News Archive for 03/06/06

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.Mac email difficulties continue

06/06, 6:45pm

.Mac email difficulties continue

Several MacNN readers report continued difficulty sending and receiving .Mac email. Apple's status page for the online service still states that "all .Mac services are online and operational." .Mac users have reported email-related problems for over a week. Apple has responded to the issues, noting that an "extremely high volume" of email messages has caused some of the problems today.

Apps: iStopMotion, CryptoQuote, PDFshrink ...

06/06, 4:10pm

Apps: iStopMotion, CryptoQuote, PDFshrink ...

Boinx iStopMotion, a stop-motion animation and timelapse recording application for Mac OS X, has reached preview release status. "Customers attest the software a high quality and a depth that makes it a valuable addition to the Digital Hub." New features include editing of frames in an external image editor application and exporting of frames. The licensing model includes a free 'Lite' license, which offers all the features at an Internet-suitable output resolution. Before June 30th, customers can purchase the iStopMotion DV license at an introductory rate of $36. [Download - 396KB]
John Haney has released CryptoQuote 1.0, a word puzzle game for Mac OS X. CryptoQuote contains hundreds of quotes to be decoded like CryptoGrams in some newspapers. "CryptoQuote makes solving these puzzles fun and easy, taking advantage of your Mac to provide features which make it better than working on paper." CryptoQuote is $5 shareware. [Download - 298KB]
PDFshrink 3.0 reduces the size of PDF files created by Mac OS X, Adobe Acrobat Distiller and other software. PDFshrink compresses images within the PDF file, "but PDFshrink doesn't stop there like some competing software products." Version 3.0 adds more resolution choices, support for encrypted PDF with proper password, AppleScript support, and an improved user interface. [Download - 1.5MB]
If Then Software has released IDIot 1.0 released for Mac OS X. "If you distribute your Mac OS X software electronically, use an internet-enabled disk image (IDI) which 'cleans up' after itself leaving behind only the desired software and nothing else related to the download process ... it will remove all traces of the 'shell' that the software comes in and simply place the software on the desktop." [Download - 127KB]
Xmonitor is a real-time system and email monitoring application for Mac OS X. XMonitor allows you to easily monitor your disk, CPU, RAM and network usage, PPP status, IP address, email, and more. The latest release adds HTVC Version Checking; includes support for the cut, copy, paste, and clear commands; corrects cosmetic issues; and fixes a handful of bugs. [Download - 1.3MB]

MS alters settlement to address concerns

06/06, 1:00pm

MS alters settlement to address concerns

Microsoft, which agreed to pay $1.1 billion to settle antitrust claims in California, dropped a provision in the agreement that would give its software away for free to schools after Apple complained, according to Bloomberg: "Schools that are awarded vouchers under the settlement can now receive any manufacturers' technology product, according to court documents filed in San Francisco. Previously, Microsoft planned to give schools either free Microsoft software or cash to buy any computer products."

Aladdin ships Spring Cleaning 6.0 utility

06/06, 12:50pm

Aladdin ships Spring Cleaning 6.0 utility

Aladdin is now shipping Spring Cleaning 6.0, its all-in-one cleaning and privacy protection suite. It offers 20 powerful tools designed to clean, protect and organize Macs, including applications to uninstall computer programs, remove duplicate files, manage Internet cookies, history and cache files to improve their computer's performance and help manage and protect Internet privacy. Version 6.0 now removes language files to increase performance and make additional hard drive space available; has improved preview of search results, deletes Sherlock cookies; includes a system Menu for Mac OS X; and other Mac OS X optimization support. The $50 suite is available now. Upgrades and competitive upgrades (from competing products) are $20.

