My Seven Favorite Mac Applications

One of my good friends just got her first Mac this week, and talking about applications she should install got me thinking about which ones I use everyday and couldn’t live without.

Caffeine – Free

The simplest application on the list is also my favorite. One click of Caffeine’s icon in your menu bar prevents you Mac from going to sleep, dimming the screen, or starting a screensaver. Click it again, and your Mac’s display settings go back to normal. It’s a simple concept, but it’s infinitely useful, especially whenever you’re watching videos or giving a presentation using your Mac.

Google Chrome – Free

There’s certainly nothing wrong with Apple’s Safari browser, but Google Chrome has the edge. What stands out the most about Chrome is that it’s fast. VERY fast. It launches faster than any browser I’ve ever used, and websites render remarkably quickly. You also do all your searches right in the address bar, which might sound odd at first, but once you get used to it, you realize it’s usefulness and won’t ever want to go back to having separate search and address bars.

Growl - Free

Growl is a notification system, allowing other applications to notify you of certain events via unobtrusive pop-ups. For example, iTunes can tell you what song it just started playing, iChat can let you know you just got an instant message, and Transmission can tell you is just finished downloading a torrent. Growl is fully customizable, from the looks of the notifications to how they behave (on an app-by-app basis, which is especially handy).

Tweetie – Free (ad-supported) / $19.95 (ad-free)

With so many Twitter applications to choose from, it’s tough for one to stand out for the rest. But Tweetie does just that. Not only does it have an elegant, Mac-like design, but it does all the little things right. URL shortening and image sharing are built right in. Conversation mode allows you to easily keep track of back-and-forth replies, and direct message conversations are threaded for quick viewing.

Blogo – $25 (21-day free trial)

I’ve tried nearly every desktop blogging application available for the Mac. Coming from Windows Live Writer on the PC, my bar for a blogging application was set quite high, and Blogo was the only application that met all my needs. I needed an application which made it convenient to write the post, made it simple to add and manage images, and that would allow me to preview exactly what my finished post would look like. Blogo does all that, and more. My favorite feature, though, is the fullscreen mode, which makes it easy to concentrate on writing.

Cinch - $7

When Microsoft introduced Windows 7, there was one particular feature that stood out as remarkably useful, Snap, which allows users to quickly place windows side-by-side or have them fill the screen. Apple’s OS X operating system, as excellent as it is, has no feature like it. Fortunately, there’s Cinch, which essentially replicates Snap’s features on the Mac. The company that makes Cinch, Irradiated Software, also offers a similar program called SizeUp which offers a few more features and takes a keyboard-centric approach to window management.

Alarm Clock 2 – Free

There’s more than a few alarm clock applications out there. Robbie Hanson’s is easy-to-use and offers all the features you need, with none of the ones you don’t. Alarm Clock 2 sits in your menu bar for easy access. It allows you to set as many alarms as you need, and they can be either one-time or repeating. You can use the program’s buzzer sound as the alarm sound, or if you’d rather customize how you wake up, you can use any song you’d like. My favorite feature is “Easy Wake,” which slowly increases the alarm volume over a timespan you select. It also supports the Apple remote for pressing snooze!

Red Dead Redemption Immerses Gamers in the Wild West

It’s 1911. Your name is John Marston. You’re a one-time outlaw; a former member of the notorious Dutch van der Linde gang.

You left that life behind after your gang left you for dead.

But the past has a way of catching up with people. The government wants your former gang eliminated, and they want you to do their dirty work for them. They’ve taken your wife and son hostage to make sure you cooperate.

And so begins Red Dead Redemption, a stunning and compelling adventure in the twilight days of the Wild West.

The first thing you’ll notice about RDR is the absolute beauty of the world you’re immersed in. From the vast plains of southern Texas to the sprawling deserts of Mexico, the environment feels entirely authentic.

The controls are going to feel familiar to anyone who has played any of the recent installments of the Grand Theft Auto series.

The same can be said for the mission system. GTA fans are going to feel right at home in RDR.

But in spite of the similarities, Red Dead Redemption stands on its own.

One of the more interesting aspects RDR introduces is the concept of your choices and actions affecting how the game’s population responds to you.

Save a damsel in distress from a posse of bandits? You earn honor points. Rob a nun at gunpoint? You lose honor points.

Players with a high honor level earn discounts at most shops and townsfolk overlook minor crimes. Those with low honor are offered discounts in the crime-ridden town of Thieves’ Landing and can bribe witnesses to keep their mouths shut about crimes for less.

You also gain fame points for many of your actions, such as completing a mission or winning a duel.

Another standout feature of Red Dead Redemption is called “dead-eye,” which allows players to slow down time and take out targets with absolute precision during gunplay.

