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

Hagenberg, Austria – Ergonis Software today announced the release of PopChar X 4.1, the award-winning tool for inserting special characters into your documents across all Mac OS X applications.

The new version improves compatibility with OpenOffice and NeoOffice and can now detect the current font in MultiAd Creator Pro. It also includes a new technique for flexible adaptation to peculiarities of certain applications. Furthermore, PopChar X 4.1 delivers a number of other improvements and fixes for user-reported issues. In particular, it fixes a problem that caused the memory allocation of PopChar to grow over time.

Visit Ergonis Software’s website at to learn more about specific enhancements contained in this release and to download a trial copy.

PopChar solves a problem faced by every technologist and multi-lingual worker. Inserting special characters into application documents can be frustrating and results in a steady loss of productivity. With PopChar you no longer need to search for and remember keystrokes. Just pop up the PopChar window, click the desired character, and the character appears in your current document right away.

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Frankfort, Kentucky – Steven Riggs is proud to announce TimeTable 1.5. TimeTable allows you to easily analyze and total the number of hours recorded in iCal.

Why not use iCal for more than just scheduling? TimeTable reads and filters iCal calendar data and then calculates the hours spent in the events. Find trends by searching the details of events and viewing the average, maximum and minimum times spent on projects. This makes it particularly suited for tracking and billing without keeping a second record outside of iCal.

Thanks to feedback from customers who helped shape this new release!

New in version 1.5:
* New exports for to do details to text and CSV.
* New expandable to do drawer.
* New set custom hours for all day events.

Bugs fixed:
* Problem with non-numeric characters in the hourly rate field causing TimeTable to crash fixed.

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Hutto, Texas – Macgamestore today announced the release of Righteous Kill for the Macintosh. Developed by Merscom, Inc, Righteous Kill is a downloadable casual game based on the major theatrical movie released in September.

Step into the shoes of Erica Dean as she investigates crime scenes in New York City. It’s a man hunt for a vigilante on a killing spree through 16 locations containing over a thousand hidden objects. With the help of Sergeant Vasquez, Erica will use clues she collects in a number of detective-themed mini games. Inspired by the motion picture film, Righteous Kill features clips from the movie and 15 animated levels.

Features:
* Engaging side story to the Righteous Kill movie
* Animated and atmospheric environments
* In-game tutorial seamlessly integrated into the game
* Beautiful but realistic visual style that conveys the New York City setting
* Multiple mini-games bases on detective activities
* Over one thousand objects
* Integrated hint system
* Exciting plot and storyline

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Cerdanyola de Valles, Spain – Aero Quartet has released Treasured, an app for the Mac that is able to diagnose and preview corrupt movie files. Treasured is the perfect complement to the Movie Repair Service unveiled last year: Video Professionals can now check whether a corrupt file still contains the precious footage and is repairable, directly on their computer and in a few minutes.

If you decide to repair the file, Treasured sends the report to Aero Quartet, whose technicians will develop a customized solution. Treasured and Movie Repair Service are designed to work perfectly together, delivering a 90% success rate in a 48 hours turn-around time.

Aero Quartet has already developed repair techniques for a wide range of formats and codecs: DVCPro HD, HDV, Intermediate, XDCAM, ProRes422, DV, H264, MPEG4, JPEG. The list grows longer every month.

Availability:
Treasured is free and runs on Mac OS X 10.4 and higher.

Aero Quartet
Treasured
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Screenshot/App Icon

Aero Quartet was founded in 2005 in Barcelona, Spain by Benoit Joossen. Our charter is to create useful software for the Macinstosh platform. “The major software companies have already filled the space with their big software suites. But you don’t fill a box only with big stones, you also need lots of pebbles. As a small developer, I want to craft some of those pebbles, indeed I want them to be gem stones !” Copyright 2005-2008 Aero Quartet. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and Mac are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Los Angeles, USA – Macvide is proud to announce ScreenCap 1.9, their video to Flash conversion utility for Mac OS X. Developed specifically for Mac users, ScreenCap allows video recording, single screenshot or timed screenshot series capturing from your Mac. All of the most popular video and image formats are supported: iPod mp4, 3gp, QuickTime MOV, Adobe Flash SWF and FLV, jpeg, png, tiff, bmp.

