iPhone Google Reader

I wrote a while back about the beta for the new iPhone specific mobile safari version of Google Reader. I've been using it exclusively since then and I'm pleased to say it is fantastic for my needs. It is really easy to sort through and browse my various feeds and both star or "mark as read" as necessary. This dovetails in with my use of the Google Reader browser on my Macs and office PC. If you are looking for a web based newsreader and own an iPhone you should definitely check this out. You can find the iPhone version of the Google Reader at http://www.google.com/reader/i/.

SugarSync Customer Support - It's Quick

Hey gang, I'm back after landing on my back with the flu. Thanks everyone for writing to ask what was going on. So anyway, yesterday I did my usual routine of diving into OS X upgrades without blinking. It worked out fine except SugarSync garbled up on one of my machines. Today, when I finally started feeling human again, I emailed them and had a response back within 30 minutes with the required fix. Impressive.

Comic Life Magiq Review

You may be familiar with Plasq. They've brought us applications like Skitch and Doozla. But before those applications existed they had a very successful application called "Comic Life". The first iteration of Comic Life gave you comic book formatted pages in which you could drop your pictures or artwork and add talking bubbles. In essence, it allowed you to produce your own electronic comic books. I first heard of it when it shipped on my daughter's iMac.

Plasq has now reinvented Comic Life with the recent release of Comic Life Magiq. This new release represents a significant interface and feature upgrade over the original Comic Life. Booting up Comic Life Magiq, you are presented with a series of potential themes. Of note here is that these themes are not all comic book related. They have themes like "road trip", "memories", and "birthday". In other words, the folks at Plasq figured out what we were all using the application for and have embraced it. Of course, if you don't want a ready-made theme, you can make your own. It will be curious to see if web sites start sprouting up devoted to sharing Magiq themes.

Once you load up your theme, there is an updated but somewhat familiar Comic Life interface that allows you to start dropping your pictures and artwork into the template. One nice feature is that in addition to your iSight camera and iPhoto album, Comic Life Magiq can browse your Aperture library.  It is all very easy to comprehend and without cracking the manual you'll find yourself changing the layout and otherwise modifying pages an options in no time.  The text effects are also fun with a variety of comic friendly and not-so-comic-friendly fonts to choose from that can be dropped into any one of several included bubbles or simply drawn across the page.

While these features represent a welcome update to a very fine application, the most notable new feature in Magiq is the image editor. Plasq has joined a growing list of OS X developers dabbling image editing. Actually the term "dabbling" really doesn't do this effort justice. The Magiq image editor is quite powerful with different layers, each of which can be easily reset.

The Color layer gives a variety of common photo editing tools such as sharpen, exposure, hue, and crop. The next layer has a very easy set of tools to do a more than average job of removing an image from a background.  The method, which requires two sets of rough outlines on the area to be removed and the area to be kept is very intuitive and consumer friendly. As an example, my eleven year old probably has no interest in learning photoshop, but in Comic Book Magiq she was all over this tool. The next layer allows you to warp objects with a variety of familiar tools from the OS X core image assets such as pinch, bulge, twirl, and squeeze. If that isn't enough there are additional layers to allow you to put an overlay on the image and filter the effects, such as blur on the image.  Finally, there is a paint brush that allows you to draw in what could not be accomplished in prior layers.  While most of these tools were intuitive to lear, others took some experimentation to figure out.  I think some degree of complexity is inevitable with this many tools. 
Once your masterpiece is done you print or export it in a variety of formats including FLickr, HTML, PDF, and iWeb.

Comic Life Magiq requires Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard and reliant on some of the Leopard tricks.  Strangely, Magiq can not read older Comic Life files.  I hope the developer releases a conversion tool or adds this functionality to a later release.  

The inclusion of the robust photo editor really transforms Comic Life Magiq into a significant upgrade over its predecessor. It gives you one application to create the layout and do the photo edits. This seems to be just one more example of convergence in OS X software. There are videos and a trial download at Plasq.com. If you are looking for a fun way to present photos, go take a look.  Comic Life Magiq can be purchased from Plasq directly for $44.95 for a full version or $29.95 for a cross-grade from Comic Life. They also have a limited time introductory $5 discount for the early adopters.

