YuckyMuffinTech

Reviews, tutorials,news, and more on the coolest things in the tech world. Special extras include an ask YuckyMuffinTech Page, beginners tutorials on making web pages, and much more. Have feedback, questions, or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. Have questions about making a website or enhancing your site or blog with outside services, we might be able to help! Email us at [email protected] for advice.

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We are proud to announce that we have 3 Pages templates now up for sale for 3/$5. Get more info on the link above =)

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Two Ways to Make an eBook.

Option A: iBooks Author

     Pros:

Easy to use

Lots of formating tools, looks great on iPad

Nice templates

Free!

    Cons:

Can only sell on iTunes store

.iBooks format only works with iPad

Not many export options

In flexible

Option B: Pages

Pros:

Pretty easy to use

Many export options

Can be used for other things (eg. word processing, simple page layout)

Sell anywhere

Compatible with many devices

Cons:

No eBook templates

Only inline objects

Look and feel of books not as polished.

$20

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Audiobook Builder

Audiobook Builder is a cheap application for the audio book lover in your family. It takes your CD audio books and burns them on to your computer. You might say “So what? iTunes can do that and doesn’t cost a thing.” Well I wasn’t done. 

When you normally burn audio books into iTunes, it divides them by chapter, and believe me, that can get annoying, especially in long books. What Audiobook Builder does is divide them into tracks based on disks, with one CD being one track. It can reduce 60 tracks to 6 tracks. You can add Cover art work and even tracks you have on iTunes. When your done, you can export it to iTunes and beyond!

This application isn’t a must have like the others. It’s just a really fun and helpful. You can pick up this app on the Mac App Store for just $5.

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Quick Tip

Just a quick keyboard shortcut for today. Hitting alt ; will give you a …, much neater than ... this way. Lets do it together now: … … … … … … … … … 

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Google Hangouts

There's a new way to video call from Google. It's called Google Hangouts. It's a flexible way to share documents, screens, youtube, and video chat. With your Google account, you can invite up to eight friends to video chat with you. When you're chatting you can do a collaborative Google Doc or share your screen. 

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Defect-free software does not exist.

Wietse Venema

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The time spent on social networks 

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Text Edit

Text Edit is already on your computer. It is a built in application for doing what the name says: all it is simple word processing application that has a full suite of features, but not as many as word. If you don’t have word or pages, this is a great free alternative.

For this section I took a break from pages and used Text Edit to get a feel for it.  Text Edit has what you would expect from a word processing application, with a lot of styles and choices. There are multiple fonts, in fact there are almost as many as word! You can chose from bold, italics, or underlined. You can change colors, with a full color pallet. You can add pictures to your document (you can drag pictures form Skitch!) When you're done, you can save as rich text, plain text, word 1997, 2003, and 2007. You can also save it as a web page or a PDF.

For a solid word processing application that doesn't cost a thing, Text Edit is your man. It should be in your Applications folder if you are running on a mac.  

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Smart Converter

Smart Converter is a, well, smart way to convert videos into optimized formats. It has a wide range of options to convert video into the best format.

Smart converter only supports video conversion one at a time. That isn't a limiting feature, though. Some examples of file types you can convert into are IOS, Apple TV, Android, Music, PlayStation, and more. Besides converting videos, it can convert some audio, too. In can convert into AAC, WAV, and MP3. Smart Converter will also tell you about how fast the conversion will take place, based on the cross platform changes.

After you hit convert, a little waiting weel will apear to tell you how much longer the convention will take. After your file is converted, it is sent to iTunes and you can view the file in finder.

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Mactracker

Mactracker is a reference application that cleanly displays information on all of Apple's hardware, past and present. 

Mactracker has many different categories for devices. It has info on older models, such as MessagePad, Apple printers, Macintosh, and more, while also encompassing newer devices, like the iPod or iMac. Mactracker neatly divides them into categories based on product type.  Another feature is to make your own smart folders, sorting products by a certain specification, like what type of processor they have. You can also make a folder of the devices you have.

When you open up a device for information, the information panel will give you a lot of info. It gives you a lot of info on everything. You'll see price, hardware, model number, and others. Categories include connections, history, and notes. There are links for support, too.

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QREncoder

App two on our list is QREncoder. QREncoder is a free app to encode all different types of content into a code. 

QREncoder lets you easily input content such as text, a Tweet, phone number, url, Appstore link, and much more. It also lets you change the color of the QR codes, too. After you have finished making the code, you can export it as a PNG. If you need it in another format, you can open it with Skitch and drag it out as another file type.

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Skitch

There are a lot of free apps on the Mac App Store. Some are really good, while others suck. The next 5 posts will be our top five from the store. Today's is Skitch.

Skitch is a simple and elegant way to draw and annote images. It also provides a way to take screen shots. 

Skitch has a wide range of simple but useful drawing tools. A really neat feature about the free draw tool is that when you draw, the lines curves are automaticly enhanced to give them a more natural, less computer-like look. Other tools include line, circle/oval, rectangle, background paint, eraser, arrow, and text. Skitch lets you upload a photo as the background, too. But where Skitch excels is sharing. Skitch allows sharing in so many ways. Skitch automatically saves your drawings in your Skitch library, but also any where else on your computer. You can chose a save location from a traditional menu, or you location on your computer. drag it on to your desktop, or open up a finder window and drag it in to any other location on the computer. You can even drag it directly into a document! There are many web sharing options, such as upload to Facebook or Twitter. Or you can share it via your Evernote account or Skitch.com. 

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A quick tutorial on how to make audio and screen recordings.

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Vimeo?

Bob: Ugh! I am so annoyed with YouTube! It is so full of intrusive ads, mean comments, and too many singing chipmunk videos. It just isn't the right place for my videos. They deserve more!

YMT: Vimeo to the rescue!

Bob: Vimeo?

YMT: Vimeo.

Bob: What the heck is that? I thought YouTube was the only place to socially share videos.

YMT: Vimeo is a way to safely, cleanly, and socially share videos online. It has all the features of YouTube, and many more. And it's still free.

Bob: Sounds fishy. Wait, let me guess. The site is plastered with ads.

YMT: Actually, vimeo.com isn't. The only ads are for Vimeo plus, but they don't intrude.

Bob: Oh, so its one of those services where the free is unusable so you have to upgrade to premium. Most of the site must be blocked off.

YMT: It is true there are premium services at Vimeo, but the free account is quite viable. It includes 500MB/week, 1 HD video/week, and plenty of goodies such as the Vimeo Music Store or the widgets.

Bob: That music store sounds like a failed attempt to rival iTunes and get more money.

YMT: Bob, the Vimeo music store isn't a place where you would get music for your iPod, rather for your movies. You can get both free and paid music specially licensed so you can use it in your movies. There are many tracks available for free.

Bob: Where do I sign up for Vimeo? I think its love at first site!

YMT: Vimeo.com.

P.s. This post is the 50th YMT post! Look for new goodies soon.

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Announcement

Starting today, all of YuckyMuffinTech's pictures from the blog will be on YuckyMuffinTech's Flickr page. Now there is one place to view all of our photos. There will be som extras, too!

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Kwiqpoll

See the previous post with the link to the poll? It was created with Kwiqpoll, a super simple way to create polls. Just go to Kwiqpoll.com, type in the question you want to poll and answers, and you're good to go. No sign up, no nothing. After you make the poll, Kwiqpoll gives you a link to share every where. After people vote they can see the results. Kwiqpoll is super simple and really easy to use. The only limitation I found with it was that voting for your poll can only last one week.