Tag Archives: App

Free Video Converter Embeds Subtitles In Videos, Converts To MP4 [Mac]

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Video converters are as common as they get for pretty much any platform. Even if you don’t have the perfect desktop video converter, there are plenty of web apps that let you convert video formats and you can use them without having to worry about platform compatibility. What’s harder to find is an app that will let you add subtitles to your videos. Free Video Converter is, as its name implies, a free Mac app that does precisely that. Not only does this utility batch convert videos from various formats to MP4 (including FLV to MP4), it also embeds the specified subtitle file within the converted output, so you can play it wherever you want, however you want. Converting and adding subtitles can be done in bulk, that is, you can convert multiple media files at once. The only downside to this otherwise-reasonable app is that it's ad-supported. Read More

Reddit Notifier: Menu Bar Notifications & Audio Alerts For New Reddit Messages [Mac]

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When it comes to web portals, Reddit is an amazing one; it may waste a lot of your time, but you will still end up learning a ton of new things in the process. While the site is one of the many reasons people all over the world don’t manage to get to sleep as early as planned, it is also a great place for raising awareness about important events. If you obsessively read everything on Reddit, and are more than the average lurker, Reddit Notifier is a Mac app (worth $1.99 in the Mac App Store) that you may find useful. It gives you notifications in the Menu Bar and sounds audio alerts when you receive a new message on Reddit. The alerts are customizable, so you can set them to sound once, continuously or not at all. Read More

[Giveaway] Video Flow: Create Screencasts, Split/Merge & Annotate Them [Mac]

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If you’re in the market for an amazing screen casting tool, look no further than Video Flow for Mac OS X. The app is a video creation and editing tool, which allows you to create screencasts, annotate them with text, and add videos or audio files to your screencast, or simply annotate existing videos that you may have downloaded or recorded yourself. The app lets you split videos, and also supports video-in-video frame sets (whereby you can start a video within the current one),  truly setting itself apart from its peers. It allows you to resize your screencasts to the right size for viewing on an iPod, iPhone, iPad or YouTube. Additionally, when saving your file, you can choose the frame rate it should be saved with. The available range is from 10 to 45 fps. The only downside is the rather hefty price tag, which stands currently at $50, but you can skip that if you're lucky enough to win a license in our giveaway. Read More

FileDesk LITE: Tabbed File Browser With Command+X Cut Support [Mac]

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Mac’s default file browser, the Finder, isn’t one of the things you hear users complain about. It works reasonably well and for the few things that are missing, you can always enable them via a few simple Terminal commands or apps. For some, the Finder may not be a matter of too few features, but rather too many of them that you might not use or need. FileDesk LITE is a simple file browser for Mac that lets you browse files in tabs. The app mimics how you would use a web browser and has a ‘up one level’ button that lets you return to the previous or parent folder. Additionally, the app has Command+X support for files (cut functionality), which is missing in Finder. The app doesn’t support complex features; labels and shortcuts (aliases) are supported but the app is interface focused and is meant for someone with simpler needs. The app runs in a single window and tabs allow you to view different folders separately. Read More

Time Sink: Record & Generate Reports For Usage Time Of Mac Apps

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As much as you may convince yourself that you’re a productive, well focused and difficult to distract person when it comes down to work, the fact is that the internet is ruled by kittens and you just can’t get enough of them. For many people, especially those who work remotely, the temptation to check your Facebook feed or read an interesting article is sometimes too much to overcome, often leaving them wondering where the time went. Time Sink is an excellent Mac app, worth $4.99 in the Mac App Store, that tells you just how you’ve been spending your time. Not only does the app have an excellent interface, but is feature rich, allowing you to create ‘app pools’ to measure the time spent on a particular task which may involve using more than a single app. It additionally gives you the option to run either as an application window, or from the Menu Bar. At the same time, it supports an activity monitor in its Dock icon, which pretty much means you can’t escape the fact that you’re wasting precious time. Read More

FileWard DES: Encrypt/Decrypt & Create Checksum For Files, Folders & Clipboard Content [Mac]

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Encrypting files or folders on Mac isn’t as easy as you would expect. If you often encrypt folders to ensure your data is always safe should it fall into the wrong hands, and remains inaccessible for as long as possible, then FileWard DES is a free Mac app that might be extremely useful for you. The app has an excellent, yet simple interface that supports drag & drop. It allows you to encrypt and decrypt files and folders, uses the OS X password assistant to suggest passwords, and also lets you generate checksum values for files and folders. Additionally, the app lets you securely delete files, so that they are not recoverable. Read More

TXTcrypt: Encrypt Private Text Messages Before Sending Them [Mac]

