I’m more of a keyboard shortcut person than mouse user any day of the week and seeing something like WindowFlow that allows for easy control and desktop layout of your typical busy as all get out Mac OS X desktop is more than welcomed.

WindowFlow makes organizing your application windows a breeze:

• Keyboard commands allow you to smoothly move and resize windows that snap into alignment.
• Window tiling instantly reorganizes a messy group of overlapping windows to optimally fill your screen.
• Intuitive window switching gives you an ordered list of windows and a preview of the window on the desktop.
• Ideal for developers, designers and power users who work from multiple windows.
• Keyboard junkies will love being able to keep their hands where they are most productive.
• Optimized for Macs with large or multiple displays.
• Operates seamlessly in the background, only becoming visible when needed.
• Highly customizable: re-define the keyboard shortcuts and WindowFlow’s behavior.

WindowFlow comes in Standard Edition and a Pro Edition and currently is 45% off list price.

[ Links: WindowFlow ]

Just a day or so to go before Apple’s January 27th event, the speculation about the rumored Apple Tablet is reaching a fever pitch. The guys over at Unplggd have posted a couple of realistic photos that might be oft-rumored Apple Tablet.

[ Links: Unplggd ]

I’m notorious for being late for meetings and events. It’s not on purpose or that I’m unorganized. I’m just apparently not organized enough. In fact, for meetings, I almost always tend to say “-ish” after the time we will be meeting. They know that I’ll be late. So reviewing something like Bento 3 for the Mac and Apple iPhone comes across as either a blessing or a stop being so gosh darn late hint.

Bento 3 is made by the same people that make FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server. Heavy duty products that I’ve used in enterprise level deployments and projects in the past. Of course, that might mean this product for the average desktop user will be boring, staid and ultimately deemed too complex for daily usage. Wrong. The desktop application is a joy to use.

It’s quite refreshing that the desktop application isn’t impossibly hard to use at all. It really puts you in the mind of the other Apple provided apps like iCal, iTunes and iPhoto and just as easy to approach. Mentioning iPhoto and iCal, within moments Bento will synchronize with your iPhoto photos, Address Book contacts and iCal events.

Setting up a meeting in Bento is as easy as setting one up in iCal. For instance, I have a 5pm meeting with a company tomorrow… one I actually intend on being on time for as well.

Within moments, set up, synchronized with my iCal – which my Apple iPhone connects to as well, and I’m done. And Bento does support synchronization with an Apple iPhone via wifi as well as synchronization when connected to the computer via USB. And the Apple iPhone application is also as easy to use, I’ve created and added items to my existing libraries that quickly keep me organized in all details of my digital life.

And it’s not all about meetings either. You can set up: To-Do Items, Recipes, Projects (important for me), Inventory, Time Billing, Digital Media (for collections of CD’s, eBooks, et al), TV & Movie collections, among many other options. Seriously, you can set up and organize just about every aspect of your life.

Good part? You can also set up everything as it exists on the desktop also in the Apple iPhone application as well. Yes… you can organize yourself on the go if you have to or if you happen to be on a PC. But having both the Mac desktop and Apple iPhone applications – I sorta dislike typing on the iPhone for large amounts of text – it just works well.

And yes… in the last couple of weeks, I know what movies I have at home as well as my what projects I have going on, the level of completion for each project deliverable and even have set up a couple of meetings that I have been on time for.

Shocking… I know.

I can truly state that Bento by FileMaker is an application that you need to add to your must buy list. It retails for $4.99 for the Apple iPhone via the iTunes Music Store and $49.99 for the Apple Mac desktop.

The only con(s) I have for this application is that while it is deceptively simple, it can get very complex in the creation of a blank library to suit your needs that are not covered by the library templates is somewhat time consuming. There are downloadable, update-able templates that FileMaker and the users of Bento make available but it would almost be a patience killer to create a full functional template solely on the Apple iPhone. The desktop application makes somewhat short work of that.

