The MacTrack – iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch and Mac News

Seattle, WA – Candywriter has announced the release of My Lease Miles for iPhone/iPod touch. My Lease Miles is a simple but elegant auto lease mileage calculator that allows you to stay on top of your allotted miles. Use My Lease Miles on your iPhone or iPod touch to make sure you are getting your money’s worth on your lease by not going too far under or over your allotted miles.

Enter the few important details of your car’s lease once and then open the app at any time to update your odometer reading. My Lease Miles provides a myriad of important calculations at an instant to help you keep track of your lease’s progress.

Key Features:
* Calculates how many miles you should have used to the day and analyzes your adherence to allotted miles
* Predicts any overage charges you are likely to face
* Allows you to project the effects of road trips you are considering
* Track as many cars as you wish
* Use kilometers or miles
* Supports Dollars, Euros, and Pound Sterling
* Tells you when you should flee the country to avoid turning in the car

Pricing and Availability:
My Lease Miles is only $0.99 USD and available exclusively through Apple’s App Store.

My Lease Miles
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Located in Seattle, Washington, Candywriter produces creative software for Mac OS X, iPhone, and, grudgingly, sometimes Windows. Copyright 2008 Candywriter. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Billings, Montana – Positive Spin Media is pleased to announce Pandora 2.4, an update to the media collector’s web spider and search agent for Mac OS X. Pandora makes it quick and easy to find and fetch images, movies, media, and more from the web. This release introduces dramatic speed increases that drive more results in less time. In user testing, increases of up to 50% were reported over the previous version while running on the same hardware.

Top Features in Pandora 2.4:
* Powerful engine: fast, flexible performance with improved logging and pause/resume capabilities
* Support for finding and fetching any filetype
* Plug-in architecture: Pandora can be extended to work with any website or search engine, and support authentication

Pandora can simultaneously perform as many tasks as it’s given. Multiple sessions can, at the same time, be performing searches, URL scrapes, or even running through folders on your hard drive, via “Open…” in the “File” menu.

Power Tools for the Power User:
Pandora’s preferences allow users to specify various filtering options such as minimum file size, file type, safe Google(TM) search and more. Users can also choose where Pandora stores files on their hardrives and even make sure files are clearly represented with a thumbnail icon a la Photoshop.

System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher
* ATI Radeon or NVidia GeForce card (or better) is recommended for proper use of the slideshow feature
* Connection to the Internet

Pricing and Availability:
Pandora is $29.95 (USD), and works as a demo until unlocked with a purchased registration code. Upgrade licenses (from 1.x) are available for $10 (USD).

Positive Spin Media
Pandora 2.4
Download Pandora
Screenshots

Based in Billings, Montana, Positive Spin Media was founded by John Pannell. Since 1999, Positive Spin Media has been developing custom web, database, and multimedia solutions for clients large and small, as well as developing a series of shareware applications, BombSquad and Pandora, for Mac OS X. All Material and Software (C) 1999-2007 Positive Spin Media. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Oxford, UK – Softpress Systems today launched version 5.3.1 of Freeway, its award-winning website design software. This latest update includes a full Japanese localization as well as some enhancements and bug fixes. The Japanese version is available now in both Freeway 5 Express and Freeway 5 Pro multi-language downloads from the Softpress website.

Special offer sales and downloads of Freeway 5.3.1 (Japanese and English only) will be available from our Japanese distributor, act2, in the near future.

Mr. M. Kato, President of act2 (Japan) said “Freeway 5.3.1 is a wonderful release of an already great product. It gets better every time. For professional or novice web designers, it’s all about the design; the code just happens. We are excited about version 5 coming out in Japan.”

Softpress Managing Director Richard Logan added “We are very pleased to offer the Japanese version to our loyal and enthusiastic users. Freeway 5 is the perfect tool to express their creativity across all browsers and platforms.”

New Features
In addition to the groundbreaking features in its initial release (CSS menus, Google Actions, Blogger templates, script.aculo.us Actions and dozens more), Freeway 5 now includes iPhone Actions to create QuickTime movies of different qualities, automatic device and network speed detection, and the ability to serve the most appropriate content to each visitor.

5.3.1 adds functionality to control the initiation of movie content as well as the ability to employ iPhone redirects – the iPhone or iPod Touch user can be redirected to a page that has been designed specifically for them. For more details, the very useful “Building websites for the iPhone with Freeway” document can be found on the Softpress website.

Pricing and Availability
Freeway 5.3.1 is a free download for all registered owners of Freeway 5. Freeway 5 Pro and Freeway 5 Express are both available for purchase and immediate electronic delivery directly from the Softpress Store. The SRP of Freeway 5 Pro is $249, and Freeway 5 Express is $79.

