There’s already a plethora of word processors on Mac, and most of them fit the job perfectly. Bean is an open source text editor with a very nice interface and its personal set of features. We liked the inspector tool, which gives you quick access to elements like alignment, spacing, or indenting. Bean also carries a dictionary and makes it really simple to check the spelling and definition of a word.
Bean’s font manager, which lets you add new ones or arrange your favorite ones, is very well thought out. Bean also has a statistics window, which you call up directly from the menu bar, and that will give you word count, number of paragraphs and more. Bean is a very pleasant word processor to use and you always feel like tools are immediately accessible. It’s a good free and simple alternative to Microsoft Word or Open Office.
Review by Cyril Roger
Feniks Macintosh
Regularly saving and backing up your data is something that should come natural. If you’re lucky enough to have gotten your hands on Leopard, you can easily use Mac’s very own Time Machine feature. Other users will need to look for an external solution. iBackup is a simple program with a Finder like interface which will cater to basic users.
Backups are called profiles in iBackup and you can create as many as you wish, adding, deleting or editing them. The program also allows you to create smart lists to sift through your data. While you can manually backup, the best is to create a schedule so you don’t ever have to worry about it. On the whole, iBackup performs fairly quickly and the interface makes it easy to see what you’ve added to each profile.
However the application suffers a few drawbacks. First of all, there really isn’t any incremental backup and you need to recreate a profile to add new items to it. This also means that the log file won’t show what new files have been added to a backup. Restoring a drive works fine, but iBackup clearly lacks a feature to only restore individual items.
iBackup is a simple backup solution, for people looking for something basic and easy to use
Review by Cyril Roger
Feniks Macintosh
Ratio is a simple little widget that allows you to measure ratios for selections of your screen.
This can come in handy when adjusting screen size, setting an image to the right ratio or deciding what display you want an interface to be adapted best to. To use it, all you need to do is enter the width and height of your area and select the ratio, such as 16:9 or 4:3. Ratio will take care of adjusting either the width or height so the selected area corresponds to the proper ratio.
It would have been nice to get more information on what ratio is best for what screen or to be able to simply drag with your cursor to select the area. Still, entering width and height are easy enough. We recommend using this program if you’re a web designer or a video editor looking for the proper screen size.
Ratio is a simple widget to adjust screen size according to a number of different ratios. It may have limited use but will come in handy to some users.
Review by Cyril Roger
Feniks Macintosh
To safely backup your hard drive, you can create a clone of it, which you will synchronize and backup on another drive.
Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) is a completely free solution to create clones of your disks, so you never ever have to worry again about losing your data. The application features a simple interface, from where you select the drive or folders to backup and the target drive to save to. I’ve found that you’ll have to make sure a local disk is connected to your Mac so the program can start up though.
With CCC you can schedule automatic backups, which saves you the hassle of taking care of the backups yourself. Just decide on what day of the week and time you want CCC to work and let the program do its job.
More knowledgeable users will also like being able to run pre and post-flight shell scripts, checking the list of items removed after a clone, and creating a disk image.
Once thing we’ve noticed though, is that some Mac OS X 10.5 users have complained of instability issues with CCC.
Despite these problems with Leopard, Carbon Copy Cloner is a very good program to clone and backup your drive, not to mention that it’s free. Very much recommended.
Review by Cyril Roger
Feniks Macintosh
This learning game is meant to help you practice your Spanish and is not intended for people trying to learn it from scratch. In fact, you need to understand a little bit of the language in order to answer the questions.
The program provides 49 lessons that you can download by clicking the appropriate link in the main frame. The tests include a study section where you can read many examples on a specific subject and games to practice what you have studied. To import a downloaded file, click the green ‘import’ arrow icon in the main frame of the application. It would have been nice if this install were automatic, but it’s not very complicated anyway.
Practiquemos doesn’t feature particular functions to improve your learning and it could have been easily improved from a user-experience point of view. For example when you give the wrong answer or you misspell a word, the application doesn’t correct it to show you the right version. This sort of feature, while sounding simple and basic, is actually essential for students.
If you are looking to improve your Spanish, learning new words and ways to use the language, Practiquemos is a free, if somewhat simplistic, teacher.
