Marco Tabini is based in Toronto, Canada, where he focuses on software development for mobile devices and for the Web. More by Marco Tabini
It’s tough to beat old-fashioned arts and crafts: There’s something magical about being able to make something out of nothing more than paper, paste, and scissors. Except for the ensuing cleanup—seemingly endless and somehow futile—they’re still among the best activities for kids of all ages.
Still, these days kids sometimes want to set aside old-fashioned tools and explore their creativity using the family Mac. The results are often amazing and satisfying—and much easier to clean up.
Enter Aquafadas's $25 KidsMotion (Mac App Store link), an OS X app that helps kids use their photos, videos, and music to create high-quality slideshows with minimal effort. KidsMotion takes many cues from its more-advanced cousin, PulpMotion, but features a simpler interface that’s designed to minimize the frustration that goes into building a complex slideshow.
Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
Longtime readers of the Mac Gems column know that I’m a keyboard person. With few exceptions, I prefer to keep my fingers on the keyboard and off my mouse, trackpad, or trackball—sticking to the keyboard is better ergonomically, and it’s often faster, as well.
But there’s one app where it’s been difficult for me to go keyboard-only: my Web browser. There’s no easy—or fast—way to use the keyboard to navigate websites, open links, and the like. OS X includes some special accessibility features that let you use the keyboard for these tasks, but those features were designed with accessibility, not productivity, in mind.
So I was happy to discover Vimari, an extension for Safari, based on the nifty Vimium extension for Chrome, that lets you open links and more using the keyboard. (Vimari is much more limited than Vimium, focusing on links; Vimium provides a slew of additional navigation shortcuts.)
Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
We’ve all experienced the embarrassment of sending someone an email referencing an attached file or document, only to receive a reply that, despite our claims, nothing was attached. It’s a frequent-enough problem that a few years back, Google added a feature to Gmail that would alert you if you forgot to attach a file referenced in your message.
ForgetMeNot alerts you if you've forgotten to attach files.
Though OS X’s Mail app doesn’t include this convenient feature, ChungwaSoft’s $6 ForgetMeNot is a nifty mail plug-in that seamlessly adds it. Install ForgetMeNot, and whenever you attempt to send a message using Mail, the plug-in first scans the text of that email for specific words indicating that you meant to include an attachment. If ForgetMeNot detects one of those words and the message indeed includes an attachment, the message goes through; if the message is missing attachments, you see an alert. You can then choose to cancel sending, add the attachment, or send sans attachment.
Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
I know more than a few people who connect an older Mac to their TV, using various audio and video cables, to play videos. Most of these people would love to instead stream those videos wirelessly to an Apple TV, but their Macs aren’t new enough to support Apple’s AirPlay technology and the AirPlay mirroring feature of Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8). Sometimes they stream video using iTunes, but they also have video files in formats iTunes doesn’t support.
Unless Apple works some unexpected magic with OS X, older Macs will never get official AirPlay-mirroring capabilities. And I don’t expect iTunes to start supporting more video formats any time soon. But thanks to the $15 Beamer, AirPlay streaming is still possible. This simple app lets you stream videos from older (and newer) Macs to a 2nd- or 3rd-generation Apple TV. Specifically, Beamer works with 64-bit Intel Macs (any model from 2007 or later, along with some 2006 Macs) running OS X 10.6 or later.
Launch Beamer, and its window shows all compatible Apple TVs on your local network. Choose one, and Beamer instructs you to drop a movie file into the Beamer window; a few seconds later, the movie starts playing on the chosen Apple TV. (One feature I’d like to see is queued playback, so I could drop a group of videos onto Beamer and have them play back in order.)
Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
For Macworld editors, the end of the calendar year means more than just holiday vacations and the passing of yet another end-of-the-world prediction. It’s also the season of awards. Over the past couple weeks, we’ve given you our 2012 Editors’ Choice Awards for the best Mac products of the year and our 2012 App Gems Awards for the best iOS apps of the year. Here at Mac Gems HQ, we have no official awards with fancy trophies, but I look back and pick my favorite Mac Gems of the previous 12 months—the best inexpensive-but-good apps we covered over the just-completed year.
Unlike the Eddies and the App Gems Awards, the “Mac Gems of the Year,” if you will, aren’t chosen by committee. Rather, I hand-pick them from among the over 100 Gems we mined at Macworld during 2012. (To qualify for Mac Gems, a product must be priced at $35 or less and must earn a 3.5-mouse rating or higher.) The ones recognized here aren’t necessarily the Mac Gems that earned the highest ratings from our reviewers. Instead, they’re the apps that I felt did something innovative; offered exceptional value; improved productivity above and beyond other apps; or ended up being used—by me or a fellow Macworld editor—over and over. These inexpensive applications and add-ons will help you get the most out of your Mac without blowing your budget.
Former Macworld Senior Editor Rob Griffiths founded Mac OS X Hints. He's now master of ceremonies at Many Tricks Software. More by Rob Griffiths
If you work with video, chances are you occasionally need to convert video files from one format to another. For instance, if you’ve downloaded videos from YouTube or other online video services, that content may be in Flash or Windows Media formats, which aren’t viewable on any iOS device. Or if you update web content, you may have a number of movies in H.264 format that simply won’t play in Google’s Chrome browser, which doesn’t support H.264.
There are many tools available for converting video between formats, but the one I often turn to is the free Miro Video Converter (). While its interface isn’t what you would call Mac-standard, the program does a great job converting videos. It supports a huge number of video formats, including some oddball ones, and it can output video optimized for iOS devices, as well as for a slew of Android devices including the Kindle Fire.
When you launch Miro Video Converter, you’re greeted with a large, dark, and basically empty interface. However, it’s pretty obvious what needs to be done, thanks to explanatory text that states, “Drag videos here or Choose Files.” To convert one or more video files, drag them into the window, or click the Choose Files link to use a standard OS X file-navigation dialog box to select them.
Dan writes about OS X, iOS, troubleshooting, utilities, and cool apps, and he covers hardware, mobile and AV gear, input devices, and accessories. He's been writing about tech since 1994, and he's also published software, worked in IT, and been a policy analyst. More by Dan Frakes
One of my all-time favorite Mac utilities was MaxMenus, a System Preferences pane that let you create multiple custom menus, each containing your choice of apps, files, folders, volumes, and other frequently accessed items. Unfortunately, MaxMenus appears to have been abandoned—you can no longer download it, its website is dead, and while it currently works under Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.2), I suspect some future update to OS X will render MaxMenus useless.
I’ve tried—and quickly discarded—a number of alternatives, but one that works well is PointWorks’s $2 CustomMenu (Mac App Store link). Launch CustomMenu, and its systemwide menu icon appears on the right-hand side of your menu bar. Click this icon and choose Customize Menu, and you can choose the items you want to appear in the menu.
). While its interface isn’t what you would call Mac-standard, the program does a great job converting videos. It supports a huge number of video formats, including some oddball ones, and it can output video optimized for iOS devices, as well as for a slew of Android devices including the Kindle Fire.
