Technology Blog (UK), Hi-Tech Gadgets & Gaming - Zath! » Software

TotalFinder – A Better Finder (Mac OS X)

John Thompson — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:55:16 +0000

TotalFinder is a new application for Mac OS X, which allows you to pump your Finder full of steroids (not literally of course, but you see where I’m going with this…) and enhance it with many new and useful features. It’s still only in Alpha, but it’s stable enough for everyday use, and is now an indispensable tool on my MacBook Pro.

The first thing you’ll notice about TotalFinder is that once it’s been installed on your system, Finder will have tabs! With tabs styled on Google’s Chrome browser thanks to the Chromium codebase, you can easily flick between tabs and save the hassle of having a lot of Finder windows open to carry out your daily tasks. For those ol’ Norton Commander fans out there, you can also view your windows in a dual panel mode which is a nice option to have, although one I don’t personally use.

A feature recently added in the latest release of TotalFinder (0.8 at the time of writing) is the ability to drag and drop files between tabs, which is a great addition I’ve been hoping for since the early releases. It works great and is a real time saver having all your tabs available to drag and drop in through one Finder window.

Although it’s still currently in Alpha, I’ve found TotalFinder to be a stable application, especially in the later builds. It’s currently free from binaryage, although when it comes out of testing it will cost to use – keep your eye on this one!

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TotalFinder – A Better Finder (Mac OS X)

Pushme.to iPhone App Review

John Thompson — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:18:47 +0000

Pushme.to is a free alternative to text messaging on the iPhone, allowing users of the app to send and receive messages from others on the service. At first I questioned the necessity of this application, after all, iPhone users already have SMS and various instant messaging and social networking clients (including Facebook and Twitter) on the App Store right?

After using it for a while, however, I came to appreciate the great service pushme.to offers as an alternative to these apps when you’re out of texts – after all, some of the iPhone contracts available on the market aren’t exactly generous when it comes to SMS limits. Another useful feature with this service is that it allows people to send messages to registered users from the Pushme.to website.

It’s also well worth noting that if you’re an iPod Touch user, you’ll be able to message people as long as you’re connected to a wi-fi network which is a great advantage for many!

When you open Pushme.to, you’re presented with a simple interface allowing you to either register an account if you’re a new user, or login to an existing account. If you’re signing up for a new account, just enter your details and check for the confirmation email and you’re all set!

Once you’re logged in, sending a message couldn’t be much simpler; just select the message button and send a message to whoever you want! With the inclusion of push notifications when you get a message, Pushme.to offers a brilliant alternative that you’ll quickly grow to love.

The best news is yet to come: the developers of Pushme.to have decided to include all the features from the paid version of the app in the free (or ‘lite’) version! You’ll be given Facebook profile access, unlimited messages and the ability to send images over messages, so what are you waiting for? After trying it out, I definitely recommend Pushme.to to anybody looking for an SMS alternative for their iPhone or iPod Touch.

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Pushme.to iPhone App Review

Opera Mini 5 Beta Android App Launched

John Thompson — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:54:44 +0000

Opera Mini 5 beta became available for download on the Android Market yesterday and after a long hands on, I believe it shows a lot of promise as a mobile browser on Android.

Opera has good history on mobile devices such as their Opera Mobile 9.5 browser for Windows Mobile phones, so the first thing that struck me about Mini 5 is that it too has an extremely simple user interface (UI) that’s extremely intuitive and makes a lot of key operations in mobile browsing very easy.

At the bottom of the screen, there’s a black bar with all the navigation tools you need, and although this may take up valuable screen estate on an already small screen, it’s very functional. You have your back, forward and refresh buttons as expected, but the tabs button makes it incredibly easy to add, remove and switch between tabs – much easier than it is on Android’s stock browser.

You also have access to the preferences via a pop up grid with various choices allowing you to not only change your settings, but also manage your downloads, bookmarks and view your history amongst other things.

Apart from the good looking UI of Opera Mini 5 on my Google Android-based Nexus One, I was impressed at the sheer speed when rendering pages. The browser itself isn’t necessarily faster, but the way pages are loaded is. When loading a page, it’s taken from Opera’s servers, which load the page using compressed text and images from their cache. This means that pages load extremely fast, although image quality isn’t as sharp as it is on the stock browser, where web pages are loaded like they would on any other device.

