I was crushed to learn that Leopard was not going to sport the spotlight window (remember that?!) which displayed the results in a clean way, with collapsible file types, reordering of searches, and the fact that you would see around 15 results per file type. I hate Leopard’s Finder search, since it puts everything together, shows you every file on your system related to that match, and looks pretty much like a mess.

I’ve known about HoudahSpot for a while now (I even won a license back in 2005, which I totally forgot about), but never got round to using it. A recent update caught my attention, and here I am with a small review of this search tool that promises to companion Spotlight during those difficult times

HoudahSpot does not attempt to replace the Spotlight menubar. I still use that for quick look ups, which when used with conditional searches works for most part. I do however sometimes find the need to grab very specific results, and the Finder search as I have mentioned is quite painful. 

Daily use

HoudahSpot instead promises a very advanced search that is super simple to use. I could find very specific files by quickly setting up conditions and locations. Most of the time I could narrow it down to less than 10 results, with my required file right at the top. All this done with just a few mouse clicks. 

The performance of the search is super fast (except in certain cases where it would lock up for a few seconds). This is partly because it conducts the search after you have hit enter, after which it will live update according to the search criteria. It doesn’t render any icon previews, and there’s even an option to turn off the icons completely. 

The interface is very pleasant (I’m told the previous UI colour was a hideous yellow), and features a button for an inspector as well as integrated Quick Look support. The bottom of the window shows a path bar so you know exactly where the file comes from. 

Features

Saved templates is similar to saved searches in Spotlight, but they’re much more flexible. It comes with a bunch of search templates for finding long lost files, recent files, music gone astray, and you can create your own templates. The devs have also put up a whole lot of tips and tricks you can do with the app. 

Blitz Search is something that I just don’t understand. It’s a spotlight-like drop down search from the menubar, but all it does is spawn a new search window. I mean, why wouldn’t I just hit the shortcut to go to the main search instead of coming to this? Perhaps there’s more to it than meets the eye. 

For what its worth

My only complaint about this app, is its price. At $25, it may be a few dollars too much for casual usage. If you plan to use this app extensively, it will definitely be worth it. Features wise, it is perfect. 

For me however, I don’t usually need to use anything other than the spotlight menu (not many files I’d say), and even then, I wouldn’t mind taking the extra effort to find something in Finder. A demo version is available, to give you a sneak preview of what the app is all about. 

Any HoudahSpot users out here? What’s your opinion about this app?

As it goes Facebook is becoming increasingly popular around the globe. All of my friends are on facebook and everyone seems to have facebook in their bookmarks toolbar. So why not get Facebook down to your desktop? Here are a bunch of Facebook applications that losely tie up to the Facebook API bringing certain features to the desktop.

AddressbookSync 1.1.1 »

You’ve got your address book neatly filled out, but when it comes to pictures it’s either too much trouble or you don’t have the pics at hand. AddressBookSync will not only search through your address book for matches, it will also copy over the birthdays of your contacts.

This is a great way to fill out your address book, as well as keep up to date with the latest pictures. Unfortunately, phone numbers are not synced, as the facebook API does not allow access to it. For copying over contacts, there was an application Facebook Sync that could do this. I say was, because Facebook has since made the developer remove that functionality from his app. If you are determined enough, you can find someone who can send it to you (don’t ask me!). 

Amigo »

The Facebook notification applet resides in your menubar letting you know when someone has ‘poked’, prodded, or kicked you. You also get to see when there’s a new wall post or when you are invited to a party. It also gives you quick access to your friend’s profiles, walls and all that. At $20, the app is terribly overpriced. The trial however has no limitations other than a buggy message every time you launch the app.

PhotoBook »

This is a really slick application for viewing Facebook albums. You get access to all your friend’s photos, which you can search through, or view as a slideshow. The full view shows additional info for each picture and a single click adds any selected photos to your iPhoto library. Unfortunately, the app lacks an upload option, which would have sealed the deal.

Facebook Export for iPhoto »

Made by the Facebook guys themselves, the iPhoto exporter is very similar to the FlickrExport developed by Fraser Speirs. The plugin puts in an extra pane in your iPhoto export window, from where you can tag a picture (it pulls names from your facebook friends list), set albums, comments — and hit upload!

