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InfoWallet

Susie Ochs — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:57:00 -0600

There’s being prepared as in “I’ve got a bottle opener on my keychain,” and then there’s being prepared as in “I’ve got a pallet of bottled water and two backup generators in my basement.” Somewhere in between lies InfoWallet, a piece of shareware designed to keep your secret personal information protected yet accessible in case of emergency.

InfoWallet has areas to store your medical history, medications, doctors, emergency contacts, insurance information, financial accounts, website login credentials, and software licenses. It’s all kept wrapped up in a blanket of password-protected security--you choose one of six encryption levels. We went with 448-bit Blowfish.

Use InfoWallet for everything from medical details to website passwords.

When you save your “wallet,” the data stays right in the same self-contained InfoWallet folder as the app itself. You’ll notice there are three executable files in there: the Mac app, plus apps for Windows and Linux. That’s because you can put this whole InfoWallet folder onto a USB thumb drive (or any removable disk) and take it with you. Later you access your data from any computer by just launching the executable for that computer’s operating system. Plus you can save more than one wallet.

InfoWallet on the Mac is not pretty. Your profile information is entered in pop-up dialogs. The charts and buttons don’t look Mac-like at all. There’s no Mac integration to pull contact information from Address Book, although you can export Address Book contacts as vCards and then import them into InfoWallet, and vice versa. There’s no iPhone version (it’s expected in 2010) or built-in online backup. You can back up your wallet file to your hard drive and move it to a remote location (including an online one), but you must restore it to the self-contained InfoWallet folder before launching it again. The interface for looking up business addresses online is awful--virtually unusable.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8

Leslie Ayers — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:27:46 -0600

If forced to choose a photo editor to sit down and have a beer with, Elements 8 would be our drinking buddy of choice. It’s friendly, smart, and it seems to know what we want to do with our images even before we do. Unlike with Photoshop CS4, which is certainly the expert in its field and the go-to choice for pro photographers, Elements 8 packs just the right combo of helpful, intuitive tools for average Joes and powerful features that even hard-core Photoshoppers can appreciate.

The first important pro-level addition to note is the inclusion of Bridge CS4, Adobe’s excellent photo-management application, which makes sorting through hundreds or even thousands of photos much more manageable. Rather than compete with iPhoto ’09--which includes some very cool features, such as face- and location-recognition--Bridge is about saving you time and helping you tag and organize photos on your Mac’s hard drive, so you can get back to taking more photos or doing amazing things with them.

New editing modes in Elements 8--Quick, Full, and Guided--let you manipulate your photos quickly, easily, and with minimal fuss. Common touch-up tools such as red-eye reduction and automatic fixes for lighting, contrast, and color are only a click away, while additions like Whiten Teeth (represented by a little toothbrush, natch) are a godsend for beautifying smiles in portraits, family photos, or your Facebook profile photo. In fact, the Whiten Teeth tool is also a great tool for brightening parts of any photo, not just whitening coffee-stained pearlies.

We saved this shot by brightening the baby's face using the Whiten Teeth tool.

For outdoor shots, the Make Dull Skies Blue tool can bump up the color of the sky with a click and a swipe of the cursor across the portion of the photo where the sky appears. These and other insta-fixes are all added as layers to your original, so when you save the photo, it becomes a new PSD file, and your original remains intact, in case you decide later to go in a different direction.

Adobe built Elements 8 with hobbyist photographers in mind, and the app covers several tricky scenarios that most family historians have no doubt encountered. Everybody’s had the experience of revisiting vacation photos and coming upon an image of complete strangers who wandered into the frame. Thanks to the new Scene Cleaner, they’re outta there. As long as you have a couple of similar images, swapping in the background from a clean shot is a simple procedure. What was once a complicated multistep edit has been reduced to a couple of mouse clicks. Scene Cleaner is essentially the opposite of the Group Shot function, which allows you to quickly put together a composite image from multiple shots--perfect for getting everyone smiling and looking the same direction in a family photo. And speaking of family photos, if you’ve ever wished you could make a portrait image landscape (or vice versa) the Recompose tool can easily stretch or compress backgrounds, while maintaining the proportions of foreground objects or people. It’s a powerful tool borrowed from Photoshop, and the results can be stunning.

Elements 8 offers powerful editing tools for hobbyists at a jaw-droppingly low price. In our case, the ability to vastly improve a family photo to the point where we could use it as the focal image in our 2009 holiday greeting card was worth the hundred bucks alone.