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If you enjoyed making up your own language as a kid and using it in front of your parents to make them think you were up to something, and for some reason, haven’t outgrown this fascination, it might appeal to you to code the messages you send. Whether this, or because your life’s circumstances are such that you would like to add an extra layer of security to your communication. TXTcrypt is a free Mac app that lets you do just that. It can both encrypt and decrypt text. The encryption requires a passkey, which may be up to 8 characters long. The app does not encrypt on the AES standard; instead, it uses the RC4 standard, which, while not as secure as AES, nevertheless provides a reasonable level of protection. Read More

Scrapbook: Clipboard Manager That Remembers Copied Items Even After System Restart [Mac]

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We’ve covered quite a few clipboard managers in the past, each with its own special feature to set it apart from the rest. Scrapbook is yet another free clipboard manager for Mac that lets you copy and paste text, files and folders from your Mac and text from apps, for pasting anywhere. The app uses Bonjour to connect and send snippets to other Macs on the same network. What’s particularly unique about this app is that, unlike other clipboard managers that are erased when you restart your system, Scrapbook remembers the items you copied. Additionally, the app allows you to categorize your clipped items into folders, which makes it an effective way of keeping links and text organized for future reference. Read More

Liquid Words: Search, Reference & Translate Text Selected From Within Any App [Mac]

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The right-click context menu in Mac is a fairly sophisticated one. It allows you to search the web for text selected from within any app. This simple little feature makes it easy for us to look up the background story of something, or just search for the meaning of a word. Worth $0.99 in the Mac App Store, Liquid Words is a handy Mac app that not only allows you to search text, selected from within any app, in Google, Google Images, Google Maps, YouTube, Flickr, Amazon and LinkedIn, but also lets you convert currency, temperature, area, speed, distance, volume, weight and data, reference items from Wikipedia, Wordnik, Wolfram Alpha, Google Definition, IMDB and Etymonline in the same manner. That's not all; it even allows you to translate selected text from any language to another. Read More

CornerClick: Assign Any App, File Or Action To Mac Hot Corners

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The default Hot Corners in OS X Lion allow you to start the screensaver, disable it, launch Mission Control, View Application Windows, Desktop, Launchpad or put your system to sleep. Barring the screensaver, you can perform these functions via gestures as well (provided you have a Trackpad). What would have been more useful is to be able to launch any app using one of these Hot Corners. CornerClick is a free Mac app that lets you do just that. You can pick any one of the four Hot Corners, and associate it with a file, an app or multiple apps. When you drag your mouse to the specified corner and click it, the apps or files you’ve associated with it are launched. Read More

InsomniaX: Disable Sleep On Idle Or Lid Close While On Battery Or AC [Mac]

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MacBooks, like all other laptops, go to sleep when their lids are closed. The benefits of this simple function are multiple; you can close the lid and leave your MacBook with the assurance that it will be locked, and should you have forgotten to power it off, the power consumption will be minimized. That, nevertheless, doesn’t mean you always want the lid to trigger this function. Windows allows you to disable this function completely, but Mac, unfortunately, does not. InsomniaX is a free Mac app that not only lets you disable Mac’s idle sleep function, but also lets you stop your MacBook from entering sleep mode when you close the lid. The app lets you define these settings based on the power source, i.e., if the MacBook is running on battery, you may choose to allow it to enter sleep mode when the lid closes or the system is idle, and disable this behavior when it is plugged in. Read More

Metanota: View, Create & Sync Notes From Your SimpleNote Account [Mac]

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If you’re an avid SimpleNote user, you might be a little disappointed with the fact that its Mac app is still under wraps. As far as Apple's ecosystem goes, you can only check notes on your iPad or iPhone. If you’re not good at waiting, and do not like to use the service’s web interface, you can download one of the many third party apps available for SimpleNote. Metanota is one such app; it is a free SimpleNote client for Mac that regularly checks for updates, syncs notes you’ve created on your iOS device to your desktop, and lets you view or edit them. The app supports a search feature and lets you create folders to keep your notes organized. The free version of Metanota is ad-supported, but that can be changed by upgrading to the full version (paid). The ad itself, however, is unobtrusive, and if you feel it doesn’t bother you much, you can continue using it without the upgrade. Read More

Ambientweet Is An Intuituve, Hotkey-Controlled Twitter Client For Mac

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Not all Twitter users are the same, and similarly, not all Twitter clients are made to work the same way. For the Twitter users who tweet very often and are as glued to their timeline, clients like Tweetdeck might be the right choice. However, those users who don’t treat their Twitter feed like holy scriptures, but like to keep up with the news just the same, minimalistic ones are better. Ambientweet is one such minimalistic Twitter client for Mac that works almost entirely with keyboard shortcuts. It displays one tweet at a time as a notification on your desktop, and cycles through the ones you’ve received. There are buttons for quickly retweeting, replying, favoriting or posting a tweet, but for going through a particular user’s tweets or scrolling through the ones in your feed, you will have to use keyboard shortcuts. Read More

ShowOrHide: View Hidden Files Without Using Terminal Command [Mac]

