I can’t tell you how many times per day I encounter the need to resize a photo or other image for inclusion in a web design or blog post. Some time ago, I discovered an AppleScript that let me pre-define sizes and then drag and drop images onto the script icon to perform the resize function. While this method was certainly easier than launching Photoshop every time I needed to make such minor revisions, it still was a bit cumbersome, and required a stack of files—one for each size I commonly used.

Finally, I’ve discovered a simple app that instantly resizes and rotates images, saving them in multiple formats:

Weighing in at a lightweight 5MB, RapidoResizer allows you to resize images to your specifications and easily apply them to your project. With this utility, you can extract and save application icons and images.

Once you have opened an image or a group of images you’re presented with a range of options to apply to the image. This enables you to change the dimensions quickly and easily. It is also possible to apply one function to multiple images at a time with the batch function.

In addition to resizing the image (with or without keeping proportions), RapidoResizer allows you to rotate the image, and change the picture to a variety of popular file types.

Best of all, RapidoResizer is completely free! Click here to check out this FREE image resizer from app4mac.com!

If you’re like me, your iTunes music library has grown over the years to considerably more than your iPhone or iPod Touch can hold at any one time.

Rather than settling for syncing limited selections from your music library, Simplify Media enables you to access your entire iTunes music library remotely and then stream your music to your iPhone or iPod Touch via WiFi, EDGE or 3G.

You can navigate your music library by artist, album or genre, and instantly view cover art, artist bios and even lyrics for the current song selection! Plus, you can share your library with up to 30 friends.

Took me less than 5 minutes to donload the desktop application, install the iPhone player app, login to my iTunes library and begin listening to my music.

You’ll want to get this app now; it’s FREE for the first 100,000 folks to download it. After that, it will cost $3.99 in the iTunes App Store.

Check out Simplify Media for your iPhone & iPod Touch.

Over the years, I’ve assisted many of my clients in setting up email marketing newsletters. I’ve had the opportunity to test the most popular ones, including Constant Contact, Ezine Director, iContact and others. Today, I happened to stumble across what I feel is the best email newsletter application on the web!

OK, so once you get past the quirky name, you’ll discover a simple, intelligent and powerful email marketing utility that anyone can use. Featuring some truly innovative technology, Mad Mimi is the simplest way to create branded, well-designed newsletters and promotions.

Mad Mimi is web-based, which means there is nothing to download or configure. All you need is a web browser and an internet connection. Here’s how it works…

1. Create Your Account
   The best way to see how Mad Mimi works is to complete the 1-minute sign-up for free, and then kick the tires. No credit card, no obligation, and it’s not a trial. It’s fully-functional right away!
2. Add Some Addresses
   Copy and paste your email address list(s) into Mad Mimi. Duplicates and common spacing issues are auto-corrected. Later, you can store, target and organize your list in every way imaginable.
3. Design Your Newsletter
   One of the best parts of Mad Mimi is the instantly-intuitive, uber-simple design interface. You can easily add, modify and move things around in a WYSIWYG environment. It even has an “Undo” feature, which I’ve never seen elsewhere. No design skills necessary!
4. Send Your Emails
   Mad Mimi tracks and displays the viewing and clicking behavior of your mail recipients in real time! Track opens, bounces, and every metric imaginable. Use this data to modify your marketing approach to improve results.

Within five minutes, I had already created my first test newsletter (see right). Images are placed by simply dragging them from the tray on the right into the body of your newsletter. Across the bottom of the editor is a row of handy buttons that enable you to create new sections in your newsletter, including:

• Text with an image to the right
• Text with an image to the left
• Standard text block
• Plain image
• Section Title
• Divider

Just click one of these buttons and Mad Mimi inserts the section into your newsletter, with a WYSIWYG editor, ready for you to start typing your content! Create a custom header if you like, to make the newsletter look even more polished. When you’re finished, Mad Mimi will guide you through selecting recipients from your list and sending your email campaign.

Track your campaigns

Stats are delivered in real-time, and you can track bounces, opens, untraced emails, clicks, forwards and unsubscribes. If you want even more accurate tracking, Mad Mimi also integrates with Google Analytics, intelligently automating your link tags so you can measure your promotion’s success.

Custom sign-up forms

Mad Mimi will let you create your own customized HTML sign-up form as well, adding custom fields as you see fit. When you’re done, Mad Mimi will generate a block of code for you to copy and paste into your own site to add a simple sign-up form for your visitors.

Unbeatable pricing!

Perhaps the best part of Mad Mimi is the price. The most frequent complaint I hear from my clients is how expensive it can be to send regular email campaigns to large lists of subscribers. As I mentioned before, Mad Mimi is completely free! A free account will allow you to send unlimited emails to a contact list of 100 or less. Want more?

There are three upgrade levels available to subscribers. For just $12/month, you can increase your mailing list to a whopping 5,000 contacts! $49 increases your audience to 15,000, and doubles the sending speed of your newsletters. And for you power users, $199/month allows unlimited audience members, and quadruples the sending speed!

Try it out for yourself!

The best way to see if Mad Mimi is right for you is to simply sign up for the free account and give ‘er a test run. I think within a few minutes, you’ll agree that Mad Mimi is simply the most intuitive, easiest to use and best-priced email marketing tool you’ve ever used.

