All4 App on Apple TV (A Long time coming!)
Without much fanfare the Channel 4 Catch up TV app All 4 has finally come to the Apple TV just in time for Christmas. For those of us obsessed with The Great British Bake off (🙋🏽♂️) and other Channel 4 gems your time has finally come to quit streaming from your phone or watching on your Mac.
The App itself is incredibly basic and lacks some of the perks that we have come to appreciate in Apple TV apps such as global search using Siri or showing an interactive tile on the home page of the Apple TV but fingers crossed the app gets more sophisticated in the near future.
The BBC still rules the roost with one of the best video service apps. Channel 4's offerings are often hindered by ads that have a tendency to crash a program midway, Nonetheless, this has been a long time coming and we are finally able to get in as much flour and yeast based programming as our eyes can handle!
Head to the App Store on your Apple TV now to search for All4.
Print Plugins for Apple Photos
Printing Photo Projects on a Mac
In the latest update to the Mac Photos App, Apple has enabled third parties the ability to write photo project plugins. Until now only editing plugins were available ie to retouch or add filters to your images.
Now there are a range of plugins available for printing your images and turning them into photo books.
Some of you may remember that there was the option of doing this in Aperture (rest in peace), however the selection available at the moment are very much consumer focused services and not the likes of Queensbury or Couture Books et al.
All you need to do is head to the App Store to find the appropriate app (links below) and it will install itself. When you launch the apps all that will show is a splash screen as the apps themselves are installed into the photos app as a project option in the sidebar on the left.
This is a little clumsy and I think the need to have an external app to do this is a bit confusing but nonetheless that’s how it’s done.
Available Now
1. Whitewall
Whitewall is a popular service for creating framed prints at lots of different sizes with lots of customisable options.
2. Mimeo
Mimeo has a similar offering to Apple’s own range of printable products but its always good to have a choice right?
Coming Soon...
3. Motif
Motif is actually a plugin that was created by the company that used to print all of apples print products and as such means that the products will be quite familiar to anyone who used to use Apples print services. At the moment they are Ireland and a few other European Countries only but I have been assured that they are making their way over to Europe very soon. These guys definitely look like the easiest option and feature slightly more sophisticated designs.
Irvue: Beautiful Retina Wallpaper For Your Mac
Its time for our Weekly Tuesday Review and the first in a hopefully very long debut of awesome apps is Irvue.
Irvue is a simple Free app that displays absolutely stunning retina resolution images as your background which you can set to change at intervals of your choosing. It even allows you to download the images.
The app live in your menu bar at the top which allows you to adjust the settings and download images that you love.
I can't get across quite how beautiful some of the images are so here a few for your perusal!
You wont regret getting this one. Download Here
Easy Business Plan Production
Writing a business plan is one of the most daunting things about setting up a company or expanding an entrepreneurial idea into reality. Long and complex and they often are the minimum requirement for any kind of funding be it from a bank or a venture capitalist, your business plan is your rock.
This is the document that shows your direction, your ethos, your meaning, your competition, your projections and your strengths.
Plan2biz far from being the prettiest web application out there but it is free and it is terribly good at what it does and thats give you a modular and step by step method of building various kinds of business plans.
CLICK HERE
Find keyboard shortcuts fast!
A great resource for finding mac and pc shortcuts for applications and the operating systems - life saver for users of Adobe applications like photoshop and illustrator!
CLICK HERE
Telephone: Completely free incoming telephone number via the internet.
Mention VOIP and many people think....complication, complication, complication.
Well it needn't be so.
Sipgate.co.uk provide a completely free service for incoming calls. Their plans and tariffs for outgoing and international calls are pretty amazing too. Best of all, there is finally a simple application from the mac app store that makes setting it up a cinch.
There are lots of terribly ugly "Soft-Phones" like X-lite etc and to be perfectly honest I have never once managed to set one of them up without problems or needing a telecoms expert to change something or other.
"Telephone" by Alexei Kuznetsov is a whole different story,
It has a beautifully minimal interface and does not complicate things with features you will never need.
Once set up it integrates with your mac address book or you can just type a number in the box. Best feature of all, though, is that via sipgate.co.uk you can set up voicemail for free. When someone leaves you a message when your either busy or do not have Telephone running, the message is sent to you via email as a sound file, so you can keep the voicemail and use it in audio applications etc (i store mine in itunes).
So if your looking for a communications solution for your small business this setup works beautifully for me, so it should for you too.
Color Expert - Colour library in your pocket!
This one is a pretty contentious issue. Can one truly work with colour on an uncalibrated screen.
Well despite my initial misgivings, yes you can and quite succesfully. Its never going to be perfect but if your a designer, work with textiles or simply want to re-decorate your kitchen you cant really go wrong for £5.99. This web app works like a charm and despite being used on a typically saturated screen, the colour matching actually isnt that bad, and goes a long way to helping choose those oh so inmportant hues.
I love that you can email the swatched you create to yourself or others as it generates a lovely image of the colours to include in the mail as well as the colour details.
Appzapper - “The uninstaller that finds it all!"
So, you’ve installed a large piece of software and you decide you no longer want it, either it doesn’t work how you’d like or you simply need the space. You simply trash the app yes?........don’t you?
Well no, when you install many apps they also place files in other locations on your mac (especially the pro apps).
To use appzapper you simply drag the application icon on to the zapper and zapp!! the application and all associated files are sent to the trash!
This isn’t free but it does give you 5 free zaps! so use them sparingly unless you want to buy it (not very expensive anyhoo!)
Enjoy!