Recently, Elgato released EyeTV for the iPhone (AppStore Link). At a cost of $4.99, its marketing blurb offers the following functionality:

With the EyeTV app, you can watch, record, and enjoy live and recorded TV on your iPhone or iPod touch. At last, you don‘t have to leave all your great TV shows at home; the EyeTV app puts the power of award-winning EyeTV in the palm of your hand.

The EyeTV app accesses EyeTV running on your Mac at home to deliver these great features to your iPhone:

• Watch live TV and change channels anywhere (Wi-Fi connection required)
• Watch your EyeTV recordings
• Browse the comprehensive Program Guide
• Start recordings back home on your Mac immediately or schedule them for later
• View and edit your recording schedules

How Does it Measure Up?

Now that we know the promises, how does the functionality work in practise and does it live up to the hype? To set the picture accurately; my set up is a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 2GB of RAM and two Elgato Digital USB Tuner sticks. This is hooked up to an Airport Express, which extends my existing wireless connection from another room. Between myself and my wife, we have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 2nd Gen, so I will be testing EyeTV on all three looking for differences.

Setting Up and Preparing

After downloading the EyeTV app from iTunes and installing onto my three iDevices, I had to update EyeTV to version 3.2 on my Mac mini by simply checking for updates. Once updated, switching on iPhone streaming was a simple option in the preferences.

There is also functionality for using Elgato’s servers to allow connecting to your EyeTV device from outside your wireless network called “My EyeTV.” This works in a similar manner to Apple’s “Back To My Mac” functionality of MobileMe and requires UPnP support between your EyeTV host and your router. Because I have an AirPort Express extended network, UPnP didn’t work — but I was able to manually configure a port forwarding rule in my router on port 2170 to make the service work.

Advanced options allow you to require a passcode to connecting a device and the option to automatically convert recordings into a format suitable for streaming at a later time. While Live TV does not need to be prepared, recorded content does.

You can however, also prepare recordings manually, on a case-by-case basis.

After starting the iPhone app and entering my “My EyeTV” details, I get the option of connecting via Wi-Fi (on the bottom) and via “My EyeTV” (on top). When connected to my local wireless, the “My EyeTV” connection did not work (of course you wouldn’t want to do this, but the software doesn’t detect this in any way).

Selecting the local Wi-Fi option connects quickly and presents the app’s main menu.

Watching Live TV

Selecting LiveTV gives a list of channels and what is currently showing.

Clicking on the green icon on the right displays the upcoming programs on that channel.

I can then select the current show to get a summary and an option to “Watch Now.”

This process then takes about 20 seconds of processing and streaming before I get picture and sound, which is smooth and crisp and just as one would expect.

Tapping on the screen brings up the controls which allow pausing, rewinding 30 seconds (and jumping back to the live stream), a volume control and resizing between widescreen (just like in the iPod app).

Pressing the ‘gear’ icon displayed in the top right of the channel listing presents a bandwidth/quality settings screen to enable you to tweak the size of the stream. This worked well and allows you to find the right setting for your moment. The lowest setting is about equal to the early days of You Tube while the highest setting is flawless.

Watching Recordings

Pressing the recordings menu gives you a sub menu to narrow down searching for an existing recording.

Selecting an option (such as Library) gives a list of individual recordings.

While there is no way to search directly for a recording, you can sort the list by a number of means.

Unlike live TV, when watching a recording you get full track scrubbing navigation, not just ‘back 30 seconds.’

The quality of recordings is not configurable like LiveTV is, it depends on the quality options you selected for ‘preparing recordings’ on your Mac. Cellular quality is very low and like You Tube, but if you’re on wireless (or on a jailbroken phone with 3G Un-Restrictor) you get full quality.

Schedules

Schedules let you see what upcoming recordings you have scheduled.

All you can do here is browse and remove an item from the schedule.

Guide

The Guide gives you access to the full electronic TV guide available in your Mac’s EyeTV software, this is exactly the same as when browsing the guide for Live TV, except instead of an option to “Watch Now,” the button is “Record,” which will add the show to your recording schedule.

The Verdict

There is no noticeable speed differences with performance between the iPhone 3G, iPod touch 2nd Gen or the iPhone 3GS. The bottleneck here is available bandwidth and the speed of the host computer. Generally, the functionality works as advertised, however there are some limitations to be aware of, and some version 1.0 bugs that need to be squashed.

• Live streaming does not work on 3G, requires Wi-Fi — thanks AT&T, for affecting my functionality in Australia. However, on a jailbroken phone, I was able to successfully use 3G Unrestrictor to fool EyeTV into thinking it was on Wi-Fi, thus allowing it to work. This worked at a much higher quality than I expected and was also very smooth. Well worth the $2.99 it costs for 3G Unrestrictor.
• Streaming only supports one device at a time. Connecting with my iPhone and watching a live TV stream, then connecting with my iPod touch works, but when actually selecting a channel to view on the iPod touch, it drops the stream for the iPhone. This is probably fair enough as one stream is pretty CPU intensive as it is.
• When both recording a show and streaming live TV, I had two instances of the host application crash, requiring a full EyeTV restart to allow connections again.
• When testing across the Internet while on my work’s wireless, or on 3G, I found my iPhone’s EyeTV app constantly crashing whenever it tried to connect. This seemed to be an issue with the EyeConnect helper software on my Mac mini, which needed to be restarted by turning EyeTV sharing off and on again in my Mac mini.
• When stopping a live or recorded stream, the CPU usage on the host computer often stays high for 5-10 minutes. It looks like its continuing to stream data out and didn’t get the ’stop’ message from the iPhone. This does seem to eventually time out and really isn’t a big problem unless the CPU usage causes you a problem.
• It would be a nice option to be able to ‘prepare’ a recording for the iPhone remotely.

Once Elgato gets a software update out for both ends of the solution (iPhone and OS X) to fix the crash bugs and bring stability to the software, this will be absolutely great. Until then, it’s a bit of hit and miss, it may work fine or it may need someone to be at your computer to restart software before it works, which defeats the purpose. Elgato is working hard on its forums to replicate user’s issues and make this stable, so its a bright future ahead.

If you have need to visually demonstrate your product, and you have the resources, then it just makes sense to produce a screencast. With the release of ScreenFlow 2.0, I thought it’d be useful to perform a real-world comparison review of the screencast heavyweight champ versus the relative newcomer (at least to the Mac), Camtasia.

Getting Started

I started this comparison by creating the same video in both Camtasia and ScreenFlow. Both applications are very straightforward to setup and get going in creating the screencast. Camtasia gets a little bit of an edge for configuration because, unlike ScreenFlow, you do not have to install a separate audio driver.

However, once you get started recording, both applications provide you with a simple countdown prior to recording. As a primer, try to write your script prior to recording. This way, you will have a consistent experience for your customer once you complete production.

Please note, I did not try to record a screencast across multiple displays or using an external microphone. I used what most of us have — a MacBook (or a desktop) and the built-in microphone.

Basic Editing

After I recorded the basic screencast, I was presented with the Editor window within each program:

Screenflow Main Window

Camtasia Main Window

Both programs have very similar editing experiences using a timeline. ScreenFlow has the added advantage of separating out the audio from the video portions of the recording. This is a great experience, because you can also add another voiceover quite easily. In contrast, Camtasia merges the audio and video. It wasn’t easily discoverable how to add or change the existing audio recording. With my limited skills, being able to re-record the audio as a separate track was very handy.

Enhancing Your Screencast Recording

Each has a plethora of features to modify your recording.

