It seems that although everyone makes their forms downloadable online as a PDF, almost no one formats the files as editable forms that can be filled out within acrobat reader. This means I have to download the form, print it out, fill it out by hand, and then either walk it over to whoever needs it or scan it, save it, and attach it to an email. Sounds like it would be easier to just stop by the registration table and fill it out on the spot.  Formulate Pro fixes that problem.

I should say, that if you have Acrobat Pro, there is a typewriter and annotation tool that works relatively well, but at $449 from Adobe’s site, or $378 from Amazon, it is a little pricey just for filling out forms. That is where Formulate Pro comes in. This tool does one thing, and does it well. It allows you to type, draw and make check marks on top of the PDF.  Then, you can save it with those edits as a PDF of print it out. And, it’s free!

After downloading and installing the app it is as simple as opening the PDF, clicking the “T” (text tool) for typing, the squiggle tool for drawing, or the checkmark to check a box, then save or print. Right now, it’s only for mac, but the source code is available at GitHub.

I will be honest.  Today I took a longer than normal lunch so that I could watch live coverage of the Apple event on TWiT.  As a self-proclaimed fanboi, I was excited and intrigued by the latest thing I didn’t know I needed until Steve Jobs told me I did.

All joking aside, this is an interesting device.  Apple is positioning it as a media player, content creator, book reader, and TV.  It’s a lot to fit into something .5″ thick, but they seem to have done a pretty good job.  You can go to Apple’s iPad site for all the gory details and places like Engadget and TUAW for even more.  But here’s a brief overview:

1. It has a pretty 9.5 x 7.5″ LCD screen with an iPhone-style capacitive touch interface (there is a pretty wide bezel, but the people who have played with it say that it makes sense because you have to have some place to hold it without touching the multi-touch screen).
2. The screen is 1024 x 768 pixels which mean that HD movies are going to look pretty good on your lap.
3. It will have a full browser, email app, photo app, notes app, etc (think iphone standard apps).
4. They have totally revamped iWork’s UI to make it intuitive on a touch screen. Even keynote’s graphics-intensive elements seem to work without a strain.
5. It will have a new app called iBooks that is a book reader as well as an iBook Store.  They have already secured major US publishers and are adding more.
6. It has built in speakers (and 3.5mm headphone jack), mic and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR but no camera (there is no way this will be absent from the 2.0 release)
7. It will output VGA and standard A/V cable.
8. There will be models with 16, 32 and 64 GB of storage available.
9. It will have wifi built in and an optional 3G modem.
10. There will be a dock, keyboard dock, and case (with stand) available.
11. Though they released an updated SDK today, almost all iPhone apps will work on the device and can be used in their native size or at 2x to come closer to filling the screen..
12. Apple says it has 10 Hours of battery life (doesn’t seem like this is possible, but no one has them to test as of yet).
13. It will ship in 60 days starting at an un-Apple price point: $499

What it doesn’t have:

1. Multi-tasking
2. Support for flash
3. Across the board true GPS (only available in 3g model which is $130 more)
4. USB ports
5. Did I mention camera!??!

Now, that is a lot, but there are several things that are unclear:

1. Will it have the ability for external storage?  There are adapters that allow you to connect  USB and SD to the 30-pin iPod connector, but Apple says they are for importing pictures.
2. Will it sync with Mobile Me?  They say it will sync with a computer, but did not mention their “cloud” service.
3. Will there be magazines?  It seems logical, but was not announced.
4. The hands on experience.  This one is big, until people get to really sit down with it, we won’t know exactly how reality stacks up with apple’s claims

Overall, I am interested in the product, but I will probably not buy one for one simple reason: Apple’s second generation is usually far better than the first.  I did the same thing with the iPhone, and I got the 3G, and am not disappointed.

