Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
We’ve covered a good number of Gems that can display your laptop’s battery status in the menu bar. But Battery Status (Mac App Store link) offers a unique twist that will appeal to Mac laptop and desktop users who also own Apple’s Magic Trackpad, Magic Mouse, or Wireless Keyboard. It offers information about the battery status of each of those devices, as well.
Battery Status’s menu icon displays a graphical representation of the battery level of one of the supported devices or, for MacBook users, your laptop’s battery level—you choose which in the app’s preferences window. Alternatively, you can choose to have the icon automatically display the level of the battery with the lowest remaining percentage of a full charge. You can also choose to display the numerical percentage next to the icon, and you can choose whether that icon should be black and white or use colors (green for a good charge, red for almost empty, and yellow for a range somewhere in the middle).
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sGemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
All Web surfers know—or should know—that even though they often use the Internet in the privacy of their homes, they are not alone. The Web, while a window to the universe, is also a conduit for transmitting private and personal information to prying eyes. Marketers track your every move with a variety of digital markers, such as cookies, Web Bugs, or clear GIFs. Family members and associates who share your computer also can view information that you’d rather keep to yourself, such as Internet searches, websites you’ve visited, or videos you’ve watched. Of course, you could use the Safari or Firefox built-in Private Browsing mode or simply remove information, piece by piece, but the latter would be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process.
SecureMac’s PrivacyScan (Mac App Store link), which debuted at Macworld|iWorld 2012, offers a one-stop way to mitigate common privacy concerns by identifying and destroying Internet files placed on your computer that track your usage and reveal your online activities to others. You can choose to erase information from a number of programs simultaneously, and then choose the level of destruction you’re most comfortable with. Time is the tradeoff; The more securely the information is destroyed, the longer the process takes.
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sGemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
The original Comic Life made a splash with its Mac debut seven years ago, by taking a specific task—turning your photos into comic book-style layouts—and perfectly balancing ease of use with a sense of fun. The follow-up from developer Plasq continues that fine tradition while adding some welcome features to the mix.
Previous users will feel right at home in Comic Life 2(Mac App Store link). So will newcomers to this specialized image editing application. That’s a testament to how easy it is to get started with the app, as well as how simple Plasq makes it to discover Comic Life 2’s many tools.
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sGemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
When it comes to folder organization, there are two kinds of people: Filers and searchers. Filers keep their files organized in elaborate folder hierarchies. Searchers don’t worry about where their files are; they just use search to find what they need. If you’re a searcher, Tagit could be a great tool for you.
Tagit enables you to apply metadata tags to files; you can then use those tags in searches. So, for example, instead of storing files relating to your home refi in a Home Refi folder, you’d create a Home Refi tag and apply it to the relevant files; you’d then find those files by searching for that tag.
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sGemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
BeQuiet (Mac App Store link) is a refreshingly simple utility that ensures your computer’s external speakers stay quiet when you want them to, no matter what.
Launch the app and your Mac’s external speakers are immediately muted. Better yet, they remain muted, even if you launch another application, or if your headphones come unplugged. If you do have headphones plugged in, however, that volume is maintained and can be freely adjusted.
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sGemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
When you added a set of kitchen screwdrivers and a pair of pliers into your home toolbox, you probably didn’t know exactly how you would use them, but you wanted to have them around, just in case. Same thing goes for great Mac OS utilities. FileXaminer is an indispensable tool you can use to edit file information and access privileges. You might not need it today, but the next time you have a problem opening or deleting a file because of permission problems, or you need to peak at its hidden attributes, you’ll be glad FileXaminer is in your toolbox.
FileXaminer is basically the Finder’s Get Info command on steroids. It adds other file management features, including super delete, and force-empty trash. Most of the features in Get Info appear when you open a file or folder with FileXaminer, with options for editing permissions, dates, and icons added. You have complete control of permissions at the UNIX file system level (though the FileXaminer interface is easy enough for non-UNIX geeks to understand), the ability to change creation and modification dates, and the ability to set user and group ID bits. FileXaminer’s batch mode gives you the ability to edit attributes for groups of files.
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’sGemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
Every day, I “like” posts on Facebook, bookmark articles in Instapaper, “favorite” tweets on Twitter, and save videos on YouTube. But sometimes I forget where I first saw an interesting story or link. Favs (Mac App Store link) is a Mac app that integrates into social sites and brings your favorites together into one sleek, comprehensive package.
Favs works with several social services: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instapaper, Delicious, Google Reader, Instagram, Pinboard, and Vimeo, to name a few. Just log in to the sites that you’d like to add, and authorize Favs to access your data. Favs loads your favorites from each approved site and separates them by source in the app’s main window.
