Mike Vardy - page 3

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

There are numerous productivity apps out there – no matter what platform you’re using (except perhaps Windows, but that’s another story). Many of them are simple to do list applications. These apps don’t dive in too deep into what David Allen calls the “Horizons of Focus” but tend to focus on the immediate future. That’s all well and good for the things you need (or want) to do now, but it’s not so good for those things down the line that you need (or, again, want) to accomplish. And when you’re a student going back to school you need to be able to look right in front of you and further down the road – and do so in an efficient and effective manner.

That’s where an app like Todoist shines. And right now as part of Cult of Mac Deals’ Back To School Week, you can get 1 year of Todoist Premium for only $13.99.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

One of the things I do when I’m writing is play music in hte background. I just can’t work in silence.

Lately I’ve been using a cool online service called focus@will that plays a variety of types of music that can serve to enhance productivity and focus. But I don’t use my Mac’s internal speakers when I use the service. Instead, I use external speakers. That way I can get much better sound out of the experience — and Cult of Mac Deals has a deal on the Soundfreaq Sound Step Recharge that will help you have a great-sounding experience during work and play.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

Macs are becoming more and more popular for students, and they’ve dropped in price at the same time. Sure, they’re not as inexpensive as many Windows machines, but the cost of a Mac now is a far cry from what it used be only a few years ago. So when students decide on picking up a Mac for their studies, they’re getting a quality piece of machinery that can do a lot of important things.

But the most important thing a student needs to do on their Mac isn’t the most obvious. That’s because that thing is backing up your Mac regularly — something that SOS Online Backup does.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

The tools you can find today to take your school projects to the next level are simply astounding. You can do a lot with the innovations that have come along in design, as things like Haiku Deck and Prezi are replacing things like PowerPoint and those seemingly ancient slide projectors.

They’ve also reached a price where they aren’t only affordable for most, but even for those living on a student’s budget can add some impressive tools to their arsenal at a fraction of what it used to cost. And Cult of Mac Deals has gone so far as to assemble a bundle where you can get a ton of design assets – and name your own price in the process – with The Name Your Own Price Back To School Designer Bundle.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

Games are a great escape. The more involved they are, the bigger the escape — which is just what a student needs every once in a while. The Mac has only become a mainstream platform for games in recent years, and the type of games that tend to be best served on OS X are simulation-style games. That’s why I game more on the Mac than in the past.

Cult of Mac Deals hasn’t shied away from offering games in recent deals (including a “name your own price” bundle), and another bundle is about to make its mark: The Total War Bundle.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

The last thing you want when you get back to school is to wade through tons of digital clutter. Not only does it slow you down, but it can slow your Mac down if you’ve maxed out its internal drive with music, photos, and documents.

So before you hit the books again, breathe some new life into your Mac by cleaning out your Mac and claiming back some of that much-needed space on your drive. Here are some of the areas you should focus just a little bit of time on so that you can return to school with a cleaner, more organized Mac.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

With the start of school quickly approaching for many (and even quicker for some), the time to stock up on supplies is well underway. One of the key things any student needs is a backpack

When you’re looking for one of these it is no longer enough to find one that will carry enough books. Today’s backpack needs to be a bit more diverse considering that digital devices have become firmly entrenched in our lives.

So when looking for a backpack, here are 3 things to consider:

There are a couple of offers going on at Cult of Mac Deals right now that you might want to check out as your weekend comes to a close.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” – Proverb

I’m looking forward to school starting up again. But I’m coming from a different perspective. You see, I’ve got school-aged kids and while I’ve enjoyed the time we’ve had together this summer, it’s safe to say that all of us are ready for some time away from each other. School does that…and a lot more.

The weather also won’t be cooperating with us as much as summer ends, meaning that more time inside is bound to happen. That means more time to focus on school work and less time to be distracted by the great outdoors. But just because summer is over doesn’t mean playtime has to be – which is where The Back To School Gamer Bundle comes in. In this Cult of Mac Deals offer, you’ll get 2 games at a price you name and if you pay more than the average price you’ll get an additional 4 games as well!

