Blogo Trial

I've been trying out Blogo: The blog editor for your Mac for the full 21 day free trial. So what did I think? Well, it does look and feel like a Mac app, it handles text and images nicely and it integrated reasonably well with blogger and also Twitter. I did have a few problems as it tried uploading one post and failed then, when I tried again, it worked but I was left with a Picasa album with a complete set of duplicate images - so there is a little work to be done. It is a Mac only app, however, and I did find this somewhat restrictive as I also like to post from my linux netbook. Overall it's a pretty nice app but it doesn't offer enough in the way of additional functionality over and above the core stuff in blogger etc. to make me want to part with my cash. But then I'm a bit of a cheapskate so if you're interested why not give it a go - after all the trial is free.

Blogo

I've just downloaded the trial of Blogo: The blog editor for your Mac to give it a go.
This is my first trial post.
I'll let you know whether I think it works well enough to splash the cash...

iPlayer for Mac

The BBC have, as promised some time ago, released an iPlayer for the Mac. The new application runs on the Adobe Air platform and so is also available for Linux. It allows downloads from the BBC site which overcomes some of the limitations of streaming.

It is currently in beta test and I haven't had a lot of time to play with it but it installed without a hitch, the downloads are pretty quick and the quality is at least as good as the higher quality streaming. There is a pretty limited selection of programmes available for download for this player as yet but I'm sure this will expand.

It has taken a little time but full marks to the Beeb for supporting a wider range of platforms.

Fluid - Site Specific Browsers

I hadn't spotted this until it was a MacBreak Weekly pick from Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline. Fluid is an OS X application that allows you to create a site specific browser for any website and then treat it like it's a native OS X app.

I've only tried it for a couple of sites so far and, whilst the preferences sometimes need tweaking to get a site working correctly, it seems to pass the "Ronseal test". You can have it as a dock icon, desktop icon or in the menu bar and all seem to work fine.

I'm currently using it for MobileMe (I'm using my 60 day trial at the moment but more of that in another post) and it find it really useful. I don't often have sites crash Firefox but after the last update it has hung up on a couple of occasions.

With more and more stuff moving to the cloud I think Fluid will end up being very useful. Of course when Google make their new browser Chrome available for Mac I think it will be in for some competition though...

Bento - Databases Made Easy!

I downloaded the trial version of Bento, the database for OS X Leopard, a couple of weeks ago to see if it was going to be a useful addition to the iWork suite.

I can report back that it's one of the friendliest database tools I have used. It may not have the features of its big brother Filemaker or other Pro tools but for everyday use it's so easy! The user interface is very Mac and integrates nicely with Leopard. It provides themes and templates but creating your own structure is just child's play.

I liked it so much I went off and bought the license key before the 30 day trial was up. If you've got Leopard I'd recommend you give it a look.