Send Genie – Free Drag and Drop File Sender for Windows and Mac

Posted on Tuesday, August 30, 2011

There are a squidillion file-sending apps out there across all platforms and so you have to wonder what would motivate someone to enter this particular crowded marketplace. The answer I guess falls under the ‘build a better mousetrap’ heading – everyone thinks they can do a better job of it.

SendGenie is the latest file sending service, but it does have a couple of unique features that may interest you. Firstly it features an Instant Messenger style interface in which you can add contacts and/or put them in groups. Secondly it features a simple drag and drop interface that enables you to quickly get large files (up to 300Mb) to individuals or groups. And thirdly, if you’re in the habit of sending lots of photos to people then the image auto-rotate and auto resize features may prove useful.  SendGenie’s desktop client is available in both Mac and Windows flavours.

Freebie of the Week – TweetComb for Android

Posted on Tuesday, August 30, 2011

There’s been some real innovation lately with Twitter clients, with slick interfaces that reflect the nature of the micro-blogging environment. The best Twitter clients enable you to flick easily between trends, check mentions and retweets simply and navigate your way through the users that you’re following.

TweetComb is a great looking and beautifully designed free Twitter client for Android Honeycomb. The main Dashboard screen is split three ways and can display your Timeline, Mentions, Direct Messages, Profile, Search and Favourites as you wish. It’s a great interface for swift and efficient navigation of all those accounts that you’re following.

The app supports the usual Twitter goodies such as Bit.ly, Twitlonger, Twitpic and yFrog and updates in the background so you always get the freshest feeds when you check back. Tweetcomb can be set to notify you when a fresh tweet appears in the timeline, but if you’re following more than a couple of people this can get annoying. It’s a great Twitter client for tablet users, although it’s somewhat disappointing that it’s only available for Honeycomb and not any earlier iterations of Android..

The Best Form Fillers for Mac, PC and Mobile – Round-up

Posted on Saturday, August 27, 2011

The web is booming like never before. More and more businesses are setting up online portals and funky new web services are starting up every day. Which is all well and good, but it also means that web surfers spend a lot of time entering the exact same details into online forms over and over again. But it doesn’t have to be that way – by installing a form filler add-on for your browser you can complete mundane form entries in a single click.

Going back to your roots – DOS Emulators for PC and Mac

Posted on Saturday, August 27, 2011

My son doesn’t have a clue what a tape deck is and while his dad used to earn a living as a DJ, I’m sad to say that he doesn’t have a clue what a record deck is either. Why should he? The sun has well and truly set on that kind of technology and while there will always be hobbyists keeping such things alive, the mainstream moves on. And so it was with with DOS, the operating system that powered all PCs in the pre-GUI interface era. As soon as Microsoft released Windows 95 it was discarded with joy by PC users.

But the fact is that there were some terrific games released for DOS over the years – the formative era of PC gaming. Sure they look pixelated as hell and the sound won’t win any awards for sonic fidelity, but the gameplay’s the key and gameplay’s what you’ll get. Install a DOS emulator and you can wallow in nostalgia until your PS3 or Xbox 360 throws a hissy-fit. There are plenty of games available for download, some of which are considered Abandonware and thus available for download, some of which are still commercial games and can be bought through services such as Gog. And there’s always the third option for getting hold of your games, which I’m sure needs no further explaination.

Far and away the best DOS emulator for the Mac is Boxer which is a free download. It features a slick Mac interface, a customised library and a drag-and-drop import facility that makes running games a snap. It comes with a couple of demos to get you going, including X-Com, Commander Keen, Epic Pinball and Ultima Underworld. To run them, just click on the configurable box art and off you go down memory lane.

Boxer features a number of enhancements to leverage the power of the modern Mac including a CPU setting (as some games will run too fast to be useable), smoothing (Mame or HQX options) and, brilliantly, the ability to use your iPhone as a joypad. It’s an incredibly well designed bit of software and heartily recommended to retro Mac gamers or Generation Y who just fancy a good laugh.

