This application has a very simple work flow. You first start by capturing your screen shot. The tools provided include the ability to take pictures of the full screen, a selection (which doesn’t have to be a square), and object such as a window or tool bar. You can also capture an image of a website or iSight using the tools provided, finally if you have an image ready you can drop it into the application.

Once you have your image ready you can begin editing. It’s not a Photoshop type application with hundreds of different tools. It has basic pencil and paint tools to allow you to outline and express your ideas. There is also sprays, text effects, shapes, arrows and callouts. There is also a very funky tool called a stamp, this is where you can stamp an “OK” onto an image pretty neat.

The tools are mostly used to outline ideas and make them known. They are not designed to be used a full editing suite. For example you could be working on an application, find a problem with it. Within Viola you could take an image, and annotate what is wrong with and then send it to who ever is in charge. A quick way of making sure your problems are known.

As well as basic tools there are also some “effects” which allow you to do some more complex tasks. This includes modifying the edges of an image, skewing an image to make it look more 3D, adding colour filters. As well as this you can also adjust the colours and crop the image. The effects section has more complex tools and allows you to complete more advance tasks.

Once you have fiddled with your image you can now send it to other applications. This includes sending it to iPhoto, emailing to to a friend. You can also publish the image to Flickr or and FTP server. As you would expect there is also an option to print the image you are working on.

This application’s work flow is very well defined. You capture your image, edit whats on your screen, and then forward it to how ever needs it. Very simple, very efficient. There is also other, smaller features, to help you manage all of your images. There is the option to set up collections, in essence folders, to store your images. Another hand feature is the menu bar option, this is a quick way to capture images in the application you are using, rather than going into Viola and using the tools from there.

Overall the application is a pleasure to use, it works well and the tools are very fast. However there is one major problem that I found right away, the short cuts to take images (Command + Shift + 3 for example) were incorrect. They were the wrong way around. This was really confusing at first, however a quick look in the preference pane sorted with small problem. Other than that there wasn’t really anything wrong with the app. I can see this application becoming slowly better as it is developed.

The purchase price of $39.95 is a little steep, for the image editing features include I would have expected a slightly lower price range. However you probably will end up using this application a lot, so you will get value for moneys worth.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Voila – Mac Screen Capture

Related posts:

1. Rulers – Measure You Screen
2. Layers – Send Your Screen To Photoshop
3. Little Snapper – Get Snapping

Billings is designed to monitor and track who much work you do and how much you can charge for it. It a simple way to make sure you don’t under cut your profits and you charge your clients at the correct rate. Its not designed as accounting software to tell you how much you are making, however that is not the focus of the application.

This app is split into 4 main areas. The first section contains the majority of the tools which you end up working with, this is known as the projects section. In the sidebar you have your client lists, as well as a general section which you use to generate overall reports and view all of the time slips. Within the main section of the app you have a projects section which you use to setup a project for a client. A client can have more than one project associated to them. The third section which you will use a lot is the time slips section, this is used to record the time and costs associated with a project. The final section is the “Accounts” section. This is where you send invoices and estimates to a client and track there results. It has plenty of tools to see who has paid and what stage a project is at.

This application, which seems simple on the outside, has plenty of features. I am going to walk you through how you set up a project can calculate the cost. When you first start out you need to add a client, the clients information can either come from address book (if you have worked with them before you have used Billings) or from information you have entered yourself. Once as a client has been added you need to generate there project folder. As mentioned clients can have more than one project. When you enter a project you can enter some limited details such as start and end date, you can also link a folder to specific files.

Once the project folder has been set up you can now begin to add estimate and working slips. Estimate slips can be used to send to a client before you begin work, this is a good way to track how much a project a cost and who you have sent an estimate to. The accounts section tracks when you have sent invoices so you can keep on top of things.

After you have sent your estimate you can now begin to work. Within the “Working Slips” section you can add expenses which are either timed, flat, quantity, mileage or a general expense. All of these expenses are added to the project so you can keep track of exactly what you are doing. One very nifty feature is the ability to track a cost for the client for the amount of time worked. For example if you charge £20 an hour and you have worked for 5 hours 37 minutes this will show up on the cost sheet. This means you don’t over or under charge your client.

Once you have tracked every little cost you can now generate an invoice. Invoices, estimates and reports are all added to a template. You can pick a default template or make your own. This does make invoices look a lot smarter and allows you to look more professional. Invoices are calculated on all of the costs and work in taxes and any other expenses.