Red Sweater FlexTime

Susie Ochs — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:02:40 -0600

I once appeared in my high school’s production of The Pajama Game, a musical about labor strife at a pajama factory, of all things. One of the songs is called “Think of the Time I Save,” and I still get the chorus stuck in my head occasionally: “Tick-tock, tick-tock, tempus fugit. Tick-tock, tick-tock, time goes by.” It’s a super-cheesy musical, but a nice reminder to manage my time well.

So when I recently went looking for a versatile timer app, I was relieved to find FlexTime. This light utility lets you program timed routines, making it a great choice for repetitive tasks.

For example, my most frequently used FlexTime routine is Merlin Mann’s productivity hack: 10 minutes of solid work, followed by 2 minutes of strictly enforced goofing off. Repeat that five times and you’ve just worked 50 minutes out of an hour--not bad. I’ve also got FlexTime reminding me, via a Growl notification (which requires Growl, a free notification system for Mac OS X), to space out Mac|Life’s Twitter posts. I can prewrite a day’s tweets in Tweetie, and FlexTime just nudges me to push one out every 20 minutes.

Here are two FlexTime routines I use a lot, no scripting required.

FlexTime’s easily programmed routines can include multiple steps and run once or in a continuous loop. Each step can be marked by a sound, spoken text (using Mac OS X’s text-to-speech feature), a text or Growl pop-up, or even trigger a script.

Scripting is key to FlexTime’s versatility. A routine can run an AppleScript, a shell script, or an Automator workflow. Users who are familiar with these can script all kinds of events that aren’t included in FlexTime’s defaults. A script could launch your favorite backup utility, open your to-do list, save the current document, or empty your Trash. FlexTime’s Help includes some basic examples, and when you’re using Mac OS X’s built-in Script Editor (in Applications/AppleScript), you can choose File > Open Dictionary and pick the FlexTime dictionary to browse compatible commands.

But even if writing a script freaks you out, FlexTime’s built-in options can cover a lot of ground. I re-created the routines from my favorite workout DVD, and exported the audio to iTunes, so I can exercise anywhere without the DVD. (This would also work for tai chi or yoga.) You can even break up longer activities with affirmations at set intervals--your Mac nudging you along with the occasional “You’re doing great, keep going,” for example.

Apple Motion 4

Helmut Kobler — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:51:00 -0600

Motion 4 isn’t a standalone product--it ships with latest version of Final Cut Studio. Yes, this video effects program might be a mere “component” of a larger software suite, but because it competes with standalone applications, we decided to distinguish it with its own review. And we went all “deep focus” on it, because Motion 4 has come a long way since the days when Apple was selling it as solo software.

Motion came into the world as a rather immature competitor to Adobe After Effects, the respected and feature-rich standard-bearer. Since that time, Apple has steadily improved Motion to the point where it’s a credible alternative to the Adobe stalwart. The fact that you get Motion in Final Cut Studio 3 (along with a number of other fantastic, pro-level apps) makes it pretty hard to ignore Apple’s stake in the video-editing game.

The software helps you create slick motion graphics for everything from commercials to DVD menus to film and video title sequences. When Apple released the previous version (about two and a half years ago), it was the first time we thought Motion was really ready for a wide variety of projects, thanks to new features letting you set up cameras, lights, and objects in 3D space. But those 3D features only went so far, because Motion still couldn’t cast realistic shadows or reflections. Sure, you could fake those effects by creating duplicate objects and morphing and blurring them until they looked like shadows or reflections, but it was a painstaking process.

Motion 4 offers precise control over light sources and shadows.

Motion 4 fixes all this. For starters, light sources can now cast realistic shadows on everything in your 3D world. You can toggle lights to cast shadows or not and toggle objects to receive shadows or not. You can also tweak other parameters, such as a shadow’s edge softness and its color. Similarly, Motion 4 now lets an object--say, a video layer, shape, or paint stroke--cast reflections on its neighbors, giving you precise control over how reflections fall off.

Apple also adds more 3D realism by way of realistic depth-of-field effects, which enable you to control the relative sharpness and softness of foreground and background elements in a scene. Keeping some elements in focus and others out of focus helps direct the viewer’s attention to what’s important and imbues a scene with true filmlike qualities. Motion 3 had no way of knowing what should be in focus and what should be blurry; again, you had to manually blur elements to simulate depth-of-field effects. But now Motion 4 lets you easily set a point in 3D space where the camera will focus--anything closer or farther away will automatically fall off into fuzziness, depending on the characteristics you’ve given your camera. And speaking of the camera, Motion 4 has added Camera Framing, which enables you to pick an object on which to keep the camera pointed, no matter where you move the camera or objects in your scene.

