iTunes App Store.  One of my interests is weather, and while Apple’s Weather application has a simple interface, it only provides current and forecasted temperatures.  Because one of my other hobbies is flying radio controlled gliders, I am also interested in wind forecasts.

MyWeather Mobile not only provides temperature forecast information, but it also provides temperature and wind speed forecast graphs that are easy to read.  The $9.99 price tag makes it one of the more expensive apps I’ve purchased, but it’s interface is easy to navigate and uncluttered.

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The Weather Channel also published an iPhone application earlier this month and while it contains much of the same information available in MyWeather Mobile, it  displays it in tabular form instead of a graph.  The hourly forecast screen shows the next 12 hours of temperature, precipitation, and wind and the 36-hour forecast screen shows summarized information for each day rather than each hour.  The Weather Channel iPhone application is currently free.

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I should point out that both apps will use your GPS location to show weather information for your current location in addition to the cities you manually add.

TextExpander has greatly simplified the task of getting common emails responses out to customers for me without having to rely on cut-and-paste or a template email that I have to find in a folder somewhere. And I’m not just talking about using a keyboard shortcut to generate my signature. Sure, TextExpander can do that too but it’s real power shows off when you can craft a full page email with formatted text or even generate AppleScript (which I haven’t tried yet). I have only touched the surface of what this program can do for me – I’ve only written about how I use it with email but TextExpander can work in all applications.

I can’t do it enough justice here in a short post so you really need to check out the videos. TextExpander is available from Smile On My Mac and there is a downloadable trial.

I’d be interested in hearing about how others are creatively using TextExpander as well.

Most of us have the best intentions when it comes to backing up our data.  Yes, we are told that it’s not a matter of if a drive fails, it’s a matter of when.  And when you start hearing that whining noise on a hard drive or your system just does not want to boot, you’re going to wish you had your data backed up already.

So why aren’t we as diligent in backing up our data as we should be?  It’s either inconvenient (time consuming) or too expensive and like saving money, it needs to be automatic or we won’t do it.

There’s a lot of great backup software available but there’s one package that caught my attention at Macworld a couple of years ago.  Crashplan.

Crashplan gave me three things that made backups simpler:

• Automation
• No monthly fees
• Off-site backup

That last point is pretty important.  You can have all the backups you want but if you don’t keep a copy of your data at some other physical location, then you run the risk of losing it all in a(n) <you-fill-in-your-potential-disaster-here>.  Crashplan lets you automatically backup your encrypted data to a friend’s computer or another computer that you own (ideally, one that is offsite).

Check out the video.

Crashplan runs in Windows, Mac, or Linux.

This is why DropCopy from 10-base-T Interactive is such a cool program. Not only does it simplify the setup of copying files between computers (at this point I should say Macs because it is a Mac only program) but it has about the simplest interface I have seen in a long time – it’s a translucent circle placed in on your desktop that is basically a portal to your destination machine.

Setup simply involves installing the program on each Mac (drag the program to your Applications folder or anywhere for that matter). For the most part, you won’t need to configure anything since it uses Apple’s Bonjour protocol to identify itself to other DropCopy clients. At the same time, if you want to get fancy, you can transfer files between remote machines if you set up the right forwarding rules on your router and local firewall. Hint: open port 5052 and know your public IP address.

To copy a file to the remote Mac, just drag it onto your portal and hover over the destination name you want, then let it go. Your file appears on the destination Mac in the designated folder or Desktop. Programs like this just make me smile because it really should be this simple.

This program is for Mac OS only and is free for personal use (up to three machines on a network).