Our thanks to Tyler Hall for sponsoring the Tools & Toys RSS feed this week to promote VirtualHostX. When I first learned about this app last year I was quite impressed. This week it’s on sale: $15 off for Tools & Toys readers. * VirtualHostX 3.0 is the easiest way to host multiple websites on your Mac. It's the perfect…
Apple's brand-new iMac is bad to the bone. They've laminated the screen to the glass, and compacted everything else to make it as thin around the edges as possible. It's faster, brighter, and has a Fusion Drive — which actually has little to do with providing energy and a lot to do with giving you SSD speeds at HDD prices. There's enough…
Our thanks to Mutual Mobile for sponsoring the Tools & Toys RSS feed this week. * Why work for Mutual Mobile? We've grown from a core 5 people in 2009 to just over 200 at the turn of 2012, and we're poised to double that figure over the next year. Our client list includes companies like Google, Cisco, and Audi,…
Our thanks to Sifter for sponsoring the Tools and Toys RSS feed this week. * Sifter is a simple project management tool for small teams. It frees you up to focus on shipping better software instead of checking in on team members. It's perfect for serving as your team's central location for capturing and managing all of a project's issues,…
Our thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. * You start your day, grab a coffee and update Bob. Then you swing by your manager's office and update him. He's like, "Oh. Em. Gee." (He thinks that's cool). Now you've got to update his boss. You get back three conversations later and tell Janice what happened.…
Our thanks to Inkling for sponsoring the Tools & Toys RSS feed this week. * Information design and data visualization is a fast-growing field, and charting new territory requires cross-disciplinary know-how. To that end, O’Reilly Media and Inkling have teamed up to reimagine the world’s most trusted design and technological resources for iPad, iPhone, and the web. Now, you can…
Our thanks to Karbon for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote Scratch, their stellar new iPhone app for quickly jotting down notes. * Great ideas need to be captured immediately. Scratch for iPhone cuts through the barriers of note taking and gives you a clean slate to get your idea down fast. You don't have to come up…
Sevenly is an organization that helps raise funding and awareness for charities around the world. Every week, Sevenly partners with a charity by designing a line of shirts related to that charity's mission. For every tee sold, $7 is donated directly that week's charity. * This week's cause to help Laura's House means your purchase will protect a family from…
Our thanks to Snitchware for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. * Finding the perfect weather app isn't easy. Most apps rely on free information; providing the bare minimum and accuracy that leaves much to be desired. They lure you in with fancy effects and a flashy interface, distracting you from what matters most — the weather forecast. WeatherSnitch throws…
Our thanks to muvichip for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. * Watching a movie in the post-DVD world is a mess. Blu-Ray startup times are measured in dozens of minutes. Digital is faster, but good luck finding your movie. If you find it, you'd better not get interrupted because you've got 24 hours to watch it! There has to…
Sevenly helps raise funding and awareness for charities around the world. Every week, Sevenly partners with a charity by designing a line of shirts related to that charity's mission. For every tee sold, $7 is donated directly that week's charity. * Here's more info about this week's goal to help Pencils of Promise: Sevenly's goal this week is to build…
Amazon's sweet new Kindle is for sale. The 9.1mm thick, 7.5 ounce Kindle Paperwhite features a backlit, 221 PPI e-ink display with better contrast than ever before and a new touch layer that allowed Amazon to make the bezel smaller. It gets 8 weeks of battery life, even with the light on. Borrowing from the Kindle Fire, this new Kindle includes a…
The new Kindle Fire HD is faster and larger than Amazon’s previous tablet offering. It comes with 5 GHz Wi-Fi, HDMI out, Dolby-powered stereo speakers, a multi-touch display that promises less glare than its competitors, and starts with 16 GB of storage. On the software front, it supports Audible-powered audiobooks that will play as you read (dubbed “Immersion Reading”), built-in IMDb-powered information…
Our thanks to Harvest for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Harvest is a painless time tracking tool for creative professionals available anywhere you find yourself working. Track time via the web, desktop or your mobile device. Within seconds, turn your billable hours into an invoice. Get started with a free 30 day trial today. Sponsorship by The Syndicate
Our thanks to Checkmark for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Shawn reviewed this iPhone app last month and heartily recommends it. We've found it to be far better than Apple's built-in reminders app when it comes to the accuracy and reliability of location-based reminders. Checkmark is the fastest way to create location- or time-based reminders for iPhone. In just a few…
So long as we're on the subject of nifty $0.99 camera apps, my current favorite is VSCO CAM from Visual Supply Co. Like most other photo-editing apps, VSCO CAM let's you snap a photo from within the app or import one from you camera roll. From there you can apply one of 10 different filters — 3 of which are black and…
Coffee is always an adventure. Here at the Tools & Toys headquarters we prefer a coarsely-ground cup of Guatemalan coffee brewed in our trusty AeroPress. And every now and then we bust out the Espro Press. But even that just the tip of the proverbial coffee iceberg. From coffee grinders and the various coarseness of a bean grind, to coffee brewing methods…
Our thanks to Squarespace 6 for sponsoring the Tools and Toys RSS feed this week. Design a visually rich website with magazine-quality layouts that scale to any screen size, all without touching a line of code. Squarespace 6 is a revolutionary new website creation platform with over 50 new features. Squarespace's breakthrough LayoutEngine technology allows anyone to create visually-rich pages with any…
The Espro Press makes an amazing cup of french press coffee. It has a double-walled steel vessel that is rugged and durable. After brewing you can leave the coffee in the pot and it will stay hot for over an hour. But the real magic is with the double micro filter. The Espro Presses uniquely-designed micro filter is designed to help keep…
My thanks to Boom for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Boom is a volume booster app for your Mac. It increases the system audio volume to produce better-quality audio from the built-in speakers. The system-wide graphic equalizer can further enhance your Mac's audio quality. Boom won the Macworld Best of Show award for its simplicity, elegancy and well-crafted user interface. It…