The final section is the accounts section. All invoices and estimates end up in this section. A client has a specific accounts section which tracks how much they have paid, how much is outstanding and any retainer applied to the account. This is a simple way of seeing how much someone owes for the work you have done. Any overdue payments are shown in red in the sidebar so you can see who’s payments are late.

There are more features to this application, such as generate reports for the amount earned over a certain period, however I want to wrap this review up. To conclude this application is very easy to use. After you have read the support manuals using the app is very simple. The estimates, working and reports section are very simple and provide you with a lot of information. The app also has a lot of small features to make your life a lot easier. If you own a business of any sorts, or are self employed it may be worth having a look at this app and see if it is right for you. It only costs $40, which I think is a bargin.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Billings – Professional Billing Application

Related posts:

1. Calories – Food Tracking Application
2. Witch – A Different Application Switcher
3. Timelog – Track How Long Your Work

At first I didn’t really know what to do with Berokyo. After running through the Wizard which picked my most used items and having a read through the quick start guide didn’t feel I could use the application. However, I persisted and after creating a couple of my own cabinets of files the application grew on me. Berokyo is designed as a quick start system. You make a cabinet of your most used applications (or other files) and you can then quickly access them at a touch of a button.

Each cabinet is kind of like having a stack, except its more versatile. From using the shortcut, you can quickly see what is in each cabinet. There is a search function to narrow down files if you have a larger cabinet. You can also use the slider in the bottom right to zoom in and out of the icons to get a better look at things.

Within each cabinet you can add categories to organise things more, these can be expanded and collapsed. The whole app is centred around organising your stuff and making sure you can get to it. Once as you use the app for a while it does become dead simple to use and is very useful. There is also plenty of customisation features allowing you to adjust the look and feel of the app.

There is a couple of problems I would like to address, first it runs from the menu bar, which is bad in itself but means it doesn’t have an option what you alt tab, this means switching back and forth between the app becomes very difficult. One problem with this app is its visual appeal. It doesn’t look very Mac like. some of the dialogue boxes look a bit rough and the general interface does need to be improved slightly. Having said that the core of the application works well.

Overall this application is useful. If you find you have files and folders every where but need a useful place to put them, Berokyo would do well. There is some problems but these would probably get improved in later issues. As always try it out and see what you think, it may be right up your street.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Berokyo – Desktop Organiser And Quick Launch

Related posts:

1. Desktop Curtain – Hide Your Desktop Icons
2. GeekTool – Geek Out Your Desktop
3. Fresh – Access Recent Files

Today I am going to review Stuf, a neat little clipboard manager that enables you to store more items on your clipboard, very useful if you do a lot of copy and pasting. There are hundreds of different clipboard managers out there, most of them are the same. Stuf, however, has one feature that sets it self apart, the ability to share your clipboard over a network. Interesting.

Collect Your Stuf

As mentioned in the blurb to this post, Stuf is a clipboard manager. Clipboard managers are designed to record more than one item to your clipboard, this enables you to generate a history of clipboard items which you can access later. Very useful if you are doing a lot of copying and pasting and want to review any items you may have copied to your clipboard. Stuf takes this concept and packages it a nice neat wrapper, making a well rounded application.

Stuf runs from the menu bar. Once as you set up a short cut for it to appear, there is a small window showing you you previously copied clipboard entries. The window shows your a preview of the text or image, from here it allows you to restore an item to the clipboard (so you can paste it into an application directly) or paste it from Stuf into your currently active application. Once as you get the hang of how the applications works, using the app is a doddle.

The menu bar option is basically a stripped down version of the app, it will store your latest clipboard entries in a list and allow you to select which ones you want to paste, very handy and and easy way to manage various items.

As mentioned Stuf also supports the ability to view other users clipboards over a local network. The app must be installed and running on both computers, although I haven’t tested this feature (I only have one Mac), it would be useful if you are working in an environment which called for you to quickly forward pieces of text or images to each other. There may be some security issues with using this type of feature, as well as this, apart from sending one or two items over the network I really don’t see why you couldn’t save what you wanted to send on a network storage device.

Overall this app works really well, the network clipboard is a nice feature although I wouldn’t see why you would want to use it. There are a couple of smaller features which I haven’t mentioned but would be useful to anyone who is thinking of using this app long term. As always try this app out and see what you think, as a clipboard manager it is great and works really well. It only costs €12.99 which is a great price.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Stuf – Share And Organise Your Clipboard

Related posts:

1. Clips – Get The Most Out Of Your Clipboard
2. URLWell – Temporary Store URL’s
3. Path Analyzer Pro – Traceroute Those Connections

I must first state that I may end up comparing the application to Photoshop since I have used that app for many years. However Photoshop is very expensive and very good at what it does. Pixelmator is a lot cheaper, however it is designed for the every day user. So if I end up saying it doesn’t do a feature very well, i’m just being padantic. Its like comparing a family car to an Aston Martin. To get the best feeling for this app, download it and try it out.

