MUSUBANA  In these days of tabloids, JACKOSX may be a potentially troublesome name. B-)  
(Version 0.83)

MUSUBANA  Great! I have long been looking for something like this.  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  This application is a real time saver!

Thank you developer, that you did not make it a menubar app!

The counter should always be visible; that’s one of the ideas behind the Pomodoro technique (do google it!)

A lot of programs hide the menubar, but Focus Booster is still there…

Suggestion:

When you need to see the whole screen, e.g. when you’re working on graphics, it should be possible to temporarily hide the FB window with a key combo. (Only while the keys are being pressed…) And how about making it transparent on mouseover?  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  Wow!  
(Version 1.2)

MUSUBANA  This used to be the king of personal wikies.

How bad the developer decided to abandon all the Tiger users.  
(Version 4.0)

MUSUBANA  Quite tricky to install – you have to restart your computer.

Besides, it kept crashing on mine, anytime I hit a volume button while Speaker Mute was running. (MacBook, OS X 4.9.)

What a pity.  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  Hm, PPC only in these days… :-o  
(Version 1.4)

MUSUBANA  Thanks for the new advanced timing options. Just what I was looking for! :-)  
(Version 1.2)

MUSUBANA  This program does its job, but it is rather basic. If type-rehearsing your vocabulary works for you, then you’ll be just content. If you want multiple choice tests, pronunciation checks etc. you shold try out some of the other alternatives (some of them are free). You know, some people can’t live without Word, while others happily write their letters in TextEdit.  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  Thanks. A variable timing option would be really nice.

I too want a stable rhythm BETWEEN the words. (The blackouts must all be the same.) However, when reading

1) Technical texts

2) Texts in some non-English languages (notably German)

there are a lot of words which I tend to miss because they are too long to be read in one quick glance.

It is not reasonable that ”counterrevolutionary” get the same amount of time as ”a” or ”the”. IMHO.  
(Version 1.12)

MUSUBANA  Nice and useful program.

I only wish it could adjust its speed to the length of the word being shown.

It takes longer time to read a word like ā€™democracyā€™ than a word like ā€™theā€™, but in the present version of this app they get the same amount of time on ā€¯stageā€¯.  
(Version 1.12)

MUSUBANA  Beautiful!

Just what I’ve been missing.  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  I should have bestowed only 4 stars upon Cysgliad – the joy of discovering a Welsh language app made me disregard the program’s weaknesses:

*In the dictionary, you have to type the words in full, ”pl”+enter will just lead you to a ”nothing found”. Had Cysgeir implemented a search-as-you-type function (like Apple’s Dictionary), typing ”pl” would have revealed _pla_ ”plague” immediately.

*The dictionary neither shows mutated nor plural forms of nouns. This is a severe drawback, especially if the dictionary is to be used by non-Welsh speakers. (Verbal/prepositional paradigms for each looked-up verb/preposition would also be v. nice, but that is perhaps to much to ask?)

Otherwise, the positive comments of my first review prevail! :-)  
(Version 1.0b)

MUSUBANA  Cysgliad is actually a bundle of two independent applications:

*Cysgeir, which is a searchable Welsh/English (bidirectional) dictionary

*Cysill, a Welsh spell checker

I do not write (coherent) Welsh, so I cannot comment on the usefulness/reliability of Cysill – I misspelt a couple of Welsh words in the text field, and it seems to work like any other decent spell checker.

Cysgeir is a unique collection of 12 digitalized dictionaries. Most modern-day Welsh and/or English words can be found, from spheres as various as archaeology and child care. This is one of the best free offline dictionary applications I’ve seen; a joy for any lover of the Welsh language, and a useful tool (I guess) for those who have to switch between English and Welsh in their everyday lives.

A culturally important language like Welsh deserves our respect and attention. I wish to congratulate the developers, and hope that other minority languages will soon receive a similar digital boost.  
(Version 1.0b)

MUSUBANA  WOW! :-D

Just one function away from 5 stars:

Make it (optional to) show the cursor when zoomed. I hoped to be able to use this app for graphical niggling; now it’s just for viewing…  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  This is a sad day for Tiger users.  
(Version 0.4)

MUSUBANA  (Sure, but learning foreign language colour names by clicking on the actual colours would be something novel. I think you should give it a try in a future edition...)  
(Version 1.2)

MUSUBANA  The free version is nice, but it is rather limited when comes to usefullness, as you can only see three "generations" at a time. This makes it very hard to supervise anything but the most minuscule charts.

