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

Traverse City, Michigan – MacUpdate today launched a new software bundle promotion, delivering up to 10 first-rate applications valued at more than $600 for just $49.99. The Back-to-School-themed bundle runs through September 10 and is as equally well suited for students and educators as it is for home users and professionals.

The bundle includes:
* Bookends ($100) – Full-featured reference and bibliography management.
* Periscope ($40) – Security software that leverages the Mac’s iSight Camera.
* Mellel ($50) – Highly-acclaimed multilingual word processor.
* DEVONagent ($50) – Extremely efficient Internet search tool.
* Norrkross Movie ($60) – Multi-layered video editing and compositing software.
* Alarm Clock Pro ($20) – Alarm and timing software with extensive features.
* HookUp ($10) – Share and access iTunes libraries beyond your local network.

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Mac 101: Stars and Smart Playlists

Posted Jul 28th 2008 9:00AM by Robert Palmer

Mac 101: Stars and Smart Playlists – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Filed under: iPod Family, iTunes, Mac 101

If you’re anything like me — and I sincerely hope you’re not, for your sake — you have a large iTunes music library, but the music that you like right now is only a small fraction of that total. (Yeah, that embarrassing ’96 Dave Matthews Band album is getting pretty dusty.)

Since my musical tastes vary from day to day, and songs quickly fall in and out of my fickle favor, I love assigning ratings to the music I like this minute. I have a five-star rating for la crème de la crème, and a four-star rating for stuff that’s pretty good. Three-star items are sadly relegated to history.

Next, I combine ratings with smart playlists: Now I can add and remove songs from my current rotation just by changing their star rating. I can do this on-the-go, too: Change a rating on my iPod, and the playlists are updated immediately, and eventually synced back to the computer.

Mac 101: Stars and Smart Playlists – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Chicago, Illinois – Yazsoft is proud to announce that from today, Aug 29 up until Sep 30, 2008, we will be giving 10 people a chance to own a brand new iPhone 3G (8GB). No purchase required to enter. Simply email us with the subject line ‘I want that iPhone 3G’.

Note: Everyone that registers either Speed Download or ShareTool during this period received three entries per license purchased as a modest token of thanks from us.

At the same time, we welcome everyone to check out our brand new software release, ShareTool.

ShareTool lets you access all of the Bonjour services on your home network from anywhere in the world. This includes iTunes Music Sharing, Screen Sharing, File Sharing, printing, and more.

With ShareTool, you can listen to your entire iTunes music library at work, control the screen of any of your home computers, or grab that important file you forgot to bring with you. And this is simply the tip of the iceberg. With ShareTool, it’s as if you’ve never left your own network.

Getting Speed Download or ShareTool:
Both Speed Download 5 and ShareTool are available immediately through the new Yazsoft website. Free demos to both applications is available. More information is readily found throughout our website.

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Chicago, Illinois – Yazsoft has announced Speed Download Lite 1.0.3. Developed exclusively for Mac OS X, Speed Download is an easy to use, powerful and reliable download manager.

Speed Download sets a higher standard for download manager innovation, and is expressly designed to be a central, unified hub for almost all downloading and file transfer activities.

Some Key New Features in Speed Download Lite:
* New: Completely redesigned and fully customizable interface
* New: turbo-charged downloads and auto-resuming at all times
* New: iTunes-like Minimized mode with user controlled color picker
* New: Filters bar
* New: ‘Live’ bandwidth throttle
* New: individual file scheduling
* New: queue downloading scheduling
* New: Speed Download dock menu notifications
* Enhanced: built-in Smart Folder technology
* Enhanced: Download website content for offline viewing
* Tons of tweaks and performance oriented changes
* And much more

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Chicago, Illinois – Yazsoft is proud to announce the immediate availability of Speed Download 5.0.6. Developed exclusively for Mac OS X, Speed Download is an easy to use, powerful and reliable download manager.

Speed Download sets a higher standard for download manager innovation, and is expressly designed to be a central, unified hub for almost all downloading and file transfer activities.

This new update continues to enhance and tweak the performance of Speed Download to ensure utmost reliability. Version 5.0.6 includes tons of key improvements, and is a recommended update for all Speed Download 5 users.

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London, United Kingdom – The Escapers is delighted announce the release of a brand new product into Free Public Beta. Shadow is an incredible new Mac utility for managing multiple clipboard items, in as many clipboards as the user desires. Not only this, but the clipboards can be shared over your local network, either for everyone to use, or password protected.

Shadow is ideal for any power Mac user who needs a multiple clipboard item manager, and comes into it’s own in Mac workgroups who frequently share data and work on the same projects. Shadow is installed as a menu item alongside Spotlight, Time Machine and other system extension. It’s hidden from view until the user hits their own defined key shortcut, Shadow is then displayed and your local and network clipboards are made available. Clipboard items can be double-clicked to insert them into the system clipboard and then the shortcut hit again to hide Shadow.

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Denver, CO – Plum Amazing is pleased to announce their second iPhone application, Plum Record, turns your iPhone into a digital audio recorder which tags sound files with photos and text and costs only $5. Plum Record for the iPhone is now available in the iTunes App Store in English, German, Spanish and French. There is a link below which will open iTunes to the Plum Record page in the iTunes App Store.

There are so many interesting and important sounds in our lives. Wouldn’t it be nice to record them conveniently on your ever present cell phone? Now with Plum Record and the Apple iPhone you can.

Easily record interviews, lectures, songs, shopping lists, medical notes, to do lists, bird calls, legal notes, environmental sounds, meetings, lyrics, car sounds (to play for Clik and Clak on Car Talk), reminders, ideas, audio books, diary entries, your childs first words, singing, instrumentals, street musicians, comedy, sermons, book clubs, choirs, news, podcasts, science notes, observations, the list goes on and on.

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[ Please ensure you have the Firmware Restoration CD 1.6 available BEFORE attempting any firmware operations. This is best practice and a very sensible precaution ]

Apple have released new firmware for their MacBook and iMac computers, I had quite a few problems with the firmware upgrade this morning so thought a brief summary of my fix may be helpful to others:

I went through the process as advised and applied the firmware upgrade. As instructed I shutdown and then held the power button down on my (mid-2007) iMac until the long beep. Each time I tried this the iMac just booted normally and did not enter the updating procedure.

Now, I have an EFI firmware password set so just in case this was preventing the upgrade I booted from my install DVD and cleared the password. I then re-ran the firmware update and following the ‘long beep reboot’ everything went as it should and I saw the progress bar etc.

After all had completed successfully I then booted from my install DVD again and re-applied the EFI firmware password.

A bit of a pain but security comes first, at least for me it does.

Well, maybe not

The game Horde of Orcs, by Freeverse, has been upgraded to v1.1

It’s a great tower defense game, very addictive and the innovative game play monitoring system ( +7systems Balance Engine) feeds back game play techniques employed by users of the game to improve the next version. This results in a great game getting much better at the next release.

Details of the news release can be found here