macOS New App Release – Deliver 2.6.5

Product Announcements – Zevrix Solutions of Toronto (ON) Canada has released Deliver 2.6.5, a compatibility update to the company’s file transfer solution for remote and local destinations. Deliver lets users send files over the Internet and local networks with automatic email notifications, file compression, delivery history and other powerful capabilities. It supports FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDAV and other remote and local services, and allows to send files to multiple destinations at once.

The new version introduces support for the recently released macOS 10.13 High Sierra and is offered as a free update to licensed users. Deliver has also been upgraded to 64-bit architecture, which improves the app’s performance and reduces the likelihood of memory-related errors.

“Deliver gives plenty to like,” writes Natalia Nowak on Mac360, a Mac app reviews site. “It’s a secure document delivery system with tracking built in, and straightforward and comprehensive user interface.”

Deliver solves the problem of notifying recipients of file deliveries automatically eliminating the need to compose and send confirmations for each transfer. Users only need to drop files on the program’s icon and they will be uploaded automatically to the desired destinations with customizable email confirmations issued upon delivery. Recipients can download the file using a link in the notification email.

Deliver offers the following key features:

• Transfer files to FTP, Google Storage, Amazon S3 and other servers
• Automatic email notifications
• Hyperlink to file for instant download by recipients
• Compress files automatically (zip/dmg)
• Encrypt disk images with passwords
• Create lo-res PDF on the fly and attach to e-mail
• Upload history

Deliver can be purchased from Zevrix website for $19.95 (USD), as well as from Apple Mac App Store and authorized resellers. Trial is also available for download. The update is free for licensed users of Deliver 2.x. Deliver requires Mac OS X 10.7-10.13.

Science Fiction Short Film “I’m You”

Short Films – The short (9:46) science fiction film “I’m You” was posted to YouTube in August of 2016 by White Cape Productions. The synopsis:

What happens when you set out to do the right thing, but your younger self fails you ?

I liked this film, though the sound quality was not all that good. It is a look at the Time Travel Paradox.

macOS New app Release – World Clock Deluxe 4.15.4

Product Announcements  – MaBaSoft of Milano, Italy’s released World Clock Deluxe 4.15.4, the latest version of their popular world time utility for macOS. World Clock Deluxe is a reliable and easy-to-use time tool for companies and organizations regularly communicating with people across the world, frequent travelers, and home users having family or friends in other countries or time zones.

World Clock Deluxe displays multiple digital or analog clocks in a highly configurable horizontal or vertical palette, in the menu bar, and in the Dock, and can show the time in over 1,600 cities and 200 time zones and world times, including Greenwich Mean Time, Coordinated Universal Time, and Internet Time. It comes with a variety of date and time formats and can display seconds, weekday, date, date change, time zone, offset from UTC, and offset from local time.

With World Clock Deluxe users can easily organize clocks so that they always have a good overview of the displayed times. Colors and labels can be assigned to clocks to quickly single out the local clock or different groups of clocks. Clocks can be sorted by name, time, longitude, longitude offset, or label. Seldom used clocks can be hidden and different clocks can be displayed in the palette, in the menu bar, and in the Dock.

World Clock Deluxe also helps users with phone calls to other countries and international meetings. The Time Converter quickly calculates corresponding dates and times in different cities or time zones, while the Meeting Planner allows users to easily identify the best time for online chats, conference calls, or video conferences across multiple time zones. Conversion results and meeting details can be easily shared via Mail or Messages, saved to a note, or added to a reminder.

With World Clock Deluxe, users can finally show the weather all over the world. World Clock Deluxe downloads National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather reports and displays temperature, pressure, visibility, wind conditions, and precipitations.

Version 4.15.4 solves the incompatibilities with macOS 10.13 High Sierra and updates daylight-saving time information for Fiji and Namibia.

Language Support: English, German, French, Dutch, and Italian

System Requirements: macOS 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12, or 10.13 (High Sierra)

World Clock Deluxe 4.15.4 is a free update for registered version 4 users. It is $10.00 (USD) for users who purchased version 3, and costs $19.00 (USD) for new users. Family, Site, and World-wide licenses are also available. World Clock Deluxe is available from the company website.

Control Your Dongles

Tech Tip – We all have so many dongles, cables and other accessories these days to carry along with our phones, tablets and laptops. It is often difficult to control all of these small items. Certainly there are several solutions that you can buy that are designed for the purpose, but we often have unused items laying around the house that offer a ‘free’ alternative.

