What’s better than an instrument? A virtual one. The ocarina app from Smule is a virtual recreation of what Wikipedia defines as an “ancient flute-like wind instrument”. It’s a nifty time-wasting app that’s packing some pretty sweet features.

The playing interface is super simple – four “holes”, or finger positions and a menu button. To begin playing, all you have to do is blow into the built-in microphone on the iPhone. I haven’t tested it with an iPod touch or any other types of mic’s, but my guess is that they would work fine.

While it may seem as if this is all that Ocarina does, it does much more. There are many built in tutorials, recording functionality, options and preferences, as well as a virtual map to hear what other users are playing. It works really well.

You’ll be able have plenty of fun just tinkering with the Ocarina as it is, but it can actually be used to play songs. There’s an array of sheet music available on the Smule Website, where users submit the finger covering patterns of their favorite songs. Once you get started playing, you can’t stop.

This app may not be for everyone, but those who like it, love it. Plus it’s only $0.99, so why not give it a shot? It’s available for download in the App Store.

If you’re like me, you’ve got multiple macs and are constantly switching between them. There are a few things that I like to keep the same across both computers. Slingshot, an app from Martian Technology, promises to take care of this.

Slingshot works through publishing folders, or iTunes playlists, and then subscribing to these folders/playlists on other machines. You can also set up the published folders to receive updates from subscribed machines. In simpler terms, you can have the same files on both computers, without having to manually exchange files. The frequency of updates are extremely flexible, ranging from by the minute, a set number of hours, or daily. Manual updates are also an option.

The interface is extremely simple. There is a large field containing a list of subscribed stuff, published stuff, the time of last update, and the time for the next update. To the left, are two large buttons – Publish & Subscribe. There are also three smaller buttons – Folder Info, Stop Subscribing, and Update Now. It’s not the most gorgeous application I’ve ever seen, but It’s straightforward and gets the job done.

One of the key things that I like to always have with me is my music. I keep my music organized using iTunes, and Slingshot has the ability to subscribe and publish iTunes Playlists. It’s extremely simple and easy to do, the same way that you would publish and subscribe to published folders. I have, however, had a slight problem. It could just be me, but for some reason a select few songs and videos are duplicated – a lot. Even after deleting them, they continue to duplicate. Sometimes, the playlist disappears completely from my iTunes library. The songs still remain, but the playlist is empty. I’ve sent an email to Martian Technology Support, but haven’t received a reply.

It works quite well. I have it set to update 1 iTunes playlist and an array of folders every minute. It does so in the background, without my ever noticing it. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t hog up too many system resources, but it may differ on older or less powerful machines. Finding published folders and playlists is also simple. My only problem has been with the duplication of certain iTunes files.

Martian Technology also advertises SlingShot as a backup utility. You could have your mac send backups to an old computer or file server on your network. When sending files back and forth, two security measures are taken. For starters, you can password protect any playlist or folder. Slingshot will also apply 256-bit AES encryption on the network.

Thankfully, Martian Technology has a reasonable licensing policy. You only need to buy a $29.99 copy to enable Slingshot on all of your personal macs. There is also a discount available when purchasing Slingshot with Lifeboat, another product from Martian Technology. A 30 day trial is available as a download from the website.

Squirrel, an Apple Design Award winner, is a personal finance application for Leopard. The application is powerful and has a clean, minimalist interface. While this product is not yet a 1.0 release, it contains many slick features and helps you to track your personal finances easier.

Like a normal personal finance app, Squirrel allows you to track your money over several accounts and account types such as savings, checking, cash, credit cards and friend accounts. In each account, you can activate “netbanking” where you enter the URL of your financial institution, and then can quickly jump to your account online while still inside Squirrel. You can switch back and forth between your online account and the local Squirrel database by simply clicking a tab in the top right corner of the main window.

Each transaction has the ability to be tagged and added into an category. Tags allow you to track certain types of purchases, like if you tagged your iTunes purchases with “Media” or “iTunes”. Categories work in a similar fashion. There is also a notes field for each transaction so that you can jot down anything you want to remember about the specific transaction.

These tags and categories can be used further in reports and smart folders. Reports give you information about your income and spending over a selected period of time. For instance, you could have a report for the entire year, and a report for the current month. Smart Folders are used to organize transactions based on varying qualities – similar to how smart playlists are used in iTunes.

In Squirrel, you are given the ability to set up budgets and scheduled transactions. Budgets utilize categories and tags to track your spending in various user-set up areas. You can set up a maximum amount of spending per area, and then Squirrel will show you how your spending compares with your outlined budget. Scheduled transactions can be set up for recurring transactions, like bills, and then assigned to specific accounts. There are other minor features in Squirrel, such as the ability to import various file types and to search throughout the application.

One of the coolest things about Squirrel, is how Leopard’s Core Data, Core Image, and Core Animation are utilized to produce graphs and charts instantly. A bar graph is displayed in each account and smart folder to show the account balance and trends that occur over time. In the reports, pie charts are shown to give indication of what percentage of your income comes from certain areas, or where you’re spending the majority of your money.

While Squirrel is an amazing product, there are some negatives. For starters, the ability to export your data is missing. If further down the road Squirrel is left unsupported and you have to switch to another finance application, it will be a major pain to try and either transfer the data or re-enter the data. Proprietary formats are not a good thing. There is also no syncing between multiple macs. MobileMe syncing is almost a necessity now. A minor complaint is that when you assign a dollar amount to a budget, you must re-enter the amount each reporting period versus Squirrel automatically setting the budget amount.

All in all, Squirrel is a great personal finance app, and one of my personal favorites. The program does have its flaws, but it hasn’t been officially released as a 1.0 product yet. You can download a copy, or purchase a license for €14,99.

The news industry is changing fast, and the New York Times is keeping up. They’ve released a digital format of the paper through an iPhone app in the iTunes Store. Upon launch, the latest stories show up in the latest news section. At the bottom, you have a customizable row of sub-categories to better find the news your looking for. It’s surprisingly easy and fun to read on the iPhone’s screen. Personally, I have a hard time finishing a whole news story on my desktop. However, I almost always finish the stories on the NYTimes app. In a time that the world is becoming increasingly digital, it’s comforting to see The Times keeping up with what’s going on. The program is free with built in ads, and is available from the App Store.

With gurus such as Merlin Mann and David Allen preaching positive productivity methods, programmers are pushing out productivity apps by the dozen. I’ve tried plenty of them, from OmniFocus, iGTD, and even a home-brew quicksilver + text edit solution. Yet, I never had the dream setup, until I discovered  Things from Cultured Code.

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