Yesterday, Microsoft launched its first Office app for iOS, a mobile version of the digital notebook application OneNote. If you’ve never heard of it, it may be because you’re using the Mac version of Office, which lacks OneNote, greatly reducing the usability of the iOS app.

Microsoft asserts that “78 million PCs in the U.S. have OneNote,” which, while not the same thing as having 78 million users, is still impressive. But the pool of potential overall Microsoft Office users from Mac and PC is more impressive still. Having tried OneNote, I’d suggest it may be the “practice” Office iOS app for Microsoft, before the team attempts to bring in that larger user base through Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps. But unfortunately that “practice” feel doesn’t help the OneNote succeed as an app in and of itself.

OneNote requires an active Windows Live account to work at all. A Windows Live account allows automatic syncing between OneNote on an iOS device and Windows Live SkyDrive, which then can be synced with OneNote in Office (which, remember, is only available in the Windows version). There are no other way (like email) by which to send notes from an iOS device to a Mac or PC, so cross easy syncing off your list with OneNote.

After logging in once to Windows Live, the admittedly gorgeous OneNote Home screen appears, but looks can be deceiving. On the left, the Home screen shows a list of “notebooks,” which act as directories for your notes. Unfortunately, you can’t create notebooks in OneNote for iOS. You must use OneNote in Office, or use the OneNote web app at windowslive.com. On the left are the contents of the Day-to-Day notebook broken down into sections. Think of sections as those little colored tabs on pages you might divide a physical notebook with. You can’t create or modify these in OneNote for iOS, either.

OneNote does perform well when it comes to actually taking notes, though. While OneNote can be used in landscape mode, you won’t have much screen real estate to keep track of what you’re doing. OneNote works much better, and looks just great, in portrait mode. As seen above, OneNote has options for both bullet lists and checkbox lists, as well as integration with the iPhone camera. The camera option is especially nice, as you can take a picture and have that be the subject of its own note. Apple needs to “borrow” that feature for Notes in iOS 5.

Unfortunately, even note taking in OneNote can at times be frustrating. Wouldn’t it be great if those ring binders on the left of the note indicated a potential action, like turning a page for the next or previous note? Instead, the only way you can get to different notes is by forever going back and forth through lists.

OneNote for iOS is free, for now, but Microsoft makes no promises about the future. If you want to be help encourage Microsoft to develop Office apps for iOS, get it now. If you want a full-featured notes app that really works, there’s Evernote. It’s free, but the premium service at $45 per year significantly increases what the app can do. For Mac users with limited needs, especially those with MobileMe, Apple’s Notes remains the best basic note-taking app. As for OneNote, for now it’s little more than an extension of the Windows application, better for viewing notes than actually creating, organizing, and sharing thoughts.

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To get the new app, you’ll first need to ensure that your Mac is updated to OS X 10.6.6. Once you are all up to speed, with the new Mac App Store installed, you can go ahead and download the updated application for free. You can’t just update your existing version of Tweetie.

When first launching the new Twitter for Mac application, it’s clear that this is no major UI overhaul. Using small but significant visual tweaks, Loren Brichter and the Twitter team have stayed true to what made the first Tweetie such a success: a simple and clean interface, lacking unnecessary distraction.

The most obvious change is the modified sidebar, which now sports a sleek translucent black look, along with two new icons — offering access to your lists and profile information respectively.

In Twitter for Mac, what was once a “New Tweet” button in Tweetie now offers up a menu of commonly used actions. These actions include tweeting, sending a direct message, navigating to a specific user, marking all tweets as read or accessing the application’s preferences. For advanced Twitter users, this is a welcome change, but having to click twice to compose a tweet may annoy some. Either way, customizable keyboard shortcuts are still here to please everyone.

Twitter for Mac now supports native retweets — just hover over a tweet in your timeline to see the retweet button. However, for those that like to add a short message of their own to a retweet, the option to repost or “quote” a tweet instead is still thankfully present (accessible by right-clicking on any tweet in your timeline).

Trending topics have also been introduced — click on the search icon and a list of what is trending worldwide will appear.

One of the most commonly requested features has finally been introduced, as users can now delete tweets within the application. To delete a tweet, just select the one you want removed and either right-click and select the appropriate option, or press command followed by the delete button.