For so many of us over the age of 40, the most likely option is an old eyeglasses case. But there are other containers that will fill the need – small boxes, jewelry boxes and various bags. While I was first introduced to this idea by my wife who was using an old eye glass case for her cables, I have seen the ‘life hack’ idea elsewhere since then.

While these containers are on the small side, they will contain and control a variety of items that you want in your computer bag. In the photo above I am using an old jewelry box, a plastic cream cheese container from The container Store and the box that my AirPods came in. It is much easier to find one of these containers than digging through your computer bag trying to find a specific dongle or thumb drive.

Trailer for “Black Panther”

Trailers – The movie “Black Panther ” will open in February of 2018. The synopsis:

T’Challa who, after the death of his father, the King of Wakanda, returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced African nation to succeed to the throne and take his rightful place as king. But when a powerful old enemy reappears, T’Challa’s mettle as king—and Black Panther—is tested when he is drawn into a formidable conflict that puts the fate of Wakanda and the entire world at risk. Faced with treachery and danger, the young king must rally his allies and release the full power of Black Panther to defeat his foes and secure the safety of his people and their way of life.

We saw this character first in the 2016 Marvel movie “Captain America: Civil War”.  This will be his own movie. From the trailer it looks good, but we will have to wait until February to know for sure.

macOS New App Release – PixCompare 5.0

Product Announcements – Lakehorn AG of Bern, Switzerland has released PixCompare 5.0 for macOS. PixCompare is used to search for duplicates or similar pictures in large collections of picture files and folders.

PixCompare 5.0 was redesigned from the ground up. A new graphical results view helps users to find and delete duplicate pictures easier than ever. A new, darker design highlights photo content in a much better way. Also, the new version is fully compatible with the new macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

PixCompare is based on a very fast algorithm that was developed and improved over the last 20 years. It only uses parts of the actual photo to compare them to one another, including additional photo properties, like location or date. This results in an excellent performance. PixCompare is a proper macOS app, following all Apple guidelines for making a clean and familiar user experience.

The whole comparison process executes on the user’s devices – photos are never transmitted to any third party, therefore the privacy of the pictures is guaranteed.

PixCompare Features

• Find duplicate and similar pictures in a folder of pictures
• Move pictures directly to the trash folder
• Display results as groups of similar pictures or as a list of similar pairs of pictures
• Compare one picture to a folder of other pictures
• Use macOS built-in Quicklook to display pictures in full size
• Works best on photographic pictures, file formats supported: JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIF, HEIC, and most RAW files.

PixCompare can match two pictures even when:

• One of them is grayscale
• They don’t have the same size / aspect ratio
• The contrast / intensity is different
• They have a different pixel-depth
• And when one of them is blurred or rotated

Language Support: PixCompare is localised for English, German, French, and Japanese languages.

System Requirements:

• macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) or higher
• 64-bit processor
• 7.0 MB

PixCompare for Mac is a $4.99 (USD) download available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Photography category. PixCompare is also available for the iOS platform.

macOS New App Release – Application Wizard 3.6.4

Product Announcements – MaBaSoft of Milano, Italy has released Application Wizard 3.6.4, the latest version of their popular menu-based launcher, quitter, switcher, and navigation tool for macOS. Application Wizard allows users to create groups of applications to easily access favorite applications and quickly open or quit multiple applications at the same time. It allows smooth switching between running applications and open windows and provides single application mode to reduce screen clutter.

With Application Wizard, users can also browse volumes and favorite folders to rapidly open enclosed items, eject and mount disks, check memory usage, and easily access recent documents and contacts. Application Wizard previews images, music, movies, and documents and displays file properties and metadata.

Finally, Application Wizard allows users to define keyboard shortcuts so that they can quickly accomplish frequent tasks by pressing keys on their keyboard. Shortcuts can be used, for instance, to quit all running applications, or switch back to the previous application, or turn single application mode on and off.

Version 3.6.4 solves the incompatibilities with macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

Language Support: US English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian

System Requirements: macOS 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12, or 10.13 (High Sierra)

Application Wizard 3.6.4 is a free update for registered version 3 users. It is $7.00 (USD) for users who purchased version 2, and costs $19.00 (USD) for new users. Application Wizard can be purchased directly from the website. Family and Site licenses are also available.

Review of “Executive Order”

Book Reviews – “Executive Order” eBook was published in 2017 and was written by Max Allan Collins (http://www.maxallancollins.com/) with Matthew V. Clemmens (http://matthewclemens.com). Mr. Collins has authored or co-authored well more than 150 novels as well as short stories and comics. Mr. Clemmens has published 25+ novels, and comics. This is the third novel in their “Reeder and Rogers” series.