• Cropping: Remove extra portions of the video that you don’t need.
• Trimming: Remove any extra (or bad) audio/video from the timeline.
• Playback tools: Play, reverse, fast-forward.
• Import Media: Additional audio, video or images.
• And a whole lot more…

What’s nice is that as you begin to explore more in ScreenFlow and Camtasia, they both provide simple video tutorials to show you how to use the features. For someone new to creating screencasts, this is very helpful.

Here are a few glimpses of the app once I inserted some text, graphics and transitions.

ScreenFlow: with additional text box and transitions

Camtasia: with additional graphics, text and transitions

I did perform a little trimming (Camtasia calls this Delete or Ripple Delete) at the end of each video so that you can’t see me click/end the recordings (there is no way to avoid this, although it would be nice if both tools had this as an option). Both tools make this really easy to do.

Both applications have advanced audio capabilities. ScreenFlow has true audio ducking, or the ability to decrease the volume of one recording while another audio volume is increased. Camtasia offers audio transition effects, which offers some flexibility, but not anywhere near as rich as ScreenFlow.

Unfortunately, neither application has great iLife integration, so I can’t directly insert audio clips from GarageBand. I think this is a missed opportunity for both Camtasia and ScreenFlow.

The Victor

This is a tough call. However, I give the slight edge to ScreenFlow because of its ability to edit audio separately as well as its UI for editing different properties of a recording. I happen to prefer the overall Camtasia UI over ScreenFlow’s as it seems more like iMovie ‘09 to me.

Ultimately, you have to decide which items are more important to you:

• Features/Functionality
• User Experience
• Price

ScreenFlow 2.0 is priced at $99 (or $29 for an upgrade). Similarly, Camtasia 1.0.1 is currently priced at $99 (this is a promotional price, the web site shows the full retail for $149).

If you have limited funds, there is the screen recording capability in QuickTime X, a component of Snow Leopard. If you’ve already upgraded to Snow Leopard, then you have this option available. Otherwise, the Snow Leopard upgrade is $29. Please note that QuickTime X is nowhere in the same league as ScreenFlow or Camtasia. However, if you have a new Mac that includes Snow Leopard and iLife ‘09 (which includes iMovie ‘09), you can make some very simple Screencasts, excluding the fancier features available from either ScreenFlow or Camtasia.

The Videos

Don’t laugh, they’re horrible.

Camtasia

ScreenFlow

If you are or ever have been the board gaming type, you may have run across Settlers of Catan, or at least heard of it from a fanatic friend. The game, which is a bit like Risk but without the war (at least in its basic incarnation), is all about resource gathering, trading, and colonization.

Fans of the series (and there are many) will be pleased to know that Settlers is now playable on your iPhone thanks to Catan ($4.99, iTunes link), an app that faithfully recreates the experience on your mobile device. If you aren’t yet a fan, Catan for your iPhone or iPod touch might just be the thing that converts you.

Gameplay

If you’ve played Settlers the board game, or if you’ve played it on your PC or Xbox 360, then you’ll already be familiar with the gameplay in the iPhone version, since it uses the standard rule set. Expansions are available for the board game which add more tiles or new gameplay elements, but for now, Catan on the iPhone doesn’t offer any of these additional modes of play.

The board consists of 19 hexagonal tiles, themselves laid out in a hexagon pattern. Each tile represents one resource, either Sheep, Wheat, Ore, Lumber or Brick. Each player gets to place settlements at the corners of these tiles, and collect resources from them when the number on the tile is rolled. Each tile has a number from 1 to 12, and each player rolls two six-sided die at the beginning of their turn.

Some tiles, like those with a 6 or an 8, come up more frequently, statistically speaking, and are strategically advantageous because of this. The goal in the game is to amass resources, which you can use to buy more settlements, roads, and other things to earn victory points. In traditional play, the first person with 10 victory points is the winner.

Catan on the iPhone lets you play with between three and four players. You can either play against computer opponents, or play hot seat multiplayer mode, in which you pass the iPhone off to other players when it’s their turn. It’s not an ideal multiplayer situation, since you have to trust your partner not to glance at your resource distribution, but without a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth option, it at least works well enough to be playable.

Sights and Sounds

Clearly, Catan wasn’t rushed out to the masses on the iPhone. Developer United Soft Media (USM) took its time in refining the look and feel of this cult sensation before its release, probably predicting correctly that fans of the game would be sticklers when it came this version’s faithfulness to the original.

The board is viewed from a top-down perspective, and you can zoom in or out using touch controls. Your resource count is displayed at the bottom of the screen in a convenient and non-obtrusive status bar. All of your controls are nested in a pop-out tab interface usually hidden at the right side of the screen behind an arrow button.

Sound is great, with a nice, fitting soundtrack running in the background, and appropriate sound effects for things like trades, resources, and standard button presses. In fact, I’d say it compares favorably even to the console version on the Xbox 360.

Conclusion

Whether you’ve heard of Settlers of Catan before or not, the iPhone port is an awesome time-waster. It’s engrossing, rich, and carefully tailored to the handheld touch-controlled platform. I will say that I found the difficulty to be rather on the challenging side, even when playing against a stacked line up of all the weakest computer players. The Xbox version has both a universal difficulty switcher and different AIs, allowing for greater versatility, and I would recommend Catan for iPhone adopt that in future, too. Still, for $4.99, you couldn’t ask for a better or more challenging pocket strategy game.

Despite some predictions to the contrary, the iPhone 3GS launched without a portable version of iMovie for editing of clips. Yes, you can scrub and trim video you shoot on the device in the native Camera app, but beyond that, you can’t do much. New app ReelDirector changes all that, for the relatively low price of $7.99.

It sounds like a decent deal, but I decided to download the app and find out just what the first real video editing app for the iPhone was capable of. Might I be able to become the next film ingenue sensation with only my 3GS?

Features

First of all, let me tell you right off the bat: This isn’t just a warmed-over version of the built-in Camera app, like so many photo effect apps tend to be. It not only allows you to stitch different clips from your device together, it also allows you to use 27 different transitions between them, including various wipes and fades.

You can also add text to your clips, including opening and closing credits and titles, and provide transitions for both. Only four font styles currently exist, but you change position to achieve different visual effects. Hopefully more styles will be added in later updates, or maybe as in-app purchases down the line.

Interface and Usability

The interface for ReelDirector isn’t going to win any design awards, but it is simple, fairly clean, and well-suited to its purpose. My main complaint is that while the app automatically switches to landscape view, which could be useful, there’s no toggle to prevent that from occurring, something I think every app should provide, including Apple’s own.

As for usability, ReelDirector generally performs well, but with a few issues that really prevent it from being an absolutely problem-free experience. For example, when you insert a video clip into your movie project, you have the option of trimming it, but once it’s in, you can’t go back and re-edit the clip itself. All you can really do at that point is change the transitions between clips. You also can’t live preview your movie in its entirety until you “Create” it, which can be a time-consuming process. The good news is, you can still go back and make changes after you output your movie.

Conclusion

It isn’t a replacement for iMovie by any stretch of the imagination, but ReelDirector is the first real movie editing solution for the iPhone 3GS, and for a pioneer, it actually works remarkably well. You probably won’t be taking home any awards at Cannes, since the app still lacks pretty basic elements like audio editing capabilities, but for home movies that look as good or better than the ones your uncle used to edit on his hulking early model DV cam, ReelDirector is more than capable.

RjDj, the exceptionally cool “reactive sound platform” app from Reality Jockey, which turns the iPhone’s microphone into an audio synthesizer, just got even cooler: Now available in the App Store is “Kids on DSP,” an entire album featuring collaborations from two well-known techno artists — Carl Craig and Acid Pauli — converted for play in the RjDj app.