Conversation management has also changed. In Tweetie, you could double-click on a message to see an entire conversation. No matter how deep into the conversation you delved, Tweetie always displayed a breadcrumb navigation history of your actions at the top of the application. Sadly, this handy navigation element has been removed in Twitter for Mac, replaced instead with just a single back button.

On the plus side, for those with newer touchpads on their Macs, gestures have been introduced — select a tweet, and three-finger swipe to the right to see the full discussion. If there’s no further conversation to display, a three-finger swipe will bring you to a user column for the person whose tweet you have highlighted. If there’s a link in the tweet, the swipe will open it in your default browser.

Remember in Tweetie when you wanted to send a tweet with a long URL? You had to click that ‘Shorten URL’ button. In Twitter for Mac you can just paste in any URL, no matter how long, and Twitter will do the hard work for you. The displayed character count for your tweet will already account for the URL being shortened. There doesn’t appear to be a way to turn auto-shortening off, which might be an issue for some.

Despite a few questionable changes, including the removal of the option to see if a user is following you or not, the features introduced to Twitter for Mac make for a huge overall improvement, which is made all the more enjoyable thanks to the applications newfound speed. Twitter for Mac is fast, three times faster according to Twitter. Switching from one account to the other, from your timeline, to your replies, is all super fast and  fluid, and your feed updates in real- or near real-time.

Highs: Fast; clean, attractive and intuitive UI; free

Lows: Lacks some features power-users might miss

If you’ve just downloaded the Mac App Store, make this your first download. Even if you don’t use Twitter, this new client is a pretty good reason to sign up.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not what you’d call an Excel power user. I use it for general invoicing, some light data analysis and general spreadsheet stuff. I recently had to perform an extensive document review, and Excel was the easiest way to track what the current state of each document was, and sort it based on criteria. I’ve never dealt much with pivot tables, and only occasionally missed VB macros. Disclaimer aside, here’s what I thought of the new version:

Look and Feel

Excel 2011 brings in the ribbon interface. As I mentioned in my look at Word 2011, I actually like it. The Windows version of the ribbon I found to be much more panic-inducing because it pretty much gets rid of all the menu bars. Not so on OS X; you get to have your cake and eat it, too.

The ribbon actually takes up less overall room than its equivalent in Excel 2008. The screenshot below shows the Excel 2008 on the left, and Excel 2011 on the right. You can also minimize the ribbon by single-clicking on a tab header. If you don’t like it, you never even have to see the thing. It’s definitely nice to have the option, either way.

Show Me The Money: Getting Your Work Done

Overall, Excel 2011 feels much more responsive than 2008. For starters, I can now launch the app without being able to microwave popcorn before it fully loads. I did notice some sluggishness when it loaded the template chooser, but you can easily skip that screen. Speaking of templates, while I found the supplied Word templates weren’t that special, I was impressed with those supplied in Excel. There are a few (invoices and general finance) I can actually use, a first for Office.

One interesting new feature is Sparklines. Basically, Sparklines is a handy way to trend data. In the screenshot below, we’re tracking quarterly sales by region. The in-cell chart is a Sparkline showing the trending data. We can tell at a glance that the Boston region is doing quite well, while the manager of the Los Angeles region might want to shop his resume. You can set a Sparkline to be a line, bar, or win-loss chart. I can see using it to trend my freelance business.

Conditional formatting is much improved in 2011. Put simply, conditional formatting allows you to set rules to highlight cells that meet a given criteria. Keeping with the sales data, I can set up a condition to highlight any cell with a number less than 100.

There’s a couple of weird gotchas, though. When I opened the document review spreadsheet I mentioned earlier, I wanted it to show me documents that had been modified during a specific date range. While you can choose “dates occurring” from a pull-down, it’s a fairly narrow range. Instead, I had to set the cell data range in a separate pulldown. It’d be nice if there was an option to set that range right in the “dates occurring” section. Still, the older version of Excel was much more limited, so these improvements are welcome.

One cause for complaint in the new version of Excel is the lack of support for Snow Leopard services. In my Word article, I mentioned how happy I was that Word handled these well, but sadly, the same can’t be said for Excel 201. Highlighting a section of text and choosing Services just gives you a grayed-out “No services apply.” I believe this is due to the Carbon underpinnings of Excel, as it seems Services require the app to be programmed in Cocoa. Whatever the reason, it’s a shame it’s not in there.