Being in beta, Opera Mini 5 looks incredibly promising, and although features such as pinch-to-zoom aren’t supported yet, the future of web browsing on Android certainly looks bright thanks to Google’s open platform policy, unlike a certain other company’s mobile platform…

For full details on how to download Opera Mini 5, head on over to the Opera website or search for the browser app on the Android Market.

Via – Telegraph

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Opera Mini 5 Beta Android App Launched

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software Review

John Thompson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:17:53 +0000

We’ve all been there and done it… Not many people can say they’ve never accidentally deleted an e-mail or an important file, and those who have may not have got it back! With Stellar’s Windows Data Recovery Software, you can make sure that those all important files are recovered if you ever lose them or format a drive and forget to backup a file.

Installation was effortless, and I was up and running in no time with no hassle. Unlike most complex applications that are designed for a similar function, Stellar’s recovery software is extremely well designed, providing easy access to key functions and allowing even the most inexperienced user to navigate around. You’re given five tabs to choose from at the top of the window. When a tab is selected, you’re given different functions to choose from and an explanation on how each of these functions work and how to use it. This is especially useful for beginners, and shows how much thought went in to the design process of the application.

So the user interface is great, but does Stellar’s data recovery software work well when getting your data back? To find out, I carried out small test of my own… The first thing I did was deleted numerous documents and other files across my hard drive and made a note of them so I knew what I was looking for when I ran a search to get them back!

Under the ‘Data Recovery’ tab, I chose to perform a ‘Deleted File Recovery’, which performs a quick scan to search for deleted files on your drive and presents the results in a treeview. If you can’t find the files you’re looking for you can then perform a deep scan, which should get you results, although it naturally takes longer!

I recovered most of the files that I deleted using a quick scan which took seconds, but others required a deep scan, so if you’re looking for a lot of things you may want to perform a deep scan and savage through what’s found. It’s also worth noting that you can’t recover a file to the same drive that you’re recovering it from. This means that if your computer only has one hard drive, you may want to recover the file on to an external drive, such as a pen drive or external hard drive or else the process won’t work.

As well as scanning for lost data, you can also specifically recover deleted emails with Stellar data recovery, which is a great feature to have, especially in a corporate situation where many e-mails are of the upmost importance. When your email file is found (either a .pst or .dbx email file can be searched for) you can then recover it to Outlook. The only down side to this is the limited file support; Microsoft Exchange isn’t supported which is a down side for many corporations, but it’s definitely a feature that could be expanded further in the future to accommodate more users.

In addition to these main functions, you’ll also find more useful features under the ‘Advance Options’ tab, which offers utilities that can examine the health of your hard drive, create an image file of your drive or use raw recovery to try and extract data from a corrupted drive.

Although it carries a $99 price tag, Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software is a great tool for power users and regular users alike, and if you’ve got data that you need to recover for any reason, this great utility could be the way to go!

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Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software Review

Tagcrumbs iPhone App Review

John Thompson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:37:06 +0000

If you haven’t heard of Tagcrumbs before, it’s a service dedicated to sharing your favourite places with your friends and people on the web, offering a great service when finding things to do around where you are, or just finding new places.

With such a service being well suited to location aware devices such as the iPhone 3GS, it was only a matter of time until Tagcrumbs had an application on the App Store, and it’s now available in the store for seven countries.

With the free Tagcrumbs iPhone app, you can recommend a place you’ve been for others to go, knowing that they’ll have a great time. With Tagcrumbs, users can tag places they find, offering great flexibility to users who can recommend and find virtually anything they want that’s been tagged by others.

Another great feature of this free application is that if you’re not connected by Wi-Fi and don’t have GPS active, there’s an online mode that you can use to draft recommendations and then publish them when you have a connection.

With the introduction of their iPhone application, it makes for the perfect means of adding or “tagging” places onto Tagcrumbs in a similar way to other location-based apps, however this is more about providing information about the places that you’ve been to rather than broadcasting out to the world where you are at that precise moment in time.

Another interesting feature is that you can create digital breadcrumb trails for others to follow in your footsteps (quite literally), which I’m sure could be quite fun, whether you’re on holiday and looking for a tourist trail or simply looking for a new pub crawl route for a night out.

