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

Macintosh and iPhone/iPod updates and announcements for June 24-25, 2009:

Macintosh

• Veenix Technologies has announced a special summer software bundle for its highly acclaimed TypeBook Creator software for Mac OS X. Purchasers of the Studio Version or Corporate Version of TypeBook Creator will receive a free copy of Veenix Font Tools, font management tools featuring a unique fast-font-previewing system. Veenix TypeBook Creator was developed for Mac graphic professionals and allows them to easily create and print type specimen books and font sample sheets of their fonts.
• Zevrix Solutions has announced the release of Instant Backup 1.6, an update to its simple solution to securely back up selected data on-line and locally. Instant Backup is designed to back up the most valuable and sensitive projects just when you need it, to ensure they’re always extra safe. And FTP backup assures that the data won’t be lost in the case of theft, fire or flood. The new version allows users to process data without creating the compressed disk image.
• Boxee has announced users can now watch live baseball games with MLB.TV Premium on boxee.  MLB.TV Premium, MLB.com’s online streaming service for baseball fans, delivers high quality video streams of live games and premium features like DVR functionality and HD Video (where available.)  This addition brings live sports content to our rich content platform. Boxee hopes other sports follow MLB.com’s lead of giving fans a choice of how they enjoy watching their favorite teams.
• TheMacBundles first bundle was released in early June and has received widespread praise from journalists, consumers, and developers for the unique marketing model and value that it brings to both consumers and software developers. TheMacBundles is pleased to announce that the next bundle will be released on June 29th and will continue in the footsteps of the first bundle by bringing consistently high quality programs to consumers at a bargain price.
• locr is continuously offering new geotagging software solutions for Apple Macintosh, Windows PCs, and mobile phones. The new locr “DropBox 1.0” for Mac OS X allows users to upload photos directly from the desktop to the locr website, using drag and drop. Within the locr community people from all over the world share their travel experiences. Photo locations are displayed on digital maps and information about motif and surroundings are provided.
• BinaryNights today has announced a special promotion for ForkLift, their popular file and FTP manager for OS X. Forklift is a powerful file manager and ferociously fast FTP client clothed in a clean and versatile UI that offers the combination of absolute simplicity and raw power expected from a well-executed Mac software. This grandiose experiment cuts software prices with a mindboggling offer on ForkLift for a week. The singular promo ends on June 30.
• Dragan Milic today announced Springy 1.5.3, a powerful archiving utility for Mac OS X. Springy integrates seamlessly with the Finder and includes some incredibly useful features. Users have the ability to see at a glance, the contents of an archive or disk image without being forced to extract any file from it, add, and/or extract files of choice from an existing archive, as well as previewing them. All archiving tasks can be done via Drag and Drop or through Finder contextual menu plug-in.
• Delivering on the specialized requirements of the Mac community, Seagate has introduced an advanced line-up of mobile and desktop FreeAgent for Mac storage solutions and accessories: the FreeAgent Go for Mac with USB, FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac, the 2TB FreeAgent Desk for Mac and FreeAgent Go Dock+, a powered USB-hub and dock for the FreeAgent Go. Providing a complete storage toolkit for today’s creative professionals, such as web designers, musicians and graphic artists, as well as multimedia enthusiasts, these enhanced FreeAgent for Mac external hard drives each include performance and capacity improvements to help store, record, protect and share creative inspirations.
• Humble Daisy has announced ProfCast 2.6.0, a adding Podcast Producer support to their flagship lecture recording and podcast creation solution for Mac OS X. ProfCast is a versatile, powerful, yet very simple to use tool for recording lectures including PowerPoint and/or Keynote slides for creating enhanced podcasts. ProfCast offers an integrated workflow that makes creating, recording, and publishing podcasts easy.
• Vemedio today release the first major improvement update to Snowtape, the easiest and most intuitive software for recording internet radio. Snowtape enables the user to quickly find and record his or her favorite music, add album artwork and exports it right into iTunes.
• Macware is kicking off the summer with a huge summer savings sale through their website. Save on your favorite Macware software titles with this special, limited time offer. Now until July 7th, you can take 50% off your entire Macware purchase through the Macware website. This is a special summer offer that won’t be repeated. Simply enter MACB2 at checkout to receive your discount.
• Josh Lockhart has announced RapidSearch 3, an upgrade to his popular RapidWeaver search plugin. RapidSearch 3 is the easiest way to add powerful Google search to any RapidWeaver website. RapidSearch 3 retrieves Google search results immediately and displays the search results inline on your website. Your visitors never leave your website, and your branding remains intact. Version 3 includes many new improvements and a recommended download.
• KavaSoft has released HyperImage 2.1, an application for downloading web photo galleries. HyperImage is an industrial-strength tool for downloading entire websites worth of pictures all at once. Just point HyperImage to any website, and watch as thousands of pictures stream down to your computer. HyperImage includes a built-in image browser with infinitely resizable thumbnails, so you can easily browse through all the pictures from a particular page or website.
• KavaSoft has announced KavaMovies 1.3, an update to their Mac movie database. KavaMovies lets you organize the movies you’ve seen, the movies you want to see, and the movies in your collection. It connects to the internet and downloads tons of information about each of your movies in realtime. Click a movie to see who’s in it. Click an actor to see what they’ve been in. Directors, genres, keywords, charts, awards, languages, years - everything is connected.
• Other World Computing, a leading PC and Mac technology company, announced today lower pricing of up to $300 and a new 0TB “Add Your Own Drives” Kit for the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 desktop hardware RAID storage line. Featuring Hardware RAID 5 redundancy to protect against data loss, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 has four SATA hard drive bays for up to 8TB of storage; a “Quad Interface” of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA ports for Mac and PC compatibility; and data transfer speeds of up to 300MB/s. With this combination of features, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 offers the highest level of data capacity, performance, and reliability in a Plug and Play desktop hardware RAID solution.
• Dockland Software has announced Fantasktik 1.4, an update to their taskbar for Mac OS X Leopard. Fantasktik is an innovative toolbar that shows all open documents and applications on the Mac and allows users to switch between windows with a single-click. Version 1.4 adds the ability to close windows from the taskbar, launch Expose on any open application directly from Fantasktik, and more.
• Paradigma Software has released Valentina DB 4.2 for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, the ultra fast columnar database for business and developers, and Valentina Reports 4.2, the cross-platform database reporting solution for Windows and Mac OS X. Cocoa Developers now receive Valentina iPhone Library for building client-server iPhone applications free. New options for PHP and Director developers.
• Zevrix Solutions has released BatchOutput Server 4.2, an update to its output workflow automation solution for Adobe InDesign. The software automates printing and exporting to PDF and PostScript by processing InDesign files from watched hotfolders. BatchOutput Server automates, simplifies, and streamlines output workflows of publishing houses, printers, prepress service providers and ad agencies. The new version allows users to keep entire job folders after output for further processing.

