Mac|Life Utilities RSS Feed

Updated: MacScan 2.7

SecureMac — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:50:38 -0500

MacScan is designed to detect, isolate, and remove spyware, keystroke loggers, trojan horses, and make you aware of remote administration applications which could have been maliciously or inadvertently installed on your Mac. MacScan is available for Mac OS X containing the latest definitions for spyware. With Internet privacy in mind, MacScan has added a blacklisted cookie scanner. This feature maintains a list of known tracking cookies, and when run, removes them from Web browsers in which they are found. No more losing saved usernames and passwords to websites when you want to clean your cookies.

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2.4 or later

To download a demo copy of MacScan 2.7 (5.2MB), click here.

Digitize Your Mental Notes with Evernote

Susie Ochs — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:29:40 -0500

Capture ideas and information instantly--and be able to find it all when you need it.

What You Need:

-- Free account at www.evernote.com
-- Evernote application for the Mac (free, www.evernote.com)
-- Optional: Evernote application for the iPhone or iPod touch
-- Optional: Twitter account (see Step 9)

What do you do when you come across some info you want to remember? If it’s a webpage maybe you bookmark it; if it’s an email or a file, you might stick it in a folder called “Important!” Evernote is a super-useful service that comprises a Web-based application, a free Mac desktop app, and even an iPhone app, all kept effortlessly synced. And it’s ready to store all your digital info--receipts, serial numbers, snippets of code, articles, photos, PDFs, audio files, recipes, you name it--with handy tagging, indexing, and searching features so you can actually find it all later. We’ll walk you through setting up Evernote, then encourage you to tinker around and discover how it fits into your personal workflow.

1. Sign Up and Download

Head to www.evernote.com and click the Register link at the top-right of the page. Then click the Downloads link at the very bottom of the page (or go to www.evernote.com/about/downloads) and grab the free Mac app, which requires Mac OS 10.5, aka Leopard. Install that puppy in the usual fashion

This is all the personal info they ask for. Refreshing.

2. Look to the Menubar

The app will put a little elephant-head icon in your menubar. Click it to check out your options: New Note launches a window where you can type a new text note or drag in an attachment from the Finder. If you have a free account, you’re limited to attaching JPG, PNG, or GIF images; MP3 or WAV audio files; or PDFs. But Premium account users ($5/month or $45/year) can attach any file type.

Those hotkey combos work globally, and you can change them in Evernote > Preferences > Shortcuts.

The menubar icon also lets you paste the clipboard contents into Evernote, send a screenshot to Evernote, and launch the main Evernote window with the cursor in the Search box. Better still, all these commands can be executed with global hotkeys.

3. Web Clips, Three Ways

Most of the info we want to save comes from that ever-gushing font of knowledge and nonsense known as the Internet. Evernote’s got that covered: Firefox has a dedicated Evernote extension, which adds a toolbar button with a contextual menu for clipping the whole webpage, or just a selection, to Evernote. The Evernote app can install a similar Safari plug-in (click it to send the current webpage to Evernote, or Shift-click it to save the page to Evernote as a PDF, which does a better job of preserving the formatting).

But if you want to avoid bloating your browser with extensions or plug-ins, there’s also a “bookmarklet” you can drag into your bookmarks toolbar for one-click clipping. Find it at www.evernote.com/about/downloads.

Mouse over the Evernote button in Safari for a reminder of what it does.

4. More Ways to Add Notes

If the Evernote app is running, you can also drag supported file types right onto its Dock icon. If you’re using someone else’s computer when inspiration strikes, just log in at www.evernote.com to view your notebooks and add new notes through the Web interface.

And the app also has a button labeled iSight Note that lets you snap a shot with your Mac’s iSight—and it even flips the image horizontally before saving it to a notebook, so any text that’s visible in the image doesn’t appear backward.

Normally when you hold something with writing up to your iSight, the text is backward.

5. Search for Text in Images

“Who cares if the text is forward or backward?” you may ask after reading step 4. Well, you do. The genius of Evernote is that it finds text in your notes—even text that shows up in a photo, scanned document, screenshot, or PDF, and even if the text is handwritten. When you click the Sync button in the Evernote app, the notes on your Mac are synced with Evernote’s servers, where the text recognition is performed. Once that info is synced back to your Mac (which happens automatically, or you can click Sync again after a couple of minutes), you’ll be able to search for words contained inside any of your notes.

Our search for "Mac" found the image we took in step 4. Smart!

6. Tag Notes

Evernote lets you create multiple notebooks, but we prefer to dump everything into one notebook and then use tags to keep it all organized. You can tag notes as you write them, and as you type a tag, the app will suggest tags you’re already using that contain those letters. For tagging after the fact, just select one or more notes from the list and drag them onto the desired tag, listed in the sidebar—it’s the quickest way to tag multiple notes at once. And of course, each note can have as many tags as you need.