Are You Kidding Me?!

This is the kind of thing that could give a fellow nightmares. I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth.

Go Dockless

Dockless is an application that tells OS X to keep certain applications out of your dock. I first read about Dockless in the Spamsieve manual but was a little leary of it. I've been bitten before by life on the wildside of OS X altering applications and I was a little nervous about it. Then my friend Katie at the Mac Core very nicely told me during the last Mac Roundtable to get over it and give Dockless a try. I installed it and sure enough I am liking it. The Spamsieve and Menucalendar clock icons are now officially banned from my dock. Unfortunately, the SugarSync icon is Dockless resistant but two out of three ain't bad. If your geek gene runs as deep as mine and you actually get annoyed with extra icons on your dock, head on over and download Dockless.

TextExpander Bumps to 2.2

SmileOnMyMac has been putting in overtime on TextExpander lately. They released version 2.1 recently followed very quickly by version 2.1.1 and now they are releasing 2.2. The newest version adds a snippet group for common CSS code for all the web design jockeys. It also limits "Adapt to Case" to lowercase snippets and to abbreviations with two or more characters to avoid problems with those expansions.

I've been using the upgraded version today for awhile and still occasionally run into a problem when typing fast and the text gets jumbled into the snippet. That frustration aside, TextExpander is still one of my all time favorite applications on the Mac. Lets hope they figure a way to put their magic onto an iPhone where this application could be extremely useful.

New Mac Roundtable

I joined in on the Mac Roundtable recording last week and it is now up for download. This episode has a lot of guesses and speculation about what happens next with the iPhone and it could be a perfect record of just how wrong we all were in a few months. Either way, it was a lot of fun recording it. You can download it through iTunes or right here.

I Think Windows Hates Me

After watching all the hubub about the new VMWare Fusion, I decided it was time to give VMWare a spin. I've been using Parallels since it first hit the streets and I hadn't bothered with VMWare because for the very few applications I need windows, Parallels works just fine.

But I thought it was time to look at the competition. I actually planned to write a comparative review of the two applications. So I've been struggling with getting it working. The Parallels converter failed on me so I tried a fresh install. The first one stopped in the middle because windows said some obscure file didn't copy. I tried again and it finished but the first time I booted it up, Windows informs me my license code has been registered too many times and I need to buy another copy of windows. Just to be clear, I bought this copy of windows for Parallels. I've used it a total of one time. So now I have to choose between spending more money on a windows license or becoming a pirate and going to find a cracked license code. Actually, I'm leaning toward a third option and just sticking with Parallels.

I'm sure VMWare is an excellent program but if I had to choose between spending another hour trying to get Windows to work or sticking my hand in an electric socket, a little shock doesn't seem like such a bad idea. There was a reason I switched.

Screencast 13 - OS X Screen Capture Goodness

I've been without a machine capable of doing video for about a month but now with the shiny new MacBook Pro, the screencasting machine is warming up again. This is a short one about the various ways to take screen shots in OS X. Enjoy!

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.Mac Push Syncing

The rumor mill has been working overtime lately with respect to Apple's .Mac service. In my experience this has been one of the most controversial Apple products in the last few years. Some people swear by it while others seem to hate it. For my part, I find it very useful but probably overpriced. Of particular note are the recent rumors that with the iPhone 2.0 software, .Mac is going to start pushing email, calendar and contact data to our iPhones. I don't like to get hung up on rumors but let me just go on record to say that is something I've been lusting after for some time now. I generally sync my iPhone to the MacBook Pro but that usually stays at my desk at home while the MacBook Air follows me around during the week. Even though my calendars are synced (via BusySync) and contacts are synced via .Mac, if I sync the calendar and contact data on the iPhone on both Macs, inevitably things start hiccuping. I would much prefer that stuff (which are very small data packets) just show up on my phone and forego that type of wired syncing altogether.

This would also be fantastic for families and small businesses that don't need an Enterprise but still need the convenience of push syncing. I'm crossing my fingers that this rumor comes true.