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Aug 11 2010

Rising Card Magic App for iPhone

A while back, I wrote a story on various magic tricks you can do with your iPhone, iPad or iPod. Shortly after I posted it, someone let me know that I had missed on. Namely, Rising Card by theory11.com.

Today, I set about rectifying the error of omission by recording this mini video with the help of @davesalter84 (on camera) and Loran from MacStation in Abbotsford, BC.

Rising Card is a simple trick to do and is very convincing. You have your participant name any card, it doesn’t matter which. Then bring out your iPhone and hand it to the participant to launch the app themselves. You don’t even have to be in the room as the participant shakes the iPhone and witnesses their chosen card rising magically from the deck on the iPhone screen.

Rising Card sells for $2.99 US and is brought to you by a professional magic effect supplier—theory11.com.

No Flash? No problem—click here!»

By RickMacMerc • apps, Featured, iPhone, MacMerc.TV, Mini Video • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apr 27 2009

iCal Toys

While the jury is still out on the new iSync Beta from Apple, iCal already brags its own fan club. Enthusiasm for the calendar app has spawned a plethora of freeware utilities.

iCal FTP

One of the more interesting features of iCal is its ability to sync to a WebDAV server. Don’t have a WebDAV server? If you have an account on an FTP server, then that is just as good with help from iCal FTP. This utility will place your calendar on an FTP server to ease sync between two internet-connected Macs.

iCal Calling iTunes!

This free script allows you to enter iTunes playlists as events in iCal and have iCal trigger them. Sounds kind of useless until you think of the applications (an alarm clock, for one).

iCal Birthday Shifter

One nice thing about the new iOrganizer apps is the slick integration with the operating system. One overlooked feature is remedied with iCal Birthday Shifter. This app digs birthdays out of your address book and places them as events in iCal.

For those of you who think enough of yourself to post your personal calendars online, you might want to check out this web site which allows you to view your online .ics file in a web browser, or this one which facilitates the sharing of iCals.

I won’t be uploading my calendar any time soon, but you can bet I’ll be back here next Friday with more great freeware.

Brian

By admin • Articles, Freeloader Friday Download of the Week • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apr 27 2009

Fun with Fink

Fink: more than a funny name, it is a gateway to the best free software the GNU/Linux community has to offer. With the help of FinkCommander, you can use Fink without touching the Terminal.

Fink and Fink Commander

What is Fink? To answer that question, we’ll have to delve a little into the world of Linux. Each distribution of Linux has a package manager that works like OS X’s Software Update. However, Linux package managers track and install third party GNU applications as well.

Fink acts as a package manager for OS X, providing access to a library of GNU programs and libraries that have been ported to OS X by the Fink Project. To get your own Fink, download the installer, run it and then install FinkCommander (included with the Fink installer) to install a GUI.

I should mention that applications downloaded through Fink will require a form of X Windows on your system. Don’t worry, this isn’t as complicated as it sounds. X11 for 10.3 is an easy download from Apple. If you’re a Jaguar user and didn’t download Apple’s X11 beta, you can install X11 using XonX.

Update: Thanks to James for this download link to the Apple X11 beta for 10.2 here.

Once you have Fink and Fink Commander installed, you can fire up Fink and go shopping for GNU apps. There are two ways you can install an application with Fink – install a precompiled binary or compile the source code yourself. For the later you’ll need to install developer tools from Apple.

finkcommander Fun with Fink

So, is there anything worth downloading from Fink? You bet. I’d recommend grabbing the KDE window manager. KDE is, simply stated, the Aqua of Linux. It is easily installed through a convenience package in Fink that bundles all the required files together. If you install the full bundle of KDE, you’ll have added a full GUI including games, office, internet and utility applications.

Once you have a window manager in place, you’ll probably want to grab the Gimp. This free Photoshop rival is also available via Fink. Now this is a good time to talk about versions. Fink supports 10.1,10.2 and 10.3 in varying degrees. The most interesting and recent packages are available to Panther users. Based on your OS and Fink versions, you’ll have access to a different set of ported software. If you like to keep things simple, stick with the default stable binary builds. If you like to live on the edge, you can take on the newest unstable versions.

There are too many cool free applications available through Fink to mention them all here. But, once you have your installation going, you can have your crack at anything from IRC clients to genealogy tools. And for veterans of the Classic Environment, you’ll find the ability to run programs from another OS easy and useful.

That’s all for this week. Have fun with Fink!

Brian

By admin • Articles, Freeloader Friday Download of the Week • Comments Off • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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