By Rob Griffiths, Senior Contributor, Macworld |
Port Map: Simple port mapping for your router
Today's Best Tech Deals
Picked by Macworld's Editors
Top Deals On Great Products
Picked by Techconnect's Editors
-
The Coding Monkeys Port Map 1.3.1
GemFest 2009
- GemFest 2009 begins
- AirRadar surveys your wireless signals
- Application Wizard makes program...
- AppShelf tracks software licenses
- Add an OS 9-like app menu to OS X with...
[Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, 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.]
If you occasionally want to access your home Mac from afar, whether it be to reach shared files, access a Web server, check in on a Web cam, or any other such purpose, Port Map is a free solution that can make the process simpler. (If you have MobileMe, Back to My Mac makes certain tasks much easier but may not be of any help with, for instance, viewing a local Web cam remotely.)
Port Map is a simple front end to your Universal Plug and Play router’s port mapping feature (this includes AirPort Base Stations). When you need to open a port to the outside world, instead of first visiting your router’s setup page, then navigating to its port mapping feature, then using its often byzantine interface to map the port, you can run Port Map instead. Click the plus sign to create a new mapping, enter the port number you’d like to open, provide a meaningful name (Web Camera), and then click Add Mapping.
Port Map will then create this map in your router, and you’re good to go--the port will remain mapped, even when you quit Port Map. You can also easily see all existing port maps and enable and disable mappings on a per-map basis, or all at once. If you don’t know what port mapping is, you’ll probably never need this program...but if you do map ports, Port Map makes it amazingly simple to do.
Want to stay up-to-date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your inbox.
Our 186-page Mac Gems Superguide is a veritable greatest hits of Mac Gems. It's available as a PDF download, PDF on CD-ROM, or as a printed book. Learn more about the Mac Gems Superguide.
[Rob Griffiths is a senior editor for Macworld.]
GemFest 2009
GemFest 2009 features great free and low-cost software for your Mac.
Increasingly, the airwaves around us are a jungle of competing wireless signals. Koingo Software’s...
Application Wizard--which operates as an OS X System Preferences pane--displays four colored...
If you need to track licenses and registration information for a large number of applications,...
If you who miss the OS 8/9-style application menu, two programs, ASM and multiXFinder, aim to fill...
If you’d prefer a simpler way to work with disk images, Click Archive is one such solution.
This program aim taps into iPhoto's Faces feature so you can attach images to Address Book entries.
GlimmerBlocker is an ad blocker that is safe to install because it doesn’t hack Safari.
If you find yourself inundated with a huge assortment of documents that are difficult to track, a...
FileBrowse is a beautiful, well-made media browser program, though how useful you find it will...
Zipeg is a free utility that’s useful to keep around as a complement to OS X’s built-in archiving...
If you juggle work all day and find yourself switching from one set of apps to another, you can...
Wx is a meteorological program that is for anyone who’s serious about the weather.
If you regularly receive winmail.dat files from business associates, Letter Opener is well worth...
Riverfold Software's Clipstart is to video clips what iTunes is to music, or iPhoto is to digital...
Do you find the standard OS X Address Book too limiting? If so, BdContacts might be just the...
Typically, while using your Mac’s iSight camera with one program, you can’t use it with another....
Have you ever wondered what a non-Apple software installer actually installs? Or what files a...
If you work extensively at cooking or event planning, or you’re just intensely organized and...
Digital Sentry is an aptly named program that monitors your computer for any of a number of events.
This simple program aims to fix the problem of lost or forgotten warranties by providing you with...
Full-featured accounting programs like QuickBooks can seem overwhelming and complicated. For...
Monitor is a small and lightweight freeware application that seeks to put these regularly visited...
Precipitate is a System Preference pane that lets Spotlight search your Google Docs, Google...
Tweetube is a complementary app to the third-party service of the same name that allows you share a...
Yum 3.0.7 is a solid, no-frills recipe manager, but its lack of some key features may have you...
If you want to use the same custom location several times in iMovie '09, you can use...
If you tend to put all your events, appointments, and client meetings in iCal, TimeTable can help...
DeskCover is a free program that adds a customizable background behind the icons on your desktop.
Instead of logging in and out of different user accounts on your Mac, rooSwitch lets you switch...
Whether you’ve deleted photos, reformatted your media card, or had a card go bad, Klix recovers...
Photo Wrangler makes it easy to quickly scan through a folder of photos and sort them into separate...
Rife as Mac OS X already is with slide-show capabilities, PhotoPresenter builds onto those and puts...
For image editing, Sumo Paint offers many Photoshop standbys. And best of all, this Web-based...
With ViewIt, you can simply drop your camera’s photos onto the ViewIt window, view and mark what’s...
You’ve probably heard about the Faces feature in iPhoto ‘09 that makes it quick and easy to find...
As great as video sharing Web sites like YouTube are, they often don’t allow you to directly...
Shape Collage turns a collection of photos into a collage of practically any shape, whether you’re...
Aquafadas’s PulpMotion produces professional multimedia presentations that are anything but...
When you want to create iTunes playlists based on tempo or need to find the BPM of your songs,...
VideoDrive aims to make video conversions easy.
Cooliris is a super-handy browser plug-in that lets you scope out images and video content in a...
SousChef is a recipe organizer with an iTunes-RSS feed sensibility that can help you get your meal...
If you have an even moderately large media library and like the idea of having everything neatly...
As a grand finale to GemFest 2009, here’s a list of some of our all-time favorite Mac Gems.