Rolling credits are a staple of film editing, but it’s never been easy to actually animate a basic credit sequence. Motion 4 makes the process a piece of cake. You can import a text file containing your credits, set type properties, and use a custom navigation tool to quickly jump to any part of the credits to perform last-minute edits. Finally, just apply a Scroll Text behavior to your credits, and then adjust scroll speed, direction, and other useful attributes. Voilà! Instant and professional scrolling credits.

Zuma's Revenge

Susie Ochs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:44:17 -0600

The name might remind you of an unpleasant side effect of drinking the water in Mexico, but this Zuma’s Revenge won’t make you run for the bathroom. Instead, you’ll be glued to your chair, clicking away at ever-harder levels in four fun game modes.

The sequel to Zuma doesn’t change the fundamental gameplay: You’re a frog who shoots colored balls at an advancing train (or trains) of colored balls, trying to match three colors to make them disappear. The trains double back on each other, making it hard to get the right shot, and the balls just keep on coming until you rack up enough points to fill the Zuma meter. Then no new balls emerge from the start point, but you still have to clear all the balls on the board before they advance to the end point--or you lose.

All we wanna do is Zuma zoom-zoom-zoom.

To assist you, Zuma’s Revenge tosses in power-up balls, including three new ones not seen in the last game. You’ll get to explode parts of the train, shoot lasers, fire cannonball spray, eliminate all the balls of one color, slow down or reverse the train, and so on.

The frog doesn’t even stay fixed. In some levels, he jumps between two vantage points to shoot from. Other levels let the frog slide back and forth on a track. After every 10 levels you’ll fight a boss character, who showers you with obstacles that slow you down, make the balls wildly change colors, and more. The linear, 60-level Adventure mode doesn’t let you progress until you beat each level, but save points, free lives, and a generous continue system ebb the frustration.

Once Adventure mode is complete, you can play Iron Frog mode, and Heroic Frog, more difficult twists on the main game. Challenge mode offers one-off levels, where you try to achieve a set score within a time limit. The more you beat, the more are unlocked, 70 in all.

PopCap’s bright, tiki-inspired graphics and island music give the game polish, with the 3D balls seeming to glow against the backgrounds. We experienced a crash or two on our 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, but for the most part the experience was smooth.

One Arm Battle

Susie Ochs — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:49:02 -0600

The computer is beating us by $1,000 right now, but we just hit Bop Till You Drop, so we're about to rack up a huge risk-free score.

It's you against your phone, racing to bank $5,000. You first roll a goal and then spin the slot machine's reels. When the reels stop spinning, you click on individual reels to hold those points, and then either tap the Stop button to end the turn and bank those points, or the Spin button to re-spin the reels you haven't held. So in that way, it's like a cross between a slot machine and video poker.

If the slot machine shows no points on any reels after a spin, you lose that turn. So it's a gamble after every spin: You either tap Stop and bank any points into your permanent total, or keep spinning to increase your points but risk losing the turn and not getting any points at all.

If you "sweep" the machine, or score points on all 6 reels, you usually get a bonus. Most of the goals, in fact, are to sweep the reels and get a bonus, and you can stop the turn and bank your points anytime. Other goals change things up a little, offering huge bonuses but not letting you stop.

For example, Bop Till You Drop keeps spinning the wheels until no more points can be scored, but you can't lose the turn—all the points will be banked, even when the wheels don't show any more points at the end of a spin. And the Grand Force goal will give you a 1,000-point bonus if you sweep, but you can't stop the turn so if you don't sweep you get nothing.

Tap the Pay Table button for a reminder of how that particular slot machine awards points.

The game has multiple slot machines you can play—they look the same but offer different scoring and bonuses. You start with one and then unlock eight other machines as you play. When playing, you can tap the Pay Table button to see a list of how that machine pays out. And a scrolling information bar gives you prompts on what to do if you ever get stuck or confused about if it's your turn or not.

I dug One Arm Battle. The music is cheesy, but we just turned off the sound effects and went back to listening to our iPod tunes -- if you leave the sound effects on, they'll play right over your music. It'd be nice to be able to play single-player, maybe in a timed race to a certain dollar amount. Or to play against a friend, either with two devices connected via Ad-Hoc, or by passing one device around.

