Loktah – portfolios, boxes, cases
Loktah produces beautiful, simple and natural looking products based on waxed organic paper. I thought I would diverge this week from my usual tech solutions to something more tangible for all of you artists, photographers and crafty people. They have elegant products at a reasonable price.

Website: www.loktah.com
Cost: $10-$35US

iShowU is a very cool capturing application (realtime screencasting), that captures online/offline media that can be imported directly into Pro Apps such as Final Cut (you can even choose pro level settings). The image quality of the captures is quite amazing. Ironically, the demos on their website are not that impressive which is a pity, but the software can produce very high quality captures. The price is also very reasonable compared to other, less feature-filled apps, at just under $60 US. You can use this product to enhance video projects, you can use it for software demos, you can create support videos to E-mail to customers addressing their technical problems..etc. When I first installed it, it didn’t work properly but once I closed it, restarted it and put in my registration number a second time, it worked perfectly.

Some other features include:
- Recording from iSight and DV cameras
- Upload to YouTube/Blip.TV
- Realtime scaling for captures
- Key recording and Mouse actions
- Real time preview
- Watermark editing
- Low CPU usage

Website: http://www.shinywhitebox.com/ishowuhd/main.html
Cost: $59.95USD
Requires: Leopard 10.5

iCal Events
This product is a widget you can put on your dashboard, it draws calendar events out of your Apple calendar and gives you a summary of up to two weeks in advance. The events are color coded to define which calendar events are out of. It is a great reminder, it has saved me on a few occasions already!

Website: http://www.benkazez.com/icalevents.php
Cost: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or later

I came across MacJournal as a means to keep my notes organized. I often find myself at events, talks, seminars etc and need an organized place to keep track of my notes and ideas. MacJournal is almost like a personal log from StarTrek (I’m out of the closet ), you can keep a daily journal, written or video, as well as notes.

What I like is that your notes are dated so it is easy to go back and find specific entries. The MacJournal also has cool features like export to blog, Picasa integration, password protection and encryption options. It is a great tool for the creative professional as it allows you to collect your thoughts and ideas in one place, it also doesn’t limit you to just using words to express yourself. It is also priced well at $34.95US

Website: http://www.marinersoftware.com/
Cost: Free trial and then can purchase for $34.95
Requires: Mac OS X Leopard.

Communicating the latest news, events, or just to stay in touch with customers using web based technologies is a challenge. There are many formats publish the news in: RSS feeds, XML, Facebook, email lists, Twitter.

Do you Twitter? If so, your message will never get to me. My first experience with Twitter was reading lines like: I’m throwing up now; time to feed the cat; my dog just pooped [this is the euphemism] on the carpet.

My first impression of Twitter was it’s just garbage so I never signed up. The “signal to noise” ratio was 0 (zero). Nadda.

Enter from stage right: Paul at YellowPencil. Paul introduced me to a new web service: Dapper.

Dapper home page

The Dapper home page is clean and provides clear entry points for more information. Am I lazy? You bet. I’m going to search for existing Dapp feeds first. Let someone else do the grunt work.

Getting started is easy. For those guys that never read manuals, click on the “create a new dapp.” For those rare individuals that actually read (or listen to) manuals first, click on “how it works video.” The small amount of text and images makes finding these links easy.

Once you get into Dapper, you realize it is like a super translation service. You could use Dapper to find news on “Hawaii all-inclusive vacation” or “Caribbean cruise” through a Google search then combine them into one “signal” and get your news as an RSS feed. Or you could choose an XML format. Or add it to NetVibes.

And if hell freezes over and someone convinces me there is useful content on Twitter, I could add that to a Dapp feed: with a very strict filter to remove the crap.

The Dapp creation process is just as easy as the home page suggests. There is a guided 5 step wizard that prompts and nudges you on the right path. Of course, the last step (number 5) is “Please sign up to save your Dapp.” By the time step 5 rolled around I was convinced I could do this. I definitely like the “try before you sign up” concept.

Dapp also provides features for companies: provide your latest news in a Dapp friendly format and users can easily choose which format to receive it in. You reach audiences that like RSS or NetVibes or Google Gadgets but only have to support one interface.

Reduced work equals more play time. Caribbean cruise anyone?

How do you present news to your audience?

This is the first installment of a weekly feature called ‘Christy’s product of the week’. In this weekly feature I will highlight great products which will inspire you, foster your creativity and help you to become more organized.

This week I’d like to recommend a nice app called Things. This app is downloadable to your desktop and there is also an iPhone version. Its purpose is pretty simple: it helps you to keep track of all of your to dos. It has a really clean interface which is a joy to use. You can arrange your to dos in several ways, and you can even customize how you use the software outside of their organizational recommendations.

- Today (those to dos you’ve scheduled for today)
- Next ( those to dos which aren’t scheduled but are a priority)
- Scheduled (those to dos which are due on a specific day)
- Someday (those to dos which you know need to get done but their are not a current priority)
- Projects (tasks relating to specific projects)

A couple of other cool features of Things is that you can search for your to dos by tags such as school, work or home related tasks, finally, you can add urls, documents and E-mails directly to a task by dragging it into the window.

The only downside I’ve experienced so far is that if you want both the iPhone and desktop app you are paying ~ $60US which is pretty pricey for a one trick pony.

More Information:
Things Website
Screencast