During our Black Friday promotion, purchasers of full-priced copies will receive a valuable iTunes gift certificate or Amazon voucher. Upgrades from Freeway 4 Pro to Freeway 5 Pro are $99, upgrades from 4 Express to 5 Express are $59. Owners of Freeway 5 Express can upgrade to Freeway 5 Pro for just $169. For a limited time, owners of Dreamweaver CS4 or GoLive 8 or higher can purchase Freeway Pro at a huge discount.

Softpress Systems
Freeway 5.3.1
Update Download
Purchase Freeway
Building websites for the iPhone
Japanese Distributor (act2)

Softpress was founded in 1993 to address the emerging needs of professional publishers and designers for cross-media authoring tools. Freeway, and its extensive feature set, result from Softpress’ ongoing efforts to identify and meet the real needs of web designers in today’s environment. Softpress creates tools that many people rely on for their day-to-day business, so they listen carefully to their customers. Future upgrades and product offerings will continue to demonstrate Softpress’ commitment to quality, leading-edge innovation and customer service.

Do you find it a chore to delete a message in Gmail?  Or, do you prefer to use the keyboard rather than moving from mouse to keyboard and back again?

I do.

Here is a handy hint to help, I’ve just revolutionised the way I use Gmail with a few simple keystrokes:

Go to Settings
Go to Labs
Activate Keyboard Shortcuts (you may have to click on settings again to refresh)
Choose Keyboard Shortcuts from within Settings
Locate “Move to Trash” and set it to be “-” (a minus sign)
Locate “Mark as Unread” and set it to “§” (or whatever is the key below the Esc key)

Now from your inbox simply hit the minus key to delete the message, or from within a message, hit minus and it’s gone, moved to Trash in easy one step no mouse needed – or of course you can hit ‘y’ to archive it.
When you delete a message whilst reading it your inbox is then re-displayed.

So, I go: enter (to read) “y” or “-” to archive/trash and then enter again to read next one (and repeat).

It’s *so* quick as” -” and enter (on numpad) are co-located – it’s easy.

Use “§” to mark a a message as unread (I do this if I want to revisit the message for actioning as I keep my inbox empty).  I use the § key as it’s a similar location to Esc and I use it to “escape” back to the inbox leaving the message unread.

Of course, if easier, you can choose other keys if you find them more suitable but make sure they aren’t already allocated to another function.

Austin, Texas – Alta Vida LLC is delighted to announce Babelingo 1.3.3, their language translation utility for iPhone and iPod Touch. Containing more than 300 useful phrases and words, Babelingo is an incredibly fast and easy-to-use phrase book communicator, allowing anyone to show a professionally translated phrase to a foreign language audience.

Babelingo can translate to and from 10 different languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Czech, Hindi, Japanese and Chinese. Each phrase is carefully translated by highly skilled professional translators and displayed in a large, beautifully rendered script that is easily read from a distance. With the latest version users can enable viewing of phonetic phrases for Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Hindi (Romaji, Pinyin, Romanized Russian and Romanized Hindi respectively).

Each category, phrase, word, and screen can be presented in any one of the supported languages. The user chooses their native language, the alternative audiences language, and Babelingo does the rest. Phrases are grouped by category in a flat list for fast navigation. Simply tap a phrase and its translation is immediately displayed.

For commonly used phrases, users may add them to a favorites list for quick and easy access. Quickly search for phrases using key words. Hindi speakers can search for Hindi script using the English keyboard and phonetic spellings (Romanized Hindi). And Babelingo is more than a simple phrase book too. The application also enables two way communication by allowing the alternate party to navigate Babelingo in their own language and respond to requests, making it the perfect travel companion for both business and leisure.

Version 1.3.3 includes professionally translated phrases in the Russian language, and a recommended update. In addition, this version allows users to enable viewing of phonetic phrases for Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Hindi (Romaji, Pinyin, and Romanized Hindi respectively). Customers who have a need for a specific language are urged to contact support so that it may be prioritized into a future release of Babelingo.

Feature highlights include:
* Over 300 useful phrases and words
* Each and every phrase carefully translated by highly skilled professional translators
* 25 different categories
* Large and beautifully rendered translations
* Native language responses
* Phrase search
* Favorites list
* No network connection required

Language support:
English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Czech, Hindi, Japanese, and Chinese

Minimum Requirements:
* iPhone or iPod Touch 2.0

Pricing and Availability:
Babelingo 1.3.3 for iPhone and iPod Touch is only $5.99 (USD) and available exclusively through Apple’s App Store.

Alta Vida
Babelingo 1.3.3
Download Babelingo

Headquartered in scenic Austin, Texas, Alta Vida LLC is a privately funded company founded in 2005 by Shane Crawford. With a sole focus on the Mac platform, Alta Vida’s aim is to develop unique Mac and iPhone products, as well as provide customized development solutions. Copyright 2005-2008 Alta Vida LLC. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod Touch are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.