January 27 - 9:45pm EST   In brief: Mariner Software has announced a new social networking site that allows writers to post their own work or read and comment on material from other users. MacNN has recently taken a look at a device that holds an iPhone or iPod touch on a desk. The Just Mobile Xtand is stylized to complement the design of the iMac and Cinema Display, while holding the device in either the portrait or landscape orientation. Intrinsic Development Corp. has announced that it will offer another iPhone developer training course, as its previous series received a strong response. [full story]

January 8 - 6:15am EST   SERank 1.9 ($60) can monitor search engine rankings for any number of keywords and display the changes of a sites rankings over time. Users can track search engine rankings in over 50 different search engines world time and can graph changes in their personal sites ranking over time. The application can also create customized PDF reports reports for clients. Version 1.9 can now export data to CSV or tab delimited files for use with Excel or Numbers and can also customize reports by setting table column widths. [Download - 14.4MB] [full story]

August 12 - 9:10pm EDT   Storyist Software has updated its flagship story development application to include a host of features requested by users. Designed for novelists and screenwriters, Storyist 1.4 now includes a formatting inspector window, the ability to read and write in additional formats -- including Microsoft Word, Open Office and FInal Draft -- and improved import and export functions. New text tools automate tedious routine functions such as search-and-replace, changing font styles reformatting text. [full story]

July 24 - 5:25pm EDT   Writing a script for a movie, TV show or the stage isn’t easy. While there are plenty of scriptwriting programs that format text automatically, few of these help you to think creatively about your story in the first place. To handle both sides of the equation, you may need to use a screenwriting module like the one in NovaMind Platinum. [full story]

June 2 - 3:10pm EDT   Storyist has released the first version of its self-titled writing software, designed solely for Macs. The program is meant to aid in the creation of novels and screenplays, and in addition to a standard word processor, it includes a component called the Storyboard. This maps out a story using virtual index cards, which are in turn posted on a digital corkboard. Through the latter, writers can pick scenes to edit and rearrange them at will. [full story]

April 17 - 9:55pm EDT   ModMyiFone.com forum members have discovered a new utility for jailbroken iPhones which allows for handwriting recognition using a small grey area. The beta software can recognize both Latin and Chinese characters at the moment, transcribing finger motions into editable text on a yellow notepad-style document. User poetic_folly notes that installing HWPen requires the user to add iphonecake.com/src/all as the installer source. [full story]

March 28 - 12:15am EDT  Apple has posted the availability of a Handwriting Recognition Engineer position, citing the need for a dedicated employee for its Mac OS X handwriting recognition technology. According to MacRumors.com, the individual would be responsible for enhancing the existing product, as well as extending the technology's influence to "other Applications and the iPhone," suggesting Apple is trying to recapture the feel of its Newton handheld platform. [full story]

February 21 - 11:00am EST   The US Patent and Trademark office today published five of Apple's patents, describing versatile multi-touch input device and control methods in a wide array of fields. The device appears to be an ergonomic multi-touch keyboard-style device that can accept a wide array of touch commands, including typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation, and handwriting. The patents involve actions that are simple for the user to know and remember, while the system has little difficulty differentiating between the actions. [full story]

December 11 - 7:45pm EST   Montage 1.3 ($140) tool to create, edit, and manage screenplays on a Macintosh. The new release adds Leopard support, the ability to export Montage scripts to Final Draft (.fdr), the ability to export Montage scripts to .sex format for interfacing with production scheduling applications like Gorilla, EP Scheduling and CompanyMOVE and localized support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish. [Download - form] FlightCheck Pro 6.1 ($500) preflighting solution for desktop publishing apps. FlightCheck v6.10 comprises numerous improvements and updates, including enhanced preflighting speed--up to four times faster than previous versions. The solution now recognizes QuarkXPress 7 files, ... [full story]