Drop multiple notes onto one of your tages to apply that tage to all of them.

7. Add Notes from Your iPhone

...or iPod touch, naturally. The free Evernote app is a lifesaver for capturing inspiration on the go, letting you create new notes by typing, taking a snapshot with the camera (iPhone only, of course), using an image that’s already on your device, or even recording a quick voice note. You can read all your notes, mark some as favorites (which saves a copy to your device, so you can read them offline), and search your notes too.

Notes you make on the phone will sync back to Evernote on the Web and on your Mac.

Bonus: Tap the magnifying glass icon to the right of the Search box for the Advanced Search page, where you can search for notes based on where you made them (within 1, 5, or 25 miles of your current location)—great for finding the note you made about where you left your car, once you get back to the parking garage.

8. Export or Share

The Evernote app can export your notes as ENEX files, which lets you back them up locally, but only the Evernote app can read the ENEX files. The app can also print your notes (including the ol’ print-to-PDF trick) or email them via Apple Mail. Evernote’s Web application also lets you print and email, and even publish your notebook online—you’ll get a URL you can share with friends.

Share your notebooks to let anyone (who knows the URL) read them.

9. Add Notes via Twitter

If you have a Twitter client open all day anyway, it can double as a fast way to send short notes (140 characters or less, duh!) to Evernote. First, you have to follow myEN (twitter.com/myEN). You’ll get a direct message with a URL for linking your Twitter and Evernote accounts—make sure to sign in to Evernote before you click the link. Then just add @myEN anywhere in your tweet to have a copy sent to Evernote. You can also direct-message myEN (start the tweet with D myEN) if you want your note to stay private.

To get started, go to twitter.com/myEN and click Follow.

10. Go Premium?

Evernote’s Premium account ($5/month or $45/year) boosts your upload limit to 500MB/month (a free account is 40MB/month), syncs your files between multiple computers running Evernote--even across platforms--and supports more file types and SSL encryption. (The small ads in the bottom-left corner of the Evernote app and webpage disappear too.) We don’t want to discourage anyone from upgrading to the paid service (we’re sort of Evernote fanboys, OK?), but we have to admit that in our months of using the service, we’ve yet to have an “Oooh, I wish I was Premium!” moment. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Updated: WireTap Studio 1.0.6

Ambrosia Software — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:09:22 -0500

WireTap Studio is a professional audio recording, editing, and management solution, allowing you to manage and manipulate your audio with ease. Discretely record from a specific application, record all of your Mac system audio simultaneously, or even record from any hardware/line-in device of your choice.

After recording, edit your clips with WireTap Studio's revolutionary and completely lossless editor. Lossless master recording technology enables you to edit your recorded audio without any loss of quality or content. Come back days, months, or even years later and undo the changes you've made. You can even take a file you mistakenly recorded at a lower quality and increase the quality at any time, without the need to re-record.

Even better, patent-pending LivePreview™ technology enables you to preview your audio before you capture it, saving you lots of time and stress. No longer will you need to record multiple bitrates and formats and then compare them side by side. Change the bitrate, compression format, or even add Audio Unit effects, and hear the changes in real time - before you record.

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS X 10.4 or later, QuickTime 7.0 or later, 1GHz G4 or faster, or any Intel Mac

To download a copy of WireTap Studio 1.0.6 (25.6MB), click here.

Utilities: Full Software List

The Software Vault — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:43:33 -0600

Here's a list of all the demos, trials, freeware, shareware, and donationware in the Utilities section of the Software Vault. Check back often to see what's new and what's been updated.

Just click on any software title for more information and a download link.

Sponsors:

Dragster 1.0.5 shareware - A handy application that takes the drag out of file transfers.

EasyEnvelopes Widget 1.0.7 freeware - Create picture-perfect envelopes every time with this widget.

Seek 1.1.3 shareware - Search for anything, anywhere.

iToner 1.0.6 shareware - Unlimited custom ringtones for your iPhone!

Klix 1.0 demo - Recover photographs from damaged or uncooperative media cards and cameras.

MacScan 2.5 demo - Surf safely with this Internet-security utility.

ShredIt X 5.7 demo - Easily shreds any file so that its data can never be recovered.

Snapz Pro X 2.1.2 demo - A powerful, versatile, and easy to use screen capture solution for Mac OS X.

StuffIt Standard Mac 11.0.2 trial - Solve all your basic compression needs quickly and easily.

WireTap Studio 1.0.4 shareware - If you can hear it, WireTap Studio can record it.

