Andrew Gormley

LitePanels MicroPro Review

One of the worst situations to be in while on a video shoot is not having enough light. Your footage will either turn out noisy because of a high ISO or worse: underexposed. I recently took a Litepanels MicroPro out on shoot with me because I wasn't sure what kind of lighting conditions I'd be dealing with and boy am I glad I did.

Osfoora for Twitter Review

Let's face it: the Twitter for Mac app has been abandoned. It's so outdated it doesn't even support Twitter's own image upload service which was launched back in August. While there are new alternatives popping up every day, Osfoora really caught my eye and based on its success on iOS, I decided to take it for a spin. The good news is that it's a really nice Twitter client that I'll use for a while. The bad news is that it has a few things that need to be fixed before it can truly supplant Twitter for Mac as my go-to app.

ooShirts Custom Shirts Review

For the past few months I've been toying around with the idea of getting some original designs on a t-shirt and selling them to you wonderful folks. I realized that this would be a more expensive undertaking than I initially planned as I browsed around both local screenprinting shops and online stores alike. Then I came across a site that changed my mind on the prospect.

Sorenson Squeeze 8 Review

For the longest time I’ve been looking for an encoder with a GUI that allowed me to export WebM videos. This has been a major stumbling block for me being able to post more native video content here on the site, usually just relying on the always-excellent Vimeo as my solution. The only problem is that most online video services also apply a slight bit of additional compression to all uploaded videos, so what you see there isn’t necessarily indicative of what the source material looked like. In Vimeo’s defense, however, I’ve never noticed any glaring video degradation—especially when compared to YouTube, which can sometimes noticeably alter the brightness/contrast of a video.

Notational Velocity Review

My brain runs at about a mile a minute—I quickly move from topic to topic and if I lose a good idea in the process, it’s likely gone forever. Just in the course of writing this intro I’ve downloaded three podcasts, checked into a syntax highlighter for my code editor, fired up Motion and rendered a sequence, and opened my RSS reader. Consequently, I began a quest for a simple note taking software that would allow me to jot down a bunch of ideas, style them minimally, and then move right along to the next one. I scoured for a solution, what I assumed would be a tabbed text editor, and ended up with something much more than I could have imagined.

Yazsoft Playback Review

I’m a Mac, I’m also a PS3, and I’m fanatical when it comes to digitizing my DVD collection. Up until recently, it had been a chore using PS3 as a media playback device even though it’s quite a capable machine: you’d have to copy over any files you wanted to view via an external hard drive (formatted in FAT32, no less). Anyone with a large enough media library knows that eventually it’s simply not feasible to have all of your music, movies, and photos in two places at once (it really makes organizing a nightmare!), so I set off for a way to share the media I keep on my primary computer with my PS3 and found Playback.

MobileMe Review

In July, MobileMe will have been around for exactly one year in it’s current incarnation.  It was always one technology that I was hesitant to jump right into because I felt like it was a tad superfluous.  I mean, why would I want to pay for over-the-air syncing of my Address Book or phone numbers when it’s just as easy for me to plug my phone in and sync thru iTunes?  Throughout the past three months I’ve found that there’s a lot more to MobileMe than just syncing contacts and information wirelessly. Let me tell you a bit about it.

iPhone OS 3.0 Review

Unbeknownst to me, I’ve been a registered Apple Developer for quite some time now.  Apparently, back in the early days of OS X (that’s 10.0 for all interested parties), when you registered on Apple’s site as a user, that also gave you access to all of the neat developer tools they were working on at the time. Having a developer account is useful for gaining earlier access to plenty of fun things that Apple is working on, including the iPhone 3.0 GM that’s slated for release this Wednesday.  I took the plunge and got it set up my iPhone 3G.  Here’s the score.

Beak.app Review

Here’s a quick screencast taking a look at the brand new Twitter app for Mac known as Beak. Be sure to check it out on Vimeo if you want to experience it in pure HD goodness.

Tweetie for Mac Review

It would be an understatement to say that people were looking forward to the desktop release of the popular Twitter client Tweetie, which prior to yesterday was only available for consumption on the iPhone. In this weird world we live in, where Twitter teeters on the edge of complete mainstream absorption, it’s a great idea to step back and see what options are available to you. So, without further ado, let’s get to it.