Facebook Dashboard widget »

For those of you who contantly use the Dashboard, the Facebook widget will update you on new pokes, messages, wall posts, events, and other notifications. Very simple to install and use, and uses just a tiny bit of dash real estate.

EventBox »

This is my favourite app, and is the one reason I continue to keep my facebook account alive. It displays facebook status updates, pictures, and also features a photo uploading tool. You can update your status from the EventBox window as well as leave comments on people’s photos. EventBox goes far beyond Facebook and is highly recommended for anyone who interacts with the internet. Use the coupon code in the Smoking Apples magazine to get a 20% discount on the $15 pricetag that EventBox commands.

Any of you active Facebookers know of some other cool apps? Do let us know so we can check them out.

There are FTP clients, and then there’s Flow. Ever since Adam Betts wrote about the Flow (may 2007) on his blog, I’ve been captivated by this beautifully crafted FTP client. As a Coda user however, I never really got a chance to use this FTP client, and eventually I forgot about it. A few days ago one of our team members mentioned Flow, and I thought I’d take a look at what it has grown into. 

Turns out my review is just in time, as 1.1.1 has been released just today! I played around with the beta versions for a few days just to see that everything works. With a lot of fixes in its kitty [release notes], Flow 1.1.1 brings enhanced local browsing support, fixes for Amazon S3, WebDAV and MobileMe iDisk. So without further ado, here’s what Flow is all about.

The User Interface

If there’s one thing that sets this app apart, its a well thought out user interface. Helpful Core Animation effects aside, everything is placed just right. At all times, you know exactly where you are, and the path bar can be used to quickly jump to wherever you wish to go.  

Features

If you thought Flow was all about the looks, take a look at the arsenal of features. I honestly didn’t think there’d be so many of them. Besides regular old FTP and SFTP features, Flow comes loaded with some features you might not even need. 

Full Support for Amazon S3, WebDAV, and MobileMe iDisk
Connecting to your MobileMe iDisk is super simple, and requires just your username and password. Once connected, things are at least 2x faster than using plain old finder. All your local files are available in the sidebar (finally!), or you can drag files in from any Finder window. If you want quick file transfers to your iDisk, FTP is the way to go.

I don’t have an Amazon S3 account so I couldn’t test that out, but it looks just as simple.

Editing
Flow features a built in text editor, albeit a basic one. So if you want to just change a few details in your web documents, just double click and you can edit them directly on the server. Of course, editing with your favourite editor is just a right click away. Note that this editor can only be used for the most basic tasks, as it doesn’t have any features that might be required for coding web pages.

QuickLook
Everyone who uses Leopard loves Quick Look (you should try it sometimes!). I was very surprised to find Quick Look support directly in Flow. Hit spacebar and out pops the window. 

Copying URLs
Flow is supposed to be URL smart, being able to copy a URL on your remote server or open it in your browser. This would have been a very handy feature, had it worked. Unfortunately, I tried Flow on two different Macs and three different FTP connections, but in all cases all I saw were greyed out options. Update: Apparently, one needs to set the base url for the copying URLs feature to work. Instructions for that are in this help page. Works very well now, and is awesome! 

I also really like the bookmarks feature, where you can store all your web locations in a convenient sidebar, as well as the stunning transfers view. 

The baddies

Yes, there are some of those as well. I noticed Flow crashes every now and then, with no resume-where-you-left-off support. The new version being in a crash report sending feature, so hopefully they will take care of the bugs. 

The second baddie, is support. Whenever I review an application, I always check out what the support is like. I usually send in a fake support request just to guage the quality of support. Sadly, I didn’t even get a reply to the two support requests I sent in. That is just plain unacceptable.

I then spoke to Brian Amerige, the lead developer of Flow, who admitted that their support system is flawed. He said they are going to bring in a new support system when it’s ready. “We don’t want to rush anything out the door”, he says. Watch out for updates regarding this on the ExtendMac Blog.

In conclusion

Flow is a really sweet FTP client, one that literally stays far ahead of the rest in terms of user interface, simplicity, and features. However, the small time crashes (3 times in 13 days) do bring it down to earth, while the lack of after sales support is a bit disturbing. However, considering that you don’t really need any support since the entire app is so easy to use, I’d leave it aside as something that shouldn’t matter much. 

