Battery Health Monitor Screen shot

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 disk with but with tons of Mac apps. Right?

Download Battery Health Monitor here. It’s a free download.

Post from: EveryJoe

Monitor Your Mac’s Battery Health

Image: Stock photo from Stock Photo Exchange

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, defragging? We’ll not limit ourselves to just those items either. Any tool you use to help service computers or keep them running smoothly, I’m interested in hearing about it.

Post from: EveryJoe

What’s In Your Computer App Toolbox

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 want to try is DeepVacuum, an app that will allow me to download local copies of web sites. This will come in useful if I want to try and deconstruct a site that I’m trying to learn from.

So if you’re a freelancer or a Mac user at that, try out the apps listed on this article. Most of them are great and best of all free.

Post from: EveryJoe

Free Apps For Freelancers

[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 means, every single crucial contact you’ve found by sweat and hard work will be secured on your Mac. So you can always use your data whether or not you have Internet access.

In short, whatever happens to your company or the economy, your sales lists will be safe.

Check it out here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Backup SalesForce Data

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 “why not”. So off I went to download the application and give it a go.

I must say I’m generally happy with the app. I’m thinking it’s worth the $40 price tag.

It’s just plain easier to have an app remember your passwords but not only that you can create identities and have it fill up the fields that you need to fill up when signing up for a new service. It can also generate new passwords for you. Cool.

One of the drawbacks I’ve seen is that it doesn’t work too well with some AJAX driven sites such as Digg or Flash driven sites such as Picnik. I don’t know if it’s just me but I had trouble logging in to both using this app. Apart from that it’s been good.

There’s a free iPhone/iPod Touch app that you can use in tandem with the desktop app.

Check out their video here. Download a trial version here.

[Image courtesy of Agile Web Solutions]

Post from: EveryJoe

App Of The Week: 1Password

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 small for their intended use. I know I’ve had this problem. So I decided to download PhotoZoom Pro 2 and see for myself. The results were pretty good.

Considering my source image was poor to begin with, when I enlarged it, it came out ok. It’s pixelated a little but then again I did start from a poor image. Given that, the enlargement was pretty decent.

The software was easy to use and straight forward.

So if you need image enlargements, I think this is a good bet. There’s a trial version for Mac and Windows. Download it here.

Check out my sample below.

Original Image

Enlarged Image

Post from: EveryJoe

Image Enlargement

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 gave me two licenses to give away and I thought WWDC (a second Christmas for Mac fans) would be a good time to give away some extra presents prizes.

So here are the rules:

• Only on topic comments will be counted as entries.
• Use your name and email address. Anonymous comments won’t count.
• Apple fanatics can sometimes cause disagreements. That’s ok. Just keep it civil.

So keep your eyes open for new posts as the details emerge from this year’s WWDC. Be a part of the conversation and get a shot at one of two licenses for the amazing TextExpander.

Tags: WWDC, Apple Community, TextExpander, Contest

Post from: EveryJoe

WWDC Conversation Equals Free Mac Software

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 and if you have been following Mac productivity sites for any length of time you have probably heard the gist of what it does.

TextExpander takes programmed abbreviations and turns them into to plain text, formatted text, or picture snippets.

For instance. If I type "/sig" and I get my long email signature. One I just programmed in… "/tam" gets me The After Mac.

Now for some things you might not know, especially if you haven’t looked at TextExpander in a while.

CAPITALIZATION AND DELIMITATION

I use the / key to separate things like tam from tame. With my preferences set the way they are, if I used tam as my The After Mac shortcut, I would get a replacement every time I tried to type any word that starts with tam. But, I can set a delimiter and or case sensitive rules instead.

So instead of adding the slash, I could make my shortcut TAM. I probably wouldn’t type tame as TAME very often. But, I might type TAMPA now and then.

Another option is utilizing the delimiter. This is basically a character (or group of characters) that act as the execution directive. With this option enabled, TextExpander doesn’t go to work until you press the space key (for example). This means the only time tam would get expanded would be if it stood alone as its own word.

APPLICATION SPECIFIC

Another great feature of TextExpander (and one that I have got to set up soon), is application specific or application exclusive folders. You can create a folder of snippets that will only work in a particular program or that will specifically not work in a particular program.

The first thing I thought of was all the little IM type phrases people use: lol, rofl, brb. They work great in iChat, but if I am writing an email, I might want them to expand to their actual meaning. So a folder of snippets that excludes functionality in iChat would be just the trick. This means btw would stay btw in iChat, but would become By the way… in an email to my boss.

DATE/TIME

Another little thing that I use regularly is the insertion of date and time. It would automatically give you the current time and date in a variety of formats. I use /time for 10:53 AM. I use /date for Wednesday, May 28, 2008. These come in handy when writing a letter, email, or taking notes in a meeting.

I was the secretary on the board of a non-profit for a year and I would type /time at every full pause in my notes just to keep an eye on how long different points of conversation were taking.

The other time/date thing i do is /tdate. This gives me something like this. 05_28_08 105624. I use this when creating files that are going to be versioned and want a new name for each version. Instead of rough1.psd, rough2.psd, rough3.psd, etc… I get rough 05_28_08 105754.psd, rough 05_28_08 105819.psd, rough 05_28_08 105834.psd, etc… Much easier to tell which is first and I know instantly which was created when if I decided to go back to an older version.

AUTO CORRECT

Do you find yourself mistyping the same word regularly? I constantly type receive wrong. Word has that nifty auto correct built in, but the rest of my computer doesn’t. Until TextExpander. There are actually two snippet groups you can install that are preprogrammed with Auto Correct snippets or you can just create your own for that handful of phrases that you have problems with.

If you have not checked out TextExpander in a while, download the demo and give it a shot. The cost is $29.95 after the 30 day trial, but well worth it, imo (see… if I had set up my iChat snippets that would have expanded to in my opinion).

What great snippets do you have programmed or what great snippets would you program if you had a copy?

Post from: EveryJoe

Eliminate Repetive Stress Disorder with Fewer Keystrokes

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 about all those digital camera pics and files you named hastily.

Say hello to Name Mangler.

Name Mangler is a utility for the Mac that allows you to drag a file (or whole group of files) onto it’s icon and it batch renames them all for you by rules you set. Do you find yourself using the same rule over and over? Turn one of your rules into a droplet and it is even more automatic and faster.

I love this for my digital camera files. Which one would you rather be searching for in spotlight?

DSCN0298.JPG

or

Mexico2006-001.jpg

I have over 900 pictures from 5 different photographers on that trip. Renaming them by hand would have been out of the question.

It can also rename by folder structure and can incorporate the existing file name into the new name. This is useful for a folder that has all of a clients files in it, but no particular naming scheme.

For Example: If final.psd, roughs.psd, small-graphic.jpg, logo.jpg, & project-todo.doc are all in the folder PBL, Feed Mangler could turn them into PBL-052508-final.psd, PBL-052508-roughs.psd, PBL-052508-small-graphic.jpg, PBL-052508-logo.jpg, & PBL-052508-project-todo.doc. [This may not seem like a big deal, but when you are searching for the final document for a particular project you don't want spotlight to return a bunch of final.psd files so you have to check out each one.]

Name Mangler is Leopard only, but you can use the older version, File List (link on site), on Tiger. Both are donationware.

Post from: EveryJoe

A Great Way To Manage Your File Names