Enter the Hitchcock app, released by Cinemek.  It’s one of the priciest apps yet at $19.99, but it is certainly one of the most useful. It melds many of the existing iPhone assets to make one intuitive piece of software.

For people like me, drawing storyboards usually ends in snot bubbles, tears, and depression!  Most of my time is spent getting a single frame to look like it does in my head, a painstaking waste of time and resources.  Storyboarding is one of the most important steps to translating an idea into a vision, and the Hitchcock app spares LOTS of heartaches by allowing users to build storyboards shot by shot by using photos you’ve already snapped, or new ones taken through the iPhone.

Users can set the duration of any given shot.  Zooms, pans, and tilting are easily adjustable. Need actors? Add changeable stand-in male and female silhouettes with a few button presses!  Users can even add text as dialogue or to better explain the shot. If you would rather narrate the storyboard, the app allows for audio recording as well.  It’s a comprehensive app for sure with all these great tools to play with!

Users can also easily upload their developed storyboards as PDFs to the web and send links to friends for downloading.  One would figure this app loads and runs slowly, creating lots of big files.  It does neither.  It’s really an amazing piece of software.  For filmmakers, it’s a must-have.  For iPhone app aficionados, it’s a great buy.

Yubin Wadesworth
iApplicate

Yubin Wadesworth is iApplicate’s producer and his love for the iPhone is second to none!
iApplicate is the web’s premiere iPhone app video review program.
There are over 100,000 iPhone applications available today, wouldn’t you like to know which apps to avoid, which ones will fit your specific need, and which ones just flat out rock?  iApplicate reviews and evaluates iPhone app functionality to help you find the products you need.    Follow iApplicate posts and weekly episode uploads on Facebook, Twitter, the iApplicate website today!

While using the website itself is a decent way to tweet and get the latest updates from the feeds you follow, I find that that for a true web-addict like myself, who already works with dozens of open tabs at a time, substituting my Twitter-dependency to the use of desktop clients has been a refreshing change, especially with some of the great Adobe Air-based clients available for Mac users, providing a sleek and very intuitive experience. However, with so many fresh desktop clients surfacing out there, it can be a little confusing – so, which Twitter desktop client is the ultimate pairing for your Mac? Below is a rundown of some of the best Twitter desktop clients for Mac – depending on your needs and use of Twitter, one of these is bound to be the ideal Tweeting solution for you.

Tweetie:

As an iPhone fiend, Tweetie was the one of the more obvious choices for me when their desktop client for the Mac was released, as Tweetie had already managed to secure a spot as favorite on my iPhone. One of the greatet advantages of Tweetie is the enabled support for multiple accounts, meaning I can navigate both my personal Twitter account and 5min’s Twitter account, for example, all without the troubles of multiple sessions, login frustrations or any hassle. Interestingly enough, Tweetie was first developed for the iPhone and only then migrated to the Mac OS X. Another huge pro with Tweetie is the handy little bookmartklet, which allows you to morph any web page you are browsing to a tweet in a simple, straight-forward way – a great idea if you’d like to, say, share links to interesting videos with your followers on Twitter. Using Tweetie, a double-click on any Tweet will enable you to view the entire conversation, which is a great way to stay in the loop. So, what’s the best part about Tweetie? Since it’s not based on Adobe AIR, the program’s memory footprint is a petite one, allowing you to tweet your little heart out without having to worry about your Mac slowing down, freeing more memory for other awesome things, like playing Plants vs. Zombies.

The bitter side-dish? Tweetie’s offering is displayed in a single-column mode – this may be a downer for you if you prefer to receive all your Twitter information in one go, including @replies and direct messages (DM). Personally, I find Tweetie to be a wonderful desktop client despite this drawback, as it allows me to maintain the same experience I have with Tweetie on my iPhone.

TweetDeck:

When I first started to use a desktop client for tweeting, I hopped aboard TweetDeck, one of the more veteran desktop clients on the Twitter scene. There are many wonderful things about TweetDeck, but the real pitch was its super-easy searchability, and an integration with TwitScoop, a web service that tracks trending topics throughout the Twittersphere. TweetDeck also includes the option to receive status updates from your Facebook friends, meaning you’ll have all the updates you need in one place. One of TweetDeck’s awesome features is that it allows you to create groups of different users and categories, such as “Work” or “Friends”, and view them each in their own display.

The possible downer is the fact that being Adobe AIR-based, overdosing on TweetDeck may lead to your Mac behaving a wee bit slower as its memory is devoured by an incessant rain of feeds. On a sidenote, after about a month and a half of using TweetDeck, I developed somewhat of a Pavlovian reflex to the sounds the app’s alerts voice with each incoming update, and ended up feeling a little like Dwight Schrute. Bottom line is this – if you need ALL your Twitter data concentrated in one place and a few sleek columns, TweetDeck is the desktop client for you.

