Mac Apps Roundup

I don’t believe I have publicly professed my devotion to Mac here, so this will make it official. After a week of tweaking our blogging presentation, I finally sat down in front of NewsFire to dig through my subscriptions. I found a few jems I would like to share in the software department:

think.jpg

First is Think from Freeverse. I realize our students love to multi-task, but there is value in being singularly focused at times. Think is a little app that blackens everything on your screen but the window you are working in at the moment. My first thought when I encountered this program is that it would be great for freewriting in the classroom. No distractions, just write. It may also be a tool to keep you kids from jumping between programs when you are not looking (seems harder to hide a screen while running Think).

interstatemap.jpg

Next is Pukka, a Delicious client. This little jem is my new favorite app. Pukka is an alternative interface for posting to Delicious. It gives you the freedom to manage multiple accounts (thank GOD), and caches all the tags from ALL accounts. If you highlight a section of text before clicking to post, the text is automatically copied into the description window.

pukka.jpg
I modified it with Growl so I’m notified of the successful post while I continue to work.

Finally, Peter Baer Galvin has posted a HUGE list of “essential” Mac apps. If you’re a Mac user and itching for a new toy to play with, this list is bound to have something fun to discover.

Pukka from Code Sorcery Workshop
Think from Freeverse
via TUAW

3 thoughts on “Mac Apps Roundup

  1. Hi… I was the ITRT from Petersburg that sat in on your Bob on Blogs session… P-town is a all Windows environ but I on my own am doing a 60/40 split with my Mac/PC respectively. Before I was basically all PC, though I have had many iterations of Mac… a 15″ G4 laptop and now my 17″ MacBook Pro… I am def loving it more and more…

    The reason I am posting, aside from patting your back for a great job at EdTech, is that I wanted to share: VirtueDesktops with you… It has a very Leopardesque desktop manager. Right now I have a six sided cube that allows me to manage my desktop in a really cool way that needless to say makes PC people drool (Linux users are unaffected cause they have had XGL for theirs)

    Thanks again for all the resources and info. I added Tom to my Blogroll on my blog but if its ok with you I will add yours as well.

  2. Joe,

    Just to clarify things- Jim and I share this blog. The tech ninja site is just a fun one I do for our students. By all means add it to your blogroll if you want to. I wouldn’t worry about permission to do that. 🙂 Glad you enjoyed edtech.

    I like VirtueDesktops. That’d make a great training aid in that I can set up one of my desktops to mirror a standard student or teacher layout. Good deal.

    See you at VSTE and thanks,

    Tom

  3. Ok Tom,

    Thanks for clarifying. If thats the case then let me share with you the same email I sent to Jim.

    Hi Jim,

    Thanks so much for all the resources and the cool presentation that you and Tom gave at the Ed Tech conference. I am hoping to start implementing some of the things I have learned.

    One thing that I saw you use on your Bionic Teaching site was Snap Anywhere. I cant seem to get it configured correctly. Any pointers you might have on what I could be doing wrong? I put the plugin just like it says on the web and then activated it in my control panel by putting in the code.

    But then it mentioned something about putting the code in the footer. I put it where I thought I was supposed to but still not getting what I was hoping for. Anychance you could talk me through what you did to get the site installed.

    http://digitalruck.us/blog/

    Thanks so much


    Joe Talaiver

    I wonder if you could give me some tips. Just wondering.

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