Audio picked up by your mic is seamlessly mixed with the music, and played back as a unified audio soundscape in your ear buds; your surrounding environment becomes part of the album. Take a deep breath, say, and it’s turned into a heavily reverbed whoosh; take your iPhone into the kitchen, and the faucet sounds like a rainstorm crescendo added to the backbeat.

The RjDj experience for “Kids on DSP” will vary from track to track, Reality Jockey producer Robert Thomas told me by email. “‘Drowning Street’ incorporates sounds from your surroundings to become a kind of tripped out sonic bed which washes over you and pumps around the music,” he wrote. The “Timecruising” track created with Craig takes external audio inputs and plays them backward, creating a bizarre, temporal rubber band effect. (This video explains further.)

All this aural wizardry isn’t just an innovative plaything, however, because it’s also being launched as a new revenue source for recorded music. Reality Jockey is developing a number of applications for “major label chart topping artists,” Thomas said. While a number of artists are selling apps of their own, he argued that “most of them are actually no different from the old ‘multimedia CD’ release — i.e. some music, some video, some web links, etc.” Thomas believes RjDj will offer a better strategy by selling albums that weave a musician’s work into an immersive, interactive experience that goes beyond mere listening. (Operating on a somewhat similar premise, track downloads for the music video game franchises Guitar Hero and Rock Band have become enormously successful. )

Still, whether this can become another needed revenue alternative for the music industry remains to be seen. Thomas tells me 300,000 iPhone/iPod touch owners have downloaded the RjDj app, which is a nice audience base to start with, but will probably need to grow much larger before it becomes a significant income/promotion channel for labels and artists. And as with music video games, the other challenge is composing music tracks customized to play well in RjDj. Thomas suggested that in order to do that, “[T]he composer needs to think in multiple possible scenarios, not just one route. I tend to call it quantum composing.”

Image courtesy of rjdj.me

Even though services like Skype, Gtalk, Yahoo, AOL, Twitter and Facebook make it possible to instant or direct message just about anyone online these days, some folks still swear by Internet Relay Chat (IRC). In fact, for many die-hard geeks and software development teams, IRC is the only way to fly.

There are plenty of Web-based and standalone apps that let you join IRC chat rooms (or, channels, as they’re typically called) from your desktop computer, but once you go mobile, your options dwindle. Colloquy, one of the most popular open-source IRC clients for the Mac, now has a spiffy new version for the iPhone that lets you stay connected in-channel while you’re on the road.

Once installed, Colloquy sets up easily in minutes. To add an IRC network to your preferred list, simply supply its address and your identity information. You can choose to automatically connect to the server and even individual rooms at launch.

It’s easy to remove networks from your list if you decide you no longer want to visit them.

Colloquy runs in the background to track conversations and tells you at a glance where the action is. It also alerts you when someone in the channels you’ve joined uses your nickname or keywords you’ve pre-designated.

Channel conversations are streamlined thanks to nickname and emoticon completion popups and support for all the common IRC commands you’re used to using with computer-based IRC clients.

Colloquy for the iPhone has a number of other useful features including support for landscape mode, a searchable room member list, and secure connections over SSL. Clicked links open with the built-in browser, and Colloquy even stays connected when you lock your phone.

If you use IRC for online communication, then Colloquy for the iPhone’s $1.99 price tag is well worth it. The app is easy to use, even for a novice, and has a great user-community that can help you get started or answer any questions that arise. Once you have the app up and running, be sure to come by TheAppleBlog’s IRC channel and say hi.

Of all the file syncing solutions available, one of the most popular is Dropbox. As one of the solutions that is also cross-platform compatible, many Mac users have embraced Dropbox as a more reliable and robust solution than other alternatives, like MobileMe’s iDisk. Diehard Dropbox users can now rejoice as the Dropbox team is at it once again with the release of a native iPhone app, allowing users to access their dropbox on the go.

For a while, Dropbox has provided users with an iPhone-optimized web site for accessing their contents on the go, but that left many users desiring more. Even with 3G speeds, web browsing through Mobile Safari is not as fast as an application that can read/write to its own resources and sync with a server.

Native App, Native Features

With a native application, the Dropbox team has managed to provide full access to your dropbox contents as well as several interesting iPhone-specific features.

One of these is the ability to take photos or video directly within the application (or use existing content on your device) and have those photos synced to your dropbox automatically. Dropbox then gives users quick access to generate an email with an appropriate link to view the content and share it with others.

The application itself is very usable and functions like most other native apps. As expected, you can delete items from your dropbox just as you would an email (swipe to delete). To prevent users from experiencing lag (as would have happened with a web app), the application caches a copy of the directory structure once you’ve viewed it at least once. (This later is re-synced if changes occur elsewhere.)

Typical application file types that are supported on the iPhone (images, PDFs, Keynotes, Pages documents, Word documents, etc.) are all supported within the application. Word documents even support copy and paste! If you have video files that are of a supported type (QuickTime and the like), they will also stream from your Dropbox. For those who love sharing content, just like the aforementioned photos, a mail icon in the lower left corner allows users to generate emails for any content stored on their dropbox.

Dropbox also supports a “Favorites” feature which allows you to sync your favorite files directly to your iPhone, even further speeding up response time. To favorite a file, simply tap the star icon at the bottom of the screen when viewing the file.

A Few Shortcomings

One little complaint that I have is that Dropbox uses its own picture browser. As such, when I load an image, I’m unable to pinch to zoom like what happens when browsing photos elsewhere on my phone. Support for the accelerometer is present, though, as rotating my phone allows the photo to reorient itself. I’m assuming this is just a bug and something the Dropbox team will work out in a future update.

Another interesting piece that is missing is the fact that Dropbox supports Growl on its desktop version. Though it may be annoying, some users may be wishing for push notifications for any updates to their dropbox. Again, as this is an initial release, this is something that could come in a later update.

Dropbox is a free download from the App Store but does require a valid Dropbox account. Users can sign up for a free Dropbox account (limited to 2GB), and there are paid options for greater storage (50GB or 100GB). As someone who has used Dropbox for over a year now, it’s a very robust solution for file syncing and in my tests, a lot more stable than MobileMe’s iDisk. If you’ve used Dropbox or the new Dropbox app and have thoughts on the matter, tell us your experience!

The first week of September has seen a deluge of new arrivals at the App Store. It’s time for me to search through the latest releases for iPhone and hand-pick my recommendations for the past seven days.

This week I’ve been looking at Button, Facebook, BlogPress and Quicksilver.

Button (Free)
One of my favorite sci-fi novels, “Better Than Life,” oscillates between a deep space distopia and an almost perfect Earth as it follows the surviving crew members of the Red Dwarf mining ship. It’s soon revealed that the crew’s collective vision of Earth is actually a highly addictive massively multiplayer online game beamed directly into their brains, leaving their real bodies in a seemingly catatonic state. Rather than take a giant leap towards this sinister style of multiplayer gaming, Button instead takes baby steps. There’s a big button, everyone around the world sees the button, when the button lights up you must push the button, sometimes you win a prize, usually you don’t. Button is effectively a nonsensical distraction that seems to tickle just the right bit of your brain. Plus, you can ramp up the futility by playing as a team. I’ve created a special team called tab just for readers of TheAppleBlog, come join my group and let’s push buttons together.