Twhirl:

Twhirl is another friendly Twitter desktop client based on Adobe AIR, created by the awesome folks at Seesmic and compatible with both Windows and Mac platforms. Twhirl also happens to be the more social of the bunch, if you ask me, connecting to multiple Twitter, FriendFeed, identi.ca and Seesmic accounts, as well as smooth integration with Twitter-based services such as TwitPic, TweetScan, Ping.fm and more. Obsessive types like all the wonderful Tweeples on my team will surely appreciate Twhirl’s spell-check feature, too – because even if you’re confined to 140 characters, you shouldn’t be out there embarrassing yourself.

Mac Lounge:

Mac Lounge is another terrific desktop client tailor-made for Macs and iPhones, which also supports multiple accounts. The interface is extremely intuitive and will be quite familiar to Mac users, not to mention it’s very easy on the eyes. All of the frequently-used functions are conveniently located on the left side-bar, including the option to view all your tweets, everyone on the public timeline, your friends/followers, sent and received direct messages, everyone you follow, and so on. A big selling point for Mac Lounge is the ease with which you can follow entire conversation threads, displayed as reply chains. With Mac Lounge, you can easily choose from a wide range of options for every tweet – retweet, link to a tweet, copy a tweet, etc. The app is currently in beta, and I can’t wait to see what more they have in store.

Nambu:

If Twhirl is the super-social of the bunch, I’d label Nambu as the cosmopolitan desktop client – in fact, Nambu enables you to translate any Tweet into plain English with a simple keyboard shorcut. Nifty, huh? As with TweetDeck, you can create groups to better help you track your followers and the different types of feeds and information you receive. Nambu is also great for lazy Tweeples, as it auto-completes usernames as you enter them. All in all, Nambu is like a hybrid between EventBox and TweetDeck, albeit with lesser integration with third-party services such as Facebook and Friendfeed. The real cherry on top? Definitely the de-clutter factor of Nambu, which automatically organizes your replies into conversation threads, resembling text message history, so you can keep abreast of updates with a breeze. Too bad Nambu’s iPhone app is not as slick, but hey – you’ve got Tweetie for that.

Only a few years back, some of the common question bothering potential Mac users contemplating whether or not to make the switch were issues like the ability to view Microsoft Word documents (which have become a standard), access Excel spreadsheets or to connect to the mail server at work, since no matter where you’ll work, unless it’s in Cupertino, most chances are you’ll be using Windows, along with the Microsoft Office suite. Even upon a triumphant adoption of Boot Camp, you may find yourself on the fray.

Luckily, you can deal with all of these obstacles on your path to bridging between the worlds of Mac and PC – enter platform virtual machines. The virtual machine, or VM for short, is basically a software implementation of a machine or computer, which can execute commands and programs like any real computer, and can serve as an outlet for your remaining PC needs right within your Mac. The virtual machine basically tricks the operating system into acting as though it’s running using its own hardware, when it is actually leeching unused CPU cycles and RAM. Aside from serving as an important tool and test environment for developers, virtualization can be used to build a tiny little Microsoft outpost directly within any Mac. Nifty, huh?

There are a multitude of virtualization products to choose from – VMWare Fusion, Sun xVM VirtualBox and Parallels Desktop for Mac, just to name a few. However, finding and choosing the right virtual machine product for your needs may take a little bit of time and experimentation. While the two major players in the Mac virtualization market are currently VMWare and Parallels, my personal favorite after a long process of trial and error is VirtualBox, free for the taking from Sun MicroSystems.

VMWare Fusion is a virtual machine platform developed by VMWare for Macs sporting Intel processors. VMWare Fusion allows you to run “guest” operating systems on your Mac OS X, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux and NetWare. In other words, a user-friendly security blanket for those making the Mac migration or in need of Windows applications. In this video tutorial from WhoKnewTech, find out how to install VMWare Fusion on your Mac.

Parallels Desktop for Mac was developed by Parallels, Inc., the pioneer on the virtualization-for-Mac frontier, having released the first virtualization software for the consumer market back in 2006. While initially I was a happy camper having coughed up the humble sum to acquire Parallels, this was not a how-to with a happy ending – while things were working seamlessly at first, “heavier” use proved to be a problem. Actions such as opening up Microsoft Excel spreadsheets while having an Outlook window resulted in sluggish moves, I had trouble retrieving files from my Mac libraries in less than a minute or two, and my DVD-drive and USB ports were constantly being hijacked without warning. My CPU usage was inching at 100%. The final battle was fought when upon updating to a newer release, my Parallels virtual machine morphed into a mute.

