The creators of the program, ‘The Little App Factory’, suggest that ripping your DVD’s to your mac hard drive will save your macbook battery, since ‘Laptops use a lot more juice when they’re spinning a DVD and a hard drive’. While this may be true, I think it’s rather clear that any DVD ripping program will most likely be used in order to copy borrowed or rented movies to your computer, to save yourself from purchasing it. It is from this perspective that I shall conduct my review!

The first thing you notice when RipIt is launched is the creators definitely kept in mind that Mac’s are supposed to be incredibly ‘easy’ to operate. Instead of providing us with any options, we are simply supplied with a directive, ‘Insert DVD’ (). Let us oblige and see what happens!

In keeping with the simple theme of RipIt, things don’t get much more complicated once the DVD is loaded (and once we close the obnoxious DVD Player app which no doubt automatically launched and began playback of your DVD). The RipIt display updates with the name of the DVD you have inserted, as well as as the size. Two options are also available to us, ‘Rip’, as well as ‘Compress’ (). Simple right?

Clicking ‘Rip’ begins to extract the DVD straight to your hard drive. This option creates an exact replica of the DVD, so bear in mind it will likely take over 8 GB of storage space for the average movie. The format used to save the file is known as ‘dvdmedia’, and double clicking this file will open the DVD in Mac’s built in DVD Player. For the average movie, this process will take approximately 40 minutes (based upon the performance of a pretty old Mac Mini, so your results will hopefully be slightly faster).

If you don’t have the space available to create an exact replica of the DVD on your hard drive, then RipIt offers the ‘Compress’ option as well. This option extracts the DVD in the same fashion as ‘Rip’, however after ripping the DVD to your hard drive, it converts the DVD to a smaller format. The converting process takes around 60 minutes (once again, based upon my old Mac Mini). As you can imagine, a smaller file size results in slightly lower sound and video quality.

Something to keep in mind : Before you are able to ‘Compress’ your DVD, you need to install additional software. You will be prompted to do so once you press the ‘Compress’ button (). The download is very quick, which led me to question why it wasn’t included in the application to begin with ().

RipIt does not contain extensive preferences options, which makes sense considering the simplicity of the application (). There is nothing spectacular in the general preferences tab for you to play with. Here, you can set the location of the ripped movies, you can choose to automatically begin ripping DVDs once you insert them (I am unsure as to how valuable this option is…), as well as options to turn off some of the eye candy, such as as the spinning DVD animation, as well as the dock icon labels. One notable option is the ability to turn on or off the anonymous reporting of successful rips. Please leave this checked! It helps out the community, and it doesn’t implicate you in any way.

In the ‘Compress’ preferences tab, there are some important options to set which will affect how your ‘Compress’ button operates (). When you rip the entire DVD by clicking the ‘Rip’ button, it includes all of the languages, subtitles, etc. However, when using the ‘Compress’ option, it’s a good idea to set your preferred language and not leave it up to the computer to detect. Secondly, you can also set the type of video you want to convert the DVD into. High Quality MP4, Xbox 360, iPhone/Touch, Apple TV, as well as PS3 are the choices available (). Once again, pretty self explanatory, pretty easy to use!

In order to give you an idea of how the program looks, feels, and operates, I’ve created a quick video outlining my first attempt at using RipIt.

As you can see, there isn’t much to this program. It has one job, and to be honest, it seems to do it quite well. I’ve read quite a few reviews stating that RipIt was only successful in ripping around 10% of the DVDs they inserted. I have experienced much higher success (somewhere around 100% after 9 DVDs), and so I question the validity of these reviews, as well as how obscure the movies are which they are watching! However, you do get 10 free rips with the demo version; make sure to test your DVDs before buying!