I’m sure there’s lots more to come from these types of location-based apps, but I’m pleased to see that this particular one seems to have more direction and purpose than some of the other more big name apps out there that I’ve tried on my iPhone 3GS! Let’s hope they come up with an Android version of this app soon!

If you’re a someone who loves location-based apps, then, you’ll definitely like this Tagcrumbs iPhone app and you should try it out from the App Store as soon as you can!

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Tagcrumbs iPhone App Review

AppZapper Review (Mac OS X)

John Thompson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:35:14 +0000

One of the great delights of Mac OS X on my MacBook Pro is how easy it is to install and uninstall applications and now AppZapper makes it even easier. For those of you who aren’t familiar with OS X, when installing an application, all you have to do (most of the time) is drag and drop in to your applications folder.

When uninstalling, you simply drag the application into the trash can. As with any program, however various leftovers remain on your hard drive which are hard to identify amongst the multitude of other files floating around. This is where AppZapper comes in!

It’s a simple application which allows you to drag any application in to a small window. AppZapper then finds all related files for you and groups them together ready to be ‘Zapped’ with the main application. The whole process is not only simple, but effectively manages to delete any related files and save space on your hard drive, in this sense it’s similar to the recently reviewed CleanMyMac software.

Oh, and did I mention the really addictive ‘zap’ sound you hear as well as the screen flashing every time an application is deleted? Don’t worry, you can choose for this not to happen, but it’s cool right?

As well as the standard drag and drop feature, a recently introduced feature, ‘Hit List’, allows you to visually browse all of the applications on your Mac. If you find one that you no longer want, simply hit Zap and the application along with all its related files will be gone!

AppZapper is shareware, free to try for 5 zaps before requiring a license which can be bought for $12.95 from the AppZapper site.

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AppZapper Review (Mac OS X)

VoucherCloud iPhone App Review

John Thompson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:27:39 +0000

Whoever invented discount vouchers should most probably be a saint…if you look hard enough, you’ll be able to find discount vouchers for most stores you’d want to buy from, but it’s the looking that’s the hard part!

Luckily for us, the VoucherCloud iPhone App takes the pain out of hunting for vouchers by simply offering you choices based on your current location and any category you wish to view.

VoucherCloud is available as a free application on the App Store, if you’re out and about you’ll be saving money in no time with all the offers in your area that you didn’t know about! Presenting offers around your current location using GPS is a great location based service that makes this app a great addition to your iPhone.

Registration on your iPhone is a simple process taking less than a minute and by default after locating you, you’re shown all offers, but you can narrow down the search by selecting any of the icons which gives you more relevant results based on what you want. If you find something that interest you, it can be selected to give you more details on the offer as well as contact information of the business, including an address and phone number.

If you want to use the voucher, simply select ‘Use’ to display the voucher that you show to the shop assistant who will then scan the onscreen barcode to give you your discount there and then.

I’m really pleased with how it works, it reminds me of similar US-only apps which launched last year and I was annoyed that there was no UK counterpart – well now there is! Having tested it out here at Zath on our iPhone 3GS, we’d say it’s certainly a very useful iPhone app to have with you when you’re out and about looking to save some cash – and who doesn’t want to do that?

Being a very well designed and useful application, VoucherCloud is definitely worth checking out from the App Store; just showing your iPhone to shop assistants (much like with the Tesco Clubcard iPhone App) is something that’ll take some getting used to though! However, if you don’t entirely trust your local stores to know what they’re doing just yet, you can still print out the vouchers from the VoucherCloud Mobile Vouchers website and take them along as backup, perhaps until you trust stores to fully know what’s happening.

Also, if you don’t have an iPhone, then you won’t have to wait long until you can get an equivalent VoucherCloud app for various other mobile phone platforms (such as Android) as these are being rolled out during Spring 2010.

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VoucherCloud iPhone App Review

Zath’s Technology & Gadget Roundup (08/03/2010)

Simon Barker — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:05:34 +0000

It’s the start of another week here on Zath, wow this year is really flying by, but at least it starting to get sunny here in the UK – anyway let’s have a quick look back at some of the interesting technology and gadget articles in the past week…

LG InTouch Max (GW620) Review – we’ve reviewed quite a few LG mobile phone handsets over the past couple of years and now we’ve had chance to take a proper look at LG’s first Android mobile phone, it’s perhaps not everything that you might have wanted if you’re looking to move from an iPhone, however if you’re looking for a good low priced Android handset, then this could be the one for you!

