I had a pleasant surprise last week when I found out I had won a free copy of the $60 MacKeeper program for my MacBook Pro from the Make Use Of website.
This software is almost like a Swiss Army Knife for your Mac. I have only run 4 of its components so far, and they have all been performing in an excellent manner. I activated the Internet Security firewall (which is constantly in effect), ran the anti-virus scan (no viruses, as usual), the clean-up utility which removed pieces and parts of previous uninstalled programs that were left behind (regaining 2.5 GB of space on my hard drive), and the duplicate file finder, which would have regained 7 GB of space if I had deleted the duplicate files. However, most of them were backups of photos I’ve taken and I’ll end up moving them to an external drive in the near future.
I also registered the Anti-theft feature, but of course won’t know if that works until the sad day when my MacBook goes missing. Hopefully never.
MacKeeper also has a DOD-level file shredder and file encryption (though the NSA probably already has the keys for that one, lol), Smart program uninstaller (that doesn’t leave pieces and parts behind), Update tracker, Disk usage reporter, file backup utility, file recovery utility and a few other handy items. It truly is one of the best all around programs I’ve used for my Mac.
The second pleasant surprise came yesterday when I received an email from Tor.com notifying me that I had won an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of The Time Traveler’s Almanac in their latest sweepstakes. This book won’t be published until March of 2014, but I’m getting a galley copy in the next week or so to read and enjoy. Here’s a description of the almost 1,000 page book:
The Time Traveler’s Almanac is the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, this book compiles more than a century’s worth of literary travels into the past and the future that will serve to reacquaint readers with beloved classics of the time travel genre and introduce them to thrilling contemporary innovations.
This marvelous volume includes nearly seventy journeys through time from authors such as Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Michael Moorcock, H. G. Wells, and Connie Willis, as well as helpful non-fiction articles original to this volume (such as Charles Yu’s “Top Ten Tips For Time Travelers”).
In fact, this book is like a time machine of its very own, covering millions of years of Earth’s history from the age of the dinosaurs through to strange and fascinating futures, spanning the ages from the beginning of time to its very end.The Time Traveler’s Almanac is the ultimate anthology for the time traveler in your life.
I love time travel stories and there are several of my favorite authors in this collection, so I can barely wait to receive my copy and start reading!
Now, if I could just win that Google Glass contest I entered…