Apple generally sacrifices features for stability and user experience on the 1.0.  After they work out all the bugs, they release a product that seems complete.  The iPhone 3g added GPS, third party apps, streaming audio over 3g, push e-mail, and other niceties.  I fully expect the iPad 2.0 to have a camera, (maybe even two) some form of external storage (if that is not part of this version), higher quality screen (OLED?), and a couple more pieces of glory that I can’t forsee right now.

Bottom line: should you seriously consider buying it?

• If you were considering a netbook because of it’s size: yes.
• If you wanted a netbook because of its price and storage capacity: no.
• If you were considering a new laptop and do not need video editing or large amounts of storage (in other words you primarily use it for email and word processing): yes.
• If you have a church administrator who loves Apple and will let you play with $500: yes
• If you use keynote for your talks and cant afford a macbook but want something more portable than a mac mini: yes.
• If you need to run any traditional apps like Photoshop, Final Cut, etc.: no.
• If you were considering an ebook reader but couldn’t justify almost $300 on something for that single purpose: yes.
• If you are secretly in love with Steve Jobs and want to show him your undying devotion: yes.

There you have it.  Let us know what you think!  Although I said I was not buying one for myself, you are more than welcome to send me one in the mail, I would not even come close to turning it down… I am a fanboi after all.

I’ve seen many little utilities/preference panes I could install that would show me extra details on memory usage, cpu temeprature, hard disk availability, and everything else under the sun. iStatMenus puts it all into one nice package and displays all of them in your menubar. Though it has far more that would be interesting to get into here, here’s a list of what I like best about it:

1. You can view multiple CPU cores as one item or multiple graphs.
2. The memory usage meter will display your top five processes.
3. HD USage will monitor your mobile me space as well.
4. Network drop down shows peak as well as current bandwidth.
5. Every sensor from temperature to exhaust fans is available for monitoring.
6. The best date and time display.  It drops down a full month calendar with user defined alternate times as well.
7. Every item is configured via one preference pane in system preferences.

The best part?  It’s free!!  So, if you need to monitor your stats or just change your date and time display to a more helpful configuration, go to iSlayer.com and download iStatMenus.  Available for Macs only.

I have had an idea/problem that I have been percolating on for a while now.  The basic idea was that I wanted to have copies of several specific folders on specific, different external storage solutions so that I could have them with me when I needed them.  Complicating this problem is the fact that I am lazy.

Of course, I could copy my documents folder the the thumb drive every couple of days, my video clips to my external HDD every time I added a new clip, and my seminary files to the small thumb drive each night before I went to bed, but that would take both time and discipline. The only thing I have less of right now than time is backup discipline.

That is how I ran across what is hands down the best Mac sync utility I have found: ChronoSync.  It does the standard things like let you schedule a sync or backup with a drive every X number of hours/days/weeks/etc.  But it has one incredible function that sealed the deal for me.  I can schedule a sync to happen whenever the target drive is mounted.  Now, whenever I plug in one of the aforementioned devices, the specific files on my computer I want synced with that device automatically get updated and update the external storage.  This, of course, reinforces my confidence in the idea that if I wait long enough, I will find a way to allow my computer to make up for my laziness.

But that is far from all the features of ChronoSync.  It will make bootable backups, lets you specify a range of methods for the sync process including ignoring deletions so that an accidental deletion in one location does not eliminate the file across all your storage.  It will create archives (think time machine) and connect to almost anything you can think of from webdav servers to all the computers you can “see” in the finder.  For those of you who really want to geek out, it has incredibly detailed filtering that will let you specify exactly what you want to backup.

The only con I could find is that the interface is not as intuitive as it could be.  For instance, several of the options at the top of the screen (trial sync, schedule, etc.) are grayed out until you save the sync you are creating. Similarly, several of the terms they use to describe the options are unclear (mirror, sync, blind) but explained well in the documentation.  All that being said, the program’s power and overall ease more than make up for the UI, and ChronoSync is well worth the $40.  There is a demo downloadable here.