Facebook (Free)
The official Facebook app has finally received its first major update for some time, bringing the service’s iPhone implementation almost (but not quite) up to speed with the 3GS and 3.0 firmware. For starters, the app’s user interface has been streamlined and tidied up — gone are the tiny buttons, pointless scrollable horizontal groups bar and crash-happy inbox. The main feed benefits from having a clutter free interface and now incorporates likes and comments. The menu screen features several big chunky buttons, designed for ease of navigation. Notably, the app now allows video recording and uploads, a real boon for iPhone 3GS users. However, it’s seems that when Facebook update their app, there’s always something missing. In this case, there are no Push Notifications, an OS 3.0 feature which could have been designed solely for apps just like Facebook.

BlogPress ($2.99)
The official WordPress app just isn’t working out for me. While I appreciate the WordPress app being free, I’m still not impressed by the app’s sluggish navigation and overly technical user interface. In essence, the WordPress app doesn’t feel pretty and it doesn’t work as it should. With this in mind, I’ve been on the hunt for a replacement and BlogPress seems to be just the app to knock WordPress off my iPhone. The app features a WYSIWYG editor, incredibly important as you certainly don’t want to be tweaking your latest post’s code on your iPhone’s keyboard. There’s also video uploading, something which the WordPress app doesn’t currently support, handled by uploading your video to YouTube and then embedding within your latest post. BlogPress also supports posting simultaneously to multiple blog services, including Blogger, MSN Live Spaces, WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal, Drupal and Joomla.

Quicksilver ($1.99)
And finally, while on the subject of replacing apps, I’ve been on the hunt for an alternative to Nimbuzz — while it’s an excellent feature-rich iPhone IM app, and free too, I’ve been feeling like I need a more streamlined solution. With it’s minimal iChat-esque interface, Quicksilver is the perfect app for a quick bit of iPhone IMing, with one caveat: it’s made for XMPP-compliant servers only, which, in non-geek-speak, means it’ll work with Google Talk but not MSN. The really great thing about Quicksilver is that it incorporates Push Notifications, making it more than worth the two buck asking price. When you close Quicksilver, you’re not logged out of chat, instead you’re status is changed to away. If one of your contacts should get in touch, the message will arrive on your iPhone as a push notification.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

There are no shortage of iPhone apps that function as remotes for your Mac, Apple TV, or just about anything else. Keymote (iTunes link), by Iced Cocoa, takes the concept to a new level by allowing custom “keysets” for all of your favorite applications.

So why would anybody need an app to do this when most apps have keyboard shortcuts already? Well the answer is simple if you consider the power of leveraging the large screen on the iPhone. When it launched sans a physical keyboard, Steve Jobs commented that it was a great idea to do away with it, because there are times when you don’t need a full size keyboard. If you are typing in numbers, it would be great to see large numbers instead of individual keys.

The same holds true for shortcuts. Why should I have to press “Shift+Command+Delete” to empty my trash when I could just use one button for that same purpose? Keymote addresses this usability blemish.

Keymote’s setup process is very simple and only requires that your iPhone and Mac share a Wi-Fi connection. Download the remote software on your Mac and it resides on the menu bar. Once you’ve paired the iPhone to your Mac from the app, you’re ready to roll.

Keymote comes with several keysets out of the box but also includes an in-app store that provides a larger wealth of free downloadable keysets for other popular apps, all contributed by users. Instantly download keysets for Aperture, Adobe Illustrator, Pages or any other app you use frequently. My favorite is the Numerical Keypad keyset which will help your stylish Apple keyboard feel a little more powerful.

If there’s not a keyset for an application you like to use, feel free to create your own and share it with others. If a particular keyset is not quite up to your standards, tap a key or spacer and hold. Then you can just drag it to a better location. If a shortcut is missing, just tap the plus and add it right alongside the rest.

The only thing to keep in mind is that you might find yourself using your phone more often than before. In case, my iPhone has become more of an auxiliary keypad and so I needed to adjust my sleep settings to keep my phone awake. Additionally, Keymote requires the software you’re using be the active application. This means if I call up Photoshop key commands and create a new document, it invokes “Command+N.” If Photoshop isn’t the active application, “Command+N” will apply to whichever app is active. The developers are aware of this limitation, and it’s something they are working to address.

With a stylish user interface that looks great not just on my iPhone, but as a “keypad” next to my Mac, Keymote is a great application for those whose regularly harness the power of shortcuts. Keymote is $3.99 and available for download on the App Store. If you’ve had the chance to try it out, please share your thoughts.

Who doesn’t battle the Apple Sync Services dragon on a semi-regular basis? Here are a couple of examples from Apple Support about how to resolve problems with this very useful yet unfortunately flawed feature:

• Mac OS X 10.5: Resetting the SyncServices folder
• Sync Services: Advanced troubleshooting for contact and calendar syncing

There are even more support articles around the web, although I think you get the picture. Let’s be clear, syncing any type of data is not trivial. Syncing multiple forms of data (contacts, calendar, bookmarks, etc.) is even less so.

If you use Sync Services and you don’t have issues, count yourself amongst one of the lucky few. If you use Sync Services and you have problems, then read on…

To cure your Sync Services woes, The folks at Spanning Sync recently released a great set of three applications called Spanning Tools. Here is what the package includes:

• Calendar Cleaner: resolves calender conflicts, duplicates, etc.
• Contacts Cleaner: resolves duplicate contacts, bad data with contacts and more.
• Sync Tune-Up: the big-kahuna tool. This one enables you to completely remove any bad Sync Services data and then start syncing with fresh (clean) data.

Where Sync Services gets crazy is when you begin using additional applications that leverage the functionality. Some of these applications include: MobileMe (AB, iCal, Safari, etc.), Microsoft Entourage, Daylite, Missing Sync, Google Contact Sync (from Address Book), Spanning Sync, BusySync, iSync phones and many, many more

What I like about this software suite is that it is focused. You have a specific toolset to resolve some potentially big data synchronization issues. What’s also great is that this suite of tools is very inexpensive – $20. Thus, for a nice crisp Mr. Jackson, you can own a complete toolset to ensure that your Sync Services data is kept clean, fresh, and consistent.

If you’re looking for a something sync-oriented to add to your utilities arsenal, then definitely head on over to the Spanning Tools site – you won’t regret it.

If you’re like me, your iPhone does double duty as your average, everyday camera. While I have a dedicated point-and-shoot camera, since my iPhone is always with me, it’s great for quick shots. Sure, the camera isn’t the best, but the convenience is worth the tradeoff.

I heard Alex Lindsay over at MacBreak Weekly offer Autostitch as a “Pick of the Week” a while back and I couldn’t wait to try it. Autostitch is a fantastic app that lets you quickly snap photos on your iPhone and create panorama shots from it. I was ready to call shenanigans on this; I thought there was no way a $1.99 app could create a panorama on the iPhone. So I stood in downtown Boston and snapped a few photos.

After that, I opened up Autostitch and selected the photos I wanted to stitch together by pressing (you guessed it) “stitch.”

About three minutes later it was done and the below image appeared.

At which point I said, “Holy cow,” and called my wife to tell her about the best two bucks I’d ever spent at the App Store. I expected to see some lines, or some imperfection showing that this image was actually four images stitched together, but if not for the people moving in the foreground, it would look like an untouched image. In this photo you can see some black around the edges, but in the latest version you can crop that out.

What’s also nice is this isn’t limited to photos you take on your iPhone. As a test, I took some shots of my messy home office on my Nikon camera and copied them over to the iPhone. Again, about four minutes later, the below image appeared.

Frankly, I’m amazed at how great a job this little $2 app does. If you’re at all interested in panoramic photos, it’s well worth a look.