Editors' Picks:

1Passwd 2.4.11 demo - Create strong, safe passwords and manage them with ease.

A Better Finder Rename 7.8.5 shareware - Easily rename multiple files in a matter of seconds.

AlarmClockPro 8.0 trial - This iTunes and Web-enabled alarm clock enhances the quality and serenity of your daily life.

Amnesty Generator 1.3 freeware - Run your favorite web widgets in your Dashboard or Sidebar.

Amnesty Singles 1.2.1 trial - Turn any Dashboard widget into a standalone application.

AOL Instant Messenger 4.7 freeware - Keep in touch with friends with IM and swap files while you're at it.

AppZapper 1.8 shareware - Quickly and completely delete applications along with all their related support files.

The Atomic Mac 6.7.0 trial - An extremely complete software periodic table of the elements for your Mac.

Awaken 3.1 trial - This digital alarm clock will wake you with tunes from your iTunes library or with any of its built-in alarms.

BBAutoComplete 1.5 freeware - The most versatile word and phrase auto-completion tool available. Killer for coders.

BetterZip 1.5 trial - Sometimes you only want to extract exactly those files you really need.

Birthday Buzzer 1.1.1 demo - Don't be a dope and forget yet another birthday.

BurnAgain DVD 1.2 demo - Multi-session disc burning reinvented.

Burnz 1.1.32u trial - Burn discs faster and more efficiently than the Finder could ever dream of doing.

Captain FTP 5.0 trial - Be the captain of the FTP seas with this powerful FTP client.

CDFinder 5.0.1 trial - Organize your disk and data archive and keep track of your digital media assets.

Charmas 2.0 shareware - Get out of the font jungle with this app.

ChronoSync 3.3.5 demo - Efficiently synchronize files and folders from one disk location to another.

CLIX 1.8.0a freeware - Harness the power of Unix - all of Unix.

Compress Files 2.4 demo - An easy-to-use tool for compressing, archiving, and encrypting files while omitting Mac-specific invisible files.

DasBoot 1.0.2 freeware - Create a bootable diagnostic drive from an iPod, flash drive, other device.

DashQuit 2.1 freeware - Take better control of your Dashboard widgets.

DetoxDiskz 1.0u trial - Protect your files when moving them among Windows, Unix, and Linux file systems.

First-Generation iPod nano Template freeware - Create your own iPod armor.

FinanceToGo 1.5 demo - Professional and intuitive finance management for homes, small businesses and accountants.

FontDoctor 7.3 demo - Got font problems? Not anymore.

FontNuke 1.10 freeware - Clear troublesome font-cache files quickly and easily.

Font Tools 7.0 demo - Good typography becomes easier with aid of this program.

Health Tracker 3.1.0 trial - A simple yet powerful program which helps you keep track of and graph any health related measurement.

HoudahSpot 1.4.8 demo - Quickly create and store powerful search queries.

HyperImage 1.0 trial - Do you download lots of images from the web? HyperImage is made for you.

iClip 4 demo - Here's a multi-level, easy-to-use, scrapbook and clipboard expander.

iGet 2.5.5 demo - This modern file-transfer tool supports all the file features that Mac users expect.

iGetter 2.6.1 shareware - Look ahead for better downloading from the internet.

iList Data 3.5 demo - A powerful, single-user database for the Macintosh.

I nterarchy 8.5.3 trial - Gain control over most every Internet file-transfer function, plus work with remote servers.

iScrapbook 1.1.1 trial - Professional scrapbooking software so simple that a monkey could use it.

JABMenu 1.2 shareware - A system-wide menu provides an easy way to access your Address Book data.

Keep It Together 1.3.8 trial - Keep your stuff together, and find it again instantly.

Macintosh Explorer 4.5 trial - One thing Windows does right is its Windows Explorer file management. Here it is for the Mac.

MailSteward 7.6.1 demo - MailSteward will archive all of your email in a database for easy retrieval.

Martian LifeBoat 1.0.1 demo - Backing up to external media just got a lot easier.

MemoBlock 4.7 donationware - This notepad utility incldes styling, alarms, iPod integration, and more.

Monolingual 1.3.7 freeware - If you don't speak Urdu (or many other languages), why should it take up space on your hard drive?

MS Messenger 6.0.3 freeware - For Mac users who want to communicate instantly with family, friends and colleagues from one convenient place.

NetSpeedometer 2007 donationware - Graphically monitor the speed of your internet connection.

NetworkLocation 1.1 trial - NetworkLocation adds a whole new dimension to using OS X locations.

OnyX 1.3.1 (Jaguar/Puma) donationware - Maintain, optimize, and personalize your Mac.

OnyX 1.5.3 (Panther) donationware - Maintain, optimize, and personalize your Mac.