On the PC there are several good DOS Emulators but far and away the best is DOS-Box. It emulates 286/386 CPUs in realmode and protected mode, the Directory FileSystem/XMS/EMS, Tandy/Hercules/CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA graphics and SoundBlaster/Gravis Ultra Soundcard for that authentic ’90s audio. All of which means it’s capable of playing pretty much any old DOS game you throw at it.

Unless you fancy getting truly old school and using the DOS prompt to mount and play your games, DOS-Box is best paired with a front end such as CBoxrun, DBGL or D-Fend. Any of these free downloads will enable you to utilise a simple interface to manage and play your games and, to be honest, pissing around with DOS prompts is one part of a retro gaming experience most people would gladly live without.

If you fancy tackling X-Com again or Bullfrog’s seminal Magic Carpet is calling to you from the mists of time, you can find a full list of compatible games here. To kick off your collection, check out the library at Abandonia.

itDJ – Free DJ Mixing App for Mac

Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011

itDJ – Free – Macroplant

There are some excellent free DJing suites available for the Mac, some great budget ones and a redundant record box full of full-blown commercial apps. Currently Mac owners can download Virtual DJ Home and Mixx in the App Store, both of which have large user bases and, in the case of Virtual DJ, a clear upgrade path to a more comprehensive package should a bedroom DJ decide to move up to the DJ booth.

itDJ certainly has the feel of a free app and while I realise that this means we ought to take it easier on the software, there are other free DJ apps available for the Mac and itDJ has to be reviewed with this in mind. So the first thing to say about this software is that the interface is all over the place – metal styled knobs, old school folders and nasty buttons. It’s probably best to say that it isn’t a thing of beauty but I’d forgive the ugliest of interfaces if the functionality made up for it.

In terms of layout you get a vaguely Serato Itch style interface, with a couple of decks at the top and the music list at the bottom of the screen. There’s pitch and gain controls for each deck, along with EQ knobs per-deck. Music you cue up by dragging it onto either of the decks is shown at the top of the screen in over-lapping waveforms – red for the left deck and blue for the right. There’s a master BPM setting in the middle of the decks along with the obligatory cross-fader. It’s a fairly ramshackle arrangement.

In terms of sonic goodies, there’s actually some fairly cool tools to play with. Principle amongst these is a neat beat mixer that enables you to chop a track up in 2, 4, 8 or 16 beat chunks. It works surprisingly well and syncs nicely between beat modes. There’s also an effects tab with the obligatory reverb and flanger and a wahwah which can be set to match beats and works well when combined with a loop.

The loops and cues tab, an essential tool for any digital DJ these days, is a bit hit-and-miss. This comes down to the fact that itDJ’s beat detection isn’t exactly world-beating and so while the cue points function well, getting a loop on the money is not guaranteed. There is a cool loop shifter slider that enables you to flick your 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4 or 8 bar loop up and down the track.

Many digital DJs either don’t know how to beat-match tracks or choose not to and so the Sync feature is all-important. We found this to be lacking – unless there was a crystal clear bass or high-hat for the sync to latch onto, it failed to find the beat. In comparison to Virtual DJ Home’s syncing facility, it’s woefully inadequate. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was easy to mix the ‘old fashioned’ way, but the virtual decks are non-functional and did nothing no matter how we moved the mouse pointer on them, so to beatmatch you have to use the top waveform to nudge, speed up or slow down the track and it simply doesn’t work in any useful way.

Hidden behind a toggled FX Panel button are four sample decks, 16 effects slots which you can fill with your own police sirens and ‘woo-yea’s and a full sequencer. The latter seemed like a vaguely bizarre thing to add to a DJ mixing application and its painfully simple design wouldn’t add much to any set beyond, possibly, getting you out of trouble if a track comes to its end before you’re ready to cue up the next one. itDJ also appears to have some basic support for MIDI mixing panels, but it’s not clear which ones it supports or indeed if you need to do the button mapping yourself.