Click here to check out Mad Mimi for yourself!

Photoshop guru and author, Deke McClelland, recently produced this entertaining—and arguably educational—video, containing 101 Photoshop tips (really). Take 5 minutes to kick back and enjoy, and if you feel guilty about skipping work to do so, pull out a pen and pad to jot down your favorite tip. (Yes, there were even a few I didn’t know!)

I’m a sports car nut. I used to autocross a Mazda Miata, and one of the biggest challenges I faced as an amateur racer was measuring performance before and after major improvements to my car. Accelerometers are expensive, and booking time on a dyno can be cost prohibitive as well. But now, if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod, you can have a fairly decent performance meter in your pocket!

Dynolicious is the first automotive performance meter available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It uses the hardware built-in to your iPhone to measure the performance characteristics of your vehicle. No external wires or equipment are necessary, simply slip the iPhone into a cradle or cupholder and go!

Some of the performance metrics Dynolicious can measure:

• 0-60 Acceleration
• 1/4 Mile Elapsed Time
• Lateral G’s
• Horsepower

And, unlike other accelerometer-based performance meters, Dynolicious maintains a history of test runs, showing you averages and trends in your results. You can also enter modifications performed to your vehicle, and it will instantly show before-and-after results to easily identify gains or losses.

At just $12.99 on the iTunes App Store, it’s a must-have for any auto enthusiast.

Check our the Dynolicious Auto Performance Meter for iPhone and iPod.

This is quite possibly one of the funniest pieces of video I’ve seen in a very long time, although I find myself getting agitated along with John Mayer while I watch it. We thought it would be easier if we talked our parents into buying a Mac instead of a PC. But apparently, it just doesn’t matter what type of computer is in front of them.

If you use WordPress for your personal or corporate blog, and you own an iPhone, then you’ll want to check out the newly-released WordPress for iPhone.

WP for iPhone lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds. Download it now!

The good folks at Mozilla have announced that the latest version of their popular web browser, Firefox, will be available for download on Tuesday, June 17th.

The Firefox web browser is probably the best web browser available today, with built-in phishing filters to protect surfers from malicious or phony sites, standard-compliant support for the latest web standards (which makes the life of web designers SO much easier), and significantly faster browsing speeds.

In short, Internet Explorer should take a few notes.

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

UPDATE: Guinness bestows download record on Firefox

Perhaps even bigger news than the new 3G iPhone (which of course, I’ll be updating to, as soon as it releases) was Steve Job’s announcement of the much-improved online productivity suite, formerly called .Mac.

The revamped service, now called MobileMe, offers web versions of Apple’s email, calendar, address book, photo album and remote disk programs. Now, folks everywhere can begin to use Apple’s gorgeous applications, with having to switch to Mac, or even buy a new computer! This is simply ingenious.

Of course, if you already own a Mac, then you’ll be instantly familiar with the look and behavior of the online versions of these applications, because they are simply web versions of the exact same software you’ve been enjoying on your Mac—plus a few extra goodies thrown in.  AJAX goodness makes the programs function more like desktop applications than web sites, including drag-and-drop functionality.

Push email. Push contacts. Push calendar.
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars on an online server — or “cloud” — and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Your changes happen automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone or syncing manually — to stay up to date.

With this functionality, along with embedded sharing capabilities, the iPhone/MobileMe marriage offers up a serious challenge to the antiquated Microsoft Exchange Server business solution. Goodbye, ridiculous licensing fees, specialized IT personnel and decade-old user interfaces! Hello, gorgeous, intuitive, web-based applications that don’t require a dedicated IT department!

MobileMe will cost $99/year when it launches, but I’d highly recommend the Family Pack, which costs $149/year, and features five licenses. Share the other four with friends and family and the cost per year drops to $30 per person, which is a great price for this productivity suite.

UPDATED! I just found out that you can buy .Mac right now from Amazon for just $69.99, and still get upgraded for FREE when MobileMe launches! Save $29.96 and get MobileMe… what a deal!

Click here to check out .Mac on Amazon for $69.99!

Or click here for the Family Pack for just $124.49!

I anticipate MobileMe will turn out to be one of Apple’s best strategies to date, and will be even bigger than the iPhone itself! Welcome to Mac, PC users everywhere!

This morning, Tom, the most senior—and helpful—AT&T Tech so far, came to the house and began working on my continuing problem with upload speeds. After nearly six hours, the problem is finally resolved!

Turns out, there was a mismatch of VPI/VCI cards on either end of my line. There was a 768 kbps card on one end, but a 512 kbps on the other end. The mismatch should have simply resulted in lower upload speeds altogether, but apparently they also use slightly different protocols, which resulted in abnormally high packet loss.

Here’s what I’ve learned through this ordeal:

1. Once you get past the first level of “script readers”, the level two support folks at AT&T are quite knowledgeable, attentive and friendly.
2. Contrary to the rumor mill, AT&T does NOT throttle upload speeds.
3. If you’re experiencing slow upload speeds and have eliminated line trouble, ask about your VPI/VCI card.

Now, I have no idea how the problem occurred in the first place, since I was getting great upload speeds up until two weeks ago. Apparently, somebody swapped in the incorrect card at some point. But, I’m back to my happy uploading self, and ready to get back to work. I’m sure my clients will be happy as well!