Hijinks Inc.

Category: Software

  • Top Picks: IM Software

    These days I don’t do as much non-work related instant messaging as I did in the past but I thought it would be nice to post up my favorite to IM software packages.

    Windows: Pidgin

    Pidgin is a multiple protocol, Windows based instant messaging programing and it does a really good job with a fairly simple interface. Pidgin supports many different IM accounts including AIM, MSN (or Live), GTalk, Sametime, and Yahoo to name a few.

    The software is easy to install and set up, doesn’t use a lot of system resources and has a nice set up for multiple sessions. You can also combine various accounts from the same contact person under one heading, this helps keep your buddy list clean.

    OS X: Adium

    Adium is a great IM program for OS X because like Pidgin, it also supports multiple IM accounts, is easy to set up and runs quite well. Adium also has a lot of customizable options including the dock icon, sounds and how your message window looks. There is a large amount of user created customizations to choose from.

  • Hijinks Inc. for iPhone

    Hijinks Inc. for iPhone

    It’s not much to look at right now, but Hijinks Inc. for the iPhone is now available via the App Store.

    We are planning on adding in new features shortly, top of our list being push notifications. If there’s anything you’d like to see us add, drop us a comment.

    [ Download Hijinks Inc. for the iPhone ]

    This application is only available for users running iOS 4.

  • Hijinks Reviews: TuneUp

    Are you one of those people who rip CDs without taking the time to name each track? Or maybe you are one of those individuals who doesn’t exactly buy most of your CDs, you simply acquire them from various locations online, which can lead to a very jumbled messed up music library. Perhaps you have a friend who gave you a large collection of music, but he labels it all differently than you do.

    Whatever the case, there’s a number of ways your digital music library can get screwed up beyond all recognition. I know mine is, and it’s due to all of the reasons I listed above. Enter TuneUp.

    I don’t remember how I stumbled across this iTunes plug-in (now also for WMP), but it’s freakin’ awesome. I threw everything I had at this thing and it probably fixed over 90% of it with ease, some of the albums were ‘Unknown Artist – Track 01’ and it still found the right CD, correctly updated the metadata, added the cover, and even gave me a few YouTube links about the artist. I emphasize the word correctly because I tried other programs and ended up having a number of my CDs mislabeled, which only complicated matters. The few times TuneUp missed on it’s first try, it gave me a few options of possible matches, and I was able to get it set straight right away.  You can even customize the program to fit your desired naming system. I haven’t gotten through my entire collection yet, but it was almost unmanageable before, and this makes pretty quick work of it, all with drag and drop ease.

    You can try out the demo, it will help you through 100 song clean-ups and up to 50 cover art saves. I can safely tell you though, if you have a library that needs some work, you will fall in love with this plug-in before the demo runs out. I don’t like paying for computer programs, but this is definitely worth the price. They’ve even provide quick and timely customer service.

    I can’t imagine how long it would have taken me to get through my entire music collection, if you want to whip your music collection into shape in a hurry without the headache, don’t bother with anything else, go get TuneUp for PC or Mac.

    TuneUp Media

  • Mobile Credit Card Processing with Swipe

    As I’m still waiting to hear back from Square about getting into their beta, and still waiting for Mophie to announce pricing for marketplace (which might not ship, as it’s disappeared from their website since posting this originally), I’ve decided to give Swipe from AppNinja’s a try.

    Keep in mind that I’ve only been using it for a couple days now, so I’ll probably have more to add at a later date.

    [ The Good ]
    Super clean interface that makes manually entering a transactions a breeze, it also makes good use of your existing contact lists to quickly populate additional receipt fields.

    Surprising good signature capture, made even better by using a Pogo Sketch from TenOneDesign. Which is nice to see, as a lot of the other apps for the iPhone don’t support signature capturing.

    It also features Authorize.net support, which doesn’t limit you to only being able to process credit cards on your iPhone, and has a reasonable transaction rates (unlike Square, which I believe sports close to 5%).

    [ The Bad ]
    Really, the only drawback at this point is the customizable receipts feature needs to offer more robust options, there’s no way to change the layout of it, you can only control what’s displayed in the header and footer.  However, to their credit the app features a web controlled back end for customizable receipts, which means no waiting for Apple to approve changes if they update the receipt options.

  • Two Copies of Trend Micro: AntiVirus plus AntiSpyware 2010 to Give Out

    If anyone is interested, I have two copies of Trend Micro: AntiVirus plus AntiSpyware 2010 to hand out to any interested parties.

    Hit me up in the comments with your email address if you’re interested.