ScreenCap offers an easy-to-use interface that guides the user through the capturing and recording process. The application can select capturing area in a preview window or on a whole screen. ScreenCap automatically provides ideal default settings and control many audio/video preferences. Audio capturing can record your voice during creating your video from microphone or just grab all sound of your Mac.

Feature highlights include:
* Record Video from your desctop or selected area
* Record Flash Video FLV or SWF from your Desktop or selected area
* Capture part or whole of screen by selecting capturing area
* Capture single frame screenshots
* Capture timed screenshots series
* Store result screenshots to PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP formats
* Save captured video to quickTime MOV, iPod mp4 or Mobile 3GP formats
* Save captured to Flash SWF and FLV Video
* Selectable area for Capturing
* Preview of selecte area
* Hotkey support
* Easy to use

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Munich, Germany – Boinx Software announced today FotoMagico 2.6, an update to its award-winning photo presentation software for professional photographers. The new 2.6 version of FotoMagico Pro now also supports Adobe Lightroom 2 libraries and comes with an plug-in for Aperture, enabling photographers to select their photos from within Aperture and to export them directly to FotoMagico.

“FotoMagico always was the premier photo slideshow tool on the Mac. Professional photographers treasure its fine-granular controls for creative storytelling”, says Oliver Breidenbach, co-founder of Boinx Software. “With the new version 2.6, which is a free update for all FotoMagico 2 users, we further deepend the integration with the two leading photo workflow solutions from Adobe and Apple.”

“The Aperture Plug-in provides the missing link in my workflow”, says Derrick Story, Author of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers. “Now I can select the images for my slideshow in Aperture, and the plugin automatically creates a FotoMagico document with them. Very nice.”

Adobe Lightroom 2 Support:
In addition to iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom 1 libraries, FotoMagico 2.6 (Pro version only) now also supports libraries of the new Adobe Lightroom 2. With the integrated iMedia Browser users can also seamlessly access GarageBand songs, iLife sound effects and media libraries from iTunes or media files from any other folder on their hard disk.

FotoMagico Plug-in for Aperture:
The new FotoMagico Plug-in for Aperture allows photographers to select the pictures in Aperture and export them to FotoMagico to create stunning animated photo presentations with transitions, titles and more. A photographer can now access his Aperture library from the iMedia Browser from within FotoMagico, or the other way around – send a selection of pictures from Aperture to FotoMagico. The FotoMagico Plug- in for Aperture is part of FotoMagico 2.6 and also available as a free download at the Boinx Website.

Availability and Pricing:
FotoMagico 2.6 is available immediately for download from the Boinx Website. A built-in assistant will guide users through the process of aquiring the proper license. The update to FotoMagico 2.6 is free of charge to current FotoMagico 2.x license owners at their current license levels. FotoMagico 2.6 Express is available for $49 (USD) and FotoMagico 2.6 Pro is available for $129 (USD) via Kagi. For all purchase options see the Web site. Commercial multi-user license discounts are available upon request.

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Maintain has announced Cocktail 4.2 (Leopard Edition). Cocktail is an award winning general purpose utility for Mac OS X. This version adds ability to search and delete corrupted preference files, adds a searchable database of Mac OS system error codes, adds a list of commonly used network ports, improves the clear log files procedure, fixes a number of minor bugs discovered in the previous release, contains some interface improvements as well as updated Help files and Automator actions.

The update is strongly recommended for all users of Cocktail (Leopard Edition).

Cocktail 4.2 (Leopard Edition) is distributed as a Universal Binary and runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. Cocktail 4.2 (Leopard Edition) requires Mac OS X / Mac OS X Server 10.5 or later and is tested for compatibility with Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server 10.5.5.

Cocktail 4.0.2 (Tiger Edition) for Mac OS X 10.4.x and Cocktail 3.7 (Panther Edition) for Mac OS X 10.3.x are available for download from our website.

