The iMug What's New Segment: Each month iMug shows its members new and quirky Mac apps and hardware. Here's the list for June.

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The iMug What's New Segment: Each month iMug shows its members new and quirky Mac apps and hardware. Here's the list for June.

Date Created: 01 Jul, 2006, 09:24 AM

iMug (internet Macintosh Users Group) is the Australian MUG based in Melbourne especially devoted to professional, rather than hobbyist users on the Mac platform.

As its V-P I get the privilege along with my podcasting buddy and iMug Pres, Anthony Caruana of presenting to the group's monthly face-to-face meeting a What's New segment. Here we use Keynote to highlight new apps., services, dilemmas and hardware for our members' attention in a brief segment before the main presentations.

It's turned out to be a popular segment and comfortable way to ease into the evening, get a little bonhommie flowingand allow the presenters to come to get a little feel of the group and its interests and knowledge base.

So here's the list from the What's New we delivered for June. Enjoy!

1. From Ecamm, comes two pieces of software to aid those using iChatAV and/or Skype. Ecamm refers to them as the recording studio for the mac. Two downloadable apps. (USD12.95ea) which allow you to a. record both the audio and/or video of your iChats, as Quicktime movies. and b. add to Skype's utility by recording both sides of the conversation, again as a Quicktime movie. Good for podcasters. The bundle can be had for $20.95

2. Popcopy 2, a small app (USD14.00) which installs in the menu bar and gives you advanced use of the Clipboard. Ever forgotten something in the Clipboard then rebooted and lost what you copied.

Here's what the young developer says about PopyCopy:

"PopCopy works with text, files, and images. That means if there’s anything you copy and paste a lot, you can skip the copy step from now on. PopCopy saves your clipboard item when you quit PopCopy, or restart your computer, and restores them when you launch PopCopy again. PopCopy is a Universal Binary, so it runs fine on an Intel Mac, or a PowerPC Mac."

3. Omnidazzle. From the same group that brings us Omnigraffle and Omniweb, this little app allows your mouse to do marvellous things, from spreading pixie dust across the screen, to letting the mouse draw over your screen, very useful for presentations using Keynote to spotlight aspects of a chart for instance, or to draw on objects.

And quite a few other fun and useful mousecapades. USD14.95

4. MindManager 6 from Mindjet: Time to get serious. Mindmanager is a major corporate bit of software to map ideas, information, production flows, organisational charts etc. It's been a standard app in Windows for a long time, and has now been ported to OS X and is very Mac-like. It also exchanges nicely with its Windows equivalent, and comes with a set of templates to help you get started depending on the task at hand. The website has some nice flash demos so you can see it in action. Not cheap at more than US$220. (Academic pricing also available, as is online training, for a fee). But its certainly a sign that the corporate world is once more sitting up and paying attention to the once "beleaguered" Apple.

The Mac version can be explored here and a demo downloaded.

5. Profcast (1.5) I can't tell you how many times I've wished I could record my presentations and sync it somehow to Keynote for export to some file format someone else (even on the Windows side of life) could see and hear. Even aging Powerpoint has had this feature (albeit without the ability to export other than as a ppt or pps file) for a while now.

With the rise of podcasting, and its utility in educational and training settings, finally someone has delivered a very Mac-like solution.

Profcast asks you to drop your Keynote or Powerpoint file over it, hit the record button, and start your presentation. It records your talk and syncs it with your slides and builds. Yay!

But its export options are what makes it so mac like. You can integrate the output with Garageband to make enhanced podcasts, integrate it with iWeb and offer users RSS support for keeping updated with your lectures, and ftp it to your iDisk if you have a .Mac account. Not cheap at AUD50.

6. Finally, speaking of podcasting, I've been doing some two handers (ahem, interviews with another). Rather than have us both speak into the Powerbook (whose fans start blowing about 20" into it), or using two microphones and a mixing panel, last night I showed Blue's Snowball microphone. It looks like a larger-than-average white hockeyball which plugs into a USB port.

It sits on a neat angled stand, and has three settings: the first picks up what is in front of the mic., the second reduces the sensitivity significantly in case you're near a loudspeaker or noisy crowd, and the third switches on the omnidirectional capacities, so you can place the Snowball in the centre of the table and have numerous people sitting around it chatting and record them all. Neat for iChat and Skype too, and the sound quality is very high. Not cheap at over AUD$200 but good mics are this expensive and more.

I did a demo podcast with Age MacMan Garry Barker during the week and he was so excited with the result, he decided to rush out and order one from Palaeographics where owner Hillel Lithwick is in of the first in the country to have stocks.

As a bonus it has a very humorous Manual too, suggesting its makers are very kewl.

So that's six neat and quirky apps and one hardware piece for your Mac, which will bring either great joy or increased productivity and creativity to your daily life. Thanks to macsurfer for the original links and headsup I used to gather the material.