It is Mac only, so there is a slight detractor for being limited to OS X. Buy it. If it can make a habitual late person as myself on-time and actually help organize the bits of my life that I sorely need to add more organization to and do that easily… you just need to buy this.

Rated: 4.5 out of 5 (Must Buy)

[ FileMaker ] [ Bento 3 ] [ Related: RTL Reviews ]

Multiple touch has finally made its way to the desktop in a way that I’ve been waiting for. Imagine using Corel Painter 11 [ Product Here ] and really doing some serious finger painting without the mess. Or just going through multiple touch enabled operating systems – Mac OS X and Windows Vista and Windows 7 quickly come to mind – using gestures that make using a computer as simple as flicking a wrist to pan around, pinching to shrink or zoom or dragging a finger to scroll a webpage.

Enter the Wacom Bamboo Touch for $69 [ Product Here ] or Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch at $99 [ Product Here ]

Add this to my list of things I want. Can’t wait to test these out compared to my Wacom Intuos3 that’s in serious need of replacement.

[ Wacom ]

Being an early adopter is much akin to the first person that runs into a building when it’s on fire. Even if you’re properly suited up, you might be in more danger because you’ve not taken the time to fully size up the situation and don’t know the ins and outs, the pitfalls… and the obstacles. An early adopter of technology, especially initial release technology… they’ve been similarly burned.

But I can venture that’s not the case with Apple’s newly released 10.6 Snow Leopard (Build 10A432). The bad part, my trust PowerPC G4 Cube nicknamed “Cubezilla” finally died, just a week or so short of having it for 8 years. I had replaced the original 450mhz CPU with a Powerlogix 1ghz G4 with 3mb cache, 1.5gb of RAM and the absolute maximum HD I could shove in there, 120gb. Not a monster machine, but damn I loved it.

I didn’t upgrade that machine past 10.4.10, but it still ran Adobe Creative Suite 2, Flex Builder 3, Quicktime 7.6, Flash Player 10… among just about every other piece of software that I’m having to install/upgrade on my new (early 2009) Apple Mini Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, 2gb DDR3 RAM and 160gb HD with a 1tb HD tethered to it via USB2 with an internal SuperDrive; nicknamed Minya, the son of Godzilla. I liked my new machine, but with 10.6 floating on the horizon, I had barely gotten it up and running and hadn’t installed much more than internet based apps first.

With that said, I hit up Best Buy, grabbed the 10.6 update for $25.00 – the price that’s currently on their website. Came home, slammed the singular DVD in there and while it was updating, read the tiny little pamphlet and wondered what all had been updated. The big fuss… moving parts of the OS to fully 64-bit – from the kernel to the updated Finder which has been in need of rewriting since… well, for quite a while.

The biggest thing that I have to stress… the move to 64-bit does not mean it’s faster. Nor does it mean anything else other than Apple is fully utilizing the chips given to it by Intel. Now, with that out of the way, 10.6 is lighter, faster, and smaller. Programs were recompiled and smaller. Less space was used – I gained some 20.1gb back from the prior size (no joke) and things like the finder seem to be snappier and less “heavy”. QuickTime X is on the system now, and despite having a cleaner look, it starts up faster and seems to use a bit less RAM than QuickTime 7.6.

But so far, this is one initial update that I don’t regret. I cannot say the same thing for 10.3 nor 10.5. Both were problematic for me in so many ways it was annoying. Speaking of annoyances, there’s a few. Growl isn’t yet 64-bit – the pref pane that is. So within the System Preferences, once you click it, you will be prompted to restart the System Preferences in order to gain access to those 32-bit preference panes. Luckily, the apps that aren’t 64-bit yet do not require this kind of switching – for instance Adobe AIR apps, which are not 64-bit yet at all – will still run alongside your 64-bit apps without incident.

Why would you want it? It’s simple. It’s lighter, it’s smaller, it’s faster and it utilizes more of the CPU but less processes than before. More bang for the buck, and it actually seems like I’m using the hardware and starting to finally see what Apple saw when they abandoned the PowerPC for Intel.

All in all… I’m impressed. And an update that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg… take that Microsoft.