If you’ve ever harbored the desire to write for the silver screen and tried to do something about it, you’ll already know about Final Draft, the showbiz industry’s favorite scriptwriting software.

Everyone in Hollywood uses it; Studio Execs, beleaguered Producers, hot-shot directors… even Michael Bay uses it, but don’t let that last one put you off. If you use Final Draft, you’ll be in the company of James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro and Richard Donner. JJ Abrams is quoted saying, “Even if you don’t own a computer, I recommend buying Final Draft.”

The company behind Final Draft — also called Final Draft — has crammed an impressive array of tools and functionality into version eight. In fact, there’s so much functionality that for novice users it can seem daunting getting to grips with it.

The good news is that it’s really quite easy to get started with Final Draft, particularly if you have some idea of how movie or TV scripts are constructed. And even if you don’t, Final Draft makes the learning process so smooth it’s really just part of your work flow. The software keeps your work in order, properly formatted, properly structured, yet never gets “in the way.”

There is a mountain of goodness packed into this release. So much, in fact, it’s beyond the scope of this review, but here’s a quick rundown of the highlights.

Templates

If you’re unsure of how to structure your script, you can use one of over 50 television and movie templates bundled with the application. There are dozens more available on the Final Draft website, too, though the assumption is that you are a naughty software thief so you must provide a valid customer number before you can download them.

Templates come in many of flavors, including movie scripts...

...TV shows...

...Graphic Novels...

...and even good old fashioned manuscripts.

Smart Element Formatting

The single greatest feature in Final Draft is its intelligent and intuitive element formatting. The software watches what you type and anticipates what you are doing next. With only the tiniest bit of learning, you’ll find yourself zooming through scripts faster than Stephen King can knock-out novels.

Smart Elements pop-up works a lot like IntelliType

Speech

Final Draft lets you assign the Mac OS X system voices to the characters in your script, and have them read-aloud. Ask any writer — there is enormous value in hearing another voice read your dialogue back at you!

Choose which character gets which voice...

...then hit play!

Scene Tools

Brand new Scene Navigator and Scene View tools provide handy ways to view, structure and manage your script without scrolling through a hundred or so pages every time you need to check scene order, or remind yourself exactly when it was your characters fell into that trash compacter… Was it before or after your hero blasted the controls to extend the bridge?

File Format

A new file XML-based file format improves compatibility with modern productivity software and other script-writing tools.

And more…

Also packed-in to version eight is improved page formatting and counting, workspace management, powerful production features for preparing a finished script for distribution or revision, a neat new toolbar and an apology from Final Draft for selling a copy to Michael Bay. (OK, that last one is a lie. But if you’ve cringed at the dialogue in Tranformers, you know that man owes us all. Big time.)

Just as a professional graphic artist can’t get far without learning Photoshop, anyone who’s serious about screenwriting should have a copy of Final Draft.

I’ve been looking for an up-to-date, Gecko-based browser to replace the discontinued Netscape Navigator 9 on my old G4 Pismo PowerBook running OS 10.4 Tiger. Navigato still works well, is based on the now-ancient Firefox 2 and probably has some security vulnerabilities. Firefox 3.5 and Camino 1.6 are great on my Intel Mac, but kinda sluggish on the Pismo with its RAGE 128GPU and 8MB of VRAM.

Happily, another Gecko with relatively modest hardware demands is still actively developed. SeaMonkey is the last of the Internet suite browsers, with built-in email and newsgroup client, IRC chat application and a WYSIWYG Web page composer — essentially an updated, refined, security-patched iteration of the old Mozilla Application Suite and Netscape Communicator.

The non-browser elements of SeaMonkey aren’t of much interest to me, so I’ve had a tendency to overlook the program, but my quest for a Navigator 9 replacement sent me checking out the latest SeaMonkey 2.0 beta on the Pismo, and I’m liking it.

Firefox 3.5.1 Under the Hood

SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 is thoroughly modern under the hood, using the browser core and web feature support from Firefox 3.5.1, including all security fixes, audio/video, downloadable fonts, and JIT-compiled Javascript.

Its download manager is completely reworked, including (hooray!) support for cross-session resumable downloads, new-tab and new-window command line options, and fully customizable toolbars.

Mail archiving is now supported and history is stored in a better database. A huge improvement is support for post-crash session restore and the option to restore browser windows and tabs from the last open session when starting.

Interface Refreshed

A longstanding gripe has been that SeaMonkey’s UI looks “antiquated,” with the lack of eye-candy being one reason why it’s lively on older hardware like my PowerBook.

However, with SeaMonkey 2, the UI has a brighter, more contemporary look — still simple, but everything I need is there: tabbed browsing and a real progress bar. I do wish they’d put close buttons on individual tabs rather than having to mouse to the extreme right. Like the Gecko-based browsers (except Cocoa Camino), it doesn’t support OS X Services, but that’s about it for complaints.

“Everything But The Kitchen Sink”

Even as a beta, performance and stability are impressive enough to make me a fan, but if having “everything but the kitchen sink” in one application appeals, SeaMonkey’s suite of Web apps will be icing on the proverbial cake. Indeed I find this SeaMonkey beta so pleasant to use I’ve been running it on my Intel Mac as well for the past several days.

I have a love-hate relationship with Spotlight, OS X’s convenient and useful, but immensely frustrating search utility. Apple introduced Spotlight with OS X 10.4 Tiger, and tweaked it considerably in OS 10.5 Leopard.

Having a search engine ready and waiting all the time is seductive, and Spotlight is nice to have, but falls short of Apple’s “Find anything, anywhere, fast” claim, and I particularly dislike its find-as-you-type initiating searches from the first keystroke. I was told I wouldn’t mind any more once I got an Intel Mac. Well, I now have a Core 2 Duo and still mind.

“Too Much Information”

Spotlight is also afflicted with a Google-esque “too much information” syndrome, even with a fair bit of my hard drive’s contents excluded from indexing. It also doesn’t do simple file name searches.

No path information is revealed in Spotlight’s results window. You must resort to Get Info or Reveal in Finder. No preview of file contents either, you can’t refine your search within results, and Spotlight doesn’t support phrase searches, at least not conveniently and efficiently. You can muck around using quotation marks in the search field, but I’ve had indifferent success with that.

Some have praised the changes in Leopard Spotlight, but I actually think I preferred Spotlight in Tiger, with its readout of the number of search returns and, in my opinion, more convenient and functional “Show All” panel.

Some Alternatives

In a recent article, MacFixIt cites some of these Spotlight shortcomings and proposes alternatives like Google Desktop, Easy Find, Foxtrot, and even Command-line searching.

I’ve tried Google Desktop and find it just too ponderous, resource-hogging, and overbearing. Devon Technologies’ Easy Find is a nice little app, free like Google Desktop, but more hassle to use than Spotlight, and not being indexed — slower. I can’t comment on CTM Development’s 29 Euro Foxtrot utility as I haven’t used it. The Command-line is largely terra incognita for me — not a place I want to go for quick searches in any case.

Where I do go mostly is to SpotInside, a Spotlight-enhancer that layers several elements on top of the Spotlight engine: results preview in the interface window, decently efficient phrase searching, much more conveniently configurable and sortable results organization, searches within results, and searching doesn’t commence before you bid it to.

Well Worth the Effort

SpotInside is yet another application to run, but it starts up almost instantly, is fast, and adds little system overhead. With such a well-conceived and convenient interface, it’s well worth the extra effort.