It’s important to note that many free program exist which can also rip DVDs to your hard drive, notable MacTheRipper and HandBrake. Both can be extremely effective, both are also very customizable, and both are much more complex to operate. As a result, there are a lot of Mac users who criticize the existence of a program like RipIt. However, even seasoned Mac experts can quickly come to enjoy just how simple RipIt is to operate. In seconds, you can create an exact DVD replica on your hard drive, or start converting a DVD to the proper format for your iPhone. It really takes out any guess work, any googling, and any uncertainty when trying to get that DVD on your computer, or on your iPhone, Xbox 360, etc. Furthermore, ‘The Little App Store’ guarantees that ALL DVD’s will rip properly, and if it doesn’t, they will personally buy the DVD and fix the issue (Which sounds great, and I hope they follow through on that guarantee). For myself, it is an easy purchase. $20 is a small price to pay for a nice GUI app which effectively does what it’s supposed to do.

Date of the review : April 11th, 2010
Version reviewed : 1.4.1
Download the demo here : http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/
Full-version price : $19.95 (USD)

Upon launching SizeUp, you are greeted with a complex looking preferences window (). Though this screen can look intimidating, it is actually quite well setup. At this time, you may not know what each option actually means, however hovering over the action text displays a ‘tooltip’ with an explanation of what behaviour that action entails, which is quite useful (). Though I have kept the default keyboard shortcuts, you may choose to change them at this time to something less cumbersome. Keep in mind that at any time, you can use the Menu Bar icon to both use the actions with the mouse, and to get a quick refresher of the keystrokes you set for the action shortcuts ().

SizeUp has a fairly comprehensive range of options. Four ’split screen actions’ are available. Each will place the window as taking up ‘50%’ of the screen horizontally or vertically. (If you don’t want a 50/50 split, you can adjust this in the ‘partitions’ tab) (). In addition, four ‘quadrant’ actions are available as well. By default this splits your window into 4 ‘quarters’ to place your wndows in, however once again under partitions you can adjust just how ‘big’ each quadrant is (25% is overrated!) ().

SizeUp also allows you to take advantage of your multiple monitors with specific actions directed to send windows to and from each monitor. And for those of you who can actually wrap your head around and use spaces effectively, there are actions to send windows to and from the individual spaces.

SizeUp comes with an ‘undo’ feature called ’snapback’, which restores the window to however it was positioned before you began adjusting it with SizeUp. There is also an action to maximize your window, as well as an action to center the window on your screen (along with options to set the size of the window upon centering).

The ‘General’ tab allows you to set some system options, such as starting the program on computer launch ().

Lastly, ‘Margins’ allow you to set screen margins (i.e. how close to the screen edge the windows go), as well as the space between the windows themselves. This lets you make things more attractive, by adding a bit of ‘padding’ in between each window (Shadows aren’t overrated!) ().

As you can see, though this program is designed to perform a fairly small task, it has a comprehensive range of preferences and features. In Windows 7, the ‘Snap’ feature has proved incredibly useful, and so my initial hopes for SnapUp were quite high. The idea of snapping open windows to certain parts of the screen will likely appeal the most to the multi-tasking computer user, and those of us who require the use of many different windows and programs opened concurrently in order to accomplish a task. I know I have personally gotten lost in the Command-Tab world when working on complex tasks, and it becomes very tiresome to always resize windows to fit everything on the screen at once. Being able to quickly setup your screen real estate to maximize each pixel then has some obvious advantages.

I have documented my first attempt of using this program, so that together we can discover if this program is useful, intuitive, and something worth keeping around. You’ll see I have three open windows which are overlapping; a movie is playing, a finder window is open, and a Chrome window is open (guess what is being written inside that Chrome window!). I could potentially resize these windows myself, so that I would be able to view all three at once, however I will be using SizeUp to do so. Let’s see how it goes!

As you can see, even on my first attempt of using SizeUp it’s a very intuitive program (though I do have experience with ‘Snap’ in Windows 7). Adding the margin made the windows look much more attractive, and there is something about the window symmetry which just delights my geek-heart. I do find this type of program to be extremely useful, and I believe it will increase productivity and efficiency enough to justify it’s $13 price tag (not to mention reducing frustration).

