I have never had so many complete strangers comment on my iPhone case before. And I think you can see why. That’s right, it is a “Lego” case. Actually, it is the Brickcase from Smallworks. But the idea is that you can add Legos to it. Decorate the back as you wish. Or, build your own tripod or iPhone stand and click your iPhone to it.
One of the most anticipated game releases of 2011 arrived this week. Portal 2 is the thinking-man’s first person shooter. If you played the original, then you don’t need to be convinced that this is one of the best games of all time. If you haven’t played the original, then you may want to try that first, as playing Portal 2 first would spoil some of the fun of discovery. You can get both from the Mac Steam application.
In both games you solve levels by jumping through portals, moving boxes, making clever jumps and throwing switches. And at the end of the original Portal, you get cake. Maybe.
Ever wish the Finder had tabs in each window? The TotlaFinder utility adds this and it works very well. There is also a useful mode where you can dock two Finder windows next to each other for side-by-side comparisons of folders. While other utilities do this in their own application windows, TotalFinder may be unique in brining this directly to the Finder itself.
If you give presentations often, or record screen capture video, then check out Boinx Mousepose. It dims the rest of the screen and highlights the area around your cursor. It can also show mouse clicks and keys pressed. There are tons of customizable options. I plan on using it in future presentations and perhaps in some future MacMost videos.
If you use multiple screens like I do, one frustrating aspect is your menu bar and document window can sometimes be very far apart. The little free app MenuPop solves this issues by letting you choose any item from he menu bar without having to go to the menu bar. Just press a shortcut key and all of the menu commands appear at your current cursor location.
I’ve been hearing about this scanner for years. I finally decided to go paperless in my office, which means scanning a ton of documents. So I paid the price and bought the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M. Worth every penny. You can feed this thing tons of pages and it eats them up and spits them out as PDF files. The Mac software works great too. This thing looks small and fragile, but it acts big and tough.
Been enjoying StarCraft II on the Mac. It runs smoothly on both my Mac Pro, and my little 13-inch MacBook Pro. Nice graphics, good gameplay, lots to do. It is a real-time strategy game heavy on the sci-fi.
If you’ve got an old vinyl record collection and want to transfer some of the music to your iTunes collection, then a USB turntable might be in order. I tried and liked the Ion Profile. It is inexpensive at less than $100 and the quality is decent. Forget the software that comes with it as it is not Mac compatible. But it showed up as an audio input device without a problem so you can use Audacity or GarageBand to record from it and slice your own tracks from the results.
Winter presents problems: how to operate your iPhone while keeping your gloves on. While you can get gloves that allow you to do this, GloveTips allows you to stick with your favorite gloves and modify them with a kit to allow touchscreen use. They sent me a kit to test out. It takes a little time to install it in your gloves, but certainly works. Now I can finally tell Pandora thumbs up or down while driving on cold mornings.
If you are an iPad user, you have probably tried to use your iPad while relaxing on a sofa or in bed. I’ll bet you have even pulled a pillow over to rest your iPad on. Well now there is a pillow specifically designed for this. Sized perfectly, and with a bar along the bottom for placement, the iPad Pillow will make a nice holiday gift for any iPad user this holiday season.
If you are looking for a way to synchronize folders between your Macs, PCs or servers, you might want to check out GoodSync. I tested out a copy they sent, and was impressed with the number of options available. Any syncing utility is going to need to be very complex to handle the variety of situations, and GoodSync does a decent job of giving you lots of options.
Kanex sent me the iAdapt HDMI V2 this week which converts your Mini DisplayPort video out on recent Macs to HDMI, including the audio. I tested it on three different HD televisions, including a 1080p projector and it worked great. I was able to use those TVs as mirrored or second displays. Watching HD videos was great as well. The best part is that it is pretty reasonably priced at $29.95.
Want the lid of your MacBook Pro to look cool and unique? Forget about covering it with stickers. Instead, get one really awesome one that plays off of the glowing Apple logo. Stuck Off Decals has some really interesting stuff, including superheroes, villains and other geeky characters that incorporate the Apple logo. I’ve got the “particle physics” one on my MacBook Pro right now.
I found out the hard way that if you are going to do video outside, you should have a wind screen on your microphone. I use a lavalier mic, which often come with small windscreens. But if you need one, I found the Audio Technica Miniature Foam Windscreen works well. Just a little piece of foam can make huge difference.
MacMost headquarters just upgraded to the newer Airport Extreme Base Station which promises better performance when using a variety of wifi devices. And guess what? It does. All of our devices, from an old 802.11b iMac to the iPhones, iPads and 802.11n Macs seem a little happier.
Now that there are more than a million iPads out there, you might want to make yours look a little different than the rest. Check out 
If you work with cameras and video you might find yourself in the market for a camera stabilizer. But these can be expensive if you go for the name brand. Instead, look at former MacMost.com producer’s Jaybilizer products.
For years I’ve been using Firewire to connect video cameras to Macs. But Firewire doesn’t handle HD very well, and fewer and fewer cameras are available with Firewire connections. But HDMI is now common. So adding an HDMI input to your Mac may be the way to go for live video. The Matrox MX02 Mini is one way to do it. It won’t work with non-pro apps like iMovie or iChat. But it does well with broadcast software like Wirecast and pro software like Final Cut Studio. You can get it with a PCIe card for a Mac Pro, or a Express34 card for a high-end MacBook Pro.
I bought the official Apple iPad case because I figured I should. I need to “review” it, after all. But to my surprise I like it a lot. It protects the iPad screen when closed, sure. But the front folds over the back and creates two ways to stand the iPad up horizontally. The official dock only stands the iPad up vertically. My only complaint is that you can quite put the iPad in the stand-up dock while it is still in the case.
I just upgraded my old USB mobile data card to a mobile hotspot. These fairly new devices allow you to connect with your MacBook (or iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad!) through a mobile network with a monthly data plan. The advantage of these new devices over the old USB stick is that you can connect more than one device, and you don’t need any special software on those devices since the AirCard works like a regular wireless base station. So I can travel and connect with my MacBook Pro, iPhone and iPad with just one device and nothing to install. I can even use it for mobile connectivity instead of waiting for a 3G iPad. It will also come in handy when I’m in places were I can’t usually use my iPhone because AT&T doesn’t work. And this method of connectivity offers much more security than using a public WiFi hotspot. Check with your wireless carrier to see if they offer this model or a similar one.
