Paula DuPont

“When I said I was going to tell you what apps I use, I didn’t say it was going to be pretty. This is the part where I tell you that I may be more than a little addicted to Facebook. I’m hardly a serial friender–I’ve only just made it past the century mark–and I know how to use my privacy and account controls so I only see the updates I want, but that may be the denial talking. Because with MenuTab Pro for Facebook, I’ve always got Facebook open, and I’m always ready for updates.”

- The Apps We Use: Paula DuPont | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“I like puzzles, and I like trains, so it happens that I’m often mistaken for a seven-year-old boy or a very active octogenarian. I don’t mind, though, because sometimes I get to combine puzzles and trains, and that’s pretty cool. This isn’t Jigsaw.PuzzleStorm, though, so it’s got to be something a lot better than a 1000 piece locomotive, right? That’s where Rails comes in, a labor of love from developer BeLight Software. Build your own rail yard and get your trains to their destination in this reboot of the DOS classic.”

- Become a Transit Mogul in Rails | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“BeamApp is supposed to be able to start and stop your music as you move among your devices, and it sort of does this, in that it will start and stop your music. It should be able to pick up your playlist where you dropped it as you move from your computer to your iPhone and back again, though, and as far as I can tell, it didn’t do this once. BeamApp never picked up the playlist as described on the BeamApp site when the song was over, it just played the next song by the artist, the next songs in my iTunes queue, or stopped playing music altogether.”

- BeamApp: Simple Sharing to Your iPhone | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“I wanted to play Hidden Doodles because it looked so different from just about everything else on my iPad, but I didn’t have high hopes for the gameplay. I’ve been over hidden object puzzles since my mom canceled my Highlights for Children subscription. Yeah, Hidden Doodles looks good, but it was surprisingly fun, too. The levels are short, so you won’t end up staring at the same image too long, and it doesn’t really have a chance to become boring. Like any really good puzzle game, it’s easy to fall into a puzzle hole, playing level after level until you look up and realize your toddler is going off to middle school now.”

- Find the Fun in Hidden Doodles | iPad.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“On your first day in Utopia, it’s just you, the big shot mayor, and a mechanic working at your local clone arrival center. To turn your tiny Utopia from a ghost town into a thriving metropolis, you need to start building your city and making clones. That means you’ll be in charge of everything from major land expansion projects across the void of space to splicing the genes of your individual citizens. We’ve stumbled onto the dystopian truth of Pixel People, though; a clone’s genetic identity determines his or her occupation and position in life. A clone born into the life of a janitor will spend his life known only as Jan Itor, always cleaning up after other people, with no hope of promotion or any change of situation.”

- Build Your Own Utopia in Pixel People | iPad.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“I don’t usually mention the music in a game unless it’s really good or really bad, and the music in KooZac is both. It’s like being inside an elevator inside a Trapper Keeper from 1987. If you were ever forced to watch those 1980s math and science documentaries recorded off of public television, you’ve heard the music of KooZac. If you’ve ever thought you wanted to go back to first grade math class, but you also wanted to set your pants on fire, KooZac can simulate all those emotions, something I genuinely enjoyed.”

- KooZac: Math Puzzles = Fun | iPad.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“I like anything that can make my workday run more smoothly and remove those little stumbling blocks that slow me down. Continu is just such an app. While you’re watching old episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on YouTube or however else you spend your time on your computer during the day, Continu is working silently in the background. It can either make sure your applications stay open no matter what, whether they crash or you accidentally exit out of an app, and it can open applications when triggered.”

- Continu: Keep Your Most Important Apps Open | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“Just to be clear, the full name of the game is Tales of Game’s Studios Presents Chef Boyardee’s Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. Just to be clear. Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden was developed by Tales of Game’s, a group of several members of an amateur game development forum. The year is 2053, and Charles Barkley, along with his son Hoopz, is a fugitive, on the run from Michael Jordan and the B-Ball Removal Department, as Barkley is suspected of being in violation of anti-B-Ball laws. That’s right, basketball is illegal, and it’s all Charles Barkley’s fault.”

- 6 Awesome Retro-Inspired Games for the Mac | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“You’ll have to sign up to get into Foodily, because it’s that sort of app. You can’t just get in, get recipes and get out. Foodily wants you to share the recipes with your friends and actively encourages you to engage with the community. No food loners here, eating bags of dry cornbread stuffing mix, gripping your iPhone with a quiet determination. So sign up and log in. Foodily will recommend some people (mostly celebrity chefs and Food Network types) for you to follow, along with some food and fitness magazines. It’s not a bad idea to take them up on the offer. While the quiet determination route may seem like a good plan to start, it’s nice to have some familiar faces to rely on, recipes from people you know you can trust, recipes that weren’t made up by someone eating bags of dry stuffing mix.”

