With summer comes such little pleasures as warmer weather, vacations, and umbrella drinks. For some Macworld readers a bigger pleasure is the deluge of Mac Gems reviews that run six days a week through a broad swath of these summer months. In this episode I visit with Gemmeister, Dan Frakes, who gives us the lowdown not only on this year’s GemFest, but some of the standout applications it will feature as well as a selection of his “if I were spending my summer vacation on a desert island” apps.

Download Episode #248

• AAC version (18.5 MB, 37 minutes)

• MP3 version (17.6 MB, 37 minutes)

Dan mentions a variety of applications, including these:

• Calibre
• GrowlVoice
• Space Gremlin
• OpenMenu X
• I Love Stars
• Drive Genius 3 LE
• LaunchBar
• 1Password
• Default Folder X
• NetNewsWire
• Dropbox
• Neu
• TextExpander

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This episode is sponsored by Many Tricks.