Twitter follower Jason Verly is interested in learning my technique for auto-filtering email. When I mentioned that doing this requires Outlook he didn’t shy away.
The two key components are Outlook and Stairways Software’s $36 Keyboard Maestro. The latter is an outstanding macro program that I use to fire off a series of Outlook commands.
I use this technique to handle the scads of PR releases I receive each day. In general terms, it allows me to add a sender to Outlook’s contacts and then assign a specific category to that contact. When future messages from that sender arrive, they are moved to a specific folder via a rule I’ve created within Outlook.
With online accounting applications, there is one truism you can hold on to: No one app is perfect, no not one. All offer essentially the same tools for keeping your business finances on track, but none offer what can be considered a complete set of tools. And none can perfectly satisfy every business’ needs. The reality is that none of these apps are exceptional, but all are serviceable, which, perhaps, is all you need in any business accounting application.
All of these apps do a fine job of the basics: Invoicing, reporting, and automatic import of banking data and reconciliation of accounts. All also offer apps for invoicing and accessing your data with mobile devices and each also offer varying degrees of customization for your invoices and statements.
When you write in a word processor or text editor on OS X, you might want the app to do more than record your words as unadorned plain text. In addition to specifying formatting (such as font style and type size), you may want to insert things like smart (or “curly”) quotes and live, clickable links. You may want your spelling and grammar to be checked as you type. And you may wish to insert certain bits of text automatically, to save time.
While some word processors and text editors have built-in tools to do all of the above and more, others don’t. That’s why it’s a good thing that OS X has its own system-wide text-manipulation tools, which allow you to substitute and transform characters and words in a variety of ways and which are available in many apps where you have to type text. But these settings aren’t necessarily easy to find, and it’s not always obvious what they do.
LG has taken some time to gain traction in the mobile devices segment, watching on as its arch-rival Samsung has taken the spotlight with its Android-powered Galaxy S smartphones, Galaxy Tab tablets and Galaxy Note devices. Consumer acceptance of its d…
When Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover first came out, it caused something of a minor stir in the iPad world. It was the very first keyboard cover, solving a problem many people probably didn’t realize they had: finding a Bluetooth keyboard that’s mo…
Without question, LEGO Legends of Chima Online is geared towards younger gamers. It is, after all, based on a toy line and a CG-animated TV show on Cartoon Network. But don’t write it off just yet — this is a massively multiplayer online action-RPG in which a driving motivation is to collect loot. In many ways, Legends of Chima Online is like a simplified Diablo, and that’s why it can work for older gamers, too.
The world of Legends of Chima is one in which humanoid animals (à la the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) are divided into tribes that battle over a resource called Chi. You — as a bear, eagle, gorilla, or lion — must tackle a wide array of quests, most of which require you to hack and slash enemy crocodiles. All of these actions are achieved via motions on the touch screen: tap on a target to shoot, and swipe on it to slash. It’s a simple yet effective mechanic, but the combat can become repetitive and imprecise. And Legends of Chima Online is definitely best enjoyed on an iPad, thanks to its larger screen. No matter the hardware, though, the game suffers from occasional slowdown.
Victory often leads to rewards in the form of studs (the currency used to purchase most stuff) and loot. You can pick up new weapons and armor that not only affect your appearance, but also stats such as HP (hit points) and DPS (damage per second), allowing you to dispatch foes at a faster rate; playing cooperatively with friends certainly doesn’t hurt, either. In addition to these accessories, you can acquire blueprints for new weapons, as well as LEGO bricks with which to build them.
Crafting is done at your Outpost, the place wherein the game throws a city-building component into the mix. Here you’ll place structures that generate studs or give your character additional powers. As in games like The Simpsons: Tapped Out, you’ll have to wait for stuff to finish building, but you can accelerate construction times with earnable/purchasable gold bricks.
This is business as usual for most free-to-play titles. The real roadblock if you want to play without dropping a cent comes with the amount of available real estate in your Outpost. The default area has about enough space for four buildings, and in order to have the option of expanding your Outpost (which will still cost you studs/gold bricks), you’ll have to pay for a monthly membership, costing $7.99 for one month, $35.99 for six, or $59.99 for 12. It’s a pretty severe restriction for those who want to play for free, but on the bright side, you can keep your Outpost expansions even after your membership expires.
The bottom line. LEGO Legends of Chima Online is lightweight kids’ stuff, but it has some elements that could appeal to players of all ages who are craving Diablo-style action.
As our iPhones have matured, so have our apps. What used to be a sea of simple utilities with very mobile mindsets has evolved into a rich landscape of powerful tools, which continue to amaze us with what can be accomplished on a 4-inch screen. Zippy is the sort of app that shows us just how far our devices have come. As a basic to-do manager, it does its job well enough for a recommendation, but developer Amit Wadhawan embraces the power and modernism of iOS 7 to pump a little pizzazz into the stale concept and put it over the top.
There’s nothing particularly special about Zippy’s task management, but it certainly stacks up to similar apps we’ve used, starting with its colorful interface and clean task screen. Pressing the coral-colored plus symbol brings up a blurred overlay creation screen that lets you describe your task and set a due date. To-do tasks are automatically arranged in chronological order, but a system of filterable tags helps with organization and prevents important events from getting lost in large lists. Items can be deleted or completed with a swipe, and if you need a little more time to get something done, a snooze button will delay due dates for up to a day. The navigation is fast and fairly foolproof, but we wish there were few features for power users — like the addition of notes or location-aware alerts.
But where other apps stop after something is done, Zippy takes it to another level. As you create, discard, and finish your tasks, the app builds a dynamic infographic that tracks and charts your habits, highlighting good trends and bad habits and helping to make your life run more efficiently. Each of the seven graphs focuses on a different element of your tasks, creating a snapshot of what you’re doing and when you’re doing it. It’s all a bit generic — for example, you can’t exclude routine tasks or separate by tags — but that won’t stop you from marveling at its capabilities.
The bottom line. Zippy makes your mundane tasks look anything but routine.
Just as we did last month, Macworld staffers got together to chat about the best apps they’ve been using recently. Here are some that have recently captured our imaginations (and perhaps a spot on our homescreens), whether they’re tiny apps from budding developers or the top-grossing apps that everyone is using. Our hope is that, while you might recognize some of these apps, others you might never have encountered. All of them, we think, are worth a look.
Chris Breen: Waterlogue
I’m old enough to have used really bad cameras back in the day, and so the charm of purposefully applying a filter to a good image to make it look like a poor one is lost on me. But I haven’t entirely given up on image-munging apps: I just prefer those that lend something truly beautiful to my images.
In this week’s column, I look at some interesting questions about getting apps for iOS devices that aren’t using iOS 7, about viewing album art in playlists on iTunes, and about keeping certain tracks from rearing their heads when you’re listening in shuffle mode. I also explain how to set up smart playlists to sort your music by the first letter of artists’ names.
Obtaining older versions of apps
Q: I have an iPad 2 that I don’t want to upgrade to iOS 7 because it would be too slow. My wife has an iPhone 4 that she is keeping on iOS 6 for the same reason. When we go to iTunes, it shows us apps that are incompatible with these devices. Is there any way I can get the older versions of apps if I need them?
For the past six seasons, MLB.com At Bat has delivered a baseball experience so realistic that you can practically smell the digital grass. With a remarkable system that tracks every ball and strike with impeccable accuracy, it’s been the go-to app for on-the-go fans, combining lifelike graphics and real-time stats into the best sports app we’ve ever used.
In fact, At Bat was so ahead of its time, it felt as fresh during the 2013 World Series as it did upon launching in 2008, despite little more than a series of relatively minor updates between earlier versions. Still, Major League Baseball used the offseason to give the pro sports-leading formula its first major update. But while it brings a slew of visual changes that freshen things up for iOS 7, the overhaul is mostly cosmetic in nature, leaving a somewhat streamlined experience that doesn’t quite deliver the home run we hoped for.
The first thing previous At Bat users will notice is the fresh new design. It’s not a shocking change, but everything is just a little cleaner than before. Thinner fonts and darker transparencies make the box scores and play-by-play window much neater, and we particularly enjoy the accents that changed to match the color of our favorite team. Videos are now given prominence, particularly on the iPhone, saving a few taps and making it easier to catch highlights from games you’re not closely following. Stats are just as plentiful as before, but iPad users get a bit more control over them, with sortable categories that let you break down every position.
We experienced a few crashes and a couple of annoying notification bugs, but the bulk of our frustrations came with inconsistencies that persist between the two formats. MLB has crafted an excellent app that works across iOS devices, but there’s a separation that hasn’t quite been rectified. For one, it’s still portrait-only on iPhone (except for videos), so the stunning ballpark visuals remain just as truncated as before. On the iPad side, the most glaring limitation is the lack of a proper favorite team page to mirror the iPhone’s customizable screen of news, videos, and schedules, forcing iPad users to jump between several tabs to get the same information.
Also, MLB.TV subscribers — who fork over $110 per season in addition to At Bat’s yearly $19.99 in-app fee for premium features — are still subjected to ancient blackout rules that keep them from enjoying live feeds from their local team at times.
The bottom line. We’re still die-hard fans of MLB.com At Bat after all these years, but we hoped that the iOS 7 overhaul would bring more than pretty window dressing.
Shattering a pane of glass can bring a moment of sheer joy — or abject terror, depending on intentions — but the resulting expense and hassle rarely balance out the fun. Smash Hit provides a remarkably vivid simulation of splintering glass, letting you toss metal balls at shiny digital sheets and watch the shards fly, but it’s not a gimmick app. That sensation instead forms the core of an entertaining and smartly balanced survival game, wherein precise timing and aiming let you continue crashing ahead through the colorful levels.
Viewed from a first-person perspective with a thankfully light UI overlay, Smash Hit propels you steadily forward through minimal block-based worlds, where large panes of glass — most moving or popping up from out of view — and little blue crystals await your attention. Tapping the screen heaves a metal ball, which removes one from your tally, and you’ll keep moving ahead so long as you have at least one sphere at hand. Clearing crystals adds to your stockpile, while hitting 10 crystals in a row triggers a multi-ball modifier, which adds an extra one to each toss (up to five total) without further draining the count.
Smash Hit only tallies your total distance — there’s no score awarded for smashing glass or throw accuracy, for example — so resisting the urge to break everything and focusing on managing inventory becomes paramount. Some panes of glass might not be in your straight-ahead path; don’t waste tosses on those. Only the panes in your path need to be cleared, as running into one deducts 10 balls, which will cut down a solid run in a hurry. Conserve tosses, be vigilant, and maintain the multi-ball effect, and you’ll push on and on through each uniquely designed area. Later locales introduce a spinning screen effect or amp up the speed, and the intriguing twists keep this free-to-play offering exciting.
Starting over from scratch each run can turn a bit tiring, since the early areas are slow-paced, simple, and never-changing, so it’s worth paying the one-time $1.99 fee within to unlock use of checkpoints, which let you pick back up at a previous spot with the same number of balls you had back when. That makes it a lot easier to learn individual areas, and lets you focus on the more enticing later content — though it’s still worth starting from scratch from time to time to improve your overall run and then dig deeper into what Smash Hit has to offer.
The bottom line. Smash Hit turns the simple pleasure of shattering glass into an enjoyable arcade-style cruise through abstract terrain.
Though Notification Center’s Do Not Disturb feature first made an appearance in Mountain Lion, it wasn’t until Mavericks that the feature really got its due. Here are a few tips for getting the most out of it.
Transcript
This is senior editor Dan Moren. You’re probably familiar with Notification Center, the OS X feature that collects alerts and messages from a variety of apps and even Internet services. But Mavericks upgraded the capabilities of one feature: Do Not Disturb. Here are a couple of quick tips about getting the most out of it.
There are a few ways to enable Do Not Disturb. One of the quickest—and my favorite—is to hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click the Notification Center icon in the top right corner of your menu bar. This automatically activates Do Not Disturb until the following day, just in case you’re just feeling a bit harried and don’t want to be bothered. You can accomplish the same thing by activating Notification Center, scrolling down, and then clicking the Do Not Disturb slider.
iHome’s $150 DL100 (which the company describes as a “Triple Charging Stereo FM Clock Radio with Two Lightning Docks and USB Charge/Play for iPad/iPhone and iPod”) is cooler in concept than in practice. It’s a fine clock, a fine charging station, and a decent speaker. But it’s a lackluster alarm clock, and alarm-clock features have always been what makes iHome’s products stand out from the crowd.
