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

Herndon, Virginia – Zerion Software today announced Inauguration Report. Inauguration report lets users send personalized ‘reports’ about the inauguration, and share it online with the public at large. In a collaborative effort, NPR and CBS News will also incorporate public contributions in their coverage of the inauguration, so those who submit content may be contacted if they decide to use your submission.

Reports can be submitted in the form of a text message, photos, or audio. Location information, if the user chooses to submit it, is also captured, so detailed data of who and where the content is being posted from is stored and mapped, creating a picture of the worldwide scope of the event, and those individuals involved in it.

The Inauguration report utilizes Zerion’s mobile data collection framework which allows data to be collected offline and submit to the server when connection is available. “Offline capability is critical to this project as during the Inauguraiton event cellular coverage may be affected.” Scott Hunter, Partner of Zerion Software.

“The opportunity to be involved and contribute to a project of this scope is a tremendous opportunity to serve the community at large, and be part of a historical event all at the same time. We are happy to contribute our skills in the mobile data collection space to this effort.” Sze Wong, President of Zerion Software.

Results of the project will be posted online at NPR, CBS News, and Inauguration Report. Content will be added to a collection of submissions from other iPhone users, as well as people on Twitter, Flickr, and other online communities. Inauguration Report joins iGravy and Rochambeau in the growing number of iPhone applications created by Zerion Software.

Inauguration Report
Inauguration Report for iPhone
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Zerion Software is a mobile application development firm. Founded in 2003, Zerion provides services in enterprise system architecture and mobile development, for the iPhone, Windows mobile, and Blackberry platforms. Zerion Software is an 8(a) certified small business. Copyright 2003-2008 Zerion Software. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Los Angeles, USA – SkypeCap is proud to announce SkypeCap for Mac 1.0, their Skype audio session recorder for Mac OS X. With a focus on ease-of-use, SkypeCap for Mac allows record audio conversation from Skype to audio mp4 file. It fully integrates the process into the Mac experience by allowing human interaction during session recording.

SkypeCap for Mac save your Skype sessions so that you could hear them again later or share them with someone else. Now you can with SkypeCap! SkypeCap for Mac is the complete resource for capturing and recording Skype audio sessions in real time.

Use SkypeCap to record: Skype Casts, teleconference calls, meetings, training sessions, announcements, interviews, group brainstorming sessions, telephone and cellular phone calls and more.

The possibilities are endless! You control when recording begins and ends, as well as level of quality at which the recordings should be captured. SkypeCap lets you know when it recognizes that Skype audio sessions are occurring so that you can record them. SkypeCap can even record the audio for you automatically! Only you will know that the audio are being recorded.

Feature highlights include:
* Record Skype audio conversation
* Record Skype group brainstorming sessions
* Record telephone and cellular phone calls via Skype
* Detect session automatically and save it!
* Recognizes Skype audio sessions
* SkypeCap has a transparent user-friendly interface and is very simple in use.

Minimum Requirements:
* Mac OS X Version 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard
* Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel
* 10 MB Hard Drive space

Pricing and Availability:
SkypeCap for Mac is available for only $39.95 (USD) for a Single License, and may be downloaded directly from the SkypeCap website.

SkypeCap Software
SkypeCap for Mac
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Located in historic St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, Intelus, Ltd. is a privately funded company founded in 2001. Leveraging their longtime experience in the video industry, Intelus’ goal is to develop best-of-breed tools for the Mac platform, and lead to the creation of Macvide. Copyright 2001-2008 Intelus, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries. Flash, the Flash Logo and Macromedia are registered trademarks of Adobe Inc.

Los Angeles, USA – MacVide has announced MacVide 3gp Converter 2.1, their mobile video conversion utility for Mac OS X. With a focus on ease-of-use, MacVide 3gp Converter allows conversion of the most popular video files to 3gp mobile video. It fully integrates the process into the Mac experience by allowing human interaction on the content during conversion.

All of the most popular formats are supported, including MOV, 3GP, MPEG, AVI and helps bridge the gap between many video standards. MacVide 3gp Converter is a great tool for using with cellulars and phones.

MacVide 3gp Converter provides powerful functions to set different settings for your video files. It allows you to select crop video area, the bit rate, frame rate, video resolution. Video preview with “rangebar” allows you to choose the exact video footage you want, anywhere between the first and last frames. With MacVide 3gp Converter you will able to convert your entire movie to .3gp or .3g2 and watch it anywhere and anytime. It’s very easy to use and it supports most mobile and cellular devices.

New in version 2.1:
* Enhanced support for AppleScript and Automator actions.

Feature highlights include:
* Convert MOV, AVI, WMV, MPEG video to 3gp
* Time line with ZOOM feature
* Crop video area to remove the black video sides
* Easy to use interface

Minimum Requirements:
* Mac OS X Version 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard
* Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel
* 11.2 MB Hard Drive space

Pricing and Availability:
MacVide 3gp Converter 2.1 is available for only $29.95 (USD) for a Single License, and may be downloaded directly from the Macvide website.