Review by Francesca Migliorini
Feniks Macintosh
Mind mapping is a great way of graphically organizing your ideas, and works well on big projects or to present connections between ideas. It is mostly used in brainstorming sessions for one.
MindNode is a simple and free mind mapping tool, for people not looking for anything to elaborate yet wanting to get initiated to the graphical idea organizing tool. You can create large mind maps and use different colors for each different idea and connection and choose between different types of brush strokes, a good way of differentiating the connection types in your graph. Although it will never feel as natural as actually drawing on board, it is easy enough that anyone can create advanced mind maps in seconds.
MinNode is not highly advanced though, so don’t expect lots of shapes, tones or layer possibilities. On the other hand, it does offer keyboard support, which, if you take the time to learn it, will allow you to sketch up your mind map even faster.
To share your brainstorm session, MindNode lets you print the document or export it in any way of a number of formats.
Although not highly advanced, MinNode is a good program to get to grips with mind mapping and connect your ideas easily.
Review by Cyril Roger
Feniks Macintosh
Senuti is a great tool to have on your Mac if you listen to MP3s as much on your iTunes as on your iPod. The application allows you to drag and drop music from the Apple MP3 player to the music manager, something that is quite difficult otherwise. Not only that, Senuti also keeps all the information you have stored like album cover, rating, name of playlist and genres. Organize your music in iTunes the way it is in your iPod. You can even play the music only from your iPod directly on your Mac, a useful feature to check if you’re copying the right music to your iTunes.
Feniks Macintosh
yFlicks is a great application to enjoy your videos the way you want.
The best feature of the program is probably the Front Row view, which will display all the covers for your videos and let you quickly browse through them. You an also quickly preview a movie just by hovering your mouse over it. The interface is very clear, displaying all your lists on the left side and album covers in the main window. You can also change the application to a clearer, glass interface.
Not only is yFlicks good at organizing your videos but it can also be used to play them back. Videos can be seen in full screen and you can interact with them, adding a rating or even organizing them in groups. yFlicks integrates well with Apple Remote, so you can sit back in your couch and play all your videos. What’s more you can easily import movies from video sharing sites like YouTube or DailyMotion and export them to your iPod.
There are two drawbacks to the program though. First of all, yFlicks is known to lag every now and then, with this only getting worse the more movies you have in your library. Secondly, if you purchase the program you might have to wait a little bit to get your license.
Despite being a little slow, yFlicks is a great program to preview your video library and play them back from the comfort of your couch.
Review by Cyril Roger
Feniks Macintosh
LazyMouse is the type of application that you either like or hate. Supposed to make you save time, it can automatically snap your cursor onto every new window you open. The preference pane option can also bring your cursor back to its original position. Because it install in your System Preferences, LazyMouse is really easy to set up and activate. You can have it play a sound every time the mouse is moved, although we discourage you doing that, as it gets a bit annoying after a while.
LazyMouse will appeal to users who hate moving their cursor around and like having it point right to where they need to click. However, most users, accustomed to moving their cursor around, might get a bit discouraged by it. We really suggest trying LazyMouse out to see if you really need it or not.
If you hate moving your mouse around, LazyMouse will come in handy.
Review by Cyril Roger
Feniks Macintosh
Crazy Eggs is a puzzle game that tests your reflex speed and hand-eye coordination. The goal in your game is to link up dinosaur eggs of the same pattern, and clear all eggs on board within a time limit.
Crazy Eggs is a game for the household, it is a game for you to pass time after a hard day’s work, and it is also the best choice for you to challenge your own reflexes. You can play this game together with your family, and challenge them to a game of logic, precision and speed!
If you feel like playing the game in a relaxed mood, you can choose the casual mode that has no time-limit. That way, you will be able to think deep and plan out the matching sequence that will result in the highest combo possible.
You can also play the challenge mode to put your reflex speed to test, and see how you perform under the most extreme tests.
You need to choose two eggs with the same pattern, and link them up using not more than 3 straight lines (in order words, not more than 2 line turns), if successful, the two eggs will be cleared. Of course, there should not be any obstacles in the line of path.
Feniks Macintosh