Cocktail is an award winning general purpose utility for Mac OS X. It is a smooth and powerful digital toolset with a variety of practical features that simplifies the use of advanced UNIX functions and helps hundreds of thousands of Mac users around the world to get the most out of their computers.

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Chicago, Illinois – Yazsoft is proud to announce the immediate availability of Speed Download 5.0.7 and Speed Download Lite 1.0.4. 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.

Some Key New Features in these Versions:
* New: Optimized for Mac OS X 10.5.5
* New: AFP integration and support
* Fixed: Various FTP issues
* Updated: Tweaked WEBDAV connectivity for better performance and vaster compatibility
* Updated: Many under the hood improvements to accommodate for all the changes

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Walnut Creek, California – net4mac is a social network built exclusively for Mac users. This is a powerful internet service that allows you to make new friends sharing the same passion for the Mac platform, build new professional relationships, create groups of interests and much more. We are very proud to announce today the new version of net4mac for the iPhone.

Version 1.0 for iPhone allows you to connect to the service, read your messages, send a new message, browse profiles and search members matching your preferences. The user interface is fully optimized for the iPhone. More features will be added in future versions. It’s just the beginning. The iPhone version costs only $4.99 (USD). All updates will be free and we have a strong pipeline for new features.

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Walnut Creek, California – net4mac is a social network built exclusively for Mac users. In order to become a part of the community and use all its features, users need to download an innovative application designed for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Today, we are launching version 1.5 with many improvements.

The net4mac application allows you to:

* Create an account and login to the service (internet connexion required)
* Create your profile including your location, job, activities, skills and the type of Macs, iPhone, iPod, etc. that you own.
* Add friends to your profile and manage them (remember, the service is only for Mac users)
* Contact members, send invitations to join the community, and manage your messages
* Create your own groups of interest and invite friends to join them (people using the same application, in your same location, sharing the same passions, etc)
* Browse and join groups you find interesting – share discussions, events and more
* Create events and invite Mac users (this is useful if you want to announce the presentation of a product / service, etc)
* Search members using different of criteria (for example, you can find people that use the same Mac or software)
* Discover people around you (other Mac users in your neighborhood)
* And many more functions

There are many good reasons to use an application instead of a website:

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San Jose, CA – app4mac today released CheckUp 1.2, a new update to the innovative tool that allows you to check the health and monitor the behavior of a Mac computer (even from a remote computer). Built from the ground up with Mac OS X technologies, CheckUp features an amazing user interface. CheckUp works with any Mac with a PowerPC G4, G5 or Intel Processor.

CheckUp is first designed to monitor the usage of CPU, Memory, Disk Drives and Network Adapters. You can display detailed information about all running processes and pause or terminate these at any time. By adding rules that will be triggered when certain conditions are met for a specified resource on the computer, you can receive visual notifications.

For example, CheckUp can alert you when a certain resource exceeds a certain value or when a hard drive seems to have hardware failures, even when the application is not opened (thanks to an innovative background process and the use of S.M.A.R.T technology). CheckUp can also help you to determine if your computer is able to run Mac OS X Leopard or determine if your computer have enough memory to run all your Applications at the same time.

The graphical user interface is designed with a top priority on high usability in mind. Unlike other competing

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Portland, Oregon – You Software has announced the immediate availability of You Control 1.7, the award-winning utility for creating custom menus on the Mac. This update introduces improvements for better support of iCal on Leopard, as well as a number of enhancements and fixes for other modules in You Control. The Calendar module is one of 19 modules included with You Control. You Control modules are the building blocks that allow users to create a wide variety of custom menus, with all kinds of information directly available from the menu bar.

The Calendar module provides quick access to all of the user’s iCal calendars. New in version 1.7 is support for iCal calendars served via a CalDAV server (such as the iCal Server on Mac OS X Server). This version also improves the handling of To Dos created in Leopard’s Mail application and provides general performance improvements.