I received an ARC of this novel through https://www.netgalley.com in return for a fair and honest review. I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence. The story is set mostly in the contemporary Washington D.C. area. The primary characters are former Secret Service agent Joe Reeder and FBI Special Situations Task Force leader Patti Rogers.

Four CIA agents are killed in Eastern Europe. The Secretary of the Interior dies from apparent allergic shock. Reeder, a close friend of the deceased Secretary, asks Rogers to look into the death. Reeded is asked by the President to investigate why the CIA agents were in the path of danger when the President had given specific orders to keep people out of the Russian hot zone.

Reeder, Rogers and their small team are soon in the cross hairs of a group of wealthy and powerful Americans who want to put America “back on track”. The group will stop at nothing to see their very conservative goals achieved. A few Americans being sacrificed to achieve their desired ends is worth the price.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 7 hours I spent reading this 318 page Thriller. Even though there are two prior books in the series, this novel reads well on its own. I liked the characters and the plot. The fact that significant characters die in the novel is unusual. The cover art is OK. I give this novel a 5 out of 5.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Short Science Fiction Film “Time Trap”

Short Films – The short (7:47) science fiction film “Time Trap” was published to YouTube in February of 2017 by DUST. The synopsis:

Marooned on a dead Earth, a lone space traveller must delve into the planet’s history in order to find his way home.

After losing control of his engines, bumbling spaceman Fripp finds himself at the mercy of his spaceship. A thrilling descent through an asteroid belt ensues, after which he finds himself marooned on a post-apocalyptic Earth. Without a working spacecraft, the interstellar time-traveler must dip into the dead planet’s history in order to find a way home.

I thought that this was both a well done and entertaining film with much more humor than most of the short films I have see. It has been ranked 6.8/10 on IMDB.

macOS New App Release – Font Manager Deluxe

Product Announcements – 128bit Technologies of San Francisco, California has released Font Manager Deluxe, a quick way to preview, install and manage font collections. This new Mac font manager app is now available on the MacAppware website for a limited time introductory price of $10, a savings of 50% off the normal price of $19.99.

Need an easy way to preview and manage your font collections? Use Font Manager Deluxe to keep your fonts organized and at your fingertips. Quickly scan through thousands of fonts using custom preview text, or switch to the grid view in full screen mode to see a large number all at once. Click the “i” to view what characters are available for the selected font; you can even drag and drop or copy and paste a character directly into any application that supports text. If you only want to work with a few dozen fonts out of thousands you can click the star in the previewer to add the font to your Favorites.

When you first install and open Font Manager Deluxe, you instantly have access to your library of fonts on your Mac, as well as a small collection of brand new commercial use OpenType fonts. The MacAppware Fonts collection gives you four full font families for a total of 47 fonts. Need more fonts? Download the current Google Fonts collection from the Help menu and add them (using the ” ” button in the left pane) to Font Manager Deluxe. This gives you another 2,393 fonts to use according to their license terms.

This is the perfect app to manage all the free and paid font collections downloaded from MacAppware and other sources over the years!

Check out some highlights:

• Easy Mac font manager for Mac OS X 10.11 and newer
• Install and uninstall fonts with a simple click
• Use a custom text preview to see what each font looks like, or switch to a grid view
• Select fonts you use most often to quickly view and manage them in your Favorites, so you don’t have to constantly browse through thousands of fonts looking for the right one every time
• View the character map of a selected font, to see which characters are supported
• Drag and drop, or copy and paste characters into supported apps (Pages, Word, Photoshop, etc.)
• Add and remove font collections for easy management all in one place
• Includes 4 commercial use OpenType font families, not found in any other font collection (total of 47 fonts)
• Download 2,300 Google Fonts to use in applications on your own computer (according to their license terms)
• Quickly see if a font is in TrueType font format (shown as a “T”) or OpenType font format (shown as an “O”)
• See how many fonts are in a selected collection by a total font count at the bottom right of the app window (when no collection is selected it shows the total fonts in all collections)

No bloat, just a simple way to manage a large number of fonts all in one place!

System Requirements:

• macOS 10.11 or newer (including High Sierra)
• 64-bit processor
• 20 MB (800 MB if you download the Google Fonts collection)

Font Manager Deluxe 1.0 is available on the MacAppware website for the limited time price of $10 (USD), a savings of 50% off the normal price of $19.99.