Pixelmator is an image manipulator. It is designed for you to take an image (or a blank canvas), and have the tools available to you to change it and convert it as you see fit. This means you have brushes and erasers to make basic manipulations, and more advance tools such as Levels and Curves to tweak and adjust the image. Pixelmator has all of these.

The app is designed around lots of small floating palettes. Each of these palettes is designed to feature as something specific. For example the layers is in one palette, the Swatches is in another palette. All of these palettes have the same basic feel and operation making it easy to understand what each bit does. As a result working with the program is dead simple. It takes a while to learn what each bit does, but you soon master the operations of the app.

You can use the app for a variety of different pictures and images. Although the image shown above is rather poor, if you actually dedicate some time to developing your image there is lots of tools to help you. For example you have the Levels Tool, Curves, Exposure, Hue & Saturation plus plenty of Filters such as Distortion, Blur, Sharpen, Stylize and Half Tone. There is more small features which help you work with your image.

One of the biggest features of this program is the way it works and interact with the user. For example if you click on a tool in the palette it will enlarge as your select it, there is lots of highlights and shadows to help you user the program. Take, for example, the palette on the right to control Hue and Saturation. Its probably one of the best designed palettes. The controls move smoothly as your rotate the sliders round and there is lots of options to control how the image looks from a couple of simple options. This type of features are present throughout the program.

Overall this app runs very smoothly. Its designed to run from your graphics card, so the bigger your graphics card, the faster it will run. I really like this app after using it for a while. The $59 price tag is great for practically anyone. If you are in to image manipulation, download this app and try it out.

The only downside to this app is the learning curve. Once as you get the hand of how to use it, its a lot easier to use. Getting used to how the palettes change and works takes a while but you soon pick it up.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Pixelmator – Show Your Artistic Side

Related posts:

1. Brush Pilot – Fast Easy Brush Viewer
2. Layers – Send Your Screen To Photoshop
3. Rulers – Measure You Screen

Come Here Boy

This app is all about keeping your pet’s information. Is designed to be used for a variety of pets. In the image below I am going to use the default data (I don’t have any expensive pets yet), however you can customise and change the settings as much as you want. When you first load the app you are presented with the screen shot below. The app is split up into a variety of sections, Overview, Contacts, Photos, Insurance, Veterinary, Medication and Expensive, as well as this there is also a Templates section.

The overview section of the app contains a lot of information. It allows you to set a photo of your dog (which can be dragged from Finder or iPhoto), gives you information on the age of your dog, the Chip ID and various physical features. The Up & Coming section of the overview window is based on the medication section and allows you to be reminded of when treatments need to take place.

The contacts section, as you may have guessed, allows you to add a variety of contacts. These could be yourself, your vets’, your insurance providers. Although you may not need to add your own contact details (which are pulled from Address Book), they are used within other parts of the app. This app build on quite a lot of details from other sections, so for full functionality its best to add as much information as possible.

The photos section, rather simple, is used to add pictures of your pet. This can be used for various post templates etc. You don’t need to add hundreds, although it usually a very good idea to add one for the default. The photos section has a variety of functions which allows you to adjust the image size and layouts, which is quite a nice feature.

Insurance is probably quite important feature to many pet owners. The insurance section is full of small little feature to numerous to name. This section allows you to add insurance policy, attach PDF’s add claims. It clear to see how much you are spending and receiving from your insurance provider.

Since this app is used to record what has happened to your pet, you can use it to log vet visits. The veterinary section is a running log. It is clearly labled with dates, costs, notes and any medication. Its useful to work out when your pet last went to see the vet.

I mentioned in the overview section about the Up & Coming section, in the medication you add what medication you have given, the dosage and the frequency of the dosage. Its a great way of being reminded of when you need to give your pet his next shot. This app also works with iCal to make sure you don’t forget which I think is a nice touch.

The final section, which you use frequently, is the expenses section. You will no doubt be away that pets cost money. The expenses section is designed to log all of the costs involved, which is very handy. The only think it doesn’t have which I would like to see in a future version, is the ability to auto add insurance costs each month. This feature doesn’t seem to be available.