Sure, you can click your way through’em, but you miss the "bird’s perspective" which is really needed if you want to find unexpected connections between ideas.

I must admit the price of the paid version is a ... no-brainer.

I can’t think of any other app where the leap from "free" to "share" is that steep.  
(Version 4.1.3.4)

MUSUBANA  Will you please add support for different languages? If you could choose between installed lang. files from a drop-down menu, that would be great too.

Then we could even use ColorNamePicker as a tool for learning foreign language colour names!  
(Version 1.2)

MUSUBANA  This seems great, but how do I install it?

I have run the installer a couple of times, but the Dictionary application is unchanged.

:-(  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  Anyone thinking this is a vector drawing application like DrawBerry or Inkscape should be warned: It isn’t.

It is a bitmap drawing app, which nonetheless has the option to use a vector line as an on-screen delimiter of an actual pixel figure. (It is like creating a [physical world] tile mosaic within the wavy bonds of an encircling rope.)

Nonetheless, the lite version is a decent (bitmap) drawing application. It relies heavily on an insert menu, from which different shapes can be selected – a kind of ”collage wizard”. This makes it easy to use for the newcomer, but more ”bossy” and less flexible to those accustomed to SeaShore, PhotoShop, etc. That being said, DrawIt Lite has some strength in creating custom bitmap shapes. I think I’ll keep it, and use it to create stars and the like, which can then be easily copy-pasted into SeaShore or a text document.  
(Version 1.0.1)

MUSUBANA  This isn’t a vector app in the proper sense. Therefore, it cannot possibly export as .svg.

When you choose ”insert vector”, it just uses a vector line to delimit a bitmap figure. Try increasing the zoom level, and you’ll see all the clumsy pixels…  
(Version 1.0.1)

MUSUBANA  Thank you for your kind reply.

Iā€™m not really angry! :-)

I realize it is only a question of time till every developer will do like you.

Till then I will happily continue using Tiger, and unhappily have to live without your most interesting application.

If I knew more about programming, I would remove the superfluous code and make a Tiger version for my own use.

I see that the differences between Tiger and Leopard are more complex than I thought. (Not just superficial things like Spaces and a transparent menu bar.)  
(Version 0.9.14)

MUSUBANA  Nice and handy!

Loses one star for being an AppleScript, though. AS’s are slower to execute than ordinary applications.

The icon could also be more elaborate, but that’s no big deal.

subidoo does its job, and it does it rather well.  
(Version 1.5)

MUSUBANA  Thank you KKNOPP for the warning below.

I have always been a fan of PTHPasteboard, but now I will keep the old version until the developer has realized the sense of your message, and removed the nagware.

(I post this as an independent comment to give the anti-nagware lobbying some weight.)  
(Version 4.4)

MUSUBANA  Thank you.

But that oneā€™s java... Almost easier to draw it by hand... :-/  
(Version 0.9.14)

MUSUBANA  (Here I go again…)

Is there any technical reason this app is Leopard-only?

I mean, it looks simple and cocoa-esque, so why this limitation?

If it has anything to do with Spaces, or Leopard Preview, or TimeMachine – is there a file or a line in the pref file I can delete to make it work in Tiger?

Sorry for this double rant, but I think it would be crazy to buy Leopard just to get a free mind mapping app…  
(Version 0.9.14)

MUSUBANA  Please make this app available for Tiger users… There are a lot of us still!  
(Version 0.9.14)

MUSUBANA  Thank you so much that this is still available for Tiger users!  
(Version 1.5.2)

MUSUBANA  This application is perfect. Everyone should try it out.

Proxi has allowed me to automate my system the way _I_ want. Most other system additions give me the feeling of _me_ being directed instead.

Because of Proxi I’ve deleted Automator and several small one-trick ponies, thus saving a lot of HD space.

Keep working on this, developers!  
(Version 1.5.1)

MUSUBANA  Wish I had this some years ago, when I spent several hours correcting signs in my text files which had mysteriously ”morphed” after being transferred from a pc to a mac. Sigh. :-)  
(Version 0.8.0b)

MUSUBANA  Thank you developer for this recent update!

The program is quite close to perfection now.

The only thing I still miss is the possibility to save notes when closing them… And maybe a (thumbnail) note browser with all categories…  
(Version 2.0)

MUSUBANA  Had this been ”Pet Year Calculator”, I’d download it…

Not much help for cat aficionados here…

And aren’t there some rules for calculating ages for horses, rabbits, parrots too?  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  I found a bug in WW 1.5 related to non-US keyboards.

