Mike Vardy - page 18

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — One of the highlights on the agenda on the second day of this year’s expo is the appearance of Rob Corddry (The Daily Show, Childrens Hospital) for a live recording of the popular Mac Power Users podcast. Both he and Merlin Mann of 43Folders fame were in fine form during the 45 minute session led by podcast hosts David Sparks and Katie Floyd.

The theme of the episode revolved around Corddry’s workflow, including the tools he uses to get his work done and some of the strategies he employs to keep on top of his myriad projects.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — One of the closing events from the first day at Macworld / iWorld was the RapidFire session. If you wanted to learn about one cool thing about a variety of Apple-related stuff, it was the place to be.

Each presenter delivered a quick-paced talk that offered information, tips and tricks that shed some light on a little known or understood piece of software or hardware. The scope of the talks ranged from unconventional uses of Photo Booth to how to fix some of your Apple devices on your own, but here were the ones that I felt were the best of the bunch.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — The Neat Company has long been known for its scanning devices, like NeatReceipts and NeatDesk. Those devices let you take your paper receipts, documents and business cards and scan them into your Mac so that you can organize them in a way that makes sense to you.

But here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, The Neat Company is focusing on their latest venture: conquering the digital realm. The thrust of what they are presenting here is all about the cloud. NeatCloud and NeatMobile, to be specific.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — It’s one thing to have your favourite photos sitting on your iPhone or iPad, giving you the chance to show off your kids or places you’ve been with others quickly and easily. Snaptotes is taking that one step further — by letting you put them on the cases and bags that you keep your devices in.

Snaptotes has a small booth at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but they made an instant impression with me when I saw the photos of kids making up part of their display. I’m on the road and I miss my kids, so I decided to check out what they had to offer.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — As you walk the exhibit floor here at Moscone West, there are the much larger booths that make up the bulk of what you’ll see. But there are also some of the smaller booths — known as “pods” — that a lot of the mobile apps are housed in. There’s plenty of iOS apps being featured in this area of the hall, and plenty to discover.

One of my favourite apps I’ve found here is called — oddly enough — FavorIt, an app that lets you and your friends share what their favourite apps are with one another.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWorld 2012 — At the media preview last night at Macworld/iWorld, VIPOrbit Software had a ton of news to offer.

First, they unveiled a new version of VIPOrbit for the iPhone. The latest version has new features requested by its users, an improved user interface and an enhanced Dashboard.

Then they debuted VIPOrbit for iPad, bringing signature features from the initial iPhone app to iPad users.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — There are no shortage of iPhone cases being showcased here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but only one grabbed my attention at last night’s media preview. It was a case called Flygrip, and it promises to keep your iPhone in hand so you can do other things without worrying about dropping your valuable device.

Macworld/iWorld marks the launch of FlyGrip, and I was given a unit to test out.

As a bit of a productivity nerd, it was great to see a couple of apps that revolve around that niche having a presence at the Macworld/iWorld media preview. One of these apps was Pocket Informant, which looks both elegant and compelling. And its available for both the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. For those looking to get a little bit more productive and want a pleasurable-looking experience while doing so, this might just be the app for you.

Pocket Informant fully integrates your calendar, tasks, notes and contacts into one spot, which allows you to focus on everything you’ve got going on in a day. This is a bit of a departure from other productivity-type apps in that they tend to put the emphasis on your tasks and let everything else fade into the background. Pocket Informant keeps everything close at hand and visible so that you don’t miss out on somewhere you’ve got go, someone you need to get in touch with or something you have to do.

This year’s edition of Macworld, taking place January 26-28, is shaping up to be a bit of a departure from Macworlds of the past. 2012 is a year of evolution for the event, now branded as Macworld/iWorld.

And that evolution begins tonight with a blast.

One of the apps available in The Fall 2011 Mac SuperBundle offered on the Cult of Mac Deals page is Camtasia by TechSmith ($149 regularly/$99 introductory pricing, in the Mac App Store. Camtasia is a screen recording application for the Mac that has generated a lot of buzz over the years on the Windows platform, and has started to make some noise on the Mac front as well.

Camtasia is laden with features like simultaneous webcam and screen recording, contains a wide selection of effects and filters, and offers online video tutorials to help you through the process of putting together a great screencast. If you’ve ever wanted to put together a screencast, Camtasia is an incredibly simple — and yet powerful — tool to get the job done. But it’s not without its flaws.

Every new Mac comes with iPhoto, which is getting better all the time. Still, it doesn’t have all of the features that are made for folks who are really into manipulating their photgraphs. Adobe’s Photoshop is often too much for the budding shooter (and cost prohibitive to boot), and image editors like Acorn – while simple to use and well-priced – don’t necessarily have the “feel” of iPhoto that many Mac users are used to.

This is where FX Photo Studio Pro by MacPhun ($40 in the Mac App Store) comes in.