On a day to day, week to week basis you will use the features mentioned above. There is one last section which is really useful, but you will find is not as used as much. This is the templates section. This is used to auto create templates of you details. This includes expenses, facts, history’s and up and coming medications. It can also be used for creating a missing poster. I mentioned you should put a of details into each section, simply because the templates will bring all of this information together.

This application is brilliant. It includes a lot of different features, one which I haven’t mentioned is the help that is run when you first start the app. It gives you lots of different bits of information and tells you how the app works. The help guide is very useful for jumping straight into the app. When I use this app I feel that the developers have added all of the little bits that you need. They clearly have thought of something (no matter how small) and added it in. As a result it is a brilliantly designed app.

If you have a pet, download this app and try it out. It may make your life a lot easier. It can support as many pets as you have, each one is saved in a .clarus file. Its priced at £15, which is the perfect price point.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Clarus – Keep Control Of Your Pets Info

Related posts:

1. Librarian Pro – Manage Your Library
2. Billings – Professional Billing Application
3. Stox – Track Those Stock Options

The Daily Grind

As mentioned this app runs from the menu, this doesn’t mean you should take it lightly. Its split into six main sections (and one section to address the app specifically). Each covers a different section of your application from system to user. Each section has a variety of different options which will do something to your system.

There is quite a lot of options, as a new user you may be overwhelmed with what you can do, to summarise:

• Batch Tasks: Is used to set up batch tasks within MainMenu, allows you to run the tasks automatically.
• System: Repair disk permissions, activate cron scripts, clear caches, remove logs and temporary files, and rebuild various databases.
• Network: Clear DNS settings
• User: Clean caches (again) and do various system level stuff such as hiding and showing invisible Finder options.
• Applications: Allows you to quick restart and force quit apps.
• Disk Utility: Repair and Eject volumes.

There are quite a lot of different tasks, each do a different options. A lot are actually very useful. The app can also be used to access extra features on your system such as showing hidden files or relaunching the menu bar or dock.

When actually carrying out a task, such as clearing a cache, you do have to close all you program and restart your computer, which is slightly annoying. It does do a good job and if you are experiencing major slow downs this app may solve them for you.

Overall this is a good buy, it does a variety of tasks which you can automate to take the load off yourself. I don’t recommend you use every option everyday as it may have a detrimental effect on your Mac, however as a weekly or monthly run it is really useful. It does cost £15, which isn’t that bad. I’m not sure of the licensing conditions but it may be a good buy if you have a couple of Mac’s in the house, or your personally use your Mac alot and it has a lot of clutter.

As with every app featured on this site, download it and try it out. It may be the right app for yourself.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

MainMenu – System Tasks From The Menu Bar

Related posts:

1. CleanMyMac – Spring Clean Your Mac
2. AppCleaner – Uninstall Those Apps For Free
3. AppZapper – Really Uninstall Any App

Cleaning Things Up

Using this app, like most Mac apps is dead simple. Once as the app has run and searched through your Services options you are given a simple check list. These check list options relate to the services options on the menu.

To remove a service option you simply uncheck the box. When you are done you hit save and the changes will take effect. Its that simple. You can at a later date add them back in if you miss them.

This application is dead simple and I recommend you try it out.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

ServiceScrubber – Clean Up Service’s Menu

Related posts:

1. CleanMyMac – Spring Clean Your Mac
2. Blogo – The Every Platform Blog Editor
3. Involer – Invoicing Made Easy

Displaying Files

As mentioned this app is really visual. If you are familiar with the Sci-Fi movies when circles and disks move to visually update the information (Star Trek comes to mind). This app follows the same sort of feel. When you begin, you select the folder or disk you want to visualize. The app will then run through your disk, or access one of the many system files which stores your disk contents, and begin to display your data. The gathering of data will take a couple of minutes depending on how big your disk is, if you have lots of small files this process will take a lot longer. When its done it will have a nice growl message telling you the application is ready to be used.

Once as the app has finished you will be presented with an image similar to the one below. You can now begin navigating your file system.

Each set of folders is colour coded depending on where it belongs. System folders are in red and pink, Applications are coloured blue, User folders are in green and Documents in yellow. The colours are decided depending on the main folders on your disk and will vary depending on whats on your disk. The area of each space will signify the size of the folder or area on your disk. In the image above I have a lot of documents for myself (as you would expect) and a lot less system files.

The length of the spurs relate to the depth of a file in terms of folders. For example the blue spur on the left at the very end is 15 folders deep. The app has found that there is a lot of files and reside is a large folder. These files are quite deep in my file system and is promptly shown it on the chart. Folders are coloured where as files are in grey. It takes a while to get use to using the app and you will probably figure it by using the app rather than reading this review.

