“NoodleMac is home of the 9 Word Reviews for Mac software.”
Recent mini Reviews
Skype
Our favorite free non-iChat audio, video, and chat utility. Good for VoIP phone calls, decent video and audio, good chat sessions. Live and talk dangerously with the new Skype.
Talk to friends, family and co-workers across the internet without long distance telephone charges. It works by using P2P technology for the data transmission, meaning there is no central server as a middle manager.
9WR - Skype: iChat-like VoIP utility for audio, video, chat, free phone calls.
Things
Finally out of beta, out of release candidate status, is the highly attractive and capable task manager with project management capability. Reduces complex project and task management to simple, enjoyable process. Highly recommended. Syncs with iPhone version.
Things is task management solution that helps to organize your tasks in an elegant and intuitive way. Things combines powerful features with simplicity through the use of tags and its intelligent filter bar. A Leopard style source list allows for quick and easy focusing. Together with a beautiful user interface, Things aims at the seemingly impossible: making task management both easy and fun.
9WR - Things: Task, project manager, excellent user interface, many handy features.
Navicat for MySQL
Popular utility to create and manage MySQL databases, remotely, locally, on Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X. Elegant, somewhat utilitarian, interface.
It works with any MySQL version from 3.21 or above and supports most of the latest MySQL features including Trigger, Stored Procedure, Function, Event, View, Manage User.
9WR - Navicat for MySQL: MySQL database server administration, create, sync, back up, report.
MoneyWell
Everyone wants to manage your money these days. MoneyWell takes a different approach. Think digital envelopes. Think buckets. Lots of easy access reports, schedules.
Powerful personal finance organization and analysis tools in a simple, single-screen solution. Without running complex reports or having to trudge through six levels of pie charts, you’ll know immediately if your spending is on track.
9WR - MoneyWell: Gentle learning curve, comprehensive ‘envelope’ budget management, one-click reports.
Together
Our favorite information manager. Highly intuitive and easier to use than Yojimbo. Love the shelf. Organize files however you like. Holds almost everything. Now with auto tagging, nested groups, editing.
Together lets you keep everything in one place. Text, documents, images, movies, sounds, web pages and bookmarks can all be dragged to Together for safe keeping, tagged, previewed, collected together in different ways and found again instantly.
9WR - Together: Personal information organizer, stores text, documents, images, movies, whatever.
Parallels Desktop
Major update to the pricey but increasingly popular way to run Windows or Linux within Mac OS X. Share files between Windows and Mac. Support for Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3.
Run Windows, Linux, and more side-by-side with Mac OS X on any Intel-powered Mac, without rebooting. Run Mac OS X and Windows at the same time. You can even drag-and-drop files between desktops!
9WR - Parallels Desktop: Runs Windows, Linux with Mac OS X on Intel Macs.
aLunch
Yet another Menubar application and file launcher. Set up categories, icon size, add files. Barely not bad. Developer’s complete description of aLunch:
You can chose to display icons at 32 pixels or 16 pixels. Files and folders can be registered with aLunch as well. Folders will be opened in the Finder. Different categories can be registered by using groups and separators.
9WR - aLunch: Now how many items are in your Mac’s Menubar?
TrailRunner
Yet another seemingly every-other-day and ever-so-teeny-tiny and more minor-than-minor update to the rather clever utility for people on the move. Literally. Plans routes with maps, graphs, locations, and calculates distance. Check the ancient Mac360 review.
TrailRunner is a route planning software for all kinds of long distance sports like running, biking, hiking, inline-skating, skiing and more.
9WR - Trail Runner: Route planning for runners, bikers; maps, diary, exercise plan.
Sunrise
Yes, another Mac browser to try, with not so regular updates. Flock does browser social networking angle, Sunrise aims a few features towards developers, otherwise it’s Safari under the hood.
Sunrise is the open-source web browser that (is) based on (the) WebKit framework for Mac. It is light and fast.
9WR - Sunrise: WebKit, visual bookmarks, multiple search engines, thumbnails, window fader.
Acorn
Better than a simple image editor. Affordable, fast, easy to learn, many image editing tools and options, from gradients filters to layers. Nicely done. Now with a cool brush designer, and improved performance via your Mac’s GPU.
Don’t let Acorn’s size fool you; it’s a powerful little guy. Fancy math to keep your pencil strokes from having sharp edges, squeezing as much performance out of your computer’s GPU as possible, and simple innovations to make your life easier.
9WR - Acorn: Simple image editor, layers, filters, effects, vector shapes, text.