Latest in Mac OS X

I wrote a round-up review last month for anyone interested in using their webcam as a home surveillance system, but since then we’ve had a few updates from developers so I thought it appropriate to revisit the topic and take a look at these services.
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Misplaced brand loyalty – or brand disloyalty as it sometimes manifests itself – is a game I gave up on long ago. Speaking from experience, buying or ignoring a certain company’s products “just because” without duly considering the real pros and cons is a mug’s game. Apple have arguably one of the best regarded customer service records of all large-scale technology manufacturers. Of course there are horror stories.
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Computer-aided learning, although not always a substitute for a music teacher, gives you the feedback you wouldn't get from a plain old piano book. Moreover, gamification can make practice easier, and a lot more fun by introducing elements usually found in computer games. There are many ways to describe Synthesia, which is a free application available for Mac OS X and Windows computers.
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Always know exactly how long it is until...something. The countdown dashboard widget for Mac is a fun way to obsessively keep track of the exact seconds until the greatest events in your life – or anything else. Clocks tell you what time it is now. Calendars help you know what's coming up next. What's the use of a countdown if you have both of those things? Context.
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When the Internet becomes part of your day-to-day workflow, resources for storing and managing mountains of data become absolutely necessary. And that's been the goal and purpose of the free and popular cross-platform notebook service, Evernote. Since it was launched back in 2008, Evernote has become a leading online and software service for writing and collecting notes and notebooks, creating voice memos, clipping full webpage and webpage excerpts.
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With Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Apple introduced a number of changes; some small, some big. One of those tiny changes that impacted my workflow most is the disappearance of the menu bar display menu. Before the update, ticking off a checkbox in the Mac OS X display preferences pane would introduce a nifty display icon in the menu bar at the top of your screen. That menu bar icon is now gone.
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Start using the best instant messaging client out there for Mac. It's called Adium, it connects to everything and there's no reason for not using it. Okay, there's one reason - Adium does not support Facetime. But if that's not an issue for you, Adium is a piece of software you should install. Combine all of your conversations into one great interface, then customize that interface to work exactly the way you want it to.
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How else can I say this? Actually, there is no other way more straightforward than this: you need to backup now. The risks involved with not doing so are simply not worth it. There’s no really no reason to not be backing up your computer. That said, you likely feel you do have a legitimate reason. And in some cases you might, but there is always a way.
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The success of Apple indeed lies with their attitude of "Thinking Differently". While the company may not have always been heralded as a success, their strength over the years has come from great vision and not always doing the same things as the competition. They have been bold and occasionally put a few noses out of joint, but that's the price paid for thinking outside the box. Though many of us are fans of the Apple products, not all fans are well versed in the history of the company.
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As a writer, blogger, and serial emailer, you can imagine that I go through repeating myself several times throughout an average day. Auto Text Expander ($29.95) allows you to associate blocks of text to abbreviations or keyboard macros. Read on through this post to learn more and win one of 25 licensed copies of Auto Text Expander, retailing at nearly $750 in total!
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Recover any file on hard drives connected to your Mac, and protect deleted files from being overwritten. Disk Drill Pro offers a complete suite of file recovery and protection tools for your Mac, and we're giving away 25 copies valued at $2225!
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We've covered Pocket back when it was Read it Later and after its relaunch as the newly redesigned Pocket, and it's no secret that we're big fans of the service. That's why we were pretty excited to hear about Pocket's Mac desktop app which makes it easy to keep up with the articles, videos and blog posts that you've saved to check out later. Available for free from the Mac App Store, the desktop app feels right at home with the suite of Pocket services.
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If browsing the web is one of the top three things you do on your computer everyday, you owe it to yourself to become familiar with as many time saving and clutter free features as you can. While there are several features I would like to see added to Safari, it's still my default web browser of choice because of its speed and connectivity to my other Apple devices.
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If I was asked to name my favorite Mac OS X application, CloudApp—or Cloud, for short—would definitely make the shortlist. It's a nifty menubar utility that makes it incredibly easy to upload and share small files. CloudApp developer team has also published an API for their service, meaning other developers can create third-party CloudApp clients. Below, we'll be looking at five different CloudApp clients to use the service on most popular operating systems, desktop and mobile.
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Tweak the notification center in Mountain Lion to be somewhat useful, by adding notifications from the programs you care about to it. With a few tweaks you can add every Growl program to the notifications center, along with content from your favorite web sites and apps. You can even add all of your favorite TV show listings. My friend and co-host James outlined 8 tips for making great use of the notification center, and they're all solid.
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