Macgasm

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In this episode, Josh talks about the ability to deposit checks with the iPhone.

[02.8 MB] [0:05:50] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

Some people just use Google’s mail services for everything-work, pleasure, play–so using Mail.app is usually not required.  Frankly I prefer Mail.app, but who am I to judge.  Clearly there’s a ton of people out there who just need an email notifier for their menu bar, or Notify wouldn’t exist.  I actually gave it a go and to be honest, it has me rethinking my paradigm for using my personal Gmail accounts.  I mean knowing that I’ve been beat down in Mafia Wars is of the utmost importance to me.

Notify is slick and simple, it lets you know if you have unread mail, and it lets you know the instant they come in. That makes it a little easier to keep on top of a Gmail account if you ask me.  If you find yourself getting annoyed at logging into Gmail only to find that nothing’s in your inbox then you need this app, it’s free, and it’s great.

[image by _ES]

I have completed upgrading all of my Macs from Leopard to Snow Leopard.  After looking over the new Operating System there are quite a few new features as well as performance enhancements.  In addition it seems that software developers have made their software Snow Leopard ready, and if it isn’t they will let you know that they are working hard at getting it ready.

This seemed to be the smoothest upgrade I’ve ever encountered.  I did my normal hard drive cloning as I mentioned in – Snow Leopard’s Release is Just Around the Corner.  After that I popped in the Snow Leopard Install DVD, and away it went installing the upgrade.  When the upgrade was over it rebooted my Mac, and I noticed that the first start-up was a bit slower.  However, after that the subsequent boot times were much faster.  Even the applications load faster.  I remember in Leopard when I would open Safari, the dock icon would bounce a few times before it would open.  Now when I click on the Safari dock icon it opens right away.  Even the shutdown times are much improved.

I found a few new features in Snow Leopard that I find quite useful.  One being integrated Cisco VPN connectivity.  No more downloading and installing Cisco VPN software for the Mac.  Now I simply go into Network Preferences and add the Cisco IPSec VPN.  It took about a minute to configure.  When I was done, I was able to connect with no issues.  I give Apple kudos on this one.  Job well done.  Another new feature I found was with the Date & Time in System Preferences.  It uses Location Awareness to automatically set your current time zone.  The caveat here is that you need to have your Mac’s AirPort turned on, if it’s off this feature will not work.

In my efforts to make sure that all of my software still worked; I checked several of my application’s web sites for updated versions of their software for Snow Leopard.  The sites that I checked either had new software available, or they had beta versions of their software.  In the event that there was not an update, they stated that they are working hard at getting their software Snow Leopard ready.  1Password even has gone as far as inviting their customer’s to beta test 1Password 3.

Overall, I am very satisfied with my upgrade to Snow Leopard.  I would recommend this upgrade to whoever is looking to get the most out of their Macs.  I’ve read several articles where the author’s stated that you should wait to upgrade to Snow Leopard if you are in the middle of a project.  I totally agree with them in that regard.  However, when your done, you definitely want to upgrade.  You won’t be sorry.

Protecting your geeky toys is an important thing. You have spent good money on your Mac, iPod, and iPhone. You don’t want to get this stuff damaged. Today more than ever these items are part of our every day life and we have at least one of them with us at all times, maybe even all. But with all the companies out there that make cases for our toys, which ones are the best? Well, I am going to tell you from my own experiences.

iFrogz: I have to say, iFrogz was the first company that I ever purchased an iPod case from. They are super affordable, have awesome sales, and also have a huge selection of protection for your iPod and iPhone. The only thing they don’t carry is cases for your MacBook Pro. They carry any where from silicone to hard plastic cases for the iPhone and great colors too. I have yet to use any of their hard shell cases, but their silicone cases are in my opinion the best on the market. I know, it isn’t always cool to have a case for your jesus phone, But you will be happy with iFrogz.

iSkin: Maybe one of the more popular case makers out there, iSkin offers a pretty nice variety of protection for your iPhone and iPods. I have only used a couple of their cases though. By far my favorite case that iSkin offers is the Revo 2. It offers full protection of your iPhone including screen protection! Now I don’t mean just one of those little flimsy films, I am talking about a chunk of plastic that sits over the screen. It does get annoying though at times, so when I use the case, the screen guard is only on when the iPhone is in my pocket. The great thing about iSkin is they are always introducing new styles of cases for you.