Back to the Macro

Thankfully, Visual Basic macros are back. As I said, I’ve never been a big VB user, but the lack of them really messed up Windows compatibility.  While I never created them, I’d get enough spreadsheets containing them to shake my fist in Redmond’s direction whenever I tried to open sheets in Excel 2008. It’s nice to see things are back to normal.

Closing the Books

I’m pretty happy with Excel 2011. The interface is cleaner, and I didn’t notice some of the slowdowns other reviewers have mentioned, but the largest sheet I opened was about 1000 lines. Sparklines, corny name aside, seems like a good, albeit situational feature. I’m happier with the improvements to conditional formatting. The big reason to upgrade, though, is the return of Visual Basic macros. It’s hard to praise that return too much, though, since it really feels like we’re paying a premium just to get an old feature back.

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New Features

The Office suite has been criticized for being bloated, but I’m reminded of the old adage “You can only please some of the people some of time.” Or, in software terms, “One person’s bloat is another person’s critical feature.”

Take the return of Visual Basic macros. Reviewers are praising its return from the mountaintops, but I’ve never used the feature and didn’t miss it. However, the addition of an equation editor while I’m the midst of my first algebra class in 20 years has me positively giddy.

An academic annoyance that’s not Microsoft’s fault is that EndNote, a popular citation management program, isn’t yet compatible with Word 2011. While Word does have its own citation manager, I’d rather see EndNote support, as it can connect to my university’s library and grab all the relevant information.

The Ribbon

The ribbon interface from the Windows version also makes its appearance in Word 2011, although there was a sort-of-proto-version in Word 2008. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth has occurred since the announcement, but after finally getting my hands on, I find it helpful. You can easily make it go away with one click, but I don’t recommend it; spending some time figuring it out will pay dividends in increased productivity later.

My biggest complaint with the ribbon is, oddly, that not everything is on it. Word 2011 has a nice full screen view — similar to Scrivener’s — but it can only be accessed via the View menu. While ribbon-haters may cheer this, it can slow learning down as you stop to check whether something is on the ribbon or not.

Word 2011 ribbon.

Toolbox and Services Integration

Also not fully migrated to the ribbon is the old Toolbox. In Word 2008, the Toolbox was where you’d do a lot of heavy lifting. It’s still there, and it’s where you edit styles and insert citations. While you can right-click on a style in the ribbon to modify it, I found the Windows way of doing things a little more user-friendly.

Snow Leopard’s improved Services seemed to catch Word 2008 by surprise. Selected text, for instance, didn’t a trigger a text-related Service. Fortunately, that is much improved, as Word 2011 sees text as, well, text. Native support for accessing your iPhoto library is also included. Previously, this required a custom Service to work.

Word 2011 services.

General Usage

Ok, now that we’ve gotten what’s new, different, and the same out of the way, how is Word 2011 in actual usage? Pretty darn good. Word 2008 was so bad an experience for me, I’d switched to Pages. It was faster and more stable, and I don’t collaborate enough with Office users for issues to really arise.

However, Pages is also a consumer-level product. My day gig is a technical writer for a large corporation, and there’s no way I can do that work in Pages. It’s just not equipped for heavy lifting. Another big benefit for work is that Word 2011 can now “paste and match formatting” right from the menu bar. Gone is the need for several mouse clicks to do a simple task.

The only crash I’ve encountered in my admittedly light testing was a hang up with sharing a document. By now, Word 2008 would’ve thrown several fits. I tend to agree with Gartner Analyst Mike Gartenberg, who tweeted “Totally love the new Office for Mac. Possibly best version of Office. Ever.” Given speed advantages alone, Word 2011 is going to be one of my go-to text wranglers. My general plain-text and creative writing will still be done in Scrivener, but all my school and business work will happily go to Word 2011.

A More Versatile Word

I’ve been very, very impressed with this version. I threw a couple of worst-case documents at it — custom templates with imported Visio documents created on the PC, and a user guide I created with a boatload of graphics — and it didn’t hiccup. If, like me, you thought Word 2008 was a blight upon the land, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with Word 2011. If you’re an academic user, with the built-in citation and equation management, Word is clearly the leader here. If you’re using Word for work, then the time saved thanks to speed boosts and fewer crashes will go even further toward justifying the cost.