As a longtime iPhone user, I’ve gone through my share of cases. There are a ton of great ones out there (including the FLAK case, currently available at a discount through Cult of Mac Deals), some of which work better in certain situations than others. That’s why I’ve always had a variety of them around – and it’s something I’d suggest more iPhone users do.

There are several reasons to keep a few iPhone cases handy, but the main reason I keep a selection of them around is simple: versatility.

Remember Corel? They were the company behind CorelDRAW, which was arguably the most popular vector graphics editor software of its time. The company hasn’t exactly gone away over the years, but they’ve been less inclined to throw their name on products. Corel has acquired a slew of companies (including Roxio and Pinnacle), but I’ve rarely seen the name “Corel” on many products since the days of CorelDRAW.

AfterShot Pro changed that — and it can change how you deal with photos on your Mac. And AfterShot Pro is just $39.99 for limited time through Cult of Mac Deals.

If you’ve already got Parallels Desktop for Mac – version 6 or 7 – then The Parallels Upgrade Mini Bundle from Cult of Mac Deals is going to get you that much-needed upgrade – along with an app that will clean up your Mac in the process.

There’s been a lot written about Steve Jobs here and elsewhere – but if you want to get even deeper insights into the man and his legacy, then Cult of Mac Deals has assembled a video bundle that will help you do just that.

Populous. The Sims. Minecraft. There’s something about simulation games that I’ve always enjoyed. There are other ones that I’m too fond of (honestly, I find World of Warcraft almost too time-consuming for it to be enjoyable), and others that I will spend hours playing knowing there is a definite end point. Examples of ones I really enjoy would be the Fable series and Star Wars simulation-style games mainly because depending on the choices I make – being good or evil – can really affect the outcome.

Sim City was another I played for hours growing up, and there were several others which caught my attention from time to time that followed a similar theme. The “Tycoon” series of games were personal favorites, and this Cult of Mac Deals offer features one of those games – Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Platinum – for only $4.99!

Smartphone technology gives us a whole lot to have at our fingertips in terms of innovation. Things like being able to scan things using the phone’s camera (which Prizmo 2 takes advantage of) and being able to use it as an all-in-one inbox with an app like Drafts demonstrate how more productive our iPhones can help us be.

But this particular Kickstarter success story has me very intrigued.

It’s called Hone, and it uses your iPhone (along with other iOS devices) and allows you to locate valuables that you may have misplaced.

Gone are the days when you absolutely needed a scanner to deal with document scanning. With the emergence of smartphones, we’ve seen a ton of new applications hit the market that allow you to do things that were unheard of before. Scanning documents is one of those things – and Prizmo 2 is just one of the apps that gives you that ability.

If you don’t have an app that handles scanning right from your phone, then now would be the time to take advantage of the pricing at Cult of Mac Deals. Because Prizmo 2 is only $24.99 during this limited time offer.

I may not be a designer, but I know what I like. And even with my lack of craftsmanship in design, I do have a sense of realizing when a color is just a bit, well… a little off. But what I don’t know how to do (at least with ease) is how to fix that “offness” when I really need to.

So I don’t fix it at all.

Only when people who have more design sense than I do tell me that the color that I thought was “a little off” is actually very off do I feel bad about my decision to just let it be. That’s when this app—currently on sale through Cult of Mac Deals—probably could have come in handy.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 is touted as “the professional color-matching application for your Mac” and Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $29 for a limited time.

If you’re a hobbyist who wants to get really creative with your animation or are a budding animator who wants to make waves with your work online, then this award-winning piece of software might give you the upper hand in either case. And by “award-winning,” I mean that this app won Macworld/iWorld 2013 Best of Show. Having spent time on the exhibit floor at Moscone during that event, I saw a ton of great apps so (while I haven’t tested this app out) winning that award gives it some serious credibility.