The bottom line is that this digital DJing package simply doesn’t cut it in any meaningful way. If I was being charitable I’d say it was a step up from using iTunes to DJ with – but only just. Given just how good the also free Mixx and Virtual DJ Home are and given the fact that many people get Traktor LE free with their digital DJ decks or MIDI panels, you’d have to be fairly desparate to consider using itDJ. It does have a nice icon though.

Augmented Reality TV Shopping

Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011

Here’s a terrific innovation from Sony which enables you to buy the right sized TV (Sony TV, natch) for your room. It utilises a simple marker card which you mount on the wall and then photograph in-situ. Having uploaded the photo to the Sony site you can then view a series of perfectly scaled TVs in that space, enabling you to opt for a 50″ behemoth for the living room, rather than that 28″ one your partner’s been insisting on.

Air Swimmers – Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the lift

Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011

Here’s a terrific gift or fun ‘executive toy’ that’s been released just in time for a bit of pre-Xmas hype. The AirSwimmers are inflatable flying fishes – two models are available – a shark and a clownfish. The remote controlled toys are powered by a single AA battery, have a range of 40feet and can fly up and down as well as left and right.

The TFI Friday Time-Waster – Week 3 August 2011

Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011

Well what do you know, Friday’s here again. Is it just me or has this weekend blown by faster than a deposed dictator’s escape convoy? With that thought in mind, we bring you a little something to ease you into the weekend – a long form commercial featuring the incredible rally driver Ken Block, doing what he does best on the Universal Studios backlot. They’re selling sneakers too, but we’ll forgive them given the insane driving in this clip. Check out the bit with the forklift trucks.

TotalFinder for Mac – tabs and dual-screen goodness

Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011

Windows has Explorer and OSX has Finder – they both do the same job, but they both go about it in totally different ways. Finder has evolved over the years into a flexible file management tool and, in its latest iteration under Lion, sports some genuinely useful refinements such as improved sorting and folder merging.

However there’s always room for improvement and TotalFinder from BinaryAge aims to fill that gap. It has two features in particular that in thensekves makes it worth purchasing – tabbed windows and dual mode. When you want to copy or move files in Finder you need to open up one window with the source files in it and then create a second Finder window showing the destination. It’s all a bit crude. With TotalFinder however, you can quickly flick to dual mode and enjoy having two folders side-by-side.

Amongst the applications other party tricks are a system file toggle, default ‘folders on top’ in file listings, cut and paste files and a visor mode that gets you instant access to TotalFinder whatever application you’re in at the time. It’s a mature bit of software and the ideal tool for anyone that does a lot of file management or who simply wants to improve Finder. It costs a very reasonable $18 and there’s a 14 day trial version in case your hesitant.

Nikon Coolpix P7100 – Gadgety to the Max

Posted on Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Nikon have long been one of the most respected camera manufacturers on the planet and so the arrival of any new model is going to be news, but the P7100 deserves a special mention. Utilising Nikon’s own EXPEED C2 image processing engine, the 10megapixel P7100 features innovative special camera modes including ‘Zoom exposure’ and ‘Defocus during exposure’.

If you’re looking for a versatile point-and-shoot, then the P7100 is well worth a look. It has a 28-200 mm lens that offers 7.1x zoom range and a noise reduction engine that can keep the pixelisation to a minimum even on very high ISO captures. It also features an instant start-up design and a flip-out 7.5cm display on the back meaning that’s it’s not only pragmatic, but versatile too.

Amongst the other goodies on this matt black powerhouse are a 720p movie mode, RAW image support, Eye-Fi compatability, front and rear command dials, in-camera filter effects (such as low-key and cross-process) and HDMI connectivity. The P7100′s RRP is $499 and it will be available from September onwards.