iPhone/iPod

• ustwo, the design team behind iPhone app MouthOff, has invited twelve of the biggest names from the illustration world to create a “signature” mouth to add to the game. MouthOff is a realtime sound reactive app offering players a set of animated mouths to choose from. The idea is to hold your iPhone in front of your mouth and talk, shout, laugh, scream or sing, and the mouth animates in time with the sounds you make. There are currently 25 mouths on the game, plus the 12 new SIgnature Series mouths.
• On June 3, 2009, independent software developer Danilo Campos announced the release of GlobeJot 1.0, the new travel organizer for iPhone and iPod touch. After a day of sales, it was discovered that the application suffered from a critical bug in its final version, causing a faulty app to become a generous donation. Version 1.0.1 includes multiple bug fixes and improved data save behavior. GlobeJot will be returning to the iTunes App Store today, June 24th, 2009.
• Andesigned has announced Total Baby 1.0, the newest addition to their Baby Tracker Family for iPhone and iPod touch. Total Baby combines 11 essential logging and tracking functions for your child’s care through a smart and sleek interface that makes tracking easy and fun. With innovative new features unmatched on any platform like dual timers for multiple children and twins. Welcome to the future of Baby Logging.
• G-Monkey Productions has released iBacon 1.0, their novelty game app for iPhone and iPod Touch. iBacon uses 30 fps video loops to cook real bacon. Users can pinch virtual cooking tongs to flip individual slices and even tilt to pour off the bacon grease, tilt to eat bacon, as well as shake to turn off the smoke alarm, and more. Vegetarian approved, eat bacon guilt free.
• START MOBILE has announced the launch of the Pride mobile art gallery for the iPhone. The Pride Wallpaper Gallery features sixteen rainbow images created by digital artist Samala. At the request of the artist, 100% of START MOBILE revenues from this mobile gallery are being donated to The Courage Campaign. The mobile art wallpapers are optimized for display on the iPhone, and all the images can be ‘flipped’ to reveal additional information about the artist.