CrazyTalk 7 Pro is the app I’m referring to–and Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $99 for a very limited time.

Now that the iPad has a full-blown camera built in, more and more people are taking pictures with it. Even my old, original iPad has photos I’ve synced to it so that I can display photos in a larger format when I feel the need. But I rarely use the iPad’s Picture Frame mode because, well, considering the way I store the iPad it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But when I saw The Koala Wall Mount from Dockem–the latest deal at Cult of Mac Deals–I saw a whole new way to make use of the iPad’s Picture Frame mode that makes a whole lot of sense. And looks good in the process.

I remember trying to wrap my head around the Adobe suite a few years ago, and at first I used trial and error to make things happen. Needless to say, things didn’t happen. Then I picked up several books on the software suite, but they only provided some marginal help… at best.

I’ve given up on learning Adobe’s stuff (mainly because I don’t believe I can give learning it the attention it deserves), but if you’ve been wanting to get a solid grasp on Adobe’s new Creative Cloud then there’s no time like the present. Cult of Mac Deals is offering a video course—called The Adobe Authorized Creative Cloud Bundle—for only $79 that will help you get a leg up on this powerful software suite.

I’m always looking for ways to get things done more efficiently and—better still—effectively. After all, those two elements combined are the true keys to improved personal productivity. And while I’m not a coder, I am well aware that the term “lifehack” has its roots based in the realm of coding. The term essentially originally meant “a more general solution related computer problems that occur in a programmer’s everyday life” but now it means a lot more.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t still apply to the realm in which it was born.

There’s a key difference between paper clutter and digital clutter: you can actually see paper clutter. Digital clutter can clog up your Mac in various places, and sorting your files into folders will only help you to a point. There are tons of other little files that can keep your Mac running at less than optimum levels.

In the film The Nines, Ryan Reynolds’ writer character uses gaming as a means to get away from the rigors of writing…and I do the same.

One thing that has always fascinated me about gaming isn’t so much the playing of games, but the creation of games. But I’m a storyteller and not a coder, so I’ve left my ideas for stories that could be built into a game environment either unwritten or put to page or screen to read instead.

The big upgrades you can add to your devices aren’t always going to be the ones that can make the biggest difference in how much you get out of them. It’s often the little innovations that can really change the way you use them. One example would be the much-talked about Tile, which goes beyond the iDevices we have and will serve to help us keep tabs on a slew of our personal belongings.

When focusing on little innovations for iDevices, Cablekeeps are a great example of an add-on you can use with your iPhone iPod, or iPad that does something small that can mean a lot more – like getting cable clutter out of your way. Cablekeeps allow you to wrap up the excess cord onto your Apple power adapter so that the unsightly extra length of cord gets wrapped up quickly and neatly for those moments when you want to grab and go everything you’ll need to charge those iDevices of yours. As a frequent traveler, this little innovation can be a big help in keeping the cable clutter down and ensuring you’ve got everything you need to keep powered when you take your iPhone on the road. If you want to get one of these – available in orange, light blue, or green – Cult of Mac Deals has them going for only $12.99 right now.

I’ve got plenty of headphones lying around the house — and I mean a lot.

I’ve got some in-ear style ones, earbud style ones (which generally came from a variety of iDevices), and a couple of pairs — “over ear” headphones — that cover my ears completely. The thing about headphones is that each type is suited for certain activities better than others, which means that having several pairs available isn’t a bad thing at all…especially if you’re into being productive like me and want to have as little friction as possible going from task to task (or, in this case, from audio-related task to audio-related task).

The in-ear and earbud style headphones are my “daily drivers”. They’re the ones I use for everyday activity, mainly because they take up very little space in any sort of carrying bag I’ve got and they just seem so…disposable. But I’ll use the earbuds more often for exercising (running, for example) than the in-ear ones because they are less likely to fall out while I’m being active. My earbuds and in-ear headphones can be found in various spots throughout the house, that way they can be grabbed quickly – no matter what I plan to use them for.