However, I don’t know how to contact the developer, as he leaves no contact info on his homepage.

Can anyone help me?  
(Version 1.5)

MUSUBANA  Nice.

I do not know a word of Chinese, but finally I can add sound to all those ”mute” internet adds… (�_�)

Unless you have a CJK keyboard/typing device it is a bit hard to use, though. I picked random signs from the System’s floating Unicode palette (click the flag on your menubar), and discovered that Pinyin Dictionary only covers the mere basics. If you input some sign from the extended sign blocks, like "CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20021" (𠀡), the program yields nothing.

I guess actual readers and learners of Chinese script will give this app their thumbs up. Let’s wait and see…

(A final wish: Why not include IPA transscription as well? That would be a perfect way to learn Mandarin. [I assume the program gives the Mandarin pronunciation of the signs, though it does not explicitly says so – which it definitely should!])  
(Version 2.0)

MUSUBANA  A good idea with a long way to go before perfection is achieved.

First of all, hierarchical browsing through all the folders on oneā€™s computer in order to find image folders is very clumsy and un-mac-ish. Other apps have niceties like ā€¯add folderā€¯ buttons and drang-and-drop. (Perhaps even a ā€¯Scan harddisc for image filesā€¯ menu could be useful.)

Secondly, most people do not remember pictures by colours, but rather by things like, I guess, buildings, who were on that particular photo, was it a group portrait or a depiction of a landscape etc.

I recognize that a program that can analyze the facial traits of photographed persons and group shots of similar individuals together may be a bit out of scope here, but at least it ought to be possible to do shape-based sortings like:

*images with predominant vertical/horizontal elements

*images with one central dark element

*images with several scattered dark elements etc.

But keep up the good work and this may some day revolutionize the way we sort images!  
(Version 2.02)

MUSUBANA  It would be wonderful if it were possible to select another screensaver for your desktop than the one appearing as your ”actual” screensaver!

Watching the same thing when you take a break as you just saw while you were working, is a bit boring…  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  Well, searching does not work on my computer.

Keeping the welcome entry (which contains the words ”This is a portable application.”), a search for the word ”this” returns just the same as a search for the word ”alien”: nothing. The screen even stays the same. (No ”Nothing was found” message.)

The search field menu also has the custom of jumping back to ”✓Entry” after I have searched once for ”✓Content”.

P’aps it works fine on Leopard. I still use Tiger.  
(Version 1.1.3)

MUSUBANA  The search function does not work properly. Indeed, with only one diary entry, it doesn’t work at all.  
(Version 1.1.3)

MUSUBANA  Sometimes the simplest things are the most ingenious ones. People may laugh and say ”So what? It’s just a menu!” – but someone had to breathe life into this idea.

Works like a charm. When I combine it with CornerClick ( http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12413/cornerclick ), all I have to do is to click the menu’s corner to get uncluttered access to all those small icons…

The only thing lacking is a way to hide the Menuola icon from the doc…

Menuola is worth 5 stars, but I give it only 4 for now, to encourage the developer to think about what I just wrote… ;-)  
(Version 2.0)

MUSUBANA  Dear M. Developer!

Could you please make it an option to auto-hide the cursor on launch?

That little black fly of Apple’s bugs the lamp effect… ;-)  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  I was looking for something like this.

What a pity, then, that it’s dependent on PhotoShop, which I don’t have.

How about a stand-alone app?  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  Why would anyone want to download Adobe Reader when Skim has many more functions and runs smoother?  
(Version 8.1.1)

MUSUBANA  This is cool, and it would be useful if you could actually USE it for something:

to create ASCII art.

It ought to be possible to pause the movie, e.g. by a mouse-click, and then copy the text string.

Or even open a non-movie (image file) and see/copy it as ASCII.  
(Version 3.0)

MUSUBANA  To the developer:

Can you please make a Sporktris widget?  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  This is the most beautiful version of Tetris I’ve ever seen.

No irritating melodies, no robotic feel to the graphics. (If you want that, try Quinn.)

Pure _recreation_ for the mind.  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  Bellissimo!  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  I’m probably biased since I only write in Latin-script languages…

But even if I never have to analyse Chinese texts, it’s quite fun (is that the word??) to see how many e’s, s’s etc. a text contains. Gives you at least some orthographic perspective.