=-=-=-= Update =-=-=-=

I have been using the program for a few days now, and wanted to give an update based upon more comprehensive use. It was very easy to integrate this program into my daily computer routine, and the keyboard shortcuts have already become second nature to me. It feels so ‘right’ to use this program, and is definitely a ‘missing feature’ of OS X. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple include a similar feature in future versions of OS X.

I’ve begun to take advantage of some of the preferences possible with SizeUp. I have adjusted my halves and quadrants so that the windows are not split equally, but one side of my screen ‘dominates’, which is where I place my main working window.

In the future, I would like to see this program move beyond the idea of ‘quadrants’. For example, with my main window open upon the left size of my screen, I would like to have 3 ’snappable’ areas on the right; each taking up 33% of the screen. Currently, it is only possible to make 2 ’snappable’ areas. A great feature would be to allow as many ‘partitions’ as possible, though this will obviously complicate the currently very simple and intuitive design of the program.

However, the program is very well polished. The options are straightforward, and the developers seem committed to making sure the user has the best possible experience with their products. Be sure to check out their website (http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/) in order to see a list of applications which they ackowledge don’t work quite up to par with SizeUp. Hopefully they can solve some of these issues (The Adobe limitation seems like it may deter some individuals, though Adobe products generally have their own workspace management system).

Again, for $13 this is a fantastic program. I would recommend anyone who has used WIndows 7 and fallen in love with ’snapping’ to get this program. I would also recommend that anyone who is obsessive compulsive and loves symmetry to get this program, as well as any people who really need to make the most of their desktop real estate and are tired of manually resizing windows!

Date of the review : April 5th, 2010
Version reviewed : 1.2.1
Download the demo here : http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/
Full-version price : $13.00 (USD)

iChm, by Robin Lu, is a free and powerful CHM file viewer for the Mac operating system. It is the solution to this problem, and you can download it here. Just follow the steps below in order to print your entire CHM file or convert it to PDF.

1) Open your document (File >> Open)

2) Click the ‘Print’ icon or use the context menus (File >> Print)

3) To print your document, select your printer from the drop-down box and select ‘Print’

4) To convert your document to PDF, click ‘PDF’ in the bottom left corner of the print dialogue box, and select ‘Save as PDF’

And that’s it!

Often, users of the MagicJack experience a problem where the MagicJack is recognized by your pc, but for some reason it is not working. For example, the ‘dial’ screen is not popping up. If your MagicJack is not working properly, one solution is to uninstall the drivers, and then reinstalling them. This video goes over the process involved in doing so.

iMovie Mono to Stereo Sound from Joe on Vimeo.

Mono audio tracks are perfectly fine for podcasts, but leave much to be desired for other media. iMovie 2009 does not provide a method for converting mono audio tracks (likely recorded with a computer microphone) to stereo.

This video covers how to solve this problem, using features built in to iMovie as well as the free, open-sourced audio editor ‘Audacity’ (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/).

www.MacNuggets.ca

This is especially useful when reading through a long web page (for example, Google News), e-mail, or SMS text message log, where you need to he at the tip of the window to enter a new website, reply to the email, or call the person who you’ve been messaging.

There are very little preferences available for this program, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The authour seemed to have a simple goal, to beautify Craigslist, and in this he succeeded. However, given that the normal Craiglist interface, while cluttered and cumbersome at times, isn’t very bad to begin with, it is hard to argue a reason to purchase this program. Enjoy the 25 day demo, and then go back to the normal Craigslist!

• Search multiple regions at a time
• Add items to ‘Favourites’ with a click
• Integration with ‘Mail’ and ‘Safari’ (or your browser)
• Narrow your results with unlimited and customizable filters

The Good Simple and clean looking interface No learning curve, preferences are few and easily set Growl integration Easily filter results, easily check if you’ve visited certain results, and easily bookmark results

The Bad Craigslist isn’t that ugly to begin with! It’s easy to use, so it’s hard to justify paying extra money to browse a free service, despite the usefulness of the filters and multi-region searcing Some small bugs which haven’t been worked out yet (But the authour seems committed to fixing bugs which are brought to his attention in a timely manner)