Google Buzz iPhone App Launched – well it didn’t take a long did it? You can now get an iPhone app that works as a software client for the latest social network; Google Buzz. I have an iPhone and have looked at the Google webpage app, but haven’t really used it. It’s good to see separate clients appearing for Google Buzz as it wasn’t until I started using clients with Twitter that I properly used that.

Review: Sony Ericsson Aino (The PS3 Phone) – have you got a Playstation 3? Would you like to be able to connect your mobile phone up to it and use Remote Play to control and view content on your PS3. This is an interesting move forward for the console manufacturers, ever since we first did our Sony Ericsson Aino preview, I’ve been thinking that in future we’ll be seeing more ways in which to use your mobile phones with your gaming console.

FLIPR iPhone Universal Remote – this nifty little device plugs into your iPhone 3G, 3GS or iPod Touch and turns it into a universal remote control. I’ve tried a variety of different universal remote controls in the past, but unfortunately for a variety of reasons always end up going back to having a line of original remote controls on my sofa. However, having a customisable touch-screen remote control in the form of my iPhone 3GS that I always have in my pocket does sound appealing!

Virgin Broadband: Next-Gen Fragging For Discerning Gamers – do you need the fastest of high-speed broadband? Are you a gamer that needs the fastest connection to ensure the lowest pings on your online games? Or do you love your online media and want to be able to stream the latest high definition programming? Does it take you ages to upload your photos and videos to sites such as Facebook? I can only wish that I could have internet access to these kinds of levels because of my location, but if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that is covered by Virgin Media Broadband, then you might want to take a look at what it’s capable of!

Wayne Unwillingly Goes Wireless For The Weekend – so what happens if your internet provider goes down? Well normally we’d just have to put up with it, wait for it be fixed, perhaps find a coffee shop that offers free wifi, however if you have an online business, you probably need another option you can depend on, here Wayne gets to test out Orange’s iPhone tethering internet access. I found this particularly interesting as I’m looking at mobile broadband options in the form of either a USB dongle, a Mifi (mobile internet wireless hotspot) or perhaps an Android-based phone such as the Nexus One and using a tethering option with that. What are your thoughts on this subject? I’d be interested to know what you think!

World Of Warcraft Characters Papercraft Is Just WOW! – right well I admit it, I do on occasion play a bit of World of Warcraft and if you’ve ever played the game too, then I’m sure you can appreciate some of the impressively created WoW papercraft characters that someone has made – I’m sure it takes ages to make something like that, but they do look very cool and if you’re someone who already has a WoW mouse and perhaps a WoW keyboard connected up to your computer, then these could be just what you need to complete your desk!

Mini Freeview Digital TV & Media Player – so it seems that everyone is talking tablet devices this year, what with a plethora of different companies producing their own products and not to mention a certain product called the Apple iPad whose launch is creeping closer every day. But what if you want a smaller, simpler media player to watch your Freeview digital TV, videos and music, then this might be a better option for you!

Radio Controlled Nighthawk Helicopter – ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had some kind of fascination with helicopters, I’m not quite sure what it is, but they always looked so cool to me just hovering in the air, seeing the Airwolf helicopter on the TV show probably added a lot to it. Anyway, consequently I’ve always wanted a really good radio controlled helicopter, unfortunately they were always so expensive, however they are now coming down to an affordable price as technology marches on, so I might have to give one of these a try now. What do you think, have you got a remote control helicopter? Do you have any advice in buying one?

If you read or run a technology or gadget-related that has written some interesting articles that you think other people would like to read about, then feel free to send us your suggestions to contact@zath.co.uk

Also, if you haven’t already, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook as a way of keeping up to date with everything on Zath, try it out and see what you think, it won’t cost you anything!

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Zath’s Technology & Gadget Roundup (08/03/2010)

Tesco Clubcard iPhone App Review

Simon Barker — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:10:04 +0000

Have you seen the new Tesco Clubcard iPhone App? If you’re a loyal Tesco customer like me (well I have a loyalty card, so clearly I must be) and have an iPhone then here’s your chance to get rid of one of those numerous cards from your wallet or purse!

Tesco’s Clubcard app for the iPhone is a pretty simple one in its current form, you enter your clubcard details into it and it then will display a barcode whenever you load up the app.