Apple talks to independent lables about music

06/06, 11:10am

Apple talks to independent lables about music

Derek Sivers, President of CD Baby and Hostbaby, has posted notes from Apple's meeting with independent music labels, which took place last night: "There are 6-7 million copies of iTunes in use; there have been 3.5 million songs sold so far; Apple is selling about 500,000 songs a week now; More than 75% of songs have sold at least once; 45% of all songs have been bought as an album....Big labels don't get preferential treatment....'Everyone is going to get the exact same deal. It's not negotiable. It's take it or leave it.'...a special Music Store Encoder tool for Mac OS X will be released in 90 days or so."

Solutions for sharing music with iTunes 4.01

06/06, 10:30am

Solutions for sharing music with iTunes 4.01

iCommune 401(ok) is a "quick and dirty hack to allow iTunes 4.0.1 to share music beyond your local network. 401(ok) redirects incoming connections on port 4689 to port 3689. This allows for the iTunes music sharing server normally run on port 3689 (but with limited access), to be reached on port 4689 globally. The local network limitation in the iTunes sharing server is achieved by sending server responses with a low IP time-to-live. By doing a local port redirection, the server responses are sent with the normal TTL, and the 'subnet' limitation is eliminated." Meanwhile, a tutorial describes how to access your iTunes 4.0.1 music collection beyond your local network.

Apps: Trisection, SquidCam, ChimeX...

06/06, 9:10am

Apps: Trisection, SquidCam, ChimeX...

Trisection 1.0 Is a new puzzle game for Mac OS X that "follows in the grand tradition of Tetris, involving fitting falling pieces into an existing matrix. But in Trisection, you're matching up colors, not just completing rows. And unlike the square blocks of Tetris, Trisection uses a triangular grid and pieces, making it a much more interesting puzzle." The $15 shareware features more than a dozen levels, many different Aqua-style rendered pieces, sound effects, and two soundtracks. [6.4MB]
SquidCam 1.5b2 is a video phone/video chat application designed for use with broadband connections. It enables audio/video connectivity with one or more people using SquidCam over a network connection as well as text messaging. It offers compatibility with the new Windows version of SquidCam, faster video, better quality video, improved audio, and other changes. It is $25. [757KB]
Pariahware has released ChimeX 1.4, an update to its Mac OS X utility that "brings back the hourly chimes missing in the new OS. Choose between speaking the time, playing an alert sound, playing a sound file (System 7 through MP3), or having ChimeX randomly choose a file from a folder. Alerts may be set for the hour, quarter past, half past and quarter of." Version 1.4 removes the dock icon and places it in the menu bar and also introduces an alarm setting. A 30-demo of the Mac OS X shareware ($5) is available online. [1.0MB]
appMac software has released a preview version of xTime Project 1.0b1 designed to organize, track and manage projects. It offers functions for creating Gantt charts display project details in daily to yearly timelines; project views to illustrate assignments and resource usage, AutoFit formatting, resource allocation, summary bars, task dependency tracking, a calendar, and data exchange with iCal as well as other databases and applications. It is $100 through the end of July. [1.9MB]
PowerQuote Software has released PowerQuote 10 printing estimating and management software. It handles offset, copy and brokered jobs. The system is designed for quotes, job tickets, invoicing, easy recall of jobs for reorders, and more. The Lite version can be upgraded to the Standard version to gain production schedule, invoicing, account receivables and network capability. Pricing starts at $1,700.

Aabel 1.5: data analysis and charting

06/06, 9:05am

Aabel 1.5: data analysis and charting

Aabel 1.5 is described as an integrated application that provides native worksheets, a database metaphor, numerous 2D and 3D graphs/charts, statistical tests, multivariate data analysis methods, data processing and data filtering tools. Version 1.5 adds 35 new chart types in 19 categories; a complete set of new statistics (t-tests, Wilcoxon sing-ranked test, Mann Whitney U-tests, F-test, correlation and covariance matrices, one-way and two-way ANOVA, full Kaplan-Meier analysis and logrank test); a user-defined/non-linear curve fitting module, new text frame and table editors for generating styled text and tables; additional import functions including Excel and Fortran formatted files; new marker symbols; and other changes. Aabel 1.5 is $350; academic/educational licenses are $250; it is free upgrade for registered users.