But perhaps the most impressive aspect of Red Dead Redemption is that there’s never a shortage of things to do.

There are plenty of wild animals to hunt, plants to collect, challenges to complete, strangers to help, treasure to find, and mini-games to play, including the ever-popular Texas hold’em.

Simply put, Red Dead Redemption is a big game that gets all the little things right. The voice acting is superb, the world is expansive and immersive, the combat is smooth, especially with the “dead-eye” system, and you always have plenty to keep you entertained.

Recommendation: BUY.

Swype: The T9 of Touchscreen Texting

Touchscreens have quickly become the new norm in the mobile phone industry, but despite the advancements in the technology, typing on a touchscreen still remains frustrating for most users.

Cliff Kushler, the man who brought you T9 predictive text technology is back with a solution for touchscreen texting: Swype.

Swype’s brilliance is in its simplicity. Instead of hunting and pecking for every character of a text message, Swype allows you to slide your finger across the keyboard from letter to letter, and it predicts the word you intended to type.

Its accuracy is remarkable, and it lets you incorporate apostrophes and other characters as needed.

It also learns as you use it. If you need to type a word that is not in Swype’s dictionary, simply type it in as you would normally, and the next time you need it, Swype will remember it.

That includes usernames and e-mail addresses, which is incredibly convenient.

Without a doubt, Kushler and his partners are on to something huge with Swype. It is much faster and much easier than the traditional hunt-and-peck virtual keyboards, and we will likely see Swype pre-installed on a wide array of phones in the next couple of years.

Swype is still in beta, which is evident when it occasionally slows down, but with its recent update, it seems that the developers have worked out most of the bugs.

Learn more at Swype.com, and if you have an Android phone, sign up to be notified when they re-open the beta so you can try Swype for yourself.

BroncoGators: Fans or Phonies?

For the entirety of Tim Tebow’s still-young football career, he’s been blessed (and cursed) with a remarkably loyal following, especially in his hometown of Jacksonville, Fla.

These days, now that the former Florida quarterback has been drafted by the Denver Broncos, these fans call themselves “BroncoGators” and don custom-made apparel combining the two teams’ logos.

When Tebow’s hometown Jacksonville Jaguars did not select him in the draft, his fans were enraged, with many deeming the non-selection of Tebow as the end of the Jaguars in Jacksonville.

Draft15.com, which campaigned for the Jaguars to select Tebow in the months leading up to the 2010 NFL Draft, told the Jaguars in a message on the site that the team let their fans down and thanked them for “doing everything [they] can “to win a Super Bowl”…for the Los Angeles Jaguars.”

Let their fans down? Hardly.

Fans don’t base their loyalty to a team on whether or not they draft one particular player. Fans don’t turn their backs on their team and hope that they are forced to relocate to Los Angeles.

No, fans stand by their team, in the good times and the bad. No matter who they draft.

These “fans” were never Jaguar fans. They care about the success of one player more than the success of their local team.

And you know what? More power to them.

After all, I’m rooting for Tebow too. He’s a class act and works as hard as any player in history, so he deserves to succeed and I hope he does. Except for when he’s playing against the Jaguars. And that’s the difference.

So, “BroncoGators,” when Tebow’s career is over, and the Jaguars, still in Jacksonville, are doing well, don’t come back. We don’t want you. We want true fans.

Ones who are true to the teal.

Twitter Getting Popular, But Not Everyone Gets It

When I first signed up for Twitter in March 2007, the social networking site was just beginning to find an audience. But most of the people joining then were habitual early-adopters, not average social network users.

Two years later, Twitter has finally found significant worldwide popularity, thanks in large part to attention from the mainstream media.

Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and most major news networks have run stories on the social network, and shows such as ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” have incorporated the site into their broadcasts.

Even celebrities like John Mayer, Ashton Kutcher, Martha Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, and Shaquille O’Neal are Twittering these days.

But not everyone understands why the site is suddenly getting so popular.

Whenever I’ve tried to explain Twitter to someone who doesn’t get the site’s appeal, I’ve found that it is actually a very challenging task. After all, on the surface, Twitter can easily look like nothing more than a relative of Facebook’s status updates.

However, there is much more to the site.

To really understand Twitter, you have to dive in and use the service to its fullest.

Connect it to your mobile phone, use a desktop client, reply to other people’s tweets. Most importantly, don’t just follow people you already know. Go find and follow other people whose updates you find interesting, then interact with them. You’ll find yourself having some excellent conversations that way.

Because if you treat Twitter as just a status update service, you’ll be barely scratching the surface of its usefulness, and you’ll probably give up on it quickly.

Why miss out?