OnyX 1.7.9 (Tiger) donationware - Maintain, optimize, and personalize your Mac.

PageSender 4.0.1 trial - Fax or e-mail anything you can print with this full-featured fax software.

PasswordVault Lite 5.2 trial - This password manager offers auto-filling of Web forms, detailed reports, and much more.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.4 shareware - Monitor all your system's activities, plus adjust process priorities.

Power Manager 3.6.2 demo - Automate when your Mac is on, off, awake, asleep, and secured.

Preferential Treatment 1.1.7 freeware - Track down and easily eliminate corrupted preferences files.

Process Wizard 1.1 beta freeware - Track and change the priority of all your system processes.

Remote Buddy 1.1 demo - Make better use of your Mac's remote control with this neat application.

Savvy Clipboard 2.1 shareware - Add easy-to-use multiple-clipboard capability to your Mac.

SecuritySpy 1.4.1 demo - If you want to set up a multi-camera security system, this is the software you need.

Speed Download 4.1.12 trial - Take control of all your download and file-transfer tasks quickly and efficiently.

Springy 1.2.2 shareware - Manage all your compressed-file archives with ease and elegance.

SuperDuper 2.1.4 freeware - You do back up regularly, right? This backup utility is so easy, your excuses are no longer valid.

TextExpander 1.4.2 demo - This customizable typing timesaver expands abbreviations as you type.

Think 1.1 trial - The world is full of distractions, and so is your Mac. Think helps you concentrate on the task at hand.

TimeCache 6.1.8 trial - TimeCache simplifies the tracking, reporting, and billing of time spent on projects.

TrashCache 1.6.8 shareware - Manage your trash with this safe and sane utility.

Vela Clock 2.1.1 demo - Though your Mac has a clock, it doesn't have a clock even remotely like this.

Virtual TimeClock Pro 5.3 trial - Effortlessly track your employee's hours and overtime.

World Clock Deluxe 4.4.9 shareware - Regularly work with people across the world? Have family or friends living in other countries or time zones? Often travel abroad? You can make your life easier.

Xupport 3.4.1 demo - Take total control of OS X with this handy utility.

You Control 1.5 trial - Take custom control of how you use your Mac.

You Control: Fonts 1.2 demo - Fonts can drive you crazy; this app will restore your sanity.

Yummy FTP 1.6 trial - This fast, flexible, and reliable file transfer utility is wrapped in an intuitive user interface.

Zipeg 1.4.0.645 freeware - A freeware alternative for StuffIt and similar compression utilities.

Updated: iToner 1.0.6

Ambrosia Software — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:41:15 -0600

iToner enables you to quickly transfer custom ringtones for your iPhone - without modifying, hacking or having to reset your iPhone. Simply drag and drop your MP3, AAC, WAVE, or AIFF audio files on iToner's window, click the Sync button, and you're done.

Your iPhone allows you to assign different ringtones for your different contacts. With iToner, now you can have a Barry White ringtone for when your girlfriend calls, Frank Zappa for when your college buddies ring you up, or the theme from Jaws for when your boss is calling.

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4.10 or later, iPhone

To download a copy of iToner 1.0.6 (7.2MB), click here.

Updated: EasyEnvelopes Widget 1.0.7

Ambrosia Software — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:28:55 -0600

EasyEnvelopes is a widget for Dashboard, so it is instantly available no matter what application you are using. EasyEnvelopes allows you to create picture-perfect envelopes every time. You can use whatever typefaces you choose for your mailing and return addresses, control the color of the text, and even use a graphic for a return address for just the right look. EasyEnvelopes will also optionally print USPS postal bar codes for both 5 digit and 9 digit zip codes.

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later

To download a free copy of EasyEnvelopes Widget 1.0.7 (736KB), click here.

Updated: iSeek 1.1.3

Ambrosia Software — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:25:54 -0600

iSeek is a handy little program for Mac OS X that allows you to instantly search for anything you seek, no matter what program you are running. iSeek puts a familiar search field in your menu bar, needing just a click or keystroke to start your search.

Look up a word definition in the dictionary, or a synonym in the thesaurus, or even famous quotes that reference the word. Search for information on Google, in popular news sites such as the BBC News, MacNN.com, or even search for software on MacUpdate.com or VersionTracker.com

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later.

To download a demo copy of iSeek 1.1.3 (5.8MB), click here.

Updated: Xupport 3.4.1

Applicorn — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:26:31 -0600

Xupport is a multipurpose system utility for Mac OS X. It provides many features to configure hidden Mac OS X and Unix options, to increase system security and performance, to maintain and backup Mac OS X, and to dig deeper into the world of Unix.

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later

To download a demo copy of Xupport 3.4.1 (2.9MB), click here.