May 13, 2010

Steam released for Mac: First Impressions

If you’ve been under a cave than you probably haven’t heard that Valve’s Steam game service is now available for Mac. I’ve had an on/off relationship with Steam over the years. Using it on a PC, getting a Mac and all but forgetting about it, trying dismally to use it in Crossover Games, and finally using a native Mac version. You can grab it here at steampowered.com. There is also a limited time free download of Valve’s Portal to start the show and garner interest from Mac gamers.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you’ve already bought some of the games from outside the Steam store (in my case I have Tales of Monkey Island I bought through the last MacHeist nanobundle. You can enter your license key and it will be included in the steam menu. I haven’t tested the to see how it deals with Mac to PC and vice versa gaming. But all will be done in due time. Until then, I’m going to take this time to enjoy Portal. A game I’ve been curious for a long time that I didn’t work up the nerve into purchasing.

As for my PS3? It’s still dead to me until Sony gets off their high horse. With the price of quieter blu ray players coming down constantly that also have standard remote IR functionality. This device “that only does everything” has gotten less useful as more capable devices in my apartment have replaced it. It does less than my HTPC, it does less than my region-free DVD player, it doesn’t seem to connect to my ReadyNAS. I’m a little unhappy with it frankly.

Posted by yardie at 11:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 9, 2010

Welcome to MacJournal!

Welcome

To get started, create a new entry by clicking on "New Entry" in the toolbar or choosing "New Entry" from the File menu. You can also drag files from the Finder in to the Sidebar or the Entries list to import them as an entry. Show the Inspector from the View menu to see settings for the current entry, journal, and document.

What's new in version 5?

  • All new interface, built for Mac OS X Leopard.
  • Add any kind of content, not just text. Drag PDFs, QuickTime movies, images, and more into the Sidebar to create an entry with anything on your computer.
  • Open more than one MacJournal document at a time and save them wherever you want, or just use the default document and never worry about saving.
  • Create Smart Journals from searches you perform.
  • Create aliases to entries that you can store in other journals.
  • Assign each entry a rating, status, and priority, and sort any journal by those values.
  • Record video from your iSight and attach it to any entry.
  • Performance enhancements for working with large numbers of entries.

I've downloaded MacJournal and linked it to my blog. So I'll never need to log directly into the system through the portal. This should make it more convenient for me. Instead of having to open a browser, enter the URL, login, and password. Then make a new entry, upload photos, and create the appropriate links. This system should do fine. I'll have to see on how it handles different image sizes. MT has a good system of creating clickable thumbnails for large images. This has been on my 'things to do' for a while, just never got around to downloading and registering MacJournal. Now I see why people like it.

Shout out to MacHeist who made it possible. I didn't really think about this program until it arrived in my bundle.

Posted by yardie at 2:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack