Mellel 2.2

RedleX today released Mellel 2.2, a major update to the premier word processor for Mac OS X.

Mellel 2.2 introduces several new citation and bibliography features, making citation entry, verification and scanning easier than ever before. The new features further solidify Mellel’s position as the leading word processor for writers and scholars. Mellel 2.2 also introduce several exciting and unique character styling options, including sophisticated background, outline, and line option. Another key feature in Mellel 2.2 is the Marker palette, allowing users to mark text as with a highlighter and easily search for highlighted text in the document.

Mellel 2.2 is free to all registered users of Mellel. The update is a for-pay upgrade for user who purchased Mellel more than 3 years ago. A free trial version is also available.

Note: Mellel 2.2 released today is an English-only user interface. A version including 14 different languages is expected within a week.

Mellel 2.1 is available for download now, from the servers listed below. The price for a single user license is US$49, Educational license is US$34.99, 5 Pack license (5 separate licenses) is US$99. A Boxed Edition of Mellel is also available for US$59 (including shipping costs).

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Soaked!

Aspyr Media, Inc. announced today that RollerCoaster Tycoon® 3 Soaked! has begun shipping for Macintosh. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Soaked! licensed from Atari Interactive, Inc., is
the first expansion pack for Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and was developed for Mac by Aspyr Studios, www.aspyrstudios.com

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Soaked! brings a whole new range of options to the RolllerCoaster Tycoon 3 series as players select from more than 50 new rides and coasters, and use the all-new Swimming Pool and Waterfall Designers to easily create shimmering pools, waterfalls, whirlpools and wave machines.

For more information or to order your copy today, please visit Aspyr’s Website at http://www.aspyr.com/product/info/70.

Spring Updates from DEVONtechnologies

DEVONagent 2.1 brings new features as well as a large number of little enhancements. New search engine plugins have been added and all plugins and scanners have been updated. Bookmarks can be conveniently accessed now through the Dock menu, tabs show a thumbnail preview of the displayed Web page in a tooltip, and the new ‘next’ operator comes in handy when entering more complex queries using parenthesis. Also, nearly all plugins can be assigned a keyword for quickly entering a query in the Web browser’s address field, the ‘See Also’ functions returns better results, and the advertisement filter is more accurate. DEVONagent 2.1 is more compatible to Web pages with bad encodings and wrong HTML code, and many other minor enhancements improve the user experience as well as the overall performance.

Version 1.9.9 of DEVONthink Personal brings it in line with its larger brothers. The update features all the technology and interface enhancements already introduced with DEVONthink Professional (Office), from the pop-up menu of the toolbar search field that remembers recent searches to a more reliable ‘See Also’ and ‘Classify’ function, faster searching, and the possibility to scroll PDF documents with the mouse (while the Command key is held) on Mac OS X 10.4 or later. New plain text file types have been added, documents that are converted while importing are logged, and DEVONthink shows whether a document is locked or otherwise read-only.

DEVONthink Professional 1.3.1 and DEVONthink Professional Office 1.3.1 are maintenance updates that enhance the compatibility to some third-party applications, e.g., Bookends, improve the results of ‘See Also’ and ‘Classify’ as well as the AppleScript performance. The handling of relative links, e.g., in the Download Manger is more compatible and the memory management is more efficient. Finally, the French and German localizations have been updated.

All applications require Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, for DEVONagent a reasonably fast Internet connection is recommended. The new versions are immediately available from www.devon-technologies.com and can be test-driven for free for 150 hours (DEVONthink) or 60 hours (DEVONagent) of runtime respectively until they need to be properly licensed; the email import function of DEVONthink Professional Office is limited to 200 messages per day and the OCR function is limited to 20 documents per day during the trial period. The updates are free for all registered users.

DEVONagent sells for US$ 49.95, DEVONthink Personal for US$ 39.95, DEVONthink Professional for US$ 79.95, and DEVONthink Professional Office for US$ 149.95 in DEVONtechnologies’ online shop. DEVONagent and DEVONthink Professional (Office) are also available as as bundle for US$ 99.95 or US$ 169.95 respectively. Users of a lower edition of DEVONthink are able to upgrade to a higher edition for the price difference. Upgrade coupons are available.

TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac

In case you hadn’t heard the buzz, TextMate is a full-featured OS X editor
that can make programmers incredibly productive. The secret is that it’s not really a text editor.

In his latest book, “TextMate Power Editing for the Mac” (Pragmatic Bookshelf, US$29.95, 0-9787392-3-X), author James Edward Gray II shows you how to use TextMate to do your normal work, but signal the ever-watchful ninjas as you go. At your command, they will launch into action, slicing through text, inserting boilerplate, structuring source code, and much
more. They will even post to your blog, handle your IRC conversations, and
read your email.

These ninjas seem to be mind readers. They can transport you to exact line of the file you need to be on; they’ll watch what you type and anticipate what you need next. And they’ll help tuck your source code safely away at the end of the day.

TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac
by James Edward Gray II
ISBN 0-9787392-3-X, 208 pages, $29.95US, $41.95CA, softcover.

Pragmatic Bookshelf Titles are distributed to bookstores internationally
by O’Reilly Media: http://oreilly.com

Checkout: Point of Sale Software for Mac

When my wife started a new Wig business, we thought long and hard about how we would keep track of inventory, sales, cost, profit, discounts and bookkeeping. Plus, I wanted it to have the ability to grow when the business demanded it. I looked at a lot of software and ended up choosing madebysofa’s Checkout Point of Sale for Mac.

We are using only a small percent of the capabilities that Checkout offers. If you want to see the full power of Checkout, use a Mac with Checkout installed along with third party cash drawers, receipt printers, and scanners. You then have a full featured, end to end solution for your retail business at an affordable price.

My wife runs her wig business out of a salon where she has worked for many years. The salon owner has her own Windows based point of sale software for her business, and she paid $900.00 for the program several years ago. Checkout has an introductory price of $399.00, and I’ve found out from looking around, that’s a very fair price for what Checkout can do. If you want to use it as a full frontdesk checkout solution, you’ll have to pay extra for the third party products I mentioned above.

Let’s look at some of the features that caught my eye to this point. Checkout can create amazing reports. They look great and they can handle tax and sale inquiries. Checkout gave us custom templates to create invoices, orders, sales slips and quotes. We can import inventories and products on order with CSV and TSV files. My wife can search for specific sales and invoices and can give discounts on specific sale items. We were able to walk through the setup with a sample storefront and screencasts to hold our hand when we set up sales tax and product markups. That’s just for starters.

Checkout’s strongest asset is the fact that it looks, feels, acts and handles like a true Mac application. It was built from the ground up as a Mac Point of Sale software package, and I sure could tell. The best place to start is to visit their website, www.checkoutapp.com. The developers did a nice job with demos and quicktours somost of the questions I had were answered without reading the manual. I would recommend Checkout to anyone that wants to run a retail storefront with their Mac. You can find other apps that do a good job with invoices, or bookkeeping, or forms, but Checkout does the whole job for you, just as you’d expect a good Mac application to do.

Disco 1.0 for Mac OS X Released

Disco is the missing solution for disc burning on your Mac. Utilizing a simple and fun workflow based interface, users are able to accomplish real burning tasks with minimal effort. The entire burning process has been designed from the ground up to work efficiently and effectively for the user. Steps smoothly glide into place and progress bars pulse as the user moves through the workflow.

Simplicity doesn’t result in meager features, however — as Disco is jam packed with tools designed to appeal to average and pro users alike. They include: full multi session support, audio burning, disc erasing, multi file system support, one to one disc copies, VIDEO_TS burning, motion sensor support, and many others. One of Disco’s major functions is spanning. Spanning allows users to span large amounts of data over multiple discs. Disco offers a “just works” principle to the whole process, and the spanning nests itself as deep as possible to ensure that your data can be spanned in almost any case.

Disco also includes a standout feature called Discography. Discography seamlessly tracks all of your burns and lets you search through tens of thousands of previously burned files to find out what disc they are on. Users can also import existing discs into Discography. This feature takes Discography from simple disc tracking to a full blown media cataloging solution.

Talk about fun, Disco’s window emits fully realistic rendered 3d smoke while burning on those machines that support it. As promised, the developers have truly taken the AppZapper screen flash to the next level. Finally, the developers have included smoke support for nearly every Mac out there — addressing perhaps the most requested feature for the application.

Having announced Disco in September, hundreds of thousands of people have become interested and active readers of the Disco blog. Disco is now available to everyone at the extremely reasonable introductory price of $14.95. A family pack is available for under $30 and a 10 pack for under $90.

For more information, visit: http://discoapp.com.

Big Bang Brain Games Released!

Freeverse today announced the immediate availability of Big Bang Brain Games for OS X — Six classic games designed to stimulate the cerebellum, cajole the cortex, and gratify the grey-matter!

Stunning graphics and witty characters make Big Bang Brain Games a truly “Best of Class” experience.
The latest research has shown that the use of memory and puzzle games can help create new pathways in the brain, keeping the mind sharp.

Whether you’re looking to help out the ‘ol hippocampus, or just have some fun, there’s a game for every age and every taste in the Big Bang Brain Games.

Big Bang Brain Games include:
Reaction: Pop all the molecules in the fewest number of clicks. Deceptively simple, but requires clever planning.

Sudoku: Wildly popular, Sudoku is endlessly compelling. With over 50,000 puzzles included, you’ll never run out of challenges.

NovaSweeper: Test your Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction with this long-time favorite. The gameplay may be familiar, but Minesweeper never looked this good!

Remembrance: Train your short-term memory with a classic game of Remembrance. Selecting the number of cards to memorize makes this game compelling for kids and adults alike.

Echo: Remembrance tests your spatial memory, now add an auditory twist. The Music of the Spheres will keep you dancing!

Fallacy: Philosophers have long emphasized logical reasoning as a means of discerning what is true. These Logical Fallacy quizzes may aid your own thinking – “Freeverse is the greatest game company on the planet. Big Bang Fallacy is made by Freeverse. Therefore Big Bang Fallacy is the greatest game on the planet!” – Right?

Win Mix It Like A Record and DUY Global Bundle

Kagi Media, producers of Mix It Like A Record, the enormously successful interactive mixing course authored by Grammy-winning engineer, mixer and producer Charles Dye, together with DUY, a leading developer of a broad range of plug-ins for Pro Tools, are sponsoring a contest in which three winners will receive a copy of the Mix It Like A Record mixing course and DUY’s Global Bundle.

The widely praised interactive mixing course teaches the secrets of mixing with Pro Tools. Leading industry professionals, pro audio critics, top educators, bestselling authors and users all agree, Mix It Like A Record is the best and fastest way to learn the elusive skill of mixing, and now you can win a free copy.

DUY’s Global Bundle is a potent combination of six high-definition sound sculpting tools. ReDSPider – an entire plug-in bundle in a single plug; DaD Tape – physically models analog tape machines; DaD Valve – physically models classic tubes; DUY Shape – a 3-band spectral and dynamic enhancer; DUY Wide – widens stereo image by placing sounds outside the speakers; and Max DUY – maximizes level with zero harmonic distortion.

To enter the contest, go to www.harddisklife.com and click on “Contest”. Watch the two streaming movies about DUY’s plug-ins. They contain example chapters from Mix It Like A Record, and a tutorial on DUY’s Global Bundle taught by Xavi Sanchez-Roemmele of DUY. Then answer a couple simple questions and submit to win Mix It Like A Record and DUY’s Global Bundle.
The movies are worth the visit alone, but all entrants are also eligible to purchase Mix It Like A Record, which retails for $149, at a special contest discount price of only $99. The contest runs from January 18th until February 31st.
http://www.mtechmarketing.com/KAGI_011807_DUY_Contest.html

Prosoft Debuts Two New Products

Prosoft will be introducing Data Backup 3, a major release for our award-winning backup software. We will be giving demonstrations of the new improved interface and several added new features at the show. The current version Data Backup 2.0 just received a 4.5 mice review on Macworld http://www.macworld.com/2006/12/reviews/dbackup21/index.php and will be in the February 2007 issue.

They will also be announcing a brand new program that is geared for fun and entertainment. This will be this exciting new product’s first debut.

Prosoft will be demonstrating both of these new programs at the show along with our other award-winning products including Data Rescue II, Drive Genius, Picture Rescue and TuneTech for iPod.

Apple’s Letter Says “Podcast” Legal To Use

The Global Geek Podcast » In Writing: “Apple Does Not Licence the Term “Podcast””

If the letter on this blog is as authenic as it appears, I would love to see all the “Chicken Little” bloggers that were screaming Apple’s name in vain spend as much time covering this letter as the one that supposedly started all the fuss. But we all know that will never happen.