I personally use Coda for my little FTP needs, while many others use the free Cyberduck (also fully featured) for their FTP purposes. But when it comes to a good mix of features and stunning interface, you can’t go wrong with Flow. At $30 for a single user license, Flow is decently priced. A 15 day trial awaits, but I think if it’s simple and clean FTP you need, Flow will win you over.

In my ongoing quest to find the best possible Mail experience, I’m always looking out for interesting plugins, hacks and tips to extend this amazing email client. Here I’m going to feature two great plugins for Mail, that simply flush it with power and features while still keeping it simple and elegant.

MailTags

Almost every piece of software out there is going the tag way. Tags are a great way to sort and organise your data in a non-linear way. Unfortunately, Mail comes with the old fashioned way of organising emails using folders. Nothing wrong with them, until you find that you have too many emails coming in, and sorting them is really a pain.

MailTags integrates with Mail, by adding a sidebar which can be shown or hidden at any time. This sidebar is really powerful with which you can add so many organisational functions that it is hard to believe that it’s just a plugin. Using the sidebar you can add tags in their simplest forms, assign ‘projects’ to emails, set reminders or ‘ticklers’, change the message colour, create a todo or event from Mail directly into iCal, or add a note. Continue Reading »

From time to time you may find that your Mac starts to really slow down. It’s really painful for myself when I have a whole bunch of apps open and then my computer comes to a near complete halt. Normally a restart helps to solve the problem and I do get some better performance but that really is only a remedy. There are a few maintenance apps on the Mac but really not many can compare to the full feature set of Cocktail. Not only does Cocktail feature some typical maintenance tasks but it also has a few extras.
 

The Features

Cocktail divides itself into six tabs: Disks, System, Files, Network, Interface, and Pilot. Each of these contains tasks that pertain to the respective category. The Disk tab has tasks that allow you to enable/disable journaling, repair disk permissions, settings for what to do when the computer sleeps, and some last miscellaneous options. System has some scripts that you can run, spotlight things, database fixes, start up options and some more miscellaneous options. Files has caches options, preference fixes, and some pretty nifty things you can do to files (like deleting locked files). The Network tab has some things that I don’t think the average user (myself included) will find necessary to mess with, however there are some cool filesharing options. As an almost extra, Cocktail includes some interface customization options which I will go into later. Finally the Pilot option is probably the most useful and easiest thing to understand. It lets you run scheduled scripts and just preform the basic maintenance tasks. Many of these options you might not know what they do but the Cocktail help really helps out in explaining and I’ll be doing some copy & paste from it to explain the options (seeing as I’ll most likely get them wrong). Continue Reading »

Continuing onward from our last week’s look at Puzzle Games on the App Store, we’re going to take a look at Word Puzzles on the App Store.  Word Puzzles have long been popular, making appearances in newspapers, children’s fun books, magazines and now they’ve paved their way onto the App Store.

WordsWorth

WordsWorth comes from a team of Indian creative minds called 99Games Online. Based out of Mangalore, India, [Milind: hey! That’s my native land!] 99Games has a bunch of puzzle games available in the App Store, WordsWorth being their latest offering. But, what exactly is WordsWorth?

WordsWorth is a fun, interactive word puzzle game wherein the objective of the game is to find words from a collection of letters scrambled in the form of a honeycomb looking grid. Although this sounds simple, it is quite difficult to find out and trace the words from the grid. You may either tap each alphabet to form a chain forming the word, or you can trace out the word chain by dragging the path. You are awarded points based on the length of the word and the alphabets chosen. The top of the game tells you how much a word formation will reward you before the submitting. Continue Reading »

What a long title! You’d be surprised to know that even the website url is just as long as that. Well let’s not bother about that shall we? With the holiday season, Apple gets lot of switchers buying Macs. A lot of these switchers are too afraid to touch anything that doesn’t look like a bright green Start button. I’m sure you know someone who fits this profile. 

Scouring around the net I came across this little video tutorial which boldly advertises its contents. A 300MB download later, I launched the application. Based around a flash interface, Switch to Mac is an absolute beginners guide to help new users to get familiar with the OS. 