MacVide
MacVide 3gp Converter
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Located in historic St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, Intelus, Ltd. is a privately funded company founded in 2002. Leveraging their longtime experience in the video industry, Intelus’ goal is to develop best-of-breed tools for the Mac platform, and lead to the creation of Macvide. Copyright 2002-2008 Intelus, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries. Flash, the Flash Logo and Macromedia are registered trademarks of Adobe Inc.

Brooklyn, NY – Software developers are typically known for making something beautiful out of math and variables. Antair Games and 148Apps challenged developers to move out of their comfort zone, and into the world of sugar and flour. We invite you to see the results, and judge their successes and failures yourself.

The Great Indie Bake Off is a cooking challenge that was put out to the titans of the independent iPhone App scene, to make the best cake they could based on their products. Developers from around the world responded to the call, took off their XXXXL t-shirts, and put on their somehow even larger aprons. Fire alarms were set off, calories were gained, and only the moistest survived to show up in the competition. The voting for the contest is being hosted by popular iPhone App review site 148apps.com, and we’re inviting everyone to help us choose the best cake.

Best of all, one lucky voter will be randomly selected to receive a package of great prizes, including free copies of many of the apps involved, iTunes gift cards, and iPhone accessories.

Featuring the surprisingly good cakes of developers from around the world, the Great Indie Bake Off is a refreshing reminder that developers are people too, with a sweet tooth, and that many have no idea how to apply frosting. With entries from popular chart topping games like Flick Bowling, Up There, and Chopper alongside underground sleeper hits like BurnBall, Sneezies, and ScribBall, there’s something here for everyone.

Check it out now and see your favorite iPhone apps in sugar form! Voting closes 25th January 2009.

Voting Link for the Contest
Great Indie Bake Off Contest
Antair Games
Antair Games Blog
148Apps

Located in Brooklyn, NY, Antair is an independent software development company founded in 2005. Antair Games is a new division dedicated to producing games for the iPhone/iPod Touch, they recently released their first iPhone game, Sneezies, to widespread critical acclaim. Copyright 2009 Antair Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Tel Aviv, Israel – RedleX today released Mellel 2.6, a major update to the leading word processor for Mac OS X. Mellel does it differntly. And better. Again. Mellel 2.6, released today by RedleX, adds QuickLook support, Spread views, and many other new features, all marked by Mellel’s well-known tradition of trying to make features work better, even if that means making them work differently.

“With Mac OS X 10.5 Apple introduced a wonderful new feature called QuickLook, which allow you to peep into documents without opening them,” says Eyal Redler, RedleX’s CTO. “The default for word processor documents, however, was only so-so: the document was not divided into pages, elements like footnotes were missing or misplaced, images were not placed correctly or, in short, it did not look like a PDF. We wanted our QuickLook previews to look like a PDF.”

Which is exactly what they do. Mellel document viewed with QuickView look exactly like they would look in Mellel or in print. No compromises. In addition, to save time waiting for the full preview, you can set in the preferences the number of pages you wish to preview.

Another new feature in Mellel 2.6 is the new “Spread View”: Mellel now support viewing documents in single page view, two page view, four page view and ‘spread’ (facing pages together). “It’s not the most important feature in the world,” says Redler, “but even the little features deserve to be done right.”

And they are done right. The new ‘Spread’ view, for example, takes into consideration the page numbering, and displays odd pages alone when they need to be displayed alone.

Mellel 2.6 introduces many more new features. 25 more new features and enhancements, to be exact. Here are some of the more interesting among those:

* Automatic update: Mellel now supports automatic or manual updates. No more work: Mellel tells you when there is an updates, tells you if it is a free update for you, downloads it, installs it and runs Mellel again.
* Better statistics: the statistics palette is conveniently organised and one can fine-tune what characters will not be included in the count (e.g. punctuation or blank characters).
* Save as PDF: directly.
* Improved CJK: Mellel supports exporting and importing Chinese, Japanese and Korean in several encodings, which vastly improves handling of older documents in those languages.
* Smart style matching: with imported documents or documents with ad-hoc attributes, Mellel will smartly ‘sense’ the attributes in the text and match them. For example, if one applies a style to text with font in boldface, Mellel will look within the style for a style variation in boldface.
* Windows Hebrew fonts: Mellel now displays vowel marks with most Windows Hebrew fonts (in other OS X apps those fonts are do not function with Hebrew at all).
* And more: Mellel 2.6 offers several other enhancements and includes dozens of bug fixes.

Pricing and Availability:
Mellel 2.6 is free to all registered users of Mellel who’ve purchased Mellel after December 2006. Users who’ve purchased Mellel earlier can purchase an upgrade ($19 USD).