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Let me start by saying that if you’ve given up on Office for Mac after the disappointment of 2008, you should have another look at the latest offering. I feel like the Mac department over at Microsoft is finally getting the support and resources it needs from corporate to give its products a fighting chance alongside Apple’s own offerings.

General impressions aside, here’s what you need to know about the new PowerPoint.

More Windows and More Mac, All at Once

Amazingly, Microsoft managed to make the new PowerPoint interface feel more like its Windows-based twin, while also changing the design so that it looks more at home on the Mac desktop. One of the features that helped the new design is the inclusion of the ribbon. Yes, it’s a controversial feature, and many Windows users don’t like it, but I’ve grown accustomed to using it, and I welcome its inclusion on the Mac side of things.

The ribbon in PowerPoint 2011.

The ribbon, for those who haven’t tried any recent editions of Office for Windows, resides at the top of your interface underneath the tool bar. Commands and tools are organized by sections, like “Home,” “Theme,” “Charts,” “Slide Show,” etc. If you’re used to hunting around in menus for Office commands, you probably won’t like them, but for those new to the suite, it’s a much more logical means of organization.

Office 2011′s ribbon has all the same content as the Windows version, but it looks decidedly Mac, as you can see from the screenshots, so there’s no confusing what environment you’re working in. You can easily hide or show the ribbon, so it doesn’t get in the way of the presentation you’re working on. You can also customize it by rearranging tabs and changing commands, so there’s really no reason to dislike it unless you just prefer things not change.

Slide Layers Make Everything Easier

It’s hard for me to even convey how frustrating it is to manipulate the order of objects in past versions of PowerPoint, especially in presentations and slides where you’ve got a lot going on. I used to work at a company where we used PowerPoint as print publishing software, so that should give you some idea of how complicated layouts could get.

The new Reorder Objects tool in PowerPoint 2011 allows you to easily manipulate even the most complicated slides pretty easily. It looks like the new Windows 7 Flip 3D feature, fills your whole screen, and lets you click and drag layers to rearrange. No more hoping this is the last time you have to click “Send Backward.”

Media Manipulation

PowerPoint 2011 approaches the simplicity Keynote has in terms of adding media. You can use the Media Browser to drop photos, music and video in from various sources, including your iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie libraries. Even Aperture showed up in the source menu in my tests.

You can also edit stuff more easily — and with more options — from within the app. Doing basic retouching on photos is quite easy, and about on par with what you can do in iPhoto, only without having to leave the app. PowerPoint also has some other neat image editing functions, like the Remove Background tool I used to cut out Justin Long and John Hodgman in the screenshot below in about 30 seconds.

Better Cross-Platform Access and Collaboration

Working together with distributed teams is easier with the new PowerPoint, since you can collaborate wirelessly in real time, and communicate with each other via Live Messenger or Communicator. Plus, you can access and make changes to your presentations on the go with the PowerPoint web app. Finally, publishing your slide show to the web so that it’s viewable by others is a snap, and your audience doesn’t need to have the program to take part.

There are still some limitations to using PowerPoint 2011 on the Mac. You can’t access your presentations on the web from your iPhone’s or iPad’s browser, for example, and I still think presentations made in Keynote might look a little better, too.

Overall, that’s about all I have to say against PowerPoint 2011. Earlier today on Twitter I asked how many still used Office for Mac in some capacity, and was surprised to find that a lot of you still do. That Microsoft is delivering software at this level is great news for those users. If I was still in the business of regularly making presentations, this is definitely the tool I’d use to get the job done. In fact, it may just inspire me to include a slideshow the next time I give a talk.

Stay tuned to TheAppleBlog for coverage of what’s new in the rest of the Office 2011 suite, too.

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First, I want to point out that I don’t actually need all that much in a Posterous iPhone app. The point of the service is to provide a dead simple blogging tool that just about anyone can pick up and use. Any iPhone app that interacts with the service should reflect that.

The official app accomplishes this, and does so without feeling limited: a thin line to walk. PicPosterous, by contrast, doesn’t manage to stay on the fair side of that divide. It allows you to post pictures, and only pictures, to your Posterous account.

Posterous for iPhone allows you the same access you’ll find on the web-based post editor, including text-only and combined text/photo/video posts. The post creator also allows you to add tags and optionally geotag your post with your current location.

You can set the preferred size of images and video that you upload, too, in case you’re experiencing long load times or you’re working from your 3G connection and want to avoid data charges. Three size options for both are included.