Obviously, this downgrade turned viewing videos into a somewhat creepy experience, so I began searching for alternatives. VirtualBox was the one to ultimately become my VM BFF – open source, freely available for use, well-designed and seamless for the most part. Plus, being a cheapskate, nothing says love to me like free and open-source software. *Swoon*

The backup capabilities executed via the Snapshot feature are excellent, and the resulting snapshots don’t even occupy much disk space. If you’re in a hurry or low on battery and can’t afford to worry about what’s currently open on your VirtualBox desktop, you can just save the current machine state and close up shop – ironically enough, the results were more predictable and stable than on some actual Windows machines I’ve worked on, without much crashing of any kind.

While I still feel a little embarrassed to run a “fake Windows machine”, as we affectionately call it here, out in the open on a dainty little Mac (as if anyone passing by is actually going to point and exclaim, “HEY! Is that Outlook I see way in there?!”), installing a VM product on your Mac is a relatively quick and painless process, and with so many great virtualization options out there, it’d be a shame not to have that extra Windows XP environment to play around with. In other words: to open up those PowerPoint presentations your parents forward you, easily download, view and edit files associated with Microsoft Office, browse websites that for some reason do not yet support Safari, and navigate the workplace computer environment with ease.

Got questions, comments, or suggestions for a VM alternative not mentioned here? We want to hear about it!

My first pick is Plex, an awesome user interface freebie for Mac that provides instant access to your media – television shows, movies, music… even the weather looks fascinating on Plex. Based on the XBMC open-source media centre originally designed for the Xbox, Plex may just be the most useful infusion for any Mac owners who use their Macs as an entertainment hub. At our place, a Mac Mini hooked up to a frighteningly huge LCD screen serves as our ever-obedient media center, so Plex was a perfect fit. This beautiful behemoth of a media center is currently available only for OS X, which is really the only bummer I could spot, but hey, you didn’t need me to tell you that PC users are losing out, right?

A great (and again, FREE) alternative to Front Row (which I was using before), Plex has completely upgraded my home entertainment setup. Plex can play a wide range of video, audio and photo formats, but the real prize here are its dynamic library features, which allow you to catalog your media as a collection of versatile libraries, automatically retrieve metadata from the Internet, and display your libraries using one of the visually stunning skins. The skins are hypnotizing, really – I stared at a hi-res image of a tellie set thrown in a field of tall grass for about an hour before proceeding to click “Play” on my little Apple Remote. Plex includes a thoroughly customizable skinning engine that enables users to alter its entire user interface. Colors, controls, navigation, positioning of elements, animation, and even added functionality can all be achieved with a skin, which also makes Plex a great display for the easily bored and interface-picky.

The icing on the cake? With Plex, you can now automatically download movie and TV show artwork, fan-art, plot and episode information for your movies and television shows, as well as artwork, artist and album information for your music files. How awesome is that? My secret infatuation with Gossip Girl is now out of the closet thanks to Plex’s beautiful features, which I just couldn’t bear to hide away from house guests… Darned be Plex! Watch out, Upper East Siders – here I come!

But seriously, if you own a Mac, you absolutely need to be using Plex.
For more handy Mac tips and tricks, check out 5min’s Tech Files.

Because that’s why podcasts exist: to make statements, to spread the voice, to showcase your creativity. In the podcasting industry, you have a sea of possibilities to choose from: you can either enjoy the sheer fun of internet celebrity  Gary Vaynerchuk, with his classy yet un-snobby wine expert show, laugh with  Dr Tiki’s bar adventures, or learn from Threadbanger’s DIY fashion tips, just to mention some of my personal favorites.

Making your own podcast is easy. All you need is a microphone, audio editing software, a host website and an RSS feed. Just check Tinkernut’s video tutorial on How To Make a Podcast and get started. You can even respond to Palin’s video, unless Chris Crocker did it already.

While back then vector play seemed to be all the rage at our humble little school, by the time our graduating class was out the door, diploma in hand and in search of their first “real” gigs in design and graphics, FreeHand was already dead buried and eulogized: Adobe’s competing software, Illustrator, had taken over the market, and was admittedly much more fun to use.

Like the classic Photoshop interface which I was already familiar with, Illustrator provided many new options for typesetting, fonts and image layout, as well as supporting plug-ins and other extensions that made projects easier. However, Illustrator was like a surprise cold pail of water for anyone who’d been training on FreeHand, and most of my friends found themselves lost, desperately seeking tips on how to catch up with Illustrator and its vast abilities.

So while this may be a little late for my frustrated former classmates, you still have every chance to get acquainted with the terrific abilities of Adobe Illustrator, as well as other software applications published by Adobe. With the help of Total Training’s software training videos, you can proceed at your own pace, learning the entire Adobe Creative Suite right on your own computer. Lessons are structured into segments dealing with the different tools and features of each application, allowing you to get familiar with all the tools you will be using as you gain experience. Check it out – learn how to create and color objects in Illustrator for an easy start: