Mac Mode

Just enter the promo code “MACSANTA” and save 20% for anything listed on this page through 12/25. They have an RSS feed too so you can keep up with new additions.

Do you do a lot of copy/paste stuff? I do. iClip which retails for $19.99 is being offered for a limited time, thanks to macZot, for free. Hurry and download it here before July 2.

Hat tip to Lifehacker.

mexicanpictures.com has a list of 11 semi-obscure Mac programs including: live search for Safari Inquisitor, sBook, Saft Firefox extension like support in Safari, Flip4Mac to play non-DRM Windows Media files in Quicktime, AppleJack, Growl, tweak iChat with Chax, Soundstream, keyboard navigation with Witch, Delicious Library for organizing your media library and finally Jumpcut, a multiple clipboard organizer.

Create and share your own comics with Comic Life which is published by freeverse. It’s as easy as dragging, dropping, selecting and typing. It took me 30 minutes to create the comic shown below with zero prior experience:

I saw Comic Life at the local Megastore and was surprised to see the following testimonial as the top of box blurb: “Runs well, looks amazing, and does something so incredibly unique.” - Chris Pirillo, lockergnome.com. How about that Chris, you are a box star?!

I laid down the $29.99 (it’s only $24.99 if you buy from their website, I discovered later — doh) and took it home planning to install and check out when I had a few minutes.

After carefully knifing open the contents — the comic makes it look like this is some kind of struggle, but thats all in good fun — I removed the CD and stuck it into the eMac drive. Just had to drag the folder over to the desktop and then click on the CL icon to enter in the Comic Life code (found on the front of the instruction manual.

From there it’s a matter of choosing a comic template, dragging and dropping pictures from iPhoto or elsewhere on your Mac, adding captions and text, modifying the design and voila, you’ll have a comic created. The last step is exporting to a format that can be shared with others. It can be exported as an HTML document, images, directly to a .Mac account or even as a quicktime movie.

Any application as involved as this that lets a complete newcomer create something cool in 30 minutes or less is better than waiting for pizza to arrive.

Macworld gave this 4 1/2 mice. This is a well designed and implemented application, especially for creative types (my mind is whirring with ideas!). Plasq created Comic Life [official plasq RSS feed].

Haven’t put up any affiliate links or advertisements on this blog yet, but my long term plan has been to link to the Apple store or iTunes if they would accept this blog into their affiliate program. Recently I applied and am happy to report that Friday I received the email from Apple approving Mac Mode!

Apple Store

iTunes Music Store

Now for the handful of readers this blog has reaching to unsubscribe, don’t worry, this isn’t going to fill up with ads. Content comes first in my book and I prefer to review things that I’ve actually bought with my own hard earned money and if others like my personal review, why not put up an affiliate link to the product? I will mark the text links with the word “affiliate” so it’s clear what’s going on.

It has been a year of my Mac ownership and this blog and there hasn’t been a single ad here, so I wouldn’t worry about content changing too much, although I’m hoping in my second year of Mac ownership to post more (shouldn’t be difficult goal to attain). Also, I’m only planning at this time to show Mac-related advertising, so it should all be of interest to fellow Mac-heads.

This reminds me that I really need to write a post outlining the history of my first year as a Mac owner.