Articles

Disable automatic unzipping when you download a zip file

Have you ever downloaded a zip file to your Mac and noticed that the file was automatically unzipped? Do you want to turn that facility off so the Mac keeps the file zipped? (This is useful if, say you download a WordPress plugin as a zip file from a website then want to upload it into your own website.) This is how you do it. Go to Preferences in Safari… Under... [Read more of this article]

Duplicated text with Notational Velocity and Simplenote

I use Simplenote pretty much every day. I add text to these notes in Notational Velocity maybe once a week. I love both programs. However… I get text repeating in Simplenote, often when using it when I’m on 3G. You can see the way the sentence “Listen…” below gets duplicated… What’s WORSE is this: you’ll... [Read more of this article]

Snapheal review: remove objects or people from an image

I recently reviewed an application for the Mac called Inpaint which helps you to clean up images by removing unwanted objects. Today I’m going to show you a very similar, but more sophisticated application for the Mac, called Snapheal. Here’s a video I created to show you what it can do… In this second video I show a number of photos... [Read more of this article]

Alfred for super fast application launching

Would you like to speed up the way you use your Mac? Alfred really helps – and the ‘standard’ version is free!! Alfred is a productivity application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web. What’s extra great is that Alfred learns which apps you use often and prioritises them when... [Read more of this article]

Review: Air Display for iPad: more screen real estate

Do you wish you had a bigger screen? Or are you debating whether to get an 11-inch, 13-inch, 15-inch or 17-inch MacBook? You may want to consider getting an iPad 2, if you haven’t already got one, and the low-cost Air Display app. This app enables you to site the iPad 1 or 2 to the right or left of your MacBook (or PC laptop for that matter) –... [Read more of this article]

How to choose a MacBook

I wrote the following to a friend who wanted to upgrade his ageing MacBook, but wasn’t sure which of the new models to get… 128gb storage is the minimum you’ll need to do serious work. Questions to consider… How much space do the following take up on my current computer? Songs Photos Files Mac applications Apps for iPhone plus... [Read more of this article]

Review: Day One diary app for Mac, iPhone and iPad

I love buying software for my Mac and iOS devices. What keeps me buying is often noticing I have a problem, and wanting to fix that. I have kept a digital daily journal for about 12 years. I have typed more than 300,000 words, mostly detailing the things I did each day. I started entering text into a Palm device which slotted into a folding keyboard,... [Read more of this article]

Dragon Dictate review: speech recognition from Nuance for Mac

Update (November 2012): I am now using Dragon Dictate version 3, and it is much better than version 2.5.2 reviewed below, but some of the bugs mentioned in this review are still in version 3. I was one of the beta testers for version 3 and reported the bugs, but as of now, November 2012, Dragon Dictate is still rather frustrating to use at times. My... [Read more of this article]

MacSpeech Scribe review: transcribe audio files with your Mac

MacSpeech Scribe is a companion application to Dragon Dictate from Nuance. Dragon Dictate only transcribes live audio. You cannot ask it to transcribe from an audio file like you can on Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. So if you have a device like an Olympus digital recorder and you want to dictate onto that and have it transcribed,... [Read more of this article]

How to send bulk emails on a Mac

Do you have a list of people you’d like to send a personalised email to? Would you like to send an email and be able to find out if the recipient ever opened the email and, if so, on what day and time? Would you like to send an email to a friend or colleague with a link to a page on the web – and be able to tell if or when they clicked on the... [Read more of this article]

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