MacTricksAndTips.com

There is a popular market out there for audio books, Amazon has thousands of them, some very popular. However, if you want to make your own audio books, this can be quite difficult, there are probably various methods around on the Internet which you can follow. Today I am going to show you a cool little app called AudioBook Stitch, it is a very simple and easy to use app for putting together your own audio books. The app also extends as a way of joining other audio files, great if you want to join an album together into one long audio track with chapters.

Sometimes you get a PDF or another text document that has paragraph after paragraph, page after page of text. If there is no informative summary or abstract this can be a pain to read. However, Apple has kindly built in a summary service which you can use to summarise long paragraphs of text into something that is quickly readable. For the most part it is pretty good, and useful in forming quick a quick summary of long complicated articles. It only takes a moment to set up and can be used for almost anything.

Everyone wants perfect photos, with the advent of high quality cameras in point and shoot cameras and even iPhones, it isn’t hard to take a good photo. However, with a small amount of image editing most people can take those photos and make them look excellent. Although built in apps such as iPhoto have image editing tools, some people may not have iPhoto installed (or don’t like to use it) but still want to edit images without having to pay out thousands for a tool such as Photoshop or the cheaper version Elements. That’s why an app called Snapheal, was invented. Its a cheap photo retouch that can edit images and make them look fantastic.

This little trick I came across while I wondered why my hard disk was being used when no apps were actively running. Its a basic Terminal command that shows you which files are being accessed and by which program. Its very useful and customisable, and interesting to watch to see how you Mac uses the files stored on your hard disk. You can use it when a file is in use or an app is accessing your disk. The resulting output is great for determining if you have a rogue app accessing files it shouldn’t or if an app is heavy on file access, something which can slow your Mac down.

One of the hottest apps out there is CleanMyMac, its a simple yet useful app for ensuring your Mac stays clean and efficient as you use it. You may not know this but as you use your Mac it generates log files, caches, as well as other system Junk which you can remove on a regular basis. By removing the stuff you don’t need, you can keep your Mac free and hopefully running well. CleanMyMac is designed to clean your system and keep it in tip top shape. Its very efficient at doing this.

I have a quick tip for anyone who uses imgur. If you find you regularly upload images to the service to share with your friends or other people on the internet, you will find this right click service menu option a quick way to get those images onto the imgur website. The cool feature of this service is that you can upload more than one image at a time. Its a great little time saver, and works very well.

Over the last week or so I have reviewed a couple of fun game, Cut The Rope, Rotieer and not forgetting five fun games post. I have another funky game to add to the list, it is called PaperMonsters. Its a 3D platform game similar too Super Marios Bros, but with cool 3D graphics and a cool little main character. This game is cheap, fun, simple to play and strangely addictive with some interesting level design and game play.

One of the simplest methods to uninstall apps on your Mac is to move them to the trash. However, this can level preference files, caches and other files scattered around your Mac. Although this isn’t much of a problem, it does allow you to pick up where you left off when you re-install your app, it is nice to know everything is clear when the app is removed. It also reduces disk space and generally keeps your Mac nice and clean, no point in having a file you don’t use. This expensive list will detail pretty much every Mac app cleaner I can find. There is no order to the list with eleven apps in all, and it contains both free and paid apps. If you have an app that I have missed, please leave a comment.