If it were drop-and-drag, I’d give CaraCaraC one more star. Now it’s open-file-mark-text-copy-to-clipboard-open-CaraCaraC-scan-clipboard,

which isn’t that elegant.  
(Version 2.1)

MUSUBANA  Tak for en sjov widget! :-)

(I assume you know some Danish, since your blog address ends in .dk…)

Just one wish:

Make it an option to turn off those dumb remarks by the Fruit Machine.

They ”sound” worse than good old HAL (”A Space Odyssey”). Argh!  
(Version 1.2)

MUSUBANA  No, I haven’t tried the original TR 606.

I see your point…

A ’lator (emu-/simu-) is a ’lator…  
(Version 1.2)

MUSUBANA  This app should be universal, but works quite OK with Rosetta on Intel macs.

This is a VERY basic drum machine, where you highlight the beats on a single line. When playing, a ”loading bar” roams across the screen. It looks lousy.

(But hey, it’s the sound that matters, right?)

My main objection is:

when you switch instrument, there is NO WAY to see which beats are being played by other instruments. The beat line simply becomes unmarked again. If you for example want two instruments to play at the same beat, you have to guess where that beat is – or use your ear really good.

This could have been acceptable in a PC program, but on a Mac I’d expect something graphically more advanced.

Sorry. Try MrDrum or Breakage, they’re free too.  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  You can even do the same – and lots more with TinkerTool. Check it out!  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  Not of much use unless you are an expert of Mayan or a medieval-minded modern-day Maya.

But five stars for the historical value and the great fun! :-)  
(Version 2.0)

MUSUBANA  This program has some interesting features.

The box makes it easy to overlook all your notes, even those not stored on the desktop. It is also nice that you have the possibility to doodle on your sheets, and to bring a note to the front of your screen at a specific time (the alarm function).

On the other hand, the SketchBox notes are ugly (neon rather than pastel colours; small flags extending from the left side of the note, even when another app is active) and lack the simplicity of Apple’s Stickies. In the physical world I prefer the pale yellow quadratic PostIt notes to those in heart-shaped ones in screaming orange etc. Thus I stick to Stickies.  
(Version 1.1)

MUSUBANA  A decent little app.

Doesn’t do much; for more advanced drawing, people should download Seashore.

However, if you just want to make a quick sketch, it’s perfect.  
(Version 0.8)

MUSUBANA  This program has improved a lot (incl. a lasso tool!), so I will modify my original harsh review a bit.

However, I do think that the app was launched to the public too early.  
(Version 0.8)

MUSUBANA  The screenshot made me think that this was an app to create system-wide ”hovering notes”, of the kind that appears when you hold your cursor (unclicked!) a couple of seconds above certain spots (like the buttons in Firefox, or the Start button in Windows). I’d love to be able to create a reminder note that appeared each time my cursor hovered above the HD icon…

But no. This program is just another ”Stickies” program. And the BAD thing is that the ”Sheets” (= stickies with one pointing corner) just vanish when you quit the main window. Even when you keep the program running in the background, close a sheet and reopen it, the program seems to have trouble to remember the original position of your reopened sheet. This program adds no functionality that you can’t get with Apple’s stickies or alternatives such as ”SideNote”. Don’t waste your time.  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  A paint program with no useable lasso tool?

No way.

Better download SeaShore.  
(Version 0.5)

MUSUBANA  Widget-to-Desktop doesn’t cooperate very well with Virtual Dashboard (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22751/virtual-dashboard).

When I switch from one dashboard to another, the W-t-D function vanishes, and I have to launch W-t-D again.

Could you fix this somehow?  
(Version 3.1)

MUSUBANA  Oh, there is a Launcher icon in the .dmg... Now everything works fine!

(You just have to be aware that the package itself won't install the Launcher onto your harddrive...)  
(Version 0.2)

MUSUBANA  The problem is that SuperTuxKart installs itself as an X11-only program; you have to type a code in the X11 terminal.

Now, this code doesn't seem to work on my computer...

And I have no idea how to find the SuperTuxKart files, so that I can remove those 30 MB; a search for "SuperTuxKart" yields no results...

Until the developer includes an uninstaller, I will dissuade other users from downloading this "game".  
(Version 0.2)

MUSUBANA  Using Dockless (which works fine on Intel macs, despite being a ppc app), I've been able to solve the problem.  
(Version 1.0)

MUSUBANA  Hi, I really like this app.

However, it should be possible to exclude items of your choice from the menu.

Right now I'm using several "decoration" programs like MenuShade (search it here on MacUpdate), and it is really irritating that it appears as an icon whenever I start Think. :-/  
(Version 1.0)