The graphics aren't jaw-dropping—they reminded me of a dressed-up version of the pocket-sized casino videogames my dad used to get in his Christmas stocking and play at the breakfast table. But the gameplay is fun and has moments of real excitement, like when the computer-controlled player is up by $3,000 and you hit a huge winning streak and catch up in one turn. We did experience occasional crashes, but the game saved our progress every time, so it wasn't too annoying.

Spore: Galactic Adventures

Zack Stern — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:08:19 -0600

Spore’s first true expansion pack--and we’re not counting the weak Creepy & Cute, an assortment of extra body parts--fundamentally changes the game. In the original Spore’s final stage, you’re bound to a spaceship, but Galactic Adventures lets you park on planets and stretch your legs. These away missions beget a whole new universe of gameplay, including combat-based action sequences and story-driven adventures heretofore unseen in Spore. Unfortunately, the quality of these tweaks is just as open-ended, often resulting in frustration and untapped potential.

Like the millions of creatures that can inhabit your game, these new intraplanetary missions are largely created by other players. Galactic Adventures includes fairly understandable tools to script these sessions, and the tutorial does a good job of explaining the basics.

Just don’t expect adventures to congeal as easily as sticking legs on a creature and watching as the game makes it dance. In fact, crafting an enjoyable adventure that lasts just a few minutes can require hours of work on your part. At the very least, you’ll write all of the dialogue and events and pick all of the objects and characters from Spore’s huge catalog.

In a Robot Chicken story, you've got to conquer a malfunctioning intergalactic rest stop.

A simple checkpoint system lets you advance as a player by killing or befriending another creature, bringing two objects together (such as a key to a gate), or otherwise interacting with your story. Layer small events like these together, and you can create complicated adventures--although they all result in linear stories.

Still, you can personally craft nearly everything in the game: individual creatures, planetary environments, background music, ambient structures, building interiors, and more. If you have the time and creativity, Galactic Adventures can generate astonishing, unique results.

But at what cost? As a player in other people’s sandboxes, you’ll encounter many more first-draft worlds than masterpieces. Theoretically, a ranking system should help you find crowd-approved favorites, but weak organization somehow doesn’t bring the best to the top.

Spore’s developers built in a few dozen adventures, but even those include some duds, such as the high-concept retelling of The Metamorphosis that mostly leaves you scurrying between characters to read their dialogue. An adventure by the creators of the off-kilter TV show Robot Chicken mixes a funny story with terrible design: You pick from several doors to progress, but we spent a half-hour wandering around without knowing we’d lost. Worse, we regularly had problems moving in many adventures, getting stuck behind objects, walls, and ambient characters.

Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword

Zack Stern — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:27:57 -0600

Beyond the Sword is the Costco of expansion packs: You’ll get more than you asked for, and for a really top-notch experience, you’ll have to suss out pockets of quality rather than stuffing yourself with sheer quantity. There’s a lot going on in this game--and there’s a lot to like.

This Civilization IV update twists the game’s global-dominance strategy with new nations, buildings, and other alterations. Changes to the franchise’s fundamental gameplay turn this iteration of Civilization into various new games, from space conquests to fantasy adventures. Without a good index, the add-ons can feel overwhelming, but with persistence you’ll find new favorite ways to play.

Boldly go beyond a typical Civ game in one of many completely converted modes.

Beyond the Sword’s basics are similar to Civilization IV’s, but some clever changes improve an already excellent game. As before, you use a turn-based strategy model to build up a society from meager beginnings. In the end, you can win by defeating others with a military, getting the most votes in a U.N. popularity contest, dominating the world economy, and more.

A single game, made up of tiny turns that last between seconds and minutes, can stretch to 10 or 15 hours. One of the new updates lets you begin in a later stage, moving past some of the dull opening turns. It can be a lot more fun to buy cities, units, and technologies from a fixed allotment, instead of earning your way up from the dawn of civilization.

Beyond the Sword adds additional victory conditions too, although most are moderate updates. For example, instead of just being the first to launch a spaceship to colonize a foreign planet, you now have to add enough engines to be the first ship to reach Alpha Centauri. The upshot is that a faster ship can win even if launched after an opponent’s.

Outside the standard games, a dozen new scenarios provide overwhelming variety. You can play in space with altered rules, swapping the global map for a star chart. Tactical combat scenarios add dozens of new units re-create historical situations (such as WWII) or take fighting into a sci-fi future.