Therefore all you need to do when you’re next at the Tesco checkout is load up the app and have it scanned at the till instead of plucking out you a card from your wallet or purse or perhaps using one of the keyring barcodes they’ve also sent out to people.

Although, if you’ve got your wallet or purse out to pay for your shopping, isn’t it more convenient to just use another card instead of taking out your iPhone, loading up an app to scan? That said though, I do normally end up using my iPhone 3GS while waiting in the queue anyway.

The Tesco Clubcard iPhone app in its current form is fairly useful and a nice option to have, especially for those times when you don’t have your clubcard with you for whatever reason, but obviously it’s not revolutionary in this initial release.

However, what really appeals to me is how they could develop this application, for instance they could have all your clubcard voucher codes available from within the app itself? I personally never end up using the clubcard voucher offers that are sent out to me in the post as I always forget about them entirely, if I could easily flick through them on my iPhone, assign which I wanted to use whilst in the queue, then they could be easily scanned in when I get to the till?

Also, how about them using the GPS and providing location-based information of specific special offers of what’s in-store at your nearest supermarket that day that Tesco’s Clubcard database will know that you would like because you often buy them anyway, surely that would be a good way of getting extra people to the store on certain days to buy extra stuff? Perhaps they could offer discounts for specific times of the week when they know it’s quieter, to encourage more people into the store would make better use of the staff they have in-store that they’re paying for anyway?

I’m sure there are other ways in which they could develop this application further, especially given you can now buy an iPhone from Tesco Mobile and get free Tesco Mobile sim cards.

Anyway, what do you think about the Tesco Clubcard iPhone App in its current form and what do you think about the potential that these kind of apps could add to your shopping experiences?

Alternatively check out some of our other sites - Gadgets For Men - Tech-Styling - Cheap Bargains - Zath TV

Tesco Clubcard iPhone App Review

Google Chrome Browser Share Grows Through February

Christian Milsom — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:11:55 +0000

It’s been a while, probably since Google Chrome was released to the world, but web browsers are back in the big news again all thanks to Microsoft’s EU enforced ‘ballot box’ for selecting a browser to install, and Net Applications have recently released statistics which paint a very interesting picture about the world of the internet browser.

Unfortunately the situation has been pretty similar for a while: IE have boasted over 60% of the market share for years now, with Firefox edging closer and closer to the 25% mark with the rest fighting over the remains. But that looks like it might change, and in fact Chrome was the only major browser growing in February, and that is before the Microsoft Windows Browser Ballot which promises to change much.

Before we look at why – the figures. Google is up a significant 0.39% to 5.61%, whilst Firefox fell 0.20% to 24.23% and Internet Explorer suffered the biggest hit with a fall of 0.54% to 61.58%. Opera (0.03%) and Safari (0.08%) both also fell, although seeing as both of them combined fail to make up more than even 8% of the market they are unfortunately not much more than footnotes.

In fact just looking through the list is quite interesting Opera Mini, Playstation and BlackBerry making an appearance, but it really is the growth of Chrome that is the most interesting part of this survey.

So Google Chrome is on the rise even before Microsoft have introduced the Browser Ballot, but why? Well as various newspapers and TV stations have been catching on to the story they have been having various articles/discussions about which browser is the best which will have brought the fact that there are alternative browsers to the attention to some of those less tech savvy internet users.

But I don’t think that is the whole story, as although more attention is being brought to the alternative browsers it’s only Google that would seem to be benefiting from this, and I think the reason for this is exactly the same reason that IE has been popular for all these years: people trust Google.

Admittedly there are no extensive studies to back this up, but it does seem logical to suggest that given a choice of products you are more likely to go with the one made by a company you have come to trust, and I believe that this will really be an indication as to what will happen when people are given the choice – many more of the ‘un-browser-educated’ will go for Chrome than for the likes of Firefox or Opera merely because they recognise the name…they may already use it every day for searching the Internet… which really goes to show how much of a brand Google is.

So Chrome is on the rise, and could we be seeing it compete with Firefox in the future? Admittedly at this rate it will take them well over a decade to do so, but it could well become more of a three horse race in the future, and maybe the possible introduction of the Google Chrome OS in the future may help this. We shall just have to wait and see!

Via – Netmarket

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Google Chrome Browser Share Grows Through February