Unlike Spotlight and Leopard’s Quick Look, SpotInside can use the Find panel and select text in your search result. It also conveniently highlights your keywords in search results. It doesn’t search as extensive a range of file types as Spotlight (eg: music files and email messages), but I’d argue that’s a good thing. For finding words or phrases within text files, PDFs and the like, it’s the best tool I’ve tried.

SpotInside searches ever major text document format (including Pages). It can display PDF previews as images or as plain text, and will also find the folder the desired document is located in with a click of the “Reveal in Finder” button, and open it with the “Launch” button. There is a Zoom slider for adjusting the size of the preview contents.

I haven’t found another desktop search engine that has the uncanny ability to efficiently and quickly zero in on just what I’m looking for, as SpotInside does. If you’re frustrated with Spotlight, or even if you’re not, SpotInside is worth checking out.

SpotInside requires OS X 10.4 or later, and is free.

Earlier this month, Dare to be Creative announced MainMenu 2.0, an update to its system maintenance utility for OS X. This lightweight application allows you to clean up your Mac, improve system performance and free up hard disk space — all directly from the system menu.

The new release offers a range of improved functionality, an informative system menu icon, and integration with the Growl notification service. This review will offer an overview of MainMenu’s key features, and explain how the software can assist with running a fast, healthy Mac.

The Interface

The Main Menu

MainMenu resides in the OS X menu bar as a small icon, offering a compact drop-down menu when clicked. This details the various categories of maintenance functions that can be performed, relating to the system, network, user, disk, and applications. It is also possible to run pre-defined batches of tasks together.

The final item in the menu provides access to MainMenu’s preferences, covering options such as whether the application should launch automatically, the appearance of the menu bar icon (several options are available), and whether the application should display a visible log as maintenance runs.

Improve System Performance

A number of options within the menu can help cut back on clutter and speed up your machine. These include the ability to re-build your Spotlight index for faster searching, and repair disk permissions to improve disk access speeds.

None of these are guaranteed to provide a dramatic increase in system performance, but can certainly have a noticeable impact when combined with clearing temporary files and caches (see below).

Re-claiming Disk Space

A variety of operations aim to delete unnecessary temporary files eating up hard drive space. These include the ability to remove Logs, Temporary Files, .DS_Store Files, and various system caches.

Clearing Browser Cache

Usefully, the menu also offers a central point for cleaning up your browser cache — across any (or all) of the web browsers you may have installed on your system.

Regular Maintenance Scripts

OS X has a variety of scripts (cron jobs) built-in for performing system maintenance, set to run automatically at a particular interval. Main Menu offers an easy way to execute these maintenance operations manually.

Time Savers

A degree of the functionality offered centers around quicker access to operations that would otherwise require running commands in the Terminal (or deep within System Preferences). A few of my favorite time-savers are:

• Showing or hiding invisible files in the Finder
• Relaunching various services such as the Dock, Finder, Airport, or Menu Bar
• Disabling Dashboard (a great way to speed up older machines)

You’re also able to Force Quit or Force Restart any application currently running. This is particularly useful if, for some reason, you are unable to Force Quit an app through the Dock.

Batch Mode & Growl Support

Another useful feature allows you to create a batch of several commonly performed tasks. A batch can be executed with one click, not requiring you to select each maintenance operation individually.

Batching Tasks

The limitation apparent here is that only one “batch” can be created. It isn’t possible to create several different sets of actions, each with a different name — a feature that could be particularly useful.

The latest release of MainMenu adds one final feature: Growl integration. This is a useful way to notify you when a maintenance task completes, and can help to streamline all your system notifications through one central system.

Conclusion

After experimenting with MainMenu for a few days, I can see it being an application I continue to use regularly. Although it seems a little unnecessary to run maintenance operations every few days, I certainly appreciate the in-built shortcuts for restarting services and adjusting Finder display preferences.

Whether you’re a seasoned Mac user who understands the need to flush your DNS cache, or a beginner looking for a simple utility for keeping your machine clean and tidy, MainMenu is certainly worth looking into.

MainMenu costs $20, and a trial is available as a free download from the MainMenu website. It runs initially in a 15-day trial mode with all features active — more than long enough to experiment with the utility and determine whether you use it enough to purchase a license.

Booyah, which is available as a free iPhone app, is a new social MMORPG from a well-funded startup of the same name. But here’s the twist: Unlike all other online role-playing games (GigaOM Pro, sub required) , you don’t improve your character by performing fantastic otherworldly tasks, like looting dungeons or slaying hobgoblins — what gamers call “leveling up.” With Booyah, instead, you level up yourself, through real-world activities.

Get regular exercise and attain Booyah’s “God of the Gym” status, for example; jetset around the world enough, and Booyah dubs you a “Wondrous Wanderer.” These achievements are registered as badges in the Booyah virtual “room” on your iPhone, where your comically bulbous-headed avatar resides.

The idea for Booyah originated when CEO Keith Lee and his two co-founders were developers at Blizzard Entertainment, creator of World of Warcraft, which now boasts nearly 12 million worldwide subscribers. That’s largely thanks to the addictiveness of WoW’s character-building and quests, which encourage people to obsessively play for years, just to earn virtual achievements for their Warcraft avatars. As he explained to me in a recent demo, Lee and his partners wondered if they could take the same design principles, which make Blizzard games so popular, and apply them to real life.

So in Booyah, you self-report everyday activities in a variety of categories (work, shopping, etc.) just as you would on any other microblogging service; here, however, those updates are registered as progress points to your next achievement, and displayed in the “Booyah Society” social network (which can also be integrated with your Facebook or Twitter profiles.) This public aspect, the developers believe, will help keep your self-reporting honest. (If your Booyah friends notice that you’re exaggerating your accomplishments, they may call you on it.) Lee told me the company plans to eventually use iPhone functionality, like the GPS and accelerometer, to track player stats with more objective metrics.

At launch, Booyah is not without its shortcomings: The social functions could be more robust, and the emphasis on achievements over socialization may limit its appeal with women. Lee told me the company plans to add virtual currency, avatar-to-avatar interaction and other features, but without them, the growth rate may sputter. Still, it’s an appealing attempt to leverage MMORPG play aspects for benefits beyond games — a goal long-desired by developers and researchers alike. Booyah even has accomplishment ladders for cultural activities and social activism, so if players make a genuine effort to earn the game’s wide range of awards, they may also find themselves becoming more enriched, better-rounded human beings. Call it World of Lifecraft.

The developers of iBank, the robust alternative to moribund Quicken for the Mac, have gone mobile with their latest product. With iBank Mobile for the iPhone and iPod touch you can bank on the go, but probably not go it alone.

To be fair, there is no perfect personal finance manager (PFM) in the App Store. There are standalone apps like the cryptically-named iXpenselt, and cloud apps like Mint and Quicken Online Mobile — which unbelievably does not sync to Quicken for the Mac or PC.

Synchronization with the desktop is where iBank Mobile comes in. Certainly, it was a much improved experience over using it as a standalone application. Creating fake accounts, transactions, and categories using iBank Mobile for the purpose of review was incredibly time consuming. Having said that, once iBank Mobile is up and running, it follows the money pretty well.

Accounts

Left, the Home screen provides an overview of accounts and access to the spartan control scheme: Home, Spending, Settings, Sync, and New Transaction. The Spending screen shows categories and activity. Drilling down from Spending lists transactions sorted by category, each transaction selectable for details. Transactions can also be accessed by account.

The interface is straightforward and useable to this point, with one minor complaint. Accounts can only be sorted alphabetically, though they can be grouped in two lists: Primary and Other.