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We’ve covered quite a few tips in the past that required access to hidden files on your Mac. Additionally, hidden files aren’t just used for tweaking; every app you install creates a folder on your hard drive, which is saved in the Library folder, hidden by default. While you should just hope that no app requires you to ever go digging after these files, viewing hidden files on Mac isn’t a big deal, and can easily be done via a Terminal command. However, for those that don’t want to go there, there is ShowOrHide - a free Mac app that does nothing more that toggling the visibility of your hidden files. Read More

SyncDifferent Lets You Sync Files Between As Many Folders As You Want [Mac]

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Just yesterday, we shared a tip on how to sync a folder between two Macs using a cloud service, Dropbox. The same method is applicable for syncing any number of folders on the same system as well, but if you prefer an app that does this for you, then SyncDifferent is what you need. We’ve covered apps similar to this one before, but most of them were restricted to syncing only two folders. With SyncDifferent, however, you can sync files between as many folders as you want. The app lets you sync data from the source to the destination folder and vice-versa, and similarly, lets you sync any new files that are added to either one of the folders. Read More

MagicPrefs: Modify What Apple Magic Mouse & Trackpad Gestures Do [Mac]

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Apple’s Magic Trackpad is possibly one of the most impressive track pads out there and definitely one you’d want to use with a Mac mini or iMac. What’s most impressive about the Magic Trackpad is that combines a trackpad and mouse into one and you can’t really want more than that. While the hardware is definitely amazing, there are few tings you can do with it using the mouse preferences in OS X and that logically calls for the need of better preferences in the form of MagicPrefs. MagicPrefs: is an app that modifies what you can do with whichever type of Mouse you’ve connected to your system. It changes the default mouse options in System Preferences and lets you remap which functions are performed when you tap, swipe or click the mouse. The app additionally allows you to view the battery status of your mouse and gives you on-screen notifications when turn Caps On or Off. Read More

Chaperone: Track Time Spent On Tasks & The Apps Used To Do Them [Mac]

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Getting things done on a computer is tricky business; your productive apps sit right next to the ones that make you unproductive, and occasionally, the one app you need to use to get work done is the very same app that distracts you, i.e., your browser. This is precisely why you need task managers - to stay organized, and to force yourself to work when you really don’t want to. Chaperone is a free Mac app that lets you record tasks by projects, and define which apps you need to complete a given task. Once started, the app monitors your usage of the app(s) and tells you when the allotted task time is over. To help you in being more productive, Chaperone lets you set the task time at the beginning, but doesn't allow you to modify it afterwards. Read More

Bluetooth Screen Lock Automatically Locks Your Mac When A BT Device Moves Out Of Range

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Security may be equally important for everyone, but not everyone treats it as seriously as they should. While some people just don’t believe they have anything to a hide or no reason for anyone wanting to gain access to their personal files, it is no excuse to not protect your important data. For those that aren’t jumping at the latest military range defense and security systems, but would like to enable some level of security, the first place you can start is your Mac. There are people who are in the compulsive habit of locking their screens even if they bend down to tie a shoe lace while others are often forgetful of doing this simple little task to secure their systems. Bluetooth Screen Lock is a Mac app worth $0.99 that relieves you of the responsibility to lock your screen. The app lets you associate any Bluetooth enabled device with your Mac and when the device is no longer in range, it locks your screen. Read More

Launch Any App Or Script By Moving Mouse Over Left Edge Of Screen [Mac]

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The Launchpad utility itself is widely used to group apps, keep them organized and, of course, launch them easily. The only problem with it is that it can quickly get cluttered. Whenever you install an application, a shortcut to the app is added to Launchpad, and these shortcuts need to be moved around to keep things organized. Third party app launchers focus on trying to make it easier to launch your frequently used applications and system utilities. AmbiLauncher Lite is a free Mac app that adds a color spectrum along the left side of the screen. For each corresponding color, you can associate an app or script. When you move your mouse to and back over a color in a boomerang movement of sorts, it launches whichever app or script is associated with that color. Read More

AppDetective Notifies You Whenever An App Of Your Choice Arrives In The WP7 Marketplace

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You can argue that Windows Phone 7 has got the best interface among all the smartphone platforms, but there is no denying the fact that the number of apps available in the Marketplace is nothing compared to the apps in Google's Play Store and iTunes App Store. We haven’t even got Instagram on the Mango platform, and Skype has been launched only recently. However, all that doesn’t mean that there is no development going on for WP7, as there are many apps that are to be released in the Marketplace in the near future. So, how will you come to know when Photosynth or Temple Run becomes available for WP7? You can keep searching the Marketplace each day, or you can use the much easier method of employing AppDetective to your service. With this handy little app, you have to specify your likes and wishlist just once, and it will notify you as soon as the official app, or even its third-party client, is launched in the Marketplace. Read More