September 29 - 6:10pm EDT   The Omni Group has released OmniWeb 5.8, switching the browser's base to the same version of WebKit in use by Safari 3.1. It includes the latest security patches and features of Safari 3.1, including downloadable fonts, CSS animation, HTML 5 media tags and client side database storage. The new version includes upgraded toolbar icons, a Google Chrome user agent option, a bugfix for Leopard's Spaces and support for Non-POSIX file URLs, providing improved compatibility with Dreamweaver and other Carbon and Classic applications. [full story]

August 18 - 7:25pm EDT   In brief: MacNN has reviewed MacSoft's Drop Point: Alaska, for snowboarding enthusiasts. The game allows players to drop from helicopters onto virgin mountain peaks, snowboarding on over 100 challenging trials. The rendering of snowy mountains provides strong visuals, for systems that can handle the visual challenge (Mac Mini owners may not have the best experience). Drop Point Alaska offers a vast playing area but may be too much for low-end machines. [full story]

August 13 - 7:00pm EDT   Nielsen Online says Apple remained 10th on its list of top online brands in July, a slight increase over june. The research firm says 51.7 million unique users visited an Apple-owned website or used Apple software in July, up from 49.9 million in June. Apple also finished 10th on Nielsen's list of Top Parent Companies/Divisions. [full story]

August 7 - 1:30am EDT   Two developers have come up with new ways to create web pages and streamed video content for the iPhone. DigitalFX International says it has added its Media Vault solution for storing and transcoding videos to its "helloWorld" subscription-based web broadcasting service. Windows users can now send video messages to the iPhone or other newer 3G phones. Another company, Schmap, says it has developed beta version of its Javascript software that allows existing websites to provide map and contact details "perfectly formatted" for iPhone visitors. [full story]

July 14 - 5:15pm EDT  Servoy Inc. has introduced Servoy 4.0 -- one code base for desktop AND Web applications. Servoy 4.0 -- now an Eclipse plug-in -- is a major upgrade from all previous versions of Servoy, enabling Servoy developers to produce enterprise-level applications using a standards-based IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Servoy consists of a GUI designer, is fully event-driven and scriptable through JavaScript. As a plug-in for Eclipse -- an open source, free, extensible development framework -- Servoy 4.0 can inherit a form from another parent form within a solution -- eliminating the need to duplicate forms with similar functionality. [full story]

June 30 - 7:35pm EDT   Autodesk has acquired the assets of Green Building Studio (GBS), further consolidating the market for Mac-based architecture software. GBS' web service will soon join the Autodesk product family, while the GBS team will continue selling, training, and supporting architects as they use the GBS web service to design carbon neutral buildings today and in the future. Autodesk also plans to continue support for the Green Building Studio web service and carbon neutral building design training. The gbXML schema will remain an open industry standard, and the GBS web service will continue to be available to any other BIM software. [full story]

June 24 - 8:35am EDT   Slife Labs has debuted Slife 2.0, the latest evolution of of its time and activity management software for Mac OS X. Released in conjunction with Slife Teams, a subscription-based collaborative web service, the Slife software package provides a solid platform for 'time-based' workers such as designers and consultants to keep track of productivity, eliminating reliance on time-sheets or spreadsheet applications. [full story]

June 17 - 1:20pm EDT   Though servers offering the software are currently buckling and inaccessible to many users, Firefox 3.0 on Tuesday has made its debut with the Mozilla organization looking to set a record for browser downloads. The major new release of the open source Web browser is available today in approximately 50 languages, and is purportedly three times faster than its predecessor, offering "15,000 improvements" including a smart location bar and malware protection. The new Firefox 3 smart location bar, dubbed "Awesome Bar" by Mozilla, adapts to user entries over time. The Firefox 3 Library archives browsing history, bookmarks, and tags, where they can be searched and organized. [full story]

June 16 - 12:40pm EDT   Mesa Dynamics has posted a beta of Amnesty Hypercube, which is designed to “free” Google Gadgets and other web widgets from the confines of a web browser to the desktop. Not to be confused with Dashboard widgets, web widgets are tiny applications -- often snippets of HTML code -- designed to be inserted in blogs or other web pages. Amnesty Hypercube allows these widgets to be launched from within Dashboard or from the desktop. [full story]

June 3 - 5:25pm EDT   The Alchemist Guild has announced the release of WebScripter 2.0, a new release of the integrated development environment (IDE) for programming in several popular web scripting languages such as:  PERL, PHP, CSS, HTML/XML, JavaScript and Ruby. The tool offers features including: text editing, previewing web pages, testing scripts, managing projects, navigating code and FTP integration. The developer says that in this release, the original concept was scrapped and redesigned from the ground up with a modern OS X GUI using tabs for editing and split views for integrating features into a single window. The new design is "compact, concise and helps to keep the user in close ... [full story]

May 30 - 3:40pm EDT   Totus Copy 1.0 utility for transferring data off of a failing hard drive. OS X has a number of safety features built into it's copy functions, if it detects an I/O error or a stalled read the transfer will fail. OS X also gets file information for all files before it even copies the first one. While these are great functions to prevent further damage to a hard drive it makes it very difficult to transfer data. Totus Copy will scan a failing hard drive and recover the files from it onto a separate functional hard drive. It does this by using a very gentle non-intrusive scanning method. [Download - 224KB] BlogAssist 2.2 ($10) tool to help weblog and website editing by making HTML markup ... [full story]

May 22 - 3:30pm EDT   Apple's .Mac service, once a promising method for sharing media, performing online backups and more, has paled in the presence of free alternatives and represents an untapped opportunity for Apple according to a recent report from CNET. The articles posits "$99 a year is hard to justify for the .Mac service. 10GBs of storage? I can get that for $20 from Google, and I can get much more if I want it. Photo sharing? I can do that for free on Flickr, and upload as many photos and videos as I want for $24.95 a year. Build my own Web site? Lots of services offer that capability for free." [full story]

April 22 - 4:40pm EDT   According to new data from Nielsen Online, Web traffic to the Apple Inc's sites collectivly grew 13 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2008, from a three-month average monthly unique audience of 42.9 million to 48.4 million. Total minutes spent on the site grew 12 percent year over year, from 9.4 billion in Q1 2007 to 10.5 billion in Q1 2008, while total purchases at The Apple Store grew 32 percent month over month, from 322,000 purchases in January 2008 to 424,000 purchases in February 2008. iTunes, Apple Store and QuickTime were the top three fastest growing Apple Computer Web channels year over year in Q1 2008 [full story]

April 14 - 7:35pm EDT   Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research has published an article addressing the suitability of Apple products -- the Mac and iPhone in particular -- for business purposes. Noting that Most IT departments are not deploying Macintosh systems in large numbers and those that are are deploying are usually in niche spaces such as graphic arts, Gartenberg says that the Mac OS has changed significantly in the last few years and says that Apple's systems now offer a reasonable alternative for Windows systems used in businesses. [full story]

March 27 - 4:40pm EDT   Objective Development, makers of LaunchBar, recently unveiled WebYep 1.2.2 - an update to its content management system designed for small and medium sized businesses. The product enables users to turn any existing site into a fully editable environment, creating and editing pages from within a web browser, on any platform. WebYep also integrates with popular web authoring tools such as Dreamweaver, RapidWeaver, and Freeway. [full story]