It also allows you to view and share your site within the app, and delete any posts you aren’t happy with. You can’t edit posts, but I don’t think that’s a major flaw. For me, Posterous is about posting quick thoughts and photos relatively unfiltered. If I don’t like something, I’m not going to spend significant time reworking it, so deleting is probably a better option.

You can access any Posterous blog associated with your email from the app, and navigation is simple, so switching between sites takes no time at all. Maybe best of all, you can even add brand new blogs right from your phone. Of course, if you’re like me, this might prove more of a distraction than anything else, since starting a new personal blog seems so much more tempting than building an existing one.

The Posterous app is free, and it’s available now in the App Store. If you’re a Posterous user, or if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to share thoughts, photos and videos while on the go, this is definitely a must-download.

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Easy Books (Free)

Easy Books was anything but! For a business using strict accounting methods, I’m sure the application has merit, but for balancing your checkbook and tracking credit cards, it doesn’t cut it. The app gives you a variety of templates to choose from, but it was extremely confusing for tracking money coming into and out of accounts.

Annoyingly, all data must be entered by hand since there’s no direct bank download option. The in-app purchase option does give business owners the option to create invoices ($16.99) and track hours worked ($12.99) on the iPad, but without a desktop companion application, all your work has to be done on-device.

MoneyDance(Free)

MoneyDance acts as a satellite application to its desktop version ($49.99). Transactions can be edited and classified on the iPad, but account setup and transaction downloads must be done on your computer. Synchronization with the desktop was clunky, requiring you to type a very long string of alphanumerics to establish pairing, a process which wasn’t always successful.

As a cross-platform Java-based app, MoneyDance was slow and clunky and not very Mac-like. If all you want to do is modify transactions while away from your desktop, MoneyDance for the iPad will suffice, but otherwise, this app is probably one to avoid.

PocketMoney ($4.99)

PocketMoney has the potential to be a great financial management app. The program can stand on its own, and allows you to add accounts and transactions. Budgeting is included, as are options for in-app upgrades for charting ($2.99) and photo receipt tracking ($.99).

It also synchronizes with a full cross-platform desktop client. And though this release doesn’t yet allow for direct downloads from banks, the feature is slated for a future release. If you just want to track your checkbook and credit cards and don’t mind typing in transactions directly, PocketMoney is an excellent choice for the average user.

SplashMoney($4.99)

SplashMoney is by far the most powerful iPad financial app out there, and it’s extremely easy to use: a rare combination when dealing with money. SplashMoney can run fully independent of the desktop. Setup of accounts, budgets and reports can all be done on the iPad.

Unique among its competitors is the ability to download transactions from your bank while away from the desktop. The ability to fully manage credit card downloads while away from a computer is a killer feature. Obviously, printing of reports or registers isn’t currently supported by the iPad OS, but that will likely change in iOS 4.2.

Because SplashMoney fully supports .qif import and export, I can try it without commitment, but I suspect as time marches on, I’ll have a long-term relationship with this app.

PageOnce Premium($6.99)

PageOnce is a direct competitor in terms of both features and benefits to Mint. Unfortunately Mint doesn’t yet have an iPad app.  Like Mint, PageOnce downloads your transactions from your bank and credit cards in order to give you a dashboard view of your spending, and is nearly identical to its web counterpart.

No direct registers are supported and an Internet connection is required for usage. PageOnce take full advantage of the iPad’s real estate to give you a great overview of your financial situation. The application and its website counterpart don’t allow for budgeting or reclassification of transactions. Many users will find this annoying, but fortunately no commitment is involved, so you can test it out for yourselves.

Unlike Mint, PageOnce gives you a dashboard view of your entire digital life and includes your frequent flyer miles, gift cards, social media accounts, etc. If it can be accessed via the web, PageOnce has it. The Premium version includes the ability to password lock the application, and additional travel options.

I can’t recommend the free version because of the inability to secure the data in the app. Lovers of Mint will find this application just as sweet with a few extra benefits.

Overall, Splash Money seems to be the only mature application in the iPad financial management field and is the recommended choice. PageOnce is a great alternative or companion to existing applications out there, but shame on them for not allowing free users to lock and protect their data.