Information about each files or folder is shown in the side bar on the right. It gives a list of files and there sizes, it also colour codes them so you can quickly see what type of files they are (system, documents etc). When you click on any of the areas (except files) it will zoom in and re-render the image with that folder and sub-folders contents. Here you can move around your Mac’s file system and view the size of each file and folder in relation to each other. You can click on any area to quickly move to it. You can use the file tree at the top of the screen to quickly move back to the beginning.

Moving through your files system is very animated, every time you click on a folder it will re-draw the folder contents, but animate the size of the folders as it draws them. For example if you click on a yellow folder in the disk, it will remove every other coloured folder and re-size the pie and remove the gap. Its really fun to watch and use, due to the way the program words you will get a different image every time you use the program making each time your run the app unique and different.

You can also use Quicklook to work with the app. For example if you hover over any folder or file and press space bar, Quicklook will run and show you the file or folder in question making the app slightly more practical to use. As well as this there is also a right click menu option which can open a folder in Finder, which is a great shortcut if you want to work on a file or folder directly.

Conclusion

Overall this app is brilliant to use. It really shows off the power of the Mac operating system and should be a gloating tool for anyone using a Windows machine. It is also really good to navigate and see the size of files and folders in questions. I’ve found that the big blue spur in the image above can be deleted as it is no longer needed. It is a joy to use and I love playing with it. I personally think something like this should come built into Finder.

The only problem with this app is its price. It costs $19.95 which I personally think is a bit to much. Like most program there is a novelty factor and don’t think you would use this app constantly. However if you have a lot of hard drives and want a cool visual way to see files and folders this app may be a consideration. As this very app on this site, download it and try it out. You may enjoy using it.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

DaisyDisk – Cool Data Visualization

Related posts:

1. GrandPerspective – View File Sizes
2. Espionage – Password Protect Mac Folders
3. Changes – Find Out The Differences In Files

Compressing Files

Springy is the sort of application that should be included with the operating system. It has a very simple interface, yet has hundreds of little features which make it a well rounded application. When you run the program you are asked to create an archive (you can turn this off if you don’t need it). As mentioned it has a large focus on making and extracting compressed files such as zip, rar etc. Once as you have chosen a location for your archive you can begin adding files to the archive. You can add files through the file window, or dragging them into the window. You are then given the option of how you want to compress the files, and the level. The higher the compressing the smaller the file size, but the slower the file will run. You can also just store files which is very useful when you want to send files over the Internet.

When you add files to the archive (you can add as many or as little as you want) they are automatically compressed. You build your archive as you go along. This give you a lot of power over how the archive is built. Plus if you forget anything or make a mistake, it is really easy to remove a file, you just delete it out of the archive.

Extracting Files

Extracting files is just as easy as adding them to the archive. You can either drag files out, use the button on the toolbar, or extract all of the files out (again using a button on the tool bar. This will extract the files to your chosen destination. Since this app is designed to add and remove files, you can also add files to an existing archive, which makes it very useful as you generate files that need archiving.

Other Features

Everything is done through the single window show in the screen shot above. This make learning and understanding the application very simple. I picked up how to use this app in a couple of seconds. Other than the adding and extracting of individual files there is also a whole load of other options. As you can see there is the an image being rendered in the screen shot above, this also extends to being given more information when in column view, very similar to Finder.

You also get a search feature, which is useful for large archives. There is also a right click contextual menu, which I didn’t test but provides a shortcut for using the application. You can also add encryption (not sure of the length of the security keys but it will probably be strong), splitting of files into multiple archives of specific sizes. There is also the ability to edit files while it is in the archive, which could be very useful if you have just realised you have cocked something up before sending it some one.

Overall this is a brill app. There is a great deal of control on how you use your archives. It is not a simple matter of adding files and having to re-do it every time you go wrong. You can now control indiviual files and folders while you use your archive. Its a lot better than using the disk utility built into Mac OS X.

The only problem with this app is that doesn’t look very nice. The website has a beautiful design and I was expecting an application to match, however i’m just being picky. It also doesn’t have rar support when making archives, which is slightly annoying, it does have support for extracting files however.

I recommend you download and try this app out, it is really good and useful. It cost $19.95 which is a reasonable price for what you do get, but you would need to make and use a lot of archives to full justify the cost.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Springy – A Better File Compressor

Related posts:

1. GrandPerspective – View File Sizes
2. iFlicks – Your Videos To iTunes
3. Fresh – Access Recent Files