Start the Clock! Speed-Up & Chronos Are In This Timely Giveaway

By Cody Fink

Podcasts and getting things done tend to go hand-in-hand at the office. For those who want to blaze through a podcast session, your iPhone offers the ability to speed up your talking heros for a quicker injection of information. Speed-up brings that same control to your Mac via the menubar, and it was reviewed a while ago as a podcast throttle for your Mac.

Chronos is also an app we recently reviewed, and continues our time theme by keeping track of various tasks and projects on your Mac. It’s very simple to use, and can accommodate a Mac user as a progress indicator from the dock or menubar.

We’re giving away four copies of each, and we recommend that you check out Speed-up and Chronos in the Mac App Store before clicking past to the giveaway after the break.

Twitterrific 4 Update Hides Dock Icon, Opens Links in Background

By Cody Fink

Twitterrific 4 Update

All hands on the Mac App Store! Get your update button ready for Twitterrific 4.0.1, a substantial update to the already awesome Twitter client that’s bringing loads of cool new features. Now supporting key commands for page-up & page-down, you’ll also find a “Full Metal Ollie” who’s ready to take on some of the client’s advanced features. Per your requests, you can now hide Twitterrific in the dock, open links in the background by default, and get notified of important mentions and messages through Growl.

If you don’t yet have Twitterrific, a free version is available at Twitterrific.com with ads, while a full version can be had for $9.99 on the site or on the Mac App Store.

March 2nd Liveblog: The iPad’s Second Coming

By Cody Fink

There couldn’t be a more hyped announcement than this week’s Apple Keynote at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on March 2nd, and we’ll be hanging out with all of you guys at a safe distance for when the fireworks misfire. Rumors will be settled, white iPads will be tossed into (non)-existence, and awkward picture moments with new cameras will be had. Plus, you can expect those heart tingling show-stoppers with a Jony Ives speech, and maybe (just maybe) a new look at the next generation of iOS. Excited yet?

Join us at 12:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (that’s the New York gamut) for an hour long pre-show where we’ll kick around iPad predictions, overdose on coffee, and potentially ruin a perfectly good stress ball before the event. As always we’ll be consolidating all of the major announcements into a streamlined feed from everyone’s favorite websites.

Bookmark this page and come back before the event starts on March 2nd for lots of fun, question answering from the audience, and maybe a guest or two.

Time Zones:

13:00 – New York, New York
10:00 – San Francisco, California
08:00 – Honolulu, Hawaii
05:00 – Sydney, Australia
03:00 – Tokyo, Japan
02:00 – Shanghai, China
23:30 – New Delhi, India
21:00 – Moscow, Russia
19:00 – Rome, Italy
18:00 – London, England

Don’t see your city? You can use this link to get your exact time. Read more

A Minimalist Task Manager Could Be Yours: TaskAgent Giveaway

By Cody Fink

TaskAgent is pretty slick for being so simple, and the developer has already promised an update to improve compatibilities with formatting notes on the Mac side of things (and it’s pretty stupid easy already). With such ease, you’re more likely to get things done than organizing lists of to-dos or burying important items in sub-categories of a master-category. For work or at home, those who want the bare essentials may want to check out our previous coverage of TaskAgent before entering our latest giveaway.

MacStories Product Review: Joby GorillaMobile For iPod Touch

By Cody Fink

Joby has an affliction for legs and we wonder if it’s become a fetish. Their trademark product styling involves those signature curvy, twisting joints that allow cameras of all kinds to stabilize on a variety of uneven surfaces, including from the back of car seats, refrigerators, poles, or a rocky mountain landscape. All of their tripods are incredibly versatile, but I got to go hands on with one specifically made for the iPod touch, a variant of the GorillaMobile series. Check past the break for this clingy review!

Turn Twitter Noise Into Signal With Our Smartr For iPhone Giveaway!

By Cody Fink

MacStorians are incredibly Twitter savvy (most of them - we won’t discriminate if you don’t use Twitter), and for the power users who want to turn Twitter into a pure information feed, Smartr is a super client for getting micro-information on the go. Remove annoying Foursquare checkins, save articles for later reading, show page previews instead of links, and do it all with multiple Twitter accounts for business and personal use. We’re giving away five copies of Smartr to our delicious readers, and it’s incredibly simple to join in on the fun. Beforehand you might want to check out Federico’s glowing review, naming Smartr as, “Flipboard for the iPhone.”

What Is Thunderbolt?

By Cody Fink

Thunderbolt technology is what was Intel’s Light Peak. It’s not an Apple technology, but rather the culmination of Intel’s handiwork in combination with Apple’s mini DisplayPort. While Light Peak was developed to work over fiber (literally for light speeds), Thunderbolt is implemented over copper. Despite this, you’re still getting bi-directional (in and out as they say), 10 Gbps connection over a cable, plus a 10 Watt feed so you can power heavy equipment on the go (you don’t get that with USB). For comparison, your current USB 2.0 devices only get 480 Mbps through the cable! With this technology, you can drive multiple inputs including monitors, workstations, and audio equipment without a bird’s nest under your desk.

Apple To Preview Lion & Lion Server: Features AirDrop, New Mail [Updating]

By Cody Fink

Businesswire has lit up with a pair of Apple press releases, one of them being a developer preview for OS X Lion. Mission Control and Launchpad are the prominent features we’ve heard about in the past, and Apple is talking about new gestures to zoom in on web pages and switch between full screen apps. More notably is an overhaul of Mail, and other new Mac features you’ll find after the break.

Update: Apple has updated their Mac OS X Lion page to reveal some of the upcoming features. There’s a lot to sort through, and we’re digging into the details.

New MacBooks Could Follow Intel Thunderbolt Announcement, And Yerba Buena Doesn’t Match Up

By Cody Fink

MacRumors suspects that tomorrow’s new MacBook Pros would be officially launched after Intel’s event starting at 9.00 Am Pacific Time. Apple would likely introduce their products as the first to feature Thunderbolt, which isn’t an Apple technology: Thunderbolt is an Intel trademark that can be used across any platform. So what’s the deal with Apple’s mini DisplayPort standard? On Twitter, Arnold Kim writes,

So interesting theory on why mini Display port for LightPeak/Thunderbolt, and not USB…

…basically, USB committee didn’t seem pleased that Intel was going to their port. But guess who designed mini DisplayPort? Yep, Apple.

To differentiate Thunderbolt from USB products, it will feature a new standard connection type which conveniently fits the bill for Apple to step with their port. The mini DisplayPort is freely licensed by Apple, and would explain this afternoon’s speculative images.

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