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Backblaze

Instead of configuring what BackBlaze backs up, you tell it what NOT to back up. It automatically excludes certain system files and won’t back up individual files larger than 4GB, but otherwise it’ll grab everything else on all your connected drives by default. Too often in my line of work, I see online backup systems miss files because they were put in the wrong folder. Backblaze’s exclusionary configuration greatly reduces the chances of that happening.

Another unique feature of Backblaze is its ability to overnight you a hard drive (currently $189) in case of failure. Carbonite doesn’t currently offer this option, and Mozy will ship your data via DVD for $29.95 plus 50 cents per GB. Anyone who’s suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure knows waiting days and weeks for an online service restoration only adds insult to injury.

Tech support with Backblaze was also much better than my experience with other providers. While they missed their 24 hour response window, the advice they gave was helpful and accurate and I didn’t suffer the off-shore language barrier I experienced with Carbonite and Mozy. After my trial was over, I signed up my main Mac with Backblaze, knowing that I had quality support when I had questions.

I also liked the fact I could create a supplemental security password and encryption key that can’t be reset. I tried many times to convince them to reset the password and they simply wouldn’t, which is good practice from a security standpoint, just make sure that you won’t forget that password or you’ll be up the creek without a paddle.

From a technical perspective, Backblaze’s software is simply outstanding. They were one of the first on the scene with a 64-bit version for Snow Leopard, beating out both Carbonite and Mozy. The software runs as a System Preference pane, but doesn’t require admin access to configure or disable. Unlike Mozy or Carbonite, Backblaze allows a full throttle upload capability using all available upload bandwidth. When it’s set to high it really flies!

My only major complaint with Backblaze is the fact that while backups can be scheduled to start, they can’t be set to stop at a certain time. This is part of their philosophy that backups should be constant. With set time windows, backups could be missed and data lost. Still, I’d personally like the option to set an end time.

Pricing is $5.00 a month, or $50 a year, for unlimited backup. For most users, when compared to Mozy or Carbonite, Backblaze is simply a superior choice. That is, until you check out CrashPlan.

CrashPlan

I first used CrashPlan many years ago, way before Mozy and Carbonite were household names. At the time, their focus was on local and peer-to-peer backups. CrashPlan has grown up considerably since then. The basic software is free for home users. Consumers can download the software and backup to a local hard drive or to another person running the software who gives them permission. For $59.99, CrashPlan+ adds features such as hourly backups, customer support and no ads.

CrashPlan Central is an option within the general CrashPlan software (regular or plus). Central provides online backups with unlimited storage, with tiered pricing for single and multiple-computer licenses. Similar to Backblaze, you can allow your backup to use the maximum upload bandwidth to allow for quick initial backups.

The software is an application that runs in the background, but not as a System Preference or with a menu bar icon. CrashPlan uses inclusionary, rather than exclusionary, backups. Changing the configuration does not require the Administrator password, but CrashPlan can optionally request one of its own. I really liked this option because I feel a regular user should not be able to change or configure the backup.

However, this isn’t just an application that runs on your Mac. Because CrashPlan talks to Central to do backups, the developers realized the conversation could be two-way. With the CrashPlan account password, you can go to their website and directly modify the preferences for your own Mac anywhere in the world. For example, I was able to turn down the throttle on the initial backup when my ISP requested I do so.

Other unique settings CrashPlan offers is the ability to tweet or email you when backups are completed. Plus, you can specify how many versions of files CrashPlan should keep, and it can modify its actions based on user activity and percent of CPU being used. If you can imagine it, you can configure it with CrashPlan.

In my opinion, the killer feature of CrashPlan is the ability to “seed” your backup. The initial backup with online services can take many weeks for large hard drives. Crashplan allows you to create a local encrypted backup to your hard drive that you can ship to them and they’ll add that data to your CrashPlan account.

That initial upload can then take a few days instead of a few weeks with no impact to your system or bandwidth. This service runs the opposite way as well: They can ship you a hard drive with all your data to do a full restore. The service isn’t cheap at $150, but it’s well worth it for those who need it.

CrashPlan Central’s pricing is extremely competitive. For one user, Central is $54 a year, and goes down if you agree to a multi-year deal. They also have an extremely generous family plan. For $100 a year, you can back up as many computers as you own. That could include the machines of anyone in your family, no matter their location. The only catch is the account owner can see all the files (either a blessing or curse depending on your perspective).