Griffin: Probably the most complete line of apple gear in general, Griffin offers great iPhone, iPod and Mac cases. My favorite case from Griffin though, is the Clarifi. For those of us that have the 3G it is a crucial case for us. The Clarifi gives us the ability to take macro shots with our iPhone. This case is perfect for people like me who use evernote all the time. Any time I get a receipt or business card I snap a picture of it with my iPhone using the clarifi case. I get crystal clear and readable results. On top of that, they also offer some MacBook Pro cases.

Brenthaven: And finally something that isn’t iPod related. Though some may argue with me here, I consider laptop bags to be cases. They offer protection and hold our stuff. Brenthaven is the only laptop bags that I will buy for my macs. I have two currently (one for my MacBook and one for my MacBook Pro) and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Brenthaven has some of the best bags out there and they are practically indestructible. They even have some videos up for some of their bags showing some crazy stuff.

These are of course just a few of the options out there. But these are my top picks. Check them out. Also tell us your favorite cases in the comments.

RecordStudio is your personal 4-track pocket recorder. This brilliant iPhone application allows you to record up to 4 tracks for your creative moments. If you are a musician this is a must have in your pocket. How many times have you been jamming out on the drums or guitar and just busted out that amazing riff? Maybe you are outside and away from your recording equipment. With RecordStudio you just launch the app and start recording. But that’s not all, it has a built in metronome. Not only that you can lay down other tracks. So you lay down your rhythm track and loop it, then you lay down a solo and magic happens. Ok, not real magic, but I can’t count the number of times I have been playing my guitar and came up with a beautiful riff that I forgot 20 minutes later when I actually had access to something like this. But how much is it? It must be a small fortune. Well it’s not. With three versions of the app available in the app store you have a few price points. $.99 $1.99 and $4.99. Yes that is all. A must have for any musician out there. Pick it up now in the app store.

We would also like to thank RecordStudio for their support in being an advertiser with us. To have such great people, companies and other organizations like RecordStudio advertising with us, lets us know we are doing something right.

The new Quicktime is all flash and no substance. Some of the features from Quicktime Pro has been moved to the new version, but a lot of the finer tunings have disappeared altogether.

Apple seems to have taken a step back from the “Pro” stigma, and decided to land squarely on the “prosumer” level.  The prosumer tag is being very liberally applied here.

I’m a little bit confused about some of the choices they’ve decided to employ with the new Quicktime. Exporting files have been severely limited now, and only include three settings, iPhone, Computer, and YouTube qualities.  You can, however, save the file out to a number of HD formats, but you have zero control over what codecs are being employed on the export.

That’s a huge step backwards, unless they’re planning on adding in “Pro” features in the near future.  Things get a little weird after realizing that a lot of the export features are missing.  I realized that Apple has left QuickTime 7 on the machines that have installed Snow Leopard, so we

still have access to settings there.  The next thing I realized is that iMovie still lets you export using QuickTime settings, so it’s looking like Apple’s either not done with the QuickTime 10 update, or they can’t figure out how to give people the export features they want in iMovie and other iLife packages quite yet.

I’m not sure what any of this means, but I’m frustrated nonetheless.

Sometimes you just want to fancy up an image and send it off, and you certainly don’t want to wait for photoshop to open and then mess with some blending options and other fancy plugin settings.  Picturesque is a great application that lets you do that. You no longer need to spend a grand on adobe’s software packages to get round corners on some of your photos.

Add in functionality to add 3D perspectives, reflections, and borders and you’re pretty much set.  The great thing about this is that you also have the ability to batch edit a group of photos, and not have to apply everything on a photo by photo basis.  Considering the automation and the ability to use some applescript for the automation process and you have a pretty powerful tool.  Web Designers that are doing a lot of work with thumbnails or fancied up image UIs will definitely want to check out this application.

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In this episode, Grant talks about the possibility of a CDMA iPhone.

[02.8 MB] [0:05:40] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]