Nathan Alderman is a writer and copy editor, and frequent Macworld contributor based in Alexandria, Virginia. More by Nathan Alderman
Colorful icons with helpful tooltips make Email Pro for Gmail’s interface a pleasure to use.
The only clunky thing about Email Pro for Gmail2.1 (Mac App Store only) is its name. This slender app provides a convenient way to get to your Gmail messages directly from your desktop.
Essentially a site-specific-browser, Email Pro leans on the mobile version of Gmail’s website for its main interface, though you have the option to use Gmail’s desktop layout instead. Though this Web-view approach can occasionally make retrieving mail slow, it also has several distinct advantages. Since you’re using Gmail directly, rather than importing its mail into an app, you don’t have to create an application-specific password, even if you’ve heightened your Gmail security settings. (Indeed, setting up Email Pro proved painless; after entering my Gmail username and password, I was off to the proverbial races.) And you can start working with your mail instantly, rather than waiting for a POP or IMAP client to download hundreds or thousands of messages.
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
Between Google Hangout video conferences for work, Skype videos and calls for podcasts, and FaceTime chats with family and friends, I use AV-chat apps several times each week. But I’m not always an active audio participant: I’m a heavy user of the Mute button in every one of those apps and services. Sometimes it’s because I’m typing and I don’t want the clickety-clack of my keyboard to be audible on a podcast recording or to others in a meeting. Other times the maintenance folks are performing the day’s noisiest tasks at the same time as my chat, right outside my office window. And it’s not uncommon for family members to come into my home office while I’m chatting or recording.
The problem with using so many different apps for chats and recordings is that each of those apps has a different way to mute the microphone. Which isn’t a huge hassle, but it does mean that whenever I want to mute my mic, I need to stop and think about which app I’m using, and then remember where the mute control is. And if for some reason I use a different microphone-enabled app—for example, GarageBand for a podcast recording—I have to learn a new mic-mute control.
Nathan Alderman is a writer and copy editor, and frequent Macworld contributor based in Alexandria, Virginia. More by Nathan Alderman
I’d never found an email client that might woo me away from Apple’s Mail () until I came across Arcode’s free Inky. This cleverly designed app seems built around the way most people use email every day.
On startup, Inky prompts you to set up an account for Arcode’s cloud-based service. You can then add details for any email accounts you own: IMAP, POP, or webmail. With only an email address and password for each, Inky set up two different email accounts in seconds. I appreciated how the program kept me informed as it figured out how to configure itself appropriately.
Inky learns to predict how much each message might mean to you.Read more »
Back in 2010, I reviewed version 3 of Smile’s TextExpander. The company recently updated its venerable text-expansion utility to version 4 ($35; $15 for owners of older versions), and though the latest version will be quite familiar to anyone who has used earlier iterations, Smile has added some notable new features.
For the uninitiated, TextExpander lets you create abbreviations for bits of text that you frequently type—the program calls these bits snippets. You type an abbreviation in any document or text field, and TextExpander instantly replaces the abbreviation with the corresponding snippet. For example, I’ve created simple snippets for my name (kmc), my address (ad1), and my telephone numbers (ttel and tmob). I also have a number of more-complex snippets that I use when writing in HTML that take advantage of special TextExpander features. For example, hrf types an <a href></a>-tagged link and inserts the contents of the clipboard as the URL.
The program also automates the tasks of filling out online forms, inserting email signatures, and even correcting typos (instantly replacing teh with the, for example). Suffice it to say that these snippets are so useful, and so ingrained in my workflow, that I could scarcely work without them.
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.
) until I came across Arcode’s free 