One more thing: CrashPlan’s tech support was one of the best I’ve seen for any software vendor. My emails were answered quickly and professionally, but I asked for a number to call with questions. I called the number and a gentleman from Minnesota answered within two minutes. I gave him my “test scenario” that I gave to all the online backup vendors. He wasn’t really sure the answer and said he’d have to research it. Within an hour, he called, having tested the solution on his own computer and provided an extremely detailed guide to the solution worthy of inclusion in Apple’s own tech manuals.

Verdict

So after researching four backup services, which do I use? Personally I’ve been extremely happy with Backblaze. The high-speed uploading combined with the peace of mind that I can quickly get a drive of my data convinced me this was the backup service of choice for my main computer. I’m committed to them after spending all that time uploading the data and while CrashPlan is attractive, I’m happy with my service from Backblaze.

However, should Backblaze ever stop being awesome (and recent blog posts about buyouts and extended downtown indicate cause for concern), I’ll happily send my data over to CrashPlan and have started recommending it more and more to my clients. I also use CrashPlan for some of my other, secondary systems.

So who wins? It’s CrashPlan on all accounts. The ability to seed the backup, combined with amazing tech support and family-friendly pricing makes it an irresistible choice for most users. However, Backblaze is a very strong second and beats Carbonite or Mozy hands down.

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The just-released Postbox 2.0 introduces a handful of new features that include Quick Moves, a Focus Pane, Quick Replies and better Conversation Views.

The threaded Conversation View is pretty well done with quick reply buttons readily available to respond to any particular email within the chain. I also really like the Inspector Pane that gives you some shortcuts, including all the links contained within the email thread.

The Focus Pane is all about organization. Quickly navigate to emails that match a date or topic, or are unread. If you want to deal with an email later, drag it to the “Later” topic and come back to it or click on “Today” to see emails only from today. The idea is that if organize your mail better, you’ll save time and be free of distractions.

Speaking of distractions, you can post directly to Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed from the menu bar also.

Pros:

Conversation View is very well done, with quick navigation, and the Inspector Pane could be very useful for link-happy users. Organizing mail into topics is accomplished quickly by dragging and dropping. The Focus Pane drills down to what’s really important. Keyboard shortcuts are a time saver for those who like to keep it old school.

Cons:

It’s $40, and the free Apple Mail works well enough for most. Organizing mail into topics requires commitment, and not all users care that much. There’s also no Exchange support. This is disappointing, considering Apple Mail has it built-in and business users can be notoriously organized when it comes to email.

Summary:

Postbox 2.0 supports POP and IMAP protocols, but has no Exchange support. There’s a 30-day trial, and it’s $40 if you want to keep it after that. If Apple’s Mail isn’t quite delivering and you need more organization, Postbox is probably the solution for you.

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My Google Voice needs are somewhat modest. For me, it’s the number I give out when someone wants to get in touch, but I don’t want to give them the Super Top Secret Cell Phone Number. So, PR people, headhunters, bill collectors, etc. all get the Google Voice number. Most of the time, I even turn forwarding off so it goes straight to voice mail.

Given my limited usage, I found GV Connect does as advertised. However, if you’re the person that uses their Google Voice number as your regular number, the lack of push of notifications might be a deal breaker. The lack of such notifications for voice mail isn’t that big of a deal for me, since I get an e-mail alert when a message is left. I’m not also not a big user of text messages in general, so I’m not going to mourn the loss of that, either.

GV Connect uses your iPhone’s contacts, not your Google Voice contacts. This isn’t going to be a problem if your iPhone gets its contacts from Google. If you sync to a different service, you’ll need to add contacts manually, or set up your iPhone to also grab your Google contacts.

GV Connect seems like a fine way to manage your outgoing Google Voice calls. Forwarded calls still work the same way; the app isn’t a factor. If this is most of what you’re using GV for, the app is a great way to do it.

For $3, GV Connect is a great way to eliminate the somewhat-slow Google Voice web app and use a native solution. Even though I’m not a huge Google Voice user, I feel like I’m getting my latte’s worth out of this app.

Side note: there are people mentioning connection errors on the app reviews. I didn’t personally experience any connection issues, but the developer has announced a fix for that is waiting on Apple to approve. It looks like it could be limited to international users, so if that’s you, wait for the update.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:
Report: Google’s Voice Possibilities