There is also an issue regarding general performance, at least on an iPhone 3G. Upon first accessing accounts, totals may appear as “calculating” until iBank Mobile catches up. Scrolling through transactions is a little sluggish, too.

Transactions

Creating a transaction is a guided process: Account → Transaction Type & Amount → Payee → Categories & Memo. Payee editing benefits from autocompletion, which is great, but lack of a “back” button through every step of the transaction process is not so great.

Split transactions work well, especially if you already have a list of categories, as there is no autocompletion here: select or create. Categories are best derived from the desktop software, which underscores an important point. Whether using iBank Mobile is a chore or a pleasure really comes down to whether or not you use iBank for the Mac. Syncing is where iBank shines.

Synchronization

Even if you don’t plan on syncing with iBank, the passcode option protects your transaction data on the iPhone, while encryption is used during syncing. As for syncing itself, it just works. Via Wi-Fi, MobileMe, or WebDAV, setup is simple. Syncing more than 5,000 transactions took about five minutes, while normal syncing after setup takes seconds.

Summing Up: Bronze Award

As a standalone application, iBank Mobile is rather spartan; no online options, no bill calendar, no charts, no budgeting, just transactions and spending. According to the developers, customer feedback will be a driving force in updates, though direct download of transactions from financial institutions is a priority. For now, I don’t recommend iBank Mobile as a standalone PFM, but then I don’t recommend any standalone PFM application for the iPhone and iPod touch. However, I do recommend iBank Mobile as complement to the desktop product.

The value in iBank Mobile is tracking where your money goes as you spend it over time, like cash from an ATM withdrawal. That information then easily integrates into iBank for the Mac through the excellent syncing options. What you do with that information is up to you, but the first rule of personal finance is knowing where the money goes, and iBank Mobile makes that possible wherever you are.

The real power of OS X lies in all of the hidden gems beneath what you see at first glance. Technologies like Expose, Spaces, Stacks, Spotlight and others help users tap the power of their Mac, while keeping the experience sleek and elegant. Aptonic’s Dropzone, a third-party application designed to further simplify your Mac experience, fits into this group perfectly and naturally.

It’s Like an Intern for Your Dock

Dropzone is an application that resides in your Dock like any other app. The power of Dropzone comes into play when you begin dragging files onto its icon. Similar to the appearance of a Stack, Dropzone will expand giving you options of what to do with the file or files you’ve selected. Think of it like Automator for your Dock.

For example, if I have a handful of files selected, and drag them onto my Dropzone icon, I am presented with a series of choices, one of which is “Zip files and email.” As simple as it sounds, dragging the files onto this icon zips the files automatically and attaches them to a new email message inside of Mail. Gone are the days of right-clicking to compress the files, attaching that to an email and then deleting the zip file when I’m done.

Another “destination” included is the ability to install applications quickly by dragging a DMG onto the “Install Application” destination. Behind the scenes, your Mac will mount the DMG file, locate the application inside, copy it to your Applications folder and launch it, unmount the DMG and move the DMG file to the trash.

Other destinations include quick access to uploading images to Flickr (including copying the image URL to your clipboard when its done) or upload files to your FTP server. Want those files zipped before upload? No problem. Just hold down the option key as you drag the files onto the icon. It’s quick and simple and really does save time.

I’m the type of Mac user who likes to keep my Dock as simplified as possible, but I do enjoy the ability to be able to drag files onto an application icon and force the file to open in that application. Dropzone allows me to throw applications I use frequently inside of it and then I have the ability to do just that. Compared to attempting the same thing with a stack in Leopard, I only spawn Finder windows.

Taking It Further

Several optional downloads can extend the functionality of Dropzone. There are add-ons to allow you to start your screensaver, mount/unmount firewire drives, and set your computer to sleep, in addition to many others. Dropzone even includes support for popular web services, including the ability to quickly share photos via TwitPic, shorten a dropped URL via the Is.Gd service (and copy it to the clipboard automatically), and quickly share photos and documents on Posterous.

If you are comfortable programming ruby scripts, Dropzone also offers a scripting API to allow you to create your own “destinations” to further extend the application.

If you’d like to try out Dropzone, it’s currently available for Leopard or Snow Leopard users. Aptonic does provide a trial version of the software, and the cost is only $10 to purchase the full version. The trial does limit you to 15 days of use and up to five “destinations” at a time. I spoke with the developers at Aptonic and they informed me that updates through 1.0 will be freely available to users who register, but the $10 price is likely just an introductory price. Download the demo version here.

I’ll be the first to admit, much like Quicksilver or Spaces, once you get used to integrating this app, it really does save you time. If you have tried out Dropzone, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

If you look at the amount of advertising out there these days, you’d think the Mac vs. PC war is a mere slap fight compared to the war being raged for your data backups. They want your data, and they want it now!

In one corner you have Mozy, which shares corporate DNA with former Mac backup champion, Retrospect. In the other corner is Carbonite, which began supporting the Mac this year. Mozy had almost a 2-year head start on Carbonite, but the software race doesn’t always go to the first one out of the gate. I gave both products an intense 3-month test. Which one deserves your data? Read on.

Round One: Staying Power

I wouldn’t trust my data to a brand-new company that could go out of business when I need my data (X-Drive, anyone?). Carbonite and Mozy are both well established. Of the two, Carbonite has the better name recognition, referencing Han Solo’s preservation in the “Star Wars” series. But Carbonite also seems to attract bad press like the Millennium Falcon attracted mynocks.

A server failure in 2007 lead to quite a few lawsuits, but according to Carbonite, no data was lost. Additionally, Carbonite was caught using “the Force” to influence reviews on Amazon — and by the Force I mean its employees. Carbonite uses Rush Limbaugh as a spokesperson, and you can’t get more controversial than Rush. However, Mozy has the “Mozy gal,” who has almost as high a following as Deltalina. This is a tough choice, and we’ll call Round One a draw.

Round Two: Setup and Installation

Carbonite cleans Mozy’s clock in software design. For reference, both Mozy and Carbonite require Tiger, but Carbonite is Intel only.

Both programs have assistants that automatically pick your critical data, as well as let you manually decide what to back up and how much bandwidth to use. Because these programs upload large amounts of data, the average system could take weeks to back up. Neither program will back up external media. Mozy claims it does, but if you detach it, it forgets the configuration. Carbonite flat-out refuses to back up externals. If you keep critical files, such as iTunes or iPhoto libraries, on something besides your main boot drive, neither product will back it up reliably.

Mozy is a background program that can easily be quit, reconfigured or uninstalled without asking for an Administrator password. Like the Death Star, one well-placed shot, or mouse click, renders this program useless. On the other hand, Carbonite runs as a daemon, requiring Administrator approval to change or quit. Mozy allows you to back up other users, but doesn’t always run when switching users.

Dare I say that Mozy operates like a clumsy blaster and Carbonite is the elegant light saber? The clear winner in this round is Carbonite. If you have more than one user account on your system, it’s time to go home, because Carbonite has won.

Round Three: Restoration

Carbonite takes a blow to the chin in this category. Both services offer a web-based restore program, not requiring installation of their software. Unfortunately, Carbonite does not handle Mac OS packages well, so I could not restore OmniOutliner and Keynote data files via its web site, since its software saw them as folders rather then files.

However, Carbonite restored those files properly after installing the client software. Unfortunately, after installing the client software for either product on the restoring computer, the services got confused and stopped backing up my old computer.

The process for restoring Mozy is a bit more complex. Mozy has you choose the files to restore, and emails you when they’re “ready.” The prep for a 6GB file took about an hour. Mozy also allows you to order a DVD of your files at a rather hefty price of 50 cents a gigabyte, plus a processing fee of $29.95 and a next-day shipping charge of $40.