The UI of the app is well done, and simple enough for anyone to understand. The host of the tutorial, Saied, is a gentle guy and speaks in a clear and concise way. The best part of this tutorial is it’s non-linear way of learning. The flash based UI allows you to choose what you want to learn. So clicking the Finder icon (suggested by Saied in the introduction) launches the Finder tutorial from where he tells you all kinds of things about the Finder. He also switches back and forth between a Windows PC and a Mac to show key differences in ways of working. Saied covers all the key applications that ship with Mac OS X, spotlight, Dashboard, Spaces, and even Stacks. After looking watching the tutorial, you get to interact with the virtual flash based Mac OS X and perform the steps that Saied just showed you (with a helpful notes panel at the top). 

I’d say UI wise this is a perfect way for a beginner to learn about the Mac. The app loads in full screen so you don’t have to worry about distractions, and the level of learning has been brought down to basic levels. They have obviously taken a lot of time to make this package (I noticed that the Stocks widget showed AAPL at 175!) which is basic, concise, and will help out a switcher. 

Of course, I have some issues. First, I noticed that the app is sometimes a bit buggy. Maybe it’s just my Mac, but sometimes it would refuse to act the way it should, which would end up confusing a new user. I’ll be testing the package on a MacBook to see whether that bugginess is just my Mac and report back on that front. Second, it can be a bit too short. I would have preferred the lessons to be a little longer, offering a few more tips on how to work things.  

This is not recommended for those who know their way around a computer, nor for those who are already using a Mac for a while. At $29.95 for a shipped box pack, I’d say it should be a helpful Christmas gift for your friend who has just switched to a Mac. Those who prefer to download, it’s a cool $25.

LittleSnapper was announced by RealMac Software a few months ago, and since then the anticipation had been building up to a point where everyone couldn’t wait to get their hands on this apparently brilliant screenshot application. We got our hands on the early betas and tested them for what it’s worth. However, only after 1.0 could we be the least bit judgemental about it. So how does LittleSnapper fare in our tests? Why that’s what this whole review is all about!

LittleSnapper is a tool that lets you snap pictures of web pages, your computer screen and organise them into a single library. You can then edit these pictures, add annotations and finally share them using your FTP server or the build in QuickSnapper service. 

Even before you install LittleSnapper, I must say RealMac has done an excellent job presenting it. The website is something to behold, with good typography, smooth buttons and effortless downloading. You can tell from the website that these guys know about interface design. Continue Reading »

Apple’s iWeb is the simplest web development platform in the world. Building and deploying a website or blog using your MobileMe account could not be simpler. It has some great themes, and impressive photo gallery features. However, there comes a time (and pretty soon in most cases) where you will find that iWeb lets you do only so much.

So what’s the next step then? Learning and building websites using a professional app like Dreamweaver isn’t going to cut it. RealMac Software claims to have the answer with RapidWeaver, their semi-professional wysiwyg web development platform. I’ve been looking at this app for a while now, and here’s my review. 

Making your website

RapidWeaver incorporates a one window interface, which is well designed and easy to navigate. This is important for someone who isn’t familiar with web design concepts. The basic process is you add ‘pages’, which could either be a blog, gallery, contact page or even a plain HTML page.

(The blogging platform is solid, and gets the job done)

Your pages are then assigned themes around which they are rendered. You can switch between themes at any time, while your pages will retain their content. Nothing revolutionary, and almost similar to what iWeb offers. Continue Reading »

Macs are trouble-free right? And they never slow down? Or crash? Well what’s that spinning wheel I’ve been seeing a lot lately? As we all sooner or later come to realise, Macs do have problems, no matter what the ‘cool guy’ at the Apple Store told you.

That is not to say Macs can’t take care of themselves. Every week OS X will run maintenance scripts, will optimise performance now and then, as well as rebuild your file permissions and locations. This works well enough for most part, and the occasional Disk Utility permissions repair takes care of the rest.

But, after a year of using OS X, you begin to notice that it isn’t as fast as it used to be. Most Macboys I’ve interacted still hold that defragmenting holds no value with OS X, but I have noticed a noticeable difference before and after defragmentation. Drive Genius 2 from Prosoft Engineering Inc., claims to take a good look at your hard drive and fix just about everything in sight. Continue Reading »