Have you ever needed to get something accomplished, known the application you needed, but been short of the cash needed to buy said necessary app?  Lament no longer, AlternativeTo is here!  A quick surf over to the simple website gives you more options than you need.  Looking for a cheaper Photoshop?  Why not try Gimp, Pixelmator, Photoshop Elements, Acorn, Pixel…  you get the point.  Not only is it a great place to find alternative software, but its homepage allows you to browse by OS and number of views, likes, recent, or no alternatives.  Hopefully this will save you some cash and make your search for the right app a bit shorter.  Check it out: www.alternativeto.net

Ever have a long document and wish you could simply turn your macbook on its side and use it like a kindle to read the book/document? All you need is to download the Display Rotation Menu from Mage Software.  It adds a menu bar item that allows you to rotate your Mac Laptop and use it as if it were an ebook reader only without the several hundred dollars to Amazon or Sony.  It doesn’t work on all mac laptops because of graphics card limitations, but they have the short list of which somewhat current models are omitted.

I recently bought a new computer on which I did not install the normal pro apps I use.  That meant that I did not have quicktime pro, and I quickly realized what an incredible deal it is!  For a whole lot of common tasks, you do not need to buy or open up a huge, expensive program.  If you need to trim a bit of the beginning, rearrange the order of events in a clip, or quickly change a file’s size or format to upload to the web, all you need is the $29 upgrade to quicktime pro (on the mac).

My favorite feature has nothing to do with editing video files.  One of the handiest little preferences that shows up is the ability to play a movie on your secondary monitor or projector.  Instead of having to do some wonky dragging of the window to the other screen (which doesn’t work in many players), or use a presentation program like keynote or pro presenter, you can simply plug in your laptop, switch the display preference over to the secondary monitor, and voila!  Like I said, the $29 is totally worth it.  Click here for a link to it in the apple store.

UPDATE: Thanks to Luke for the comment about Quicktime X.  Apparently, with the release of Snow Leopard, many of the pro features will be included.  Which means it’s time to preorder Snow Leopard for $29 instead!

Mac friends, I know what you are thinking, not another software bundle, I was thinking the same thing, until I saw what’s in this one.

One of my favorite all time techy tools kits has been the amazing Tech Tools Pro. I’ve used it a number of times to diagnose problems on my computers and on friends machines. I’ve been meaning to upgrade my copy, and now I can get it, plus more. In addition to Tech Tools, the bundle includes: Parallels, Notebook (another piece of software I use everyday), RipIt, and NetBarrier just to name a few. At only $49.99 it’s well worth the cost.

Maybe you have a once a yer cleaning ritual, or maybe you are just running out of space on the hard drive that you were sure was way bigger than you needed when you initially bought the machine. Whatever the case, you probably find yourself wondering where to start. Where did all your gigabytes go anyway? That’s where JDiskReport comes in. The software is easy and intuitive. After you install it, it will do a scan of whatever directory tree you specify and then come up with an easy to understand pie chart showing where your precious space has gone. You can click through the tree structure on the left or on the pie chart to the right to drill down into the cluttered depths of your hard drive.

The only thing I wish it could do is delete the files/directories from within the program, but that is not a hard drawback to get over in such a handy piece of freeware.

The best news? Not only is it free, but since it is based on java, it is available on Windows, Mac (though with a decidedly Windows look and feel), or even over the web.  Just check out their site for all the details!

For all the Mac users out there, one of the best Mac bundles is back.  Mac Heist unveiled their bundle tonight.  There some great stuff in there. I really recommend it.  At only $39 you can’t miss.  There some great image software that I know I will use a lot.  There is also an application to access files on your iPhone or iPod touch.  There’s also some fun games that I’m sure my kids will enjoy.

I’m hoping they get enough people to unlock Boinx TV, if you can get that for $39 it’s an unbelieveable deal.

It’s over a $550 value for $39.  You can’t beat it.

Check-out it out: MacHeist