The DL100’s standout feature is the capability to charge three devices simultaneously. The top surface hosts two Lightning-connector docks—one for an iPhone or iPod, and the other, with a sturdy back support, for an iPad (full size or mini). On the back of the DL100 is a USB port for charging a third device. You can use the DL100’s speakers to listen to an iOS device connected to any of the three connectors.
Akitio has expanded its line of Thunderbolt accessories with its new Thunder dock. With eSATA, FireWire 800, USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt pass-through, the new accessory aims to provide a sensible set of additional ports for most MacBooks manufactured in th…
Sector is a totally unique, vastly powerful, and well-designed beat manipulation tool for iPad that stirs together audio and math in a way that astounds and delights. The description of a “stochastic sample slice sequencer” might scare some off, but fear not: this is a beauty of a beast.
You begin by importing a sampled sound file – a drum app like DM1 is a great place to start, but you can bring in audio files via iTunes, the general pasteboard, or the excellent AudioShare app (created by the same developer as Sector). Once imported, it’s mapped into a circular, looping display, and sliced into a specific number of sectors, or segments (from two to 32 chunks), each with its own color. If you do nothing else and hit the “run” button, the imported sound will simply play back normally.
But things start to get interesting as you program “probability links” by tapping on combinations of different sectors, creating jumps in the playback that are based on randomness and probability. If you want to enforce some order in the chaos, switching to the secondary Seq(uencer) screen lets you hardwire specific sectors to trigger at exact positions in the loop, while still retaining randomness where applicable. While this all surely sounds a bit confusing, the tastefully sparse and colorful interface really helps with the process of learning, alongside the decent online manual — a must-read before going too crazy inside the app.
Four programmable sector buttons along the bottom right allow you to manually force a specific sector to play back when the current one is done, and there are also controls for instantly linking a selected sector to all others, as well as flipping the symmetry of the existing links. A third screen, Warp, puts all sorts of playback effects – backwards, jitter, speed up/down, and random speeds – on the table, which can be assigned to selected sectors.
Up to four effects can be used at a time, with controllable probability determining which will be applied with each playback pass of the selected sector. And it gets even wilder: all of these controls are tweakable in real-time while playback is happening, which makes Sector perfect for live performance. The lack of external MIDI sync and built-in recording abilities are definite drawbacks, but the developer claims that both are coming via update.
The bottom line. Despite missing a couple of notable features (for now), Sector is one of the most innovative and entertaining audio apps you’ll ever encounter.
Here we find that most elusive of creatures: a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) strategy game for iOS that’s not compromised by a free-to-play model. Autumn Dynasty Warlords scores a victory on that front alone. This tale of martial ambition in ancient China may have a harder time conquering on some other fronts, but its simple strengths usually suffice to rout its flaws.
It’s essentially Shogun: Total War Lite, delivering a compact take on that PC favorite. Warlords is designed for conquests on 10-minute subway rides, and thus it lacks the depth of, say, Sid Meier’s Civilization – though what’s here does the trick. Diplomatic missions exist, for instance, but they involve little more than clicking on an officer and sending him to chat or trade with rivals. City building, that old mobile strategy standby, also guest stars here to let you train new units and generate resources, but space limits keep it from detracting from Warlords’ focus on bite-sized schemes. Each element yields enough complexity that the tutorial pop-ups never sufficiently explain Warlords’ nuances, but the gameplay’s straightforward enough that you should pick them up on your own.
All of this is secondary to the dirty business of war and the multiple battles it takes to conquer a province. There’s beauty here that gives new meaning to the “art of war,” both in the attractive aesthetic inspired by early Chinese watercolors and in the sweeping brushstrokes that trail your fingers as you direct troop movements through terrain. Pity, then, that it sometimes fades in battle. Troops tend to work as intended, but strategy falls flat as soldiers automatically attack when they’re near enemies (and bugged foes may not fight at all), and the limited troop selections for both sides sometimes turn warfare into barefaced games of rock-paper-scissors.
Other aspects threaten to spoil the fun, such as the absence of a multiplayer mode and the ever-present time limits for battles. Master Autumn Dynasty Warlords’ quirks and start to expand your empire, however, and you’ll discover a rewarding mobile strategy experience that currently has few peers.
The bottom line. Autumn Dynasty Warlords does a great job of translating 4X strategy for mobile play, although its simplicity threatens the appeal of its combat.
