent enough for my organising system, that’s for sure.

Unified Communications Report

2008-05-15T17:40:00Z

The third wave of unified communications technology is characterized by robust, interoperable, server-based tools that integrate with desktop and mobile clients to give information workers access to voice, fax, e-mail, and other data from wherever they are and allows users to use the telephone to manage their email, calendar, and personal contacts.

LaserChamp Barcode Reader

2008-05-14T17:28:00Z

The LaserChamp barcode reader from SerialIO is a small, handheld, rubberized barcode reader capable of entering a large number of 1D barcodes into an equally large number of applications. The barcode device, manufactured by Microvision, comes with either a serial cable (with serial to USB converter) or a Bluetooth radio module (or both). Unlike most barcode readers, the LaserChamp does not interface like a traditional USB scanner as a keyboard wedge using the HID (Human Interface Device) protocol, which opens up a whole world of possibilities and functionality. Key to the LaserChamp’s flexibility and versatility is the SerialMagic software --available for most any platform, including Mac OS X Leopard.

Disc Cover 2.x Labelling Software

2008-05-14T14:32:00Z

Creating disc labels is easy with Disc Cover 2, but just as with discLabel, you can ask yourself the question whether Disc Cover would be used by professional designers. Just like Bryan Bedell, I don’t believe designers will ever use tools that are primarily aimed at creating a design fast. But Disc Cover 2 does have a well balanced feature set and you can get good results with it.

Just as I did with discLabel last week, I asked Belight Software about their opinion of where and how Disc Cover is used. Helen Nersesova, Belight Software’s PR lady answered them.

DiscLabel 5.x, A Tool for A Professional Designer, Or An Occasional User?

2008-05-07T15:03:00Z

SmileOnMyMac has been making DiscLabel for quite some years now. Throughout that period, the application evolved from a simple disc labelling program to what seems like a powerhouse of disc labelling. With DiscLabel 5.x you can add automatically flowing text on a disc label, get access to an open source clipart library, add image and layer effects, and basically do most things you can also do in Photoshop or Illustrator --but only on CD/DVD related media.

DiscLabel gained the ability to output to paper labels, HP’s DVD Tattoos, LightScribe and now also the Dymo DiscPainter. Its interface grew to accommodate the ability to label jewelboxes as well. But the question remains: do professional designers use applications like DiscLabel, or do they still grab their copy of Illustrator or Photoshop to create the design? And if they do, is there a use for DiscLabel at all?