Mellel 2.6
Mellel Features
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RedleX was founded in 2002 by Eyal and Ori Redler. The company is privately held and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. Copyright 2002-2008 RedleX. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and QuickLook are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

San Francisco, CA/USA – iRingPro, makers of critically acclaimed iPhone ringtones, announced today that a portion of every ringtone sale going forward will benefit Children of Nepal, an organization that provides a culturally appropriate Steiner education, along with meals and medical care, to underprivileged Nepali children, among the poorest in the world.

“When I discovered what overwhelming challenges these innocent kids face everyday,” said iRingPro founder Joel Hladecek, “horrific conditions that many of us here can’t imagine, and what little it takes to help, I realized that we could make a meaningful difference.”

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is estimated that 20 million Nepalis will be living in absolute poverty by the year 2010. Children of Nepal’s mission is to provide impoverished Nepali children with a positive, nurturing, and stimulating environment in their early years. Such care and education is considered critical in building a sense of safety and a foundation of opportunity for these needy children.

“We’re thrilled to see the power of online fundraising reach this overlooked community of disadvantaged Nepali children,” said Rachel Amtzis, Fundraiser for Children of Nepal, “Children of Nepal is grateful that iRingPro has stepped up and volunteered their support of our organization, and we sincerely hope it’s a model others will follow.”

“We chose Children of Nepal because we recognize that providing support in this case is not as simple as donating money to any charity or orphanage in the region.” Hladecek added.

In fact the situation in Nepal is so desperate that for some Nepali families, orphanages are considered superior to staying at home. As such it is not uncommon for parents to abandon their children at an orphanage in hopes that the child will have a better life.

To avoid generating a culture of dependency, the Children of Nepal’s Tashi Waldorf school’s families contribute to their child’s tuition according to their means.

Hladecek noted that software piracy could theoretically limit iRingPro’s effort to help Children of Nepal.

“Any digital content can be pirated today.” He said, “We just hope that would-be file-sharers in this case pause a moment to reflect on the devastating impact of stealing from these innocent, needy children. When a dollar buys a day of meals, a single shared file would have a direct and heart-wrenching impact.”

Children of Nepal was established in 1996 in association with The Rudolf Steiner Foundation (now known as RSF Social Finance) to provide education and support to Nepalese children. The organization’s first project was to create a Waldorf kindergarten in an orphanage in Kathmandu. Children of Nepal trained staff in teaching and management, and in 1999, the project was handed over to the kindergarten’s Nepalese staff. In 2000, Children of Nepal established the Tashi Waldorf School in an area on the outskirts of Kathmandu. As of May 2008, there are 124 children attending the school in a nursery, three kindergartens and classes 1 through 3.

iRingPro
Children of Nepal
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Joel Hladecek, veteran of interactive media and technology companies, founded Hladecek LLC and iRingPro.com to challenge the software industry’s aesthetic conventions through superior creative development. Previously co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Red Sky Interactive, Modstream Inc, and Harmony Digital Media Consortium, LLC. Recently Managing Partner of Innovation at PHD, an Omnicom media firm. He maintains a blog, The Interactivist. Hladecek, llc is the world’s first luxury software company. Its initial line of Professional iPhone Ringtones, launched under the brand iRingPro, has established a new level of sophistication and etiquette in cellular phone call reporting.

Alameda, California – In celebration of Inauguration Day, Karelia Software has released version 1.5.4 of Sandvox (R), its award-winning website creation software for Mac OS X. Version 1.5.4 is a maintenance release that adds important updates, including new support for the JS-Kit comments service. This new version is compatible with the recently released version (1.5) of the Sandvox Developers’ Kit. To take advantage of new plugins from Karelia and third parties, Karelia is urging all current users to update, and is inviting others to jump in the Sandvox and give it a try.

Sandvox 1.5.4 is available for downloading on a trial basis and for purchase in both Regular and Pro editions from Karelia’s website. Single-user licenses are regularly $49.00 (USD) and $79.00 (USD) respectively.

Sandvox 1.5 comes bundled with 50 designs, and additional designs are available free to those who sign up for Karelia’s email list. Other quality designs are available from Jumsoft, Blueball Design, and Sandvox Web Designs, with more third-party designs available soon.

A Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel architectures, Sandvox 1.5.4 requires Mac OS X “Tiger” version 10.4.11, or “Leopard” version 10.5 and above, and is available in English, French, Danish, German, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

More information about Sandvox is available at Karelia’s website (created with Sandvox, of course). Review copies for traditional and online media are available. Please direct requests to Media Matters and include your name along with your publication’s or podcast’s name and/or URL and any information about particular features or needs of special interest to your readership or audience.

Karelia Software
Sandvox 1.5.4
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Karelia Software is the California-based company that originally brought you Watson, the ground-breaking Macintosh Web utility, winner of the MacWorld “Eddy” and the Apple Design Award for “Most Innovative Application.” Karelia is headed by Dan Wood and Terrence Talbot. We joined forces to create Sandvox when we realized that even for the technically inclined, it was just too painful to get words and pictures on the Web.