Neither company wins this round: restoration isn’t easy or efficient. Both programs, go back into your corners and make this process easier for subscribers.

Round Four: Support

Neither company includes phone support, but Carbonite allows you to purchase it for $19.95 a year and Mozy provides it with their “Pro” package. I tested support via free online chat sessions. Of the multiple times I contacted support for both real and made-up problems, both companies failed to provide quality tech support folks that could understand the most basic of questions.

Emailing questions was equally frustrating. I consistently received conflicting and contradictory information. This is very scary when we’re talking about backups. Carbonite annoyed me more because their reps would reference instructions they were going to email me, trying to quickly close the chat. Neither company wins this round and both deserve an upper cut for lousy tech support.

Round Five: Security

Mozy, how could you let your guard down? Its software, when used properly, has all your critical and very personal data stored on its servers. When resetting your password, no security questions are asked. All you need is access to someone’s email and you can quickly and easily reset the Mozy password on an account. Email accounts can be hacked and if all you need is someone’s email password to get into any file on their computer, well, that’s a foul stench even Princess Leia can smell from across the galaxy.

Carbonite forces you to answer a series of personal questions before it’ll let you reset, and not the standard biographical info you can find on the web about anyone. The clear winner in this security round is Carbonite.

Round Six: Cost

Both Carbonite and Mozy have limited trial versions, but these tests were done with the full versions. Mozy offers a multitiered plan of 2GB of backup for home users for free. Unlimited backups for home users are $4.95 per month (though 20 percent off codes are easy to find). Business users of the Pro version pay $3.95 a month plus 50 cents per GB. Carbonite is simpler at $54.95 a year for everyone ($4.58 a month, for those without calculators). Carbonite is less expensive, but Mozy does offer the free version. We’ll score this round a draw.

The Winner

Overall, there’s no clear winner in this fight. If you have multiple users on your computer, Carbonite wins by default because it easily backups all accounts and prevents others from tampering. Additionally, if security is of high concern, then Carbonite is also the winner due to Mozy’s terrible security practices. However, if you have exclusive control of your email and don’t have multiple people using your Mac, then Mozy might be the better choice since it has the friendlier pricing plans. Who wins? I’ll leave that up to you to let me know in the comments, and/or with your wallet.

But wait, a new contender approaches the ring! New to the scene is Internet darling BackBlaze. The winner of the Mozy vs. Carbonite bout will go on to fight BackBlaze in a further review, coming soon. Make your predictions now.

When push notification finally made its way to the iPhone, a lot of people were anticipating IMs pushed to their iPhone. At first, I scoffed at this idea. I’d always figured IMs were based around the “instant” part of the phrase, and someone pushing an IM to me might be disappointed if I don’t get back to them right away. Well, guess who’s been a big iPhone IM-er since 3.0 came out? Go on, you’ll never guess. Yep, it’s me. I’d like my crow with a side of au jus, and a loaded baked potato, please.

First a quick word of warning: by no means are my comments here to be construed as any sort of a formal review. While I’ve tried to run all of these apps through their paces, I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling any of my comments a review — they’re more like first impressions.

That said, while there are 10 apps we tested out, it quickly became clear to me this was a race between Beejive and IM+ Push. The important criteria for me were: the ability to connect to multiple IM protocols (and multiple accounts of the same protocol), the ability to do push notifications, and the app not requiring its own server-side account to operate. Price, as they say, was no object. When you get right down to it, the difference between many of these apps is only $5-7. My afternoon brownie indulgence costs more than that.

Over the last week, I’ve been receiving push notifications from at least one of these apps during testing, if not more than one, and I didn’t notice a detrimental effect on my battery life — with the usual disclaimer that if I spent my entire train ride home IMing friends, I’d see a battery hit.

Without further ado, here are my findings.

IM+ Push ($9.99)

IM+ Push is a very full-featured app with two specific features I enjoyed: I can set how long I’m online for up to three days (perfect for getting through a weekend); and I can change the wallpaper behind the messages. However, I found the app overall a tad on the slow side. As a speed comparison, by the time I had opened IM+ and viewed the IM, I would have also replied to the IM in Beejive. While it does claim to connect to Skype, I had some issues getting it connected, and never got a push from Skype.

IM+ Lite (Free)

IM+ Lite is the free version of IM+ Push and the only differences between the two are that you can’t change the wallpaper and the push notifications are email only.

Beejive ($9.99)

I found Beejive to be the fastest app in my tests. I could very quickly see what IMs had arrived, preview them and reply to them. Like IM+, I can change the background, but I can only be online for up to 24 hours (which was the standard time period for all the apps). There was one nice feature I found in Beejive that I couldn’t find a corresponding setting for in IM+: I can set how long I show as “available” after I close the app. One of the chief complaints from people I was IMing during this test were the frequent “crumpy is available”/”crumpy is away” notifications they were receiving. By staying “available” for 20 minutes, the person I was IMing with had a much better experience. It was a minor detail I hadn’t thought of until a few people complained about it.

One other feature I liked is I can set how many IMs from contacts are shown when I launch the app. The default is I only see the most recent message from each contact, but I set it do display more, up to and including all messages.

Agile Messenger with Push ($9.99)

For the price, I found Agile Messenger to be a very poor solution. You can only connect to one account of each protocol (I have two AIM accounts: my personal and a work one). I also found the type size on the IMs to be too small to read, and there was noticeable lag when typing.

AIM ($2.99/Free)

There are two AIM apps from AOL, one that’s free and one that’s $2.99. I’m grouping them together since the only differences between the two are that the free one has ads and the paid version does not. While I found the app to be very responsive, there are two big issues I had: I can only be signed into one AIM account, and all push notifications have an SMS-style popup. I couldn’t stop the pop-ups, but I could control how much information was displayed — the ranges are from “new IM” to the full contents of the IM, including sender information. The only reasons I’d recommend this app is if money really is an object, you only have one AIM account, and don’t mind the obtrusive pop-ups.

Yahoo! (Free)

Well, about all I can say is, “Yep, it connected to Yahoo.” You can only connect to one Yahoo account and there is no push notification, nor any announced plans for push.

Palringo (Free)

In my tests, Palringo failed on liftoff. It requires a server-side account, and when I went to setup the account via the iPhone app, the captcha image didn’t even display — really, who needs captcha on an iPhone app? The app does not currently do push, although as of this writing they have submitted a push version for approval. At this point, for a free IM app, I’d recommend IM+ Lite over this one.

Skype (Free)

Since the purpose of this article is IM apps, I’m going to gloss over the voice portion of the Skype app, which is arguable its greatest benefit. However, I was able to connect to my Skype account and IM with friends just fine. There are no push notifications for IMs, however.

Fuze (Free)

Fuze is another one that requires its own server-side account to run. You can also only connect to one account of each protocol, and there are no push notifications. Also, for some reason even after quitting the app, it kept me online, but I didn’t receive a test message I sent myself when I logged back in. As with Palringo, if you need an IM app that’s free, go with IM+ Lite.

Chart of Instant Messenger Features

And the winners are!

For free apps, IM+ Lite blew the doors off the competition. I could connect to multiple protocols and multiple accounts.

In the paid category, while it was a close race, I felt Beejive edged out IM+ Push. While the ability to stay online longer than 24 hours was nice, I felt the speed and the ability to quickly see received IMs edged Beejive over the finish line.

As always, we welcome your comments about what IM apps you prefer.