- Holiday Dinner Help from Foodily | iPhone.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“Some people are going to find the gibbering knights hilarious, but I had to turn the sound off on my phone. Their constant chirping and taunting was not only annoying, it was repetitive. I could only listen to the same jeers so long before I couldn’t take it. Sure I wanted to slam a rock into them all the more for their chipmunk-like razzing of my catapulting skills, but it was easier — and more enjoyable — to turn the sound off all together.”

- Catapult King: A Medieval Slingshot Adventure | iPhone.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“Don’t worry about Flock adding a bunch of Facebook “friends” to whom you never actually speak; you’ll only connect on Flock if you’ve taken pictures together. Once Flock finds your friends, it’ll let you know if you already have any pictures you can share. If you do, you’ll be encouraged to add them to your friends’ albums. Though great, you’ve probably already uploaded all of your pictures from New Year’s Eve to Facebook already, and your friends have probably gotten their fill of pictures of you waving sparklers around before setting your hair on fire.”

- Flock: Social Photo Sharing Made Easy | iPhone.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“You have a lot of photos, and you want to share them, but you don’t want to just toss them up on Facebook or Twitter or even Instagram. You want to present them in a way that’s meaningful and will share not only the pictures but the feeling you had when you were taking them.”

- Grid Lens: Let Your Photos Tell the Story | iPhone.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“Tiny Post gives you some suggested tags, most of which are self-referential or incredibly vague, like #dog. Tiny Post allows you to tag your friends, just as if you were in the Facebook app, but you can’t mention your Twitter friends — even if you’re logged in via your Twitter account — something I really wanted to do.”

- Classy Photo Captioning with Tiny Post | iPhone.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“The Internet, and especially social media, has seen an influx of pretty spectacular animated gifs recently, called cinemagraphs. In a cinemagraph, the majority of the image is frozen while a section is animated. Imagine a still skyline with a fluttering flag being the only thing in motion, or an outdoor scene but the only thing that moves are a tree’s leaves. It’s a striking effect, but from a layperson’s perspective with little design experience, it seems almost impossible to capture.”

- Create Cinemagraphs like a Pro with Cinemagram | iPhone.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“Opening Astrid for the first time, you’ll be asked to create an account. You can still use the app without signing in, but your tasks won’t be synced or available from the webapp. However, I was 100% unable to create an account, because my Gmail account wasn’t recognized as a valid email address. Yeah, Astrid? Well so’s your face! I ended up having to login via Facebook, which is maybe my least favorite thing that doesn’t involve spiders, but it was the only way to get it done.”

- Astrid: Be Productive with Friends | iPhone.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“Most people know that Option Command Esc will bring up the Force Quit window, but if you’re having major issues and need to close an application right now, holding Option Shift Command Esc for three seconds will force quit the current application (keep in mind this will only work on OS X 10.5 and up). Control Option Command Eject is a handy shortcut that quits all open applications.”

- Going Further with the Option Key in Mac OS X | Mactuts by Paula DuPont

“Ridding yourself of the duplicates created by all that syncing can be a pain, but Address Book has a built in duplicate removal tool that should help a bit. Click the “Card” menu, and choose “Look for Duplicates.”
If Address Book finds any duplicate contacts, contacts with the same name but different card information, it will offer to merge them for you.”

- Sync and Manage your Contacts in Address Book | Mactuts by Paula DuPont

“Because none of these files belong to you, you don’t have any control over them. A track could be there one day and gone the next. If you stick to official YouTube channels, you’re probably less likely to run into this issue, but it can happen. While you may unexpectedly lose your favorite song on your favorite playlist, that’s not really something that can be blamed on CloudPlay; CloudPlay’s just letting you get at the music more easily where it’s available. However, if you’re really attached to a song, you might want to think about purchasing it. Not only can you keep listening to it indefinitely, but you’ll also be supporting the artist or band.”

- CloudPlay: Music Streaming Made Easy | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“There are absolutely no cons to this application. Frank DeLoupe fills a big hole for designers and developers. There have been so many times I’ve tried to drag the Photoshop eyedropper out of the application and out onto the desktop, knowing it would only end in tears. Grabbing colors outside of Photoshop for use in the application is huge, but so is the ability to pick colors from anywhere for really any use, not just in Photoshop.”

- Frank DeLoupe: Your Color Picking Friend | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont

“Each file uploaded gets its own folder and HTML file, all created within a “share” folder in your Dropbox Public folder. While it’s great to get all that separated out and frankly necessary to make the Droplings theme work, the folders aren’t named anything useful. If you want to get back into them to retrieve a file you’ve uploaded previously, you’ll find them organized by month uploaded, but that’s it. You just have to get to digging to really find anything.”

- Droplings: Simple Drag-and-Drop File Sharing with Dropbox | Mac.AppStorm by Paula DuPont