June 29 - 11:20pm EDT   Xeric Design has released EarthDesk 5.0, featuring a complete rewrite in Cocoa, faster rendering and higher resolution maps. The realtime desktop worldmap provides users with an image of Earth featuring Sun, Moon and city-based illumination and cloud cover. The Cocoa rewrite provides a new rendering engine for both faster rendering speed and lower processor usage. It is a 32- and 64-bit application that is Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) ready. Version 5.0 also adds seasonal maps with changing snow and vegetation levels and a higher resolution map for large displays. It can now provide cloud data as well. [full story]

June 25 - 12:20am EDT   Gateway on Wednesday evening introduced smaller, more powerful back-to-school desktop PCs, including its small form factor SX Series and its compact DX Series mini-tower line as well as its FHD Series of monitors featuring a new edge-to-edge glass design. Both the SX Series and DX Series PCs include a unique “digital photo frame” button that quickly delivers a slide show of favorite photos along with a “device deck" described as a small recessed area on top of the chassis to put device -- such as a digital camera, MP3 player or camcorder -- for connecting to USB ports and downloading media. Other new features include a tilt-enabled card multi-card media reader for easy ... [full story]

March 16 - 11:15pm EDT   iWeb Valet 2.0 ($19) is a tool for enhancing and uploading iWeb pages. After creating a page in iWeb, instead of publishing to MobileMe, iWeb Valet allows users to publish the site to a local folder and then upload it to an FTP sever. The update includes the ability to add new interactive widgets and also allows users to preview the modified pages in a browser at any point, instead of having to upload it to a web sever first. [Download - 8.6MB] [full story]

March 2 - 5:50pm EST   CheckUp 2.1 ($25) is a tool designed to check and monitor the behavior of a Mac system, either locally or remotely. The software scans a computer and provides information on the systems functionality and overall performance and can also allow any unused applications to be removed. The latest update includes a revised interface, support for Raid disks, improved support for Spaces and a better memory test. [Download - 17.4MB] [full story]

January 23 - 11:35am EST   Currency Assistant 3.0 ($19) allows users to convert values between 174 world currencies (all major circulating currencies plus the 16 Eurozone legacy currencies). The software also automatically updates exchange rates over the Internet using the rates published by the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank of Italy. In the latest release the software has been rewritten as a Universal Cocoa application, the currency conversion calculator has a fully revised interface and introduces several other new features. [Download - 2MB] [full story]

July 30 - 7:55pm EDT   Readers of PC Magazine have awarded top scores to Apple Products, during a recent survey on electronic products. Apple received the highest ratings in all of the categories it was involved in, laptops, desktops, routers, cell phones, media players and tech support. In all of these categories Apple received Readers Choice status and performed "significantly better than average." This year the iPhone was named the "ultimate smartphone" and topped other competing smartphones such as the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl. [full story]

February 25 - 4:50pm EST   Following Adobe's announcement of the AIR application platform, AOL has unveiled Xdrive Desktop Lite, a backup application based on the AIR standard. Computerworld reports that AOL is offering users 5GB of backup for free, which is accessed using the downloadable Xdrive application – a first time offering for Mac users. Xdrive Desktop Lite gives users drag-and-drop functionality to backup any data. The service is also available in a 50GB flavor, which costs users a yearly fee of $100. [full story]

February 18 - 4:00pm EST   Conjurebunny today unveiled Conjure 2.3, an update for its replacement desktop front-end, bringing a number of changes related to contacts, Clusters, and Clothesline. Contacts within Conjure are now considered desktop entities, just like applications, folders and files, allowing them to be viewed directly from the desktop level. The upgrade is free for existing v2.x users, while new users can purchase the full version of Conjure 2.3 for $25. [full story]

February 8 - 7:25pm EST   Panda Systems today unveiled PandoCalendar 7.0.6, an update to its desktop calendar application, adding several new features and bug fixes. In addition to increased Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility, users can also browse through all recurring events by group in a dedicated window. Two new File menu options allow users to create new notes and appointments, while a popup menu with preset snooze times has been added to the reminder window. PandoCalendar is available for free from Panda Systems' web site. [full story]