Appletell | Apple, Mac, iPhone, iPod | News, Rumors, Reviews, How-Tos

Macintosh and iPhone/iPod updates and announcements for April 23-24, 2009:

Macintosh

• Winter Wolves has released Spirited Heart, a fantasy life simulation game with RPG elements. Create a virtual alter ego picking from an apparently normal human, a cute elf, or a wicked demoness. Each character has different starting attributes and a unique personality that will greatly influence the gameplay. Once the game starts, you’ll be able to run your life in a virtual fantasy world. Choose a job from one of the 20 different ones available. Raise your skills to be able to do better. Take time to relax by going on vacation in several different locations. Ultimately, find the romance that’s right for you. The game is priced at $19.95 and is available for PC, Mac and Linux platforms.
• Mach Software Design today announced a new version of its flagship product, Clipboard Evolved 2.27, their award winning clipboard manager for Mac OS X. Featuring unparalleled ease of use, stunning interface design, and offering hundreds of ways to get to your data, Clipboard Evolved makes it fun and easy to manage all your important data. Clipboard Evolved features a clipboard-like window for managing clips, a menu bar icon, and now a cover-flow interface for quickly pasting clips.
• Hercules, the computer DJ entertainment specialist, unveils the DeeJay Trim 4&6 , a USB Audio Interface built for advanced DJ’s who already have a DJ control surface but no audio interface. This professional audio interface not only provides you with an extra USB hub that prevents compatibility issues on some laptops, but also offers a way to preview, talk over and export your mixes. The DeeJay Trim 4&6, recently showcased at Musikmesse 2009 in Germany, will be available in June 2009 for the suggested retail price $249.99. For more information and availability visit www.hercules.com starting in June 2009.
• kode80 today released EatWillGrow 1.0, an addictive arcade game for iPhone and iPod touch that takes an innovative approach to storing and retrieving high scores - Twitter. With EatWillGrow, mobile gaming just went social. Guide Blob as he floats through the cosmic stream by flicking him around the screen, bouncing off walls, avoiding mines and eating food. Every piece of food eaten results in Blob growing slightly. The larger Blob grows the harder it becomes to avoid hitting a mine.
• GarageBand is the digital music making and recording application of choice for many Macintosh users, but up-to-date, real-world documentation is hard to find. To fill this gap, TidBITS Publishing Inc. has released a pair of ebooks “Take Control of Making Music with GarageBand ‘09” and “Take Control of Recording with GarageBand ‘09.” Written by Seattle-based composer and musician Jeff Tolbert, the ebooks help readers understand how to work creatively and effectively within GarageBand and include audio examples and hundreds of tips for making the most out of GarageBand’s tools. The ebooks sell for $10 individually or may be purchased in a bundle for $17.50.
• MEI and DPCI has announced that the two companies will showcase connectivity between the vjoon K4 Publishing System and Drupal Web content management system. MEI and DPCI will host a webinar demonstrating how K4, the popular workflow solution integrating Adobe InDesign and InCopy, can seamlessly deliver content to Drupal, one of the leading open-source systems for publishing and managing Web site content.
• MEI has announced the releases of FiFi XT version 8.0 for QuarkXPress 8 and Fido Plug-in version 6.0 for Adobe InDesign CS4. MEI also announced the availability of Split & Folio XT for QuarkXPress 8 and Split & Folio Plug-in for InDesign CS4. These upgrades for the company’s powerful add-on tools offer compatibility with the latest page design software from Quark and Adobe.
• Useful Fruit Software today announced Pear Note 1.2, the latest version of their note-taking utility for Mac OS X. At its core, Pear Note integrates audio, video, and slides with traditional text notes and stores all of this on a timeline for easy navigation. Pear Note 1.2 adds support for additional video cameras and higher resolutions, as well as sports an improved playback interface.
• iSale users earned more than 1.5 Million US-Dollars last month with their auctions at eBay. equinux is tapping into this wealth of experience with the new iSale Lab, an online service that equinux now offers for free to the iSale community. The iSale Lab shows all active iSale auctions on eBay and will break down the auctions into the ten most popular categories and market places and the ten most used iSale templates. This ultimately allows users to take advantage of the editing of others.
• Synium Software has released a new version of CleanApp, the popular uninstaller and system management tool. Keep track on how free disk space decreases and why your hard drive gets filled up day by day. CleanApp 3.1 knows which related files to delete when the user drags an application in the trash. Version 3.1 comes with a brand new graphical view displaying disk usage for folders or the whole hard drive. CleanApp 3.1 is a free upgrade for existing customers.
• Lemke Software has announced the immediate availability of GraphicConverter 6.4.1, their image editing and conversion utility for Mac OS X. GraphicConverter is the ultimate tool for image editing, image browsing, metadata editing, slideshows, image conversion from more than 200 file formats and much more. Version 6.4.1 includes many bug fixes and little enhancements and is a recommended update for all customers.
• ExactCODE GmbH has released ExactScan 2, an update to their award-winning scanning software for Mac OS X. On top of the many features of the standard ExactScan 2 version the Professional version adds a OCR engine and barcode recognition to create searchable PDF documents on-the-fly. Together with the Spotlight indexing services built into Mac OS X, these features form a document management solution suitable for small-office and home-office environments.

iPhone/iPod

• Aliph, the leader in mobile audio, today introduced Jawbone PRIME with EARCANDY colors. Jawbone PRIME brings consumers even better audio quality, improved comfort and fresh, fun color choices. This release continues Aliph’s tradition of marrying technology and design to deliver the best Bluetooth headset on the market. Jawbone PRIME and its EARCANDY colors are available today for pre-order at www.jawbone.com and will be sold in retail stores nationally starting May 2, 2009.
• The Czech software house ecommerce.cz developed and introduced new mobile connector into widely spread CRM system Microsoft Dynamics CRM – the iCRM application for Apple iPhone gives users very easy and comfortable access to the CRM system from almost anywhere.
• DDH Software today announced availability of its Mac OS X conduit for syncing HanDBase databases stored on iPhone and iPod touch devices. HanDBase, a popular relational database for many types of mobile devices, was released last fall in the Apple iTunes App Store, and many users asked for a way to automatically synchronize their databases with their Macs. The new HanDBase Plus add-on package now affords them with this capability.
• Zerogate has announced that MeterRead 1.2.1, their eco-friendly green app for iPhone and iPod Touch, has extended its Earth Day sale until Sunday April 26th, 2009. MeterRead provides the key feedback that will help you understand and reduce your energy consumption. Detailed feedback includes and estimated 30 day kW-h usage based on your current reading.
• Comeks has announced Bikini Babe Yourself, an iPhone app for creating funny images by combining your own face with steaming hot bikini babe templates. Share the funny images via email, Twitter, Tumblr or Comeks.com.