
Safari Cookies | Apr 14 2009 |
FEMIGH Finally, the only really good and automatic cookie manager for any browser - a worthy successor to Safari Plus. Been waiting anxiously for a successor since Safari Plus went out of date. As with SP, SC provides easily managed cookie categories, with only marked-as-favorite source categories surviving a Safari Quit (my Safari is version 4beta). No more manually vetting an endless list of individual cookies many from the same website. My only question is why such a low version number? SC 0.1.2 seems to be behaving like an advanced beta, almost ready to go golden. I am ready to donate when the version number gets close to 1.0. (Version 0.1.2) | |
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Tags | Mar 25 2009 |
FEMIGH I had been looking for an app that would merely tag messages in Mail to compensate for poorly expressed subject headers. Mailtags does the job well, but does too many things. Then along comes Tags with its clean and fast interface for tagging virtually anything, including Mail messages. Glad I waited for it - am well into the evaluation period and very likely to pay the reasonable shareware fee after another week of looking for bugs (none so far). Tags makes creating and assigning (and removing) keywords easy and fast. I think of it as a cross-indexing complement to Spotlight and ABC Launch, especially for databases and spreadsheets that Spotlight cannot reach into. I do not tag a lot of things, but for certain projects the app makes a very good consolidator of different types of files, folders, URLs and email messages. The only thing I could wish for now is an ability to tag individual records within databases and spreadsheets. (Version 1.1) | |
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Moneydance | Dec 30 2008 |
FEMIGH Fast and stable, clearly mapped - the best money management software. I have tried a lot of Mac finance apps, used Quicken for years, finally (and slowly) migrating to Moneydance over this last year. No glitches whatever. The search features are brilliant and speedy, as are the graphic budget displays. Upgrades have been regular and free - I may voluntarily donate soon, thinking that it is about time that responsive Reilly Technologies be paid for the upgrades I have gotten since paying for the initial 2007 version. (Version 2008r3) | |
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BusySync | Apr 11 2008 |
FEMIGH Flawless, and fast, as in 'it just works' with Google calendar. SpanningSync looks good, and they are certainly trying hard enough. But it often stalls, or does just a partial sync (I typically have about 12 calendars active), or syncs only in one direction. They blame it on Google protocols, but BusySync sidesteps all that, and is very quick at automatically updating. No hiccups whatever. The odd thing about BusySync documentation is that it appears as if the .prefPane merely automates iCal's publish and subscribe protocols. But all one has to do is publish to Google calendar from iCal (via BusySync), and then a change at _either_ end will update on the other. So after a couple of days with BusySync I am about to break a personal rule not to buy software until the full trial period has been exercised. Well, maybe a few more days. And hoping that BusySync will in future extend to synchronizing Address Book with Google contacts . . . . (Version 2.0b8) | |
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SafariPlus | Mar 11 2008 |
FEMIGH BY FAR the best cookie manager for Safari (pre-Leopard) - painless, automatic filtering, easy-to-set preferences, then hands-off. Apple should pay to incorporate into Safari 3. But not ready for Leopard. When SP becomes compatible with Leopard, I will pay more than the suggested donation. (Version 1.5.1) | |
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QIM | Dec 4 2007 |
FEMIGH This upgrade is close to magic, especially with the new ability to parse entire sentences. I installed it in Leopard over version 1.3, which had been installed on Tiger. Simple installation with a new dictionary was flawless. Short experimentation showed that pinyin characters should be contiguous (words not separated by spaces) to construct sentences or phrases. Not sure about accuracy yet, but so far it seems to be even better than the 95% claimed by the developer. Well done! (Version 1.4.3) | |
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SafariPlus | Dec 4 2007 |
FEMIGH SafariPlus is the only really good, yet unobtrusive, cookie and history manager that I know of. Let us hope for a Leopard version soon. I would be happy to pay the shareware fee again just to get it operating with 10.5.x. (Version 1.5.1) | |
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Bento | Dec 3 2007 |
FEMIGH Another feature in my wish list for Bento: The ability to import/export tab-separated text files. Makes it much easier to import from other databases, as well as text files sent me to convert to databases. Being limited to .csv files is a multi-step pain, since most exports from other apps are in .txt form. (Version 1.0v2r1) | |
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Bento | Dec 2 2007 |
FEMIGH In addition to my requirements for Bento to meet the capabilities of AppleWorks DB, I add that Bento should be able to hide selected or unselected records. This is related to the need for showing forms in a list view, rather than a form-by-form view. (Version 1.0v2r1) | |
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Bento | Nov 22 2007 |
FEMIGH Good first try and, in a few respects, better than AppleWorks 6 DB. What it needs to be as useable as AW6DB: 1) in layout mode, the ability to designate default text font and style for individual fields and field labels; 2) in data entry mode, the ability to override designated text font, style or size; 3) ability to edit theme backgrounds, especially to all white; 4) ability to view forms as a list, especially for printing; 5) ability to zoom form or table window; 6) more flexible field label placement ((instead of just top or side), including the option of not having field labels at all; 7) ability to sort on secondary and tertiary fields in addition to primary field sort; 8) file (library) password protection. (Version 1.0v2r1) | |
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iList Data | Jun 16 2007 |
FEMIGH Finally a flat-field verging-on-relational database that isn’t overkill like Filemaker for most applications. But for purposes of convenience of record layout design, with easily assembled and unlimited layout/sort/search criteria combinations, nothing beats AppleWorks database. It is a GEM, even compared to Filemaker, for easy-yet-sophisticated flat-field database design and management. Apple has neglected AW6’s development but so far has not abandoned it. This version of iList Data is still comparatively awkward and in some ways a throwback to the days of dBase III and IV. If you don’t need relational capability, stay with AppleWorks while it still lives. (Version 3.5) | |
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English-Italian Dictionary | Jan 7 2007 |
FEMIGH Seems OK for what it does, especially for idiomatic expressions, but the dictionary is missing some basic functionality. For one thing, the it fails in a basic aspect - identifying the gender of nouns in Italian, making it unreliable for using the proper article with the noun. Another thing missing is the ability to conjugate verbs as one looks them up. Forgiveable in a paper dictionary, but I think essential in electronic form. The Language Assistant series (French, German, Italian and Spanish versions) used to do this for Mac OS9, with a very small disk footprint (each language app came on ONE floppy disk). Whoever acquired the series did not translate the conjugation feature into Mac OS X, or any other OS of which I am aware. (Version 9.0) | |
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