Spurred by my recent battery problems, I stumbled upon this little app from Sonora Graphics. It’s called Battery Health Monitor. It’s a free app that allows you to monitor your MacBook Pro, MacBook, PowerBook and iBook’s battery life.
It shows you the original capacity, current capacity, current charge, charge cycles, voltage and some more info. From this you can see how your battery is doing, if you need to change it, etc.
Granted these information can be found through System profiler, I just like it better when there’s a GUI to look at. Plus what am I gonna fill up my hard …read more

In my last post I shared an extremely helpful, but very low-tech tool I use to help keep the various computers I manage running in tip-top-shape. I regularly serve as “tech support” for a variety of friends and family members and I have a thumb drive that I carry with me with a variety of little apps on it to help clean-up and service those computers.
Before I share my list of tools with you though, I’m very interested to see what you all are using in your own software toolboxes. What apps do you use for anti-virus, spyware, registry clean-up, …read more

I came across this list of 25 Free Mac Apps for Freelancers from Designer Daily . A lot of the apps listed are apps that I use, because I’m a freelancer as well and they do help a lot and don’t cost a dime.
Most of the apps listed are also very useful to the everyday Mac user. Apps such as Adium, Skype, Firefox, Handbrake, Quicksilver and Transmission should be essential tools for most Mac users as well.
Some of the apps on this list that I’d like to try for myself are AppCleaner, as a replacement to AppZapper. Another app I …read more

[Image courtesy of PocketMac]
In today’s world data is everything. It’s especially critical when you’re in sales. Your customer list and information is crucial to your ability to sell. SalesForce is a great online CRM tool but what happens if you don’t have access to the internet?
Well PocketMac has a new PocketMac Backup for SalesForce. It allows you to backup your data onto your Mac or mobile device. Therefore allowing you access to critical information even if you’re offline.

That’s where PocketMac Backup for SalesForce comes in. It provides automatic and safe backup of your SalesForce lists on your Mac.
That …read more

I recently got locked out of a Finance web site I use a lot. With the tons of username and passwords I have to remember, I just forgot my details with this one. Usually I don’t like writing down my finance passwords for fear of losing the piece of paper. Thus, it took me a long phone call and several tense moments before I was able to log in again.
By sheer luck I was gifted with a single license of 1password. I’ve been thinking of buying this app but wasn’t really convinced I needed it. Since it’s free, I said …read more

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. He was narrating that he was having a difficult time combing through his pictures trying to look for several that he wanted to submit for an article. He did however have smaller versions that were in his Flickr account but these were not big enough for use in magazines.
Enter PhotoZoom Pro 2. He said that he’s been trying this new piece of software that enlarges images and does it pretty well.
I know this is a problem for a lot creative people who want to use images but are too …read more

So WWDC starts tomorrow. I am pretty psyched about the possibilities of what could be coming. But the best part, I think, of being a part of the Apple Community is that we can get excited together.
Over the next week, we are running a contest on The After Mac. We are going to give away 2 licenses to TextExpander. I wrote a post last week about how great TextExpander is. (Writing about it has actually gotten me using it more, and surprisingly, the more you use it, the more useful it becomes.) Jean from over at Smile On My Mac …read more

Ok. Maybe not eliminate it completely. After all, we are not giving up iChat or Twitter so there will still be a bit too much typing in less than ergonomically correct positions (I love to type sitting on the couch). But you can at least limit the retyping of common phrases over and over and over…
That’s where TextExpander comes in. I have been using TextExpander for a couple of years now (back when it was Textpander) and have found it to be one of my consistently reliable and under-appreciated little tools. Juan wrote about it a year or so ago …read more

I don’t know about you, but I hate the way my camera names files. And downloads, most of the time, aren’t too much better. And then there are those days when I am in a hurry to get a file saved before running out the door and I just name it rough.psd. I mean, seriously, how am I ever supposed to find these files again.
Well step one is coming up with, and sticking to, a naming convention for how you structure file names. If you like folders (and sub-folders and sub-sub-folders) create rules for them as well. But what …read more