In addition to the Calendar module changes, several other modules have also been updated based on user feedback. Highlights include:

* Improved compatibility for RSS feeds in the News Reader module
* Support for Microsoft Word 2008 in the Fonts module (when used in conjunction with You Control: Fonts)
* Minor fixes and enhancements in the Clock, Weather, and iTunes modules

We recommend that all You Control users running Mac OS X 10.4 and higher update to this version.

You Control: Fonts 1.3.1, You Control: Tunes 1.7 Also Released
In conjunction with the release of You Control, both You Control: Fonts and You Control: Tunes have been released with updates introduced in You Control 1.7. You Control: Fonts introduces support for Microsoft Word 2008, allowing simple, consistent font selection in this popular word processor.

About You Control:
You Control is a powerful utility for creating custom menus that extend the functionality and usability of your Mac. You can place your user-created menus in a variety of locations, including the Menu Bar, any corner of your monitor screen, or you can pop your custom menus up anywhere on the screen using key commands you specify.

You Control is loaded with time saving tools that make working with OS X better, faster and easier. In addition to taking control of iTunes, you can create custom menus that allow you easy and instant access to your Address Book Contacts, iCal events, news, stocks, weather and any file or folder on your Mac.

Pricing and Availability:
You Control 1.7 is a free upgrade to registered users and is compatible with both Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) and

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Stockholm, Sweden – Snarb.tk today announced the immediate availability of Cover Stream 2.2, a major update to their unrivaled iTunes controller that extends iTunes Cover Flow to the desktop. The new version adds Jukebox mode, mouseover desktop controls, integrated lyrics support, a daemon launcher and plenty of options to customize application behavior and appearance. The new version also resolves a number of bugs in earlier releases and is a recommended update for all users.

Cover Stream is one of the most popular iTunes controllers for the Macintosh, and a true piece of eye candy! Developed exclusively for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Cover Stream extends iTunes Cover Flow to the desktop,

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Hagenberg, Austria – Ergonis Software today announced the release of Typinator 3.1, the latest version of its highly acclaimed tool for auto-typing text and auto-correcting typos system-wide across all Mac OS X applications.

The new version integrates the recently released HTML snippets set providing over 100 abbreviations for elements of the HTML 4.01 standard. Typinator 3.1 also improves compatibility with many popular applications like Coda, VMWare Fusion, Butler, Zend Studio, and others. In addition to many functional improvements, the menu bar icon has been redesigned to better match the style of Apple’s menu extras – and for the user interface purists, it can now even be turned off. Visit Ergonis Software’s website to learn more about all changes in the release and to download and try the new version.

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Crevalcore, Italy – Doseido Software is delighted to announce the first release of Headline, their next-generation news reader for Mac OS X Leopard. Combining a sleek, clean interface with a powerful user experience, Headline is designed to make catching up with the latest blog posts, articles and news feeds quick and more enjoyable.

Headline starts with a revolutionary interface and then gets better. It’s easy to filter out contents by switching from Today, This Week, This Month, All, Unread or Favorites items. And with Favorites, users can easily mark articles with the click of a button, and return to them at any time. Users can view articles in Headline directly or optionally via Safari Read the rest of this entry »

Hutto, Texas – Macgamestore today announced the release of Jewel Quest III, the next installment in the extremely popular Jewel Quest series. The game is published by iWin.

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If you’re interested in learning about UNIX for the Mac OS X, or perhaps you occasionally need to open a terminal window to force a system restart, or maybe to kill a hung process (for example to restart the Dock) then a good place to begin is osxfaq and it’s UNIX tutorials.

Another good website to look at is MacRumors:Guides and it’s Terminal Commands Guide where you can learn about the delights of sudo and killall (for starters).

Remember: Terminal commands have the potential to be very powerful and wide-ranging, please use them with caution.

Reports are around detailing various strange and curious finds deeps down within the Mac OS, is MS Windows support around the corner, check out one of the reports here: Softpedia

If could be a red herring or course but it would be great if Apple did indeed have a plan to support Windows apps.

Updated: 6th Dec 2007, see comment below with details that this could be a myth.